Losing Me Finding You Read Online Free Page A

opposite, facing me. He’s smiling. I wave at Ben and watch as he gestures for me to open my window.
    “Hi, Evie,” he says.
    “Hi, Ben,”
    “Want to come over?” he asks.
    I nod yes and quickly jump out of bed, scrambling around my room as I try to get dressed. As soon as I’m done, I run downstairs, waving to my mum in the kitchen, before opening the front door. Ben’s waiting for me on the front path.
    “Hey, Evie Roberts,” he says, a big smile on his face.
    I stop, my heart lurching at the memory now it’s there. “Actually, it’s Evie Sutherland now,” I tell him, shrugging as though it’s no big deal.
    “It is?” Ben asks, his head tilting in confusion. I’m not sure what I’m going to say when he asks me why. Even I don’t know the answer to that. “Huh,” is all he says, and I can tell he’s thinking, trying to decide if this is important. “Well, you’ll always just be Evie to me,” he says, surprising me.
    I’ll always just be Evie to him.
    I smile. “And you’ll always be Ben to me.”
    Ben smiles back at me. “Good,” he says. “Now, let’s go.”
    And just like that, it’s done.

28th February 1988
    Eleven years old

    I can’t sleep.
    I’ve been lying here staring at the ceiling ever since I went to bed two hours ago. I don’t want to fall asleep because I’m afraid of what’s going to happen. I think I’m going to disappear again. Now that I can remember what happened last time, I know what to look for and I can feel it.
    The strange, sinking emptiness I had on the afternoon before my real eighth birthday is back. That feeling of losing something, that connection I seem to have to Ben, it’s all back again. It’s stronger than before and it’s taking everything I have in me just to stay in my room and not go to him.
    It’s too late now and I’ve run out of time to explain it to him anyway.
    We saw each other today, but nothing was said. I wanted to, really wanted to tell him about tonight, about what I knew deep down was going to happen. But I couldn’t, because I was too afraid and I didn’t want him to think I was weird, or crazy, or someone he should stay away from.
    I just wish I could find a way to let him know that tomorrow when he wakes up and I’m no longer here, that I haven’t really left him. That my disappearing isn’t by choice and I will do everything I can to find him again. Although I have no idea how that’s going to happen, especially now I know that come tomorrow, I won’t even remember him.
    I didn’t even realise that’s what had happened until I found him again two years ago. Didn’t even realise that I’d forgotten the person who is my best friend. How is it possible that all of those memories are here, but buried so deep inside me, that I can’t even find them?
    And they were all there; they were just waiting to be found. Waiting until I’d found Ben. Because when I find Ben, he somehow unlocks them. It’s like he is the key to all of my memories and I have no idea how or why, but most of all, I have no idea what’s going to happen next time.
    What happens if I don’t find him again?
    Tap.
    Am I stuck not remembering?
    Tap.
    Will he somehow find me?
    Tap.
    What if we never find each other?
    Tap, tap.
    I sit up in bed, listening for the sound.
    Tap.
    And then I smile because I know what it is, who it is. Sliding down my bed, I put my face to the window; the blinds already open, just as Ben throws another tiny rock from his bedroom window.
    I hold up my hand and wave to him, watch as he smiles and waves back at me. Then he closes his window and holds up a piece of paper for me. I squint in the light cast by a street lamp to see what’s written in large black writing.
    Don’t open the window, it’s freezing!
    I smile; giving him the thumbs up before I run to my desk, grab a stack of paper and my own marker so I can write back to him.
    What are you doing awake? I ask him.
    Ben smiles as he reads my note before turning to write