“I’m Halle,” she says.
It’s the same girl but everything about her is different. For one thing, she’s hot. But it’s her voice that makes me lean forward. She still sounds like yellow daffodils, sweet and creamy and fresh. My own voice catches and I creak out a small “Hi, I’m Baxter.”
She sits down across from me and points at my book. “One thing you need to know is that everyone says Shaw’s class is hard, but he’s one of the most respected teachers here. And once you figure out how to take his tests, you won’t have a problem. So don’t freak out that you got a bad score on the first one.”
I nod, still taking in the scent of her voice.
“My sister had him, and he doesn’t ask the mundane questions like ‘What color is Daisy’s hair?’ or ‘How big is Gatsby’s pool?’ So don’t stress out on memorizing trivial details. I mean, he might ask how Nick is related to Daisy, something fundamental, but the rest of the test will be essay questions that make you think about what you read. So you should be reading for comprehension and looking at the meaning behind the words.”
She stops and studies me like she’s trying to place me. It’s suddenly hot in here. A drop of sweat cascades down the inside of my shirt and settles in my navel.
The look is replaced by a frown. “You did read the first three chapters, didn’t you? Because I’m not wasting my time helping you if you’re a jock who thinks I’m going to be doing all your work while you dribble a ball down the court or practice your tennis serve.”
“I read it,” I assure her, although I’m flattered that she thinks I might be a jock. She obviously doesn’t remember me from Pascal Elementary. Even in kindergarten I couldn’t hold on to a ball.
She crinkles her nose. “Sorry, bad experience with my ex. I don’t mean to take it out on you. Anyway, the important thing is to take good notes during Shaw’s discussions. And read the chapters. If you get stuck, we can find a quiet spot to read out loud, but I’d prefer you read it ahead of time. Does this time work for you?”
“It’s perfect.” She’s perfect.
“Mr. Shaw said you’re new. Where did you move from?”
My heart quickens at the thought of how to answer. If I say California, will that be enough to connect the dots in her head? But my teachers know that I’m from California, and I don’t want to start our first meeting by lying outright to her. In the end I decide to take a chance. California is a big state, after all.
“I’m from California.”
“Really? I used to live in California when I was little. But seriously, you should know that surviving Shaw’s class will be nothing compared to surviving the winter in northern Minnesota. It’s freaking cold here and we get a ton of snow.”
“Fifty-six inches, on average.”
Her eyes widen.
“Um … I looked it up,” I say with a nervous laugh.
She stands and picks up her books. “You’re going to lose that bronze tan, you know, and then you’ll look just like the rest of us albinos from the North Country. We’ll start tomorrow. Same time, same place.”
And then she’s gone, like a swift breeze moving through the California heat, leaving me refreshed and wanting more.
I’m still swimming in the scent of her voice, strong and lasting. As much as I hate the constant refrain of memories that play like a marathon in my head, there are some moments worth remembering. This is one of them.
How I Measure Up
The meeting with Halle is a break from worrying about Dink, who hovers like an invisible cloud in my life. Seeing her again and hearing her voice lets loose the rampant memories of kindergarten. After she leaves I let them flow: how I missed my mom and held on to her leg the first day of school, those feelings of anxiety before I made a friend, every hurt and fear as well as every moment of joy and excitement. There’s my teacher Mrs. Skrove giving me a hug; she smelled like glue sticks and she smiled at me and nodded when I recited lines of conversation I’d heard on the bus.
“You have an amazing memory,” she told me.
“I appreciate you remembering that it’s Patrick’s turn to go first,” she said the next day, not even getting mad that I interrupted her.
I’m still reliving my kindergarten days when I realize that the library has emptied and lunch period is half over. My stomach lets out a disappointed growl so I jog down to the lunchroom and grab a plate of nachos, then sit next to Brad Soberg from Lit class. He asks, “Hey, can I have a few?” and even though I don’t want to share, I do anyway because Brad doesn’t leave me stranded after he’s finished eating his hamburger and fries.
“Do you know Halle Phillips?” I ask him.
“You bet,” he says. “Why? You like her?”
I avoid his question. “She’s my tutor.”
He picks up a chip and a line of cheese stretches down to the plate. “Lucky dude. How’d you manage that? She and her boyfriend broke up just before school started.”
“Mr. Shaw assigned her to me.”
He laughs. “That almost makes it worth failing his class. She is kinda out there, though.”
“What do you mean?”
He talks between mouthfuls. It’s a good thing they’re not skimpy on the chips or I’d starve today. “She’s gone green.”
“Green?”
“She’s all about global warming, recycling, saving the environment, that sort of stuff.”
Maybe it’s because I’m from California, but that doesn’t sound too “out there.” It makes her seem even hotter.
“Last year in junior high someone smashed open the pop machine and left a note that read, ‘Give us healthy drinks.’ They never caught anyone, but we all knew it was her.”
He takes a long slurp of his milk. “But if you can get past all that, go for it. You should make good use of that private time with her. She won’t be on the open market for long.”
Brad makes her sound like a piece of meat. But he’s right. What great luck for me that she just broke up with her boyfriend and that I have her to myself for half an hour every day.
But is she out of my league? Am I the type of guy girls even think about? A girl who sits across from me in math wrote “possible prom date” with a question mark next to my name when she didn’t know I was looking. I could ask Brad’s opinion, but asking a guy I just met if he thinks I’m hot will probably get the crap beat out of me.
Halle thinks I’m too dumb to pass Lit class. Does Halle go for dumb guys? What if she likes smart guys? Could I risk exposing my memory? It’s the third day of school and I’m already facing an inner struggle between wanting to impress Halle Phillips and keeping my memory secret.
“Speak of the devil.” Brad nods at a tall guy making his way across the lunchroom. The crowd parts like the Red Sea as he walks past, but he’s carrying a math book instead of a staff. He has that athlete physique: buff and muscular, tall with blond hair and a confident smile.
“Hunter Austin, future hockey pro.”
“So he’s Halle’s ex. And he’s smart?”
“Don’t let the book fool you. It’s more prop than anything. Not that he has to be smart.”
“Why not?”
“He’s a hockey god. Hockey reigns supreme up here,” Brad informs me. “We learn to skate before we walk.”
“He doesn’t seem like Halle’s type.”
Brad smirks. “Yeah. Popular jock who’s already being recruited by the pros. He’s every girl’s type.”
I make a small fist in a furtive attempt to check out my own pathetic biceps. Brad notices.
“You got the pretty boy thing going for you. Halle likes that. But if you want one of these,” he says, flexing a muscle the size of a fence post, “you come to my place.”
I have to admit I’m impressed. “You have a weight room at your house?”
“Don’t need one. You get this from lifting bales of hay. We could use another hand this fall, if you’re interested. Might give you an even playing field with Hunter.”
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“But she broke up with him.”
Brad laughs. “Rumor has it that it was the other way around. Hunter broke up with Halle to date Jenna White but now he’s having buyer’s remorse. Jenna’s a leech. She’s already picking out wedding music. I give it a month.”
“Does that mean he’ll try to get Halle back?”
Brad points a finger in the air. “Score one for the new guy. Question is, will Halle take him back after he dumped her? And of course he hasn’t dumped Jenna yet. So you have a small window of opportunity, if you know what I mean.”
I never said I liked her, but I guess it’s obvious. Why else would I be quizzing Brad about her life?
“So if you think she’s hot, why aren’t you going after her?” I ask him.
Brad shakes his head. “She’s not the type to go for a farm boy who uses agricultural pesticides and is proud of it. Besides, I have a girlfriend. Alexis lives in Duluth with her mom but spends summers here with her dad.”
Even farm boy Brad has a girlfriend. I’ve never been remotely close to having one. If I’d stayed in school, would things have been different? Not that I had a lot of friends back at Pascal Elementary, where the last two years I got in trouble almost every week for correcting my teachers.
The running documentary of my life back at Pascal Elementary starts to play in my head. It runs for a few minutes and when I finally break free of it, Brad is gone. I didn’t even hear him get up or say good-bye. My plate is empty, too.
Dr. Anderson has a quote on his door that reads, “If we remembered everything, we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing.” The quote is from William James, a famous psychologist who lived around the turn of the century. His brother was the novelist Henry James and his sister was Alice James, and … the bell rings. I’m late for class again.
My California Tutor
“Call me Coyote,” he told me the first day we met. His real name was Jack Simmons. I thought I’d be calling him Mr. Simmons. “And we’ll be meeting out on the south terrace, so wear sunscreen if you burn easily.”
Coyote was a bushy red–haired grad student from Michigan. The Grad Program had run out of assistantship money when he applied, but there was a stipend available to tutor their newest subject, which was me.
I was twelve years old and Dink had just been sentenced. I had some trust issues. I didn’t want a tutor. I didn’t want to go to school. I didn’t want anything other than to be left alone. But adults never listen to what you want.
Jack’s goal in life was to get a tan. He told me he thought that if he spent short periods of time in the sun and used sunscreen with a high SPF he’d accomplish that task even though he was a fair-skinned redhead and his previous attempts had always turned his skin lobster red.
“First thing we need to do is figure out what you like,” he said, “because nobody studies unless they’re rewarded and I’m not about to mess with grades and all that stuff. So we need a system where you study and then get rewarded and I give you all As if you pass your tests. So what do you like?”
I’d never been asked that before. “I like to ride my bike.” After Dink was arrested I took long bike rides and I’d pedal as fast as I could, dangerously fast. I don’t really know why I did that.
“Cool. I’ll see if I can get a couple of bikes for us to use and we’ll plan some long rides.”
That perked my interest. The Institute was surrounded by curvy, tree-lined roads and steep hills.
So each day we spent two hours studying on the south terrace. I developed a deep tan and Coyote turned a darker shade of pale. On Fridays after I passed my tests we’d go biking through the hills, speeding down winding roads and slowly trudging back up. Sometimes we talked as we biked, but mostly I just felt the wind wrap around me and tried not to remember or think about anything except the road up ahead. Sometimes it worked.
One day I was having trouble with a math assignment. I could always remember the formula, but I was struggling with the application of it. I slammed down my book.
“Can we go riding?”
Coyote looked up from his reading. “It’s Tuesday.”
“So what?”
“So we ride on Fridays, after you’ve passed your tests.”
“I need to get away. I don’t understand this.”
Coyote put down his book and looked at my math problem. “You’ve always had it easy, haven’t you? Never had to work to understand material?”
“I guess.” Up until now math had been mostly memorization and simple problems. But now I was studying geometry and trying to apply geometric concepts to word problems.
“It was the same for me. I didn’t have a super memory like you, but I was so smart I never had to study. Then when I went to college and my classes were harder I didn’t know how to study because I’d never needed to before.”
He pulled out a sheet of paper. “The best thing I can teach you is how to study. We’ll do the first problem together, then you do the rest while I watch.”
He guided me through it, showing me how to apply the formula to the problem. I finished the assignment and Coyote felt sorry for me and we rode our bikes afterward for half an hour.
Coyote was the closest thing I had to a friend those three years. I’d lost touch with the few ones I’d had at Pascal Elementary and was beginning to feel like an outcast. Coyote taught me things that had nothing to do with studying. He taught me how to get a soda from the machine with just one quarter, how to play desk football with wads of paper, and how to play poker, which he consistently beat me at. He yelled when I got annoying. He made me feel normal again.
He was also the one who told me I should leave the Institute. “I know you think Dr. Anderson is some kind of god. I’m as big a fan as you are. But you can continue meeting with him and go to school. You don’t want to miss out on high school,” he said. “It’s the common American experience, the hell that binds us together, the fact that we all suffer through it and live to tell about it later. You’ll regret it if you don’t go.”
So I planned to switch back to school in tenth grade, but when Dink got out, our plans changed and I went back a year earlier. I miss Coyote and Dr. Anderson, but what I miss most is the bike riding. When I left the Institute I was hoping they’d give me the bike I’d been using, since my old one at home was too small for me. No one ever offered. Mom says she’ll buy me a new one when she gets a few paychecks under her belt. In the meantime I have to hoof it.
Coyote also gave me some advice before I left. “Whatever you do, don’t raise your hand the first six months at school. Even if you know the answer.”
He knew that would be hard for me, so he gave me a piece of tape. “Pretend it’s on your mouth when you’re tempted,” he said.
When I told him we were moving to northern Minnesota he laughed. “With that badass tan and those biker legs, the girls are going to fight over who sits next to you.”
There’s only one girl I want to sit next to. So far, neither my tan nor my legs have impressed her. And the tape? I keep it in my pocket as a reminder.
Good Dreams versus Bad Dreams
I’m staring at the green wall of my bedroom, unable to sleep. Pushing down memories all day is hard work. At night, when I’m tired, they run rampant, like a dam with a crack in it. The memories seep through when all I want is to shut them off for a while, to escape into the oblivion of quiet. Someday, the whole dam will burst.
On top of that, I worry. A lot. There’s Mom, who I worry will die while I’m still young because she smokes behind my back. There’s Dink, who I worry will find us. And then who knows what he’ll do to me?
Then there’s the worry that my brain will leak if I can’t find a way to forget, that I’ll eventually lose any kind of filter or organization up there, like a library with no Dewey decimal system. The other worry is that I might forget everything; that my brain will kick into reverse and keep going until all that’s left is a blur of white noise.
But the reason I can’t sleep tonight is because I keep thinking about Halle Phillips’s daffodil voice. It floats through my mind and whispers in my ear. When I finally do fall asleep, I dream of that same daffodil voice that I heard in kindergarten, the sassy attitude that went with it, and how she sounds now, how she hasn’t changed all that much after all. I dream of her curves and those dark eyes that draw me in. I dream of her long, sexy legs.
When I wake up I want to go back to sleep, to keep dreaming about her. I roll over and look at the clock: two minutes before the beep, which lasts an annoying five seconds and repeats every minute.
Pans rattle in the kitchen and the strong odor of coffee hits my nose. Mom is up. I turn off the alarm and pull the covers over my head. Five more minutes. The fog of sleep wraps around my brain.
But my memories are up and forcing their way in. I’m in front of Dink. Dink’s muddy voice yells at me.
“We’re running out of time. I don’t want to hear any more of your crap. You don’t have to ask your mom. Do as I tell you, Baxter!”
I sat frozen in front of him, a pencil poised in my hand. Dink was doing something bad. Why did he want me to write down all those numbers?
The next moment a hand cracked across my face. My cheek had a hot streak from where Dink hit me, leaving an imprint. Dink’s eyes were wild marbles moving back and forth between me and his two friends.
Unforgettable Page 3
