Blank

by Trina St. Jean

  “I don’t mind if you did,” I say.

  She shakes her head. “That wouldn’t have been right. And I’m so happy to be able to give it to you now.”

  She leaves me standing there, eyeing the box. I’m pretty sure the Girl was squeaky clean. The more I dig into her life, though, another worry more plausible than a dark secret is building. What if I discover I don’t like this Girl very much? Then what?

  I’m nervous, but I grab the box, sit on the bed and, before I can chicken out, slowly lift off the lid. At the top of the box are loose pieces of paper: two ticket stubs for concerts I don’t remember going to, two fortune-cookie papers (Keep your face to the sunshine and you will never see shadows and Help! I’m being held prisoner in a Chinese bakery!) and a note with the words I am not afraid of tomorrow, for I have seen yesterday and I love today. —William Allen White printed neatly on it. I read the words again and again, trying to let their meaning sink in, and then I place the papers on the bedside table.

  There are a couple of photos, too, of the Girl with Megan and some guys in baseball caps, sitting on some bleachers. The photos go on the table, and then I pull out a green velvet book with a gold clasp. Diary is written in gold-embossed script on the front.

  Now we’re talking. A deep breath, and I open the cover. The first entry is written in the awkward printing of a young kid, probably grade one or two.

  Dear Diary,

  I got this from Grandma for Chrissmas. I love it.

  I love my family. Chrissmas is funn.

  Yers Truly,

  Jessica

  Well, that was insightful.

  There are only three more pages of entries after that, in the same childish handwriting. They’re only a few sentences each, about having a nice day at school and helping Father feed the bison and having a picnic with Stephen on the front lawn. I flip through the rest of the diary, hoping to find some later entries, when she was older and, I hope, less sickeningly sweet, but the pages are empty. I toss the diary onto the desk, and it sends the little papers and photos flying off the edge and onto the floor. I ignore them and reach back into the box.

  Near the bottom, there are trinkets that I pull out one by one: a beaded First Nations-style bracelet; a smooth stone with a perfect round hole in the center; golden wire twisted to spell Jessica and then formed into a pin; a plastic toy bison; a peacock feather.

  These are childhood treasures, things that must have meant something to little Jessica at some point. I wish I could care about them, wish they took me back to happy times, but they are the trinkets of a stranger. At the bottom of the box is one more thing: a floral spiral notebook with Journal on the cover.

  I reach into the box, intending to open the cover of the notebook. But I can’t do it. Not yet. I toss everything back into the box, wedge the lid on and shove it under my bed.

  I have had enough disappointment for one day.

  Icing on the Cake

  Mother says she has good news: Megan is going to stop in for a visit after breakfast, on the way to her orthodontist’s appointment. I go about my cereal preparation nonchalantly, as if my BFF dropping by is no biggie. But I feel jittery as I eat my Fruit Loops. Does she know it was me who hung up on her that night in the hospital? What am I going to wear? What will we talk about? Are two people still best friends if one of them no longer remembers the other? At the hospital, Megan seemed sweet and nice. Everything I am not.

  The doorbell finally rings at 10:32, and I saunter up to the door as casually as possible. My best friend, my best friend, I repeat to myself as I pull the door open and turn on a great-to-see-you-but-not-such-a-huge-deal smile. Megan, hair pulled up in a ponytail and lips glossy, stands with a red-haired woman holding a plate of cupcakes. Toothpicks stick out of the cupcakes and plastic wrap stretches over them, creating a domed mini world with pink-icing mountains.

  “Greetings. Hello,” I say. They say hi back, and then we stand and look at each other, smiling back and forth, until Megan clears her throat.

  “Jess, this is my Mom,” she says.

  I nod. “I guessed that.”

  “So nice to see you, Jessica,” her mom says slowly. “Is it all right if we come in?”

  I stumble backward a little and wave them in. “Sorry,” I mumble. “I’m such an idiot these days.”

  Once in the entrance, Megan’s mother leans close to me, the cupcakes between us. “Not at all, my dear. To us, you are wonderful. We are so happy you are all right.” Her eyes are misty, and I’m feeling bad for making her uncomfortable when I see Megan rolling her eyes behind her.

  Mother appears, and everyone exchanges pleasantries. Then, more quickly than I had planned for, Megan and I are alone in the living room. Two cupcakes sit exposed, torn from their utopian bubble, on small plates on the coffee table.

  “So,” Best Friend says, “how are things going, Jess? Are you happy to be home?” I study her, trying to use my rusty people-reading skills to decide whether she truly wants to know or is only making polite chitchat. She blushes. “Stupid question. Sorry.”

  I shake my head. “No, no, not at all.” I pick up a cupcake and plunge my teeth into the pink frosting. Megan studies her hands as I munch away. I have no clue what she expects from this visit—laughter, some hugs or a meaningful baring of my soul. I read a magazine article in the hospital about making friends that said you should always “be yourself.” Not so easy if you don’t know who that is.

  There are crumbs all over the front of my sweat-shirt when I finish, so I stand up and shake them off. “You’d think I was raised in a barn. Oh, wait—I practically was!” My laugh is too loud. “But let’s not talk about me.” There’s one of the Girl’s photo albums sitting on the coffee table, so I open the cover and flip the pages. “What was this all about?”

  In several photos, Megan, the rest of the Posse and I have our hair pulled back and wear hockey jerseys and sunglasses. Three guys wearing dresses and makeup stand beside us, hands on their hips.

  Megan laughs. “That was for health class. Mrs. Fletcher wanted us all to spend a day being the opposite sex, to try to understand them better. Harrison borrowed your lipstick, so you were pretty psyched.”

  “Harrison?”

  Her eyes widen. I’ve obviously taken her aback, but she hides her surprise well. “Oh, you know, the guy you like.”

  I give her a blank look, so she points to the tall skinny guy next to me in the photo. Could he be one of the guys with ball caps in the photo that was in the shoebox? I can’t tell if he’s cute or not with the bright pink lips and blond wig. I lean in closer, and Megan flips the pages until she stabs her finger down on a photo of a bunch of guys in regular clothes. “Him. You’ve had a thing for him since, I don’t know, kindergarten or something.”

  He’s okay-looking, I guess. Nothing special. It should bother me that I don’t even know who he is, but mostly I am focusing on holding myself together with my BFF.

  “Tell me,” I say, “what’s going down with the rest of the Pink Posse?”

  She looks at me with a tired expression. Yes, honey, I want to say, this is Me Being Myself. I don’t have much to work with.

  “The who?”

  My cheeks feel warm. “The Pink Posse. I thought that’s what we called ourselves? You know, the gang?”

  “Oh, right,” she says. “Only Kerry still calls us that. They’re fine. Busy with tests right now, and essays. And we’re doing a fundraiser at school to build a well in Africa. A bake sale and stuff.”

  We look at each other, and my mind scrambles to find what would we have said to each other only a few months ago on this very couch. I come up empty.

  “And we miss you, of course,” she adds.

  I reach down and pick up the other cupcake. “Want one? Made ’em myself.” I chuckle at my lame joke, and she gives me a courtesy smile.

  “No, thanks. I had one at home earlier.”

  “Aw, come on,” I say. “Live it up.”

  She shakes
her head, and when I glance down at the cupcake in my hand, I am inspired suddenly, not by a real memory we share, but close enough: the photo from my album. The one of me mashing a cupcake into her face.

  “Hey, Meg,” I say. “Thanks for coming today.” She looks relieved and is about to say something when my hand reaches over and smashes the cupcake into her nose. She leaps up from the couch like it’s on fire.

  “What the—?” she says, covering her nose. “Why’d you—?” She wants to say more, I know, but she’s holding back. Taking it easy on her damaged, fragile friend.

  “Oops,” I say. She is not laughing like she was in the snapshot. Chunks of pink icing slide down her cheeks.

  I’m sure we’re both thinking the same thing: this new Jessica is completely screwed in the head.

  Cerebral

  I lie in my bed, playing the cupcake scene over and over in my head until I am completely disgusted with myself. Then I jump up and face off against the Girl in the Mirror. I give her a pep talk à la Ruby in rehab: “You want your life back? Well then, get your butt out of this room and go get it!”

  I march down the stairs, on the hunt for photos, home videos, whatever I can dig up. Mother, in a red spandex outfit that is not her style at all, is sitting cross-legged on the living room floor. A thin woman on TV instructs her audience to breathe, and Mother obeys.

  “Jessica,” she says between breaths, “want to do yoga?” She brings her hands together in front of her chest, and I try to hide the smirk creeping across my face. She isn’t exactly what I’d call a Zen person.

  “Another time,” I say.

  “Tomorrow,” she says, leaning forward so her head nearly touches the floor, “I’d like to take you shopping. Maybe get some new summer clothes.”

  “Whatever.”

  The yoga must be working miracles, because Mother doesn’t blink at my lack of enthusiasm. “Great.” She gets up on her knees for what the TV lady calls a downward dog. That’s my cue to hightail it to the basement.

  I browse the dusty bookshelves for photo albums. There are National Geographic magazines, an old set of encyclopedias, books on Egypt, but nothing really meaningful for me to study. At the end of the last shelf, something catches my eye: The Human Body. The table of contents shows Chapter Five: The Brain. In the dim light of the basement, I learn:

  The human brain has almost 100 billion neurons, and from 550 trillion to 1,000 trillion (a quadrillion!) synaptic connections with other neurons.

  The human brain generates 12 to 25 watts of power when “awake.” This is enough to illuminate a lightbulb.

  The weight of the human brain is about 3 pounds.

  The brain is about 75 percent water.

  While an elephant’s brain is physically larger than a human’s, the human brain is about 2.5 percent of our total body weight and an elephant’s is 0.18 percent. Humans were long thought to have the largest brain relative to their body size than any species. This ratio was supposed to explain our intelligence, but that theory is now known to be false. Many animals, such as mice, have similar ratios.

  The human brain is the fattest organ in the body; its solid matter is composed of 60 percent fat.

  Your brain uses 20 percent of the total oxygen in your body.

  The common belief that humans only use 10 percent of their brains is not true. Every part of the brain has a known function.

  Harvard maintains a Brain Bank where over 7,000 human brains are stored for research purposes.

  When we are born, our brains weigh about 350-400 grams, and we have almost all the brain cells we will ever have. The baby brain is closer to its full adult size than any other organ in the body.

  The human brain reaches its full size in adolescence. It shrinks between 14 and 25 percent in the years to come. The male brain tends to shrink faster than the female one.

  At any one moment your brain is receiving about 100 million pieces of information that are fed into the nervous system through the ears, eyes, nose, tongue, and touch receptors in the skin.

  The brain can survive four to six minutes without oxygen before it starts to die.

  The chapter has a full-page diagram of the brain, the pink and gray parts labeled with their scientific names. There’s a section on how memory works, plus brief descriptions of terms like neurology and psychology and psychiatry.

  “Jessica!” Mother’s voice carries down the stairs. “Want to make cinnamon buns?”

  I flip through the pages quickly, my hands shaking. There’s one thing I want to know about the human brain, the only thing that really matters. But it’s nowhere on these pages. I slam the book shut and shove it back on the shelf.

  “Jessica? Are you down there?”

  “Coming!” I call, but I don’t move—not yet. I lean against the wall and close my eyes. There is no answer to my question. No one knows how to fix a broken brain.

  Halfway through kneading dough for the buns, I fake a headache so I can hide in my room and learn more online about the brain. Google brings up tons of stuff: a complex, color-coded diagram of the brain’s anatomy and scientific articles with words like oligodendrocytes and rhomben-cephalon. One article leads me to a website all about TBI—traumatic brain injury. There are discussion boards where people have posted topics like Can’t stop losing my temper and Dizziness? and No one understands. I pore over the posts, and it’s amazing to know I am not alone. But not one person mentions completely losing their past.

  Next I search for retrograde amnesia. A news article tells the story of a football player who, after a car accident, lost forty-six years of memories but recovered to become a motivational speaker. Other articles talk about people who arrive in hospitals and can’t remember their own names, yet are capable of reciting Shakespearean sonnets or know the capitals of every country.

  At the bottom of one site, written in red, are the words Register to join a TBI support group. I enter my email address and hit Send. Seconds later a message arrives asking me to activate my account. I read it over three times, my finger poised over the mouse.

  No guarantees, Super Doc said.

  But activating my account would feel like admitting that this is here to stay, that I will never go back to normal. I close my email without registering.

  I am not ready to go there.

  Shop Till You Drop

  When Mother sits on the edge of my bed and shakes my shoulder in the morning, I groan and roll over. But she doesn’t give up.

  “Jessica,” she says, “shopping, remember?”

  It’s still dark and I’m oh so cozy. But this day is a big deal for her, I bet—a regular mother and daughter going out for some retail therapy. It’s a two-hour drive to the big city, so I had promised we’d leave early. I will my eyes to open.

  “Be down in five,” I croak.

  She leaves and I crawl out of bed and throw on some clothes. As I come down the stairs, Father’s voice carries from the kitchen.

  “Let’s cancel it,” he says, “and do something low-key. Only the four of us.”

  I step into the kitchen. “Cancel what?”

  Father shrugs. “Oh, a little get-together for my birthday. Your mom goes a little crazy about these things and sent out invitations, like, five years ago. The big five-oh is a big deal, apparently.” He stands up with his coffee cup and plants a kiss on Mother’s cheek. “Have fun tearing up the town today, ladies.”

  I scarf down a bowl of cereal and then we are in the car, heading down the gravel road as the sun rises over the fields of hay bales. The windshield is slightly foggy, so Mother turns on the heat. With the warm air and the soft tinkle of gravel hitting the underside of the car, I can already feel my head nodding forward in sleep.

  Mother tells me which mall we’re going to—the smaller one, with easier parking—and which department stores are having sales. There is no way I will be able to keep my eyes open for the long drive. We turn onto the highway, and a few miles of silence later we pull into a gas station. I pop
the door open as soon as we roll up to the pumps.

  “Want anything to drink?” I ask. Mother shakes her head.

  I’m looking for a bottle of juice in the cooler when I spot something better: a Red Bull energy drink. This could be the pick-me-up I need. The tall blond guy at the cash looks about my age, but I don’t recognize him. He obviously knows me—everyone in this small town probably does—because he’s watching me with interest as I walk up to the counter.

  “Want something with even more kick?”

  “Huh?” I answer with my usual wit and charm.

  “More of a boost?” He slides a small green box of mints across the counter. “Jolt mints. They’re caffeine pills.”

  I nod and pick them up. He rings up the Red Bull, and I pull the cash out of my pocket to wait for the total. “Four bucks,” he says.

  “And these?” I ask, shaking the box of mints.

  He laughs. “Can’t get those here. They’re on me. It’s the only thing that pulls me through this morning shift. Consider it a little gift, Jess.” He winks.

  I mumble my thanks. I’m about to push the door open when I stop and crack open the Red Bull. I’m not aware of Mother’s opinion on these kinds of things, but I’m sure she has one. I pop two mints in my mouth, chug them down with the Red Bull and pocket the box.

  “Whoa!” Blondie says. “That should do the trick.”

  I wave my thanks and get back in the car. The first stretch of the drive, Mother and I make polite conversation about what clothes I need, Stephen’s geothermal experiment in the basement, where we should eat lunch. We don’t mention the accident or school or the bison or anything else of any significance. I am kind of enjoying myself. So this is mother-daughter bonding. I can do this.