Unforgettable

by Loretta Ellsworth

  The next month Dink took me to his workplace again. The same two guys were there. But this time it was all business. They acted edgy and no one high-fived me or gave me compliments.

  Dink sat me down in front of the same computer. “Okay, Buddy, let’s get to work.”

  “I don’t want to do it,” I said. “I want to go home.”

  Dink glared at me and his hand pushed down hard on my shoulder. “You’re going to do exactly what I tell you to do.”

  And that’s when I realized that Dink had a jerk gene in him, like the fruit flies I read about who were bred for aggression. It just took a while for Dink’s gene to kick in.

  A few weeks later I was looking for a pencil and I went into Dink’s home office, even though I wasn’t allowed in there. I found a pencil at the back of the drawer, but right next to it was a large envelope full of money. It was filled with one-hundred dollar bills, six hundred fifty-three of them. All together, there was sixty-five thousand, three hundred fifty-eight dollars inside. And underneath the money were copies of the pieces of paper with the numbers I’d written down.

  I didn’t know what to think. I was scared. That same week Dink was arrested for stealing credit card numbers from his work. When the police came to our house, I hid under my bed. I thought they’d arrest me for helping Dink, but instead they asked me a lot of questions. When I told them what Dink had me do, Mom hugged me and said sorry about a million times. I gave the police the pieces of paper with the numbers I’d written.

  Mom thinks we’re safe here. But Dink is no longer in prison and I know he wants to kill me for testifying against him. Plus there’s something that even Mom doesn’t know about. I took Dink’s envelope full of money.

  Hiding My Stash

  I’m watching The Andy Griffith Show on the oldies channel when Mom comes home. It’s the episode where his son Opie accidentally kills a mother bird and raises the babies, and then Andy tells Opie he has to set them free. I’ve always thought that my dad would have been like Andy: wise and caring, someone who would help me raise baby birds.

  Mom pauses in the hallway between the kitchen and living room. She hangs her purse on the doorknob to the basement, a cavernous place that could fit our whole apartment from California. We’ve never had a basement before and I’m not sure what you use it for other than storing the furnace. Mom nods toward the television. “Haven’t you seen that episode a hundred times?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “You have it memorized. Why watch it again?”

  “This way I can laugh in advance.” Just because I memorized the show the first time I watched it doesn’t mean I enjoy it any less the sixteenth time. “Would you say my dad was like Andy Griffith?”

  She shakes her head and her top lip curls up. “He was more like Barney Fife.”

  Barney is Andy’s inept assistant. He’s the funny one who always messes things up that Andy makes right again. Barney cracks me up, but I’m not sure he’s father material.

  She sighs. “Your dad was great. I just don’t want you thinking he was some kind of god. He was a good guy, but he had his faults.”

  I want to mention that nobody could be worse than Dink—he would have killed Opie’s baby birds without a thought. But I don’t really want to talk about Dink, and I know Mom doesn’t want to talk about Dad or Dink. Either one brings up sad memories.

  “How was school?” she asks.

  “Mr. Shaw assigned me a study buddy.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s basically a tutor. I got a C-minus on my first English test.”

  “You always get As in English. How could you possibly get a C-minus with your remarkable memory?”

  By selecting the letter C for every answer. I shouldn’t have told her about the tutor or the grade. How am I going to make a fresh start if I act the same way I did before? I shrug. “I haven’t been in a regular school for three years, Mom. I’ll do better next time.”

  She shakes her head. “I guess no one is going to suspect you of being the Memory Boy when you’re struggling in class. But really, Baxter. C-minus? You can do better than that.”

  I don’t mention that my tutor is an old classmate from California. No use making Mom worry before the spice rack is even unpacked. “How was work?”

  Mom runs a hand through her chin-length blond hair. It used to go halfway down her back, but then she cut it as part of her fresh-start approach to our new life in Minnesota. Her fingers stop abruptly when she comes to the end, as if they’re searching for the rest of her hair.

  “Turns out I’m pretty good at waitressing. We have this guy, Mr. Schneider, who orders the same thing every day: toast, tea, and eggs over easy. Today I messed up and accidentally gave him the wrong order, a bacon omelet. Thought he’d be mad, but guess what? He loved it. Says he’s going to order that every day from now on. You know, this isn’t so different from selling newspaper ads. It’s really all about people skills.”

  I flinch at the words “people skills.” Most people think I’m an obnoxious know-it-all. But that was the old Baxter. The new Baxter is an average guy who gets C-minuses on his tests.

  I’d never mess up and give someone the wrong order. But Mom did and it ended up better than if she hadn’t. It’s these unexpected twists in life that nag at me; how making a minor mistake or change can yield such different results. Like getting a C-minus and winding up with the tutor of my dreams.

  Mom takes in the mess of boxes lining the kitchen wall. “I hate moving.” She reaches into the pocket of her white apron streaked with ketchup and coffee stains and takes out a pack of Winston Ultra Lights. She flicks out a cigarette and sticks it in her mouth, raising the lighter to the tip in one fluid motion.

  “What happened to the patches I bought you?”

  She scrunches up her face. “They make me nauseous.”

  “Nauseous is better than dead.”

  “I’m cutting down. I just moved two thousand miles and started a new job. Give me a break.”

  “Dink smoked, too.”

  She puts up her hand. “We agreed not to talk about him, Baxter. I know I shouldn’t smoke. I’ll go outside. Honestly, one smoke, that’s all I’m asking for. This is only my second one today.” She waves the pack in front of her. “They’re Lights. Doesn’t that count for something?”

  She turns and walks out the back door.

  She hates my nagging, but if it guilts her down to two cigarettes a day, I’ll keep at it.

  I go back and forth between being angry at her for bringing Dink into our lives and feeling bad for her. She was so shocked that Dink turned out to be a thief and all-around jerk. And she tried to make it up to me. When school became unbearable, she worked out a deal with Dr. Anderson, a memory researcher at the Institute who was interested in studying me. They hired a tutor for me and I didn’t have to attend school anymore. Life became tolerable again.

  I pull out the scrap of paper resting inside my right pants pocket. Dr. Anderson wrote down his phone number before we moved, then chuckled when he gave it to me. “You obviously don’t need it written down. Habit, I guess.” I like the note in my pocket, though. It’s something a guy with a normal memory would carry. I think of calling Dr. Anderson now, but it’s only been a few weeks. I wonder if he’s found a new brain to study or if he misses me. After three years of attending weekly sessions at his research facility, I felt more comfortable talking to him than to the shrink Mom sent me to, Ms. Rupe, who insisted that I talk about my memories, which was like replaying them over and over again in my head. As if that helped.

  Mom is outside flicking ashes on the pavement. It’s been a whole week since I checked my stash, but I still feel like a gambler who compulsively counts his chips. I go to my room and open the closet. Stuffed in the back, behind cardboard boxes and piles of clothes, is my guitar case. But there’s no guitar. It still smells like guitar, though, and it’s filled with mementos from my life: books, pictures, stuffed animals, a margarine container
full of shells I found at the beach. Having these things helps me somehow. They make my memories real.

  Near the back of the case is a bulging white envelope that contains sixty-five thousand, three hundred fifty-eight dollars, all in crisp bills held together with a rubber band. There was ninety-seven cents in the ashtray on Dink’s desk and I took that, too. It was an impulse reaction that seemed right at the time.

  Later I worried what would happen if I turned it in, if I would get in trouble. So I’ve never spent any of it, not even the ninety-seven cents. The coins jingle at the bottom of the envelope.

  If Mom knew, she’d say it’s not right to keep it. But I still say Dink owes us.

  I put the guitar case back in my closet and go into the living room. Mom is still outside. The newspapers tagged me the Memory Boy when it was discovered that I’d written six hundred credit and debit card numbers from memory after viewing them as they flashed across a computer screen. I’m the kid who can memorize a phone book or a thick novel because I don’t forget anything once I see or hear it. I don’t forget anything.

  Most people are impressed by that. They don’t know how crowded my head feels or what a curse it is. Plus there are too many Dinks in the world who see me as a way to cheat the system.

  It’s nice being in school again with other kids, doing the same work as them, even if it’s just to read three chapters of The Great Gatsby. But Dink lurks around every corner. The memories pop up more often; his heavy brows that furrowed at the least little thing, his receding hairline, and the sneer he reserved for me when Mom wasn’t watching.

  Even when Dink isn’t here, he’s here, like a disease that won’t go away. And like the disease he is, I know I need to find a cure. Dr. Anderson thinks that if I fill my head with new memories at a new school I’ll figure out a way to get rid of him. But Dr. Anderson doesn’t know about the money. And he doesn’t know Dink.

  The Sound of Daffodils

  The bus pulls up three minutes early today. There are usually four of us at the corner—the two girls who laughed at me and a sophomore guy with short-cropped hair, but the girls aren’t here yet.

  “I’m getting my license in a couple months,” the guy tells me as he rocks back and forth on his heels. It’s become a mantra. He says it every day, as though he’s ashamed to be riding the bus.

  I tug at my jeans, which are too loose because I’ve grown three inches this summer and it’s either wear them too big in the waist or walk around in high-water jeans. I tower over the guy and I wonder if that’s why he keeps reminding me he’s older.

  Since today is my first meeting with Halle, I sit in the fifth seat from the front on the left-hand side, just like I did in kindergarten. Maybe it will bring me good luck. The guy sits in the back with the other sophomores. The driver peers around for the two girls and revs the engine. He has a gray beard and a permanent scowl on his face.

  “We’re missing two. They’re late. Hope they didn’t sleep in or they’ll be walking today.”

  “You’re three minutes early,” I say. “Yesterday you came at 7:38.”

  The driver lifts the bill of his cap and stares back at me through the mirror. “Is that so? I was here the exact same time yesterday. Maybe your watch is slow.”

  I shake my head. “Not possible.”

  His eyes become slits. “I don’t make mistakes with time, kid.”

  I open my mouth and close it. The guy doesn’t understand. Time is important. Or rather, the keeping of time. I may not be able to control the flood of memories, but I can at least make sure they’re accurate. I want to inform him that there’s no way my watch is slow, that it receives daily time-calibration radio signals and is accurate to less than a second a day. I want to tell him that he’s wrong and he’s probably left kids stranded at bus stops all over town because of his inability to keep accurate time.

  The old Baxter would have told him all that. The old Baxter also would have gotten kicked off the bus. Instead I jab my pencil into the vinyl seat in front of me when the driver isn’t looking. Blurting out random information has always been a problem for me. But the Memory Boy persona is not what I’m aiming for at my new school.

  Ninety seconds later, which always seems longer when you’re sitting on a bus with the driver shooting daggered looks back at you, two figures hurry down the road, waving their arms and jostling backpacks.

  “You’re late,” the driver says when they finally make it to the bus. “Next time I might not be here waiting.”

  I just shake my head. The driver’s voice is sour milk.

  “Sorry,” the girls say in unison, but they’re smiling. The bus lurches forward and the girl in the white jacket almost falls on top of me. The bus driver smirks in the mirror as they land in the seat behind me.

  “That guy is such a jerk,” one of them says.

  “I hate riding the bus,” the other one says.

  I turn around. “He wanted to leave you, but I made him wait.”

  “Thanks,” white jacket says. “You’re new, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re a freshman, right?” the other one asks. Both of them have straight, brown hair and identical jackets, but her jacket is black.

  “Yeah.” I want to say that I’m from California because that might impress them and God knows I need to say something impressive to make up for yesterday, but then they might ask what school I went to before or why I moved here and pretty soon I’d be telling lies upon lies, and I hate lying. I’d have to remember the lie forever and that goes against my grain of remembering things accurately.

  “Cool. I like your tan,” she says, then they start talking to each other like I don’t exist. After feeling awkward for fifteen seconds, I turn back around. I could tell them that the bus was three minutes early today and that they might need to start out earlier tomorrow or the same thing will happen again, but I don’t say anything. Being a know-it-all never helped me win a lot of friends back at Pascal Elementary.

  I haven’t made a ton of friends yet, but it’s only the third day of school. Brad Soberg sat with me at lunch the first day, and yesterday a guy I remember from Geometry roll call as Bennet comma Kevin sat across from me. “How’s it going?” he said, then ate the rest of his chicken sandwich in silence.

  It’s not like I thought I’d be one of the cool kids. Well, maybe that possibility made a cameo in my mind when I imagined this new life in a town that’s less than a hundred miles from the Canadian border. I thought that being from the land of movie stars and beaches might make me at least appear to be cool. But the first day of school erased any hopes of that happening when I saw the football and hockey jocks pushing freshmen guys in the hallway, and some of those freshmen guys had forty pounds on me and wore letter jackets.

  Now I’ve readjusted the dream to just fitting in and having a few friends and not thinking about Dink, if that’s even possible. And not letting anyone find out about my past or my memory. Reinventing yourself is harder than I thought, especially when you don’t like to lie about your past. And especially when the past keeps getting in the way.

  But hope springs eternal, and today I’m seeing Halle Phillips again.

  Halle Phillips, who once brought a shark tooth for Show and Tell from her trip to Florida, then a postcard from that same place the next day, and the following week she brought a picture of her grandpa, and after that her favorite candy—green jelly beans, which she shared with our class; and … my head swims as more memories fight their way up. I focus on my watch, staring at the dials like Dr. Anderson taught me until I can push the memories back down. Sometimes it works. Other times it’s like trying to turn off a running faucet by using a broken spigot.

  When I look up I’m the last one on the bus. The driver is glaring back at me. “You going in or do you plan on spending your whole day here?”

  I grab my backpack and leap out of the bus without touching the steps. The door closes immediately behind me and I’m standing in front of a
three-story building with a faded brick exterior the color of ash. As far away as we are from California, I still have this sick feeling that I’m going to turn around and see Dink standing behind me. Or maybe he’ll be waiting in the parking lot with a loaded pistol. I feel safer in large groups, so I join the flow of students into the school, being careful to stay in the middle, and I have just enough time to go to my locker before the first bell rings.

  We haven’t had any assignments yet in Science class; we’ve just spent the past two days taking notes from the overhead projector. I open my five-subject notebook and copy the outline, although it’s a pain to do. I mean, what’s the point? But I’d look like a slacker if I didn’t, so I scribble away like everyone else. At least taking notes helps kill time until I see Halle and keeps me from getting too anxious. Once I tried an exercise with Dr. Anderson where I wrote down my memories and then burned the paper as a means of getting rid of them. It didn’t work.

  I have two more classes after Science, and the morning drags by. The clocks are slow in all the classrooms and that bugs me, so I avoid looking at them or I’ll be tempted to get up on a chair and adjust the time.

  At 11:06 I hurry from homeroom, a twenty-five minute study hall that most students use for catching up with friends. I show Mrs. Algren my pass and wait at a small table in the middle of the library, which is also the computer center.

  I have an empty piece of paper in front of me, a sharpened number-two pencil, and my copy of Gatsby open facedown. To say that I’m nervous is an understatement.

  I size up every girl who enters the library; first, a thin girl with glasses and long, blond hair. She’s laughing and clinging to a guy so I doubt that’s Halle. Another girl with black hair and black lipstick and red streaks in her hair. She passes me without making eye contact.

  I hold my book in the air as two more girls enter the library. They smile at me in a friendly way but walk by. At 11:12 another girl enters. She zones in on the book at my table and walks purposefully toward me. I focus on her face for any hint of recognition. Nothing is familiar in any obvious way. She has light brown hair instead of blond pigtails like the Halle Phillips I used to know. A red barrette holds back her bangs. The ends of her hair brush the top of her shoulders. She’s way too beautiful to be the girl I remember. The Halle Phillips I knew had a button nose and her knee socks kept falling down. This girl has a sloped nose that turns up at the end, high cheekbones, and a curvy waist. In fact, she has far more curves than the Halle Phillips I knew, but then again, kindergartners don’t have curves. She’s wearing a short skirt and her long legs are sockless.