I thought I knew what a hangover was. I thought I knew what food poisoning was, but I’d never woken up to anything like this. I couldn’t even make it to the bathroom the first time and simply threw up on the floor beside my bed. I was too weak and dizzy to clean it up, so awkwardly crawled back into bed and curled up in a ball, begging for someone to put me out of my misery.

Mom came in at some point, saying I was going to be late for school when she found me dying in bed. She may also have stepped in the pool of vomit soaking into the carpet, which caused her to curse and cringe. It was obvious really quickly that I wasn’t going to make it into school that day.

It wasn’t until late morning that I started to feel like I was going to survive—to pull out of what had so violently attacked me. I still couldn’t get out of bed without wanting to throw up, but at least could make it to the bathroom now, and when I lay on my side, I could finally bear the pain.

By mid-afternoon, I finally got out of bed and went downstairs for something light to eat, hoping to keep it down. I also refilled the water glass Mom had brought up to me a few hours prior.

“You could have yelled for me,” Mom said, sitting at the table, looking through a stack of mail.

“You didn’t have to stay home with me,” I said, taking the loaf of bread from the basket atop the refrigerator.

“You didn’t see yourself this morning,” she said, looking up from the open envelope she had in her hand. “There was no way I was going to allow you to stay home alone in a condition like that. I nearly drove you to the ER.”

“Luckily, it seems that won’t be necessary,” I said, taking a slice, folding it in half, and ripping off a small bite.

“What happened? Was it something you ate? You were working last night, right? You didn’t go out doing… other stuff…”

“It must have been something I ate. I don’t really know.”

“When did you get home last night?”

I tried to think, but the night was a blur. “It was late. One of the closing servers had to leave, so I stayed to cover.”

In truth, a blur was an understatement. Much of the previous night was a gaping black hole. I hadn’t worked, but my family usually didn’t keep track of my ever-changing work schedule. I’d gone to Fiona’s apartment to talk with her mother, to show her the photos of Matthew, but she hadn’t been as concerned about him as I had, seemingly hiding something herself. Then I had left and sat in my car for a while, and then… and then my memory reached the cliff overlooking the black hole. I couldn’t remember anything else.

“Well, go back and lie down,” Mom said. “You can stay home another day if you need to.”

“We’ll see,” I said, taking my bread and water back up to my room.

I didn’t remember even having dinner before talking to Fiona’s mother. I didn’t remember driving home. That scared me more than anything. I peered out of my window and saw my car parked across the street. I never parked on that side, even when there wasn’t a space right in front of my house. If someone else snagged my spot, I always parked one or two houses away, on our side.

Feeling more paranoid and suspicious, I glanced around my room to see if anything else was amiss. My socks and shoes were at the foot of my bed, neatly aligned. My phone was on the desk, next to the closed laptop and the pile of the pictures I’d ripped down from my walls. My backpack was hanging from the back of my chair.

Didn’t my car battery die last night?

Nothing was making sense. Everything seemed slightly off—the kind of discrepancies only I would notice.

What the hell happened to me?

I opened the main compartment of my backpack to review the pictures I’d shown to Fiona’s mother, but it was empty—the pictures were gone. The stack of photos I distinctly remembered being on the floor next to my desk, was now on my desk next to the laptop. I flipped through them to see if the ones I’d brought to show Fiona’s mother were now somehow mixed in with the others. But they weren’t; they really seemed to be gone.

I ran back down the stairs, my nausea currently stifled by adrenaline, as I headed for the front door.

“Shouldn’t you be in bed?” Mom called from the kitchen.

“I just remembered I forgot something in my car,” I said and headed across the street, not giving her the opportunity to respond. I scoured the seats, searched under them, in the glove compartment, and even the trunk. The pictures weren’t there either.

I didn’t just happen to get food poisoning. Something had happened to me last night; I just needed to remember what.