She knows the basics. How could she not? It is every operative greatest fear, the only fear for some. She won't remember anything from being a kid, but she doesn't know what that means exactly. No one that she's known very well has ever been decommissioned. She is the oldest in the sector.
She wants to know if she'll still feel like herself. Will she still want to wear her red hat? Will she still love candy? If she isn't herself, who would she be? She figures there will be some things that will stick with her.
She wonders how her sister will act. She knows, as does her sister, that she is a superior operative. Skilled in all the most important ways. Her sister will, no doubt, try to recruit her. She feels sick at the thought of joining them. She hopes maybe some allegiance to children will remain bound to her, or at least that she denies her sister's offers.
She wonders if, after it happens, she'll remember that baldness makes her uneasy. She hates that every time she looks at her best friend there is a pit at the bottom of her stomach. She can't imagine ever forgetting the pain that one second of neglect has brought her. And him. He has always pretended that it doesn't bother him, and maybe it doesn't any more. At first, though, she would see him reach up to push fingers through his hair, but he'd find nothing. Complete baldness, always, forever. This would not be such a terrible thing to forget, she realizes.
However, there are some things she couldn't bear forgetting. Like the way her heart beats faster when she sees an airplane, always hoping that he is the one piloting it. Or the look on his face when she handed those sunglasses, and thus her power, to him. The bone crushing hugs that her green-clad friend always knows when to give. The short boy's confusion when her ideas always work better than his. The feeling that she gets when they complete a mission and are on their way back to the tree house. Every day, every moment, she has spent with her team, her friends, is too much to lose.
She cannot share these doubts with her friends. She has always been the coolest, the most collected in times of fear, and she will remain so until her last moment. She knows she can hold her head high and face the unknown without making them worry. They still have time to be spent as kids. Forgetting them will be the hardest thing of all. She will see them, but she won't. Will they even seem familiar to her?
She wonders these things now, and soon she will know the answers, but by then, she will have forgotten the questions.
When she opens her eyes that morning, sunlight is streaming in through her open window. To anyone one else, it is a beautiful day. Happy 13th Birthday, Abigail.