The Memory Keeper

by Jennifer Camiccia

  “Didn’t look that way.” Max tugs the bill of his baseball cap down low. “She looked pretty upset. I didn’t want to make it worse, so I left.”

  Was this why she didn’t spend the night? All her forced smiles start to make sense. I was so worried about my problems that I’d completely missed hers. I nearly drop my phone as I pull up her number. “I need to call her.”

  Max grabs a shovel and nods to the stalls next to us. “I need to clean these. I’ll call you later, okay?”

  “Yeah,” I say as I head back down the road. I wait until I have better cell service before I call.

  Olivia immediately picks up. “Lulu?”

  “Hey, you okay?”

  Her voice quivers so much I can barely make out the words. “My dad left.”

  “What?” I don’t know what the right thing to say is. I press the phone harder against my cheek.

  “They’ve been fighting, and last night—” She’s crying hard now, her words swimming in tears. I’ve heard Olivia cry only once before, when we watched Charlotte’s Web at school. By lunch she was back to her smiley self. The difference now is clear in each sob, her pain reaching me through the phone.

  “Where are you? Are you at home?” I start walking as fast as I can. It doesn’t feel right using Max’s money to call for another Uber, and it will take me thirty minutes to walk to the bus stop on the main road.

  I check to make sure I have my Marin Transit Youth Pass. I’d started riding the bus to school at the end of last year to make it easier on Gram. Even so, nerves jitter low in my stomach. It’s one thing to ride with other kids I know and another to ride by myself.

  But Olivia needs me.

  “Y-yes. Can you come?” Her voice cracks.

  “I’ll be there in an hour. I’m so, so sorry about your dad, Olivia.”

  “Text me when you get here.”

  “Okay. I’m on my way.”

  I hang up and keep walking down the gravel road. The sun beats down and melts my guilt until it sticks to me like taffy. How can I call myself Olivia’s best friend? Since she never said anything about her parents fighting, I hadn’t even tried to figure out what was bothering her. I always think of her as the one who needs all the attention. What if I’m the one who isn’t happy unless it’s all about me?

  My boots rub against my heels. When I sit down on the bus, I pull one off and peel the sock off a newly formed blister.

  I put my boot back on. I deserve the burning pain of it.

  18. Insula the Great

  W hat makes humans different from animals? It wasn’t until recently that scientists studied a part of the brain called the insula. They’d ignored it before, partly because it was tucked so deep inside the brain and partly because they thought it was unimportant. With MRI testing they discovered the insula is where we sense love and hate, gratitude and resentment, trust and distrust, truthfulness and deception. It allows us to show compassion and empathy. It’s a huge part of what makes us human. Sometimes the things we think are unimportant are really the things that matter most.

  * * *

  I need my insula right now. I need to show Olivia all the compassion and understanding I’ve been keeping to myself. What good is my superpower of memory if I treat my best friend like she doesn’t matter?

  Olivia answers the door in sweatpants, and I almost don’t recognize her. She hasn’t brushed her hair, and it’s tangled in a knot on one side of her head. Her eyes have dark purple circles. I don’t know this zombie girl standing in front of me with hollow eyes.

  “Hey,” she whispers. “Thanks for coming.”

  I follow her up the stairs to her room. The house is quiet. Is there such thing as a black hole where all sound disappears? Even our steps are muffled by thick carpet.

  “What happened?” I don’t know if I’m asking about her parents or her room. Every piece of clothing Olivia owns covers every inch of space. There is no place to walk. I pick my way carefully, but she steps on her organza party dress as if it’s not even there. I scoop it up and place it carefully on her desk. She may not care now, but she loves this dress.

  “They’ve been fighting for a while. I guess they both had enough.”

  I sit on the edge of the bed. “I’m so sorry, Olivia. I can’t even imagine.”

  Olivia wipes her tears with one of the folded T-shirts next to her. “Yeah, well. I’ve tried to pretend it wasn’t happening. That worked well.”

  Her sadness spills out of her. It’s in each piece of colorful clothing. It’s in the overturned garbage can. It’s in her tangled hair. It’s in the pile of shoeboxes stacked like Legos in her closet.

  When I hug her, she leans her head against my shoulder. “So, what did Max say?”

  I sit back and stare at her. “Nothing really. Just that your parents were, you know, fighting.”

  “What did he say about your grandmother?” she clarifies, her cheeks turning pink.

  “Oh!” I laugh nervously. “Sorry, I thought…”

  “I read your texts,” she says. “You said he wanted to show you something?”

  “Yeah.” I widen my eyes and hand over the folder. “This.”

  She opens it and stares at the blacked-out pages with a frown. “What the heck?”

  I explain about the hacker and what the redacted file probably meant.

  “Okay, so we need to solve this.” She rips out a page from a notebook on her desk and grabs a purple gel pen. “Tell me everything you know. Leave nothing out.”

  “Olivia, we don’t have to do this right now—”

  “Nope, don’t even try to talk me out of this. I need this right now. We’re going to solve this, okay? Now, when did you find the journal?”

  I get it. Helping me figure out Gram’s past helps distract her from what’s happening right now with her parents.

  “Um, the journal? Oh, Gram mentioned it one day, and I got curious about what was in it. I didn’t think it would be anything like this!”

  Olivia looks up with a frown. “Wait? You stole your grandmother’s journal for no reason?”

  I sigh. I decide right then to tell her a small part of the truth. It’s the least she deserves after the way I’ve treated her. “When Gram gets tired, she, um, gets this weird accent. I wasn’t sure what it was. And she started telling me these stories about her childhood, but they didn’t add up to what I’ve been told my whole life. I thought I should, you know, investigate.”

  “What stories?” Olivia puts her pen to the paper and waits.

  I tell her everything I can without revealing the secret of Gram’s memory. Or mine.

  “What else?” She looks up expectantly. “Anything more tied to Russia?”

  I squint. A niggle of something prods at one of my memory squares.

  “What?” She waves her pen dramatically. “You’re doing that thing where you blank out and then all of a sudden know a ton of stuff.”

  “Her doctor,” I say in a rush. “Her doctor is a friend, and I’m pretty sure his name is Russian.”

  “What’s his name?”

  I close my eyes and toggle through the movie of yesterday. Gram was wearing her beige sweater with the blue butterflies. “Yakov is his first name, but that’s all I know about him.”

  “That’s not a lot,” she mutters.

  “I mean, I know where his office is, though.”

  Olivia rolls her eyes at me. “Duh, Lulu. That’s huge!” She shoves her notebook and pens in one of her twenty thousand backpacks and tugs a brush through her tangles. “Come on, let’s go.”

  “Where are we going?” But I already know. She’s got that determined Olivia look in her eyes.

  “His office! We’re going to find out exactly how he knows your gram. What if he’s the man from the woods?” She raises her eyebrows.

  “He can’t be,” I say, but I’m not as confident as I sound. “She ran away from that guy. This guy is a friend.”

  “We’ll see.”

  I hurry to foll
ow her out of the house. “Shouldn’t we tell your mom we’re leaving?”

  “She’ll be asleep all day. Don’t you want to know more about this Yakov? If we can find out more about him, maybe we’ll find out more about your gram. You want to know if she’s a spy or not, right?”

  “It’s ten miles away,” I say, ignoring the spy remark. I’m not convinced Gram used to be a spy, but Olivia’s right. I do want to find out.

  “That’s what the bus is for. Duh, Lulu.”

  Once we’re on the bus, I text Gram and Mom to tell them I’m with Olivia. Mom instantly responds with a kissy face and a string of hearts, but I don’t hear back from Gram until we’re almost to Yakov’s office.

  Gram: Give Olivia a kiss from me. I’m at home with Clay.

  Me: And mom is there?

  Gram: Yes, Lulu. Love u

  I study Gram’s text, wishing I could tell if she was okay. I hope she doesn’t get too forgetful without me there to cover for her. I turn my phone over, determined to stop worrying about Gram spacing out in front of Mom. All I can do is try to find out what Yakov knows and hope it helps.

  “Do you think you can get your gram to tell you more stories?” Olivia asks. “All of them so far seem to be about her friend Jacob. Maybe you can ask where he is.”

  “I think it makes her sad to talk about him.” I still can’t stop thinking about the story of Jacob’s father. How can a dad treat his family that way?

  Olivia nods briskly. “Good. The sadder she is, the better. My mom always talks more when she’s sad. We’ll dig into Yakov and then see what else you can find out from your gram. I bet we solve this by the weekend.”

  And what does that mean? Finding out if Gram is a spy might still not help bring back her memory. I’m not sure I even want to know if it will change how I see her.

  I swallow hard. “Are you sure you’re up to this?”

  Olivia’s eyes narrow as she looks from the window to me. “Stop babying me. I’m fine. You’re the one who needs help right now, not me. Got it?”

  I nod, because I do know. I know Olivia needs to make new memories to replace the bad. Distraction is perfect for that.

  My phone buzzes. “It’s Max.”

  She rubs a hand across her face and grimaces. “Tell him I said sorry he had to see that last night. Talk about awkward.”

  Max: Hey

  Me: Hey, I’m with Olivia. We’re going to go find the doctor my gram went to yesterday. He might be Russian.

  Max: Oh

  Me: I’ll tell you what happens

  Max: Be careful.

  Me: Olivia says sorry you had to see last night.

  Max: No worries. Tell her I’m sorry it happened. I can meet up with you guys in a couple of hours if you want?

  “He says to not worry about last night and he’s sorry it happened. Also, he wants to meet up with us later?” I scrunch my nose.

  “Maybe. We might need him to hack into his uncle’s computer again.”

  Me: Maybe. I’ll let you know

  Max: okay

  We sit in silence until our stop, then get out and walk in the direction I remember driving with Gram.

  I want to go home and hug Gram and listen to Clay make plane noises. I want to watch Mom paint, and I want to play Boggle with Dad. I think about how, even though my family isn’t perfect, at least they’re still together. I don’t know how I’d feel if I were Olivia.

  I grab her arm and point to the one-story office building. “This is the place.”

  Olivia squares her shoulders. “Our plan is that we need donations for our school play. Got it?”

  I follow as she barges through the front door like she owns the place. “Hello. My name is Piper Collins, and I am collecting donations for our school’s play. Can I speak to your manager?”

  I bite my lip to keep from laughing. Olivia is doing an awesome job channeling Piper’s particular brand of haughty.

  Two women are behind the front desk. One looks up and dismisses us, but the other smiles. “I’ll go get Mr. Zhabin. Please wait here.”

  We wait for five minutes of excruciating silence until an older man lumbers out of the back office. He’s huge—way over six feet—and is pretty much completely bald. The tattoos across his forearms are written in the same Russian Cyrillic as Gram’s journal.

  “Yes,” he says in a thick accent. “Can I help you?”

  Olivia launches into her volunteer story while I study him. Do I know him? Is this the man who chased us in the woods?

  He senses my stare and frowns at me. “Do I know you?”

  “Are you Yakov?” I whisper. I’ve lost my voice along with any courage I might have had.

  “Yes. I am Yakov Zhabin. You look familiar. I know you, da?”

  Olivia lets out a small squeak of terror. Her arm clutches mine, and her breathing escalates.

  “I don’t think so.” I shake my head and smile. “We have to go. My friend needs her inhaler. She has asthma.”

  I turn and drag Olivia behind me. She wheezes impressively.

  As soon as we’re outside, she whispers, “He knew you!”

  I glance behind me. He’s staring after us. His giant form takes up the whole doorway. I can’t get away fast enough.

  “This was a terrible idea,” I say. “I should never have let you talk me into this. What if he calls Gram?”

  “Or turns her in to the government,” Olivia says.

  “Way to make me feel better.” I start walking away as fast as I can without looking back.

  Olivia glances over her shoulder, then pulls me behind the next office building. “I think he’s following us,” she gasps. “Run!”

  19. Amygdala

  Our amygdala is an almond-shaped cluster of neurons. It’s responsible for our memory of emotions, especially fear. It’s our alarm system. Panic is a direct response to this fear. This is why Olivia and I run. This is why we don’t stop until we’re sure there’s no way he followed us.

  * * *

  Olivia bends over and tries to catch her breath. “He was super creepy.”

  “Do you think he really was chasing us?” I look around to make sure we’re safe.

  Olivia stomps her foot and makes a low frustrated sound in her throat. “Now how are we supposed to find out what he knows?”

  We walk in silence. At this point I’m not holding out much hope that I’ll ever translate the journal. We catch the bus to my house and manage to find seats together.

  Olivia sighs. “We need to tell Max. Maybe he can look up information about Yakov.”

  “I was thinking the same thing.”

  I text Max and give him Yakov’s name and the address of his business. The late-afternoon sun shines through the bus window and my stomach rumbles. I missed lunch.

  “He says he’s on it,” I say. “I’m not sure how long it will take, and I need to get home.”

  Olivia nods. “Good idea. You can get Gram to tell you another story.”

  “Maybe.”

  Olivia scrolls through her phone with complete focus. “There’s a surprising number of Yakov Zhabins in the Bay Area,” she says.

  “There is a whole Russian neighborhood in the city.”

  “You mean Russian Hill?”

  “I guess,” I say.

  “I think this one might be our Yakov.” Olivia excitedly jabs her finger at her phone. “See—seventy-one years old and lives in San Rafael. That’s close to his office. Maybe we should stake out his house?”

  The bus lurches to a stop, and we hop off. As we hike up the hill to my house, I think about how different my life is now from how it was last week. If anyone said I’d be investigating an old Russian guy, I’d say they’d been watching too much television. And yet here I am, pretty much agreeing to whatever Olivia comes up with.

  Clay’s screams reach us while we’re still three houses down. I recognize the pitch of his cries immediately and break into a run. I hear Olivia gasping for breath as she tries to keep up.


  The open side door gives a clear picture of the kitchen. Clay is stuck in his high chair, his legs dangling at weird angles. He must have tried to wiggle out. I release the tray, and Olivia scoops him up.

  “Lulu,” he cries pitifully. He reaches his arms for me, and I hug him close.

  “Where’s Gram, little man?” I search each room, calling out for her or Mom.

  “Bye-bye.” His body shudders as tears stream down his chubby cheeks.

  “No one is here,” Olivia says, her eyes bigger than I’ve ever seen them. “They left him alone?”

  I close my eyes, trying to calm down, and play back the scene of us rushing home. Click. “The van is still here,” I say. I run out the front door, Clay’s arms still wound securely around my neck. Gram sits in the driver’s seat of the van, staring straight ahead.

  I open the door. “Gram, are you okay?”

  Her eyes are unfocused and swimming in a fog of confusion. “Where am I?”

  “You’re at home.” I hold Clay back when he tries to hurl himself at her.

  Gram shakes her head. “No. This is not home.”

  My stomach churns with fear. I turn and quietly hand off Clay to Olivia. She walks away, giving us privacy without my having to ask.

  I rub Gram’s hands between mine. Her skin is cold as ice, and I try to warm her. “Gram, you’re home. It’s me, Lulu.”

  I swallow my tears. It takes Gram longer than ever to come back to me. Seconds jump to minutes before she finally responds. Her eyes sharpen, and her mouth tightens like it does when she’s mad.

  “Where have you been, young lady?” she asks. “You didn’t do your chores this morning.”

  I laugh in relief, but that only makes her angrier. If I’m not careful, she’ll ground me before I can explain. “Sorry, Gram. I went to Olivia’s. Her parents are maybe, probably, getting a… divorce. Her dad left last night.”

  “Oh no!” She cups a hand over her mouth. “That poor girl. It’s a terrible thing for a child when her father leaves. Is she okay?”

  “She’s in the house with Clay. We just got home, and he was all alone. Where’s Mom?”