I Remember You

by Cathleen Davitt Bell

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2015 by Cathleen Davitt Bell

  Jacket photograph copyright © 2015 by Alison Redner

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

  Visit us on the Web! randomhouseteens.com

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Bell, Cathleen Davitt.

  I remember you / Cathleen Davitt Bell. — First Edition.

  pages cm

  Summary: Juliet and Lucas are falling in love, but when Lucas “remembers” things about

  Juliet he could not possibly know, Juliet begins to wonder if something is wrong.

  ISBN 978-0-385-75455-2 (trade) — ISBN 978-0-385-75457-6 (ebook)

  [1. Love—Fiction. 2. Visions—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.B38891526Iar 2015

  [Fic]—dc23

  2014004789

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  TO MAX AND ELIZA

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  you, you’re not the first to ask

  and probably not the last

  and i don’t expect you to understand

  why i stayed upon this rock

  after the birds had gone

  and all of the waves turned to sand

  i am a lighthouse

  in a desert and i stand alone

  i dream of an ocean that was here a long time ago

  and i remember his cool waters and i still glow

  —Antje Duvekot, “Lighthouse”

  I am writing this down so that I will remember. And because a long time ago, Lucas told me to. Or dared me. He didn’t think I could remember. Feelings you have when you are sixteen, he said, feelings so strong they could break open your ribs from the inside, they wither as you get older. He said he didn’t know how long it would take, but it would happen. He said it would be better that way. Easier. Kinder.

  Numbness was what he offered me. And I tried to accept it. On some level, I did accept it. But Lucas, the memory of him, the memory of who I was when I was with him, it was always there. I said I would never forget. And I didn’t.

  Lucas: I remember you.

  It was the end of summer. August 1994. My mom and I pulled into the driveway in our beat-up Audi that smelled of her perfume, my mom at the wheel, me slouched down in the passenger seat, pressing SEEK on the radio with my big toe, singing along though I couldn’t carry a tune. I was just back from eight weeks at sleepaway camp, and I remember how I felt then: free.

  Lucas was mowing my neighbor’s lawn. I must have known who he was, because I remember thinking, There’s one of those guys from school. By “those guys” I meant jocks. I knew Lucas was on the hockey team. I knew he was a year ahead of me too. He’d be a senior when school started.

  I remember that Lucas had his shirt off, and I remember that getting out of the car with my duffel bag over my shoulder, I was trying not to look at him. I didn’t want to so obviously not look either. I liked to think of myself as someone who didn’t freak out every time a hockey player took off his shirt.

  But I guess I did look. I remember he was wearing dog tags and that they were tossed over his shoulder like a necktie moved out of harm’s way. I remember how light the lawn mower seemed in his hands, how deeply tan his skin had become over the summer, how he was scowling at a clump of grass growing right up against my neighbor’s fence. I knew that clump; it was impossible to get down on our side of the fence post as well.

  Lucas caught me watching him and looked down at the mower, then back at me. Then he let out this ten-gigawatt smile that had a lot of information in it, including 1) we both knew he wasn’t going to mow that clump of grass down, 2) he was someone who smiled at people he didn’t even technically know, and 3) people always returned his smiles. Which is exactly what I was doing then.

  Did he nod? Did I nod back? I don’t know.

  As soon as I got into the house and passed by a mirror, I thought, Oh, great. Greasy hair. Red bandanna. Was that dirt where I’d thought I was tan? At camp, there was a layer of sap and sand and generally nasty woodsiness everywhere. Even the showers were slimy and smelled of mold, and I remember wondering if the veritable force field of scum was obvious, if Lucas had seen.

  Now I think back to Lucas with the lawn mower—there was actually a whole crew of landscapers doing the bushes and the edging, laying mulch—and I wish I’d never gone inside. I wish I could freeze time, go back and take a picture, write it all down, the way I’m trying to do now. Had he shaved, or was the line of blond stubble he got at the end of the day already there? Had he bunched up the gray T-shirt he wasn’t wearing and tucked it into the back of his shorts? I remember that his chest and back were shining, but like I said, I was trying not to notice. They didn’t belong to me then. They would.

  I woke up on the first day of school to good first-day-of-school weather. A sky you could bounce a quarter off, my mom would say. A chill in the air to let you know Halloween was one calendar page away. Stepping out the front door to catch the bus, I was thinking, I approve.

  My fingers flew on my locker combination. I wasn’t gushing, “Oh, my God, how are you?” to everyone I knew or even half knew. That wasn’t my style. But I was glad to be back.

  Second-period physics, I was slipping into a seat in the front next to Robin Sipe, who I used to be friends with in middle school and still hung out with at the newspaper, and I turned to scan the room for my best friend, Rosemary. She’d been away at the end of summer and I didn’t know her schedule. I didn’t even know if we had the same lunch period.

  But Rose wasn’t sitting in any of the rows behind me. Instead, I found myself face to face with
Lucas.

  I saw him, felt my cheeks go hot, and turned back around. I thought that would be that. But during class, I kept hearing him drop his pen—he was spinning it across his fingertips like a top and every now and then it would go flying. When it hit the back of my chair, I reached down, picked it up where it had landed, and passed it back to him. Lucas mouthed, “Sorry.” I whispered, “That’s okay.” That was the first time we spoke.

  Back then, Lucas had curly hair that he cut so short it didn’t look curly, just unbrushed. Our school made all the boys wear button-down shirts. Lucas’s was wrinkled and open at the neck. I got a glimpse of a chain and remembered his dog tags.

  The year before, I’d written a newspaper article about how all war is wrong and the sign of a truly civilized nation a position of neutrality. A lot of my teachers liked that piece and for a week or two afterward would mention it during class or speak to me about it in the hallway. So I took it as fact: people like Lucas, who glorify the military by wearing dog tags even when they aren’t actually soldiers, are perpetuating a problem.

  But when I passed his pen back, he held my eyes the way he had when he was mowing the neighbor’s lawn, and in that moment, something happened. To me. I felt like Lucas saw me—he saw right through the surface that a hockey-playing jock in dog tags would normally stop at. He saw through debate and the newspaper, the exterior of my high school life. He saw past the fact that I’m pretty enough, I guess, and that kids respect me, and that I’m friends with Rosemary Field. This may sound stupid, but I believed Lucas saw the person I am inside.

  By that I mean the person I am when I cry at black-and-white movies with my mom, the person I am when I read the comics in the sun on the front porch after school. When I’m dressed in the UCLA sweats with BRUINS sewn on the legs my dad sends me from California. When I stay up late talking with Rosemary on the phone. When I laugh so hard I snort milk through my nose. The part of me that was there when I was three or ten or fourteen—the inner core that will stay the same forever.

  As Lucas’s fingers closed around the pen, I held on for just a second too long. I felt weirdly alive, like I’d just inhaled super-cold air.

  I let go of the pen and turned back around. Robin Sipe was writing “Homework = 20% of grade” in her notebook, and I dutifully copied her words. I even mimicked her good-girl bubble handwriting.

  But then I snuck a peek behind me. Lucas was staring. At me. Still.

  The next time I spoke to Lucas was at lunch a few days later. I’d come in late, so there was no line, and I hurried to the counter, only to find him ahead of me, holding a tray. Except for the lady serving the food, we were alone, but I didn’t say hi or “How do you like physics?” I was too cool for that then. I probably let my hair hang in front of my face so I wouldn’t look like I was hoping he’d notice me. Lucas was drumming his fingers on his tray like he was practicing a keyboard solo, and I assumed he’d do his music, he’d get his food, I’d get my food, and then we’d go our separate ways.

  But he turned to me, and the way he spoke, it was like he was picking up a conversation where it had left off. “What are you doing in regular science anyway?” he said. “I thought you were in all the smart-person classes.”

  How did he know what classes I was in?

  “I barely passed chemistry,” I admitted, too startled to give up anything but the truth. “My advisor thought I wasn’t going to be able to handle honors physics.”

  “Sheesh,” he said. “Why would you want to?”

  And because he didn’t sound like he was asking that question just to make me feel better—he sounded like he was genuinely contemplating it himself, and maybe for the first time—I laughed. A little too much. “For college,” I said. “You’ve heard of college, right?”

  “Yeah,” he said. He drummed on his tray some more, and then he looked me in the eyes so hard I thought he was angry. Had I made him mad? Had what I’d said come off as arrogant when I’d meant it to be funny? “I’ve heard of college.” He was still looking at me, as if he were daring me to let go of his gaze. I didn’t. I couldn’t, even if it was kind of scary.

  And then he was gone, whistling, and I was left to decide between hamburger and sloppy joe, not wanting either one.

  “What is with you?” Rosemary said that afternoon. We were driving to McDonald’s after her soccer and my debate. She was new enough to driving that she didn’t turn her head to look at me as she asked the question, her ponytail pushing straight into the back of the leather headrest.

  The car used to belong to her mom and still said MOMS LIMO on the vanity plate. We were pulled up at a red light, and a guy in a black car to our left rolled down his window to shout, “You’re pretty hot for a mom!”

  Rosemary didn’t even turn her head. “Moron,” she muttered.

  Something that’s important to know about Rosemary is that she’s gorgeous. She has olive skin and even features, and she moves in a way that’s strong and a bit catlike at the same time. Also: she looks older than she is. When she worked for her dad last summer redoing the filing system in his dental practice, no one could believe she wasn’t an adult.

  Life with Rosemary follows a predictable pattern. She’ll ask, “Do you think that guy who works in the jewelry store / who was talking to me while we waited for your mom to pick us up after the movie / who came to do the school assembly about not taking drugs—likes me?” Or: “Was trying to get my number?” Or: “Will call?” Or: “Is going to cry when I break up with him?” The answer is always yes. At school, where she does almost zero to be nice to guys, she always gets told where the party is going to be, so if we wanted to go, we could.

  But we almost never do. Instead, we study. I force Rosemary to watch Doctor Who, and she calls five minutes before Melrose Place comes on. We go shopping and try on business suits and ball gowns we will never buy. We talk on the phone about her love life and my lack of one. I watch Rose play tennis. She watches me debate. When we do go to parties, we mostly stand by as other people pretend to be drunk, which is fun. And then after, we talk and talk and talk. About the future. About where we’ll be going after high school is over.

  Rosemary had been in the middle of telling me about her new boyfriend, Jason, a surfboarding college student she met on her family vacation in Aruba. She had a picture of him—clean-cut with dark hair and shadows under his eyes that made me wonder if he was worried about something or a little depressed. He’d already written her two letters. He wanted to come see her on weekends. His parents had a second home on a lake, not too far from us.

  I guess I’d spaced out, though, and Rosemary had stopped midsentence. She’s so even-keeled she’s hard to offend, but it was understood between us that when she asked what was wrong with me, I had to tell her. Rosemary used to hang with the über-popular girls—the Torrances, the Melissa Clarks, and the Kathy Kleins—but she doesn’t anymore. She says their dishonest, compliment-fishing, boyfriend-swapping ways were a waste of her time on this planet. (Have I mentioned that I love the way Rosemary talks?) What makes us friends, she once told me, is a shared antistupidity policy. You say what’s on your mind. No secrets. No evasions.

  “Lucas Dunready,” I admitted. Saying his name was like diving into very cold water. “He’s in my physics class.”

  “Lucas Dunready?” If it had been anyone but Rosemary, the way she’d said his name would have made me clam up.

  Rosemary’s always talking about high school guys as if they were barely out of diapers, pointing out in the cafeteria when they make disgusting jokes, or talk with food in their mouths, or smell funky, or get stupid the minute she turns her gaze on them.

  “He keeps staring at me. He said hi to me in the lunch line. I don’t know.”

  “So you think he’s into you?” she said.

  “Maybe he’s just friendly?”

  “All I know about him is that he’s kind of … I don’t know—” Rosemary was trying to gauge whether she needed to be tactful.

&nbs
p; “Oh, just say it.”

  “Doesn’t he live up in the Valley?” Jefferson Valley is a hamlet attached to our town. Kids from there go to our school, but they’re not like the rest of us. They put pictures of their car engines in the yearbook. They have different hairstyles. If not for the Valley kids, the rate of college-bound graduates would be higher.

  “You think he’s a redneck.”

  Rosemary lifted her hands from the wheel in a gesture of “You said it, not me.”

  “He plays hockey.”

  “Do you like him?”

  That stopped me short. “No!” I said. Because the fact was, I definitely didn’t. I just wished I understood why he was acting so strange.

  I knew girls the world over are supposed to want nothing more than to have some hulking jock fall in love with them and give them his high school letter jacket or whatever, but that was not me. And not Rose.

  I’d always imagined that the kind of boyfriend I’d have would be someone I’d meet in college. Someone who didn’t shout out rude comments during assemblies, like all the guys in our school did. Someone who was good at the things I was good at. Someone who respected me. Someone who knew a lot about music, maybe. Or played guitar. Or wore corduroys and rode horses. Wait, not horses. Who drove a Volkswagen. Someone with really great hair.

  Definitely not a hockey player.

  Hockey players shove the little hockey-players-in-training into trash cans in the middle of hallways. They shave their heads before games so you can see the brutal red skin of their scalps. They have acne from sweating in their helmets.

  So I didn’t like Lucas. At all. But when I got to physics lab the next day, there Lucas was, looking toward the door, as if he were waiting for me to walk in. He broke into a smile when he saw me, and what I thought then was how nice his smile was. I wasn’t thinking about hockey, or the strange way my stomach had turned over when Rosemary asked if I liked him. I was wondering if I would hurt his feelings if I didn’t smile back.

  “Hey,” he said when I sat down. He leaned forward across his desk. He raised his eyebrows and jiggled that same plastic ballpoint pen. He was chewing gum.