The next school year has started.
We are in seventh grade now.
Melanie got promoted to high school, so I won't be seeing her much outside the house anymore. That was weird to think about.
School started on Tuesday, August 16th.
After learning that my memory recall is apparently perfect, I figured I should start taking school seriously. The more I study, the more I can store away. Even if some of the things I remember seem useless now, they might matter later.
For school. For Factory 24. Or for whatever my past life is still trying to drag me into. I want to be ready.
Unfortunately, homework is tedious as hell.
It feels almost insulting now.
I can remember most of the material just by looking at it once, so sitting there and grinding through worksheet after worksheet makes me feel like I'm being punished for being efficient.
How did I never realize this before?
It's so easy to remember things.
Why did I miss so many questions on tests last year?
Well... probably because I didn't even look at the material in the first place.
That would do it.
I turned eleven three days after school began.
Friday, August 19th.
That realization hit me harder than I expected.
I'd been so focused on keeping Factory 24 in my hands that I barely stopped to realize how young I actually was during all of it.
I was ten.
Ten!
All the other founders and most of the students in my grade are eleven and will be turning twelve this school year, but I was born a year later. I skipped kindergarten and went straight into first grade, so I've always been a little younger than the people around me.
Still... being ten while dealing with The Claim, the factory war, the strokes, and the memories?
That made me realize something.
I'm still human.
I'm still just a child.
A child who's seen some horrific things.
Andrew's group torturing Alex and John.
Andrew's group beating Thomas's people until some of them couldn't stand. A few even got sent to the hospital.
And then there's me.
That part was almost the strangest.
I was a ten-year-old leading a gang of students, some of them as old as fourteen years old, and they listened to me. Not just listened, either. They actually took orders from me. Hell, even Andrew's group took me seriously, and they were full of older kids too. Fifteen. Sixteen. Maybe even some seventeen-year-olds.
That felt absurd once I finally let myself think about it.
I felt bitter.
I didn't get to have a normal childhood.
Not this life.
Not the last one either, apparently.
Factory 24 and The Claim made sure of that.
Unbelievable.
It happened to me twice.
Just how sad is that?
Well...
Speaking of memories.
I realized there's still an unanswered part of Memory A after going back through it scene by scene. In my previous life, I had a stroke there too, just like the first one I had in this life.
What was that about?
I assumed that once Memory B appeared, Memory A was basically done. Finished. Locked away.
But maybe not.
There's still that loose piece sitting there.
Then there's Memory B.
Specifically, the parking lot scene.
Blood.
Rain.
Elaine.
That's the one I keep coming back to.
I need to find Elaine before that happens in this life.
I need to know how she's connected to all of this.
There was Memory C too, obviously. But that one looked so far in the future that I barely bother thinking about it right now. It's there. I know it's there. I know it matters.
But not yet.
Memory B feels different.
Closer.
Like it could happen during the first term of this school year.
I don't know why I get that feeling.
I just do.
It feels like an impending doom. Like something is already moving in that direction, even if I can't see it yet.
The idea got under my skin fast.
When will it happen?
How close is it?
Are we already moving toward it?
I caught myself.
No.
I'm not doing that again.
I won't spiral.
I won't go berserk.
I will stay calm.
I'm better than that now.
After figuring out how to beat Andrew by using the factory against him, I've felt more in control of myself than ever before. I'm more strategic now. More self-aware.
More willing to stop and think before I just react.
I know I'm better than I've ever been before.
This life and the last one too.
I can't exactly prove that second part, but I can feel it.
I'm better.
Now all I have to do is stay better and keep improving myself.
Hopefully studying helps with that.
At the very least, it gives me something normal to focus on for a while.
———————————————————————
Now that school has started, though, I can finally start investigating the parking lot scene from Memory B.
And the first thing I need to do is simple:
Find Elaine.
At lunch, I let Leo, George, and Mel eat without me. I told them I was helping out a teacher.
Not exactly a believable excuse, but they accepted it.
First, I checked all my class rosters again.
Nothing.
Elaine wasn't in a single one of my classes.
That was annoying, but not impossible. Schedules do that sometimes.
So I started asking around.
I talked to some former members of old Factory 24. None of them had seen her. I asked a few people who knew a lot of the seventh graders by name.
Nothing.
No one knew where she was.
That started bothering me more and more.
Does she even go to this school? She has to, right? It's the only middle school in ■■■■■■.
That's what makes it weird.
If no one has her in their classes, then what does that mean?
Homeschooling?
No.
That sounded unlikely.
What if she moved?
No way.
She was in my memory.
But then I thought about that harder.
The parking lot in Memory B was unfamiliar. If she did move, was that parking lot somewhere near wherever she ended up?
But where would she move to?
We're in the middle of fuck-ass nowhere.
Josh somehow made it all the way to Salt Lake City before doing... what he did.
But Elaine?
I feel like I would've heard if she moved.
This town is too small for that kind of thing to stay quiet.
Especially with Elaine. She was a pretty popular girl. Stuff about her would spread fast.
I sighed.
That left me with one option.
And I didn't like it.
After walking back to lunch, I sat down next to a certain girl.
She looked at me like I had just crawled out of a sewer.
"What do you want, ■■■■■? In case you couldn't tell, I'm eating with my friends."
"Thanks for informing me, Sarah. May we speak in private for a small moment?"
I said it with a smile that didn't reach my eyes.
She took the hint immediately and probably assumed it was about Factory 24.
Good.
She stood up.
We walked over to the corner of the lunchroom near the bathrooms, where it was quieter and far enough from everyone else that no one would overhear us easily.
"What is it?" she asked. "I want to finish my lunch."
"We need to talk about Elaine."
Her eyes changed instantly.
They narrowed so hard they almost looked straight.
Scary.
"I'm not going to talk about that person."
I sighed.
"This is the second time now. Last time I mentioned her, you ran off. This time you're giving me a look I'm going to see in my nightmares for the next two months. I want to know what happened between you two."
That only made her angrier.
"I'm not going to talk about her," she said. "She is out of my life now. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to finish my lunch."
Guess I had to give her something.
I grabbed her arm right as she turned to leave.
"I have reason to believe Elaine is involved in the Factory 24 war."
Her eyes went from angry, to shocked, to confused.
At least I had her attention now.
"Where did you hear that from?"
"Insider secret. Won't say."
"You've been sending out a lot of lies about what's happening on your side in the war lately. How do I know this isn't one of those?"
I was actually a little surprised.
I hadn't realized that plan was working that well.
"Oh. Good to know there are a few scouts within my group," I said. "And no, this isn't one of those. I'm dead serious."
She stared straight into my eyes for a few seconds.
Then she sighed.
It wasn't an angry sigh.
It sounded tired.
"Listen," I said, lowering my voice a little, "I know something happened between you two. But I also know you'd still try to protect her if something happened to her. I'm really worried about her. I don't even know how she's mixed up in all of this yet, but you're my best shot at finding out."
That did it.
She looked defeated.
Like I'd seen right through her.
"Fine..." she said. "I'll tell you."