“I bet he did. Is that the only person you were with?”
“Fats was there, too. We went to his place.”
Sergei “Fats” Medovukha was my father’s cousin and the owner of the speakeasy Gable and I had been at the night before. Fats was fat, which was less common in those days. I liked Fats as much as I liked anyone in my extended family, but I’d told him that I didn’t want Leo hanging out at his bar.
“What did they want with you, Leo?”
“We got ice cream. Fats closed his place, and we went out for it. Jacks had…What do you call it, Annie?”
“Vouchers.”
“Yeah, that’s it!”
And if I knew my cousin, he’d probably made those vouchers himself.
“I had strawberry,” Leo continued.
“Hmmph.”
“Don’t be mad, Annie.”
Leo looked like he might cry. I took a deep breath and tried to control myself. It was one thing to lose my temper with Gable Arsley but behaving that way around Leo was completely unacceptable. “Was the ice cream good?”
Leo nodded. “Then we went…Promise you won’t be mad.”
I nodded.
“Then we went to the Pool.”
The Pool was in the nineties on West End Avenue. It used to be a women’s swimming club back before the first water crisis, when all the pools and fountains had been drained. Now, the Family (by which I mean the semya, or the Balanchine Family crime syndicate) used it as their primary meeting place. I guess they got the space on the cheap.
“Leo!” I yelled.
“You said you wouldn’t be mad!”
“But you know you’re not supposed to go to the west side without telling someone.”
“I know, I know. But Jacks said that a lot of people wanted to meet me there. And he said they were family so you wouldn’t mind.”
I was so angry I couldn’t speak. The macaroni had cooled enough to be eaten so I began to serve it into bowls. “Wash your hands, and tell Natty that dinner is ready.”
“Please don’t be mad, Annie.”
“I’m not mad at you,” I said.
I was about to make Leo promise that he would never go back there when he said, “Jacks said maybe I could get a job working at the Pool. You know, in the family business.”
It was all I could manage not to throw the macaroni against the wall. Still, I knew it was no good getting mad at my brother. Not to mention, it seemed excessive to commit two violent acts with pasta in the same day. “Why would you want to do that? You love working at the clinic.”
“Yeah, but Jacks thought it might be good if I worked with the Family”—he paused—“like Daddy.”
I nodded tightly. “I don’t know about that, Leo. They don’t have animals to pet at the Pool. Now, go get Natty, okay?”
I watched my brother as he left the kitchen. To look at him, you wouldn’t know anything was wrong with him. And maybe we made too much of his handicaps. It couldn’t be denied that Leo was handsome, strong, and, for all intents and purposes, a grownup. The last part terrified me, of course. Grownups could get themselves in trouble. They could get taken advantage of. They could get sent to Rikers Island, or worse: they could end up dead.
As I filled glasses with water, I wondered what my padonki half cousin was up to and how much of a problem this was going to be for me.
An Imprint of Macmillan
MEMOIRS OF A TEENAGE AMNESIAC. Copyright © 2007 by Gabrielle Zevin.
All rights reserved. For information, address Square Fish, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Square Fish and the Square Fish logo are trademarks of Macmillan and are used by Farrar, Straus and Giroux under license from Macmillan.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Zevin, Gabrielle.
Memoirs of a teenage amnesiac / Gabrielle Zevin.
p. cm.
Summary: After a nasty fall, Naomi realizes that she has no memory of the last four years and finds herself reassessing every aspect of her life.
ISBN: 978-1-4299-5629-1
[1. Amnesia—Fiction. 2. Friendship—Fiction. 3. High Schools—Fiction. 4. Schools—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.Z452Me 2007
[Fic]—dc22
2006035287
Originally published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Square Fish logo designed by Filomena Tuosto
www.squarefishbooks.com
1. Honorable Mention, NSPA.
2. While school starts after Labor Day for mere mortals, it starts in August for football players, marching band, and us. And bird-watchers. We had been planning to photograph the first meeting of the Tom Purdue Bird-watching Society the next morn.
3. We often “discuss” things. Others might call this “arguing.”
4. Poses a series of interesting philosophical questions which I am still pondering, but am not prepared to discuss at this time.
5. Also “arguing.”
6. Unfortunately, from this point forward, I have had to rely on the reports of others, like your dad and that cat James.
7. The camera was an Oneiric 8000 G Pro, which we had just purchased for $3,599.99 tax free plus shipping, using the entire proceeds of last year’s wrapping paper fundraiser. The staff of The Phoenix thanks you.
8. I don’t know what he was doing there that day.
9. I imagine you have also forgotten that the “B” stands for Blake, although William Blake is probably my least favorite poet and I only feel fifty percent about him as an artist. The woman responsible for the name, aka my mother, will also be your AP English teacher, aka Mrs. Landsman.
Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac Page 25