On the new kid's first day after transferring to our school I caught him eating soap in the bathroom. Just like my parents told me, I made a big fuss about it. I thought the kid, Scotty, was going to end up in the hospital. But he was fine. But I was convinced that he would get sick, and I was determined to prove that I was right.

Armed with a dangerous curiosity, I followed the kid every chance I got. I noticed that he hung around a girl from another school -- Amanda, I learned her name from snooping in on their conversations. But otherwise Scotty was a loner.

It wasn't long before I learned that Scotty could puke acid.

I'd asked him about it one day, cornered him after school. At that age I thought it was a cool superpower. Is there a way I could get a superpower too? Do you have a superhero name? I'd asked him, and Scotty had recoiled like he'd been shocked. He looked around as if seeking help. Just then, Amanda had found the two of us, and without hesitation she had placed her hands over my eyes.

The last thing I head was: "Shhh, it's alright. Nothing happened."

...

It wasn't so easy to wipe my memory at first. By the next week my recollection of the incident had returned, along with a newfound realization that Amanda had superpowers too, and hers were even cooler than Scotty's. But when I found them again to ask about it, Amanda wiped my memory again.

After several times, I learned to keep my mouth shut. I'd realized by then that neither of them wanted me to know about it, or tell anyone else about it, so I pretended that I'd forgotten everything. I kept their secret, and delighted in keeping the secret.

But everything fell apart in high school.

At a house party night in senior high, I stumbled into a random room, and saw Scotty stuffing a bar of soap down his throat, foamy bubbles and flakes of the soap bar spilling down his chin. Next to him, one of my best buddies from the football team lay crumbled on the floor, the skin of his arm badly burnt by acid. By that age, I'd stopped believing in superheroes, and I've learnt a healthy fear for unnatural things like Scotty and Amanda. I've tried to stay as far away from them as possible, but Scotty had crossed a line that night, he'd hurt my best friend.

Amanda found all three of us in the room that night. And I guess it was then that they found out, that my memory wasn't wiped as clean as they'd like. So from that point onwards, they stuck to my side and watched me like hawks.

With my mind wiped to practically a clean slate by Amanda, I'd thought that the two of them were my best buddies. They went along with it too.

Various scenes, countless moments, flashed by in my mind in a whirlwind of colors and sound. Each memory brought with it some deep, unearthed emotion that tasted like bile and fear and disgust.

And every single incident, Amanda was there, reaching out to me and covering my eyes, whispering to me: "Shhh, it's alright. Nothing happened."

...

When I looked up, Amanda was standing in the tub. The ruined skin on her face was sealing itself back together, healing way too fast for a normal human. The empty socket of her eye was filling in, fibers wriggling like tiny worms as they wrapped around the eyeball that was forming in the ruined socket. She looked like a nightmare come to life, an ugly monster caught in the middle of weaving together a fine human disguise. But for some reason I couldn't look away. New, unblemished skin smoothed over the corroded flesh, turning the ghastly figure back into the woman I had married straight out of high school. But the strange thing is, the more her face grew back and turned to how it used to be, the less I recognized her.

Her eyes locked onto mine, and the rest of the world seem to fade away as I stared into her pupils, hypnotized. Her eyes seemed to swallow everything else in my field of view, until I could see nothing except for the pair of unnaturally green eyes.

Come. The sound of the word was a hiss in my empty mind. Without hesitation, I obeyed, walking over to her in a trance.

Amanda's hand reached out, still wet from the water streaming down from the showerhead. She covered my eyes.

"Shhh, it's alright. Nothing happened."

...

I woke up to the smell of sugar cookies and cinnamon. I quickly brushed my teeth and splashed some water on my face to wake up.

When I walked down the stairs, Amanda had already finished packing the baked goods into Tupperware containers. She looked up at me as I was coming down the stairs. "Hurry up, we have to be at your parent's place in half an hour."

"Hmm?" Was there an occasion that I was forgetting? Why were we going to my parent's house?

I must've looked pretty confused, because Amanda laughed and rolled her eyes. "Christmas brunch, remember?"

"Oh, yeah. Sorry, I must've been still half-asleep." I grinned sheepishly and walked over to give her a kiss on the side of her head. Damn, my memory has been getting worse and worse. I can't even deny it any more. I must be getting old.

Amanda smacked my hand away before I even got close to a blue frosted cookie. "No stealing!"

I laughed and gave her another kiss. "Merry Christmas babe."