Memento Nora (10 page)

Anyway, after living out of shelters or in their car, Micah and his mom ended up here on the recommendation of Mrs. Brooks. Micah’s mom and Mrs. Brooks had worked at the same retirement home a while back. Mrs. Brooks had been the chef there before some big company took over.

“I think Mrs. Brooks used to teach English before she lost her house,” Micah said as he licked the bowl. “She’s always quoting poetry at me.”

Micah’s mom is still a nurse at Sunny Oaks. And when she gets home, she takes care of everyone in the Village, at least until they have to go to the emergency room. She’s stitched up cuts, taped up sprains, nursed people through the flu, and even delivered a baby or two.

After we finished our stew, Micah showed me the gardens and playgrounds. The Village grows fresh vegetables and herbs, and barters or pools its money for meat and flour and sugar. Most of the residents have jobs—or they work for Mr. Shaw. They just need a safe place to live.

We sat on the top of the jungle gym Micah’d made out of scrap metal and wrought iron, and I could understand why he felt safe there. I felt safe there, too. Maybe it was just the bread warming my insides. Or the smell of lavender from the gardens. Or the murmur of friendly voices. Or the sight of children playing. I reached out and took his hand.

He looked pleasantly surprised.

“What about your dad?” I asked.

He hesitated and then said, “I don’t really remember my dad.” I could feel him wanting to wriggle free from my hand. “I know I should. I was like five or six when he left. Mom won’t talk about it, but she swears she didn’t pill me into forgetting.”

“Do you believe her?” I asked him. I asked myself,
Could she have secretly pilled him?
She’s a nurse. They might have the TFC pill where she works. She could have slipped it into his oatmeal. Maybe.
But then I thought,
no
.
If she could do that, she wouldn’t have bothered to take him to TFC at all. Besides, like the TFC doctor explained, the pill alone wasn’t enough to make you forget. You had to talk about the specific memory.

Micah shrugged. “But even if she didn’t, I don’t want to forget anything else.”

Micah slid down the jungle gym to the ground. He gave me his good hand to guide me. The cast on his bum arm was beginning to look pretty tattered. He’d covered up the
Memento
with a big snake, just like Mr. Yamada had on his arm.

“We should do the next issue on your story,” I said as I slid to the ground in front of him, my hand still in his. My momentum carried me right into him, face-to-face. My breath caught as I inhaled him; and before I realized what I was doing (or maybe I did), I leaned in ever so slightly and brushed his lips with mine. He tasted of bread and rosemary. We lingered there a moment—until we heard someone clear her throat.

“Young man—and young lady—you’d better get your butts back to school.” We turned to see Mrs. Brooks, her arms folded. She stood there until we started moving. But as we headed toward the gate, I swore I heard a low, warm chuckle behind us.

“What were you saying?” Micah asked as we wound our way back through the maze of junk to the outer gate.

I had to think for a second. “Your story,” I said. “We should do it next.”

“We can’t mention the Village,” he said, a little panicky. “We’re technically not squatting, but we can’t get Mr. Shaw in trouble with the city. He’s not really supposed to have so many people here.”

“No, I was thinking more about the not-remembering-your-father part,” I said. “It makes your story make sense—just like my mom’s memory made mine make sense.”

“You’re pretty smart for a prep,” he teased, his hand resting on my hip.

We were crossing the pedestrian bridge again. I stopped to read the plaque. The bridge was dedicated to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as a symbolic (and actual) bridge between neighborhoods. Micah put his arm loosely around me as I read. I think he was about to kiss my cheek when the school bell rang. I pulled away. I’m not sure why. It was like the real world was calling.

“Library. Usual time,” I said over my shoulder as I walked back toward school. I left him standing there.

I tried not to think about his arm around me. Or his lips against mine. Instead I thought about his story. I could see it in my head how I wanted to do it. I started writing it out in English class when I should’ve been taking notes on the history of the Globe Theater. We’d start where we left off, with Micah getting hit by the black van, spitting out the pill at TFC, and then telling me—or my character—later about his father. And vowing never to forget anything ever again.

He was late. I was sitting in his usual place—back to the art stacks, a pile of books in front of me—as I scribbled away. He didn’t say much as he slid into my usual seat. I didn’t look up. I just kept writing. Micah shifted in his seat, and I could feel his uneasiness next to me. He reached for his bag and started to leave.

“Where do you think you’re going?” I asked as I pushed the pad of paper in front of him.

A big smile spread across his lips, and he plunked himself back into the seat. I’d used stick figures to rough out the action. The art was crap, but it was his story. He started sketching immediately.

I noticed Ms. Curtis was watching us more closely than usual. I casually knocked a book off the ever-present stack of coffee-table-sized tomes on our table. Micah took the hint and covered up his sketch pad.

“How are we going to get the comic into the school this time?” I asked as I put a book about medieval churches back on top of the stack. “We’ll all get searched on the way in.” In addition to the usual scans, security had been ransacking kids’ bags this morning.

The students weren’t happy about the new searches. I’d heard kids complaining about it in all my classes.

Maia had told me that one kid made himself a
Memento
T-shirt. But the guards had been so busy with the bags that they hadn’t noticed what the guy was wearing.

Micah stared at the books in front of us. Then he picked up three of them and took them to the front desk. He checked them out from Ms. Curtis and came back to the table.

“She may not like what I’m going to do to them,” Micah whispered to me as he stuffed the books into his bag.

The next day after school we took a new issue of
Memento
and three hollowed-out art books to Winter’s garden.

Micah would say he lost them and pay for the books at the end of the school year. He’d cut an eight-and-a-half- by-eleven-inch cavity in the center of each book, leaving enough whole pages at the front and back to pass a casual flip-through. He’d carefully preserved the insides and said he might rebind them or use them in some sort of collage. He’d been meaning to try some mixed-media pieces, anyway, he said.

There was one book for each of us.

He handed Winter a book on kinetic sculptures. “Can I have the insides of this one?” she asked, rifling through the book.

I got the one on medieval churches of Europe. Micah’s was on graphic novels of the twentieth century.

Eager to get started, Micah scanned the original comic and then carefully inspected the stencil.

“Let him do that,” Winter said to me, putting down her book. “I want to show you the solar sails.”

This was a new one, her wanting to show
me
something. Did that mean she’d decided I was okay? I stopped for a split second. Or did she want to tell me to stay away from Micah? I followed her out to the garden.

The fourth sculpture had progressed from a pile of canvases and circuits to an odd rigging of colorful rectangular sails or curtains. Each color and shape, she said, would play a different note or tone when the sun hit it. Like a solar wind chime.

“It doesn’t seem as disturbing as the other ones,” I remarked. “It’s cool, but . . .”

Then she turned it on. The sounds were these glossy ring tones, slowed down or tweaked out to sound like whispers, haunting whispers of the outside world, those tinkles of annoyingly cheerful sound that remind you that someone can always call you, can always watch you somehow, can always find you.

“It’s perfect,” I said, looking at her. I noticed the dark circles under her eyes, one of which was twitching slightly, as if it were holding back some surge of energy. It took a brilliant, spidery mind to think of this, of everything in this garden.

The music, if you could call it that, began to take on a darker tone as a cloud passed over the sun.

“I’m sorry I brought up your mom the other day,” Winter said, staring at her creation.

“That’s okay,” I replied almost automatically. I hadn’t expected an apology. “She doesn’t remember your parents,” I added quietly.

“But—,” Winter started to say. Then she got it. “Oh.”

There wasn’t much else to say, and that
oh
hung like a note between us for a long moment.

“We should do your story for the next issue,” I said to break the silence.

She shook her head but kept staring at her solar sails. I didn’t press her. I figured she didn’t want to get her parents in any deeper trouble than they already were.

The music got even creepier in the silence between us.

“Enough of that.” Winter shuddered as she clicked off the sound. But she was smiling.

We stepped back into the gazebo just as Micah was printing off the first test page. Winter and I read it over his shoulder as he held it up. Again, I got that feeling. Like we had something good here. Winter was quiet, her smile gone.

“I didn’t know that about your dad,” she whispered. Then she muttered something about putting more drying agent in the ink and headed into the house.