Memories

①

Sophie woke up, startled. She hadn't remembered going back to Havenfield that night. What she did remember was seeing all of her friends, and then her, disappear in a flash of light, right after they had tried and failed to attack the Neverseen.

Maybe that had been a dream. Sophie reached over to grab her imparter and instead found a wooden pencil.

There were no pencils in the Lost Cities. She sat up and looked around her room in shock.

It wasn't her room. 

The bed was shoved into one corner with a small table beside it. The floor had the type of cheap carpeting that came with human houses. There was one small window bordered by coral colored curtains. A desk was in another corner. There were two doors, one of them slightly open, revealing a closet. The walls were painted a light blue. One wall had fairy lights draped over it. Sophie stood up to look at them. There were pictures clipped to the lights, pictures of Sophie with people she didn't know. 

A phone was sitting on the desk. She walked over to it and flipped it over. She had two messages from someone named Eli, three more from someone labeled as "Mom", and one from someone else who was just an upside down smiley face. The time was 7:34.

"Soph, come down here! You need to eat or you're gonna be late!"

She heard footsteps coming up the stairs and froze. Sophie hurriedly walked into the closet and flipped on the lights. She looked at the clothes. At least her and her fake self had the same idea of what clothing should be.

There was a knock on her door. 

"I'm changing!" Sophie yelled as she searched through the drawers.

"Mom said that you have to get ready," said a boy's voice.

"I heard!" 

Sophie put on a pair of jeans, a black shirt that had a tiny pocket, and a blue hoodie. She didn't know what she was doing as she opened the door and walked into the hallway and down a flight of stairs. 

A lady with brown hair and green eyes appeared almost magically when Sophie reached the bottom of the stairs. For a split second, Sophie thought it was Della, but it wasn't. 

She handed Sophie a bagel. "The bus is going to be here in ten minutes. You need to get ready faster. Didn't your alarm wake you up?"

"Oh, uh, I must have forgot to set it," Sophie said. She hoped that the way humans woke up hadn't changed since she had lived there last, assuming that she was in the Forbidden Cities.

The lady sighed and shook her head before walking away.

Sophie let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. She needed to find the others and get out of there. 

A boy handed her a light pink backpack. "You left it in the bathroom. How do you leave a backpack in the bathroom?"

Sophie shrugged nervously. She had no idea where the bathroom was. She pulled on the heavy bag and slid her phone into her pocket. She would look at that later.

The boy, who probably was supposed to be her brother, walked out of the front door. Sophie followed him, not saying anything.

There was a yellow bus parked at the corner of the street. Sophie ran to get there before it left. The boy walked slightly slower than and waved to another boy who was on the bus already. 

"Hey Eli," the second boy said. Sophie remembered the name Eli from some of her texts.

She sat down in an empty seat in the middle of the bus and got to work trying to open the phone. Her thumb slid over the home button and the phone unlocked. It surprised Sophie a little. 

She spent part of the bus ride looking through the phone for any sign of where the others could be, but it turned out she didn't have to, because the next time the bus stopped, Stina walked on, along with a few other kids. Stina wasn't exactly who she had hoped to see, but she was better than nothing. Sophie waved and opened her mouth to yell Stina's name when a girl with long black hair dyed purple at the ends, dark skin, and brown eyes plopped into the seat next to her. The girl's eyes startled Sophie a little bit. She hadn't seen someone else with brown eyes for a while, and it was a little unnerving.

"Hey there, bus buddie," said the girl.

"Hi," Sophie responded, feeling a little suspicious of the fact that she had no idea who this person was or how they were supposed to know each other. If the Neverseen were going to mess with their minds, shouldn't they have at least done it right?

"What's wrong?" 

"Uh, nothing. I didn't get much sleep last night."

The girl nodded. "Me neither. Also, you can still sit with us at lunch if Madison keeps blowing you off."

"Oh, uh, thanks. I think I'm fine though." Sophie tried to look to where Stina was sitting. She was talking to some other kid as if they had known each other all their life.

Soon, the bus hissed to a stop in front of a dull brick school that was nowhere near as impressive as Foxfire. When Sophie thought of Foxfire, she thought of Mr. Forkle, and when she thought of Mr. Forkle she thought of the Black Swan, which reminded her of Dex's parents, which reminded her of Grady and Edlaine. 

They needed to go back as soon as they could.

Sophie stood up. So did everyone else. They filed off of the bus and joined all the other students inside and around the building.

Sophie frantically searched for someone, anyone. She couldn't see Stina anymore, and every time she passed someone who's hair looked remotely like any of her friend's, she thought it was them. 

She stopped in the middle of a hallway. She knew Wylie probably wouldn't be there, that Fitz and Keefe would both probably drive to school, that Biana would probably go with Fitz, that Tam and Linh were probably together, and that Stina had probably figured out what to do by now and was playing it cool. But that was all based on what she thought they would do. And Sophie didn't even know where Dex and Marella could be.

Sophie started walking again, trying to find something that looked familiar. A nearly empty hallway was ahead of her, and she got the feeling her locker was there. She didn't know why. She had never been to that school in her life. A locker was slightly open, and Sophie sighed with relief when she saw it had a crumpled sticky note inside that said "Happy Birthday, Soph!" on it.

Suddenly, someone was behind Sophie. She whirled around and found Dex standing behind her, looking lost.

"Dex!"

"How do you know my name?" Dex asked, "I haven't even been here for an hour."

"You're Dex."

"Yeah," Dex said, slowly, "Why do you keep saying my name?"

"And you're my best friend."

"I'm who?"

A/N: hey guys! I unpublished the Dexiana fic, but that's because I didn't want to be writing 3 fics at the same time.

Let me know what you think! I'm kinda trying to make it a twist on those stories where Sophie's memories are erased/ altered and she's sent back to the human world while everyone else tries to find her. 

If you couldn't tell, basically the Neverseen altered everyone's memories and sent them to the human world, but Sophie still remembers everything and nobody else does.

Happy reading!

<3 Ivy