Memento Nora

by Angie Smibert

  I stopped on the King footbridge just outside the school gates to eat all three muffins and gulp down the coffee. The late bell rang as I was licking the crumbs out of the paper bag.

  Morning classes were a real snooze as usual. I like my afternoon classes—art and shop; but the morning ones—English and algebra, especially—give me a headache. I know I’m not stupid, but sometimes I have trouble wrapping my brain around stuff that I can’t do with my hands. Or my mouth. I dozed off while Mr. Finchly droned on about the attack on Pearl Harbor in the 1940s.

  At lunch I caught up with my usual crew. Spike. Richie. Little Steven. Velvet. Winter. And Little Steven’s brother, Big Steven. I know; his parents are creatively challenged. Velvet’s parents named her Anne Marie. No one knows Spike’s real name. We suspect it’s something very long, Greek, and unpronounceable.

  We usually sit at the back table against the wall. It’s good for people watching and sketching. And the jocks don’t bother us there. Well, the jocks don’t pick on us too much since Little Steven grew a foot and half last summer and pierced his nose.

  Anyway, Spike was ribbing me about the comic. “We know you drew it,” he said. “Dude, it has you all over it.”

  Spike is into art, too. Clothes are his medium, he says. He likes spattering stuff on T-shirts and jeans and calling it street wear. Some of it is okay. Like today. He was wearing a Memento T-shirt—and, if I knew Spike, he was planning to make many more. Total badass.

  “Don’t worry,” Velvet said, leaning over the table toward me. She was sporting one of Spike’s nonpolitical painted tees over a really short skirt and black tights. “We’d never give you up.”

  Winter glared at her, and she backed off.

  “But we’re curious,” she said, looking at Winter, “about this new chick you’ve been hanging out with.”

  Winter was suddenly very interested in her burrito, but I caught her cutting me a sidelong glance as Velvet pressed for details. I couldn’t tell what Winter was thinking; but then again, I generally suck at mind reading.

  “Oh, leave him alone,” Richie chimed in. “The man can dream.” He was watching someone as he said this. I glanced up. It was Nora. She was making her way to the salad bar. She looked very little-girl-lost today.

  Richie started talking about a gig his band had next weekend. He plays bass in a retro band that mostly plays Bar Mitzvahs. No one in the band is old enough to be out past curfew let alone get into a bar. So they play the Mitzvah-Sweet Sixteen-Quinceañera circuit. This new gig was in the Cherry Falls compound, but Richie’s dad didn’t want to spring for the chip just so he could play there. Richie nudged me and said something about a new song he wanted to lay on the compound crowd. I nodded like I was listening, but I was watching Nora.

  She was looking shaky as she sat down with her friends. One of them—Maia, the tennis player—glared at me. They’re all look-good-on-the-college-app types. Everything they do is prep for some golden future laid out before them. I watched Nora pick at her salad. She looked like she was going to puke or bolt any second.

  Man, I wished I’d never messed with Nora’s head back at TFC. She was too good for that. Too good for me.

  16

  It Takes a Junkyard

  Therapeutic Statement 42-03282028-11

  Subject: JAMES, NORA EMILY, 15

  Facility: HAMILTON DETENTION CENTER TFC-42

  The bones rattled like a sack of chicken legs in a Brooks Brothers suit. The air smelled like burning books. Car alarms wailed all along Market Street. Mom wasn’t there to cover my eyes. Micah was there instead, and he made me look. At the socks. At the silver watch stopped at ten past two. At the book with Memento written on its spine. I knelt and touched its cover. It burst into a cloud of ash, covering me in fine gray silt, choking me until I woke up gasping for air.

  I skipped breakfast.

  That day was so dreary. I was waiting for something to happen, waiting for school to end, waiting to see Micah. Just waiting.

  In homeroom, HTN ran a story on the extracurricular activities that could get you into your dream college. Then a Homeland guy reminded us that all student publications must be approved by the board. Some of the kids in class booed. The only student pub we have now is the yearbook.

  I caught a glimpse of Micah during lunch as I was getting my salad. He was sitting at the far table with his artsy, weird friends, which included Winter. Her spikes were red now. She didn’t look at me, but Micah did.

  “I told you to nip that in the bud,” Maia said as we sat down at our usual table. I knew she meant Micah.

  “There’s nothing to nip,” I said as coolly as I could.

  “Uh-huh.” She didn’t sound convinced.

  “Did you hear Zack Smith got suspended for making copies of that comic?” Abby asked. “The cops even thought he wrote it.”

  That made Maia laugh. “He couldn’t even spell memento.”

  “He’ll be okay,” Hunter said. “His mom’s a big wheel at TFC.”

  The conversation continued like that for a while. I didn’t say anything. The girls talked about several kids either getting detention (little d, the school variety) or suspended for trying to send Memento to friends. Maia kept looking at me. It wasn’t like me to be so quiet, I know, but I just didn’t feel up to the chatter. Then one of the guys from the next table said he’d heard Mike Delaney wasn’t here today because his folks had lost it when they’d found his copy of Memento. They were talking about putting him in private school.

  It was getting hot and close and way too noisy in the cafeteria. I told the girls I wasn’t feeling well and practically sprinted to the trash can to toss out my lunch. Scraping the lettuce and creamy French dressing into the smelly waste bin didn’t help. The room started to spin.

  “Are you okay?” a voice behind me asked. It was Micah. He slid his bloodred spaghetti into the trash.

  I had to get air. I made for the door out to the courtyard. The band geeks eat lunch out there. I headed for the big apple tree by the edge of the school grounds. The breeze felt amazing against my hot skin. I leaned up against the knobbly bark of the tree and watched the squirrels scamper and the blossoms begin to fall to the ground.

  Then I felt something cold being pressed into my hands. Micah was handing me a chilled bottle of water. I drank the whole thing in one big, greedy gulp.

  “It comes back up on you sometimes,” he said as quietly as the breeze rustling through the trees. “The things we’re supposed to forget.”

  I nodded. We sank down into the grass by the tree. I didn’t bother to see if anyone was watching us. It felt good just sitting there in the grass. With him.

  “It pisses me off.” I said it a little louder than I’d intended. “I don’t feel safe anywhere anymore. Not home. Not school,” I added at a slightly more reasonable volume. I thought about mentioning the move to Los Palamos but didn’t.

  Micah nodded. I told him about the dream I kept having. He nodded again.

  We sat there watching the squirrels chase each other along the security fence that separated us from the outside world.

  “Want to see where I feel safe?” Micah asked after a long silence. “You’ve got to swear to keep it secret.”

  I nodded. I couldn’t imagine where he’d take me, but I felt safe with him.

  He said it wasn’t far—and we needed a few hours off. We could be back in time for the car service to pick me up, same as usual.

  Believe it or not, I’d never ditched before; but getting out of school isn’t a problem, Micah explained as we went through the security checkpoint.

  “The corporation that runs this place just cares about liability on campus. They don’t want you to bring in anything disruptive or explosive—or steal anything expensive.” He stopped talking and smiled oh so innocently as the rent-a-cop scanned our bags.

  From the school we walked a couple of blocks, across an old pedestrian bridge that ran over the highway, and then another block to a place called Bla
ck Dog Architectural Reclamation and Bakery. The bakery part hung below the main sign on a painted wooden panel.

  “Your safe place is a junkyard,” I said, astonished.

  It was an old brick building with antique bathtubs and stone gargoyles in one window—and loaves of bread in another. Instead of going in the front door, Micah led me around the side to a wrought iron gate with an AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY sign hanging on it. A stone wall seemed to encircle the actual junkyard part behind the building.

  “Don’t worry, I’m authorized,” Micah said, laughing, as he pushed open the creaky gate.

  Once inside, we wound our way through a maze of junk. Stacks of wrought iron fencing. More old-fashioned bathtubs. Stained glass windows. Doors. As we turned a corner and I caught a whiff of fresh-baked bread, we ran into a black dog. A big one.

  “Bridget, this is Nora,” Micah told the dog. She sniffed me once and then ran back the way she had come, tail wagging as she trotted. “She won’t allow strangers past this point without an introduction.”

  We emerged from the junk maze; and Micah opened another gate, this one with a dog flap at the bottom. Bells tinkled as he shut it behind us. Inside was something almost as surprising and wonderful as Winter’s garden.

  We stepped onto a neat green lawn with a stone path cutting through it to a brick square. There was a row of miniature town houses on one side of the square and a covered pavilion on the other. The town houses looked like giant doll- or playhouse versions of the ones in my neighborhood. These were skinnier and much shorter—only one story, if that—but they had windows and shutters and even flower boxes. The exteriors were painted in alternating colors: blue, white, yellow, green. My first thought was that Mom would love these.

  “Welcome to Black Dog Village,” Micah said proudly, as if he’d created the place himself.

  The smell of baking bread filled the air. Several people waved to us. A group of small children played on the green lawn near the jungle gym while an older woman watched from her porch.

  “Young man.” A tall, wiry black woman with short gray hair steamed up to us. “What is your mother going to think, you coming home in the middle of the school day? And don’t think she’s not going to find out. And bringing a girl? A real pretty one at that.”

  I blushed.

  “She’s going to think I was hungry for some of that good rosemary sourdough bread you’re baking, Mrs. Brooks, and maybe some of that stew.” Micah turned on the charm, charm I didn’t know he had.

  Micah introduced me to Mrs. Brooks. She laughed and said she was still going to tell his mother. Micah didn’t seem very worried about that.

  “Amelia,” a skinny white girl in a sundress called from the pavilion, “I think the bread is done.”

  Mrs. Brooks shooed us toward the girl, who upon closer inspection must have been about thirty. She was opening the black iron door on a low brick oven. The heat and the warm-bready smell washed over me, and I realized I was starving.

  “Those look good, honey,” Mrs. Brooks told the woman. “Melinda is learning the trade,” Mrs. Brooks explained to me, “in exchange for showing me how to do pottery so I can make flowerpots and plates and such.” She pointed to a stack of pretty light blue and creamy brown bowls stacked by the oven.

  “Oh, I want to learn, too,” Micah said.

  “You want to learn everything, child,” Mrs. Brooks replied. “Did he tell you he learned how to weld so he could make the iron flower boxes and the jungle gym?” she asked me.

  I watched Micah as he ran his finger over the swirly texture of one of the bowls. I noticed he latches on to some things, things that intrigue him, I guess, with this sweet, open eagerness.

  “Most times he needs a kick in the pants to finish one thing before he’s off to the next,” Mrs. Brooks said, chuckling.

  Micah ignored her as he examined a big blue plate with this greenish glaze on it. It was glossy in all senses of the word.

  “Now that Winter girl,” Mrs. Brooks added. “She’s good at getting things done.” She pointed to the solar panels on the roof of the pavilion. Mrs. Brooks looked at me as if trying to judge what I had to offer. “In the words of Maya Angelou, ‘Nothing works unless you do,’” she said finally. I wasn’t sure if that was directed at Micah or me.

  While she’d been talking, the other woman, Melinda, had pulled out a half-dozen round loaves of golden brown bread with a big wooden paddle. She laid them out to cool with another half-dozen or so loaves. She took one of the hot loaves and cut off a couple hunks for us and wrapped them in a clean towel.

  “There’s still some stew left,” Melinda said as she handed us the bread. Her voice was as airy as wind chimes.

  Micah scooped up the stew and motioned me toward the tables. Most of them seemed to be made out of doors. A couple of people said hi to us. One ladled out something from a big pot into two bowls, and Micah and I sat down at a pale yellow table with GENTS stenciled on it.

  The stew in the bowl looked and smelled really good, but not as good as the bread. I wolfed it down while Micah told me about the Village. His talking didn’t slow his eating at all. He sopped up stew with a hunk of bread and inhaled it without missing a breath.

  The Village is only a couple years old, Micah explained. Mr. Shaw, the owner of the salvage yard (and Bridget), let them stay there as long as there was no trouble and they helped out in the business when needed. Micah had helped collect salvage from house renovations many times. Most people throw out the beautiful old wood and iron and even stained glass when they put in fancy new kitchens and bathrooms or security measures like blast windows and fortified media rooms. Some folks still care about preserving old houses, and they buy fixtures and fencing from Black Dog—but not as much as they used to, which is why Mr. Shaw was cool with having people live on the property in exchange for a little work. Then business had gotten so bad that he and his family had lost their house and moved into the Village themselves.

  All residents have to have some skill and be approved by everyone before they move in. Micah and his mom had moved in last year, he explained, after they’d lost their apartment downtown and lived on the streets for a few months. For some reason his mom’s security score is very low, as are a lot of folks’ scores in the Village. That means they have to buy a lot of things the old-fashioned way: with cash. Without a good security score, you can’t buy or rent a decent place. Or even get some jobs. And forget about getting an ID chip.

  Anyway, after living out of shelters or in their car, Micah and his mom ended up here on the recommendation of Mrs. Brooks. Micah’s mom and Mrs. Brooks had worked at the same retirement home a while back. Mrs. Brooks had been the chef there before some big company took over.

  “I think Mrs. Brooks used to teach English before she lost her house,” Micah said as he licked the bowl. “She’s always quoting poetry at me.”

  Micah’s mom is still a nurse at Sunny Oaks. And when she gets home, she takes care of everyone in the Village, at least until they have to go to the emergency room. She’s stitched up cuts, taped up sprains, nursed people through the flu, and even delivered a baby or two.

  After we finished our stew, Micah showed me the gardens and playgrounds. The Village grows fresh vegetables and herbs, and barters or pools its money for meat and flour and sugar. Most of the residents have jobs—or they work for Mr. Shaw. They just need a safe place to live.

  We sat on the top of the jungle gym Micah’d made out of scrap metal and wrought iron, and I could understand why he felt safe there. I felt safe there, too. Maybe it was just the bread warming my insides. Or the smell of lavender from the gardens. Or the murmur of friendly voices. Or the sight of children playing. I reached out and took his hand.

  He looked pleasantly surprised.

  “What about your dad?” I asked.

  He hesitated and then said, “I don’t really remember my dad.” I could feel him wanting to wriggle free from my hand. “I know I should. I was like five or six when he left
. Mom won’t talk about it, but she swears she didn’t pill me into forgetting.”

  “Do you believe her?” I asked him. I asked myself, Could she have secretly pilled him?She’s a nurse. They might have the TFC pill where she works. She could have slipped it into his oatmeal. Maybe. But then I thought, no. If she could do that, she wouldn’t have bothered to take him to TFC at all. Besides, like the TFC doctor explained, the pill alone wasn’t enough to make you forget. You had to talk about the specific memory.

  Micah shrugged. “But even if she didn’t, I don’t want to forget anything else.”

  Micah slid down the jungle gym to the ground. He gave me his good hand to guide me. The cast on his bum arm was beginning to look pretty tattered. He’d covered up the Memento with a big snake, just like Mr. Yamada had on his arm.