He shrugged but didn’t look at her as he sat on the edge of his bed.
“Any bands you like?” she asked.
He rubbed his palms up and down his thighs, then froze as a blush crept up his cheeks. The scar on his wrist itched despite the numbness spreading over his arms and he tensed his fingers out against the mattress to keep from scratching.
“You don’t remember,” she said as she sat on the only chair in the room and wheeled it closer to him. She picked up his right hand, rubbing her thumb over the skin. “It’s all right, Henry.” She stroked his palm until he relaxed and their fingers intertwined.
“It’s over there,” he said after a number of deep breaths.
“What?”
“The scrapbook.”
She pulled him with her as she scooted back to the desk and kept his hand in hers as she flipped open the album.
The first picture showed Henry as a young boy, portrait-posed with his hair combed down and hair-sprayed. A fake smile creased his face and he’d tilted his head as though listening to someone telling him how to sit properly.
“School pic?” she asked.
He nodded, and she turned the page.
A series of portraits, one a year, scrolled across the double page as he aged to early teens.
“Nothing more recent?”
“No,” he said. “This last one here was a few years ago, I think.”
She turned another page, one after the other. Standing beside her, Henry kept silent.
On its very own page, the picture he’d brought to Dr. Saville’s office once upon a time: his parents’ smiles as they held him between them.
“Your mom?” she asked, looking from the picture to Henry, then back again.
“Her name’s Christine,” he said. “I don’t remember her, though. Only what my Dad says.”
“And?”
Henry was silent for a long time, his eyes restless, moving back and forth between his mother and Justine. He shook his head, then closed his eyes to block both views. “I think he’s lying to me,” he said.
“About?”
“I don’t know.” He opened his eyes. She was watching him and the sensation was unlike anything he’d ever known. “It’s just a feeling, when I think about her name, and my dad’s.”
“What kind of feeling?”
“That the names are wrong.” He shrugged. “I don’t know how to describe it. When I say her name, it feels right.”
“And his doesn’t?”
He sighed. “Only her first name feels right.”
“And her last name?”
“He’s lying,” he said and then fell silent. “It’s my last name too.”
“Does your name feel right?” she asked.
“Henry does.”
“And the rest?”
“Is wrong somehow.”
“Your mom?”
“He doesn’t talk about her much. Just that she died in the accident that took my memory. He’s sad a lot, I think.”
“Are you?” Justine asked.
“Sad?” He looked at her, the curls of hair escaping down her neck, the steady gaze from honey eyes, and shrugged. “Sometimes, I guess. Isn’t everyone?”
She looked away, back to the scrapbook, and turned another page—to the picture of his birthday party with the strangers who should be friends watching him blow out candles in a park he should have recognized.
“Henry,” she said, her fingers resting on the picture. “When’s your birthday?”
“November 19th. Why?”
Justine looked up at him, squeezing his fingers. “It’s not fall.”
“So?”
“In this picture. It’s doesn’t look like autumn. Those trees should have shed their leaves by November, even here in the South. They should at least be a different color.”
He stared at the photograph. In the background, behind the picnic table they were gathered around, trees filled with green leaves shaded the park. One of his friends, standing to the side, was in shorts, and all of them were tan.
He’d never noticed anything else before, beyond the faces he couldn’t remember.
“Henry?”
With a sigh, he touched the picture, resting his finger on his own face.
“Who am I?” he asked, the words barely more than a breath of air.
His fingers fell limp in her hand and slipped away as he backed up to his bed. He sat, hunched over and rocking back and forth.
“Breathe,” he said.
She was on her feet in front of him, her fingers on his arm.
“Henry?” She took his hand and squeezed it between both of hers.
He shuddered at the touch, then looked up at her from behind his hair. A thin trail of blood leaked from his nose, staining his lips a violent shade of red. He smiled at her touch.
“The medicine,” he said, barely a whisper, reaching a hand to his nose.
“It’s all right, Henry.” She wiped his face off with the bed sheet, pressing her palm against his cheek as her fingers ran over his skin. She sank to the floor in front of him and reached out to him. His head rested against her shoulder as she hugged him.
He rocked in her embrace, whispering “Breathe” over and over into her neck.
When he opened his eyes, he watched the pulse in her throat beat in time with his. Sweat glistened on her skin, so very close, and with each deep breath he inhaled her, sweet and feminine and intoxicating. Her fingers ran up and down his back, warm and comforting, and her head rested lightly on his. For a moment, he couldn’t even remember his name and didn’t care.
He shifted his head a little to the side in order to close the short distance between his lips and her neck and, before he could change his mind, kissed her.
Her hands froze and her breathing stopped. Fingertips flexed against his back, catching his shirt up in her fist as she stretched against him.
He kissed her throat again, right where the blood pulsed beneath her skin.
“Henry,” she said, the words spoken into his hair, her lips moving against his scalp.
Outside his window, the sun dipped far enough beneath the tree line to darken the room.
“Walk me home?”
He turned his neck enough to look up at her. “You live next door, you know?”
She smiled, then pushed herself up until she was standing in front of him. He grabbed her hand and stood, then spread his arms and she melted into him.
He tilted his head and looked down at her.
She tilted her head and looked up at him, her honey eyes barely open.
“Justine—” he said.
“Yes.”
“I haven’t asked anything yet.”
“Sorry,” she said, and the heat of her breath brushed against his lips. “You talk too much.”
Just as they were about to touch, she smiled.
He closed his eyes and kissed her smile.
Justine held his hand as he walked her home. Crickets and frogs, loud in the marshes surrounding the street, accompanied them. The moon had yet to rise and the scattered streetlights fought to penetrate the trees, leaving dappled shadows on the ground. The sun had taken most of the heat with it when it had fallen beneath the horizon.
Justine’s mother poked her head out the door and looked down to where her daughter held Henry’s hand.
“Almost feels as though we’re being watched,” Justine said, releasing his hand.
“You must be Henry,” her mother said.
“Hello, Mrs. Edwards.” He reached out a hand but she didn’t move. After too long a time, she shook his offered hand.
“Just friends?” she asked her daughter, then sighed. “Nice to meet you, Henry.”
“Good night,” Justine said before closing the door, flashing him a quick grin before she disappeared from view with her mother.
Henry stood there, staring at her door after she went inside. He turned around with a smile across his face. The memory of their kiss was still fresh
and her lip-gloss was a faint sweetness when he licked his lips. In the distance, heat lightning flashed, casting shadows up and down the street. Thunder rolled and left silence in its wake, the crickets and frogs deathly quiet. The slight breeze that had carried the scent of the Atlantic across the island calmed, leaving the air empty and still. The porch stairs of her house creaked with each step.
A cat screeched down the street and a dog barked in reply. Ozone tickled his nose as another flash of lightning stabbed into the ground somewhere nearby. Thunder hit bass notes deep in the pit of his stomach and he picked up his pace.
A dry branch broke in the shadows as the moon forced its way through the clouds. The back of his neck tingled and he whipped around, thinking Justine had run after him, but there was no one there. Hissing, too close for comfort, floated on the still air and he ran the rest of the way home. He tripped on the porch steps, scrabbling on his hands and knees up the rough wood, scraping his palms, though he didn’t feel anything.
Lightning ripped across the sky, the thunder chasing right behind. Still, it felt as though he was being watched. The storm seemed to follow him up the stairs to the door. His heart heaved against his ribs with each pulse, his breathing labored as he slammed the door shut behind him.
He flipped the switch but the dead bulb gave no light in the hallway. Moonlit shadows through the high windows did nothing to dispel the gloom.
The wind picked up with the rain, slamming the branches against the roof. His breathing began to calm as the thunder rattled harmlessly outside.
“Henry?” his father asked from behind him.
He jumped almost high enough to reach the ceiling and his heart took flight again, pounding with the shock. His hand rested on his rib cage, feeling the beating heart racing within.
“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t do that.”
“It’s just a storm,” his father said with a half-hearted laugh. “You’re a little too old to be afraid of thunder, don’t you think?” He turned and went back down the hall to his room.
Henry took the steps upstairs two at a time. How old am I? But like most of the other questions, it remained unasked.
seventeen
In his room, Henry ripped the photo of the birthday party out of his scrapbook. Green trees, against a high blue sky dotted with white fluffy clouds. The flash caught him just in the act of blowing out the candles on his birthday cake. A tear landed on the picture as he studied it.
The photograph trembled in his grasp, his fingers shaking, tensing around the edges and he dropped it to keep from crushing it into a ball. It fluttered to the ground and landed face-up, staring at him from the floor. Head in his hands, he stared back, unable to close his eyes and too scared to move.
“Breathe.”
A pushpin stuck out of the wall in front of him and he rested his finger on it, trying to feel the hard plastic edge. He let his hand fall, landing on the desk next to the scrapbook, the empty page with his own handwriting on it: Birthday Party: November 19.
It wasn’t autumn, in the picture still on the floor.
He turned the pages, flipping back to the beginning. He skipped the school portraits, going straight to the first candid shots. He leaned over the book, squinting to see better. He looked at the trees in the background, the grass, flowers, the clothing people were wearing, and the buildings in the corners.
One by one, he looked at them all, unable to even understand what he was looking for. Another birthday picture, an earlier age, the kids in shorts again. He picked up the photo from the floor and compared the kids surrounding him as he blew out candles on the cake. Same kids? Older, at least; similar, maybe.
He didn’t know. But again, it wasn’t fall.
More pictures, his nose brushing against the archival paper as he studied each photograph. His father had noted his mother where she appeared, a bright smile, dark hair curling around and down her face. Petite, she seemed so small next to his father, the two of them holding hands, smiling, happy.
He turned the page, picture after picture, looking for anything. Another page. Another. His face pressed into the book, he stopped. His mother and father, caught unaware by the flash of the camera. Not quite touching; not quite happy. Something had etched fine lines across his mother’s pale skin. That same something had drawn his father’s smile down into the beginnings of a frown.
After that, the pictures of them were far less frequent, those of him more staged. On another page, his father, caught in profile, watched his son doing nothing in particular. His father’s eyes were hooded, dark, with circles beneath them that were even darker, almost sad. But that’s not why Henry stopped.
There were no street names in any picture, no identifying marks of any kind for any reason. No buildings he recognized, no mountains towering in the background. No stray pieces of paper lying around for the camera to capture. He had searched every picture, studied every inch of them, and found nothing except for this one photograph of his father in profile, watching him. No, not sad; there was more pity in the look than that. And beneath the half-frown and the double chin, a faded T-shirt with half an O and an RD.
ORD?
Henry stared at the letters, blue and yellow against a gray background.
“Breathe.”
His computer hummed to life when he pulled the wireless mouse over. From beneath the pillbox he spread out the paper and added the letters to the random list. Elizabeth. Victor. Frank. Christine. CME-U. And, now, ORD. He hunched over the keyboard as he clicked open Google.
ORD.
Chicago, O’Hare airport; no. Fort Ord; no. He scrolled through the pages then froze, his fingers hovering over the keys.
ORD.
Livets Ord University, affiliated with Oral Roberts and located in Sweden; no. Then, in Google blue: STANFORD UNIVERSITY.
“Breathe.”
Henry clicked and clicked, exploring the maze of the various Stanford websites, deeper and deeper into the alumni sections, looking for … what? He didn’t know what he was searching for or why, couldn’t even figure out if ORD was a clue or not. There was no rhyme or reason to his clicking, each link taking him wherever it might. His tears fell on the keys, his breathing spiraling out of control.
Stanford.
“Breathe.”
Then, there was no place left to click, every avenue requiring registrations and passwords he didn’t have. He shuddered, struggling to draw a breath. His palm slapped against the desktop and his keyboard hopped into the air. The pills, in their plastic coffin, rattled and he dry-swallowed them all at once, coughing as they rubbed against his throat.
He stared at the monitor, resting his finger against the Stanford logo, the red S staring back at him. His finger slid down to rest on the desk and then pushed his mouse to put the computer back to sleep.
Staring at the blank monitor, he sat there, unmoving. He blinked, once, twice, then rested his head down on the keys. With a shove, he pushed himself backward, the wheels squeaking over the wooden floor. The chair bounced against the wall and Henry bounced with it.
He crawled into bed fully dressed, pulled the covers up over his head despite the heat, and tried to convince himself that pretending to sleep was as good as the real thing. Anything not to dream again.
NOAA Alert: Erika Upgraded
to Hurricane; Cuba on Alert
Miami, FL—August 24, 2009: The National Hurricane Center is reporting that Tropical Storm Erika has now been upgraded to a Hurricane as wind speeds have topped 100 mph. After the storm made a northward turn in the direction of North America, the government of Venezuela stopped broadcasting Hurricane Alerts for the coast. The projected path has been updated to indicate landfall in Cuba and the Gulf Coast by the end of the week.
A Tropical Storm alert has also been issued for the Netherlands Antilles islands of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao for the imminent arrival of Tropical Storm Danny, with sustained maximum winds of 65 mph.
eighteen
Henry woke on
the floor, tangled in blankets. Memories of a nightmare disappeared as he struggled to cling to his dream. An image of a touch, the feel of a glance, but nothing made sense as he kicked the sheets off. While he brushed his teeth, however, all he thought of was a kiss.
The sun was already hard at work burning the dew off the grass as he walked to the bus stop. He stood at the edge of the sidewalk, balancing on the curb. Along the road, a handful of other kids congregated apart from him and all he could do was watch as they laughed at a joke he couldn’t hear.
Justine walked along the street, kicking a pile of grounded moss as she wandered from side to side, keeping in the shade of the trees that lined Harrison Pointe. As she approached she grasped her backpack, holding it in front of her like a shield. She stared at the ground between them, studying his shoes. Her mumbled “Good morning” was barely audible.
“Justine?” he said, his hands deep in his pockets as she took a step back from him.
She looked over her shoulder, to where her mother stood on their front porch, and, without looking at Henry, took another step away. Before she’d taken a third, she stopped.
“Damn,” she said as the bus pulled up.
Kids piled up the stairs, jostling to reach the same seats they always sat in. The clatter of latched windows being forced down echoed through the bus. The benches squeaked.
Henry sat, slid over next to the window, and watched as Justine worked her way up the aisle. Staring at her feet, she bumped into the girl in front of her and stumbled backward. With a blush, she sat down in the seat in front of Henry and stared straight ahead.
He leaned toward her as the bus pulled away from the curb. “Justine?”
She looked at him over her shoulder, her hair curling down around her face, then lowered her eyes and turned back around.
“You all right?” he asked, resting his hands on the back of her seat.
Without a sound, she nodded.
Henry sat back, his fingers resting for a moment longer on the vinyl before falling to his lap. She cast a quick glance back toward him before turning away again. Conversations grew and died around them, replaced by laughter and the quiet sounds of kids fanning themselves with whatever was handy.
Henry Franks Page 9