Cole Whitfield is the most dazzling captain Greenport High has ever had on a Friday night.
He is also the boy who, three weeks ago, ran three blocks in the rain to pull me out of a parking lot behind the Quik-Mart on Pier Road.
He woke up on the third day. He remembers every play in the offensive book, every quiz score back to freshman year, every party he's ever been to.
Just not me.
It is day three. The gym is hung in blue and gold. The marching band is on the bleachers. They have raised his away jersey — number 7, white with the gold trim — on a banner above the center circle, and the cheer squad is chanting his name like he came home from a war.
I am at the back of the crowd. I have his ring closed in my fist.
The inside of the band is engraved in two lines.
C&W. Never drop the pass.
He pressed it into my palm the night before state finals last year. He said, Wren, if I bring home the trophy, you sit front row at every game from here on. I told him he was being a child about it. He bent and kissed the back of my hand like a kid making a promise to a priest.
If you're sitting there, I know which way to run.
Now he's under the lights with a fading bruise across his eyebrow ridge and his throwing hand wrapped to the knuckles. The gym is screaming his name. Sloane Mercer is on his arm in a Greenport-blue cheer shell, fixing his collar like she's been doing it for years.
Somebody yells from the floor: Captain — you really don't remember Wren?
The whole gym goes still. Two thousand people, all at once.
Sloane looks back at me. The corner of her mouth lifts.
Cole follows her eyes. He finds me at the back.
The look is unfamiliar in a way that has edges.
He studies me for two full seconds. Then he gives a slow, lazy smile.
Her?
He pauses. Not loud. Loud enough.
I used to date you*? Yeah — guess my taste was off.*
The laugh that goes up is the kind that swallows you.
Liv lurches forward beside me. I put a hand on her wrist.
I look at him. He looks back at me. Cold. Like he didn't run three blocks in the rain. Like he didn't sit on my floor through a 103 fever.
Sloane lifts her hand to cover her mouth, all sympathy. Wren — don't take it personally. Cole isn't being mean. He's just being honest.
I put the ring back in my pocket.
I turn and walk out.
At the gym door, his voice drifts after me, easy as anything.
Don't keep coming at me with old stuff, okay?
My foot stalls for a half-second.
Behind me, Liv mutters, His brain got bashed and so did his manners.
I don't turn around.
It isn't his manners.
I close my fist on the ring until the prongs leave four marks.
Somebody doesn't want him to remember.
The night Cole lost his memory, I was there.
It was raining the way it rains in Greenport in October — sheeting sideways off the harbor, dragging fog across the pier lights. Three guys had me cornered behind the Quik-Mart on Pier Road. They had my bag. They were trying to walk me down the slope toward the empty boat-trailer lot.
Cole came down the alley in a thin practice jacket, no helmet, no anything.
He took the first one off his feet with a single shoulder, shoved me behind him.
Wren — run.
I wouldn't.
He turned and yelled at me. Run.
The crowbar caught him across the back of the skull a second later.
He went down with my wrist still in his hand.
When the cops finally got there, two had bolted. They caught one. The one they caught swore up and down it was a robbery, nothing more, just a robbery.
Cole's father hired a Portland firm before sunrise. The school sealed the story. Captain saved a girl, took a hit, mild memory issues, full recovery expected.
But I kept hearing one line out of that night. One of them said it as they were dragging me.
That's her. Don't let her get to the hearing.
I told the cop. He told me I was concussed and confused.
I went to the hospital. Russell Doyle was waiting in the lobby in a Filson and a tie. The Whitfield family attorney. Sixty-something. Soft voice, gunmetal eyes.
Wren. Cole needs quiet to recover. You showing up only sets him back.
Day after the rally, I go to my locker for a textbook.
Locker 117. The combo is the date of our first date. He set it.
The dial clicks. The door swings.
A stack of photographs falls out and fans across the floor.
Me and Cole. The library, the field, Route 1 with the windows down. Homecoming last year — his suit jacket on my shoulders, both of us laughing.
Every single picture has a red Sharpie X across my face.
There's a Post-it on top.
stay away from him, you toxic little bitch.
Liv goes white. Who did this.
Behind me, Sloane's voice arrives like she's been waiting.
Oh — Wren. Why's all that in your locker?
Two cheer girls trail her. They've been waiting for the show.
One of them goes up an octave on purpose. She's not still trying to use old photos to guilt Cole back, is she?
I bend down. I start picking the photos up, one at a time.
Sloane steps closer. Drops her voice for me only.
Wren. People should know when they're not wanted. He can't even stand to hear your name right now.
I look up at her.
The combo on this locker. Cole is the only person who knows it.
Her smile freezes for a second. Then snaps back.
The girl behind her shrieks suddenly, pointing at the photos in my hands. She did it to herself! Look — she's faking it!
Half the hallway pivots toward us.
Sloane's eyes go red on cue. Wren — I know you're hurting. But you can't do this kind of thing for attention.
I don't explain.
I take a sandwich bag out of my backpack. I pick the Post-it up by one corner and slide it inside.
Sloane's face goes white for real this time.
Because along the bottom right edge of the Post-it, where the writer pressed her lips together to bite a thought back, is a smear of pink-cherry balm.
Glossier Cherry. Vanilla-cherry on the air.
She is the only girl in Greenport High who wears it.
At lunch, Principal Atherton sends an aide for me.
His office smells like old carpet and Earl Grey. Cole is on the leather couch, long legs stretched out, jaw set. Sloane is standing next to him with the careful red eyes of a girl who has been crying all morning over me.
Liv is locked outside in the hall. I can hear her hand hitting the door.
Atherton folds his hands on the desk. Wren. We've had a complaint that you fabricated a threatening note. We take harassment of recovering athletes seriously here.
I set the sandwich bag on his desk.
Run prints on it.
He frowns at the bag like it's a frog. The school is not a police precinct, Ms. Halloran.
Sloane's voice is butter. It's okay, Principal. Wren is hurting. She and Cole used to be — close. She's having a hard time.
Cole finally looks up.
What is it you actually want.
His voice is dry ice.
I look at him. I want to know who sent the guys after me in the alley.
He laughs once, no warmth. So your theory is — somebody got me jumped on purpose. Made me forget you. Big plan.
Yes.
Got proof?
Working on it.
He stands up. He walks over until he is two feet from me, looking down.
Wren. Don't oversell yourself.
It hits me in the chest like a fist.
Sloane uses the moment to slide her hand around his forearm.
Cole — don't get worked up.
I look at her hand.
The ring is on her index finger. Silver. Small.
I hold the look for two seconds.
She catches me looking and waggles her hand on purpose.
Cole gave it to me. He said since he doesn't remember whose it was, it might as well not go to waste.
The room goes very quiet.
Cole's brow tightens. He winces — the headache.
I close the distance and grab her wrist.
She yelps. Wren — what are you—
I don't bother. I pull the ring off her finger.
She cries out.
Cole's hand snaps over my wrist.
Give it back.
I don't move.
This is mine.
She says I gave it to her.
Do you remember giving it to her?
His eyes drop a degree.
I lift the ring up between us. The inside catches the office light.
C&W. Never drop the pass.
Cole's pupils contract.
His hand falls off my wrist. His fingertips go up to his temple, pressing.
Sloane lunges to put her body between him and the ring.
Don't show him! The doctor said no triggers!
His breathing has changed.
He is staring at the ring. There is a vein at his temple I haven't seen before. He takes one step back. He takes another. He hits the coffee table with the back of his calves and it goes over. The glass tumbler with it.
Glass everywhere.
He lurches up. Get out.
Atherton is dialing for security with a shaking hand.
I don't move.
Because the look Cole just gave me wasn't a stranger's look.
It was pain.
By Wednesday, the whole school has a take.
Half of them are running with Wren is gaslighting an injured hero into remembering her. The other half have moved to Cole saved her once and she's repaying him by setting back his recovery.
Sloane posts a story. Cole in a hospital bed, IV in the back of his hand, her thumb stroking his knuckles. Caption: I'll get you back, slow as it takes.
The replies are hearts on hearts on hearts.
Liv slams her phone down at lunch. She'll get him back. Like she's known him longer than two weeks.
I am looking at the photo.
On the inside of Cole's right wrist, just below the IV port, is a smudge of blue ballpoint. Almost a letter. A W.
I screenshot it. By the time I open my screenshots Sloane has deleted the post.
That afternoon Cole is back at practice — no contact drills, just routes and drops. I am in the top row of the bleachers.
I am not there to watch him.
I am there because student council told me I am subpoenaed for Friday's school board hearing as the on-the-scene witness for the alley assault, and because I do not want to be cornered alone by anyone who would prefer I miss it.
He sees me anyway.
His next catch hits him in the shoulder pad. Nobody catches that ball.
Marsh Tully laughs from twenty yards out. Captain. Who you looking at?
Cole's face goes flat. He picks the ball off the turf and rifles it back. It misses Marsh's ear by an inch. The whole field goes still.
Marsh walks up to him. He says something, head down, low.
Cole has him by the front of his jersey before the coach can blow his whistle.
The coach shoves between them.
I can't hear them. But I see Marsh look up at the bleachers — at me.
It's a look that gets in under your jacket.
After last bell, I open my locker. There is a piece of notebook paper folded twice on top of my chemistry book.
Don't show up Friday.
No name.
Liv reaches for her phone. Calling Atherton.
I'm starting to type the photo of it when Cole comes around the row of lockers.
He's leaning on the one across from mine. Pale. Eyes hollow.
Give me the note.
I close my hand around it.
Going to tell me I planted it on myself again?
He doesn't answer. He just holds out his hand.
Give it.
Why should I.
He looks at me. His voice goes lower.
Because I know that handwriting.
My pulse drops a step.
Whose.
He doesn't answer.
He bends suddenly, both hands flat on the locker, head down. There's sweat at his hairline.
I reach for him on instinct.
He flinches like I burned him.
Don't touch me.
Three words.
Worse than the rally line.
I take a step back.
He looks up at me with eyes that aren't all the way clear. There is something animal in them. Something hurt.
Wren. Stay away from me.
He pushes off the locker and walks.
I unfold the note all the way.
Below the line, lighter, scribbled out hard with the same pen, is a sentence somebody started and tried to take back.
He's going to remember.