Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

by Gabrielle Zevin

  James sat down on the beach next to me. After a while, I sat down, too.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m such a goddamn loser.”

  “No, you’re not,” I said.

  “I am. I am. I am.”

  “James, don’t say that,” I said.

  He pulled up his knees and set his head on them so that I couldn’t see his face.

  “James, would you look at me?”

  But he wouldn’t. It was awkward, but I tried to put my face under his so that he would have to look at me. He still wouldn’t move. I kissed the back of his neck. Then I kissed his arm.

  After a while, he raised his head. He’d been crying.

  “What happened anyway?” I tried to say this gently, but an array of other emotions was diluting my intent.

  “I was driving to my dad’s in Westwood to get the gear. And I happened to notice this cemetery, so I decided to stop. Marilyn Monroe’s buried there. I’d been there before, but this time when I went I noticed how pink the marble on her grave is because people kiss it and touch it so much, you know…And that made me depressed as hell. My brother’s buried like a mile from there in this other cemetery. No one ever kisses and touches his grave, because no one gives a crap about him, do you know? He was just some kid who died. And it’s gonna sound so screwed up, but I drove over to his grave next. I couldn’t even find it at first. I’d forgotten where it was. It’s way in the back. And I started kissing it, and touching it to try to change the color of the stone…I knew it was crazy even while I was doing it, but I’ve been thinking about him a lot lately. He was never even as old as I am now, how messed up is that? It makes me crazy sometimes.

  “This thing I have…this depression…I can see it coming on. It’s like when you’re surfing. You want to stay on the crest of the wave as long as possible, but the nature of waves is that they always come back down.”

  I put my arm around him. James felt so small to me. “I love you,” I said.

  James laughed, which was horrible. “I can’t help but wonder if you’d still say that if you could remember everything. If you were in your right mind.”

  I could have told him then, but it didn’t seem the place. “Don’t you love me?” I asked.

  “I do.”

  “Let’s get out of here, okay?”

  When we got to the car, James looked really tired, so I suggested that if he gave me directions, I could drive.

  “I thought you didn’t remember how,” he said.

  “I remembered,” I answered. He didn’t question me beyond that.

  James’s dad’s house was the California equivalent of James’s mom’s house. Roomy, empty. His dad was away somewhere. “On business,” James said.

  “Have you been here by yourself the whole time?”

  James shrugged.

  I made eggs, but James didn’t really eat anything. He didn’t say much the whole evening. I could tell he was thinking about something, and I didn’t want to disturb him. Still, I felt like each second he didn’t speak became an inch between us.

  Around ten, he said he was going to bed. I followed him into his room.

  I kissed him.

  “I need to get some sleep,” he said. “I haven’t slept in days and days.”

  “Why not together?” I asked. I knew it was probably pathetic, but I was trying to pull him back to the surface. I loved him even more now that he seemed so vulnerable. Maybe I loved him more because he needed me.

  James shook his head. “Naomi,” he said sweetly. “Naomi…I wish I could.”

  He took my hand. His grip wasn’t very strong at all. He led me into one of the guest rooms.

  “Good night,” he said, and then he closed the door.

  I hadn’t turned on my phone since boarding the plane.

  There were twenty-eight messages. I was just about to check them when the phone rang. It was Dad. I knew the jig was up.

  “Hello,” I said.

  Here’s how it played out:

  He’d been trying to phone me all day.

  He got worried when I didn’t pick up.

  He called Will.

  He wasn’t there, but he got Mrs. Landsman.

  Mrs. Landsman didn’t know anything about a conference in San Diego. Furthermore, she told him I’d quit yearbook months ago.

  He called James’s mom.

  She said that James was in California.

  “I just want to know one thing, is that where you are?”

  “Yes,” I said, and then I started to cry. It was the tension of the day more than the trouble I was in. It was the sound of my dad’s voice. It was lying, not just to Dad but to everyone. It was wondering how I’d let everything get so screwed up. With James and Mom and Will and Dad and school and yearbook and tennis and even poor Ace. It was all the things I hadn’t said, but couldn’t and wanted to. They constricted my throat to where the only thing to do was cry or choke. It was that half-eaten carton of strawberries and the coin toss that I’d lost and being abandoned in a typewriter case and then again by my own crazy, beautiful, treacherous, wall-painting mother. It was my sunglasses, which I’d left on the beach that day. The sun had gone down and I hadn’t needed them anymore. It’s when you don’t need something that you tend to lose it.

  It was James. Of course it was James. He had said I’d looked at him “funny,” but I had eyes: he was looking at me that way, too.

  Dad booked me on a flight that left at noon the next day, the first one he could find.

  In the morning, James looked better. “Maybe I just needed a good night’s sleep?”

  I told him my dad had found out and that I had to go home.

  “I know,” he said. “Raina called me. Your dad probably hates me now.”

  “You’re not the one who lied,” I said.

  On the way to the airport, James took a detour. He drove to USC, where we took the tour.

  “It’s a step,” I said.

  “An infinitesimal one,” he added. “I still have a lot to work out.”

  I held his hand the whole time. It was a really beautiful campus, and the sun was out so bright and lovely, it could almost make you forget things.

  At the airport, he kissed me, but I tasted goodbye in it.

  “I’ll see you when you get back to school on Tuesday,” I said. “Assuming my dad ever lets me out of my room again.”

  A security officer yelled at James to move his car, so he had to go. Part of me was scared I’d never see him again.

  When I got to the doors of the terminal, I realized that I had left my dad’s book in James’s car.

  10

  ON THE FLIGHT BACK, I ALTERNATED BETWEEN WORRYING about James and worrying about the trouble I was in, probably about seventy-five percent in the James direction. In lieu of thinking, I would have preferred to be sleeping, but planes are one of the noisiest “in theory quiet” places on earth, and I couldn’t.

  I put on my headphones and placed a CD in my laptop’s drive. I hadn’t really noticed what I was packing when I’d left the house, but I’d managed to grab not one but two of Will’s stupid mixes. The first one I put in was the one he’d made me when I’d lied to him about the play, but something about it made me anxious. (Maybe it was the song choice; he had, after all, been pissed at me at the time.) So I put in a different one instead, the one from my birthday, Songs for a Teenage Amnesiac, Vol. II. A prompt came up on my computer, asking me if I wanted to launch the DVD player.

  I clicked yes.

  It was a movie, no more than fifteen minutes long.

  To call it a movie would probably be an exaggeration. It wasn’t in the least professional, not like James’s video installations for the play, for example. It was a simple slideshow, set to the Velvet Underground song “That’s the Story of My Life.” He’d added some text, but mainly it was pictures.

  It was all the years I had missed. He had gotten whatever videos and images he and the school and even Mom (yes, he had contacted my
mother) possessed, and he had edited them together chronologically.

  There I was.

  There I was graduating from the lower school at Tom Purdue. I’m easy to spot. I’m the tallest girl in the picture.

  And Mom giving birth to Chloe. My sister. I knew I hadn’t been there that day, and yet it was undeniable: there I was.

  And moving with Dad to the new house—our whole life in boxes. And Ace pulling my ponytail on the tennis courts. And me taking a picture of someone taking a picture of me. It was Will—of course it was Will—I could see him dimly reflected in my camera lens.

  And in that black formal dress. My hair had been dirty blond, but you could see the roots even then.

  Nothing all that thrilling, I guess, but there I was.

  There I was, there I was.

  As soon as it was finished, I played it again.

  And then, I played it again.

  How surreal to see my whole life, as compiled by Will, from a plane ten thousand feet in the air.

  He’d obviously done it before I had my memory back—he still didn’t know I had my memory back. It must have taken him a lot of time to assemble. It was probably the nicest, most thoughtful gift anyone had ever given me, and I hadn’t even bothered to look at it for three months. No wonder he’d been mad at me. I was a jerk, unworthy of the effort.

  I spent the next three hours feeling horrible. I tried to use the phone on the back of the seat to call Will, but I couldn’t get it to work.

  As soon as the plane landed, I turned on my cell, but the battery was dead. I knew that Dad would be waiting for me outside the security checkpoint, and that would effectively mark the end of my freedom for some time. I stopped at the nearest pay phone. I didn’t have any change, so I had to call Will collect.

  “I have Naomi Porter on the line. William Landsman, will you accept charges?” asked the operator.

  “Why not?” was Will’s reply. “Well, what do you want?”

  “I’m sorry about having to call collect,” I began. “My phone died.”

  “Fine.”

  “I…I got your birthday present. I mean, I got it before, but I hadn’t watched it until today. I just wanted to say that it meant a lot to me.” The words weren’t coming out right. They sounded so stiff and not at all what was in my heart.

  “Well…Well, that’s fine. Do you need something else? I’m on my way out actually.”

  “Will, I—”

  “What?” he snapped. “I’m going out with Winnie.”

  “Yearbook Winnie? Winnifred Momoi from yearbook?”

  “Yes, Winnie Momoi. I’ve been seeing her since the beginning of the semester. You’re not the first person in the world to have a significant other.”

  “Goodbye, Coach.”

  “See you.” He hung up the phone first.

  I went out into the lobby to meet Dad. I felt like the sole of a very old shoe.

  The first thing Dad did was hug me, and the second thing he did was ask me for my cell phone.

  “It’s dead,” I told him as I handed it over.

  “It’s staying that way, kid.” He put my phone in his pocket. “I’ve never had to really punish you before, and I’m not even sure I know how to do it.”

  “Phone’s probably a good start,” I said.

  “And no regular phone either, or not much.” Dad took my backpack and didn’t speak to me again until we were in the car.

  On the highway Dad elaborated on his plans for my punishment. He told me I was “seriously grounded” for at least the next month. “What’s a serious grounding entail anyway?” Dad asked.

  “Not sure,” I said.

  “Not going out with James or anyone else, I think,” Dad said. “Also, I want you home immediately after school, and I’ll drive you there and pick you up, too.”

  “I could walk and save you the bother,” I said.

  “No, this is part of the trust thing. You see, I don’t trust you anymore.”

  It stung, but I deserved it.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you’d quit yearbook?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What am I supposed to do with you, Naomi? I never thought I’d see the day that you’d run off to California without telling me. That’s after-school special stuff.”

  “I know.”

  “Can you tell me anything that will help explain this?”

  “I was worried about James,” I began. “I could tell he was in a bad place…”

  “Why didn’t you come to me? Didn’t you think I would help?”

  “It wasn’t just James, Dad. It was me, too…”

  I told Dad everything.

  I told him about remembering everything.

  “Aw, kid,” he said, “why didn’t you say?”

  “I guess my life seemed to be going one way, and it seemed too difficult to think about starting all over again or going backward. And I…I didn’t want to lose James.” I didn’t add that I felt like now I had anyway.

  “I’m not sure I understand. Why would you have lost James?” Dad asked quietly.

  “Because…maybe it won’t make any sense to you, but not having pasts was something we had in common.” It hurt me to even say this next part. “I think it might have been one of the main reasons he liked me.”

  “I doubt that very much.” Dad smiled for a second and then he sighed. “You can drive again?”

  I nodded.

  “Shame about you being grounded, then.”

  I didn’t talk to James until Tuesday night, when he got back to Tarrytown. I probably wouldn’t have even gotten to talk to him then except that Dad had left me alone for about ten minutes, so that he could go get coffee.

  We didn’t discuss L.A. or anything that had happened there. To tell you the truth, I was overjoyed just to hear from him. I had been worried he might not make it back from California at all.

  He didn’t say anything at first, but I knew it was him.

  “I can’t stay on the phone long, Jims,” I said finally. “I’m not even supposed to be on the phone now.”

  He apologized and then he got even quieter—so quiet, I could hear Raina watching TV in her bedroom, and the fridge making ice, and Raina’s cat, Louis, lapping water from his bowl. When James did finally speak, his voice was so strange. He asked me, “What do you know about yourself for certain?”

  I said, “My name.” I laughed to let him know I was done discussing the matter.

  He must have taken it like a dot-dot-dot instead of the period I had intended, because he continued, “Besides your name. Besides your name, besides the facts, what do you know about yourself to be true, essentially true?”

  Normally, I liked his…I guess you’d call it philosophy, but on this night it was sort of scaring me.

  I told him that I loved him, because it was all I could think to say. “I wonder,” he said. “I just really wonder. If you knew everything, would you still feel the same?”

  I should have just confessed that I did, in fact, know everything, but I didn’t.

  Then he said, “How do you know that being in love with me wasn’t some grand mental delusion?”

  I felt insulted, like he was saying that everything that had happened between us didn’t count for anything. I took it the wrong way, and I didn’t say what I wish I had said, something like, “Love is love. It’s not about knowing, and besides, I know everything I need to know anyway.”

  Instead, I told him I had to go; Dad would be back any minute, and I was in so much trouble already.

  Then in a clear, strong, reassuring voice, he said he loved me, too (that too still smarts), and that he’d see me in school the next day, which ended up being a lie.

  At lunch, I called his cell phone from the school pay phone. Raina answered. “Naomi,” she said, “I was about to call you. It’s been a hectic day.” Her voice was scratchy and raw, as if she’d been up all night talking.

  “Is something the matter with James?” Given James�
�s history, all manner of horrific possibilities came to mind.

  “No,” she said. “No, he’s fine.”

  Then she told me. James had voluntarily decided to go back to Sweet Lake, which was the Albany mental health facility he’d been in a year ago.

  “Why?” I asked. “He was fine.”

  “I think that he was feeling a bit overwhelmed” was all she said at first.

  “He was fine.”

  “And he basically is fine, but he didn’t want things to get bad. They have before for him, you know. It’s good, honey, he’s trying to be responsible.” She said that it might only be for a couple of days, and that he was in the transitional facility, not the full-on psych ward or something. The difference was that at the transitional facility, he could still keep up with his schoolwork and make phone calls. “It’s really just a house, Naomi,” she said. “He’ll probably call you in a couple of days once he’s settled in.”

  I was numb, but underneath that numbness was an indignant little tumor. I couldn’t believe he would take off without even telling me himself.

  A week passed without any word from James.

  I decided that if he wouldn’t call me, I would call him. There were things he should know and things I needed to say. So whenever Dad was working or out, I would phone Sweet Lake.

  I called him maybe thirty times over the next three days, but he never called me back. There wasn’t a direct line to his room or anything. Eventually, I put it to the receptionist point-blank, “Is he getting my messages?” The receptionist sighed or sniffed very heavily—over the phone, this sounds like the same thing—and replied, “Yes. He’s getting your messages, but sometimes a patient doesn’t feel up to returning a call.”

  Screw that. I would go see him myself.

  I hadn’t forgotten my promise to him. I hadn’t forgotten his “rules.” But I didn’t want him locked up without knowing the truth: I hadn’t been with him because I was delusional or an amnesiac. I had loved him. I think I really had.

  And screw James. They were his rules, not mine.

  Not to mention, I’d had my fingers crossed.

  I knew Dad wouldn’t let me drive up to Albany by myself and especially not to visit James.