Missing: Never Lost - Paperback

Chapter One:

She opened her eyes. She saw stars—real ones swimming among the branches of the trees high above her. No moon. At least not where she could see it.

She thought she should move. Perhaps sit up or rollover, but she was afraid.

What she was afraid of she didn’t know, which was the problem. She didn’t know. Anything.

At least about herself. All she knew for sure was that she was in the woods and that there were stars in the sky.

But that didn’t begin to fill the entire empty space she found in her head. All the essential things to know were gone. Disappeared. Missing.

Where was she? Who was she?

She thought that perhaps if she shut her eyes and opened them again, she would know. So she tried that. More than once. But each time, it was the same.

She was nobody, somewhere.

She wondered if she had ever been this frightened before. She didn’t know that any more than she knew anything else.

Was she afraid because she couldn’t remember, or was she afraid for another reason?

As she lay there, the sky lightened, and she did know one thing. She was hungry.

Eventually, she would need to eat. She would need to get out of the sleeping bag and stop hiding.

Perhaps if she got up, she would remember.

A surge of hope helped her sit up. Nothing. She was not even dizzy.

If something happened to me, wouldn’t I feel something, she wondered to herself. Almost said it out loud, and then did, thinking maybe that would trigger a memory.

She whispered the question, “Who am I?” No one answered.

Sighing, she unzipped her sleeping bag and looked around and then down at herself.

What she saw didn’t spark a memory. So she noted what she saw, cataloging it as if she was studying someone else.

Without seeing a mirror, she guessed she was young, maybe around twenty. Thin, but probably athletic because she could see muscles in her legs. A pair of hiking boots beside what was a dying fire told her she hiked. Looking around, she saw a backpack hanging in the trees. To keep animals out of it. She knew that much. It was something.

Quickly slipping on her boots, she retrieved the backpack and dumped it onto the sleeping bag, looking for an answer to the question of who she was. Once she remembered that, everything else would fall into place. She was sure of that.

Food bars, a water bladder, a change of clothes, a few pairs of socks, plus sunglasses and sunscreen. Nothing that told her anything that helped her remember how she came to be in the woods.

Just a name, she sobbed. Tell me my name.

Scattering everything and emptying all the pockets in the pack revealed nothing, so she stuffed everything back in, grabbed a food bar and water, and slid back into the sleeping bag. She would go back to sleep. And wake up again.

Maybe this was only a dream. When she woke up, she would remember.

She took a bite of the bar, a swig of the water, and pulled the bag up over her head.

That’s when she discovered something else about herself. When she was afraid, she hid.

Somehow she fell asleep. Perhaps the sheer panic she felt had exhausted her. The sun was slanting through the trees when she woke up again. For a moment, she thought she remembered who she was, but then realized that what she remembered was only what had happened the last time she had woken up.

Trying to find hope somewhere, she was grateful that at least she wasn’t having a groundhog day moment. She didn’t have to repeat something over and over again. She just had no memory of who she was, where she had come from, or why she was there.

Sitting back on her heels, she started laughing. She was brand new. She could be anyone—at least until she remembered who she was before today.

Not everyone got a chance to be brand new. That’s what she told herself to get herself out of the sleeping bag.

It was time to start walking because food bars would not last her long. She didn’t know how far away civilization was. It could be just past the trees, or it could be miles away.

As she rolled up her bag, she felt a lump at the bottom. Fishing inside, she pulled out a pair of pants and a jacket.

Ah, she thought, I am smart too. I was keeping these warm and safe at the bottom of my bag. Which was when she realized she might have put the crucial things in the sleeping bag with her instead of in the backpack. The pants and the jacket had pockets. Lots of pockets. She reached into all of them and pulled out everything.

Leaving the mess on the bag, she slipped the pants over her tights and the jacket over the t-shirt to keep herself from shivering in the morning air, then she stared at what she had uncovered.

A few knives and a can of spray. Smart, she said again to herself. A rubber band held a wad of money together. At least she could eat. She unfolded the money, expecting that there she would find her driver’s license or something that told her who she was. But there was nothing.

Now she had a choice. Start crying or start walking. Or both. Cry and walk, which is exactly what she decided to do.

An hour later, following the faintest of trails, she had a thought: If I hide when I am afraid, and yet I am smart and prepared, perhaps I forgot who I am on purpose.

No, she added to herself. That would be stupid. Then I wouldn’t know who or what I am hiding from—if that’s what I’m doing. Maybe I don’t have any identification, so no one could find me. No one would ever plan on waking up one day with no knowledge about themselves.

So, no. Not on purpose, she decided. But now that I can reinvent myself, I will. At least for now. And I will hide because that seems like the smart thing to do.