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When I Don't Remember You

Chapter 2: Meet Girl & Be Considered Crazy

Here's chapter 2! Please R&R!

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The girl lets tears slid down her cheeks as she looks at me.
"Karkat... Karkat and everyone else, actually, told me you wouldn't remember. You never got to God Tier before the Game was over, so you wouldn't remember..." She looks down at her ruby shoes, rubbing her eyes.
"Karkat? Who's Karkat? And what's a God Tier? What Game?"
"I just can't believe you haven't met anyone else," she says, sitting down on the edge of my bed and rubbing her eyes with her sleeve.
"What?" I ask.
"Kanaya, Tavros, Equius, Nepeta, Sollux, and Terezi," she responds, "they're the other ones that didn't make it to God Tier. Even in the Dream Bubbles."
"Listen," I say, trying to keep myself from screaming, "I don't know you, or anything about you, or this Game or any of these people, so would you please just leave me alone so I can sleep?" I say, leaning back into my pillow, intent on sleeping.
"The Dave Strider I knew-"
"Listen, Sweetie," I say sternly, "I'm not Dave Strider. I'm Dave Stanley. I live here with my bro Dirk and my mom Roxy."
"No. Your name is Dave Strider," she says, sounding like she's about to tell me my life's story, "you love puppets to the point where your bro's puppet factory is ironic. You're Pesterchum is TurntechGodhead. You are thirteen years old and your favorite color is red and you're my best friend and Karkat told me you wouldn't remember, but I completely ignored him and-" she cut herself off with tears. I sit up again and put my hand on her shoulder. She turns to look at me.
"Listen, Jade, I don't remember anything you say I should. Plus, I'm nineteen, not thirteen."
"You... You remembered my name," she whispers, "my last name, what's my last name?!" She asks, something bordering panic ringing on her tone.
"Harley. Wh- oh my fucking god," I say, kinda freaking out too. How do I know this girl's name?! Jade Harley. Jade Harley. It sounds so right, but I don't know how I know it. According to her, we were best friends, so maybe she's right. But that's impossible. This is a dream. It has to be.
"Are there other people besides you?"
"Oh course!" she replied with a tiny smile. Her tears had started to dry up, "Your sister for one thing!"
"Sister? You mean Rose-" I stop again. Another name I just... knew.
"And your other best friend!"
"Egbert?" I know that's a last name.
"Yeah! First name!"
"Jake- no, no. John!" I say hastily. The girl smiles and throws her arms around me.
"You remember!"
"Those are just names, Jadey," I say, "I still don't know the rest of what you're talking about."
"You remember my nickname! Jadey! You called me that all the time!"
"I did?" She nods and stands up, looking at the ceiling.
"EAT THAT KARKAT!" She screams, sticking up her middle finger at my roof.
"Be quiet!" I hiss, "I don't want you waking up mom and Bro."
"They can't hear me. Only you can," She says, "That's what Karkat told me anyway."
"Who the hell is Karkat?"
"He's one of the Trolls."
"Trolls?"
"Yeah!" Jade says with a smile, sitting back down next to me. I decide it's a good idea to put on something other than boxer shorts and quickly stand up and pull some sweats on.
"The trolls are some of our best friends! They-" A loud beeping sound rings from my alarm clock.
"It's morning already?!" I say, picking up my cell phone to check too. 7:45.
"Well, your Bro will be here in a few minutes, so I'd better go," Jade kisses my cheek and smiles at me, "And the next time you go to your therapist, call her Dr. Maryam by "mistake", okay?"
"Umm... Okay?" I say. Jade smiles again and waves.

My door is suddenly thrown open and Bro and mom are standing there.
"You're late." Bro says.
"Late for what?!" I say frantically, "I never DO anything!"
"School, Dave! College? You start TODAY!"
"Yeah!" Mom agrees, "You've gotta get up and go!"
"I understood that completely. Something happen to you?"
"Your damned father took all my booze and won't give it back till later..." She says with a frown and goes back downstairs.

"Dude," Bro says the second he hears the stovetop turn on, "You look like you didn't sleep at all."
"I didn't," I reply, standing up and going over to my dresser, pulling out some clothes to wear.
"Why not?"
"If I tell you what actually happened, you won't believe me," I say only because it's totally true. Bro's not gonna believe that some girl in ruby-red heels and a hoodie-dress showed up in my room in the middle of the night and told me I was Dave Strider and I'm 13 and shit like that.
"C'mon. Try me," He says tauntingly, sewing together another puppet ass and leaning agains my doorframe. I roll my eyes.
"Fine. You asked for it," I say, throwing my shirt in a crumpled pile on the ground and tugging on my new one. It's a picture of a CD with a scratch through it with red sleeves that stop at my elbows. I have no idea how I got it and Bro can't remember ever buying it for me. I could ask mom but she can barely remember what happened last night.
"At around one am, I heard this voice and this girl showed up in a black hoodie-dress and ruby shoes and had dog ears and a tail and told me my name was Dave Strider and I'm 13 and I played some game with Trolls or something." Bro stared at me, one eyebrow raised behind his pointed lenses.
"I think I'm gonna call Dr. Marian later..."
"I'm not insane, Bro," I say as I pull my jeans on and slide my shades over my blood-red eyes. My eyes. That girl could see my eyes. Shit shit shit shit shit. Nobody I have ever met knows my eye color except Bro and mom. And now Jade, the flying girl in a hoodie-dress who cried because I didn't "remember" her.
"Are you sure?" Bro asks. I punch him in the shoulder, even though I know he's just joking around. We do this a lot.
"Daaaaave! Diiiiirk!" Mom calls from the kitchen, "Your stupid breakfast is getting cold!" I pull on a sweatshirt and Bro and I head downstairs.

"What's for breakfast?" I ask, pulling my backpack over my shoulders.
"The only fuckin thing I know HOW to make! Pancakes and toast, now shut up and eat it," Mom snaps. I can tell Bro took her booze away. She's not usually this pissed.

After my breakfast of burnt toast and undercooked pancakes I wave goodbye and walk out the door to my car, where I put the keys in the ignition and head off to school.

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When I get to school, I see almost nobody, but when I close my eyes and lean back, trying to sleep for a half-second, I see her face. Jade's face. She's crying, staring down at a corpse. She's in a green dress with something sparkly, maybe galaxies and she looks down and kisses the corpse. I feel the urge to scream, "4x CORPSEKISS COMBO" but don't. My eyes flash open before I can see who the body is. Why would I be thinking about that? And why do I know something that didn't happen to me? That corpse couldn't have… been me, could it have? No, I've never died! Whatever…

I pull my backpack over my shoulders and climb out of my car, locking the door behind me and shoving the keys in my pocket. Walking toward the front door, I bumped into a girl with spiky black hair and red-rimmed sunglasses. She was wearing a teal jacket over a black shirt and her blue jeans. I'd seen her before, but I wasn't sure where.

"Oh, uh… hello." She says, locking eyes with me.
"Sup," I respond.
"I'm Taylor. Taylor Pierce."
"Dave Strider," I reply, "Cool shades." Why?! Why did I just say Dave STRIDER?! FUCK! But I can't say Stanley now, she'd think I was weird if I didn't know my own fucking last name!
"Thanks, you too." She smiles.
"What class are you going to?"
"My math class," she replies, "Professor M. Price?"
"I have her next!" I say, "Can I walk you there?"
"Oooh, quite the charmer we have here," she says playfully, "okay. Lead the way, Slim." I smile and we start walking. I feel something weird on my shoulder, like an invisible hand, and look to see Jade standing behind me. My eyes get wide behind my sunglasses.
"They can't see or hear me… you know that right?" She says, and a weight lifts off my back.
"Do you remember when I was talking about people who never made it to god tier?" I half-nod.
"Well, this is one of them! Her name is Terezi Pyrope and she's one of the Trolls," Jade says with a smile.

"Will you leave me the H3LL alone?" I hear Taylor whisper.
"Who are you talking to?" I ask. She jumps and says,
"I uh, have a mild, M1LD form of schizophrenia." She shrugs and I notice Jade look over to her right. Her eyes get wide and she whispers,
"What are you doing here?!" She waits and then says,
"Oh, and so he," she points a thumb at me, "won't remember me so it's pointless, but SHE," she points to Taylor, "won't remember you so you should still try? That's a really dumb move, Karkat." Karkat... Jade mentioned something about Karkat when we talked last night. She waits another few seconds, then responds.

"Umm, Taylor, we should get to class…"
"We should." She looks over her shoulder and offers a sour look to the floor tiles.

When we sit down in class I say,
"Lemme guess. You have a person in a hoodie following you around?" She pauses, unsure of how to answer.
"What?"
"You said that you had mild schizophrenia, but I have a voice talking to me too. And it's only one. Is the name of this voice Karkat?" I say, hoping I'm not wrong.
"Y-yeah," she says after a second, "he started talking to me last night. And," she leans closer to say this, "he's got HORNS. It's freaking CR33PY."
"Mine's name is Jade. She started crying because I didn't know her. She's a human, though. She says your name is-"
"Terezi Pyrope. That's what Karkat told me. Said we were "Matesprits" or something. I'm assuming that's like dating, but I'm not sure," Taylor says, propping her head up on her fist, sighing through her teeth and turning her attention back to the whiteboard where our teacher had started talking.

I see Jade in the corner talking to the other person and I assume Tere- TAYLOR can see the other half. I'm only really interested in their conversation when Jade shrieks,
"I FORGOT ABOUT SBURB!"

Chapter 2! Please R&R!