Note: I was just thinking, the memory-wipe obviously can cause problems if someone pauses to analyze certain facts. Lyle, for instance, could not remember how he had gotten home and if Claire had pressed further she might have found other inconsistencies. If Lyle had asked his teammates or something they would probably look at him strangely and tell him his Dad had picked him up. The Haitian can erase a person's memory, but in the age we live in, we leave out digital tracks everywhere and the Haitian can't modify those, nor the memories of all bystanders and witnesses.
Faulty Memory
He was going crazy.
That was the only explanation.
He was going crazy.
It had started when he had pulled up his old IMs, getting ready to delete the unimportant ones. There he had found a record of an IM conversation between himself and Claire Bennet.
CLACK. CLACK-CLACK.
Zach? What r u doing?
Throwing rocks at ur window. Open up!
The timestamp was the night of Homecoming.
And he had no memory of it.
Then there was the strange purchase off Amazon, some book about evolution. He'd found a post-it note in one of his notebooks with the title and a scribbled note –for Claire.
He recalled that strange conversation on the field with the cheerleader. She had been acting familiar with him. Talking like he should know what she was talking about. And the look of horror on her face when she had realized he had no idea what she was talking about.
He started asking around school. A number of people had told him that he and Claire had started hanging around each other a few weeks ago. Witnesses to Claire's decking of Jackie said she had pulled that punch because Jackie had been mean to him.
A number of his friends told him that he had campaigned for her to become Homecoming Queen—that he was the reason they had voted for her.
None of it made sense!
Either he was going crazy, or something really freaky was going on.
He started watching Claire more closely in school. She seemed isolated. She didn't socialize much, and she had turned in her cheerleading uniform. She mostly kept to herself and she wasn't nearly as mean as he remembered her.
The look on her face before she had turned and run as fast as she could….
Maybe there was something going on after all.
Before he could stop himself he did it.
A few minutes later Claire found a message waiting for her.
FILMSBYZACH:
Claire, can we talk?