The Hidden Memory of Objects

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The Hidden Memory of Objects Page 8

by Danielle Mages Amato


  The pain—the visions. I’d experienced them again. And that tiny piece of cloth was the source.

  I stepped back, shaking hard, and grabbed hold of Eric’s arm. I pointed to the fabric in Dr. Brightman’s hand. “What is that?”

  I expected him to brush me off, to dismiss me as rudely as he had before. But Dr. Brightman’s entire demeanor had changed. He paused a moment, considering; then a slow smile spread across his face. “This,” he said, holding up the scrap of fabric, “is a piece of the dress that Clara Harris was wearing on the night Lincoln was assassinated.” He returned it to the display case before tugging his glove back on. “Remnants of the dress are rare, and there have been some questions about the provenance of this piece, but now that I’ve examined it, I’ll encourage my client to move forward with a purchase.”

  “Who’s Clara Harris?” Eric asked.

  Dr. Brightman stopped and looked at Eric for the first time. “Apparently a high school education is not what it used to be,” he said. “Clara Harris was the daughter of Senator Ira Harris.” We stared at him blankly. “She and her fiancé were here with the Lincolns on the night of the assassination.”

  “Of course,” I said. I knew there had been another couple with them, but I hadn’t remembered their names.

  “The dress she was wearing became a blood artifact,” he continued, “stained by the violent events of that night. Of course, most of it was probably Henry Rathbone’s blood—her fiancé. After Booth shot Lincoln, he stabbed Henry seven times before leaping from there”—he pointed out the presidential box, where Lincoln had been sitting that night, watching a play unfold on this very stage—“to here. Actually, he landed just about where we’re standing now.”

  “Ouch.” Eric winced.

  I eyed the square of fabric in the exhibit case. It looked like a ratty, yellowed scrap of paper, like one of the fingerprint-darkened fragments that littered my drafting table after I finished a collage. Not like my idea of an important historical artifact.

  “Did you call it a blood artifact?” Eric asked. “Is that a thing?”

  “Oh, yes,” Dr. Brightman said. “When Lincoln was shot, people combed this whole theater for relics, and if they could, they dipped what they found into his blood.”

  Eric’s face was half horror, half fascination. “Why?”

  “Powerful things, blood artifacts.” Dr. Brightman said. “For instance, take Clara Harris’s dress. She never washed it. Hung it in a closet, out of sight. But whenever people stayed in that house, they claimed to see visions of the president, rocking back in his chair and laughing, just as he was doing the moment he was shot.” Dr. Brightman rested a hand on the glass case and fixed me with a look. I couldn’t see his eyes behind the sunglasses, but I remembered their piercing black stare. “As though the dress itself held the memory of that awful night.”

  I was barely breathing. Every object has a voice, I thought. Every object tells a story. The things I’d found in Tyler’s room—the ticket stubs, the lanyard I had made him—they held so many strong memories for me. Memories I could almost see and hear and touch. “Do you think that’s possible?” I asked.

  Dr. Brightman shrugged. “Clara’s family certainly thought so. They bricked up the closet with the dress still in it. Finally, Clara’s son tore down the wall and burned the dress in a final desperate attempt to make the visions stop.”

  Eric and I stared at him, spellbound.

  “Is that true?” Eric choked out.

  “I specialize in true,” Dr. Brightman said. He took out his wallet and handed me a business card. “I’ve changed my mind. Call me at this number, and my assistant will find a time for us to meet. Bring your Lincoln box.” He smiled that same slow smile. “I think we may be able to help each other.”

  He examined me for a moment longer and then walked off down the row of display cases.

  My knees started to shake, and I felt a sudden, desperate need for air. I rushed down from the stage, with Eric at my heels. He followed me out into the lobby, where I slumped down onto a bench, dropping my face into my hands.

  “You saw something!” he said. “When you touched that cloth. What did you see?”

  I described the woman in the white dress, the man laughing. The blood.

  “Megan, from where I was standing, it looked like—did Dr. Brightman see it too?”

  “Yes.” I nodded. “I’m sure he did.”

  Eric dropped onto the bench beside me. “Crapdogs,” he said. “What are you going to do?”

  I let out a long breath. “I think it may be time to break out that binder you’ve been carrying around.”

  CHAPTER 7

  AS WE WALKED DOWN TENTH STREET TOWARD THE car, Eric called the number on the card to make an appointment with Dr. Brightman, while I tried to wrestle my body back under control. My thoughts churned; my muscles ached. Everything around me looked brighter and crisper than it had an hour ago, as though I’d tweaked the focus settings in my brain. I squinted and stuck close to Eric.

  “You’re all set for Monday afternoon,” Eric said, putting his phone away.

  I took a deep breath. “A weird thing happened back there.”

  “Only one?”

  I rolled my eyes. “I mean, a weird thing happened when Dr. Brightman and I touched that fabric. For a second, all I got from it was pain, like when I touched the Lincoln box. But then everything went super clear. Clearer than anything else I’ve seen so far.”

  “Why is that?”

  I rubbed at the nagging ache that gnawed behind my eyes, wishing I’d brought my painkillers. “I think it was because of him. Dr. Brightman. What if he was right? What if there was a memory attached to that piece of cloth, but I couldn’t see it until he touched it too?”

  I looked over at Eric, watching him take the mental leap I’d already made.

  “The Lincoln box,” he breathed.

  “Maybe there’s a memory attached to it too. But for some reason, I can’t see it by myself.”

  Eric maneuvered me around a tour group that was blocking the entire sidewalk in front of the International Spy Museum. “I think the time has finally come to pursue another line of inquiry.”

  I sighed. “Superheroes?”

  “Superheroes,” he confirmed. “Granted, most of the information I have to offer comes from comic books, but here’s the gist—”

  “But you never even liked comic books.”

  “Lucky for you, I live for a good research project. So.” He shook his shoulders loose before embarking on the next bit. “The story of how a superhero becomes a superhero, that’s called their origin story.” He looked at me intently. “What’s yours?”

  “What?”

  “How did this happen? Were you bombarded by cosmic rays? Bitten by a spider? Hit by lightning?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t think so.”

  “I hope you would have noticed.”

  I thought for a moment. “I got sad.” I forced the words past the lump in my throat. “Really, really sad.”

  “Huh.” Eric nodded, and I got the sense that he was choosing his next words very carefully. “Well. That seems significant. But maybe not sufficient.”

  I wiped away a tear with the back of my hand.

  “Let’s put that question aside for a moment,” he said. “Once a superhero has their powers, they basically have to do two things: figure out the extents and limits of those powers, and find someone to help them, to guide them on their path. Like a mentor. Okay, so some of them don’t have mentors, but then they end up living in a trailer park for years, or hanging out in the woods in Canada until they figure it all out, and I wouldn’t recommend you do either of those things.”

  “Crossing them off my list.”

  “In the X-Men comics, they have a whole school with a special room where they put the new superheroes to learn what they can do.” His eyes lit up. “Hey, maybe we should experiment? Get some things that belonged to your brother. Everyday things, or things he had
with him when he . . .” Eric went quiet.

  “I’ve touched all those things,” I said. “Nothing happened. And I’ve been through his room. And his locker.”

  “So where else did he spend time?”

  My head snapped up, and I met Eric’s eyes. “What about here in DC?” I thought of all the places that I knew Tyler had gone: the party Detective Johnson thought he went to, the McDonald’s where the cops said he might have bought drugs. The abandoned building in northeast DC where his body had been found. “I know some places we could try.”

  “Well, let’s get going!” Eric rubbed his hands together gleefully. Then he looked over at me, and his face changed. “Um, Megan . . .” He pointed at me. “Your nose is . . . You’re bleeding.”

  I jerked a hand up, and it came away bloody. “It’s nothing.” I wiped at it, but the blood kept coming. “No big deal.”

  “Wait here.” Eric ducked into a burger joint on the corner and grabbed a big wad of napkins, more than I could possibly use. He handed them to me. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  Back in the car, I mapped out the first address I wanted to visit. With the phone’s robo voice guiding us on our way, I sat back and watched the city blur by. Our route took us past stretches of beautifully restored buildings, then rows of run-down storefronts, then gleaming new office buildings plopped down awkwardly in the landscape of the city.

  Three Things from a DC afternoon: the screaming yellow-and-red sign of Yum’s Chinese. The slow surrender of white paint peeling off brick. A tiny, bright-purple house with a sign that read Faith and Hope Tabernacle Church.

  We stopped at a red light along New York Avenue Northeast, and a blur of movement surrounded the car. Six or seven plainclothes police officers swarmed across the street in front of us, drawing their weapons and pulling on black jackets with POLICE emblazoned across the backs. They descended on a convenience store with the focus and intensity of a swarm of piranha. Even through the closed car windows, I could hear shouting inside. When our light turned green, Eric hit the gas so hard the tires squealed as we went through the intersection. He turned and gave me a concerned look. “Where exactly are we going? Are you sure we should be driving around here by ourselves?”

  Adrenaline coursed through me, and my headache lessened for the first time since we’d walked out of Ford’s Theatre. It left me feeling shaky and kind of elated. “You want to turn around?” I craned my neck to look back toward the convenience store. “Maybe we could ask one of those cops for a police escort.”

  “Okay, I’m not saying that, it’s just . . .” His chin dipped toward his chest, and he shifted in his seat. “I’ve never been to DC before.”

  “What? I seem to remember you on those endless field trips to the Smithsonian in middle school.”

  “I mean the real DC,” he said. “I’ve never been beyond the tourist stops. I’ve never been here.” He gestured around us.

  On any other day, I would have agreed with him. I could see my usual anxiety mirrored in his face. But what had happened today proved I wasn’t losing my mind. I’d seen a 150-year-old woman covered in Abraham Lincoln’s blood—really seen it, and I wasn’t the only one. Dr. Brightman had seen it too. I wasn’t going to rest until I learned more. “I think we can handle it,” I said.

  “What about Nathan Lee from DC? Maybe we should give him a call.”

  “No,” I said. “Absolutely not. We are not giving him a call.”

  “I’m sure a friend of Tyler’s would be willing to help us. He might even have some other ideas about where Tyler hung out in the city.”

  Eric was right. Nathan would definitely be able to take us places Tyler had been. But he also might want to know why we wanted to go there, and I wasn’t willing to spread the whole superhero story around just yet.

  The phone spoke up again. “Your destination is on the right.”

  “Oh good,” I said. “We’re here. Pull into the parking lot.”

  Eric parked and looked around, confused. “But . . . this is a McDonald’s.”

  “Exactly.” I opened my door. “Hungry?”

  As we got out of the car, Eric held up his phone and waved it around. “I’m not getting any reception here. Can I borrow yours to send a message to my mom? Since a police escort is out of the question, I figure someone should know where we are.”

  I handed it to him and looked around. Of all the places Tyler had been in DC, a restaurant full of people had seemed like the least painful spot to start this little adventure. And this wasn’t the shady, run-down place I had imagined; instead I’d have to call it a fairly fancy McDonald’s. It was two stories tall, with actual landscaping. A bright new condo building stood across the street, with a Starbucks and a farm-to-table restaurant on the first floor. Beyond that, construction cranes loomed high against the sky, assembling the metal shells of apartment buildings. If this was a drug hangout, I had a feeling it wouldn’t be for long.

  I surveyed the parking lot. I don’t know what I had expected—significant objects lying around that I could just pick up?—but the lot was surprisingly clean. Some students in school uniforms cut through, heading toward the nearby Metro, and a couple of homeless guys hunched on the curb beside the building. I walked in circles around the Dumpster in the far corner of the lot before resting a cautious hand on its rusted surface. Nothing happened.

  Eric joined me at last, rolling his wheeled backpack behind him, and we went inside. I didn’t get any visions when I touched the front door, or the backs of the chairs I passed, or the napkin and ketchup dispensers at the drink station. No trace of Tyler anywhere. At least, none that I could find.

  “Hellooo,” said the woman behind the counter, drawing out the word. She gave us a pointed stare. “Can I take your order?”

  We got a couple of milk shakes and more fries than two people should ever eat. We took them upstairs, sat by a window, and stared out at New York Avenue below us. I pulled out my scissors, cut up the paper place mat that had come on the tray, and tucked the pieces I liked into my journal.

  Eric, to his credit, didn’t say much. He didn’t chatter; he didn’t ask questions. He just chewed and looked out the window. I watched him for a minute, studying his profile as he ate.

  One of Tyler’s other rules for fitting in at Westside had been “Stay away from targets.” He meant people who drew attention to themselves. People who stood out for some reason as weird or different or strange. We both knew he meant Elena, though he never said it out loud.

  With Elena, it had started with name-calling. “The Mouth,” kids called her, because she always had her hand up, always had something to say. Then they started carrying sunglasses to put on whenever they passed her in the hall. Because, they said, her clothes were too bright. Once, she walked into Civics Eight to find the whole class wearing them.

  Elena tried to laugh it off. She even got one of those Rocky Horror Picture Show T-shirts with the lips on it, just to show them, to throw “the Mouth” back in their faces. No way were they going to change her. But the brighter she shone, the harder they tried to wear her down. And the more I stuck by her, the more my other friends quietly drifted away.

  Elena never broke. She just got tougher. Still, by the time her dad got the job offer in Dallas, her parents had watched her struggle long enough. They moved a month later.

  “We can’t let what happened to Elena happen to you,” Tyler had said. “You have to be careful. First rule: stay away from targets.”

  I’d rolled my eyes. “Stay away from targets? That’s just mean. Plus it’s probably racist, sizeist, ableist, and a dozen other ists.”

  “Screw that,” he’d said. “It’s practical. It’s for your own good. I don’t care about the damn ists.”

  I remembered that rule now, sitting across from Eric. And I realized that, no matter how much Tyler might have wanted me to steer clear of them, targets seemed to be my kind of people. And the only friends
who stuck.

  “So are you dating anyone?” I asked.

  He choked on a fry. “Whoa. Non sequitur. Are you conversationally challenged or something?”

  “Apparently.”

  “Um, okay. No.” He scratched his nose. “Are you?”

  “No.” I paused, considering. “Any chance you’re gay?”

  Eric leaned back in his chair. “Jeez, Megan, this is not how most people interact.”

  “Well, you are wheeling around a rhinestone-covered backpack.”

  “Hey. That kind of stereotype is really damaging,” Eric said, his chin high. “Sorry if it disappoints you, but I happen to be a skinny, sparkly straight guy who isn’t dating anyone.”

  “Fair enough.” I popped my last fry into my mouth and dusted off my hands. We couldn’t hide out in this McDonald’s forever. I still had two other DC stops on my list. I tucked my journal into my bag and stood. “Let’s move.”

  “Where are we going now?”

  “To a party.”

  When we walked out the door of the restaurant into the bright afternoon sunlight, we found Nathan Lee leaning against Eric’s passenger door.

  He wore dark sunglasses today, and his shirt was a vivid titanium yellow, which brought out the warm undertones in his skin. The shirt also had a black collar, black buttons, and Buzzy embroidered on one pocket.

  I turned to Eric, bristling with accusation. “You texted him, didn’t you? All that ‘I’ve got no reception here’ crap. You took my phone and you texted him.”

  Eric shrugged. “What can I say? I believe in the power of reinforcements.”

  Nathan spotted us and broke out in a dazzling grin. “Megan Brown.” He lifted his sunglasses to the top of his head. “Look at you. Running around on the wrong side of the Potomac. What excuse do you have for this wild behavior?”

  I felt a glow in my chest, and I tried not to smile. “What can I say? I’m bereaved.”

  “How about you, Sparky?” he asked Eric.

 

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