Echoes by Marissa Lete (best books for students to read txt) 📕

and scrambled eggs with a side of ketchup. I blink in surprise. “This is exactly how I like all of these foods.”

Maverick doesn’t look at me. “I know.”

Of course he knows. He knows me. But I don’t know him, and apparently, it’s because he doesn’t want me to. I’m not sure what to say to that, so we eat in silence. I should be starving, but the latest news has killed my appetite, so I end up just nibbling for a long time.

Maverick finishes his plate in mere minutes, then sets down his fork. He waits until I put down mine to speak.

“I did it to protect you,” he croaks, defeated.

I blink a couple of times before replying. “What do you mean?” I ask. To protect me from Alice? Or to protect me from heartbreak? Or both?

“It’s…” a pained expression crosses his face, and he drops his gaze. “Complicated.”

I don’t know what to say, so I just look at him, my fear deepening. What if I came all this way, digging up the past just to find out I should have left it buried? What if I have to let go of a love that I don’t even remember having? I’m not sure if that would be worse than remembering.

I look up to find Maverick staring at my striped shirt.

“This is my shirt, isn’t it? From…before.”

He nods. “You…” the corner of his mouth tilts up slightly, “…spilled some chocolate milk on it. It was pretty bad, so you borrowed one of mine. I forgot to give it back to you.”

It’s weird, listening to him tell me about something I did and have no recollection of. Almost as weird as hearing it happen myself. “So it’s all true, I really did know you.”

He nods again.

I bite my lip, afraid to say the thoughts racing through my mind. But then I say them anyway. “And then what? You decided you didn’t want to know me anymore, so you erased yourself from my life?”

Maverick’s eyes widen in surprise, and he shakes his head. “No, Laura, you’ve got it all wrong. I’ve always wanted to be in your life. Since the day I met you.”

I frown. “Then what did you mean when you said you did it to protect me? Protect me from what?”

“From me,” he stares at the table.

“What—” I begin, but he puts a hand up.

“Let me explain, it’s kind of a long story.” He pauses, waiting for me to protest. When I don’t, he launches into the story. “Last year, around the time I met you, my mom was diagnosed with an early onset of Alzheimer’s. It’s this disease, it makes you—”

“Forget things,” I finish for him, realizing the irony as I say it. The boy who can make people forget things and his Mom, who can’t help that she’s forgetting them.

“Yeah. She started to decline rapidly. She would misplace things, forget which day of the week it was, and then around December, she had to stop going to work because she would forget how to get there, or forget she had a job altogether. One day when I came home, she didn’t even recognize me.” He looks down after he says the last few words, a deep sadness in his eyes. An image of Annie’s obituary flashes across my mind.

“We tried everything, all of the remedies in the books. But nothing was helping. By the time January rolled around, I’d almost given up hope.” His eyebrows draw together and he pauses for a few seconds, squeezing his eyes shut.

“Throughout my life—because of this ability I have—I’ve been seeing this psychiatrist. Alice, the woman who kidnapped us.” I nod, trying to put the pieces together. “She specializes in people who have… special circumstances. Like us. She was the first one to actually believe that I had this ability to manipulate memories, and she helped me learn how to control it.

“When I came in for my yearly session, I told her about how my Mom was sick and I wasn’t sure what to do. Then she told me she had been researching this new drug that she thought might be able to help, but that it was an experimental drug that technically wasn’t cleared for use yet. At that point, I was so desperate that I asked if we could try it anyway. I got her to agree, and she gave us a month’s supply. Surprisingly, it worked. Mom was back to normal within a week, it was like a miracle.

“When the month was over, however, I went back to Alice and asked if she would be willing to get me some more. I was prepared to pay any amount she wanted, but she didn’t want money. Instead, she said she needed me to do something for her before I could have it. I was willing to do just about anything at that point.” He drops his head, sighing heavily.

“She told me she needed my ability to help her. She asked me to erase a few things from someone’s memory. It was a simple task, one I thought would be harmless, and I didn’t question it. I just wanted to cure my Mom. When I completed the task, she gave me another month’s supply, and everything was fine again for a while.

“But then, the month after that, I went back, and this time she had a list of people she needed me to take memories from. And not only that but instead of simply erasing a few small memories, she wanted me to erase an entire person from existence.”

Maverick hangs his head in defeat. “It was so, so stupid, but I did it. I just wanted my mom to be okay.”

I try to put myself in his shoes. How far would I go to save someone I love? My mom? Dad? Grace, even? It