The Hidden Memory of Objects

by Danielle Mages Amato

  I abandoned the collage wall and headed for the bathroom. I stared at myself in the mirror for a long time, turning my head this way and that, until my own face became an optical illusion, like the rabbit that turns into a duck, or the old woman and the young woman both trapped in the same drawing. From some angles I thought I could see the sister Tyler wanted me to be. From others, my parents’ daughter. And sometimes I caught a glimpse of the girl I had thought Nathan might like.

  But where was I?

  I went to my room and got my big scissors—no pocket pair this time. Back in the bathroom, I grabbed a section of my hair and sliced through it at the jawline. Once the first cut had been made, the others came more easily, until chunks of hair littered the sink and the floor. I cut the back so short I couldn’t see it, but I left a long asymmetrical piece in front that fell to my chin. When I was done, I wasn’t entirely sure who that girl in the mirror was, but she looked fearless. I liked her. And I’d discovered a new favorite canvas: me.

  Now I just needed color.

  I had intended to dye my whole head, but the smell of the bleach made my eyes water. I changed my mind and opted for a fat streak in the front. While I waited for the bleach to take effect, I went down the hall to Tyler’s room, hoping I’d been wrong about Nathan taking the box, and somehow it would be sitting right there on Tyler’s bed, where I’d last seen it.

  But, of course, it wasn’t. Once again, I went through all the places where I might have put it, but the box was nowhere to be found. I even searched my own room, just in case. Nothing. After going through all those objects, I had a sense that there were other items missing too—I was sure there had been more things in the bag of Tyler’s personal effects than there were now.

  Then I had a terrible thought: the roll of cash. I’d showed it to Nathan. Had he taken that too?

  I emptied out the contents of my backpack. The money wasn’t there. I went back to Tyler’s room, but there was no place left to search. The money, the box, the rest of it—all stolen. I felt queasy with anger and betrayal.

  Staring down at the objects on Tyler’s bed, I wondered if there might be other memories hidden there, memories I could now unlock, the same way I’d done with the bullet from my pocket. But even though I tried, I wasn’t able to force a vision from any other objects. Maybe my ability didn’t work when I was totally exhausted.

  My eyes fell on Tyler’s laptop. He’d been making videos with Nathan. A lot of videos, judging by the way they’d been talking. I’d checked his browser history weeks ago, but might there be videos lurking on his hard drive that I hadn’t seen yet? I booted it up.

  I scoured the list of applications until I spotted some video editing software and clicked on it. A list of projects popped up on the left side of the screen. I had hoped to see dozens, but there were only a few. I recognized Guitar Lessons, but the second project in the list was called Thoughts from Bathrooms.

  I hit play.

  When the video began, Tyler was standing in a bathroom in someone’s house, holding up his phone and recording himself in the mirror.

  Then a voice-over began. “Public spaces,” Tyler’s voice said. “Private spaces. Private spaces inside private spaces, where you can lock yourself away.”

  The video began to make quick cuts, a different background behind Tyler in the mirror each time, while he remained motionless in the middle. He had clearly shot a few seconds of himself standing in dozens of different bathrooms and edited them all together. The result was almost hypnotic—watching the different wallpaper flash by, watching the walls expand and shrink around him depending on the size of the bathroom he was in.

  “And in these private spaces,” his voice-over said, “people sometimes keep private things.”

  In the mirror, he held up a toilet paper cozy that looked like a chicken, then a whole armful of identical bottles of aspirin.

  And then the video ended. He hadn’t finished it.

  The fact of that struck me like a blow, and tears sprang to my eyes.

  I looked in the folder called Thoughts from Bathrooms and found a whole list of clips, each one named for a different object. I saw T.P. Chicken and Aspirin, which I figured I’d already seen, but there were also Peacock Feathers, Rainbow Tampons, Tapeworm Medicine, and a whole host of others.

  Oh, god, I thought. Tyler was a collector. Of objects. Of stories. Just like me.

  I decided to add one of the clips to the end of the unfinished video. It took me a few tries to figure it out, but when I got the hang of it, I kept going. The knot in my chest finally loosened, and my breathing relaxed. I arranged and rearranged the clips, inserting and deleting them, telling a slightly different story with each edit. Like making a collage.

  I locked the door and lost myself in the work, not leaving Tyler’s room when my father knocked, or when my mother called up that she’d brought home Thai food for dinner. I only paused to rinse the bleach out of my hair and put in the InfraRed dye.

  There was music in the Thoughts from Bathrooms folder, so I added that to the video too. I didn’t know how Tyler would have ended it, so I settled for a return to the beginning, finishing with a long shot of Tyler in the same bathroom he had shown in the first moments of the video.

  When it was finally done, I returned to my room and collapsed into bed. My body begged for sleep, but my mind still whirled. All my efforts to figure out what had happened with Tyler—I’d been trying to keep them quiet. Not tell my parents, not rock the boat. But I was done with that. It was time to get loud. To expose Brown Brown for the lie she was.

  I just wasn’t sure how.

  The next thing I knew, morning light streamed into the room, and my mother was sitting beside me, shaking me gently.

  A look of shock and horror distorted her face.

  I sat up, instantly awake and panicked. “What is it? What happened?”

  Her mouth moved for a moment, no sound coming out. Finally she spoke. “What have you done to your hair?”

  Then she looked past me and let out an involuntary scream. I flopped back onto the bed. She had noticed the metal sheeting on the wall.

  CHAPTER 14

  WE ATE BREAKFAST THAT MORNING IN AWKWARD silence. My mom had insisted that I dye my hair back and tear down the metal wall, but I’d refused. To my surprise, Dad took my side.

  “The damage is already done,” he’d said. “You’ll only make things worse if you try to force her to do things your way.”

  My mother’s lips had flattened and her nostrils flared, sure signs that she was seething mad. But she’d clenched her jaw and said nothing, and now here we sat. In silence.

  The angry charge in the air was new, but the silence was not. I’d expected things to get better as time went on. Instead, as the days had passed, the air in the house seemed to grow thicker, and my parents got quieter and quieter, until the rooms themselves rang with stillness. We went through our days like three strangers in an elevator, trying not to catch one another’s eye.

  Before Tyler died, meals had never been quiet affairs at our house. The kitchen table had always been a place for heated arguments about sports, for merciless sister teasing, and for never-ending stories about the Bay of Pigs, the Kennedys, or whatever else my dad happened to be teaching that semester. Now, the silence echoed.

  “Hey, Dad, President Kennedy was assassinated, right?” My father turned to me in disbelief. “No, I mean, I know he was assassinated. I was just . . . thinking about it.”

  The old professor spark lit his eyes for the first time in weeks. “Is this for school? What do you need to know?” He leaned forward, his elbows on the table. “Do you want to watch my TED Talk? Kennedy 2.0: Rebooting Camelot?”

  I rolled my eyes. “No. I was wondering . . . what makes someone do that? Target someone like that?”

  “Fame.” Dad sat back in his chair, settling in for one of his speeches. “Almost always fame. Very rarely, they want to make a political point. As if one person’s death could change t
he whole world.”

  Mom’s head jerked up, and the words seemed to linger in the air around us, echoing off the fridge and cabinets. The glimmer in Dad’s eyes went dark, and his features slid back into blankness, his animated expression melting away.

  A long, silent moment passed. Then Dad stood and turned on the radio. My eyes widened in shock. “No media during meals” was a sacrosanct rule of the Brown house. Mom didn’t react. She just kept pushing cereal around her bowl with a spoon.

  The soothing voice of a public-radio host filled the room, and I was grateful for the distraction. Until I realized what he was talking about.

  “Authorities say the party was one of several held in illegal locations across northern Virginia in recent months. The building’s owner could not be reached for comment.”

  I let my toast drop to my plate and strained to catch every word.

  “Police won’t reveal exactly how many students were taken into custody following the event, but sources put the number at more than ten. Arrests were made in three cases, and drug charges are pending.”

  Drug charges. I blew out a slow breath.

  “The story has become a rallying point for local politicians who hope it will shine a light on the growing problem of teenage drug abuse across the DC area, from its poorest to its wealthiest communities. Virginia Senator Gary Herndon, a McLean resident, spoke out on the issue yesterday afternoon.”

  Hearing Senator Herndon’s voice made me want to slide down on my chair and hide under the table.

  “As my constituents know, I’m a plain speaker, so I’ll put it out there. We can’t afford to be lenient on drug crimes. Even when the offenders are our own children. I hear a lot of talk about addressing the root cause of drug crime. I’ll tell you what the root cause is. Drugs. Find the source, and prosecute the criminals. No matter who they are.”

  My mind went to Nathan. He’d been so concerned that someone would find out he was organizing those parties, and it seemed his fears were well founded. Even if he wasn’t selling drugs himself, the police were clearly taking this very seriously.

  “Please turn that off,” my mother said.

  “I’m listening to it,” Dad replied.

  On the radio, Senator Herndon was still talking. “That’s why I’ve been such a vocal supporter of the new crime bill. We need to put more power in the hands of the police to break up and—”

  Mom went to the radio and clicked it off. Then she took a deep breath and aggressively changed the subject. “Robert, would you dig your tuxedo out of the back closet for me? We need to get it cleaned before the gala next weekend.”

  Dad stared at her in disbelief. “You’re going to the gala?”

  “I’m running the gala. A big part of that is actually attending the event, yes.”

  “Don’t you think you should take some time off? Give yourself some space?”

  She took her cereal bowl from the table and dropped it into the sink with a crash that made me wince. She stood there for a moment, her back to us, before turning around. All her tightly held control was gone, and her eyes burned. She was a woman drowning, and there was nothing I could do to save her.

  “So I’m doing this wrong?” she demanded.

  “Of course not.”

  “I’m sorry that I’m still able to function while you are not. There are bills to pay and things to get done.”

  “We could be getting help with all that. So many people have offered to help.”

  “You think I need help?”

  “Well—”

  “You’ve been wearing the same pair of pajamas for three days, and you want to give me coping advice?”

  Dad looked stunned. “I want you to stop pretending,” he said. “I know you were listening to that radio story. I know you heard what the detective said—about Tyler dropping out of school.” He shook his head. “It’s eating me alive, and I can’t even talk about it. He told us he wanted to take some time off, maybe do a gap year. And we shut him down.”

  “He did?” I asked.

  My mother gritted her teeth. “Not in front of Megan,” she ground out.

  “I’m done trying to keep her out of it.” He gestured to me. “Look at her hair! Clearly it’s not working for her, either.”

  “So that act of self-sabotage is my fault too?”

  “Guys, it’s just hair,” I said. But by the way they stared me down, I could tell it meant much more than that at this point.

  “You make it so hard for me to keep it together, Robert.” Mom’s voice shook. “Sometimes I can hardly stand to look at you.” And she walked out of the kitchen.

  Dad didn’t move. He sat there, spoon in hand, watching the doorway where she’d disappeared.

  I stared at him for a moment, trying to figure out what to say. And then I fled. I ran up the stairs to my bedroom and shut the door behind me. I was done trying to put out my family’s emotional fires with kind words and cappuccinos. From now on, let them burn.

  Slumping to the floor beside the bed, I ran a hand through my newly short hair, tugging on the long chunk in front, and it occurred to me that I hadn’t shown it to Elena. I took a quick shot with the metal wall behind me and sent it to her with the message:

  New look caused full-on parent breakdown.

  It took Elena only seconds to reply.

  OMG your hair!

  Like it?

  It’s perfection.

  It’s so you.

  I never would have guessed.

  Mom totally lost it.

  I’m kind of glad?

  I am an awful person.

  No, I get it. You wanted a response.

  You got a response.

  I tugged on the front of my hair.

  Yes!

  I can’t wait to walk into school today and basically say: screw you all.

  If you didn’t already know, I’m a freak. No more pretending.

  There was a long pause before she responded.

  I want to say: hooray, go girl, etc.

  And I feel like I should.

  But truth is, I’m worried about you.

  Are you going to the counselor?

  I gripped the phone hard. I’d wanted her support. And this felt like a betrayal.

  MY MOTHER isn’t going to the counselor.

  That’s a whole other problem.

  I’m only saying, and I speak from experience

  This may be some self-destructive behavior.

  “Megan,” my mother yelled from downstairs. “If you’re coming with me, come now!”

  I stared at the phone in my hand, my heart pounding with frustration.

  Maybe my self could use some destructing, I typed back, and I turned off the phone.

  I reached for the necklace I’d made from Tyler’s button. I’d worn it every day, but it didn’t feel right anymore. Instead, I dug out the jeans I’d worn to the rave and went through the pockets until I found the bullets. Now these . . . these were just what I needed.

  On my way out the door, my gaze fell on Tyler’s copy of Disasters in the Sun, with its torn cover and its dog-eared pages. Tyler had been looking for some kind of symbol in that book. Maybe he’d found what he was after. I grabbed it and shoved it into my bag.

  I pored over Dr. Brightman’s book the whole way to school. The title came from Shakespeare; as an actor, Booth saw the assassination as some kind of heroic action in a play. But what kind of role did Tyler think he was taking on, playing at John Wilkes Booth? “Sic semper tyrannis,” he’d said at Nathan’s house. That was what Booth had said immediately after he killed Lincoln: “Thus always to tyrants.” Tyler had been targeting Herndon, that much was clear. But why?

  The illustrations were the real treasure of the book for me: photos of Booth, of course, but also mysterious letters written in code, playbills from a dozen different theatrical productions, and image after image of that infamous gun. I tilted the book at different angles, holding it up to the light, trying to see the photographs as clea
rly as I could. Then I closed the book and stared at it cross-eyed, to see if I could find a memory attached to it, but nothing. My ability had gone quiet.

  “Earth to Megan,” my mother said, and I tore my gaze from the page.

  “Huh?”

  “We’re here.”

  I hadn’t even noticed that the car had stopped, or that she’d pulled into a space in the school parking lot.

  “You know what?” She cocked her head. “It’s not so bad.”

  “What isn’t?”

  “Your hair.”

  I smiled.

  “But let me make you an appointment at the salon.” She crinkled her nose. “It’s so sloppy in the back.”

  My smile dropped. “See you later, Mom.” I got out of the car.

  My hair made a definite impression. Heads turned as I walked through the main doors, and girls whispered to one another behind cupped hands. When it came to Westside, only a certain kind of “different,” practiced by a certain kind of person, was celebrated and accepted. And given Tyler’s death, my new appearance was sure to set off a gossip firestorm.

  Eric was out of school that day—some kind of doctor’s appointment, he’d said—and I felt the lack of any friendly face in the crowd. When the attention started getting to me, I ducked into the ladies’ room to hide. I leaned over a sink, turning on the cold water and letting it run over my wrists. I hadn’t even made it to first period, and I was already exhausted. I checked the mirror. In the harsh fluorescent light, my hair looked more sloppy than bold. Maybe this had been a terrible idea. Maybe Tyler had been right, after all.

  “It looks great.”

  I looked up. Leigh Barry was washing her hands at the sink beside mine. Her blond braids twisted up and around her head, milkmaid style, and behind her glasses, her eyes crinkled in a smile—one with a hint of apology in it.

  “Your hair, I mean. It looks great.”

  “Thanks.” I reached up instinctively to touch it, forgetting that my hands were wet. Water dripped down my nose. “I’m questioning the whole thing at this point. Ready to make a run for it.”