Memento Nora

by Angie Smibert

  We were in a church basement.

  “Help yourself,” Officer Bell said, finally cracking a smile. “We’ll be starting soon.” He walked over to where people were setting out doughnuts and coffee on the breakfast bar in the kitchen.

  Micah and I still didn’t move. A handful of middle-aged men and women milled around, talking and sipping coffee. Some nodded in our general direction. One of them was the school librarian, Ms. Curtis. Micah nudged me and pointed toward the man setting out folding chairs. Vintage black hat. Tattoos snaking down his arms. It was Winter’s grandfather.

  “Mr. Yamada?” Micah moved to help him with the chairs, and I followed.

  “What’s going on?” I wanted some answers first.

  “The group wanted to talk to you.” Mr. Yamada acknowledged the cop with the slightest of nods. “Some thought it might be best to scare you a little first.”

  “Is Winter here, too?” Micah asked.

  “Yes, I pulled her out of seventh period,” Mr. Yamada said as he set a chair on the floor with a smack.

  Micah seemed relieved, but my fear was quickly turning into anger.

  “A memory loss group?” I pressed.

  Mr. Yamada set the next chair down more gently. “It started out as a support group for those of us who lost someone to Detention,” he explained. “Then others joined, mostly to vent about the way things are. And then it kind of grew into something else.”

  A man moved to the front of the room.

  “Winter’s over there,” Mr. Yamada said, pointing toward the kitchen. “Showing them how to make proper coffee.” He laughed.

  His tone relaxed me somewhat, but I still wanted answers.

  “Grab her and then come sit with me,” he said. “The group will explain the rest.

  “Don’t worry,” he added. “They’re harmless. Relatively. But they’re a bit full of themselves.” He winked.

  We did find Winter brewing her god-awful coffee. She started to say something, but Ms. Curtis told us to grab a doughnut and go sit down; Winter, too. Micah seized two chocolate crullers, and Winter grabbed a Styrofoam cup of her bitter brew and six sugar packets. Micah inhaled one of the crullers before offering me the other. I shook my head. I couldn’t stomach anything. I watched him stuff the second cruller in his mouth and head back for more.

  “I see you and Micah have worked things out,” Ms. Curtis said. I had the feeling she’d seen me watching Micah. “You make an interesting couple.”

  “Oh, we’re not—” I stopped because I knew I was busted. Interesting?

  “I won’t tell anyone,” she whispered as Micah and Winter worked their way back toward us. Ms. Curtis herded everyone into the front row of seats.

  Winter sat next to her grandfather, then Micah, then me. The librarian sat in one of the chairs by the podium at the front of the room. An older man stood at the podium and banged a gavel. Officer Bell slipped into the seat next to mine. He offered me a soda. I just shook my head.

  “I call this meeting of the Memory Loss Support Group to order. Madam Secretary will review the minutes of the last meeting.”

  Ms. Curtis stood up and began to recite, “The MLSG met on February fifteenth at the Southside Methodist Church. The meeting lasted approximately fifty-three minutes. The Right Honorable Chairman Wilson Carver presided. We covered the following agenda items.”

  The librarian then rattled off a list of actions. The Black Van Committee reported three sightings last month, each in the vicinity of a later incident. (Micah caught my eye at the mention of the vans.) The Phone Tree Committee practiced a “fire drill” scenario. The Refreshment Committee decided to purchase doughnuts rather than bagels. Then she went through a litany of such-and-such moved this and such-and-such seconded it, this was tabled, and that was so noted.

  “Is this a student council meeting?” Micah whispered to me.

  “More like my parents’ home owners’ association,” I whispered back. We’d had them at our house many, many times. Very dreary. I didn’t know how they ever got anything done.

  The cop stifled a laugh. Mr. Carver glared at us.

  I looked at the old metal clock on the wall. Ms. Curtis had been going for ten minutes. And she was doing it all without looking at a piece of paper or a mobile. Pure memory.

  “We don’t commit anything to paper,” the cop leaned in and whispered as if reading my thoughts. “Not that there’s anything significant to put down.”

  The chairman glared at us again. Ms. Curtis sat down after another minute of yeahs and nays.

  “We have a number of new items to cover today,” Mr. Carver said without getting up. “We need more money for the Jonas Defense Fund in order to help the Trujillo family. Luis has been ‘away’ for nearly a year now, and Mercy was let go—again—last week. And we—”

  Ms. Curtis leaned over and whispered something to the chairman. He sighed and nodded.

  “Yes. Maybe we should dispense with our old business for the moment,” he said, looking at us. “Our guests are getting restless. And I believe we need to get them back before their bedtimes.”

  Now I was really angry.

  “Moving on to new business,” the chairman said, looking at me. “We want you kids to stop producing your comic.”

  “What?” Micah almost spat out his fourth cruller.

  “Sasuke-san?” Winter turned to her grandfather. Clearly she was as clueless as we were.

  I stood up. “Excuse me, who are you guys anyway? And why the hell should we do what you say?” I kind of surprised myself.

  Winter nodded at me as if she was actually impressed.

  The chairman glared at Officer Bell again. “Didn’t you tell them?”

  “No.” The cop shrugged. “This was your idea. You tell them.”

  Mr. Carver groaned. I kept standing.

  “We’re the underground,” he said.

  Winter snorted at that.

  Mr. Carver visibly bristled. Then he focused on me and spoke calmly but firmly. “Young lady,” he said.

  I decided to sit down.

  “We are an underground group of concerned cit-izens. . . .” He paused, looking for the words. “Let’s just say we’re more than a support group.”

  Ms. Curtis stood again. “In the beginning, all of us”—she looked at Mr. Yamada and a few others—“lost somebody to Detention. We all had a loved one or friend who was ‘away,’ as George so delicately put it. So we got together to support one another mentally, emotionally, and even financially. We still do that.”

  The chairman lowered his eyes.

  “So?” I asked.

  “The financial thing is the tricky part,” Officer Bell said to me.

  Mr. Yamada nodded. “It’s illegal to give money to suspected terrorists.”

  “Koji and Doug are correct,” Ms. Curtis said. “Which is why the Jonas Defense Fund—our legal defense fund—is so important and quite enough to get us all sent ‘away,’ too.”

  A strange look came over Micah.

  “There’s so much else we do—or could do,” the chairman said. He looked like he wanted to say more but thought better of it. Plus, Ms. Curtis was glowering at him. “But let’s not get into it right now.” He turned to my friends and me. “The bottom line is that your activities, no matter how admirable, put ours at risk. That comic of yours has spread way outside Hamilton and DC, even beyond the East Coast.”

  I still didn’t get how we put them at risk, but that was all they would say. They refused to tell us what else they did. They just made us promise to stop what we were doing. Micah was oddly quiet during the whole thing.

  “And if we don’t?” I asked.

  “Officer Bell will have to do his job,” the librarian said curtly.

  Officer Bell shook his head slowly. ”Katie, don’t use me to threaten them.”

  Ms. Curtis did not look happy with him.

  “I’ve had enough of this crap.” Mr. Yamada stood up. “I only agreed to bring Winter to listen. You k
ids don’t need to promise anything. We’re leaving.”

  “Koji,” the cop said, rising. “Let me take these two back to school.” He and Winter’s grandfather exchanged a look, and Mr. Yamada nodded.

  “It’s okay,” he reassured us. “I trust Bell.”

  Winter just stood there next to her grandfather, staring at the cop with her X-ray vision as if trying to gauge his intentions. She didn’t say a thing.

  Micah and I ended up back in the cop car again. I wondered why Mr. Yamada—whose daughter and son-in-law had disappeared into Detention—would trust this cop. Why would any of them? And why would he be part of this so-called underground?

  So I asked Officer Bell.

  And to my surprise he told us.

  “It was the black vans,” he said without taking his eyes off the road.

  Micah sat up when Bell said that.

  Last year, Officer Bell said, back when he had still been on patrol, he’d noticed that whenever there was a bombing in his area, some witness always reported seeing a black van. None of the detectives had seemed to take this seriously. There are dozens of black vans at any one time in the city, they’d say. Then he’d seen one leaving the area near a bombing right after it happened. So he followed the van back to a building downtown and saw it go into an unmarked parking garage next to Tiffany’s. He’d called it in, thinking the store might be the terrorists’ next target. Nothing happened, though, and the next day he’d been bumped down to searching bags at our school.

  “I started to watch for the vans on my off time,” he said as we turned into the circular drive in front of the school. “I noticed Koji—Mr. Yamada—doing the same thing one evening. Eventually we talked, and he introduced me to the group. And Katie—Ms. Curtis.” He blushed when he said her name.

  “Thanks for telling us this,” I said.

  “I don’t underestimate you like they do,” he answered. “You kids may get more accomplished than that lot in there. Mind you, if it comes down to it, I may have to arrest you myself,” he added.

  “I still don’t see why,” I protested. “Free speech isn’t against the law.”

  “Well, that doesn’t seem to matter anymore,” he said as he parked in the drop-off zone.

  “What do the vans do?” Micah asked as I was reaching for the door handle. He’d been oddly quiet on the ride back and at the meeting, like he was someplace else. It was a good question.

  Officer Bell didn’t say anything for so long that I thought he wasn’t going to answer. He just stared at the steering wheel.

  “I’ll show you,” he finally said. “You wouldn’t believe it otherwise. But I can’t guarantee that we’ll see anything the first time out.” He told us to meet him next Tuesday at Winter’s house. After dark. “I know you can get out after curfew,” he added, looking at Micah.

  Officer Bell let us back into school long enough to get our stuff and then he left us sitting on the front steps.

  “He told us that story for a reason,” I said to Micah as we waited for my car service. I’d had to call because we’d been a little late getting back to school. “Officer Bell must want us to use the black vans in Memento,” I insisted.

  “It would make a great story,” Micah agreed. “But it won’t make sense until we know exactly what the vans are up to.”

  “And who’s behind them.”

  Micah nodded.

  “Do you think they’re Coalition terrorists?” I asked.

  “Why would the cops cover for them?”

  “Maybe they are cops. Some special bomb disposal unit.”

  “Then why wouldn’t Bell have known that?”

  I shrugged. “We should ask Winter. Maybe her grand-father told her something Bell left out.”

  Micah nodded again, but I could see his mind was racing ahead, kicking around the possibilities. He looked very cute lost in his thoughts. I really should tell him I won’t be around in two weeks, I thought; but I pushed aside the whole move thing as my car service pulled into the pick-up lane.

  I’d tell him later—as soon as I figured out how.

  “Talk to Winter,” I said, “and then call me this weekend.” And without really thinking about it, I kissed Micah good-bye.

  He stood there for a moment, stunned, before he grinned his little Micah grin and stepped on his skateboard, pushing off with a burst of energy.

  I felt pretty glossy. I still hadn’t come up with a new word.

  20

  Tech Support

  Therapeutic Statement 42-03282028-13

  Subject: NOMURA, WINTER, 14

  Facility: HAMILTON DETENTION CENTER TFC-42

  The step-whir in my head beat out a rhythm like the wings of rabid hummingbirds as I watched Micah and Nora get into Officer Bell’s car.

  My sasuke-san put his hand on my shoulder. “They’ll be fine,” he said. “Bell just wants to talk to them.”

  I trusted my grandfather’s judgment, but I still felt jittery watching my best friend (and his girl) pull away in the backseat of a police car. Maybe it was just the bad coffee making me feel that way. The hummingbirds didn’t think so.

  “Let’s go home,” Grandfather said. He gave me a quick hug.

  We walked down the alley to Jefferson Street. We didn’t say much. I was still sorting out the questions flitting through my head. We stopped at the bus stop in front of Starbucks. We’ve been busing it for years, ever since Grandfather’s car was blown up outside his shop. It had happened not long after Mom and Dad disappeared. Since Grandfather didn’t have insurance, he’d never replaced the car. He inclined his head in the direction of the baristas serving up reasonably good coffee. I shook my head.

  “That’s a first,” he said.

  “Grandfather?” I started to ask him the question that had floated to the top of my brain, but the number 72 bus picked that moment to turn the corner and grind to a halt in front of us.

  We grabbed seats toward the front. It wasn’t a long ride to our place. I could wait to ask him then. An ad for some cologne I’d never heard of was playing; but as soon as our butts hit the vinyl, the screen flicked over to the news. I had to smile. I think we confuse the system. We don’t buy much from retail markets, and not many vintage shops or tattoo parlors can afford to advertise on public transport. Most of the time I get Nomura products or the news. Grandfather usually gets cars. Guess the system thinks he needs a new one.

  The local reporter woman was interviewing a new candidate for the senate outside a TFC downtown. “I never forget who I represent,” he said with a gleaming smile.

  Grandfather groaned. “TFC is sponsoring him,” he explained without looking away from his mobile. “Nomura is being stingy with its funds this time around, which probably means your uncle doesn’t like this guy too much. Ichiro will let TFC or one of its flunkies, like Soft Target or Homeland Inc., foot the bill for this guy.”

  Politics, family or otherwise, bores me; but the reporter looked familiar. Then it clicked. “That’s where I’ve seen her,” I said to no one in particular. “That’s Jet’s girlfriend.”

  Grandfather looked up at the screen. “Yeah, that’s Becca. Jet’s been working on her back piece for a few months now.”

  Rebecca Starr is cute, a bit more boyish than I like. Jet is curvier. Wait. Becca? That meant he knows her pretty well.

  “They moved in together,” Grandfather said gently, as if he knew how I felt about Jet. I’d never told anyone about my crush on Jet, except Velvet—and she guessed. “They seem really happy.”

  Shit.

  “Eighth and Day,” the bus announced as it jerked to a stop.

  Thank God. I couldn’t get off of the bus fast enough. I did not want to hear Grandfather say that I’ll meet someone someday or some crap like that. He didn’t, but he seemed a little too aware of my discomfort as we walked toward our place.

  Question time.

  “Why is your group so threatened by a stupid comic strip drawn by a couple of kids?”

  That
wiped the grin off his face. He retina-scanned us into our front entrance. The big door slid shut behind us, and the security system beeped to indicate the place was locked—and bug free. A customer had installed this quasi-legal anti-surveillance system for us a few years ago in exchange for a full-body piece. Grandfather had felt we needed the security because of what had happened to my folks. He’s still working on that tattoo.

  “It’s true that the Jonas Fund could get us all in hot water,” he said as he grabbed juice from the fridge. “And some people, like Katie, think it’s our most important function, and we shouldn’t be doing anything that could screw it up. But I think most of the group is nervous because of the black vans.”