Title: The Forgetting Curve
Rating: PG
Spoilers: through 4.7
Warnings: really awful research
Pairings/Characters: Reid
Word Count: 1,100

Summary: Spencer Reid has an eidetic memory. That doesn't mean he remembers everything.

Notes: My first attempt at Criminal Minds fic. Any constructive criticism would be greatly appreciated, just be gentle. I'm still not sure where this one came from. Also, FF.N hates formatting. This looks much nicer on my LJ. (http :/ niniblack . livejournal . com)

"And even if you found yourself in some prison, whose walls let in none of the world's sounds—wouldn't you still have your childhood, that jewel beyond all price, that treasure house of memories?"–Rainer Maria Rilke

Reid can close his eyes and see books. He doesn't have to close his eyes to see them, actually, but if he's searching for that one word on the page, that one image, then it sometimes helps to block out whatever is around him and focus. Staring off into space works just as well, though, and probably makes him look a bit crazier. His eyes move back and forth, reading words that are written in the air. If he concentrates for a minute, he can still remember what his high school math textbook looked like. Page 314. Trajectories. y=y_0 + v_y t - ½ g t^2 where g is the acceleration due to gravity and t is time. Figure 12-5 in bold, blue letters and a picture of a boy throwing a baseball next to the graph. Even though the equation didn't account for the wind speed or force that one would have to take into account if they were calculating the actual trajectory at which the boy had thrown the ball. While Reid remembered the page of the book perfectly, he only vaguely recalled mentioning that problem to his teacher. He'd been eleven.

Most people assume that Reid remembers everything. If he can remember tiny details about a page of a book that doesn't even matter anymore, then surely he can remember all the things that do matter.

He doesn't.

Childhood amnesia is normal. It's exponential. The more time that passes the less strength a memory holds and the more difficult it is to recall. Most people don't remember anything before the age of three and a half.

It only took Reid until he was fifteen to realize that the large, missing pieces of his childhood were abnormal. Most people remember being five years old. It's past the age where children's language begins to closely resemble adult language, past the age where they start understanding more about how to define the world around them, how to understand it, and thus, how to remember it. It's easier to remember things you can understand.

Reid asks JJ once if she remembers her first day of kindergarten. He keeps his expression merely curious in the face of the odd look she gives him, and she finally tells him yes. She remembers most of kindergarten, actually.

Reid shrugs when she asks why he wants to know. "Just curious."

Reid remembers these things about kindergarten:

1. He's walking across a parking lot with other children. He's at the back of the line, trailing behind a bit. It's sunny and cold outside and his coat is bright blue, puffy. Across the street there is a gas station with windows full of bright, neon signs advertising beer.

2. He's curled up against one of the thick, plastic windows of a play-place tunnel. Outside, the world is distorted, wavy, out of focus in a way that's similar, but different to how things look when he takes his glasses off. Inside the tunnel, it's hot and humid and smelly. There's sweat making his scalp itch and the bottoms of his socks are dirty.

His mother is outside, calling his name. She's pacing back and forth in front of play-place exit, arms crossed over her chest. He's so high up he can see her and all the other parents and children outside, but there's no way she'd be able to tell it's him through the thick plastic window. She looks straight at him and he freezes for a moment before her eyes move on, searching across the play-place.

He wants to make her worry. He wants her to wonder where he is and what he's doing and if he's okay or not. He leans his forehead against the dirty plastic as he watches her talk to other people.

3. He's in a classroom, crouched behind the tables with a girl in a striped dress. Her hair is straight and black and swishes around her shoulders when she turns to grin at him. She's saying something but he can't hear what it is. He can just see her lips moving, see himself gesturing back. She stands quickly and grabs his hand, pulling him to his feet.

They're episodic memories. Reid doesn't remember the context for them. He doesn't know why he was walking through that parking lot or how he got out of the play-place or who the little girl was. This is how he knows they're real memories. He remembers other things, but his first day of kindergarten is more a memory of what he was told and pictures he's been shown than his own recollection. He doesn't really remember the Star Trek lunchbox his dad had bought him. He just knows it existed.

A girl he met in college was fascinated at his memory blanks. She was sure they meant something more. That there was something lurking in those empty places and that he should try to figure it out.

Her name was Ashley. She was nineteen and the engineering computer lab monitor at night and one of the few girls who didn't look at him like he was five and needed to be given a snack. He thought that might have been because he helped her with her Discrete Functions homework in exchange for soda from the vending machine.

"You don't remember first grade?" she'd asked.

"I skipped first grade," Reid had said.

Ashley had twirled her pencil between her fingers. "I mean when you were six. You don't remember anything that happened?"

Reid had just shrugged at her.

Unlike the handful of episodic memories from when he was five, age six is just a blank. He knows what should be there—skipping two grades, a growing understanding of his mother's illness, the last year his father was actually around—but none if it's there. He knows that they took a vacation to the Grand Canyon because he's seen pictures of it, but he doesn't remember his mom holding his hand and walking off the path with him, so they could get closer to the edge. Close enough to peer over and look down and be just inches from tipping forward, falling. He only knows this happened because she'd mentioned it, years later and with a dismissive wave of her hand, as something his father just didn't understand.

The adrenaline, she'd said, of nothing between you and death but a few inches. William'd always worried too much.

He wonders, now, if those two years aren't just hiding somewhere deep in his mind, like Riley Jenkins was. There's so much information in his brain it seems like it'd be easy to bury something. Underneath all of the facts, the equations and the pictures and the books and the poetry, there's his life. Everything that has ever happened to him.

He just can't get to it all.