by Jeff Hirsch
It was plausible. Probable, even. It was a little depressing, though, to feel the mystery of her drain away so easily. Surely there had to be more to her than that. Maybe—
“Why do I know how to tie my shoes?”
I looked up. The girl was leaning forward, elbows on her knees, knife in hand. Her eyes were wolflike.
In the universe of questions I thought she might ask, this one was nowhere to be found. “I don’t under—”
“When I woke up this morning I bent over and tied my shoelaces without even thinking about it. How can I do that if the memory of learning how to tie my shoes has been erased?”
Luckily, months of living with Lassiter’s had made us all experts on the subject of memory.
“Because different types of memory are stored in different parts of your brain,” I said. “There’s episodic memory, which is your memory of all the events in your life, kind of like your own personal autobiography. Semantic memory is general knowledge type stuff, basic things you know about yourself and the world. Cultural stuff, language and symbols, your name, where you’re from. Procedural memory is like muscle memory: it’s your memory of things you’ve learned to do through lots of practice.”
“Like tying my shoes.”
“Exactly.”
“So the virus erases episodic and semantic memory.”
“Mostly episodic,” I said. “That’s all gone. Some semantic memory is still left though. See, those two types of memory live right next to each other in the brain. They think that some pieces of your semantic memory—like your name or where you’re from—are so connected to the autobiography in your head that they got wiped out right along with it. Other parts of your semantic memory that weren’t as connected are still there.”
“Like what?”
I had to chew on that one a second. “Oh! Okay. Who’s Superman?”
The girl cocked her head. “He’s a superhero.”
“What’s his costume look like?”
She shrugged. “Blue tights. Red cape. Big S on his chest.”
“Now tell me about a time when you read a Superman comic book or saw a Superman movie.”
The girl’s eyes narrowed on the grass between us as she tried to remember. She shook her head.
“See? The idea is that a semantic memory like that survived because it wasn’t as strongly linked to your personal story. It was just something you knew.”
She lowered her head, nodding like she was filing it all away. “How did this happen? The virus.”
“We don’t know.”
“You don’t know, or nobody knows?”
There was something exciting about the way she talked. It made me think of a razor slashing through the air.
“Nobody knows exactly,” I said. “There’s this Founder’s Day thing we used to have in the park every year. Practically the whole town went. They’re pretty sure that was ground zero for the outbreak, but nobody knows where the virus actually came from.”
The girl took that in; then she looked over her shoulder and nodded toward a wide black smudge in the woods out past the northside mansions. “I saw lots of places like that. Houses burned down. Broken windows.”
“Half the people in town lost their memory on the sixteenth. It was”—I swallowed dryly—“a confusing night.”
“Half the town lost its memory? The other half was immune?”
I shook my head. “They weren’t exposed. As far as we know, no one’s immune.”
She looked away. Her grip on the knife tightened. It was a while before she spoke again, and when she did she said, “Am I ever going to get my memory back?”
For the first time, there was the slightest quiver in her voice. Greer told me that every time he’d come across someone who was recently infected, this was the question they circled back to again and again.
He’d usually tell them something vague and hopeful. It’s early yet. People are working on a cure all the time. We have to be patient. I had those exact words all queued up, but when the time came to say them, I couldn’t, not to her.
“There’s a doctor in Manhattan,” I said. “Evan Lassiter. He’s the one they named the virus after. He’s been studying it ever since the outbreak, trying to create a cure or a vaccine, but none of them have worked.”
“So . . .”
“So you’ll be able to make new memories, but no, your old ones aren’t going to come back. I’m sorry.”
The girl was absolutely still. I don’t know what I expected. That she’d cry? Scream? Deny it? According to Greer, that was what most people did. But not her. Her eyes drifted away from me to a patch of grass between us. Her chest rose and fell evenly. I thought about how, over time, everything that happens to us—what we do and see and feel—comes together and makes what we think of as reality. What’s possible. What isn’t. Who we are. What we believe. It was as if the girl was bearing down and rewriting all of those things through force of will alone, finding a way to integrate Black River and Lassiter’s and this new blank slate in her head.
It was pretty amazing.
When the process was done, the girl came out from between the boulders and opened the paper sack. She ate the biscuits and a green apple, right down to the core. I tossed her the bottle of water that was sitting inside her tent. She drained it in a single pull.
“How about some good news?” I asked.
I want to say she smiled then, but it wasn’t quite a smile, more like the ghost of one.
“Somewhere at the bottom of this mountain you’ve got a family and friends waiting for you. You’ve got a name. A home.”
I pointed at the key around her neck. “That probably unlocks the front door.”
Her fingertips went to the key. She lifted it carefully, as if it were made of glass.
“My friend Greer, he’s the best at figuring out who people are. With him on the case we can probably have you back in your own bed by tonight. Once you’re there, well, you won’t remember, but at least you’ll know. You know? And hey, if nothing else, it’d be nice to call you something other than Green-Haired Girl.”
She released the key, then moved away from the edge of the mountain. I backed off as she approached, but she stopped before she got too close. She looked curiously at my mask and then extended her hand.
My knife lay in her palm, the hilt facing me.
“I decided I’m probably not going to have to stab you.”
She couldn’t see it, but I smiled behind my mask.
“Thanks.”
I took the knife, and then she stepped past me and through the veil of trees. I stood a moment in the quiet, looking at the blade and thinking about how its serrations reminded me of the teeth of a key. I slipped it back into its sheath and followed the green-haired girl down the trail.
10
WHEN WE FOUND Greer, I’m pretty sure she was having second thoughts about returning my knife. I couldn’t blame her—the whole setup was pretty weird.
He was sitting in a small meadow halfway between camp and the reservoir. It was empty except for two straight-backed chairs facing each other a few feet apart. Greer sat in one of them with his eyes closed, his hands resting lightly on his thighs, taking slow, deep breaths.
Beside him there was a stack of books and an open cardboard box. Inside was a yo-yo, a pennywhistle, a baseball, a set of drumsticks, three large stuffed animals, a tape recorder, and multiple stacks of note cards covered with strings of words or pictures copied from the library.
“Greer just, uh . . . he takes this whole thing pretty seriously. Have a seat.”
She must have decided it wasn’t an elaborate trap, because she marched out into the meadow and deposited herself in the chair across from him. A minute or two passed. Then two more.
“Um . . . Greer? Buddy?”
He held up one finger, then rolled his neck in circles until it crackled. Who would have guessed that a master showman was trapped deep within his old scowling exterior?
Greer�
�s eyes popped open. He rummaged in the box for a notebook and pencil and held them out to me. I took them and retreated to a spot by the trees. Taking notes on these sessions was my job.
He loudly cleared his throat, then sat forward in his chair, directing every iota of his attention on the green-haired girl.
“Has your nose been running?” he asked. “Are your eyes itchy?”
She looked at me.
I shrugged.
“Um. Maybe a little bit?”
“Any difficulty breathing? A cough? Weakness in your elbows, knees, or ankles?”
“No.”
He popped out of his chair and began a series of slow revolutions around the girl, studying her from every angle as if she were a prized horse.
“Good muscle tone,” he said. “Broad shoulders. Smile for me?”
What she managed was nearer to a grimace, but it was close enough.
“Straight teeth. No piercings of any kind. No visible tattoos. Hair is recently dyed and cut. Eyebrows indicate her natural color is brown.” He reached out and tipped her head back into the sun. “A light, honey brown.”
I struggled not to roll my eyes as I wrote. “Hair the color of honey. Got it.”
Greer dropped to his knees and took both her hands.
“Small calluses on the fingertips of her left hand. Nails are short. Not cut, though. They look chewed. No indications of nail polish. No rings.”
His eyes fixed on the key. He glanced over his shoulder. “Is it normal for people to wear these as jewelry?”
I shook my head. He turned back to the girl and reached for the key, but she smacked his hand away before he could touch it.
“Interesting,” he said. “Take off your shoes, please.”
“Why?”
“It is vitally important that I examine your toes.”
The girl crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him. Perhaps realizing that discretion was the better part of valor, Greer backed off. He stood across from her, still staring intently, his chin balanced on his fist.
“What do you think?” he asked me.
I went over my notes. It wasn’t a lot to go on. “I guess we do the whole thing.”
Greer nodded solemnly. “Agreed.”
He returned to his chair and pulled the cardboard box and note cards to him. Greer had tests designed for older kids and younger kids. Boys and girls. He flipped through the box, selected a packet, and laid it in his lap.
“Now! There are a few different types of memory—”
“Card went over that already.”
He turned and glowered at me. I laughed. He hated having his thunder stolen.
“Okay, well, what we’re going to do is try and get a sense of what kind of person you are by seeing what’s in your procedural and semantic memory.”
“I thought semantic memory was common knowledge type stuff. Stuff everybody knows.”
“It is,” I chimed in. “But what you’ve got in there depends on where you grew up and how. Like if I’d asked a kid from China who Superman was, they wouldn’t necessarily know since he’s not a big part of their culture.”
“Right,” Greer said. “An infected person who studied, like, birds all their life would be able to identify more birds than an infected person who hadn’t. Someone who studied math would have absorbed more math.”
“And doing this will help you figure out who I am.”
“Exactly.”
“So how will you—”
“Think fast!”
Greer scooped up the baseball and chucked it at her. She didn’t even flinch. The ball sailed past her and into the trees.
“Interesting.” He held up a card with pictures of Lebron James, Derrick Jeter, and Serena Williams on it. “Who are these people?”
“No idea.”
“How many players are there on a football team?”
“Uh . . .”
“Don’t think, just answer.”
“Eight?”
“Finish this sentence: ‘We’ve got spirit, yes we do, we’ve got spirit—’”
The girl tilted her head as if he were speaking Arabic.
“Can you describe how to play Quarters?”
She shook her head.
“How about beer pong? Flip cup? T-Rex arms?”
“Those are games?”
“If you wanted to buy beer and didn’t know anyone over twenty-one, would you go to Black River Beverages, Quik Stop, or Harry’s Gas?”
“I don’t think I like beer.”
Greer draped one arm over the back of his chair. “That’s a hard no on cheerleader, party girl, and athlete.”
I made a note. “Got it.”
Greer did pop culture next. Not much help there. Beyond things that pretty much any teenager in America would know, she was kind of a blank slate. So not a huge movie or TV fan. As for physical abilities—she couldn’t draw, sculpt, juggle, tie a trucker’s hitch, or start a fire using two sticks and a length of shoelace. When Greer had her sing the Happy Birthday song, she was enthusiastic, but painfully out of tune.
After about an hour of this she started to get restless.
“Is this getting us anywhere?” she asked. “I mean besides establishing the fact that I don’t know anything about anything.”
“Finding out what you don’t know is just as important as finding out what you do,” Greer said. “Which means you’re giving us a ton to go on.”
She scowled at him. He grinned and held up another three-by-five note card.
“What does this say? Come on! Time’s a’wasting.”
The girl sighed, then sat up and squinted at the card. “E equals MC squared.”
“Hey, you got one! And what does E equals MC squared mean?”
She gave him the same look she gave me when I asked about Superman. “Energy equals mass times the speed of light, squared.”
“And what’s the speed of light?”
“One hundred and eighty-six thousand miles per second,” she said. “In a vacuum.”
Greer looked back at me, impressed. He held up another card. The girl got it instantly.
“The Pythagorean theorem.”
He held up another.
“Pi.”
Another.
“Deoxyribonucleic acid.”
Another.
“The War of 1812.”
She got ten more right without a single miss. The girl wasn’t bored anymore. She was teetering on the edge of her chair, practically trembling. Greer was too. He shuffled through his cards with unsteady hands.
“Quick, Greer! Give me another!”
“Uh . . . Okay! Literature. Finish this quote: ‘All happy families are alike; each unhappy family . . .’”
“‘Is unhappy in its own way.’”
“‘It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune . . .’”
“‘Must be in want of a wife!’ Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice. Oh! Give me another one!”
“What book includes the characters Ponyboy, Sodapop, and Cherry?”
“The Outsiders!”
“Merricat, Constance, and Julian?”
“We Have Always Lived in the Castle.”
“Aslan and Mr. Tumnus?”
“The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe!”
“Who killed James and Lily Potter?”
The girl shot to her feet, her arms raised in triumph. “Tom Marvolo Riddle, also known as Lord Voldemort!”
Greer and I broke into rowdy applause. The girl’s cheeks reddened as she bowed grandly.
“So did that help?” she asked. “Do you guys know who I am now?”
Greer laughed. “Oh yeah,” he said. “You, my friend, are what they call a big ol’ nerd.”
Minutes later Greer was sitting on the ground by his chair, sorting through towers of hardback books while the girl watched.
“You thinking St. Edwards?” I asked from my place a short distance away.
�
�Gotta be, right?”
“What are you guys talking about?” the girl asked.
Greer placed a hand on top of one of the stacks of books. “These are the yearbooks from every school in the area.”
“Greer, uh, liberated them from the local library,” I said.
“Anyone who went to a school anywhere near Black River is in one of these,” Greer went on. “St. Edwards is the closest private school.”
“Why do you think I went there?”
He gave a casual shrug. It was another part of his showmanship. Acting like the whole thing was a snap.
“Solid dental work, general physical health, what looks like professionally dyed hair. That probably means money. No piercings, tattoos, or jewelry says a fairly conservative family. Around here that generally means private school.”
“That,” I added, “and it definitely sounds like you studied a lot.”
The girl sifted through the note cards in front of her. “So that’s why I knew all this stuff? From studying?”
Greer tossed a book aside and grabbed another.
“If you drill facts into your head hard enough over a long enough period of time, they can move into your semantic memory, which you still have most of. Usually it happens with common-knowledge things, like the president’s name or the fact that we live on Earth in the United States, but it can be other things too.”
“Or in your case,” I said, “everything.”
“Lot of good it did me,” she said. “I still don’t know my own name.”
“Yeah,” Greer said. “That’s because—”
“Card already told me.”
Greer sputtered. The girl and I shared a hint of a smile before she turned again and slid a yearbook off one of the stacks. “So where did you two go to school?”
“Black River High,” Greer said. “The school for weirdoes, morons, and troublemakers.”
“Oh yeah? Which of those were you?”
“All of the above, probably.”
“You don’t know?”
Greer shook his head.
“But if you’re so great at figuring out who people are, how come you don’t know who you are?”
“We were able to figure out his name,” I said. “But that was it.”
Greer closed a book and opened another. “We know that me and the birdman here went to the same school. But we didn’t know each other. And apparently everyone I did know is either infected, dead, or on the other side of that fence.”