The Memory Heist

This story contains references to suicide or self harm and mental health.

I could’ve picked anything. Her name. Her locker number. The moment she slammed Emi into the lockers so hard it knocked the wind out of her. But I didn’t. I picked the one thing that made her decent. The thing that shaped her before she ever picked up the habit of cruelty. I took a sentence. Just one.

You’re good. You’ll always be good.

I don’t know why I knew it mattered. I just did. And the second I pulled it from her, like peeling something still warm from the bone, I knew it wasn’t justice. It was something uglier.

It started three weeks earlier, though even now, I don’t remember the exact day. I only remember how quiet Emi had become. No music in the morning. No tapping her pencil on the side of her cereal bowl. She didn’t hum while brushing her teeth. She didn’t look me in the eye.

She tried to end her life on a Thursday.

I found her.

Not Mom. Not her best friend.

Me.

And she lived. Which should’ve been enough.

It wasn’t.

Because when I sat beside her in the hospital bed, holding the sleeve of her hoodie like it was her hand, she turned toward the wall and said one thing.

Don’t touch me.

She didn’t whisper it. Didn’t shout it. She just said it like she was telling me the weather.

So I didn’t. For three weeks, I didn’t touch her. Not a hug. Not a shoulder squeeze. Not a brush of her hair.

But I thought about it. I thought about what I could do. I have a gift, I guess. That’s what my uncle called it. A strange trick that skips every few generations in our bloodline. I can take one memory from a person. Just one. Doesn’t matter what it is. Doesn’t matter when it happened. But it’s final. You only get one.

It’s not flashy. I touch someone near their temple, I think about the memory I want, and I feel it lift. The memory doesn’t burn or shatter. It folds. Like a paper crane turning back to a flat square.

I’ve only done it a few times. Once with a kid at summer camp who wouldn’t stop crying after watching his hamster die. Once with a girl who couldn’t sleep because her cousin told her ghosts lived in her closet. I took the memories, and they healed. Simple as that.

But Emi wasn’t simple. She wasn’t crying. She wasn’t screaming about ghosts. She was disappearing by the hour. And when she came home from the hospital, she refused to eat. Refused to speak. Just stared at the wall or sat on the floor in her room like she didn’t know how to be alive anymore.

That’s when I went looking.

Her school was a brick box with linoleum floors that smelled like glue. I knew the back hallway. I knew where they kept the student files. I waited outside the assistant principal’s office until he left for his second smoke break. The cabinet was already unlocked.

Her name was on the third sheet of paper. Sydney Mara Wilkes.

I’d seen her in the hall before, months ago, laughing with friends like her world spun perfectly. There were notes in the file about other students—teasing, minor fights, one complaint about shoving.

And that was before Emi.

I didn’t tell anyone. Not Mom. Not Emi. I just followed Sydney after school that Friday.

She walked with two other girls, blonde braid swinging behind her like she was in a toothpaste commercial. They joked about someone's shoes. Someone else’s breath. They were relentless. Effortless.

I waited until her friends crossed the street.

I stepped close, just enough to brush the side of her head with my fingertips. I focused. I didn’t grab. I didn’t push. I just pulled.

And I felt it.

A kitchen. Warm. A mother’s hands cupping her cheeks. A whisper. You’re good. You’ll always be good.

Gone.

Sydney blinked once. Tilted her head. Then she laughed and said something I can’t forget.

Why do people get so dramatic about their stupid siblings?

She kept walking.

The next day, she shoved a freshman into a stair rail. The day after that, she snapped a girl’s headband in half and left it on her desk like a trophy. By Thursday, two teachers had filed reports. By Friday, she had detention and a note home. Her mother came in the following Monday, red-eyed and shaking.

She said Sydney wasn’t the same.

She said she wanted to know what happened.

I already knew.

I had done something permanent. Something that couldn’t be reversed. I hadn’t punished her. I had removed her guardrail. The piece of her that made her believe she could be good.

And I couldn’t tell anyone. Not just because they wouldn’t believe me. Because they might. And I didn’t want to face what that meant.

I thought Emi might notice. Might say something. Smile. Speak. She didn’t. She just stared out the window like the world outside belonged to someone else.

I sat with her that night. No words. Just the two of us and the TV humming with a show we weren’t watching. I wanted to tell her. I wanted her to know I did something for her. Something because of her. But when I opened my mouth, nothing came out.

I knew then that I couldn’t touch her either. I couldn’t use my gift on her even if I wanted to. Because what if I took the wrong thing? What if the silence wasn’t just pain—it was part of how she was surviving it?

I kept my hands to myself.

I kept my secret in the back of my throat like a stone I couldn’t swallow.

And Sydney kept changing.

A week later, she slapped a boy across the face for spilling juice on her shoe. He didn’t even look surprised. Just backed away like he expected it. Like they all did now.

I didn’t know if that made me the villain. I didn’t know if I was the story’s turning point or its curse.

All I knew was that I didn’t want to be seen.

That was the week I stopped looking people in the eyes.

Some nights, I see the memory again. Not Sydney’s face now, but the six-year-old version. Sitting at a wooden table, crayons everywhere. Her mother leaning in, soft voice wrapped in love.

You’re good. You’ll always be good.

That sentence used to be her compass.

Now I wonder if anyone will ever say it to her again.

Emi fell asleep on the couch last night. Curled up in a way that made her look younger. Like the little sister who used to beg me to carry her down the hall. I pulled the blanket over her shoulder, careful not to touch skin. Careful not to use what was left of anything I had to offer.

She didn’t flinch.

Didn’t say a word.

I sat there until morning.

I don’t think I’m a bad person. I really don’t. But I also know I’m not the hero. And I don’t think I deserve to be.

I didn’t make a mistake.

I made a choice.

And I still hear her mother’s voice in my head.

I don’t know if it’s hers anymore.

But it’s mine now.

And I have to carry it.