Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

by Gabrielle Zevin

  Luckily, I woke up on my own this time, which was good. I didn’t want to be known as “that chick who’s always falling asleep in class.” (There’s always one; you know who you are.)

  The doctors had said that head traumas can cause exhaustion for “a while.”

  “How long is a while?” I asked.

  “Ballpark?”

  “Ballpark.”

  They nodded and whispered to each other. “Indefinitely” was their very helpful reply.

  “Miss Porter.” Dr. Pillar stopped me on the way out. He had a perfectly round face and was bald with a woolly strip of jet black hair above his ears and neck, like a pair of headphones that had slipped off his head. “Your papa. He calls to say that your math and science skills are hunky-dory, yes?” He had a strange, stilted way of forming sentences and an equally strange accent that I couldn’t quite place, but had a hint of Dracula in it.

  “You are one year ahead in math and science, so this is very good, yes? But I prepare for you a dossier with chemistry and mathematics necessary for mastery of physics.” He handed me a large heavy envelope, crammed with papers.

  In other words, a review. I thanked him. It was nice to know that the school was not peopled entirely with Mrs. Tarkingtons.

  “It is interesting, this. Why you have lost some things and not others…” He studied me, much like you would expect a lab technician to watch an ape. “Maybe it is because you place different things in different areas of brain? We know nothing about brain, yes?”

  It had certainly seemed that this was the case.

  “And four years, is it? This is very odd. Maybe it is puberty onset that alters the place in which you are storing long-term memories? So you have everything before puberty, but nothing after?”

  I wasn’t sure what he was trying to say, but I really did not want to discuss puberty with Dr. Pillar.

  “Perhaps a traumatic event from your youth that you have been very much longing to repress?”

  “Um…perhaps.”

  “Forgive me. I like to make theories for what cannot be readily explained. It is my nature. Do you have any theories about your memory loss, Miss Porter?”

  “I lost a coin toss and I fell down the stairs. Bad luck and clumsiness?”

  “Or, perhaps, randomness and gravity. In this respect, you are walking physics experiment, yes?”

  That was certainly one way to put it.

  Fifth period was lunch, and Ace was waiting for me outside physics to lead me to our place in the cafeteria.

  “You didn’t say you were coming today!” He hugged me and lifted my backpack from my shoulder.

  “It’s fine, Ace. I can carry it myself.”

  “I want to,” he insisted.

  We sat with a group of about twenty kids at a long benchlike table. It was a mix of boys and girls, and I recognized some of them from my classes and a few others from elementary school. Our table was, by far, the noisiest one in the place. You could tell that the kids I ate with considered themselves to be the celebrities of the school. It was like they were putting on a show of having lunch as opposed to actually eating it.

  A curly-haired blonde named Brianna introduced herself and then said, “I just want you to know how brave I think you are. What happened to you is so, so tragic. Isn’t she so brave?”

  I didn’t feel at all brave. Even though her words were ostensibly addressed to me, she seemed to be talking to Ace or the table at large or the whole school.

  She took my hand in hers. “It’s strange because you look like yourself, and yet you’re so different, Naomi.”

  “Different how?” I asked.

  Brianna didn’t answer. She had finished talking to me and was on to the next person.

  Four or five of the people sitting nearest to me also introduced themselves. Some of the girls spoke too loudly, as if I were deaf. Others wouldn’t quite look me in the eye. And then everyone just resumed The Lunch Show and ignored me, which was fine. I figured out pretty early on that these were Ace’s friends, not mine. I wondered where James Larkin sat—I hadn’t seen him yet. Or Will.

  “Does Will usually eat with us?” I asked Ace.

  “Why would you want to know about that?”

  His reaction surprised me. “Did I say something wrong?”

  “No…I know Landsman’s your friend, but I just don’t get that little dude at all.” Ace shook his head. “He eats in the yearbook office. You sometimes eat there, too.”

  In addition to being loud, the cafeteria was kept at near-arctic temperatures, as if the administration was afraid our food might start to spoil while we were in the process of eating it. I actually started to shiver. On the way in, I had noticed kids eating in the courtyard. I said to Ace, “It’s such a nice day, maybe we could eat outside?”

  Before Ace could say anything, Brianna answered, “Um, I guess we could, but we always eat in here.” Then Brianna and a girl whose name I couldn’t remember giggled, like I had suggested we eat on Mars.

  “It’s true,” Ace said with a shrug.

  So I shivered through another ten minutes of lunch before telling him that I needed to get something from my locker.

  “Do you want me to come with you?” Ace asked.

  I shook my head and told him I was fine.

  But I didn’t go to my locker. I was simply tired of being cold. I walked out into the courtyard, but fall was near and it felt even colder to me out there.

  I wandered behind the school. On the boundary between the athletic fields and the rest of campus was a greenhouse.

  I tried the door and found that it was unlocked. It seemed somewhat less cold in there so I sat on a cement bench, in front of what appeared to be a cruel experiment with sunflowers—seven of the plants were mostly dead, but one was thriving. I wondered what the live one was being fed, or if it had just been more of a survivor to begin with.

  I was still contemplating that eighth sunflower when a familiar deep voice said, “You’re shivering.”

  It was James. I decided not to turn around and look at him yet. I didn’t want to reveal how pleased I was to see him again, especially considering that he hadn’t visited me in the hospital or at home.

  “Maybe a little,” I replied casually. “Is it cold in here, by the way? I have trouble telling.”

  “Not to me,” James said, emerging from behind an orange tree with an unlit cigarette hanging from his lips. He placed the cigarette in his back pants pocket. “But that doesn’t mean it isn’t cold to you.” He took off his jacket, which was brown corduroy with a sheepskin collar, and handed it to me. “Here.”

  I put the jacket on. It smelled like cigarettes and paint. “You smoke?”

  “Now and then. Mainly to keep myself out of worse trouble.”

  For additional warmth I slipped my hands into his jacket’s pockets. I could feel keys, a bottle of pills, a lighter, a pen, a few slips of paper.

  “Suppose I should have cleared out my pockets before lending my jacket to a girl,” he said. “What’s in there anyway?”

  I gave him my report.

  “Nothing too controversial, right?”

  Depends on what the pills are for, I thought. “Depends on what the keys are to,” I said.

  He laughed at that. “My mom’s house. My car, which is, at the moment, in the shop.”

  Distantly, I heard the bell ring.

  “You’re still shivering,” James said. He loosened his tie and took off his dress shirt. He had a T-shirt underneath. “Put it on under the jacket. You’ll be warmer.”

  “Won’t you get in trouble?” The dress code at Tom Purdue was pretty strict.

  He said he had another shirt in his locker. His arms were slim and muscular, but not like a guy who worked out. I noticed a two-inch horizontal scar across his right wrist. I wasn’t sure, but it looked like the kind of mark you’d get from trying to off yourself. He saw me looking at it. He didn’t cover it up, but he didn’t choose to explain it either.

&nbs
p; The bell rang again. “You’re going to be late,” he said.

  I looked at my hand. Sixth period was French III in Room 1—, the number had gotten smudged during the course of my morning ablutions. I held out my hand for James to read. “You wouldn’t happen to know where this is, would you?”

  He held my hand like a book. After he’d read it, he closed his hand around my palm and offered to take me himself.

  I liked the way his hand felt over mine. It might have been my imagination but I thought I could still feel the faintest of scabs on his palm from where I’d grabbed him so hard three weeks ago.

  He dropped my hand almost as soon as he grabbed it. When he spoke, his voice was hard and businesslike. “Come on. We’ll be late.”

  I had barely kept up with him as he led me through the halls, but then, at the French classroom door, he lingered. I thought he might say something to me. All he wanted was his jacket. “My jacket,” he said, rather testily for a person who had been so quick to take it off in the first place. I removed the jacket and was about to take off his shirt, too, but he repeated the thing about having another. “You should really dress more warmly,” he said before rushing off without a single glance over his shoulder. I stood there, cold again, and feeling bad that I hadn’t had time to thank him for his help at the hospital.

  I had forgotten nearly all of French, which actually made my French class unintentionally fascinating.

  “Bonjour, Nadine,” said Mme Greenberg in New York–accented French.

  One thing that had never been in question was my name. “Sorry,” I said, “My name is—”

  “En français? Je m’appelle…”

  “Je m’appelle Naomi. Uh…Non, Nadine. Nadine, non.”

  “Ici, nous employons les noms français, Nadine.”

  “Oui,” I said. Fine, if she wanted to call me Nadine, whatever. It sounded like the name of a comment dit-on? French prostitute, but whatever. En anglais, I asked the boy sitting behind me what in the hell she was talking about. Apparently, we had all been assigned French names, which struck me as incredibly idiotic. If I ever went to Paris, people weren’t going to all of a sudden start referring to me as Nadine.

  Seventh period was gym, which I was, of course, excused from, and had been told to use for study hall until I could rejoin. I spent the period sleeping.

  Last period was Advanced Photography Workshop. The teacher’s name was Mr. Weir. He didn’t look all that old to me (he might have still been in his twenties, though I’ve never been good at guessing ages), but he was completely bald. Whether it was elective baldness or compelled, I couldn’t determine. He was wearing a T-shirt and a pin-striped blazer. When I came into the room, he introduced himself. “I’m your favorite teacher, Mr. Weir. Fierce shades.” I liked him immediately. “You sit over there,” he said helpfully, pointing me to a table in the back.

  Advanced Photography Workshop was for kids who’d taken two years of other photography courses, which I had (although I couldn’t remember them, of course). The main point of the class was to do one big independent project. It was basically supposed to be a series of pictures that told a story, preferably a personal one, and our whole grade was based eighty percent on the one assignment, and twenty percent on everything else, which, from what I could tell, mainly came down to class participation. It seemed like a breeze to me, the fat on the rest of my schedule, something I could put off while getting caught up with my more academic subjects.

  On my way out of the classroom, Mr. Weir asked if we could talk. “I don’t know if I should mention this to you, but you came to see me in the summer before your accident. You told me you wanted to drop this class.”

  “Why?”

  “You said something about commitments to yearbook, but I’m not really sure. That may have been an excuse, so as not to hurt my feelings. Of course, you can still drop the class if you want, but I’d be happy to have you.”

  I asked him if he knew what I’d been planning to take instead, but he didn’t. The one class I had actually liked (and that seemed like a small time commitment) I hadn’t even wanted to take. Who could make sense of any of it?

  At least the day was over. Each period had required me to be a slightly different person, and that was exhausting. I wondered if school had always felt this way and whether it was like this for everyone.

  I decided to go to the bathroom. Not because I actually had to go, I just wanted to be alone.

  I was sitting in the stall when I heard Brianna come in.

  She was talking to someone.

  She was talking to someone about me. “Oh, I know, it was so awkward at lunch,” I heard her say. “I mean, she looks the same, but she’s not all there. She used to be so…” She sighed. “But now…” Her voice trailed off. “So tragic. So, so tragic. And you know who I feel really awful for? Ace.”

  She was an idiot, but I didn’t necessarily want to confront her either. What would I say? Besides, she was probably right. I stayed in the stall until she had left.

  To tell you the truth, I found the whole thing pretty depressing.

  I was still sitting there when my cell phone rang. I hadn’t even realized it was on. I looked at the display. It was Will.

  “Don’t tell me you’re at school,” he said.

  “Unfortunately,” I answered.

  “Now I’m pissed. My mother called me, but I didn’t believe her. Why didn’t you mention you were coming today? I would have definitely gone to school.”

  “Your mom said you were sick.”

  “Nothing that major.” He said he’d had an ulcer when he was younger and now he had “this stomach thing” that sometimes acted up, so he’d stayed home. “But I would have shown up for you, Chief. And I’m here now anyway.”

  “If you’re not feeling well, shouldn’t you still be at home?”

  “I never miss yearbook,” he said. “You don’t either. Where are you? I’ll come get you right now.”

  “Sure, Will. I’m in the ladies’. Come on in.”

  “Um…you’re not serious?”

  “No. I’m not.”

  Will laughed. “Right. How about I meet you at yearbook, then? It’s the classroom next door to Weir’s. By the way, you should call your dad to let him know you’re with me.”

  “Hey, Will?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “How come I was going to drop photography?”

  “Photography. Photography. Okay, I think you said it was because you thought that the big project was going to take up too much of your time. Also, you didn’t think it was right for your grade to be based on a personal story. I think you thought it left too much to chance. And…that’s it, I think.”

  I could tell he was leaving something out. My dad always says to listen for the pauses when you want to know if someone’s hiding something. I asked Will if there was anything else.

  “Well. I’m theorizing here. But the first two years of photography are more technical. Like which cameras to use and lighting and processing and Photoshop. But advanced is more creative, more like what your mom does, if you know what I mean. So maybe that was the problem?”

  I didn’t say anything, but it sounded like truth. “I’ll see you upstairs,” I said.

  The staff cheered for me when I entered the room and everyone sang “For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow” and shook my hand and patted me on the back, like I was some kind of hero. Someone held up a camera that turned out to be the camera, and said that I should have my picture taken with my old nemesis. They rounded up yet another camera, and I pretended to be having a fistfight with the camera, which made everyone laugh. I felt a little overwhelmed and maybe even touched, because it was clear how much these people really did like me, as opposed to the ones I had to eat with in the cafeteria.

  All that was wonderful, until I started to realize what the actual business of yearbook entailed. It amounted to a succession of group photos, selling advertisements, and going to conferences about (you guessed it)
yearbooks. All this required an endless series of meetings and debates. I wondered why in the world it could possibly take so much time, money, and effort to slap two hard covers around a stack of photographs.

  The meeting lasted until around seven o’clock at night. There were photos to approve and copy to edit and schedules to arrange. On the way out, I asked Will how many times yearbook met each week. He laughed and said, “You’re joking, right? We meet every day. Some weekends, too.”

  I did the math. That amounted to twenty (plus) hours a week of yearbook.

  Seven hundred and twenty hours a school year—not including weekends or yearbook conferences.

  Any way you looked at it: a hell of a lot of time.

  I hoped that I would get my memory back, so that I would remember what I had liked about yearbook in the first place. I didn’t want to let all these nice people down.

  In the car on the way home, Will couldn’t stop talking yearbook. The guy was obsessed, and I guess with seven hundred twenty hours a year, you’d have to be. I mainly found myself ignoring him. I’d nod every now and again and that seemed to be all the response that was required on my part.

  I wanted to ask him why he (I) liked yearbook so much, but I thought it might hurt his feelings.

  “You’re awfully quiet,” he said.

  I told him I was tired, which I was.

  “I’ve been talking too much,” he said. “I guess I just got excited that you were back. It’s not anywhere near as much fun without you, Chief.”

  We were halfway to my house and stopped at a red light when I spotted James Larkin walking along the sidewalk. It had started drizzling, and even with whatever strangeness had passed between us in the greenhouse, I felt like we should offer him a ride. I asked Will if he would mind pulling the car over, and he replied, “The chap looks like he wants to be by himself.”

  I reminded him how much James had helped me in the hospital, and how I had never had a chance to really thank him. “Plus,” I added, “he was nice enough to return the yearbook camera.” I knew that last part would definitely get Will. He sighed like it was really putting him out and muttered something about it “costing a lot of money to keep starting and stopping the car all over the place.” So I told him he could just drop me off, that I’d walk the rest of the way home. “Yeah right, I’m really going to leave my injured friend in the rain,” he said. “I don’t have all day to chauffeur you and your buddies around.”