The Memory Trial

I stumbled home that day and curled into the corner of my room.

I hit my own chest again and again as grief tore through me.

"Lily!" my memory screamed. "Why did you die? Why did you leave us?"

On the platform, my present self sat with my eyes shut, tears slipping down my face.

The crowd grew uneasy.

"Wait. Why does she look so devastated?

"If she really protected the attacker, why would she cry like that?"

Mr. Warren roared over them.

"Crocodile tears!"

He pointed at me, shaking with rage.

"My wife knelt outside her door until her forehead split open, and Rachel would not open it!

"She set that dog on us! How could someone like her be good?

"Lily grew up with her, and this is how she treated the mother of her dead friend!"

At that moment Mrs. Warren appeared near the front of the crowd, hair loose and tangled, clutching a worn doll to her chest.

"Lily's good," she murmured. "Lily's not scared. Mommy's here."

The crowd's anger flared again.

Claire's face turned ugly. She rushed up the platform and grabbed my shoulders, shaking me hard.

"Look at them, Rachel!

"This is what your silence did!

"You had no parents. Lily and I pitied you when you were seven and alone. We treated you like family, and this is how you repaid us?"

She slapped me across the face.

"Do you think these memories will soften me?

"Lily is dead!

"And the person who helped kill her was you, Rachel Vale!"

Her hatred was wild enough to tear me apart. Yet beneath it, I saw grief so deep it had never healed.

Lily's death had been a tidal wave to Claire. After the wave passed, everything inside her stayed soaked and ruined.

Then Claire straightened. She wiped her tears upward with the heel of her hand, and her sorrow turned back into ice.

"Rachel, hear me clearly. I will not stop until I find him.

"And when I do, I will send both of you to hell."

She ordered the technicians to widen the extraction range.

They adjusted the console. The red needle on the monitor jumped.

Inside the helmet, the probes drove deeper into my skull.

I screamed.

Electric current ripped through my brain. White light burst behind my eyes. My body thrashed against the restraints until the iron cuffs cut my skin.

Blood ran down my hairline and dripped onto the metal chair.

The screen flickered wildly.

Classrooms. Creeks. Mountain paths.

Memory after memory of Claire, Lily, and me together.

But not the night Lily was attacked.

The crowd stirred.

"Why isn't it showing that night?

"Didn't Lily's note say Rachel knew who did it?"

Claire turned to the technician.

"What is going on?

"Why can't you find the memory with the attacker?"

The technician wiped sweat from his forehead.