You Can’t Come Back If Your Memories Are Missing

You Can’t Come Back If Your Memories Are Missing Written by Chloe N. Clark and Recommended by Juan Martinez. I’ve read and loved Chloe N. Clark’s stories for years. “Accidental Girls” is a gem—even the title feels direct and truthful, but still messes with you a little. (Nothing here is accidental, certainly not the girls.) The story opens as the narrator recognizes someone from her childhood in a bar, a classmate named Halley who vanished when she was 16. She confronts her, the woman denies and deflects, and what follows is a delightful variation on the doppelgänger trope: the woman in the bar (Halley? Not Halley?) claims that “there are only so many facial characteristics to go around.” The narrator—and readers—are briefly convinced: sure, life is weird. But not that weird, right? Right? Clark operates with precision: we have a self-aware narrator uncovering one mystery that, without giving anything away, opens windows into bigger, more disquieting mysteries at the edges of the story. “Accidental Girls” works through startling moments with enviable control. It takes so much patience as a writer, so much trust in the reader, to do what Clark does here—the timing is excellent, and the tone is exactly what you hoped for even if you didn’t know you were hoping for it in the first place. It’s not funny, it’s not tragic, but it’s also not detached or removed. We have a narrator confronting the strangeness of navigating loss, […] Introduction by Juan Martinez Share article Issue No 566

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