After Tom left, Maya and Dennis came back to see her. The rest of the day was spent talking, asking questions, and telling stories. There was so much to tell. Those seventeen years Emily had lost could not be told in just one day. Maya and Dennis took her to the grocery store, where she'd worked for over a year. They took her to the town square, where she'd been obsessing about Tom for months before they'd finally got together. They took her to Maya's house, where her mother told her all about what she'd been like as a small child – very energetic apparently, she'd been climbing on everything she could climb, even falling out of a tree or off a fence every now and then.

"The first time it happened, I had to take you back to your parents while you were crying your eyes out." She laughed at the memory. "I was so relieved when your parents just laughed it off and told me you did that all the time. Yeah, you were a little rascal at that age. I couldn't take my eyes off you guys for even a second, if it was all four of you here."

"Wait, four of us?" Emily asked confused.

"Yeah, you three and Joshua!"

"Oh, we haven't told her that yet!" Maya interrupted her mum "When we were little, it was always the four of us. Joshua moved away when we were about seven years old."

"The worst day of my life!" said Dennis full of self-pity. "He left me behind with two girls..."

Maya gave him a playful push.

"You were all pretty upset about him leaving," said Maya's mum. "Your response to it was growing closer than ever, to make sure you'd never fall apart."

Maya and Dennis grinned at their friend proudly. "We let nothing come in between us. Of course we fight sometimes, but we always make up again really quickly."

"What do we fight about?" Emily asked curiously, hoping for yet another story.

Dennis rolled his eyes. "You two about useless girls-stuff."

"And us two with Dennis about him acting like such a punk. It's really not that cool," Maya immediately shot back.

"Weren't you guys fighting the other day?" said Maya's mum. "Couple of weeks ago?"

Emily looked at her friends expectantly, only to see them exchange another glance before Maya said, "Oh, that... Uh, that was nothing... Not a nice story."

Dennis cleared his throat and said, "I think we should go. We've still got a lot to show you."

The town they lived in gave her friends plenty of stories to fill the rest of the day with. But to Emily's deep disappointment, none of it was familiar even in the slightest.

Early in the evening, the three friends walked back to Emily's house. They purposely took a different route, so that Emily could see a little more of town. Just in case.

"That's the church," said Dennis, pointing to a small building with a high clocktower. "But nobody ever goes there anymore."

"A few streets that way is school," said Maya. "And we'll pass the swimming pool, too. We haven't been there in ages, but we used to swim a lot when we were little."

They took a left into the next street. In the distance, past a row of dilapidated houses that appeared to be empty, grew trees.

"Is that the forest?" Emily asked curiously. Eddy had been talking about that this morning. The craziness of his story hadn't left her mind yet.

Maya and Dennis glanced at one another uncomfortably. "Yeah. It is."

"Can we go there, before we go home? I just want to see it," said Emily.

Maya sighed. "No, Emily, we can't."

"Why not?"

"Because the forest is dangerous," Dennis explained. "Nobody goes there."

"Oh, come on, what's so dangerous about it? It's only a forest." Emily laughed.

"The problem isn't the forest itself, it's what's on the other side. The Others live there."

"The Others?" Emily remembered every word of what Eddy had told her about them. They were savages. They had magic. Would her friends say the same thing? Would she believe them if they did? "Eddy was talking about that, too. Who are they, exactly?"

"They're dangerous people," said Dennis, an angry frown on his face. "They live on the other side of the forest and they apparently go into the woods a lot. You better stay away from there, Emily. You don't want to run into them when you're all alone."

That night, Emily and Eddy ate their dinner quietly. Eddy had made lasagne for her. Apparently that was her favourite. She couldn't remember, but it tasted lovely.

Her thoughts went back to that day. She was very thankful to her friends that in only one day they'd been able to tell her so much. If she did manage to get her memory back, it would be all thanks to them. And Tom... Well, she'd just have to give him another chance.

She couldn't forget about the forest they'd seen at the end of the day. Both her dad and her friends had warned her for it. Could it really be that dangerous? From a distance, it looked so calm and peaceful. Calm and peaceful was exactly what she needed at that moment.

"So, how was your day?" said Eddy suddenly. Maybe the silence was making him uncomfortable after all.

"It was nice," said Emily. "Maya and Dennis showed me a lot, and they told me so many stories. I even met Maya's mum. She's nice."

"I've met her. Haven't talked to her in a long time, how is she?"

"Good, I guess," said Emily, after swallowing her food. "She smiled a lot."

Eddy laughed. "Yeah, I remember that. Your mum once said she looked like a sloth, with that permanent smile on her face." After a second, he added, "Please don't tell her that, it's not very nice..."

Emily giggled. "Mum was not wrong."

They both took another bite of their dinner, chewing happily.

"Eddy? Can you tell me a bit more about my mother?"

Eddy's eyes immediately wandered to the picture frame on the cabinet behind his daughter. "Of course. Who knows, it might even help you remember." He took another bite, but Emily could see him thinking. She waited patiently.

"She was a teacher, at the primary school here in town," Eddy started his story. "You adored her, always did. You were so excited when you finally turned four and got to go to school. Every day, at lunchtime, you'd go see her to tell her what you'd been learning that morning. Some days you only talked to her for a few minutes, so you'd still have time to play with your friends, but you always went to see her. And every afternoon, you walked home together." Eddy smiled. "You were quite the daredevil when you were little. Every now and then you'd come home crying your eyes out, because you'd fallen off of something again. Your mum could always cheer you up within minutes. After she'd gone, that task fell to me, but I wasn't nearly as good at it. Sometimes you wouldn't stop crying until I put you to bed and you just fell asleep from exhaustion."

Emily stared at her half-empty plate. That didn't sound like she had such a great childhood. At least not since her mother had died.

"It took months before you finally started to learn to live without your mum. I tried everything to help you, but nothing would work. I took you places to distract you, had your friends come over a lot, I even bought you a diary so you could write or draw your feelings down on paper. Nothing worked. Well, nothing but time. You must've been seven when you seemed happier again. And that's when you started helping me."

Emily looked up in surprise and saw her dad smile at her.

"It turned out you knew exactly when I missed her the most. You'd come sit with me and hug me, trying to make me feel better."

Emily chuckled. "I was cute when I was seven."

Eddy nodded. "You were the best daughter I could ever have hoped for."

A few hours later, Emily found herself lying in bed, staring at the ceiling. The moon shone through the cracks between her curtains, lighting up the room just enough to make out shadows. But Emily's thoughts weren't on shadows in the present; her mind wandered amongst those of the past.

Not remembering your mother, especially if she wasn't alive anymore, was the worst feeling in the world. Eddy had told her how much she loved Rosalynn, how much she looked up to her. But now she couldn't even remember her face, her voice, what she smelled like.

How was it that she missed something she didn't even remember having? With every story her dad and her friends told her, she became more and more determined. She had to get her memory back. She just had to. She owed it to her mother. To Joshua. To everyone she'd ever known. She couldn't let them down. She even felt bad about sleeping; like she was wasting precious time. Time she should spend learning about her old life.

But there was nothing she could do while everyone she knew was asleep.

That's when a thought hit her like lightning.

Eddy had told her she'd been keeping a diary when she was little. Could she still have that somewhere? She jumped up, throwing the sheets off her. How had she not thought of this before?

Emily rushed over and turned the lights in her room on. Oh, how much a diary could tell her! Her own memories, that she'd written down herself, would be right there in the pages.

She glanced across the room; from the desk on one side, to the single bed with moss green sheets, to the large oaken wardrobe on the other wall. Okay, she thought. A diary... Where would I hide a diary?

Emily pulled open the drawers of the desk, ruffling through them. Several notebooks, but no diary. She moved over to the wardrobe and searched through that. Nothing. She checked the windowsill, the small gap between the desk and the wall, even behind the one poster that was framed. Still, no diary.

In the end, she sat down on her bed with a sigh, looking around. Maybe it was time to admit she'd gotten rid of that thing. Probably years ago. She dropped her head down onto the bed –

And immediately jumped up once more. The bed! The one place I haven't looked is the bed!

Her heart pounding in her chest, Emily dropped onto all fours and peeked under the bed. Then she lifted up the mattress, checked inside her pillowcase, and finally pushed her bed aside to check behind it. Just as she was about to pull it back against the wall, a frown of disappointment on her face, she noticed the slit in the mattress. It was only small, invisible even while the bed was against the wall. But it was there.

Emily kneeled down next to the bed and stuck her hand through the slit. Her hand was immediately stopped by the soft pockets containing the springs, so she moved her hand to the side. It had to be there somewhere.

Not there... Not there... Yes!

She almost squealed out loud when her fingers brushed against something made of paper. She pulled it out of the mattress triumphantly.

It was no diary. There wasn't even any writing on it. The only thing on the folded and frayed piece of paper, was a drawing. A boy with high cheekbones, messy hair with overlarge ears sticking out and a slightly bent nose. His eyes smiled at her sadly.

Emily couldn't stop staring at the drawing. Had she drawn this herself? Who could that boy be? Why on earth did she have a drawing hidden inside her mattress of a boy who wasn't even her boyfriend?

Questions bounced around her mind, begging to be answered. She sat there, kneeled next to her bed, until her legs started to hurt and she had no choice but to stand up. She folded the drawing up as neatly as she could and put it in the pocket of her jeans, then pushed her bed back against the wall and lay down. But even as she tried to fall asleep, the boy's sad eyes wouldn't leave her head.