She turned nine in a Red Cross shelter, and something started to sour in her heart, and she couldn’t stop it.

August sits on the edge of an air mattress in Brooklyn and tries to imagine how it would feel if she didn’t have any of those memories to understand what made her who she is. If she woke up one day and just was and didn’t know why.

Nobody tells you how those nights that stand out in your memory—levee sunset nights, hurricane nights, first kiss nights, homesick sleepover nights, nights when you stood at your bedroom window and looked at the lilies one porch over and thought they would stand out, singular and crystallized, in your memory forever—they aren’t really anything. They’re everything, and they’re nothing. They make you who you are, and they happen at the same time a twenty-three-year-old a million miles away is warming up some leftovers, turning in early, switching off the lamp. They’re so easy to lose.

You don’t learn until you’re older how to zoom out of that extreme proximity and make it fit into the bigger picture of your life. August didn’t learn until she sat knee-to-knee with a girl who couldn’t remember who she was, and tried to help her piece everything back together.

The next few days go like this:

August’s alarm goes off for class. Her shifts come up at Billy’s. Her essays and projects and exams stay looming over her like a cave full of bats. She ignores all of it.

She goes back in to work exactly one time, to hang the opening day photo back up on the wall and waylay Jerry as he passes it on his way out of the bathroom.

“Hey,” she says, “I never noticed how cool this picture was. The seventies seem like a hell of a time.”

“That’s what I’ve been told,” Jerry says. “I barely remember ’em.”

“I mean, you must remember this, though, right? Opening day? All the original Billy’s crew?”

She holds her breath as he leans in to squint at the photo. “Buttercup, any one of these sons of bitches could walk in here and sock me in the face and I wouldn’t even know it was them.”

She pushes it. “Not even the one who invented the Su Special?”

“I was what you might call an alcoholic at the time,” Jerry says. “I’m lucky I can remember what goes in the sandwich at all.”

“Are you sure?”

Jerry raises a bushy eyebrow at her. “Y’know people in New York mind their business, right?”

He trudges back to the kitchen, August frowning after him. How can he have forgotten Jane?

She flags down Lucie on her way out, asking about the last time Billy himself visited the restaurant, thinking maybe she could ask him—but, no. He’s mostly retired, lives in Jersey now with his family and almost never comes in, just signs the paychecks. He’s put Lucie and Winfield in charge and doesn’t seem to be welcoming phone calls from rookie servers new to the city.

So, she leaves. She skips class. She calls in sick to work. She listens to Lucie tut at her over the phone, like she knows August is faking. She doesn’t care.

Instead, she shoves her legs into jeans and her feet into Vans and her heart deep, deep down into her chest where it can’t do anything stupid, and she swipes her way into her station.

Every morning, Jane’s there. Usually the seats are a cool, clean blue, the lights shiny and bright, but occasionally, it’s an old train, burnt orange seats with FUCK REAGAN scrawled down the side in faded marker. Sometimes there are only a few sleepy commuters, and sometimes it’s packed with finance guys barking down their phones and huskers singing into the morning rush.

But Jane’s always there. So August is too.

“I still don’t understand,” Wes says, when August finally manages to wrangle everyone into the same room. He’s just stumbled home from the tattoo shop, bagel in hand, while Niko blearily pours himself coffee and Myla brushes her teeth over the kitchen sink. The bathroom plumbing must be acting up again.

“She’s stuck on the train,” August explains for what feels like the five hundredth time. “She’s lost in time from the ’70s, and she can’t leave the Q train, and she doesn’t remember anything before she got there.”

“And you, like,” Wes says, “definitely ruled out the possibility that she’s making it up?”

“She’s honest,” Niko mumbles. He looks perturbed at having to open his third eye before eight in the morning. He’s barely opened his two regular ones. “I met her. I could tell. Honest and sane.”

“No offense, but you said the same thing about the guy who moved in downstairs, and he stole all my weed and ghosted me and moved to Long Beach to be stoned all the time. Less honest and sane and more comatose in California.”

Myla spits in the sink. “Comatose in California is my favorite Lana Del Rey album.”

“He’s right,” August cuts in. “I believe her. She’s never not on the train when I get on, even if it’s a different train a minute later. I don’t see how she can do that unless she’s not living by the laws of reality.”

“So, what are you gonna do? 50 First Dates? Girlfriend with no memories?”

“First of all,” August says, gathering up her bag and sweater, “that movie was about short-term memory loss, not long-term memory loss—she remembers who I am. Second of all, she’s not my girlfriend.”

“You’re wearing that red lipstick for her, though,” Myla points out.

“I—that is a style choice.” August maneuvers her sweater over her head so nobody can see what color her face is and talks through the wool. “Even if she wanted me to be her girlfriend, I can’t. We don’t even know who she is. Figuring that out is way more important.”

“So altruistic of you,” Wes says, unwrapping his bagel. “I—Oh goddammit, they got my order wrong. How absolutely dare they.”

“Criminal,” Myla says.

“I go there every single morning and order the exact same thing, and they still can’t get my order right. The disrespect. We live in a society.”

“Good luck with that,” August says, shouldering her bag. “I gotta go un-amnesia a ghost.”

“She’s not a ghost,” Niko says, but she’s already out the door.

Wes did give her an idea, though. She doesn’t know how to fix Jane, but rule one is start with what you know. She knows Jane was a New Yorker. So they start there: with her coffee and bagel order.

“I don’t remember,” she says when August asks. “That’s how it is with a lot of stuff. I remember I got here. I know there was stuff before it. But I don’t remember what it was or how I felt, until something sparks. Like when I saw that lady who reminded me of my neighbor with the pierogies.”

“It’s okay,” August says, and she hands over a coffee with one sugar and a plain bagel with cream cheese. “You lived in New York for at least a couple of years. There’s no way you don’t have a coffee and bagel order. We’ll do process of elimination.”

Jane takes one bite and wrinkles her nose. “I don’t think this is it.”

For the next four days, August brings her a different coffee and bagel. Black and an everything with lox. Cappuccino with cinnamon and a toasted parmesan with garlic herb. It’s not until day five (chocolate chip and peanut butter) that she opens the paper bag and sniffs and says, “Oh my God. Chocolate.”