The Memory Book

by Lara Avery

  CURRENT SAMMIE

  • goes by “Sammie” because no one will adjust to addressing her as Sam—except for Davy, but with lisp it sounds like “Tham”

  • eats anything put in front of her, including fake fruit by accident at a church function

  • glasses are okay, just way too “gold” and “huge” and possibly disco

  • wears whatever free school-function T-shirts haven’t been visibly slobbered on by one of the smaller organisms in the house

  • laughs at SpongeBob and fart jokes even when stupid people make them (I can’t help it, it’s actually so funny)

  • closest female friend is Maddie, but I’m not sure if we’re really friends or just that she and I spend so much time in the government classroom that we are friends by proxy, and between you and me, her ego is way too off the charts

  • reads the New York Times at Lou’s when other people throw it out because Mom and Dad refuse to pay for it

  • gets high fives from debate team, so at least that’s a start

  WHAT MRS. TOWNSEND WAS PROBABLY LOOKING AT

  From the NPC Wikipedia page:

  Neurological signs and symptoms include cerebellar ataxia (unsteady walking with uncoordinated limb movements), dysarthria (slurred speech), dysphagia (difficulty in swallowing), tremor, epilepsy (both partial and generalized), vertical supranuclear palsy (upgaze palsy, downgaze palsy, saccadic palsy or paralysis), sleep inversion, gelastic cataplexy (sudden loss of muscle tone or drop attacks), dystonia (abnormal movements or postures caused by contraction of agonist and antagonist muscles across joints); most commonly begins with turning of one foot when walking (action dystonia) and may spread to become generalized, spasticity (velocity-dependent increase in muscle tone), hypotonia, ptosis (drooping of the upper eyelid), microcephaly (abnormally small head), psychosis, progressive dementia, progressive hearing loss, bipolar disorder, major and psychotic depression; can include hallucinations, delusions, mutism, or stupor.

  From Wikipedia, after I edited the NPC page:

  Your shit is fucked.

  (Was taken down shortly after and all my Wiki editing privileges were suspended, but it was worth it.)

  WHITE MALE PHILOSOPHERS WHO (BASED ON THEIR PORTRAITS) I/WE WOULD MAKE OUT WITH

  • Søren Kierkegaard: those lips

  • René Descartes: I’ve never said no to a man with long hair

  • Ludwig Wittgenstein: the coiffe, the straight nose, the sunken, knowing eyes

  • Socrates: that beard though

  SHAH DOLCE VITA

  When I told you that this wouldn’t be feelingsy, I lied. You probably knew that, Future Sam, but maybe you’ve been able to put a lid on them by the time you read this.

  I want Stuart Shah. I want Stuart Shah so bad.

  Stuart Shah (proper noun, person): Oh, screw it, I’ll just tell you everything.

  Picture this: It’s two years ago. As a critique of capitalism, you have taken to wearing a lot of vintage (fine, used) clothing, mostly your dad’s oversize T-shirts, cutoffs, and your mom’s gardening clogs that you took without permission. You are reading a lot of National Geographic articles about how the ice caps are melting and polar bears are being pushed from their usual habitats, and watching a lot of your mom’s old DVDs of The West Wing. On this particular day, Ms. Cigler (then your Advanced Sophomore English teacher) has asked you to complete the short-answer questions at the end of a Faulkner story, “A Rose for Emily,” about an old lady who sleeps with her dead husband’s corpse. Anyway.

  Suddenly, a figure passes by your desk. This person has that smell like they have just been outside, you know what I mean? It’s a combination of sweat and humid air and grass and dirt, and when you’ve been inside air-conditioning all day, you can tell from just one whiff they’ve been outside doing something.

  You look up and you see it is Stuart Shah.

  You have seen Stuart around before—he’s a senior while you’re a sophomore, one of those kids who’s always eating a sandwich while walking, on his way to the next thing. He’s tall and has an old-fashioned, guy-in-the-fifties haircut and dark, wet eyes like two river stones. It appears that he wears the same thing every day, just like you, except he wears a black T-shirt and black jeans and he looks amazing. He’s friends with everyone and no one in particular. He played Hamlet in the spring play.

  Now he’s bending down next to Ms. Cigler, telling her something in a low voice. The corners of his lips turn up in a smile while he’s talking. You watch his long fingers twitch from where they prop up his lean arms on the desk.

  Ms. Cigler gasps and claps a hand over her mouth. The class looks up from their work. Stuart straightens and folds his arms, eyes on his feet with a shy, half smile still on his face.

  “Can I tell them?” she asks, glancing up at him.

  Stuart shrugs, looking up at the class, and then at you, for some reason.

  “Stu just got a short story published. In an actual literary magazine. A high schooler. I mean… my god.”

  Stuart lets out a little laugh, eyeing Ms. Cigler.

  “Ploughshares is a publication I wish I could publish in, folks. Give this young man a round.”

  People clap halfheartedly, except for you. You don’t clap. Because you are staring at him, your hand holding a strand of your hair. You shift in your chair, leaning toward him. You catch your eyes running up from his lace-up shoes, to his jeans, across his waistband, to his brown neck, his smooth lips, across his eyebrows like black brushstrokes, down to his eyes, which meet yours again.

  You turn hot and look down at your to-do list.

  He leaves the classroom, and instead of listening to Ms. Cigler, you find yourself tracing a letter S.

  Later, you wonder aloud to Maddie about him at debate practice, and she notices your drifting eyes, your fingertips playing on indiscriminate surfaces, your little sighs.

  “Sammie McCoy is crushing,” Maddie says.

  “I’m just curious. You know, like professionally. I wonder what it’s like to be published.” That word, published. It comes off the lips like an adult drink, like sweet cherry liqueur. It means that Stuart’s way of seeing the world is so complete, so sharp, so fascinating that important people want to spread it around.

  You want your words to be like that. I mean, not in a fictional story, you could never do that, but in general. You want to be a debater (and then a lawyer) so you can look at the world from above, so you can cut it into neat, manageable pieces and fit problems and solutions together like a puzzle, making it fair for everyone. You want to tell people what is correct, what is real. Stuart is already doing that in his own way, and he’s only eighteen.

  Over the next year, wherever he goes in the halls of Hanover High, he glows. You make excuses to switch lunch periods so you can watch him pop rolls of sushi into his mouth with his fingers from Tupperware he brought from home, his other hand holding The New Yorker or other publications with important names like The Paris Review or small, worn novels of every conceivable color. You make note of their titles and read them, too, so you can know what scenes are passing through his head. Once or twice he catches you reading the same book he is, in the cafeteria or elsewhere, and gives a little nod of recognition, which sends your lunch swirling.

  But eventually he spends less and less time in the halls, and more in the backseats of Jeeps headed to the swimming hole or Dartmouth parties or trips to Montreal with his friends. As he should, you think, because he’s cool. You get to school early to study, and you stay late to do your homework. You are not at the parties where he is, or joining Hanover’s literary magazine where he’s the editor, or making friends with groups of girls who laugh loudly and wear revealing clothes, which might catch his attention.

  On his graduation day, you watch him from the bleachers, standing between his parents, wearing sunglasses, shaking hands with all the teachers, smiling bigger than ever, trying to keep his cap from falling off. Last you heard, another magazine, The T
hreepenny Review, had seen his work and picked up a second story. Ms. Cigler told your class that he had been writing short stories since he was your age, and he’s hoping to publish a collection, and then a novel, then who knows? He’s off to New York now, because his parents have an apartment there anyway. He won’t go to college. He’s just going to write, because he’s found what he wants to do and what he’s good at, and he’ll stop at nothing to keep doing it. The thought of him still sets a fire in you, and before he leaves for good, you catch one last sight of him, taking off his robe and draping it over his arm, then disappearing into the crowd.

  That is, until this morning. That’s right, Future Sam. It’s been two years, and I saw him this morning.

  I was feeding the stupid chickens with Harrison and Bette and Davy (because even when it’s one of their turns to do chores it automatically becomes my turn), and suddenly Puppy jets up from whatever he was doing in the backyard and runs around the house past us, down the front slope. I followed the dog for a bit and watched him head toward the main road. He started trotting alongside a person walking, which wasn’t unusual. Our twisted little two-lane highway is too tangled and nestled among the mountains to allow for cars to go very fast, and people bike and jog and walk along it all the time, sometimes from as far as twenty minutes away, in Hanover. But this person was wearing a black T-shirt and black jeans. This person had dark hair and brown shoes. I squinted but I couldn’t be sure.

  Then Puppy came back, and Davy and Harrison and Bette and I piled into the pickup and set off toward the elementary school, where I would drop them before I went into town. On the way, we passed the guy in black walking along the road. I slowed down and we all craned our necks backward. Stuart waved behind his sunglasses. All my siblings waved in reply. I just stared forward and tried not to scream.

  I have held the scream in my throat all day and am now having trouble keeping it in while Maddie goes over her opening. Okay, I’m swallowing it, but I keep seeing his face against the Upper Valley morning, his hand up in a wave, his mouth lifting in a smile, as if he recognized me.

  Stuart Shah is back.

  THE WAITING ROOM

  Two days, no sign of Stuart anywhere. I looked for him again on the drive to and from school, around the bend at Center Hill, up every winding driveway into the oaks, birches, maples, in every car we passed along the Connecticut River. I looked for him on the streets of Hanover coming out of Lou’s, or maybe sitting on a bench near the Dartmouth campus, reading a book. There aren’t too many guys of Indian heritage wearing black jeans in this town, but I managed to find two, and neither of them was him.

  Now my family’s at the doctor’s office, minus my dad, who’s at work. Specifically, we’re at the office of pediatrician Dr. Nancy M. Clarkington at 45 Lyme Road, and I’ve drunk five Dixie Cups of water from those little water machines. There’s a possibility I will leave here and clean out my locker, living the rest of my days as a homeschooled inpatient. Unless, that is, I get the doctor’s note required by Principal Rothchild. I don’t even want to think about the possibility of walking out of this office without Dr. Clarkington’s signature on that godforsaken note.

  Mom is next to me, reading a garbage magazine about garbage people. An enlarged photograph of a jungle scene covers the walls. Bette and Harrison and Davienne are all on their knees in front of the aquarium watching the fish, because they are still children, and they don’t know what it feels like to have their whole lives hang in the lotioned hands of a small-town pediatrician.

  Mom (proper noun, woman, 42): short, wispy-dark-haired person who birthed you. Looks like a Tolkien elf with laugh lines. If she is not at work, find her at home in mud boots in the yard, weeding vegetables, cursing at rabbits for getting into her garden, caulking cracks in the shed and/or house, or throwing a stick for Puppy. In winter, find her in the leather La-Z-Boy, wrapped up in a blanket.

  Harrison (noun, brother, 13): enormous boy-man with skinny limbs good for climbing trees, thick brown curls like mine, and a potbelly full of macaroni and cheese. Find him in the sixth grade, playing Minecraft, or sulking in the outdoors because he can’t play Minecraft.

  Bette (noun, sister, 9): a miniature version of Mom, but for all we know was deposited by aliens to examine our species. Find her at the tree line building weird structures out of sticks, in the back of her fourth-grade class making beeping noises, or doing Harrison’s math homework for caramels as payment.

  Davienne (noun, baby sister, 6): another Mom miniature, but with Harry’s and my sturdy build. Find her as the most popular girl in first grade, sticking jeweled stickers to everything, and still blissfully unaware that her siblings’ habit of yelling “Surprise!” whenever she enters a room is the result of an unfortunate case of eavesdropping on Mom and Dad when they found out they were pregnant again.

  We’re all here because Dr. Clarkington has to determine whether or not I’m healthy enough to go on an overnight trip to Nationals in Boston next month, and to finish out the school year.

  The answer is obviously yes, because, like, look at me. I mean you can’t look at me, Future Sam, but there’s nothing grossly wrong. Sure, I have to shake my hands and legs out sometimes because they fall asleep. And my eyeballs hurt. But I think that’s just from reading too much. Besides, no one needs hands and legs at a debate tournament. Just a memory and a voice.

  If Dr. Clarkington says I’m too sick, there are two major consequences:

  (1) If I don’t go to the debate tournament, I can’t win, and (2) if I can’t win, then my NYU essay (about working steadily toward winning) was a lie, and I go into NYU a liar. Not to mention the fact that my entire high school career would have been a waste. If not for spending hours in the government classroom after school and on weekends, I could have been a popular, sex-positive hottie by now. Plus, I was just born with that steely blood, man. I always want to win. The first time Harrison beat me at chess (this year) I banished myself to only playing checkers in self-punishment. Anyway, that’s not the end of it.

  If I don’t get to finish out the school year, my grades go down.

  If my grades go down, Hanover will reconsider my valedictory status.

  If they take away my valedictory status, my parents will realize I’m losing control of things… and they might not let me go to college in the fall.

  If I can’t go to college, I… actually haven’t even considered this possibility. I can’t imagine what I’ll do. Probably walk up the Appalachian Trail with nothing but a coat and some jerky, hoping to start a new life somewhere in Canada.

  It’s because there’s this part of me that wants to be extraordinary. Like I want to believe that if you work hard and you have good ideas, you can be who you want to be. Like Stuart, for example.

  Imagine the horror if I were to be banished from school, and I run into him somewhere, and by some miracle speak to him without going into psychedelic reverie.

  Sammie: Oh, hey, Stuart. What is that, Zadie Smith’s new novel?

  Stuart: Hello, Sammie. Wow, yeah. It’s amazing. And you! You’re stunning. You’ve really grown into your glasses.

  Sammie: Thank you. You don’t look so bad yourself.

  Stuart: What are you up to these days? You’re debating in one of the most prestigious competitions in the country, right?

  Sammie: No. No, I’m not.

  Stuart: Oh really? What a shame. What are you doing instead?

  Sammie: Oh, just, you know, diseasin’. Diseasin’ around.

  This cannot happen.

  I just proposed popping down to the Co-Op to buy a large bouquet of flowers to give to Dr. Clarkington, but Mom just looked at me like, Aren’t you supposed to be the smart one?

  I also feel really dumb because we’re all in our nice clothes since we have to go to Harrison’s confirmation after this. I told Mom that we look like we got dressed up to go to the doctor and that’s dumb.

  Mom sighed. “Just let me be out of my scrubs in public in peace.”


  “But it’s as if you’re wearing pajamas all day, that seems nice,” I said.

  And she was like, “Have you ever had an old man show you a mole on his lower back while you’re in line at the grocery store because he thinks you’re a nurse?”

  “Touché.”

  Mom’s not a nurse yet, by the way, Future Sam. She’s still working reception at the Dartmouth Medical Center.

  Still waiting.

  Text from Maddie: Where are you?

  Me: Be back in time for practice

  I vaguely remember this quote from one of my favorite theorists, Noam Chomsky—something about optimism as a strategy rather than just a feeling. If you don’t believe the future is going to be better, then you won’t take action to make it better. It sounds cheesy, but there’s another word for cheesy: It’s called sincerity.

  And besides, Maddie already used her birthday money to buy us both National Debate Tournament pantsuits in corresponding colors, navy for me, mauve for her, and they are bangin’. (I will pay her back when I’ve sold some of my Plato to any stoned-looking Dartmouth freshmen who I can convince that it’s necessary for Philosophy 101.)

  We also got a write-up in the school newspaper. The newspaper makes it official. What are they gonna do, issue a correction that Sammie McCoy will no longer be competing and instead will be replaced by Alex Conway?

  Yes, that is exactly what they’ll do.

  Oh god, I want to put my fist through a wall.

  East Coast Debate, the premier blog and newsboard for East Coast high school debate, called Maddie and me “the team to beat.” That’s Maddie and ME, not Maddie and Conway.

  Alex Conway didn’t even start doing policy until last year! Little bitch was doing Model UN as Denmark.

  I told you I’m competitive.

  Oh my god, the nurse just called my name. Bye.