Memento Nora (8 page)

14

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

Homeroom was quiet—except for the drone of Homeland Teen News in the background. HTN is this ’cast that all Homeland-owned high schools have to run in the mornings. Today’s lead story was about teamwork on and off the field. Nobody was watching. I tried to cram for a Spanish quiz but ended up just staring at the words while I listened for something. I don’t know what. Maybe a swarm of security guards crashing through the hallways. A black helicopter landing on the roof. All I heard were the usual whispers of my classmates and the rustle of paper. I let out a breath and tried to focus on the vocabulary words. Micah and Winter were just being their paranoid selves, I told myself.

Mr. Finchly got up from his desk, which was unusual, and started walking down the aisle toward me. He moved with deliberate speed, like a police car moves right before its lights start flashing. I imagined myself sitting in the office, police by the door, my father storming in. Then Mr. Finchly brushed past me. I heard him stop a few desks behind me.

“Mr. Jameson, is there something you’d like to share with the class?” Mr. Finchly’s crisp British accent echoed in the now silent room.

Rick Jameson replied, “Why yes, sir, there is.” He held up a familiar sheet of paper.

Mr. Finchly snatched up Rick’s copy of
Memento
and read it quickly. In my head, I could hear the helicopters hitting the roof and cops swarming the halls, but I couldn’t turn away. I had to see his reaction.

“Where did you get this?” Mr. Finchly asked.

I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but I thought I was going to hurl.

“They’re all over the place,” someone else—Catrina Jackson, I think—replied. Other kids agreed, saying they found it in the bathroom, hallway, café courtyard, locker rooms.

I forgot how to breathe for a minute.

The bell rang. Nobody moved.

Finally, Mr. Finchly turned on his heel, wadded up the paper, and tossed it in the trash can at the front of the room.

“Well,” he said, turning back to the class. “What are you waiting for? Get out of here.”

On my way to Spanish, I started to think it was all going to be all right. I even relaxed enough to get a B on the quiz.

After third period I met my girls outside the yearbook room. We started talking about Mercedes Rios breaking up with Trey Collins on
Behind the Gates
. I hadn’t told anyone yet we were moving. I couldn’t think that far ahead—even if it was only eighteen days. I hated the idea of leaving my girls, though I knew they’d be so behind the move. I’d be their ticket into compound life.

“Oh, she’d never marry him,” I said when Maia brought up Trey’s brother, Stone, as a possible replacement; but I didn’t finish the thought. We could hear lockers slamming and unfamiliar voices down the hall toward the gym.

The school cop and his squad of rent-a-cops were searching lockers. Actually, the real cop watched as the others did all the work.

“I bet it’s because of that
Memento
comic,” Abby said.

“Oh yeah, everyone’s got one.”

“Someone ran off copies in the library.”

“My cousin sent it to my mobile just before third period—and she goes to a private school across town.”

Wow. I had no idea it would spread this fast. Or at all. It had become self-replicating, like the viruses we were studying in biology. I started getting that queasy feeling again.

“Hey, isn’t that your skate-punk art history partner?” Maia asked, pointing to a security guard frisking a kid. Micah.

Micah, however, was grinning as they patted him down. I didn’t dare move, even if I could. He opened his bag for them as if he didn’t have a thing in the world to hide. They turned out books and papers and candy bars and even dirty socks, but no sketch pads. He winked at me as he stuffed all his belongings back into his messenger bag.

“Girl, he likes you,” Abby said, giving me a little shove.

I blushed, and Maia told me I’d better nip that in the bud.

I didn’t say anything. All I could see was that big, sandy-haired cop staring at me.

The rest of the school day dragged on forever.

That afternoon I waited in our usual spot in the library, but Micah didn’t show. The school cop did. He sauntered in about five minutes after I sat down. He poked his head into the librarian’s office. Ms. Curtis is kind of cute, so I thought maybe he was just hitting on her. She giggled, and I relaxed a bit. I opened one of the big art books from the perpetual stack on the table. No one seems to tidy up this place. The book was about kinetic sculpture. I turned the page, and a piece of paper fluttered out.
They’re watching us.
I stuffed the note back into the book and looked up to see the cop smiling at me as he headed out of the library.

“I see Mr. Wallenberg stood you up.” It was Ms. Curtis. She’d emerged from her office to watch the cop leave. “Oh, don’t worry about him.” I wasn’t sure if she meant the officer or Micah. She looked at me differently then. “You know, we have similar taste in men,” she said.

I was so not having this conversation with the school librarian. I grabbed my bag and stood up.

“We fall for the ones our friends—and family—don’t get,” she added with a sad smile.

“I’ve got to go.” I left the library.

But then I thought,
Maybe she has something there.
Micah was not who Dad or my friends would pick for me. Still. She was like thirty-five or something. It was not the same thing at all.

But Micah was right. Someone was watching us, although maybe not for the reasons he imagined.

15

Therapeutic Statement
42-03282028-12
Subject:
WALLENBERG, MICAH JONAS, 15
Facility:
HAMILTON DETENTION CENTER TFC-42

Dreams suck. Not all dreams do, obviously. But this one did. Big-time. Most mornings I don’t even remember them. I just roll out of bed and see what’s for breakfast. Okay, I feed the cat, do my chores, shower, and then see what’s cooking. By the time I’m shoveling oatmeal into my mouth, any trace of a dream is out of my head.

This time, though, it was like something important was there, something I couldn’t quite see, as if a wall were blocking it. I remember being in a crowd of people, all way taller than me. They were moving and shouting, not angry shouts but more like chanting. A guy—I think it was my dad—lifted me up and put me on a fence or wall so I could see over the crowd. He told me to stay put as the crowd started to surge forward, carrying him with it. All I could see were heads. Hundreds of them. Then there were sirens. And angry shouting. And shots. Smoke. People running. A man called my name. And then nothing. This big, fat wall of nothingness I couldn’t see around.

I sketched what I remembered, meaning to show Nora later. Somehow that thought made me feel pretty mellow. Glossy even.

Then Mrs. Brooks knocked on the door. I knew it was her because Mom was working the night shift. Again.

“Young man,” Mrs. Brooks said in that mock stern voice she puts on to get me to do stuff. “You’re going to be late for school if you don’t shake a leg. And you promised me some firewood for the ovens. We’re making a big batch today.”

I could already smell the bread baking across the square.

“I’m up,” I told her.

“Sure you are.” She chuckled. “I saved you some muffins for breakfast. Those Peterson kids eat enough for an army.”

Mrs. Brooks always has my back.

I rolled out of my cot, banging my cast on the dresser that doubles for my desk. Our shack is a definite improvement over living in our car, but I still miss a real, person-sized bed. I pulled on the cleanest-smelling T-shirt I could find out of the pile on the floor, fed Mr. Mao, and wrestled a shopping cart out to the woodpile.

Sometimes we used salvage wood, the stuff we’d ripped out of old houses that was too damaged to use again. Today we had proper logs for the bake ovens. A guy traded us a truckload for some bathroom fixtures and a half-dozen loaves of rosemary garlic sourdough. Mrs. Brooks has connections.

I wheeled the cart over to the pavilion and told Mrs. Brooks I’d get the rest after school.

“Sure you will,” she said, nodding. She handed me a warm paper bag filled with blueberry muffins and a to-go cup of coffee. The smell of the blueberries and the coffee (and that little dash of vanilla the old lady dabbed on her wrists every morning) was the smell of pure love.

“Marry me, Mrs. Brooks,” I said as I slung my bag over my shoulder.

“Get to school, child,” she said, this time not so stern. She pointed toward the gate.

I stopped on the King footbridge just outside the school gates to eat all three muffins and gulp down the coffee. The late bell rang as I was licking the crumbs out of the paper bag.

Morning classes were a real snooze as usual. I like my afternoon classes—art and shop; but the morning ones—English and algebra, especially—give me a headache. I know I’m not stupid, but sometimes I have trouble wrapping my brain around stuff that I can’t do with my hands. Or my mouth. I dozed off while Mr. Finchly droned on about the attack on Pearl Harbor in the 1940s.

At lunch I caught up with my usual crew. Spike. Richie. Little Steven. Velvet. Winter. And Little Steven’s brother, Big Steven. I know; his parents are creatively challenged. Velvet’s parents named her Anne Marie. No one knows Spike’s real name. We suspect it’s something very long, Greek, and unpronounceable.

We usually sit at the back table against the wall. It’s good for people watching and sketching. And the jocks don’t bother us there. Well, the jocks don’t pick on us too much since Little Steven grew a foot and half last summer and pierced his nose.

Anyway, Spike was ribbing me about the comic. “We know you drew it,” he said. “Dude, it has you all over it.”

Spike is into art, too. Clothes are his medium, he says. He likes spattering stuff on T-shirts and jeans and calling it street wear. Some of it is okay. Like today. He was wearing a
Memento
T-shirt—and, if I knew Spike, he was planning to make many more. Total badass.

“Don’t worry,” Velvet said, leaning over the table toward me. She was sporting one of Spike’s nonpolitical painted tees over a really short skirt and black tights. “We’d never give you up.”

Winter glared at her, and she backed off.

“But we’re curious,” she said, looking at Winter, “about this new chick you’ve been hanging out with.”

Winter was suddenly very interested in her burrito, but I caught her cutting me a sidelong glance as Velvet pressed for details. I couldn’t tell what Winter was thinking; but then again, I generally suck at mind reading.

“Oh, leave him alone,” Richie chimed in. “The man can dream.” He was watching someone as he said this. I glanced up. It was Nora. She was making her way to the salad bar. She looked very little-girl-lost today.

Richie started talking about a gig his band had next weekend. He plays bass in a retro band that mostly plays Bar Mitzvahs. No one in the band is old enough to be out past curfew let alone get into a bar. So they play the Mitzvah-Sweet Sixteen-Quinceañera circuit. This new gig was in the Cherry Falls compound, but Richie’s dad didn’t want to spring for the chip just so he could play there. Richie nudged me and said something about a new song he wanted to lay on the compound crowd. I nodded like I was listening, but I was watching Nora.

She was looking shaky as she sat down with her friends. One of them—Maia, the tennis player—glared at me. They’re all look-good-on-the-college-app types. Everything they do is prep for some golden future laid out before them. I watched Nora pick at her salad. She looked like she was going to puke or bolt any second.

Man, I wished I’d never messed with Nora’s head back at TFC. She was too good for that. Too good for me.