Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

by Gabrielle Zevin

  I just shook my head.

  Alice kissed me on both cheeks and told me she was so proud of me. And then the guy who had played Guildenstern called her. “Who do you think is cuter? Rosencrantz or Guildenstern?” Alice asked. “I simply can’t decide who I prefer.”

  “What about Yvette?” I asked her.

  “Yvette, Yvette, sweet Yvette.” Alice sighed heavily. We both turned to watch Yvette, who was laughing with another girl in the play. “We are in high school, and that means I don’t have to marry anybody.”

  My curfew was midnight, and I was about to get a ride home with the doomed Yvette, who like most doomed people seemed to have no clue, when someone tapped me on the shoulder. “Hey, Hamlet,” James said.

  “You’re late,” I replied.

  He shrugged. “I didn’t think I was going to come.” He took a cigarette out of his jacket and lit it.

  “Aren’t you gonna offer me one?” I asked.

  “I would, but I didn’t think you smoked.”

  “Still, it’s nice to be asked. Courtesy, you know?”

  “Truthfully”—James inhaled deeply, and his gray eyes were lit by the flame from his cigarette—“truthfully I don’t want to be the guy who ruins your pretty pink lungs.”

  It sounded an awful lot like flirting. I’d been down that road with James before, and it never led anywhere.

  I said that I had to go home. He offered to drive me, but I told him that Yvette was driving me. “In case I don’t see you again,” I said, “I just wanted to say that I thought the installation was beautiful.”

  James tossed off my praise. “Yeah, turned out pretty decent. I’m only doing this play thing to have something extra to put on my college applications in case my first choice doesn’t work out.”

  “Well, it doesn’t matter why,” I said. “It was beautiful anyhow.” I turned to leave.

  He finished his cigarette in a single inhale. “Wait a second. Don’t I get to compliment you, too?”

  I shook my head and told him it was too late for that. “I’d probably assume it was in response to mine.”

  “I was afraid of that,” he said.

  “It was nice seeing you, James.” I pointed him in the direction of the drinks and the partygoers with curfews later than mine.

  “I don’t drink. I mean, I used to. But not anymore,” he said. “And besides, the person I came to see was you. You remember that class I told you about?”

  I did.

  “They’re showing Hannah and Her Sisters on Tuesday night. You said that was one of your favorites, right?” he said. “It’s cool if you bring the jock, too. Do you have a piece of paper?” I held out my hand, palm facing out, and he took a black Sharpie from his pocket and wrote the screening information on my palm.

  I had no intention of going. The play had made me fall farther behind in my schoolwork, and I had yearbook, and James did not seem like a good bet for a boyfriend or even a friend, not that I was looking for either. In fact, I tried to wash his note from my hand that night before bed, but those Sharpies really have staying power, even on skin. Tuesday rolled around, and as I could still see it, ever so slightly, I decided what the hell.

  Dad dropped me off, and he told me to call him when the movie was done. It was a pain not to be able to drive myself places, but I didn’t really have time to take driving lessons until the summer.

  It seemed to me that every senior citizen in Tarrytown was there. Having seen the movie before, I didn’t have to pay too much attention to it, which was lucky, because the old people made quite a lot of noise unwrapping candies and whispering to each other, What did she just say? I found myself thinking of the last time I’d seen it with Mom. Mom’s favorite part was when this guy tells this woman (not Hannah, one of the sisters) to read a certain page of a book because it had a line of poetry on it that reminded him of her. The line was “No one, not even the rain, has such soft hands,” or something like that, and it always made Mom cry. I wondered if Nigel had done stuff like that for Mom, and if that’s why she’d left Dad for him.

  The movie ended, and I decided to wait for James to come out of the projection booth, just to be polite.

  When he finally emerged, he asked me how I had liked seeing the movie again.

  I guess I was still thinking about Mom, because I found myself telling him all about Dad and Mom and Nigel. How I kind of wished Mom had seen the play, because she really got a kick out of that sort of thing. How I kind of wanted to see her, but I didn’t know how to do it without making a big production of it. The horrible name I’d called her the last time I’d seen her—

  James cut me off. “None of that matters. If you want to see her, you should go. Take off and do it. Don’t wait.” He started talking about his brother, and then he cut himself off, too. “Oh, you don’t want to hear all my sad stories. I can’t even bear to tell them anymore. Screw the past, right?”

  Screw the past. It made me so happy to hear someone say that. I felt lighter, like when I first cut my hair.

  His gray eyes clouded for a moment, and then he laughed. “Say, Naomi, there’s something real serious I’ve been meaning to ask you,” he said, his voice suddenly filled with gravity again.

  “What?”

  He grinned. “Whatever happened to that shirt I lent you?”

  The dress shirt was hanging in my closet at home. “I washed it,” I told him. “Come get it now, if you’d like.”

  Dad was locked away in his office working when we got there.

  “Do you want to meet my dad?” I whispered.

  “I’ve already met him,” James reminded me. “In the hospital.”

  “Right. I’m sure he’d like to thank you, though.”

  “Next time,” James said shyly. “I don’t always go over so well with people’s parents.”

  I led James to my room and located his shirt in the back of my closet. As I handed it to him, my hand brushed up against his forearm, but James didn’t seem to notice.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  We were both standing in the entrance to my closet, which was a walk-in. James was looking around when he said, “What is that?” He pointed to a stack of CliffsNotes on the top shelf.

  “I know. It’s very scandalous. In my defense, I can’t remember buying them.”

  James set down his shirt and took the top booklet off the stack. “Slaughterhouse Five. For God’s sake, who buys CliffsNotes to Slaughterhouse Five.”

  “Apparently that was the kind of girl I was.”

  “The very bad kind,” James said. He picked up his shirt and moved to leave my closet.

  James had run hot and cold in the months since I had met him, so I’m not exactly sure what possessed me to do what I did next. They say that people who have had brain injuries sometimes suffer from strange emotional outbursts, and I guess this would qualify. “Do you remember what you asked me back at the hospital?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “When my dad came in?”

  He still didn’t answer.

  “About kissing me and if you had permission?”

  “Yeah,” he said in a low voice, “I remember.”

  “Well, you would have had it.” I took a deep breath, and then I added, “I’m not with Ace anymore.”

  He took my hand in his and said, “Naomi, don’t you think I knew that?”

  Then I kissed James, or he kissed me.

  (Who knows how these things start?)

  And then I kissed James again, or he kissed me again.

  (And if you don’t know who started it, it’s hard to know what came next.)

  And I and him, and him and me.

  (I will always remember that he tasted like cigarettes and something passing sweet, which I could not quite identify.)

  Andiandhimandhimandme.

  (And so on.)

  It might have gone on like that forever except that Dad knocked on my door. “Kiddo?”

  James and I broke apart, and I told Dad to come
in.

  “I didn’t know you had company,” Dad said.

  “I don’t, not really. James just stopped by to pick something up, and I didn’t want to bother you if you were working. You met James at the hospital, remember?” I went on and on. Even though we hadn’t been doing it or anything, I knew that that kiss was written all over my face. Also, I couldn’t stop smiling.

  Dad nodded distractedly. “Oh hey. Yeah.” Dad reached over to shake James’s hand. “Thanks for all your help, son.”

  James nodded. “My pleasure. Well, I’ve got my shirt.” James held up the shirt, presumably for Dad’s benefit. “Guess I’ll be on my way. See you in school, Naomi.”

  “I’ll walk you out,” I said.

  As I walked James to the door, he whispered to me, “Is that gonna cause trouble for you?”

  “My dad’s cool.” I really didn’t care if it did anyway. “Whenever I break one of Dad’s rules, I can always claim amnesia.”

  “I believe you used it with the CliffsNotes, too,” James pointed out. “But—”

  “Don’t deny it, Naomi. It really is a good, all-purpose excuse. Robbed a bank? ‘But, officer, I didn’t remember I wasn’t supposed to rob banks.’ I wish I could use that one, too.”

  “What would you use it for?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Things. Mainly things I’d done in the past, but you never know what might come up.”

  At the door, he kissed me again.

  When I got back to my room, Dad was waiting for me. Of course, he wanted to know if I was seeing James, but I wasn’t sure of the answer to that yet. “Not technically.”

  “He’s very handsome, and he looks older than you, if I’m not mistaken. Both of which do not exactly recommend him to me, your dear old dad. I assume you know what you’re doing though.”

  I nodded.

  “In any case, I came to talk to you about the wedding.” He said that they were planning to have it at a hotel on Martha’s Vineyard the second weekend of June. It would just be me and him; Rosa Rivera and her two daughters, her sister, and her brother; Dad’s mother, my grandmother Rollie; and “significant others of the aforementioned.” He said Rosa Rivera wanted me to be a bridesmaid along with her two daughters, which struck me as ridiculous.

  “But, Dad, I barely know the woman!”

  “You’d be doing it for me, too.”

  “Not to mention who’ll be left to watch the wedding if nearly everyone’s a bridesmaid?”

  Dad said that wasn’t the point.

  “It wasn’t that long ago you were lying to me about even having a girlfriend, and now you want me to be in your wedding. It seems fast and unfair, and…”

  “And?” Dad prompted. “And what?”

  I thought of when James had said “screw the past,” how right that had felt. I was moving forward with James, and Dad was moving forward with Rosa Rivera, and screw whatever had come before. I was going to be all about now, about am, about present tense. “Tell Rosa Rivera I’m happy to be her bridesmaid.”

  Dad’s stunned look was pleasurable in and of itself. “I thought we were in for the long haul on this one, but I guess not. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled, but why the sudden change of heart?”

  I felt reckless and happy, so I kissed my father on the cheek. “Oh, Dad, what possible difference can why make anyway? Just go with it.”

  My phone rang. It was Will, so I told Dad I had to take it. Dad just nodded. I could tell he was still dazed by my turnabout. I vowed to do it more often.

  “You sound different,” Will said skeptically. “Your voice is all full of…I don’t know what.”

  I laughed at him. I liked being unpredictable, unreadable.

  “It’s that cat James,” he said simply.

  This seemed to come out of nowhere. I hadn’t mentioned James to Will since that day we picked him up. “Sort of,” I admitted. “What makes you say that?”

  “I have eyes, Chief. I saw your play. I read the program. If you’re in love, I’m happy for you. You don’t have to hide it. He certainly seems more interesting than Zuckerman.”

  “I’m not in love,” I said finally. “I like him.”

  “There’re those rumors about him—”

  I interrupted. “I don’t care about any of that. It’s in the past.” It was my new philosophy. It had to be.

  “I heard he used to be an addict and that he got thrown out of his old school and sent to—”

  “Did you hear me? I said I don’t care.”

  “I’m not gossiping,” Will said. “I’m only watching out for my friend. Personally, I think it’s better to know more than less. I’m not saying you should listen to any of the crap the kids at Tom Purdue say, but it might be worth addressing with James—”

  “Christ, Will, would you stop being such an old man? You’re worse than my father,” I snapped. “I haven’t even gone on a date with James yet.”

  “Sorry,” he said coolly.

  “Why are you calling anyway?” I snapped again.

  “I don’t remember,” he said after a pause. “I’ll see you at school.” He hung up the phone.

  I was thinking how Will pulled things backward when what I needed was to be in this moment, now, when my phone rang again. I didn’t recognize the number, but I picked up anyway.

  It was James.

  “Did you get in trouble?”

  “Not really.”

  “Good, because I was thinking I could take you out this Saturday.”

  Saturday was my seventeenth birthday. I had planned to go out with Dad for dinner, but I could always cancel that. I had dinner with Dad all the time.

  “Sounds like a plan,” I said.

  Dad gave me my present right before James was set to pick me up.

  That year, the book he gave me was blank. The cover was made from taupe suede, and a leather cord wrapped around it so that it could be tied shut. The edges of the pages were gilded. He inscribed it “Write your life. Love, Dad.” For a variety of reasons, the gift offended me, and I briefly considered throwing it in the trash before just deciding to bury it under my bed among the dust, widowed socks, and other lost things.

  Dad asked me what I thought of his selection.

  “I would have preferred a novel,” I said.

  “You didn’t like it?”

  “I think it’s in somewhat bad taste to give an amnesiac a blank book.”

  Of course, that was what I wanted to say. What I actually said was “It’s nice, but I doubt I’ll have much time for writing in it.” This was true enough, too.

  Dad smiled and said, “You will. And you’ll want to.”

  That seemed unlikely. Writing has always seemed such a backward activity to me, and that was most definitely not the direction I wanted to go. When my parents were still the Wandering Porters, I thought of summer as the living time; the rest of the year was the backward time, the writing time.

  The doorbell rang, and it was James. He was wearing his corduroy jacket even though it was too light for the season. He was so handsome I nearly wanted to swoon. The word swoon had never even popped into my head before I saw him that night, let alone as something that I might do.

  He smelled like soap with only the faintest hint of cigarettes. He was holding a wrapped CD, which he handed to me.

  “How’d you know it was my birthday?” I asked.

  “I didn’t. This was sitting on your doorstep. Happy birthday anyway. What is it?”

  I tore open the paper. “Just a mix from my friend.” The CD liner read: “Songs for a Teenage Amnesiac, Vol. II: The Motion Picture Soundtrack, Happy 17th Birthday. I Remain Your Faithful Servant, William B. Landsman.” There wasn’t even a playlist; he must have run out of time when he was putting it together. I tossed the thing on the bench in the hallway.

  “We could listen to it in my car,” James suggested.

  “Okay.” I shrugged. Will usually had good taste in music, and the songs wouldn’t mean anything to me anyway.
r />   James put the CD in the car player, but no sound came out. “This player’s old, and it can be a little spastic with home-burned stuff.” James popped the CD out and handed it back to me. I thought about throwing it out the window; I was still pissed at Will from yesterday. Instead, I just slipped it in my purse.

  James hadn’t mentioned where we were going, and as part of my new life philosophy I hadn’t asked.

  “Aren’t you curious where I’m taking you?” he said in that low voice of his.

  “No, I trust you.”

  We were stopped at a red light. He turned to stare at me. “How do you know I’m trustworthy?”

  “How do I know that you aren’t?”

  James abruptly pulled the car into another lane. “We’re going to California, right this instant.”

  I didn’t blink.

  “If I drove you to the airport and told you to get on a plane to California, you’d follow me.”

  “Why not?”

  “Unfortunately, I’m only taking you to dinner, Naomi. Maybe a movie. If I’d known it was your birthday, I would have planned something more exciting.”

  But just being with James was exciting. I liked that his past was as much a mystery as mine. I liked that he might do anything at any moment. I liked that he didn’t expect me to behave any specific way. I liked that he believed me when I said I would take off and go to California.

  “Maybe I’ll have to take you to California sometime?”

  “What’s in California?”

  “Kick-ass waves. I’m an amateur surfer and the Atlantic don’t really cut it,” he said. “My dad is, too. He lives in L.A.”

  “Are you from there?”

  “The thing is, I’m not really from anywhere, you know what I mean?”

  I did.

  “But yeah, I lived there for a while. Until I came here to live with my mom and my grandfather, and…I’d like to go back there for school. To the film program at USC, if I get in.”

  On the way to the restaurant, it had started to snow.

  By the time the movie was over, the town was a different place, the negative image of itself. I felt almost newborn myself, like it was my first winter ever.

  “I wonder if there’s enough snow on the steps at school for us to go sledding,” James said.