kotlc number one: THANK YOU FOR REVIEWINGGGGGGG! I'd told myself that I would only continue this story if someone asked for it... thank you!
"Where's your mommy and daddy?" Keala asked suddenly.
They'd been riding the bus to San Diego for two hours now, and Aeron had been half-sleeping.
"What?" he asked groggily.
Fiddling with the chain of her pegasus-themed charm bracelet, Keala repeated the question.
"It doesn't matter."
Keala gave him a look.
Sighing, Aeron sat up in his cracked bus-seat, smoothing his hair. He was silent for a long time before answering. "They're dead. You know that, Keala."
"Oh. I forgot."
They both lapsed into a deep silence. Aeron felt the familiar cloud of depression settle on him again. That was what he told people now - that his parents were dead. But he knew in his heart of hearts that it wasn't true. He had to say that because it was the only reasonable explanation to those that couldn't remember the Time Before.
The Time Before was when he still lived with his parents. He was the only one left who could remember that. He was the Rememberer; everyone else was a Forgetter. He envied his grandparents; his cousins; everyone who wasn't him, because they didn't have to bear the singular burden that Memory was to him.
What had happened that he should be the only one to remember? He wished he knew. The only thing he did know was that it would have to be a very great power indeed that forced his grandparents to forget their oldest daughter; or his aunt to forget her only sister. His grandparents had "adopted him." Upon finding him on their doorstep that fateful day, they had acted as if they'd never seen him before. They wrote to the Adoption Center only to find that he wasn't on record. He had appeared out of thin air - a mystery. Needless to say, they'd adopted him. And he'd lived with them ever since, attending the public elementary, middle and now high schools, never mentioning his past life, holding out for the day that his parents would surely come back for him.
But they never did.