The Hidden Memory of Objects

by Danielle Mages Amato

“I think they all ended up like us.”

  I turned my body so I could see Dr. Brightman more fully. “What do you mean, ‘like us’?”

  “I already told you that Clara saw visions of the president. And her fiancé, Henry . . .” He sighed. “He was treated for constant headaches—and for hallucinations. Finally, one night, he lived the assassination all over again, but as the killer this time. He shot Clara in the head. Killed her instantly. Then he stabbed himself over and over, exactly as Booth had done almost twenty years before. When the police arrived, Henry said he saw people all around him, hiding in the walls.”

  A sick dread settled in my stomach. “And Mrs. Lincoln?”

  “Mary always saw ‘ghosts,’ but after the assassination, her visions got worse. She even spent time in a mental institution.” He shrugged. “I think that night changed all of them, left them haunted by memories no matter where they turned. And they had no way to understand what was happening to them.”

  I stared miserably at Dr. Brightman, wondering if he realized that his theory didn’t bode well for either of us, or for how we would end up.

  “In the end,” he said, “Booth’s derringer claimed more lives than just the president’s.”

  Lucy Hale’s blue eyes flashed through my mind. “But Booth’s fiancée,” I said. “She was fine, right? She got married, grew old, and everything.”

  Dr. Brightman held up a finger. “Thank you for reminding me. I brought you a gift. An object I thought you might like.” From an inner jacket pocket, he pulled out a small black jewelry box. “A memento, from Lucy herself.” He handed it to me.

  I took the box, holding it only by my fingertips.

  “It has no provenance. I couldn’t authenticate it by any of the normal methods, so monetarily—even historically—it’s worthless. But I thought you might appreciate it.”

  I turned the box over in my hands, but I didn’t open it. Then Mr. Wendell slid into his seat behind the wheel, and we were off.

  “Mr. Wendell,” Dr. Brightman said, leaning forward to speak to him, “you can drop me off and then take Miss Brown”—he glanced back at me—“wherever she would like to go.”

  A sudden thought struck me. Mrs. Herndon. She had probably gone straight to my mother and told her all about our conversation. I pulled out my phone. Yep. Three missed calls and four angry texts, all from Mom. I texted back.

  I’m okay. Heading home.

  I knew I should feel terrible for worrying her, but mostly I just felt numb.

  Less than fifteen minutes later, Mr. Wendell pulled up in front of Dr. Brightman’s brick row house. Before he got out, Dr. Brightman said, “I hope this won’t be the end of our relationship, Miss Brown. I would still love to look at that Lincoln cigar box. And I’m sure we could work out some kind of fee for your authentication services, if you’re interested.”

  I stared back at him blankly. The jewelry box sat unopened on the seat beside me.

  “Think it over.” Mr. Wendell held the door as Dr. Brightman stepped out of the car, then stuck his head back through the doorway. He tapped his wired sunglasses. “I keep an extra pair of these in my desk, and one in my car. If we move forward, let me know if you start to need them.”

  After he disappeared into the house, Mr. Wendell took his seat behind the wheel and turned around to face me.

  “You okay, kid?”

  “I’m really not sure.”

  He reached into his wallet and handed me a white card with his last name and a phone number on it. “You ever need help, you let me know. I got a daughter about your age. And what happened back there? That was truly effed up.”

  I nodded in agreement, tucking the card into my pocket.

  “Where to?” he asked.

  I gave him my address, but then I paused. There was one place I hadn’t gone to the last time I was in DC. One last place I hadn’t been able to bring myself to visit. But right now, I felt an overwhelming desire to see it. “Would you mind if we stopped somewhere else first?”

  Knee-high grass and weeds surrounded the building where my brother had died. A chain-link fence, several feet taller than my head, circled the large, almost empty lot. Inside the fence, one brownstone was still standing, but all that was left of three other houses were concrete foundations and front steps leading up to nowhere. On one side of the lot, a stretch of attached row houses ended abruptly in a windowless wall, an ugly scar where its neighbor had been torn away. A metal sign on the fence clattered in the breeze. Across the street, a construction crane towered over the frame of a large, half-finished building, with signs promising Luxury Condos, Coming Soon.

  I left Mr. Wendell in the car and walked up to the fence, curling my fingers through the chain link. I couldn’t see any way through, and I wasn’t going to try and climb over with Mr. Wendell watching from the car. So I just stood there, breathing.

  What is happening to me, Tyler? I asked silently. Why did you leave me here like this?

  After a few minutes, I pulled the sleeve of my sweater down over my fingers, reached into my back pocket, and pulled out a tarot card. I had stolen it earlier, during the commotion that followed my vision. It was the moon. Stern and cold, its cobalt-yellow face shone down from the heavens on two snarling dogs. Or maybe one of them was a wolf. A road disappeared into the distance, stretching through barren land and across a choppy ocean.

  Even through all my confusion and struggle, I felt a jolt of satisfaction; taking the card was exactly what Tyler might have done. I took out my art journal and tucked the card between two empty pages. Raw materials, I thought. For later.

  Finally I pulled out the jewelry box that Dr. Brightman had given me and opened the lid. Nestled inside was a wide gold band: a man’s ring, etched with an intricate design. I didn’t know what memories it held, or what I would see when I touched it, but I knew one thing: Dr. Brightman liked dark objects, and I’d seen enough for one day. I snapped the box shut and gave one long last look at the empty lot before making my way back to the car.

  CHAPTER 16

  THE MOMENT MR. WENDELL TURNED ONTO MY street, I spotted it: a police car, blocking our driveway, silent but instantly terrifying. I felt my breathing speed up. This was going to be worse than I had imagined.

  “Keep going,” I said, ducking down in the backseat. “Drop me off up there.”

  Mr. Wendell didn’t hesitate; he drove smoothly past the house and didn’t stop until he was around the corner and well out of sight.

  “You good to handle this alone?” he asked.

  I nodded, trying to look confident as I stepped out of the car. “Yeah. I think so.”

  “If you change your mind about that, call.”

  As I turned the corner, I saw my parents and a uniformed police officer walk down our front steps, headed toward the patrol car.

  “Thank you so much for coming,” my mother said. “I’m sorry that we . . .” She spotted me and trailed off. She took two deep, shaky breaths, and then she grabbed my father’s arm and burst into tears.

  The sight of them unwound me, and I rushed over and put my arms around her. “I’m sorry,” I whispered into her hair. She smelled of honeysuckle and oranges, a scent that made me feel five years old again, and I clung tighter. She stood stiffly against me, tears still running down her face. “I’m so sorry,” I said.

  “You are grounded forever.”

  “I know.”

  “Let’s go inside,” my father said. “We need to talk.”

  The police car drove away, and I thought the law-enforcement portion of the afternoon was over. Instead, I found Detective Johnson on our sofa. She was becoming a regular fixture of the room, like my mother’s favorite porcelain lamp. She stood as we entered.

  “You’re home safe,” she said. “I’m glad to see it. When I realized that you left the police station, I called your parents. We’ve been looking for you.”

  “How’s Nathan? Did you arrest him? Is he okay?”

  “He’s fine. We talked, an
d then he went home.” She looked over at my parents. “I’ll get out of your hair in a minute, but I have a few questions for Megan before I go.”

  I perched on the back of the couch and dug my fingers into the texture of the fabric. I couldn’t bear the tormented look on my mother’s face. My heart was pushing outward on my chest so hard, I thought my body might give way. I wanted to reach into my bag and grab that tarot card, to use the pain it held to kill all the other thoughts in my head, no matter how much it hurt.

  “We understand you were at Ford’s Theatre today with David Brightman. I need to ask . . . Megan, are you involved with Dr. Brightman in some way?”

  “Am I . . . ,” I began. Then I realized what Detective Johnson was asking. “What? No! Absolutely not. That’s . . .” I shook my head. “No.” I looked away from her and into my parents’ worried, trusting faces.

  “But you were with him?” she asked me.

  “I was . . . talking to him,” I said. “I met him at the exhibit two weeks ago. He recognized me in the museum. We were just talking.”

  “But you left with him.”

  “I may have left at the same time as him,” I hedged. “But we don’t have . . .” I searched for something that was true but not incriminating. A relationship? An inappropriate relationship? Ugh, at this point we might have both. “We don’t have the kind of relationship you’re talking about.”

  “But what were you doing at Ford’s in the first place? And the police station?” my mother asked. She shook her head, her face creased with sadness and confusion. “Why did you skip school?”

  I closed my eyes and saw Nathan’s face, sapped of color and grim with the knowledge that all his worst fears had come to pass. I saw his parents, bleak and frightened. I could tell them all that I’d gone to the police station to say that Tyler had been a thief, making money off his friends’ parents and using the cash for god knows what. But who would that help, and who would it hurt? And I asked myself . . . did I really want to uncover the truth about Tyler? Or did I only want to prove that Tyler was the person I thought he was? Because, as it turned out, I couldn’t do both. And maybe not knowing, however hard that was to swallow, would be less devastating to the people I loved than the truth.

  I opened my eyes again. “I just . . . felt really depressed. I didn’t want to go to school.”

  My mother looked at me expectantly. “That’s it? That’s all you have to say for yourself?” She threw up her hands in frustration. “You told me that if something was wrong, you would talk to me!”

  “No one in this family talks to anyone else,” I snapped, “and no one listens! This house is like an echo chamber, and all I can hear is the sound of my own voice.” I stood. “Can I go now?”

  My parents exchanged a guilty look. “Go,” my father said quietly, breaking their shared gaze.

  I could still hear their urgent whispers as I went upstairs to my room. Before I sat down, before I even took off my backpack, I took my phone out of my pocket and called Eric’s number. The call went straight to voice mail without ringing once. Had he blocked me? Since this whole thing had started, we hadn’t gone more than a day without talking, and now, nothing.

  I heard a knock, and my mother cracked open the door. “You’re still grounded. But I couldn’t seem to turn this guy away.” She opened the door the rest of the way. Eric stood in the hall, his face anxious, one hand twisted in his hair.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  I started to cry. A big, ugly cry, the kind that came with sobbing. The kind I hadn’t given in to since Tyler’s death. Eric rushed into the room, and I bear hugged him with all my might. I caught sight of my mother’s startled face over his shoulder.

  “Hey,” he said, patting my back, “deep breaths. It’s gonna be fine.”

  My mother coughed, and we broke apart. “Okay, you two. You have ten minutes.” Her gaze darted back and forth between us, lingering on our hands, which were still linked together. I don’t think she’d ever seen me hold hands with a boy before, much less fall all over one like I’d just done to Eric. “How about I leave this door open?” she said, backing out of the room.

  “What was all that about?” Eric asked.

  “Oh, she’s afraid we’re going to make out.”

  Eric dropped my hand and propelled quickly away from me. “I’ll sit over here, then.” He flopped into the chair by my worktable. “So you’re not hurt?”

  I shook my head, lowering myself down onto the bed. My neck and jaw still hurt from the aftereffects of my vision, and the dull ache refused to fade.

  “Thank god,” he said. “When you went missing, your mom called my mom, then my mom pulled me out of school. I got over here as quickly as I could.”

  “You should have called me.”

  “I didn’t have my phone.” Seeing my puzzled look, he continued, “Don’t laugh—my sister tried to Bedazzle it.”

  I laughed. Of course I laughed, even though it sent a fresh stab of pain across the back of my head.

  “It’s not funny,” he said. “She cracked the screen into a million pieces. Mom will be docking her allowance until the day she goes to college.”

  I grinned, rubbing at my neck. “I thought you didn’t want to talk to me.”

  “Oh, I didn’t,” Eric said. “You were a real asshole.”

  “I’m sorry. You were right—we’re in this together.” I rested a hand on his arm. “Forgive me?”

  He shrugged. “Done. So tell me . . . you saw the box in Bobby’s locker?”

  I nodded. “He apparently came for all the things he and Tyler had stolen.”

  “That lying weasel!”

  “He must have used the spare key to get in and go through our things—” I shot to my feet, despite my body’s protests. My senses still tingled from the vision I’d seen at the self-storage unit—the gun, the body bleeding on the ground. Right now, while I still felt so raw and sensitive, I wanted to try touching more of Tyler’s things.

  I rushed down the hall to his room, with Eric right behind me. Tyler’s personal effects, the ones the police had returned to us, lay scattered across the bed, and all the things I’d taken from his locker were still in a bag in the corner. I dumped it out and sifted through it.

  In the pile of things on the bed, I spotted a plastic bag full of money—coins and bills—that the police must have gathered from Tyler’s pockets or his car. One of the coins was different from the others: dark bronze, with a hole in the center. I opened the bag and fished around until I had it in my hand.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” Eric asked. “You seem a little”—he waggled his hands up and down—“off balance. What happened today?”

  I examined the coin. Asian characters clustered around the square hole in the middle. It didn’t take superpowers to figure out where this had come from. I wondered what Nathan would think if he knew that Tyler had stolen from his house too.

  Eric touched my shoulder. “Megan. What’s going on?”

  I shook my head to clear it. “Sorry. I guess I’m not myself.” I turned the coin over in my hand. “I went to see Dr. Brightman today.”

  Eric’s eyes popped. “And? What happened?”

  “I touched a seriously hostile object.” Not this coin, though. It had a friendly sparkle, a golden gleam that called to me, and it buzzed, ever so slightly, against my fingertips. “I think I’m feeling a little . . . hypersensitive,” I said. “To the visions. Because there’s a memory attached to this coin.” I held it up. “I can tell.”

  “Well, can you try to, I don’t know, find it?”

  I stared at the coin, striving to see beyond it as Dr. Brightman had taught me, looking for the light.

  The brightness rushed over me, shocking but painless this time. Then the blaze telescoped down to the glare of a lighting instrument, set up in Nathan’s family room. Tyler was kicked back on the couch, flipping a coin in the air—the very coin I now held—and catching it with the same hand. Cedric sat beside h
im, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees. Nathan stood over a digital camera, adjusting settings and pushing buttons.

  “Red, dude, these cameras your folks sprang for are awesome,” Nathan said. “They’re going to take The District to a whole new level.”

  Tyler shifted on the sofa, a guilty look in his eyes. I was certain my parents had not bought video cameras for The District.

  “Yeah, but we can’t seem to crack a thousand views per video. We need to draw more attention to ourselves.”

  “Bring the sunshine,” Cedric said, nodding.

  “Ooh, I know.” Nathan snapped his fingers. “Get Idris Elba.”

  Tyler shook his head. “You’re not taking me seriously.”

  “You’re right. If my gorgeous face isn’t reeling in the viewers, nothing will.” Nathan struck a model-worthy pose, one fist under his chin, lips pursed.

  Cedric blew a breath out through his teeth, smiling. “Fool,” he said. “But for real, you think we can keep this thing going when you’re both off at college?” He looked hopefully at Nathan. “Unless you’re choosing Howard?”

  “Oh,” Nathan said. “I don’t know yet.”

  Cedric’s face fell, and he turned back to Tyler. “I mean, I can keep shooting in DC, bring some new people on board, but without you guys . . .” He shrugged. “It won’t be the same.”

  Nathan flopped down on the couch beside Cedric. “Huh. I hadn’t really thought that far ahead.”

  Tyler caught the coin one last time, clenching it in his fist. “Something big. That’s what we need. We could take this channel from kid stuff to national news. Something to be proud of.”

  Nathan made a face. “Hey! I’m proud of it.”

  “No, we can make it bigger. And I think I know how.” Tyler shook his head. “But right now, let’s shoot.”

  The vision faded, leaving the coin warm in my palm. I looked up at Eric. “I found it.” I rubbed the coin, feeling its edges.

  My mother called up from the bottom of the stairs. “Five more minutes!”

  “I’d better go,” Eric said, moving toward the door.

  “Wait. I want to try something else.” I looked around. “This whole room is full of Tyler’s memories. It’s like a gold mine.”