Into the Mist

Chapter 25

That night I couldn't sleep.

Something made me get up and pull out my old journals again. I hunted through them until I found the one I wanted: the one from when I had just started horseback riding lessons.

Cathy says I can join the intermediate riding class! I'm kinda nervous, because there are kids my own age in that class. Like Cecilia Poole. All those girls have their own horses and win at horse shows all the time. I'm happy that Cathy thinks I'm good enough, but I don't want to look stupid next to them. I guess leasing a horse is almost as good as owning, it's not like I'm using the lesson horses. But I'm still nervous.

Cut to a few weeks later:

The intermediate class is so much better than the therapy class. Like, I'm learning real horsemanship and not just riding to help my mental health or whatever. I'm glad I have Stewie and not a Thoroughbred like the other girls have, because their horses spook at everything. Stewie's calm. Angelika's really nice, she helped me when I couldn't get Stewie to trot over the ground poles. And Ceci talked to me today. "Your horse is really gorgeous," she said. I babbled a bit about how he was part draft horse but how he's really calm and gentle and she said sometimes she wished her horse was that calm. Then she asked if I was going to be in the horse show this weekend! I told her I wasn't but maybe I could come and watch and be in the next one. She said she would teach me how to braid a horse's mane.

And then the following week:

It was the first day of high school and Ceci and Maddy and Angelika asked me to sit with them at lunch!!! Angelika saw me sitting alone and said I should sit with them. They never said anything like they knew what had happened with Ella but everyone knows, they must have known why I was sitting by myself. But all that was back in elementary school. And in middle school I always ate lunch in the guidance counselor's office. So I guess high school is a fresh start.

All of this was the same as I remembered.

I flipped forward, stopped on some pages where my writing was slanted and hurried, as if I was upset and had to get the words out. Ceci told me she was going on a date with Damon Phelps. She told us all, but I saw the way Maddy glanced at me after she said it. Ceci told them about the date before. They all were waiting to see my reaction. I tried so hard not to freak out there in the cafeteria. She knew I liked Damon, I told her that. I had to do my breathing techniques to calm down, and Ceci was all like "Is something wrong, Bree?" So I said, as calmly as I could, "You knew I liked him."

She pretended like she didn't know. "Did you know?" she asked Maddy, then Angelika, and they all looked at me like I was crazy. I had to get up and leave.

And now I have to apologize to her for freaking out. Because I thought I told her, but if everyone says I didn't then I guess I didn't. At least that's what Dr. Warren says. I can't trust my memories.

Who was Damon Phelps? I didn't even remember that name.

I tossed the journal back into the box. So I had apologized for not remembering correctly before. It didn't mean I actually had memory problems. I was just going by what Dr. Warren always told me: if multiple people confirm that I'm wrong, then I'm wrong, unless I have a way to prove it.

***

The next morning I awakened with an indent in my face from my phone. I had fallen asleep scrolling through my Pictagram account, searching for clues in my posts and comments, then Ceci's posts and comments. But we were so good at projecting what we wanted others to see that I couldn't read between the lines to see what might have actually happened, and my new phone didn't have a record of texts we might have sent each other two years ago.