Unforgettable
Page 19
“I do. He’s asked me to spend next summer at his research facility in California. I could stay with Aunt Val. And Dr. Anderson even offered to let me stay at his house if I want. He’s got a pool and a tennis court. He said he’d teach me how to play tennis.”
“Tennis? What happened to the dragonflies?”
“I’m not really into …” Oh. She’s teasing me. “Good one, Mom.”
Mom ruffles my hair. “A whole summer without you?”
“You could come visit. Aunt Val would love to see you.”
I’m hoping to talk Halle into coming, too. I don’t think I could spend three months away from her, not after finding her again. But Mom doesn’t even know that I’m dating Halle yet. That conversation is for another time.
Mom twirls a pencil in her fingers. I haven’t caught her smoking in a week, but the pencil looks like it has teeth marks on it. “If that’s what you really want to do.”
Mom shivers and pulls on a sweater over her turtleneck shirt. She’s learning how to dress in layers. Mom’s also more fidgety since she’s given up smoking. “You know, my memories aren’t as good as yours. They’re broken fragments, and pieces are missing. But they’re good memories, at least most of them.”
“I think that’s the way memory is supposed to work.”
“Sometimes, well, a lot of the time, I wish I had a better one.”
“I used to hate remembering everything. But it would be weird to forget, too.”
Mom looks thoughtful. “Well, I remember something you can’t remember because you were too little. You were only two years old and Aunt Val and I took you to the zoo. You saw the giraffe and you wanted to know what kind of noise he made. I said he didn’t make a noise. He just stuck out his long tongue to eat. So for the next two weeks you stuck out your tongue when you ate. Then you said you knew what sound the giraffe made.”
“What sound was that?”
“You made this weird slurping sound. You said that all tongues made that noise, so that must be the sound the giraffe made. You spent the next week slurping your food every time you ate. I didn’t take you to the zoo for a long time after that. See?” She smiles. “You don’t remember everything.”
“You’re right. I don’t remember that.” I love it when I gain a new memory of my early years. It’s like filling in pieces of a puzzle or adding one more stamp to a collection. I do remember that when I was older I found out that giraffes really do make noises.
So I search for a happy memory to give her in return. “Do you remember when you and dad took me trick-or-treating when I was three? It was two months after my fall on the playground.”
She squints, as if the memory is out of reach, too far away.
“I wore a pirate costume with a patch over my eye and a bandanna on my head. I carried a cardboard sword that Dad had spray painted silver. Dad dressed up as Indiana Jones. He wore a leather jacket and a brown fedora pulled down over his eyes, and he carried a fake whip over his shoulder.” I smile as the memory takes shape, and I remember how fearless I felt with my dad beside me.
“After Dad took me around the neighborhood, we came back home and I rang our doorbell, thinking you wouldn’t know it was me because I was wearing a costume. You pretended you didn’t know who I was and gave me a Baby Ruth bar. You also said that Dad looked like Harrison Ford and you swooned and pretended to faint in the middle of the yard. Then Dad picked you up and carried you into the house.” This is one of my favorite memories of them together.
One eyebrow goes up and Mom has a half smile on her lips. “I’d forgotten all about that.” I can see her reconnecting the memory, maybe getting rid of an unpleasant Dink memory to make room for this happy one. Someday soon I’ll tell her about Halle, and how sometimes people can get their happy endings. Mom is blushing, and in that instant, I feel as though the green light, the one that Gatsby watched from across a darkened sound, turns back on in Mom’s heart.
I believe in the promise of that light.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to the following people who were all involved in the making of my book: Stacy Cantor Abrams; Monica and Dave Barnes; Lisa Bullard; Mary Cummings; Emily Easton; Andrew, Brea, Brian, Chris, Erin, Jim, and Kasia Ellsworth; Steve and Vicki Palmquist; Luann Phillipich; Jane Resh Thomas; Robin Toboz; the Pheasant Writing Group; my Hamline University workshop group; Marsha Qualey; and the crew at Walker/Bloomsbury. If I’ve forgotten anyone, it’s due to my poor memory.
Also by Loretta Ellsworth
In a Heartbeat
Copyright © 2011 by Loretta Ellsworth
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
First published in the United States of America in September 2011 by Walker Publishing Company, Inc., a division of Bloomsbury Publishing, Inc.
Electronic edition published in September 2011
www.bloomsburyteens.com
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Walker BFYR, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ellsworth, Loretta.
Unforgettable / Loretta Ellsworth.
p. cm.
Summary: When Baxter Green was three years old he developed a condition that causes him to remember absolutely everything, and now that he is fifteen, he and his mother have moved to Minnesota to escape her criminal boyfriend and, Baxter hopes, to reconnect with a girl he has been thinking about since kindergarten.
ISBN 978-0-80272-306-2 (ebook)
[1. Memory—Fiction. 2. Impersonation—Fiction. 3. Dating (Social customs)—Fiction. 4. High schools—Fiction. 5. Schools—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.E4783Un 2011 [Fic]—dc22 2010049590