Unremembered

by Jessica Brody

  I focus on the whiteboard, expanding my field of vision until I can see it all at once. Then I approach and examine each section individually, noticing where the boys started with the original formula and where they strayed off course. I grab the eraser from the shelf below and wipe out the second half of their markings, eliciting a series of gasps behind me.

  ‘You c-c-can’t . . .’ I hear one of them stammer. ‘She just erased two hours of work!’

  I ignore the protests, pluck the red marker from Cody’s hand, and continue where the proof leaves off. My hand moves fast. Almost faster than I can follow. I don’t remember anything I’m doing and yet the numbers and symbols that are appearing on the whiteboard in front of me are familiar. Familiar in a way I can’t explain. They don’t come from memory. They come from somewhere else. I know how to form them like I know how to walk. How to speak. How to count items in a shopping cart.

  I’m finished less than a minute later. I step back and examine my work. The entire white space is now filled. I circle the final result. ‘Proved,’ I say.

  Cody doesn’t reply. His mouth is hanging open at a funny angle. The other boys have similar expressions on their faces. I interpret them as surprise. I’m surprised as well. Not by the fact that I could do it. But by the fact that Cody inferred that it was near impossible. It definitely didn’t feel impossible.

  But I have other things on my mind to think about. Higher priority items on my list of impossibilities.

  I hand the marker back to Cody, who is still silent, staring at the whiteboard, his eyes running rapidly across my lines of scribbles, his lips moving as he silently reads what I wrote. If he’s checking it for errors, he won’t find any.

  That much I can be certain of.

  It actually feels nice to be certain of something for once.

  I make my way back to the bathroom. ‘I think we should leave early tomorrow,’ I tell him. ‘Five a.m.’

  Cody nods ever so slightly as I close the door behind me.

  12

  LINGUAL

  It’s still dark outside when we leave the house. I’ve taken the liberty of borrowing Scott’s baseball cap again to hide my face from view and I’m dressed in the same clothes I wore yesterday. Heather had planned for us to go shopping today. I guess it will have to wait until I get back.

  ‘I feel funny,’ I tell Cody as we walk down the road that leads into town, glancing back at the sleeping house.

  ‘It’s called guilt,’ he says. ‘And I just want you to know that if I get in trouble for this – which I most certainly will – I’m telling them you kidnapped me.’

  ‘Kidnap.’ I echo. ‘To abduct by force.’

  He makes that strange sound with his nose again. I think it’s called a snort. ‘So she’s a walking dictionary too.’

  ‘I didn’t force you.’

  ‘No, you’re right,’ he concedes. ‘You hustled me.’

  ‘Hustle,’ I say. ‘To be aggressive, especially in business matters.’

  ‘It also means to con someone out of money. Like at pool.’

  I frown. ‘But I didn’t take any money from you.’

  ‘Never mind,’ he replies quickly, hitching his backpack further up his shoulder. ‘Why don’t you just start by telling me how you proved Goldbach’s conjecture?’

  I shrug. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Well, I don’t believe you. I think you found it on the Web or something.’

  ‘The Web,’ I repeat with curiosity. ‘Like a spiderweb?’

  Cody gives me a strange look. ‘No, the World Wide Web. You know, the Internet. You seriously don’t even remember that?’

  ‘I don’t remember anything.’

  ‘But you can walk and talk and prove unsolvable conjectures.’

  I take a deep breath. ‘I guess so.’

  The road is silent. And very dark. There are no street lamps like the ones I noticed when we were in town yesterday. But I can see Cody’s face perfectly. His forehead is crumpled and his lips are twisted to the side.

  ‘So then how could you not know what the Internet is?’

  This is the very thing that frustrates me. ‘I don’t know. I can’t explain it. I know certain words but not others. There doesn’t seem to be a pattern. Or if there is, I haven’t found it yet.’

  Cody glances at me out of the corner of his eye. ‘That’s gotta suck.’ Then, upon noticing my puzzlement, he hastily adds, ‘I mean, that has to be hard.’ He motions towards my left wrist. ‘And I suppose you don’t remember why you chose to get such a weird tattoo?’

  I cover the thin black marking with my other hand, embarrassed by it. ‘No.’

  Cody pushes my hand away and leans down to get a closer look. Then his eyes light up. ‘Whoa, I wonder if it’s like a gang symbol or something.’

  ‘Huh?’

  He shakes his head. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘So what is it?’ I ask.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The Internet.’

  ‘Oh. Right. It’s . . .’ He pauses, wheeling his hand around in a circle. ‘Well, it’s where you find everything.’

  The definition intrigues me. ‘Can we go there?’

  He laughs. It sounds kinder than the one I heard last night in his bedroom. ‘No, you don’t go there. It’s on a computer. Or a phone. Or a mobile device.’ He reaches into his pocket and pulls out what I now recognize as a cellphone. It lights up at the press of a button and he begins tapping on it.

  ‘Look,’ he says, handing it to me. ‘This is the bus schedule. It’s posted on the Internet.’ He points to a line of text and my gaze follows his finger. ‘This is the bus we’re taking to LA. It leaves here in twenty minutes and gets into Los Angeles at 9:42 a.m.’

  He shows me how you can scroll through the rest of the page and I absorb the information eagerly. ‘What else can it tell you?’ I say when I reach the bottom.

  He shrugs. ‘Anything.’

  My mind is on fire. The thought of all that data – that information – accessible through a single device, is unbelievable. I want to search for more, but Cody takes the phone back and returns it to his pocket. ‘It’s faster if you have Wi-Fi.’

  We arrive at the bus station five minutes later and Cody leads me to the ticket counter. He speaks to a man sitting behind a clear pane of glass.

  ‘Two round-trip tickets to Los Angeles, please.’

  The man taps three times on a screen in front of him. ‘That’ll be $138.00.’

  Cody turns to me. ‘I’m guessing you forgot your bank account information too, huh?’

  ‘I . . .’ I fumble awkwardly.

  ‘Figures,’ he says, and then reaches into his pocket and produces a pile of green bills. ‘This is nearly two weeks of allowance. You owe me big time.’

  Mounted on the counter is the same kind of card-reading device that I saw at the supermarket yesterday. I point to it. ‘Why don’t you just use that?’ I ask, trying to be helpful.

  But once again, I’ve said the wrong thing. Cody groans as he hands the man two bills. ‘Because my parents won’t get me a credit card. No matter how many times I ask. But thanks for reminding me.’

  ‘Credit card,’ I repeat, dissecting the words. ‘Credit: commendation or honour given for some action. Card: a rectangular piece of stiff paper.’

  The man behind the glass gives me an odd look as he hands Cody our tickets. Cody flashes him a hurried smile. ‘She’s from –’ he grabs my arm and leads me away from the ticket counter as he mumbles – ‘somewhere else. You’re like a small child,’ he tells me sharply. ‘You really don’t know anything.’

  The comment stings the back of my throat. I have to swallow before speaking. ‘I suppose I did at one point.’

  Cody shakes his head. ‘A credit card is a plastic card that you use instead of cash. It keeps track of what you purchase and then, at the end of every month, you pay the total. I swear I feel like I’m in a bad sci-fi movie. Are you sure you’re not from outer space?’

&nbs
p; ‘I don’t think so.’

  He laughs. ‘Well, it would certainly explain a lot. Wouldn’t it?’

  ‘How so?’

  Cody rubs one of his bushy yellow eyebrows with his finger. ‘Never mind. Look, I’m going to use the bathroom. Wait here until I get back and don’t go anywhere, OK?’

  I nod. ‘OK.’

  He points to an orange plastic chair behind me. ‘Sit there.’

  I do.

  ‘Don’t move.’

  I watch him disappear behind a door marked MEN, and I peer around the room, counting the number of people (eleven) and the number of seats like the one I’m sitting in (forty-eight).

  A young brown-haired woman in a blue dress approaches and asks me if I know when the bus to San Francisco stops here.

  ‘Five forty-five,’ I tell her.

  She seems to be pleasantly surprised by my response. ‘Are you going there too?’

  ‘No. I’m going to Los Angeles. But I read the bus schedule.’

  ‘Do you live there?’ she asks.

  ‘Maybe,’ I say, and then upon seeing her confused expression and not wanting to attract any unnecessary attention to myself, I quickly add, ‘My family lives there.’

  It’s only the second time I’ve lied. The first was when I told Heather that the boy in the supermarket parking lot merely recognized me from the news. I’m starting to understand the purpose of lying. It’s a protection mechanism.

  ‘How nice,’ the woman says. ‘Are you from Portugal or Brazil?’

  I’m confused by the question, unsure of why she would assume these are the only two options. Do I look like I’m from Portugal? Or Brazil? And if so, why has no one else remarked on that before?

  ‘I don’t really understand,’ I begin. I want to ask her why she’s made this seemingly arbitrary assumption, hoping it might reveal some clue to my identity, but I’m not given the chance. I feel an urgent tug at my arm. Cody pulls me out of the seat and leads me to the other side of the station.

  ‘OK,’ he says, his voice serious. ‘First of all, don’t talk to random people in bus stations. It’s sketchy. Especially given your . . . well, celebrity status.’

  ‘She asked me about the bus to San Francisco.’

  ‘And secondly,’ he continues, ignoring me, ‘and probably more important, um, hello? You speak Portuguese?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘How could you not know? I heard you back there.’

  ‘Heard me what?’

  ‘Speaking Portuguese,’ he clarifies, sounding exasperated. ‘To that woman.’

  I glance over his shoulder at the young woman in the blue dress. She’s taken the seat I just vacated. I think back to our conversation, suddenly hearing it differently in my memory.

  ‘Você sabe quando o ônibus para São Francisco chega?’

  ‘Cinco e quarenta e cinco.’

  ‘I speak Portuguese?’ I repeat Cody’s question.

  ‘It would appear so.’

  I reflect on what this means. Where I might have learned it. Perhaps I lived there once. Or perhaps I really am from Portugal or Brazil, just as the woman speculated. Is that why no one has come for me? Because they live in another country?

  ‘When I was little I had a nanny from Portugal,’ Cody says. ‘She used to watch Portuguese soaps all the time.’

  ‘Do you think that might be where I’m from?’ I ask.

  Cody shrugs. ‘I guess it’s possible. But you don’t speak English with an accent so I don’t know.’

  I don’t know either. I index this incident away in my mental file, adding it to the slow-growing list of clues I’ve collected. The only problem is, so far the clues don’t exactly fit together in any coherent way.

  What does Portuguese have to do with the locket? Or with this tattoo on my wrist? Or with the boy who claims to know me?

  ‘I’m learning all sorts of interesting stuff about you,’ Cody says, that peculiar distortion suddenly back in his tone.

  ‘Me too.’

  A loud voice comes from a speaker above our heads, announcing the arrival of bus 312 to Los Angeles. ‘Well, that’s us,’ Cody says. ‘Should we go find that lost mind of yours?’

  I gaze out the window at the large silver-and-blue vehicle pulling noisily up to the kerb. There’s an illustration of a dog on the side. He’s running. To where? I don’t know.

  I wonder if he does.

  There’s a sign on the front of the bus that reads LOS ANGELES.

  It’s a start. I suppose I can’t ask for much more at this point.

  ‘Yes,’ I reply to Cody, taking a deep breath. ‘Let’s go.’

  13

  GRUDGES

  The bus isn’t smooth like the car we took from the hospital. It’s jerky and smells funny. And there are no buttons to make the windows go down. As soon as we sit, Cody takes his phone out of his pocket and I get excited because I think he’s going to show me more about the Internet. But instead he holds the phone close to his face and becomes incredibly absorbed in running his fingertip across the screen in rapid motion, causing images of small animals to move around.

  I face forward and allow my eyes to drift shut.

  But the second they close, he’s there. The boy. His mouth is curved in that easy smile. His eyes gaze at me with an undeniable longing.

  ‘So you do remember . . . At least some part of you does.’

  My eyes flutter back open. I stare at the seat in front of me. Blue cloth. A fold-up table. A pouch made of string. I try to distract myself by counting the threads in the fabric, but it doesn’t work.

  My mind still wanders. To him. His smooth, settling voice speaking such jagged, unsettling things.

  I wish proving or disproving his claims were as easy as solving Goldbach’s conjecture. A few lines of formulas on a whiteboard. A few calculations and it’s done. Circled. Disproved. Moving on.

  But it’s not.

  So here I am. On this bus. Travelling one hundred and seventy-five miles to try to refute something I’m unable to refute on my own.

  Maybe then it will go away – this feeling I get every time I see his face in my mind. It starts deep in my stomach and spreads quickly. Growing stronger by the second. And if I focus on his eyes, it becomes unbearable. It’s like a sickness. A prickle just under my skin. A clenching of muscles.

  And the worst part is, I don’t know what it is. I can’t label it. Is it simply because I’m a girl and he’s a boy? Some kind of biological, hormonal reaction to the opposite sex that I have no control over?

  But if that’s the case, then I should feel the same sensation when I’m around Cody. Who’s also a boy. However, when I turn and look at him, his face partially lit by the screen of his phone, the feeling vanishes. I stare longer, harder, waiting for it to return, but it doesn’t.

  He looks up at me with a displeased expression. ‘Can I help you?’

  I shake my head. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘What’s the matter? Spellbound by my irresistible good looks?’

  I’m once again perplexed by his cutting tone. ‘What is that?’

  He glances down at his screen. ‘A game.’

  ‘No, in your voice. Why do you talk like that?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘You say things you don’t mean.’

  He chuckles. ‘It’s called sarcasm. You don’t have that in your little mental dictionary either?’

  ‘I do,’ I admit.

  ‘Well, there you go.’ He turns his attention back to the phone.

  ‘You don’t like me.’

  He smiles but I can tell immediately it’s not the genuine kind. I’m starting to realize that there’s a difference. And it’s an important one.

  ‘That’s not true. I like you tremendously.’

  And there it is again.

  ‘Why are you bitter?’ I ask.

  ‘Bitter?’

  ‘Sarcasm: bitterness. Used to convey scorn or insult. Why are you bitter?’

 
He sighs and places the phone down in his lap. ‘I’m not bitter.’

  ‘Then why are you conveying scorn or insult?’

  He shifts in his seat. ‘OK, I’m not bitter at you, specifically. More at . . . I don’t know . . . girls like you.’

  I struggle with this. ‘Girls like me?’

  His face starts to turn that peculiar shade of red again. ‘You know –’ he glances out the window – ‘girls who look like you.’

  ‘What do I look like?’

  He groans and peers back at me. ‘Are you really going to make me say it?’

  I don’t reply.

  ‘Pretty!’ he finally says, the red deepening. He faces the window again. ‘OK? You’re very pretty. You should be a model. If you’re not already. There you go.’

  I process this. ‘And you don’t like that.’

  I can see his reflection in the glass. He’s shaking his head and closing his eyes. ‘No. I do. It’s just that pretty girls don’t normally talk to guys like me. Or if they do . . . Well, let’s just say they’re not very nice.’

  ‘So you’re bitter,’ I confirm. ‘At pretty girls.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he says, kicking the seat in front of him. ‘But I will admit that you’re not like the rest of them.’

  This statement makes me feel happy and sad at the same time. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well, for starters, none of the pretty girls I know can prove Goldbach’s conjecture. And . . . you know . . . you actually talk to me.’

  ‘So maybe then you shouldn’t be bitter at all pretty girls,’ I say.

  He laughs. ‘You’re starting to sound like my mother.’

  ‘Is that good?’

  ‘It’s –’ he struggles – ‘complicated.’

  I’m starting to wonder if there’s anything that isn’t.

  ‘What about you?’ he asks, finally facing me again. The scarlet tinge to his skin is gone.