Free A Clean Slate by Laura Caldwell Page A

pissed off about him being made partner ahead of me, about him possibly knowing that I would be fired, I felt much better now that I’d gotten my dose of rage. And oddly enough, I felt a tipsy contentment around me. It’d been eons since Laney and I had had a late-night chat like this, a fact that made me sad. It was Laney who’d been with me every step of the way though the traumas of high school, the newfound freedom of college and the often painful days of early adulthood, and yet it was Ben I’d ended up spending so much time with. Ben, who’d eventually decided that the time meant nothing.
    â€œHe is such a fucker,” I said, the margaritas making my tongue loose, causing me to repeat myself over and over.
    Laney gave me a light smack on the arm. “Stop already. It’s unhealthy. Let’s talk about something else.”
    â€œName it.”
    â€œAre you sure you’re all right with this no-memory thing? I mean, you’ve had a lot going on today, and it’s all right to fall apart.”
    I turned on my side to face her. “I feel better than I ever have.”
    â€œWell, don’t think that you have to put on a tough act. You can still fall apart if you want.”
    â€œNope. I’ve done enough of that.”
    Laney was silent for a second, and I could hear the whoosh of cars passing by her building. “It’s just that something was definitely wrong. Something more than Ben and the job,” she said.
    â€œIt was obviously something that didn’t matter.”
    â€œMaybe.”
    Her tone made me feel a little chilly, and I buried myself deeper under her duvet. What was it that I hadn’t told anyone? Did it matter now? On one hand, if whatever it was could explain why I couldn’t remember this summer, I wanted to know it. For some reason, I truly wanted to learn why this odd memory loss had happened to me. But on the other hand, if I remembered those five months, wouldn’t I just slip back into that depression? I wanted the whys and the hows of the situation, but I feared the details. I felt as if my memory was a house of cards, wobbly and shaky and hollow inside. I was afraid that if I came too close to that emptiness, that missing time, everything would fall in on me.
    â€œLook, Lane,” I said, “I’ve already spent too much time on whatever it was, and maybe that’s why I feel so goodnow, because I let myself be depressed until I couldn’t be depressed anymore.”
    â€œShouldn’t you try to figure out more about what was going on with you during that time? I could help you, you know. We could go talk to Ellen or somebody, maybe do some research.” Laney’s voice sounded so sweet, so helpful and slightly worried, and it made me tremble a little inside.
    I squeezed her arm, as much to reassure her as myself. “It’s okay. As far as I can tell, nothing good happened during those months, right?”
    â€œRight,” she said, a hint of doubt lingering in her voice.
    â€œRight.” I rolled over, turning my back to her. “And what you don’t know can’t hurt you.”

6
    O n Sunday, I suffered an intense headache. I usually didn’t feel so bad after a night of drinking, but I probably hadn’t been drinking much for five months. I tried not to think about the headaches Laney had told me about, the ones I suffered during those months I was holed up in my apartment.
    After Laney plied me with ibuprofen, she and I joined Gear and the rest of his High Gear band to watch the Bears game at a little corner pub. I’m not sure what I expected of Laney’s latest boyfriend—maybe heroin at halftime?—but he wasn’t exactly the stereotypical dude in a heavy metal band. Oh sure, he had the requisite tattoos on his arms (barbed wire on the right, some Chinese lettering on the left) and he wore a ripped black T-shirt and black army boots, but Gear was warm and