Memento Nora (3 page)

Therapeutic Statement
42-03282028-11
Subject:
JAMES, NORA EMILY, 15
Facility:
HAMILTON DETENTION CENTER TFC-42

The next day I was showing off my new bracelet to my girls at my locker when I saw the kid with the cast lurking around the windows. I hadn’t noticed it so much at the TFC, but he had that retro-skate-punk look down. It was so thirty-years-ago that it was almost cool again. Almost. My girls were all over me about the TFC experience and how many points I got for the first visit.

“I’m going to save my points, when I get some, for a shot at being an extra on
Behind the Gates
,” one of my girls said.

I was putting on lip gloss when I noticed that the ad playing on my locker door was for Profile Body Spray for men. I hadn’t picked it in my preferences, and I seriously doubted any of my girls had it in theirs.

“I hear you’re not a virgin anymore,” a guy said to me.

My girls went quiet as I turned to look at him. It was Tom Slayton, captain of the lacrosse team.

He tapped his temple and grinned. “Had my first experience last year.”

The girls giggled and said they’d see me in yearbook as they disappeared into the crowded halls.

I managed a smile.

“The team is having a party this weekend at my place. Want to come? Your friends are invited, too.”

Normally I’d have been thrilled. Sophomores never get invited to those parties. And Tom was tall and blond and overall easy on the eyes. But I could still see cast-boy sitting near the windows pretending not to watch me.

I nodded to Tom.

“Cool,” he said.

The first bell rang. I told Tom I’d see him in Spanish.

I lingered by my locker, debating whether to say something to cast-boy. Finally I wandered over as casually as I could.

“Hey,” I said. It came out a little squeakier than I intended.

“You remember me, huh?” he said, gathering up his olive-drab messenger bag with his good hand. “I’m honored.” He didn’t sound it.

I shrugged and checked the time on my mobile.

“You’re not going to say anything about the pill, are you?” he asked, staring me down. Suddenly he didn’t seem so sure of himself.

I shook my head. The second bell rang, and I started off in the direction of my biology class. Then, I’m not sure why, I turned back. “I didn’t take it, either.”

I’d never seen anyone’s jaw literally drop open before.

The tardy bell rang. “Shit.” I started to run toward bio.

I heard wheels drop to the linoleum behind me. Cast-boy rolled up beside me on his skateboard.

“We should talk. Meet me in the library after school,” he said before he pushed off down the hall. “I’m Micah, by the way, Micah Wallenberg,” he added over his shoulder, right before he almost crashed into Mr. Peters, my geometry teacher.

“Get off that board, young man,” Mr. Peters said.

I debated all day about going to see Micah after school. He didn’t exactly fit in with my group of friends. I wouldn’t say there are cliques at Homeland Inc. Senior High. (Technically, we’re Homeland High No. 17, one of the company’s many schools in the Virginia-Maryland-DC area.) Obviously it’s a free country and you can talk to whoever you want. But you are expected to hang out with the kids like you, the ones into the same things, going the same places. My crowd was into yearbook, student council, social clubs, and sports. We were going to Columbia and Stanford and Duke after we got out of here. Micah’s crowd was into skateboarding and piercing their eyebrows. And I had no idea where they were headed.

I thought about all that as we discussed what events to cover for this year’s book. As I looked at my girls—my funny, glossy-headed girls—bubbling away about the prom (which was only a month away), the fund-raising drives, and class trips, I realized I could never talk to them about what I was supposed to have forgotten.

After yearbook I called the parentals to let them know I’d be home late.

Micah sat with his back to the art stacks, his cast propped up on a pile of coffee-table books. I could just see his curly brown head bent over something, his good hand working furiously with a pencil. As soon as I got close to the table, his head popped up and he smiled a quick, happy-to-see-you-showed-up grin. Then he pulled out the chair for me with his good arm. And I could see what he’d been doing. Sketching. Me.

It was a stylized comic-book exaggeration of me: skinnier and with actual boobs. My brown hair hung down over one green eye. My designer jeans were a little tighter. And I was poised to defend myself from the attack of a band of giant ninja pills.

“Not bad,” I said. Actually, it was really good. “Did you do one of yourself?”

He flipped back a few pages. It was him, only more so. The curls were wilder and darker. The glasses were not as Harry Potterish. His goatee wasn’t as penciled in. But he wore the same dark green T-shirt with a big black star on the front, not-too-baggy black jeans, and clown-sized skateboard kicks. In the picture, colored pencils spilled out of the green messenger bag that hung from his side; they were drawing an even more exaggerated caricature of him on the sidewalk.

He showed me a few other sketches. One was of a Japanese girl with pink spiky hair tinkering with a windmill made out of mannequin parts in a garden of equally crazy-looking sculptures or machines.

“My friend Winter Nomura,” he said. “I met her in welding class.” She went to our school, but I’d never really paid attention to the faces in his crowd.

Then he showed me a series of drawings, like panels of a comic strip, of his character getting pummeled under the bleachers by apes in football jerseys. The numbers on the jerseys gave away who they were supposed to be.

“That was the first memory I was supposed to have erased,” he said. “At least that I remember.” He flipped to the next page. “This one was my own damn fault.”

The comic strip showed Micah skating through traffic downtown, a spray can in hand, and then getting hit by a big black van at the corner of Market and First.

He explained that the cop at the scene had convinced his mom that he’d be scarred for life if he didn’t “forget” about this incident. “He probably thought my accident was related to the big bombing up the street.”

“The bookstore one,” I said, putting it together. “That’s where I was. That’s what I was supposed to forget, too.”

Micah picked up his pencil. “Tell me about it.”

I did, and it just sort of flowed out of me, much easier than it had at the TFC. Micah sketched as he listened. I stopped when I got to the part about seeing him in the waiting room.

“You didn’t really spit out the pill because of me, did you?” he asked. He stopped sketching, and I noticed how brown his eyes were.

“No,” I said after a few seconds. “It was my mother’s memory.” That was too private to tell anyone, to even say out loud. “Let’s just say she’s earning her frequent-forgetting points. And somebody needed to remember that.”

Micah looked at me as if I’d said the most profound thing on Earth. “Yeah, they do,” he said finally. He gathered up his sketchbook and pencils, shoving them into his messenger bag with his good hand. Then he leaned over and kissed me on the cheek before grabbing the skateboard he’d stashed under his seat. I was too dumbstruck to say anything. He looked over his shoulder as he stood up.

“Same time Monday?” he asked.

I nodded.

I waited until he left to look around to see if anyone had noticed us. Micah wasn’t really date material, not in my crowd, but I couldn’t help feeling pretty glossy.

Maybe I needed a new word.

Therapeutic Statement
42-03282028-13
Subject:
NOMURA, WINTER, 14
Facility:
HAMILTON DETENTION CENTER TFC-42

The hummingbirds had been slumbering peacefully in my brain until that day. Velvet tagged along with me to get a book on Jean Tinguely’s work that I had reserved at the library. He created these amazing abstract metal machines that showed how ridiculous everything was.

“Why don’t you just download this shit?” Velvet whispered as we walked up to the front desk. I didn’t answer her. I had tried to explain before that I liked to touch the pictures. The real sculptures would’ve been even better. But the thing with my parents meant I’d never get an exit visa to go see Tinguely’s work in person. It was all in Switzerland and France.

Ms. Curtis smiled tightly at us as she handed me two books. I don’t think she knew what to make of my crowd. Velvet could construct a runway-worthy ensemble out of a trash bag and a shoelace—and look darn good in it. Our other friends dressed like the rock stars and
artistes
they thought they were. My only outward expression of inner nonconformity was my hair. It was pink that day.

“I thought you might like this one, too,” Ms. Curtis said, tapping the second book.

The top book was the one I’d ordered; the other was about Alexander Calder. He sculpted mobiles and painted airplanes.

I took the Calder book. It had a striking red mobile on the cover. Maybe I could make a sculpture driven by the sun, like solar chimes, and they could play something really annoying.

I looked up. Ms. Curtis had said something that evidently required an answer on my part. I nodded. She continued talking about her trip to the National Gallery over Christmas break with a guy who didn’t appreciate art. He
was
into music, though, she added, as if that made him acceptable in my eyes. Ms. Curtis, with her cute blonde bob, perfect complexion, and matching sweater set, might not
get
us; but maybe she wanted to
be
us—just a little.

Velvet nudged me. “That can only end badly,” she said as she nodded in the direction of the table by the art stacks.

My best friend, Micah, and a girl, both with their heads down, almost touching, were working away at something. They were totally absorbed in whatever they were doing—and each other. It was as if they were in their own private bubble.

And the girl was Nora James.

Velvet was so right—for so many reasons. This was going to be bad. In my head, the whirring noise, like the running in my dreams, like the beating of hummingbird wings, returned. With a vengeance. Shit. I mumbled a good-bye, grabbed my books, and exited the library, Velvet hot on my heels.

“I thought you guys were just friends,” she said.

“That isn’t it.” And she knew it. She knew I was obsessed with someone else.

Velvet put her arm around me. “Why don’t we try some retail therapy? Thrift shop variety, of course. Cheap but still therapeutic. Or we could dye our hair blue.”

Velvet smelled like lavender. And she did look like Jet. The hummingbirds settled down to a dull flutter.

I chose the blue option.