Forgotten Life

by Hailey Zmuda, 13

He was eight years old when he realized his memories weren’t his. It happened on a Tuesday afternoon in late September. 

In the hallway of his elementary school, the lockers were dented and blue, and the air smelt like old paper and pencil shavings. Someone had spilled their chocolate milk near the drinking fountain. 

He was standing in the line when his hand brushed against Mrs. Alder’s cardigan sleeve. Then suddenly … He was older, he was standing in a hospital room, staring at a man whose breathing came in thin, mechanical signs. 

The room hummed with fluorescent light. His chest felt like it had been hollowed out. He knew without being told the man in the bed was his father, and he was about to say goodbye. The grief was tidal, crushing, the crushing, and it was gone. 

He was in the hallway, Mrs. Alder still asking someone to quiet down. His heart was racing and his hands were shaking, crushing, and shaking. He stared at her, this middle-aged woman with wire-rim glasses and peppermint gum breath, and he knew something, something he shouldn’t know. 

Her father had died in a hospital room with pale green walls. She had not been ready. 

He went home that afternoon and didn’t tell anyone. His name was Mark Mercer. By the time he was ten, he understood the rules. He had to touch someone’s skin, or sometimes even through fabric, if it was thin enough. The memory would come like a flood, not gentle or polite, but immersive. He wouldn’t watch it like a movie; he would physically live it. He could feel the emotion, every detail. Sometimes it lasted seconds, sometimes minutes. Once it felt like hours. He couldn’t choose which memory he saw. It was always something important. Something heavy, joy or grief, fear or love. The moments that carved people into who they were. And every time he did it, something inside him loosened.  

At first, he didn’t notice. A forgotten spelling word. The way his bedroom looked before they repainted it. The name of a kid he’d known since kindergarten. Then it grew—he forgot his favorite color. He forgot the sound of his mother’s laugh before she started working double shifts. He forgot what it felt like to ride a bike without training wheels. 

It wasn’t immediate, it was like erosion, small pieces slipping away quietly, almost politely. Only later would he realize they were gone. 

The first time he understood the cost was when he reached for his best friend Caleb’s hand during a game of tag. The memory that struck him was bright and golden. Caleb at five years old, running through a field while his older sister chased him. The sky was huge, the grass was endless. His sister tripped, and they both collapsed into laughter. It was so wild. Mark felt it all, the freedom. The warmth. The absolute safety of being loved. He almost cried from how beautiful it was. 

That same night, he stared at a photograph on his dresser. It was him and Caleb at the beach the summer before. They were grinning, sand in their hair. He recognized the picture. But he couldn’t remember that day. Not the water. Not the sun. Not the way it felt to stand beside his friend. It was all erased. 

By thirteen he stopped going near anyone. He kept to himself all the time, he flinched from hugs, he learned how to move through hallways without brushing shoulders. He was careful, but sometimes, he failed. A hand on his arm during a fire drill. A shove in the cafeteria. A girl grabbing his wrist to stop him from walking into traffic. Each time, another memory vanished.  His mother’s face blurred at the edges of his childhood. He knew she loved him. He knew it factually. But the memories that proved it were thinning, like old photographs left in the sun. 

He began keeping journals. He wrote everything down. “Today I ate pancakes. My favorite song is ‘Vienna.’ Mom used to sing in the car.” He read them constantly, terrified that one day he’d open the notebook and the handwriting would look like a stranger’s. 

At sixteen, he met her. Her name was Mara. She was new to the town, arriving in October when the trees were already skeletal and the air smelled like smoke. She had dark long curls and eyes that seemed to study the world like it was a problem to be solved. He noticed her because she didn’t try to fill the silence. They were paired together in literature class. She didn’t smile much, but when she did, it felt earned. He avoided contact, he avoided everyone. But Mara was observant. 

“You move like people are made of fire,” she said one afternoon as they walked home from school, careful inches between them. 

He shrugged. “Maybe they are?” 

She tilted her head. “What would happen if …” 

He cut her off, “Just don’t feed into it.” 

A week later, it happened. They were sitting on the bleachers after school. The sky was bruised purple with rain on its way. Mara was talking about the city she’d moved from, about crowded streets and train stations and the way she missed noise.  

“Have you ever missed something so much that it feels physical?” she asked. 

“Yes,” he said, too quickly. 

She reached out, impulsive, and took his hand. The world broke open. He was seven years old, standing in an airport terminal. Her father was kneeling in front of her, promising it wasn’t goodbye forever. Her mother stood a few feet away, rigid and silent. The air smelled like coffee and jet fuel. Her father hugged her too tight. He never came back. Mark felt the crack form in her chest, the hairline fracture that would never fully seal. He gasped and pulled away. 

Mara stared at him. “You saw something,” she whispered. 

He didn’t know how she knew. But she did. He told her everything, not at once, not cleanly, but in pieces. She listened without laughing.  

“You steal memories,” she said finally. 

“I don’t mean to,” he said looking down at the ground. 

“And you lose yours.” 

He nodded. 

“How many?” 

“I don’t know.” 

She studied his face, searching for proof. “Show me,” she said. 

“I can’t choose.” 

“Then don’t choose. Just …” She hesitated. “Take one.” 

He froze and every instinct screamed no. But something about her steadiness made him reckless. He reached for her wrist. This time, the memory was different. It wasn’t grief. It was recent. 

Mara, just weeks ago, sitting on her bedroom floor in this new house. Boxes everywhere, she was holding her phone, starting at his contact name. She hadn’t texted yet. She was afraid he’d disappear like everyone else. He felt the quiet hope she carried when she walked beside him. He felt how carefully she was beginning to care. When he pulled away, tears were already in his eyes. 

“What was it?” she asked. 

“You,” he said. 

That night, he opened his journal. He couldn’t remember his eighth birthday. The losses accelerated after that. He forgot the layout of his childhood home. He forgot his father’s voice entirely. He forgot why he hated thunderstorms. 

One evening, he looked in the mirror and felt a flicker of panic. He recognized the face. But he couldn’t remember ever being young. It was like his life began at fourteen. Everything before that was second hand. He stopped sleeping. 

Mara noticed. “You’re fading,” she said. 

“I’m still here.” 

“Are you?” 

The question lingered. The truth arrived quietly. It was in the library, of all places. Mark brushed against an elderly man reaching for the same book. The memory slammed into him with unbearable force. He was inside the old man’s mind, but it wasn’t a moment from the past, it was absence. A room with no furniture. A house emptied of sound. The man standing in a kitchen unable to remember his wife’s name. The terror of knowing something is gone and being unable to retrieve it. Alzheimer’s but beneath that, a faint echo. A shape that didn’t belong. Mark felt it like a scar. A place where something had been taken. Not by time. By him. 

He stumbled back, horrified. It wasn’t just that he lost memories when he took them. They lost something too, not the memory itself, but the weight of it. The sharpness dulled, the edges blurred. He wasn’t stealing moments, he was siphoning meaning. Each time he carried someone’s memory, he carried part of their emotional imprint. And in exchange, he gave up part of himself. Balance, a trade. 

He told Mara. She went very still. 

“So every time you try to understand someone,” she said slowly, “you disappear a little.” 

“Yes.” 

“And they become lighter.” 

“Yes.”  

She looked angry. “That’s not fair.” 

“I don’t think it’s supposed to be.” 

Winter came hard that year. Snow pressed against windows like static. Mark’s journals filled faster than ever. He wrote facts about himself like a scientist cataloging a specimen: I like tea, not coffee. I’m afraid of forgetting Mara. He underlined her name repeatedly. Because that was new terror, what if forgets her? What if one day he looked at her and felt nothing but polite recognition? The thought hollowed him out. So he tried his best to stop going near her completely. Distance returned. Mara endured it for a while, then one night, she showed up at his house. 

“You don’t get to erase yourself to save me,” she said. “I’m not—”  

“You are.” 

She stepped closer. “I’ve been thinking.” she continued. “What if you don’t have to lose something important?” 

He frowned. “I don’t get to choose.” 

“Maybe you do.” 

He stared at her. 

“What if,” she said slowly, “you give up the memories you don’t need?” 

“Like what?” 

She swallowed. “Like the ones that hurt.” 

The idea lodged in him. He had avoided people to preserve himself. But what if he used it deliberately? What if he chose to let go?  

The next time he went near someone, it was intentional. It was his mother—she was exhausted, sitting at the kitchen table with unpaid bills. He took her hand, the memory was soft and warm. Him at four years old, asleep on her chest. The TV flickering blue light. Her whispering that she would always protect him. He felt the fierce love, the terror of failing him. When he pulled away, he held onto the warmth for as long as he could. Then he let something go, not her, not that. He focused on a memory he’d been unable to shake for years, though he only knew it from his journals. The day his father left, he didn’t remember it clearly anymore. He released it. The pain thinned. And he checked later, he still remembered Mara’s laugh. He still remembered his mother’s voice. The cost had been specific, targeted. 

“I can steer it,” he said breathlessly. “Not perfectly. But I can choose what I surrender.” 

She searched his face, “And what are you keeping?” 

“You.” 

For the first time, she reached for him without hesitation. He let her, no memory came, instead, something new formed. Not hers, not borrowed, the beginning of something shared. 

Years later, Mark would still forget things, small things, the name of a street, the plot of a movie. But he learned to guard the pillars of himself. He learned that identity wasn’t just memory. It was a choice. Each time he reached for someone now, it was with care. He no longer tried to collect people’s pasts. He only stepped in when they asked him to carry something heavy. Grief, regret, shame. He would hold it for them, let it soften, and in exchange he would lay down something he was ready to release. He became lighter, but not emptier. 

And on the days he feared fading, Mara would press her forehead to him and say, “Tell me who you are.” 

He would smile. “I’m someone who stays.”

Mitchell, Ontario, Canada

This piece won FIRST PLACE in our 2026 Voice & Verse Writing Contest, prose ages 12-14 category.

Judge’s Note: This piece is so beautiful and polished and one of a kind. The structure, language, and narrative skills are all extremely impressive. The author of this is an incredibly empathetic, creative, and genuine writer, and the ending made me cry a little. Slowly learning about Mark’s power builds intrigue, which becomes dread as we realize he is losing himself. The solution of Mark being vulnerable with one person, who ends up being the one who saves him, is just beyond words, touching.