Free A Year Without Autumn by Liz Kessler Page A

seems to reach her eyes, and for a split second things feel normal. Then she turns to me. “Jenni, what are we going to do about this?” she asks.
    I bend down and rummage through the stones, looking for some more flat ones. “I don’t know. I’m scared.”
    “Of what?”
    “Look, I don’t think it’s amnesia,” I say. “I don’t feel any different. It’s everything around me that’s changed. I feel exactly the same.”
    “But that’s exactly how it is with amnesia!”
    “I know,” I say, frustration biting at my throat. “But it doesn’t
feel
like amnesia. It doesn’t feel like I’ve lost my memory. It’s — I don’t know. It’s too weird.”
    “What d’you mean?”
    “I don’t know. Just — it’s not as if I’ve forgotten things. It’s as if it’s all changed, in a split second. Everything’s different from how it was this morning. Except it wasn’t this morning. It was a year ago.”
    Autumn just stares at me.
    “I know what you’re thinking,” I say.
    “What am I thinking?”
    “That I’m describing amnesia.”
    Autumn doesn’t say anything, but her look says it all.
    I sit down on the pebbles. “A whole year,” I say quietly, “and I don’t remember it.”
    Autumn sits down beside me. “Look, what’s the last thing you
do
remember?” she asks.
    “You coming over to our condo,” I say woodenly. “We were going horseback riding.” My eyes fill with tears as I hang on to this simple, useless fact. “You said don’t be late.”
    “And that’s it? That’s really the last thing you remember?”
    I nod.
    “Jen, you swear you’re not messing with me?”
    “Of course I’m not!”
    Autumn breathes a low whistle out through her teeth. “Wow.”
    We stare at the river in silence. The water glides past, smooth swells running into tiny whirlpools around the bigger rocks.
    “It must have been when you fainted,” she says after a while. “You must have hit your head. We just didn’t realize how bad it was.”
    “But I’d forgotten stuff before that. I didn’t know you were in that condo.”
    “Maybe you fainted before that, too.”
    “I don’t make a habit of falling down all over the place, you know,” I say. “Anyway, I’d have remembered if I’d done that.”
    Autumn just looks at me.
    “OK, maybe I wouldn’t have remembered. But it all feels so weird. I can remember this morning so clearly.”
    “But it
wasn’t
this morning,” Autumn insists.
    “See, even you,” I say.
    “Even me what?”
    I pause. I don’t want to hurt her feelings. “You’ve changed,” I say carefully.
    “How?”
    “You don’t believe me. You’re looking for a rational explanation.”
    “Well, of course I am. What — you want me to say you’ve been abducted by aliens or something?”
    “The old Autumn would have said exactly that!”
    “Well, the old Autumn didn’t know anything about reality,” she says flatly. “The old Autumn was quite happy living in a childish make-believe world where bad things didn’t happen and where you could make up whatever silly story you liked and tell yourself it was true.”
    “And the new Autumn?”
    Autumn stands up and brushes stones and gravel from her legs. “The new Autumn knows that the world isn’t like that,” she says. “Come on. We should be getting back. I don’t want Mom to wake up in an empty condo.”
    We head back in silence. My thoughts all seem to be buried under mush, and I don’t know how to articulate a single one.
    We get to Autumn’s door. I know I should offer to go in with her, but I can’t face going back in there.
    “Listen, I’d better go in on my own, OK? Spend some time with Mom,” Autumn says, as if she’s read my mind. Or maybe she just doesn’t want me around. I wouldn’t be surprised. The last thing she needs right now is a best friend who’s only adding to her problems.
    “See you later?” I ask.
    Autumn nods. Her face is empty and lifeless. It’s like a mask made from gray