Chapter 6

                                    

                                          
I can't focus. I can still feel the tips of his tanned fingers on my chin. Nothing else had mattered at that moment; not dad, not Madeline, not anything. It had been so long since someone looked at me like that. Even the thing I had come to ask disappeared: What did he do with the physical files?
I feel red bands tearing away at my temples. It's the cure of having perfect memory, every single thing you see is shoved into your mental space. Images of the files dazzle my hippocampus. I slump in my desk chair.
I wonder what it's going to be like if I do get a cure. I try not to think of it. I try not to think of my father. If he had really found a cure why won't he share it with me? I can not banish the thoughts but I push them to the corners of my skull and let them buzz there like angry bees. I'll deal with them later. I've got a new problem to stress about.
 I enter the last character into the address bar on my computer screen.
Three words. Twenty seven characters.
'The First Special Ones File' in thick arial letters appears on the otherwise blank page . Whoever this computer girl was, she certainly didn't have an eye for design. A single blinking box is in the center. I peer at the small slip of paper that I had been rubbing in between my fingers. Even Payne's handwriting was beautiful. I type in the code: a random assortment of characters and symbols. A new screen pops up, still in the unappealing black and white.
What is your name?
	Joie Andrews
What is your talent?
	Memory
What is this group called?
	The 27.
	Finally I am granted permission to see the same file photos as before, only this time I can click through them with ease at my discretion. I stay a while on each, scrutinizing each fold in the paper with vigor. Each page was the same. Six files complete and others almost barren with the occasional first name and age. But something was off. I start from the beginning again, my eyes aching from constant blue light. Sometime was definitely off.
	My record is the same. Same picture. Same ancient writing scribed on the yellow pages. Next Joshua Carter. Same familiarity. Same mysterious history. But the info wasn't the issue.I memorize the brush strokes of my dad's writing. Memorizing the hundreds of curves and edges and the way his pen bled on the once crisp paper is easy.
My mother had always badgered him about it. "It's the new age," she would tease. "The advancement age. Nobody uses paper anymore!". 
He had refused, citing he couldn't remember things as well if he didn't write it physically. I suspect that he didn't want to put in the effort.
	Then Payne's file. I get lost in the details before I finally see it. My dad's writing had a meticulous slow rhythm to it as if he thought deeply as he wrote. Payne's file begins with the same writing style that bleeds just slightly in the words around when talking about his name, age, and background of his brother's suicide. Until it didn't. As it diverged into his history of self-harm the words got stranger as well as the letters. His letters still had the same shape and connection but no bleed. I zoom. The surrounding paper was just slightly lighter than the surrounding yellow. 
What... Why? Was it a problem with the scanner? Did Payne-
	"What are you looking at?" croaks someone a few feet behind me.
 I slam the laptop lid shut with a bang. I should have recognized her presence sooner. The smell of cigarettes permeated through the room like a fog. I continue to focus on the yellow daze of the streetlights just outside my bedroom window. I don't afford her a glance. I take a deep breath.