Never Never

“She’s holding a sheet of paper. The sentence across the page reads, Never stop. Never forget. I drop the sheet of paper, wanting it out of my hands. ‘I don’t know what it means.’”

The phrase “Never Never” becomes a refrain in the novel. As the story explores the reality and importance of soul mates, the phrase comes to mean two different ideas: never forgetting the power of love and never taking it for granted.

“A gust of wind blows and the skirt and scarf move with it, but she remains unaffected. She doesn’t even blink. She’s lost in thought. I’m lost in her.”

Through mysterious amnesia loops, the novel allows Silas and Charlie to keep falling in love. Here, Silas experiences love at first sight, electrified by Charlie’s demeanor—this appreciation for the little things emerging as a strategy for keeping their love alive.

“I probably should have hit the asshole, but I don’t hate him enough to […]. He picks up a paperweight and hurls it across the room, luckily not in my direction. It smashes against a wooden shelf.”

As expected of a coming-of-age story, both Silas and Charlie cannot transition from childhood until they act independent of their judgmental parents. Here, Silas feels the first awakening of his rebellion against his insensitive father, whose aggressive lifestyle demands Silas be something he is not.

“My first reaction is that she is ugly. But it’s more a fact than a judgment […]. She’s waiting right behind their backs—she wants to hear. I felt something. When I saw her face I felt something.”

The school “misfit,” Cora, whose nickname is nicknamed “The Shrimp,” emerges amid the noise of the amnesia loops. She embodies what happens when love is denied, as her father neglects her in favor of simply sending child support. Charlie’s instinct foreshadows the revelation of both girls sharing a father—Brett.

“[Avril’s] voice drips with sex. I can see how things must have started up with her, but it makes me feel shallow. It makes me hate who I was.”

The Finley siblings, Avril and Brian, embody what happens when love is denied any emotional depth, when love is little more than physical satisfaction. Despite being soul mates, Silas and Charlie pursue empty relationships with Avril and Brian, respectively, after their breakup.

“I’m gonna make you fall in love with me again.”

Silas is determined to break the amnesia loops and rescue Charlie from her spiral, caused by her father’s arrest for fraud. The novel pushes the pair to never stop falling in love. This is a demanding challenge, but one with long-term benefits, as revealed by the Epilogue.

“Like, Sleeping Beauty needed someone brave to kiss her and wake her from the sleeping curse. Snow White needed true love’s kiss to bring her back to life. Ariel needed to get Eric to kiss her to break the spell the sea witch put on her.”

Charlie and Silas realize their amnesia loops are not the stuff of fairy tales; no kiss will break the cycle. What will break the cycle is commitment, born of communication, investigation, and reflection.

“I can dismiss her theories—from tarot readings to fairy tales—simply because it doesn’t make any sense to me. But she’s right. None of it makes sense. And the more we try to uncover the mystery, the more I feel like we’re wasting our damn time.”

After a tarot reading, Silas still struggles to understand his and Charlie’s circumstances—reinforced by Charlie’s blank outcome card. He wants answers, but the novel keeps its cards close, as mystery lends itself to the possibility of genuine love. The pair must work through their ordeal to find their answers.

“It’s 10:59 […]. She’s about to forget everything she’s learned in the past forty-eight hours. And I have no idea how to find her. How to warn her.”

As their current loop comes to a close, Silas and Charlie are helpless to stop it, knowing their love is about to be erased again. Determined, Silas will go on to frame himself as the knight to Charlie’s damsel in distress—raising the fairy tale-like stakes of their situation, despite his earlier skepticism.

“This is the anti-love note […]. You’re very, very unattractive. I flinch every time I see your unblemished skin and think—Oh my god, that kid would be so much more attractive with some pimples and crooked teeth. Yeah, you’re gross, Silas. Not in love. Not at all. Never Never.”

Charlie’s anti-love letter to Silas is dripping in irony; “Never Never” becomes “Always Always.” Through this indirection, Charlie reminds Silas that for all her protestations after her father’s imprisonment, all her attempts to distance herself from him, she has never not been in love with him.

“I stare at [the nurse]. Am I supposed to remember? If I ask her questions, she may think I’m crazy, and by the looks of the things, I may already be crazy. I don’t want to make things worse.”

When Charlie awakens in a locked room in her old home of Jamais Jamais (French for “Never Never”), she initially assumes she is in a mental hospital for her amnesia. Because she fears the amnesia loops are a collective hallucination, she takes the “nurse’s” medication. Only later does she realize she is being held captive by her father’s former lover, Janice, the mother of Cora.

“That wasn’t a dream. It happened. To me. I reach up to touch my face, smiling a little. He loved me. He was so full of life […]. Why hasn’t he come to find me? Can a person forget that kind of love?”

The novel treats dreams as revelations, with Charlie’s dream of a boy (Silas) indirectly revealing the purpose of the amnesia loops. She found love, her soul mate, but let him slip away. The dream leaves her yearning for Silas yet again, and will only become reality once she exercises vulnerability.

“How pathetic am I? I have no control over my own teeth. No control over my own memories. No control over when I eat, sleep, shower or pee. The only thing I feel I can control is my eventual escape from wherever it is I am.”

While in captivity, Charlie faces her own inaction and realizes what she needs to do in order to return to Silas. As much as she desires control, love requires one to relinquish control and seek help from time to time.

“I don’t know why, but I feel like we’ll both sleep better if you have your arms around me. Not touching you seems more awkward than touching you […]. This must have been why I felt an unwavering need to find her.”

Resting in a hotel after Charlie’s escape from captivity, Silas responds to his intuition that they belong together. Despite the sexual connotation of sharing a bed in a hotel, the moment is less about physical love and more about emotional connection. To Silas, simply being with Charlie feels right.

“‘Never never,’ he whispers. His warmth, his lips, his hands. He presses his mouth to mine and kisses me deeply and I….”

This quote’s drift into ellipses indicates that at 11:00 am, Charlie and Silas lose their memories yet again. However, this moment offers an intriguing development: This time, Silas and Charlie are determined to share the moment of forced amnesia, a step toward reclaiming their love.

“I’ll never love anyone like I love you. And if the worst is to ever happen and we do grow apart, I’ll never regret this tattoo […]. I’d be grateful for this chapter in our lives, and there won’t be an ounce of regret.”

Despite struggling to remember who they are and their love, Charlie and Silas’s increasing stash of letters (notes regarding their past relationship) helps them progress. In this quote, Charlie’s letter details their joint decision to get matching tattoos, which speaks to the permanence of their influence on each other—even if not romantic.

“Silas’s and Charlie’s lives don’t fit together anymore. It’s too hard now. It’s taking more effort than either of us is capable of. I don’t want him to hate me. I just don’t want him to love me anymore.”

As Charlie reads her journal, she sees her past self as someone else entirely. In this entry, she tries to explain why she broke up with Silas, her soul mate. In reality, what she is rejecting is the responsibility that comes with making love work. It is easier to end something than maintain it, especially when harboring a (justifiably) negative mindset.

“Goodbye, Brett.”

Charlie enters the state prison as a “Daddy’s Girl,” whose “framed” father can do no wrong. However, upon learning of her father’s infidelity and manipulations, she refuses to call him “father” and leaves on her own terms.

“I immediately get that longing in my chest, akin to how I felt last night at the hotel when she fell asleep in my arms. The feeling that I would do absolutely anything to be able to remember what it was like to love her. God. I want her back.”

One of the challenges of love stories is describing romantic love in technical terms. Silas understands this, that love cannot be described by words alone but small actions and feelings—such as the presence of Charlie in his arms.

“Charlie? What if when we broke up, we screwed with destiny?”

Silas pieces together the cause of his and Charlie’s amnesia. He suggests that if soul mates are dictated by cosmic forces no one understands, to deny such a relationship is to offend these forces. In other words, the universe itself wants them to reclaim their love.

“Fate is the magnetic pull of our souls toward the people, places, and things we belong with.”

This quote from Tiffanie DeBartolo’s How to Kill a Rock Star speaks to both Charlie and Silas, as they come to understand the gravity of their love. As Silas suspected, rediscovering their place next to each other proves important on a cosmic level.

“Silas says dance.”

While playing “Silas Says” on Bourbon Street, Silas and Charlie end up dancing. In the novel, dancing is akin to letting loose, to embracing the spontaneity of love as much as the steadfast.

“We might lose our memories again, but we’re still the same on the inside. Somewhere down deep. We want to do good. Be good. Deep down we love each other.”

Before yet another 11:00 am, Silas asserts that he and Charlie have rediscovered their love, thus breaking their curse or spell. This assertion proves true at the turn of the clock, as they have successfully learned their lessons—to remain true to themselves and each other.