by Suzanne Weyn
That night I tell Mom I want to drop out. You’d think I told her I want to move to Antarctica—or the moon! “Absolutely not!” she cries looking shaken.
“I’ll take the GED!”
“It’s not the same as graduating,” she says. “What about college?”
“I thought I needed a scholarship. I’m not getting one now.”
“You can go to community college.”
“What good is two years of college going to do me if I can’t afford to finish?”
“It will give me two years to save.”
“Come on, Mom! You can barely pay the bills each month as it is. How are you going to save? I’ll work at the diner full time.”
Zack comes into the room while we argue about this, going around in circles on the subject. We’re so involved that we barely notice him until he shouts. “Stop!” His hands are over his ears. He scrunches his eyes shut. “Stop!”
Obeying his command, we stare at him, surprised by the outburst.
“If Mira doesn’t want to go to school, she shouldn’t have to,” he tells Mom.
“Why not?” Mom asks him gently, patiently.
“Mira is special now. She’s not like the other kids. I know what it’s like.”
“You do?” Mom questions.
“Yes. I’m special, too, so I know.” Mom strokes his hair affectionately.
“It’s great to be special,” Mom says, “but you also have to learn how to live in the regular world with other people.”
“No,” Zack disagrees. “We’re in our own worlds. It’s better there.”
“It’s time for you to go take a bath and get ready for bed,” Mom tells Zack. “Mira and I have to talk privately.” Once he’s upstairs she turns her attention back to me. “Is that what you really want to be—a full-time diner waitress?” Mom asks, sounding defeated.
“I don’t know what I want to be. I just want a job until the Snap Girl commercial comes through. I’ve already called Carl, and he’s agreed to put me on an afternoon shift. Since I worked there part time before the accident, he doesn’t have to train me.”
“Why are you doing this, Mira?”
“I don’t fit in at school anymore. I’m not going to graduate with my class, anyway. They won’t let me play sports because they say I have an unfair advantage. Most likely Snap Girl will want me to do something for them and I’ll have to be more available, anyway.”
Mom sits at the table and lets her head drop into her hands. “All right.”
Standing, I hug her. “You’ll see this is the right thing. The diner is just temporary. The Snap Girl thing is going to work.”
I get into bed, my head buzzing from the day. I’m overstimulated, the way kids get on Halloween when they’ve had too much candy.
My imagination goes wild, playing out in my mind a little drama in which I really tell off those idiots who failed my essay. In it I toss my fake arm at them and tell them to get real. It’s a new world. My arm comes to life on its own and starts chasing them around. I go through this scenario a few times, because it makes me feel good.
I imagine what I would do if I didn’t have school everyday. At first I think of all the things I’ve always wanted to do. Skydive. Surf. Perform in a band.
Thinking of that makes me want to see what’s going on with Electric Storm, so I take my phone from my nightstand and go to the website Matt put up for us. It’s pretty good, with cool graphics, a photo gallery, and videos. I check out a video of their latest gig. Matt’s right. He’s not a great vocalist. Niles, though, has written a new song. It’s about a sorceress in a forest who is there some of the time, and other times she disappears. Though he doesn’t usually sing, Matt and he sing this one together. I notice that he leans on his grandfather’s cane, which has a strange trollish man at the head. He has a quirky, low, throaty voice. It works, at least on this song.
Niles is a good guy.
A full-length mirror hangs on the back of my bedroom door. I’m about to go to bed, so I wear the tank top and shorts that I sleep in. Rotating to get a full look, I stop to check over my shoulder for a rear view.
I am all muscle.
No kidding. Anyone would think that I spend all day lifting heavy weights and training, though I don’t. Someone else would start to lose muscle tone, get flabby. I become more muscular by the day, but not in a bulky, bodybuilder way. I’m a little cut, though more than that, I’m just completely solid.
“Your body is adjusting to the chip beautifully,” Dr. Hector tells me at my next visit. “You’re going to start to see changes as your body begins working at optimal performance.”
“Starts?” I question. “You mean this is only the beginning?”
“It is.”
“What kind of changes?” I ask, worried.
“You tell me at your next visit. I don’t want to put ideas in your mind. How’s your memory these days?”
“Great!” I report.
“Let’s see.” He holds up a card on which a long string of random numbers are printed. In about sixty seconds, he puts it down. “How many numbers can you remember?”
I recite them back, forty in all.
“That’s amazing!” he says quietly. “You remembered every number correctly.”
“Maybe optimal performance has already set in,” I suggest.
“It looks that way,” he agrees. He pulls out some pictures of my brain that were taken in the MRI. “See this fuzzy area here,” he says showing an area of my brain that looks like cottage cheese. “That was your brain right after the accident. There are areas of damage, especially here.” He indicates one section that looks darker than the bits around it. He turns over a different scan. “This is from your most recent MRI.”
“Colorful,” I observe.
“You bet it is! Your brain neurons are blinking on all circuits. Your brain is not merely as good as it once was, it’s much better.”
This proves to me that I don’t need school anymore. I’ve made the right decision.
NOVEMBER
“Funny to run into you here,” I tell Niles. We lean against the railing of the diner’s handicapped ramp. He’s perched on the top rung, his cane balanced against it. I’m on my fifteen-minute break and I saw Niles approach across the parking lot.
The afternoon’s cold rain has subsided, but everything is still wet, puddles everywhere. Everyone has started wearing coats and scarves, but I’m just fine in a sweater because I’m not bothered by the cold these days.
“Not all that coincidental,” he says. He looks down and away for a moment, but when he returns to me, his eyes are playful. “I heard you were working here.”
“From who?”
“Elana.”
She called me the day I left school and I’d told her I hoped to get a job here. She called several times after that, but I never answered her back. It seems easier to cut ties with the past. I’m not that person anymore.
Even so, I am glad to see Niles.
He looks different to me than the last time. My vision keeps advancing. It’s becoming some version of ultra HDTV. Every strand of his hair shifts softly, tossed gently by the wet breeze. He’s lost weight, which gives him an animal sharpness I’ve never noticed before. It makes him look older.
“I didn’t just come to see you. I was buying some new strings for my guitar,” he says.
“You couldn’t 3-D print up some new ones?” I ask, only half kidding.
He smiles. “There’s probably a way to do it, but I haven’t figured it out. There’s a music store place down the block,” he says. “I went there to get the strings. Then I saw the diner and decided to drop in for a veggie burger. I heard they were good here and I’m trying to go vegetarian.”
“Good for you,” I say.
But I hope he’s lying. I wish that he had come to see me, and that the veggie burger and guitar strings were an excuse.
Niles shifts from one leg to the other, as if deciding what to say next.
“How much break do you have left?” Niles asks.
“It was over three minutes ago.”
“Then we’d better get inside.”
“Oh, they’ll never fire me,” I say.
“Is that so?” he asks, amused. “And why is that?”
“Because I’m probably the greatest server this place has ever seen,” I tell him. I grin, but it’s the truth. “I can sprint across the entire diner in seconds. I can carry ten fully loaded plates, five balanced on each arm. I never forget an order—don’t even have to write it down. I never complain that my feet hurt, because they never do. And last night I even strong-armed a drunken idiot customer and escorted him out the door.”
“Wow!”
I’m bragging, but it’s hard to stop when Niles is shooting me an admiring look like he is now.
“He’d been bothering Karen, one of the other waitstaff, and I just grabbed his shoulders and walked him right on out. The shocked expressions all around me were hilarious. I even got applause.”
Niles smiles. “So you’re a waitperson and a bouncer all in one.”
My break is over, though, and despite my confidence I need to get back. “Come in and have that veggie burger,” I suggest. “They’re good here, especially with double cheese.”
“Sounds great.”
We smile at each other as though there’s suddenly something shared between us, even though I can’t name it. I push off the railing to go inside, but Niles grabs my arm lightly. “Why don’t you come back and sing with us?”
“Is that really why you came here? To ask me that again?” I realize this time that I hope it is. Just working and going home is getting really lonely.
“Yeah,” he admits. “That’s the only reason I came, really. The rest was just an excuse. I’m a pretty lousy liar.”
He is.
Inside, I put in his veggie burger order. Placing a tall orange soda with no ice in front of him, I lean against the opposite table, since we’re not allowed to sit with the customers. “How did you know I wanted orange with no ice?” he asks, clearly pleased.
“We used to rehearse together three times a week,” I say. “And when we went out afterward you always ordered orange with no ice.”
“I didn’t know you were noticing,” Niles replies. He’s flirting.
“I noticed,” I flirt back.
“Or is it that you have super memory now?”
“That, too,” I say. “It’s very strange. Everything I remember is very sharp, totally clear. Like, I used to remember going to the beach when I was little. I love the beach, and it’s a good memory. Now, though, when I think of it, I can hear the crash of the waves and the screams of the gulls. I can feel the itch of the sand in my suit. It’s so vivid that I have to scratch.”
“That must be nice,” he says, “except for the sandy bottom.”
“It is, but it works with every kind of memory. Bad ones, too.”
Immediately, I wish I hadn’t said that.
“Like the accident?” Niles guesses.
I nod grimly while fighting back the impulse to resurrect that memory. It’s too late. The tearing of metal roars in my ears, as does the sound of Matt and Niles shouting. And the pain! The searing burn of torn flesh, the fiery agony as my bones cracked.
I feel it all as though it’s happening over again. With this new ability that’s getting stronger all the time, I experience agony that I never recalled before. This time is stronger than the last. What will the next memory bring?
I don’t want to go through this the next time.
Niles stands abruptly. “Whoa!” Bracing my arms, he lowers me into a chair. “Steady there, Supergirl. You’re about to faint. Put your head down.”
I do and the blood trickles back into my brain. It helps, but not totally. I keep seeing Matt’s blood-smeared face. I smell the gasoline and hear the screaming. “Get back! It’s going to explode.” I feel the firm grip of the firefighter dragging me away.
These flashbacks and other horrible ones—the agonizing ride in the ambulance, the many surgeries, the days of nausea and slow recovery—have happened to me a lot in the last two weeks.
I’ve developed a trick for controlling it.
With a lot of concentration, I focus on a white screen in my mind. When thoughts try to enter the white, I turn them into a rubber ball and bounce them out again, as if my mind is a handball court. All I want is the blank wall.
Keeping my mind under that kind of control all the time is difficult. The alternatives are worse, though. Other people have buried—suppressed—memories. I want these to go even deeper underground.
Karen hurries by. “Your order is up, hon.”
Then she doubles back, noticing the state I’m in.
“What happened?” she asks Niles.
“She almost fainted.”
I lift my head, still crouched on the chair. “I’m okay.”
“Stay there. I’ll get you some water,” Karen offers.
I pull myself straight. Though I’m a lot better, I still feel weak.
“Feeling any better?” Niles checks.
Nodding, I wipe my sweating forehead with a napkin. “Some memories are better forgotten,” I say.
“You’ve changed so much!” Sylvia Marcus says when I enter her office at Snap Girl. I’m about to shoot my first Snap Girl commercial.
I smile, preparing for her to gush. So I’m surprised by the worry that clouds her face. I’ve never looked better in my life—so what’s the problem?
“It’s the new me!” I tell her, smiling wide.
“You look great, but for us the old you was better,” she says.
“Are you kidding?” I cry. “I’m more in shape than ever. My hair keeps getting thicker, my skin is practically glowing, my muscles are more ripped.”
“Exactly. You were a regular girl who needed lots of Snap Girl products to improve her look. Are you even wearing makeup right now?”
“No,” I admit.
Sylvia hunches, propping her chin on two fists as she scrutinizes me. “I’m a genius,” she says after a moment. “We’ll do a before-and-after sequence with you. We’ll use the Polaroids we took of the old you and then juxtapose them with photos of the current you.”
“And you’ll say it’s because I use Snap Girl makeup?”
“We’ll put some on you, of course.”
“I’m not wearing it right now, but I have been wearing it.”
Sylvia stands, then comes around to the front of her desk. “That’s wonderful! That was you then. This is you now. It’s all essentially true.” She studies me once again. “Why do you look so fabulous, if I may ask?”
“I have a chip in my brain that helps send messages to my fake arm and leg. It also helps with the brain damage that I—”
“The important thing is that it’s working,” Sylvia says, cutting me off. “Let’s get you to makeup.”
At the door, she stops. “I wonder … do you think I could get a chip like that?”
“I don’t know. I mean, I was in a nearly fatal accident with an oil truck.”
“Hmm. Right. But still … there’s got to be a way.”
“It would probably be extremely expensive,” I say as we head down the hall together.
“Yeah, well, so is a facelift, and it doesn’t have all the other side benefits. I would kill for your hair alone.”
That Sylvia is so enthused is a relief. For a moment I thought she wouldn’t use me for the commercial. The money will be great. Diner customers constantly recognize me from the news pieces, which is a thrill for them and for me. I’d like to keep it all going, especially the money.
Just as we’re about to head into makeup, a man in a suit pulls Sylvia aside. They speak in agitated tones and glance my way constantly.
Sylvia returns to me looking apologetic. “Did you quit school, Mira?”
“It just didn’t, uh, seem relevant anymore,” I say. “I’m just so beyond that now. Old me, new me. You
know. And I’ll need to be available, since I’m working for you now.”
“Which means you’re no longer a high school swimming champ, am I right about that?”
“Right.”
“You’re a diner waitress now?”
“How do you know all this?”
“We have people who research. We like to be current with our spokespeople. I’m sorry to tell you this, because you do look fabulous, but my boss just told me we can’t use you. High school dropout diner waitress who uses Snap Girl cosmetics is not the image we’re after.”
“Everyone doesn’t know that,” I argue. “I could go back to school, even quit the diner.”
But I’m already gone in Sylvia’s mind. I can see it on her face. She holds out her hand to shake. “You’re so inspiring. I hope it all works out well for you. Good luck, Mira”
Feeling strangely numb, I take the elevator down. As I step off, the lobby spins. I reach for something to grab on to but claw at air …
My eyes open and Dr. Hector looks down at me. “Had a nice nap?”
The room looks just like the last hospital room I was in. “What happened?”
“You’re okay now.”
“What happened?” I repeat.
“Your blood pressure went a little crazy. We’ve got it under control, though. Has this happened before?”
“Once. Twice maybe.” I don’t know that blood pressure caused the fainting, but it probably did. “Can I go home?”
“Not yet. Your mother just left, but we talked about something we could try, in order to avoid this happening again.” He goes on to explain that he wants to essentially implant a more powerful chip that should make every system in my body work at even fuller efficiency. “Right now the signals from your brain aren’t being fully communicated and it’s causing your nervous system to work overtime. The stronger chip should take the burden off your nerves, and therefore lower your blood pressure.”
“I can’t keep fainting like this,” I say. “I don’t want that.”
“Of course not.”
So, I have yet another operation.