by Jaime Reed
Of all the outlandish remarks to fly out of Stacey’s mouth, I hadn’t expected that. “A what?”
“Raaaaciiiist,” she repeated slowly. “Ellia said that she went to see you and your dad came out of nowhere and started yelling about how her kind wasn’t welcome or some mess like that.”
I kept perfectly still because I needed all my energy to think. I replayed the discussion in my head and couldn’t find anything offensive other than Dad’s lack of decorum. Then it hit me.
“My son’s in enough trouble dealing with the likes of you people,” he’d said. “So hop on your bike and don’t come back.”
Without the proper context or backstory, that statement could easily be misconstrued as something else. My Dad was a lot of things, but a bigot wasn’t one of them. “That’s not what he meant,” I told Stacey.
“You sure about that, Mr. Blond-Haired, Blue-Eyed, All-American Hero?
“Stacey, I—”
With a flippant wave of her hand, she said, “No need to explain it to me. It’s Ellia who needs assurance.”
I reached for my phone in my pocket. “I need to clear this up.”
“You need to do something ’cause this thing right here is not gonna work.” Her finger swung between us. “Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the perks, but our arrangement is getting on my nerves. This back and forth, passing messages between people too stubborn to hash it out for themselves—I do enough of that with my own parents. So this is the part where I bow out gracefully.”
My thumb paused over the keys in midtext. All of the humor and snark that was there a moment ago had vanished. Stacey was dead serious. “Where’s all this coming from? Is this because of the B-minus?”
“No, it’s been a long time coming, actually,” she said wistfully. “See, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking—”
“Whoa, careful now,” I interrupted. “Did you at least stretch first?”
“Shut up. Anyway, it didn’t really hit me until I went to see Ellia last week. I was wearing this sexy nurse uniform … ”
“This sounds like the beginning of a dirty joke—”
“Oh my god, shut up!” she snapped. “I was trying to pinpoint where her blank spot began. We were going through pictures and skipping down memory lane and she couldn’t remember the Decades Celebration. But she could remember the layout of the hallways, our Spanish One teacher, and crab soccer in gym class. Ellia’s memory loss stretches exactly two years—from October of freshman year all the way to her accident this past December.”
“Okay,” I said, eyeing the students getting up to leave and dumping their trash. There was a point to this somewhere, I just knew it. As weird as Stacey’s ramblings got, it always led to something. But man, did she love to drag scenes out for dramatic effect.
“Isn’t it funny how that time frame lines up perfectly with your dating history?” she asked. “It makes you wonder if her brain is trying to block you out completely. You said that you had nothing to do with her accident, but you avoid her like you have something to hide. And now your dad doesn’t want her around to cause trouble. Now what kind of trouble would that be, huh, Hemingway?”
I didn’t like her accusatory tone. The conversation had taken a dark turn and caused my knee to bounce under the table. “I didn’t hurt her.”
She gave me a cold stare. “You were there.”
“It doesn’t mean I’m responsible,” I argued, and even as I said the words I knew they were a lie. “If I’m guilty then why haven’t the police arrested me yet? Why did you agree to help me if I was so dangerous?”
“Because there’s more to the story than what you’re telling. You’re not exactly going out of your way to get her memory back. Unless you did something that you don’t want her to remember?”
Ah, so my hired spy was spying on me. Stacey was much smarter than she let on. And unlike the rest of the kids in school who just wanted to get the dirt on what happened, Stacey genuinely cared for Ellia. That may well be the reason why I haven’t strangled her yet.
“It’s just a coincidence,” I said through gritted teeth.
“Really? Why haven’t you gone to see her? Why haven’t you called her? Her phone works now, and I’m sure her cell is number one on your speed dial. Why am I stuck answering questions that only you can answer?”
“Or maybe you’re jealous,” I argued. “I’m competition for you, someone who knows her better than you do. I’m someone who she shares secrets with, deep secrets that she won’t share with you.”
“Yet I’m the one she can remember.”
Her words cut deep and I had to take a breath to reel in my composure.
Struggling to keep the anger out of my voice, I finally said, “I can’t see her, all right? I’m not allowed to go anywhere near her.”
Stacey reared back at my confession. “So you did have something to do with it—”
“No!” I slammed my fist on the table, the loud impact making those within earshot jump, including Stacey. I didn’t want to frighten her or have her see me as an unstable freak, but she needed to get a few points straight so as not to jump to the wrong conclusion.
I leaned close to her and spoke in a softer tone. “Her parents didn’t want us together from the start and the accident was a perfect way to keep me out of her life. Every time I visited her at the hospital I was turned away. I’ve tried calling and emailing, but her phone was locked and she never got my messages. I’ve done all I can, so don’t tell me that I’m not doing enough.”
Stacey sat stunned for a long moment, her eyes growing larger with each blink. “Why don’t you ever talk about the accident?”
“Because it’s not worth mentioning and we’re not exactly close,” I replied nastily.
“Maybe.” She shrugged. “But you need to find some type of closure for yourself. Whatever’s going on with you is eating you alive and you need to talk it out. If you can’t go to her place and she can’t go to yours then you have to meet up on neutral turf. You can’t use me because she’ll know it was a setup.” A sly smirk appeared at the corner of her mouth. “Hmm. I think I might know a place.”
She rubbed her hands together, giddy at her own brilliance. She only needed to stroke a creepy cat on her lap to finish the look of criminal mastermind.
Tired of the suspense, I asked, “Where? Just tell me.”
“Consider this a parting gift. It’s the last piece of info you’re getting from me. Anything else you’ll have to find out on your own,” she warned while relishing my desperation for every crumb of detail.
“Hold on to your knickers, Hemingway.” She leaned in and whispered in my ear. “The Great Ellia Dawson is going to therapy.”
As usual, I woke up with a pounding headache and an acute sense of Where am I? My sleep pattern was all over the place and I kept waking up before dawn for no apparent reason. This could’ve been some residual trauma from being shaken awake every hour by a cheerful nurse. In the hospital, everyone and their mother wanted to check on me and make sure I didn’t die in my sleep or something.
It always took a minute or two to get accustomed to the layout of my room and the strange decorations. I turned to the nightstand and groaned at the time on my alarm clock.
5:29 A.M.
I rolled over and threw the covers over my head. I applied the breathing exercises my therapist taught me and focused on a quiet, peaceful place. My mind drifted to the sound of crashing waves and seagulls in the sky and imagined the soft give of the sand under my feet. That thought seemed to give me the most comfort, but it also caused a slight pressure just behind my left eye.
I rolled over and peeked at the clock again from under the covers.
5:34 A.M.
“Are you kidding me?” I threw the covers off and crawled out of bed, giving into the fact that I wouldn’t go back to sleep until I looked out the window. It was like some sort of compulsion I couldn’t help. There was a kid who went to the same counseling session as me who had to wash her ha
nds seven times and click the light switch twice before leaving the bathroom. Maybe this morning routine was some latent OCD that was slowly breaking out.
And surprise, surprise, Liam stood across the street under the lamppost, doing stretches and looking up at my window. I was careful not to disrupt the curtains so he wouldn’t know I was there. As I watched him watching me, I dueled with two courses of action: call him and cuss him out or go outside and cuss him out. He made the decision for me by leaving for his run.
I turned around and nearly screamed at the figure standing by the closet. It was Vivian, the mannequin that I should’ve trashed weeks ago, but didn’t. It seemed like a waste of a perfectly planned heist, and leaving her on the curb might incriminate me somehow.
As of late, I’d been in the habit of dressing her up and talking to her. She was a pretty good listener, but now she seemed to be watching me and judging me with her blank stare.
I crawled back into bed. My day didn’t start for hours. That was one good thing about being homeschooled—I didn’t have to get up early. When I finally awoke at noon, I squashed all thoughts of Liam McPherson and focused on my academic future.
I signed up for the online course my counselor recommended and I was starting to get into the rhythm of my work routine. Every lesson came with a new assignment and daily quizzes that would be sent to my instructor at Serenity Health. I swear, I spent more time in that building than in my actual home. My tutoring periods ran three hours every Tuesday and Thursday, followed by an hour therapy session with Dr. Kavanagh each Friday. Juggling appointments with a neurologist, a psychologist, and a personal instructor—I needed to install an app on my phone just to keep track of them all.
As for schoolwork, all I had to do was roll over, open my laptop, log in to my student account, and watch the online course of the day. If I had a question, I would just rewind the tutorial video. No books, no pencils, just a keyboard and high-speed Internet service, and I would be caught up in no time. Hauling bulky textbooks around like a pack mule wasn’t something I missed about school. But I did miss the activity, the chatter between classes, outrunning the bell, and the mad dash to finish last-minute homework. Public school left plenty to be desired, but it gave you a reason to get up in the morning. It gave you someone to talk to.
On the up side, I could do all my assignments in bed without brushing my teeth or fretting about wearing the same outfit to school two days in a row. I could eat during the lessons, even though the menu selection in my house was grim, and I could work at my own pace. I wondered why my parents didn’t have me homeschooled before—it definitely had its benefits.
* * *
“What do you mean I’m failing?” I shrieked, slamming my hand on the table in outrage.
Denise, my instructor, consulted the printout of my weekly report and frowned. “Well, it says here you scored poorly on the reading comprehension and math section. Now we need to assess if you’re able to attain knowledge or if you have difficulty with test taking in general,” she said. “Relax, Ellia. We’ll figure this out.”
We were in the learning center on the fifth floor, which was basically a large gray room full of cubicles, computers, and tables. The area stayed packed in the afternoons, each round table occupied by the autistic, dyslexic, bipolar, and learning deficient patients with their assigned tutors.
Denise was a blond, twenty-something grad student who was working on her PhD in child psychology. All dimples and smiles, she had the bright-eyed optimism that none of the counselors here seemed to have. She didn’t treat me like a number, so I liked her.
Denise handed me a worksheet. “I’ll give you thirty minutes to complete the assignment and we can work from there. I’ll be back in a bit.” She stood up from her seat and left for her routine coffee refill and smoke break.
The entire facility was nonsmoking, so she had to get her fix in her car. I wasn’t sure if that sort of thing was prohibited by the staff, but whatever. She didn’t baby me or hover, and I appreciated the freedom to do my own thing. If I needed help, I’d just text her to come back.
As the minutes crawled by and my attention began to lag, I was tempted to do just that. Equation solving was not my thing and I could only register the letters and symbols on the paper. The hypnotic blur of text weighed my eyelids down. Top it off with my complete disinterest in word problems, and my brain was out to lunch.
I put my head down on the table and let out a heavy and very loud sigh.
“What’s wrong now?” A familiar voice came from my right.
I turned around and saw Cody sitting at one of the cubicles, his chair balancing on two legs as he leaned back. Placing his hands behind his head, he reclined with a sandaled foot draped over his right knee and his headphones hanging around his neck.
I pointed an accusing finger to my worksheet. “This! This is what’s wrong. It’s sorcery, I tell you, with tricky wording and numeric voodoo.”
“Uh-huh.” He stood up and came to my side. “Want me to help?”
“Sure.” I scooted toward the window to give him room.
He pulled out a chair next to me, searching the area for prying adults. “Algebra One.”
“Yeah. It might as well be Sanskrit or some other dead language,” I griped. “Why do we have to learn all this stuff anyway? How will this benefit me in the workplace?”
He scratched the stubble on his chin. “Well, rumor has it that a high school diploma comes in handy during job interviews, so … ”
“I mean the classes,” I clarified. “High school should be about real life. Teach us stuff like how to pay a bill, or how to write a resume, or how to fold laundry. You know, something useful.”
“I think that’s what college is for.” He snatched the pencil from my hand and began to jot digits on the page. “It’s pretty simple, but the way the instructors tell you isn’t always the best solution.”
His explanation went in one ear and out the other. I was more captivated by his enthusiasm than his math skills.
Cody’s recovery was fascinating to not just me but the entire staff here. His issue was with declarative memory, dealing with events and fact collecting. He was able to learn quickly, acquire new skills and do complex tasks, but would have no idea how he did it.
Last week, he showed me videos of him playing classical guitar. His fingers strummed in perfect harmony, yet he was clueless about whether he’d ever took a single lesson, or what the chords meant, or the name of the song. Doing the same thing over and over again made his actions habitual, an instinct that didn’t require deliberate thought. This was what he meant by repetition.
Cody relied heavily on his phone to keep track of info. He had several ringtones and beeps to remind him of when to take his medication or when to call his parents. He was even allowed to drive with the aid of an interactive GPS. He also had organizing software on his home computer that gave him hourly updates. Everything had to be preprogramed and scheduled ahead of time in order for him to function in daily life. Aside from the hourly recap, he was just a kid, fully aware of what was going on, but not knowing how things got that way. Then again, weren’t we all?
Which was why I asked, “What does it feel like to lose your memory?”
He paused to look at me. “I don’t know what you mean. What is it supposed to feel like?”
“Well, what’s the last thing you remember?”
He searched the ceiling for insight. “I remember the ocean water and the sound of the waves and the feeling of being dragged down and not being able to reach the surface and then … I’m sitting here doing math problems with … ” He looked at me.
“Ellia. We have the same tutoring times every Thursday. We’ve been in this room for about an hour. And we’ve been talking for about ten minutes,” I explained, knowing the drill already.
Cody frowned as he processed the new information. “Really? What are you here for?”
Another thing I’d learned was that his short-term memory didn’t z
ap out completely, but gradually dissolved within the hour, like a waning dream that you could only remember the tail end of. The problem for Cody was that he kept “waking up” about twenty times a day. The mind was a scary and fragile thing; I couldn’t imagine living my life from minute to minute the way he did. Cool in theory, but a complete mess in practice.
“Check your notes. Filed under: therapy session, patient, hot girl, Jason Bourne.”
We’d hung out for two weeks and I already knew how he organized the notes on his phone. Instead of repeating the story all over again, I’d just direct him to it and he could catch up on what was happening. He had about two pages’ worth of data on our interactions—the questions he’d asked before and little inside jokes.
As more details about me piled up on his phone, I’d assembled a mental fact sheet of my own. Cody was a Gemini, a music nerd, and an avid fan of flip-flops and vintage tees. The boy practically had gills, so a near-drowning experience wouldn’t keep him out of the water or from following his dream to become a marine biologist. He worshipped his older brother, who was a kickboxing champion who tried to get into Hollywood stunt work.
“Okay, so it says here that you have a boyfriend, but not really,” he reported while scrolling down the list on his phone.
I cut my eyes at him. “Seriously? That’s the first thing you ask me?”
“Hey, I’m an amnesiac, not dead,” he replied in his defense. His brown eyes twinkled with a humor that I found contagious. “So tell me, what is this guy like?”
My focus drifted to the window, not really seeing anything but the image of Liam in my head. One had to be blind, deaf, and dumb to find him unattractive, and I held the same admiration of him as one would for a Van Gogh painting. It’s beautiful, weird, and made a great conversation piece, but there was no way I’d take the real thing home. And since I didn’t know much else about Liam, appearance was all I had to offer for discussion.
“He’s tall, cute, smart, athletic … ” I paused at the sound of snoring next to me. I looked over to Cody, who pretended to nod off.
