My stomach feels sick. Why doesn’t anyone remember me when I live here, go to school here?
It only gets worse when she finally looks me up in the computer. “Marshall King? How could this even be possible? You’ve been absent without excuse most of this year!” I have? “You’re failing six out of seven courses. You can’t graduate, even with summer school. You’ll simply have to repeat grade twelve.”
While the dot matrix printer takes its sweet dot matrix time over my schedule, I stand there feeling like the loser I am. For crying out loud, how could I flunk senior year? Why didn’t I bother to show up to school like a normal person? What was my problem anyway? Then I think about what Elyse said: The point of coming here today is to learn the truth about our pasts, not worry about grades. Something occurs to me. “What about last year?”
“What about it?”
“You said I can’t graduate. But I managed to get promoted from junior to senior somehow, right?”
“Barely.” She scowls at the screen.
“So my grades were always bad.”
“I only have records for one semester. Before that you didn’t even go to SF High.”
I didn’t? My hopes for gaining valuable info suddenly soar. “Where does it, um, say I went?”
“Nowhere. We don’t keep copies of grades for homeschoolers.”
I was homeschooled? That’s not helpful at all. Nor is it comforting. Means I spent all my time at home, probably with that guy we ran away from.
She hands me the printout, and I thank her and turn to go.
“Wait a minute,” she says, snapping her fingers. “It’s coming back to me now. Your parents are those foreign journalists, aren’t they? They still researching . . . what was it again?”
Journalists. My parents are foreign journalists. What would they possibly be researching in some little tourist town?
“Well, I guess you wouldn’t be here otherwise,” she says, answering her own question.
Elyse was right, I think, walking to my first class—math—with my schedule in hand. I’ve already learned something in school, even though it’s given me more questions than answers.
Unfortunately that’s pretty much the only thing I learn for the next few hours. In math, Spanish, and Language Arts I sit in the back and no one calls on me. It’s not that people aren’t nice to me. They’re too nice. With big, happy smiles, they tear out sheets of notepad paper for me and toss me spare pens and pencils, let me look on in their textbooks without complaint. But it’s a huge waste of time. The teachers’ voices drone, repeating the same lesson points over and over because someone or other still doesn’t get it. Or the teacher forgot where she was. Maybe I’m an arrogant jackass for thinking this, but how can a whole roomful of people be that slow, forgetful, and distractible? In some ways it feels more like kindergarten than twelfth grade.
At one point in Spanish a cheerleader bounces up to the teacher’s desk and asks if she can go to the bathroom. Asks. To go to the bathroom. Even weirder, the teacher asks her to hold it till break, and she cheerfully agrees, and marches back to her chair. Maybe it’s just my own attitude, a holdover from being homeschooled, but I’d never let anyone—teacher or otherwise—tell me when I can and can’t take a leak. Over and over I find myself wondering, Am I the odd one, or is it this place? Or both? Either way, I fit in about as well as a wolf at a puppy obedience school. I keep thinking about Elyse, wanting to talk to her and being irritated that something as stupid as a school schedule can stop us from seeing each other. I wonder how she’s coping. Is she feeling the same disconnect as I am?
I search for her bright blond hair at break but don’t see her anywhere, so I head to the next class on my schedule. American History. Room 209. According to my report card, I aced this class last semester. Somehow. Miraculously. I grab a seat in the back row, the seat closest to the door. The classroom starts to fill up and get noisy fast—break is only ten minutes.
Then the teacher walks in and my pulse quickens. It’s the British guy from the antique store, Mr. English.
If I thought he seemed young for a teacher when I met him yesterday, it was nothing compared to how absurdly youthful he looks in his own classroom. Pacing the room in his gray argyle sweater over a blue shirt with its ironed collar and rolled cuffs, he looks as out of place as I feel. Neither one of us really belongs here.
“All right, settle down, everyone,” he says, barely looking our way. “I spent all weekend grading your essay tests, a depressing task, given your underwhelming performance.”
Scattered groans from around the room. Two girls exchange notes, not bothering to be subtle about it. Understandable. We’re all seniors in the last nine days of school.
“Your ignorance of the American Great Depression is so horrific that I should fail each and every last one of you.”
The class looks up. He’s got their attention now.
“The only reason I hesitate is your parents. They don’t realize how tough it is to find a teacher willing to move to this benighted tourist trap.” Why is he being so snarky? I try to catch his eye from the back row. If he keeps talking like this, he’s liable to induce a mass heatnap. “If I gave you all the grades you’ve earned,” he goes on, “a mob of hicks with torches and pitchforks would storm my poor little cabin this very night.”
Finally I manage to make eye contact, and he stares right at me, clearly confused to see me here. I have to wonder, did I buy that A-minus?
“You can relax, folks,” he says. “I learned long ago, you can’t force people to learn. You can only try to be a good influence. In that spirit, I shall burn these test papers and never speak of them again . . .”
The class issues a collective cheer.
“. . . and we’re going to do the unit over.”
The cheer turns to a groan.
My next class is PE, but I don’t have gym clothes, so I just have to sit there while a bunch of people play volleyball. Halfway through I have to pee, but I’m not going to ask anyone’s permission, so I just stand up and walk out of the gym. No one notices.
I decide not to go back to the gym at all and head to the library instead. It’s tiny, with an unmanned counter, only a few shelves of books. But I spot a row of yearbooks and school directories up front. First thing I do is look up my own address and phone number: King, Marshall. Senior. 863 Finch Street. I tear out the page and stuff it into my pocket with my schedule.
Next I sit at the single computer, pull open a browser, and try Googling my own name. But all I get is unhelpful stuff about kings and marshals. I look up “Marshall King” “Summer Falls” and click on the top link, an obituary. Not from a local newspaper but from a major one.
It’s short. Not like you’d write for someone really famous. But it’s here, taking up lines in a paper read by tens of thousands.
Journalist Eva Moon passed away August 22 of this year due to complications of hypothermia after taking a midnight swim in a mountain pool. The Ecuadorian-born Moon was in the midst of researching a book about the picturesque town of Summer Falls, Colorado. She is survived by her husband, Bill King, and their son, Marshall King.
A midnight swim in a mountain pool? I shiver, remembering the ice-cold, watery grave from my dreams. I’ve been dreaming of the place where my mother died. It’s been calling me. Had it been calling her too? Everyone who read this obit must have figured she was drunk or even trying to kill herself. I know better.
I stare at the thumbnail photo above the writing. It’s the same picture Elyse pointed out on my bedroom wall, the black-haired woman holding hands with the little boy, only he’s been cropped out. All you can see is Eva Moon’s face, that look of quiet triumph.
My mother, I think, trying to get used to the idea. I had a mother. She took care of me when I was small. She held my hand. I loved her. I’ll never see her again.
My mother is dead.
Impossible to grieve over someone you never knew about. Impossible to miss her. And yet I fe
el something like grief. Anger and sadness and frustration, at finding her only to realize I’ve lost her forever. Lost her completely. Whoever or whatever wiped my memory obliterated the last piece of her too. I want to smash my fist through the monitor.
Instead I reach toward the screen and touch with my fingertip that tiny, distant, pixilated face. It’s silent in the library, and for a moment I feel like I can almost recall the sound of her voice, low and warm and gently accented. But it could just be my imagination, deviously filling in the holes with lies I want to believe in.
Chapter 19
ELYSE
No surprise, I can’t concentrate in any of my classes. The Language Arts teacher yells at me for not having memorized my poem and makes me copy out a dictionary page as punishment. The PE teacher asks if I’m feeling all right because I don’t remember which volleyball team I’m on, even though we’ve been playing all month.
That’s not the weird part though. The weird part is the other students. Like the boys who offer to copy my dictionary page for me. Or, in PE, when I bow out saying I have a headache, the five girls surrounding me with Tylenol and cups of water. It’s not like I can just hide under my math book and be invisible. The sheer number of pictures of me in the yearbook suggested I was popular, but I didn’t realize what that would feel like. Tiring, is how. Everywhere I go, people won’t leave me alone, but it’s not like they have anything useful or helpful to say either. It’s all just noise.
“Love your hair, Elyse.”
“Hope you feel better.”
“Oh my gosh, is that a new top?”
“Elyse, I have to play you this song at break! It’s so good.”
“What were we talking about?”
That’s another thing. People at school are incredibly distractible. Every exchange is quick, vapid, and trivial. If this is what my friendships were like, maybe it’s okay I don’t remember them. It was probably just wasting space in my brain to remember day after day of “love your hair,” especially when more than half the girls in school have my exact hairstyle. Long, wavy, face-framing layers. You don’t even have to know someone to say that kind of crap.
When the bell rings for break between second and third period, Carla runs up to me. At the sight of her, memories of Pete bleeding on the ground come rushing back. My pulse speeds up. I’m dying to ask if she’s heard from his family or the hospital—then I remember what Marshall said. That after Pete’s accident, people forgot what had happened. So I’m careful how I phrase the question. “How’s Pete doing?”
Carla looks puzzled. “Pete who?”
“You know . . .” I falter. She truly has no idea who I’m talking about. She hasn’t just forgotten about her boyfriend’s grisly accident. She’s forgotten his entire existence. What’s going to happen when he comes back from the hospital?
“Weren’t you talking to some guy named Pete yesterday?” I improvise lamely. “At the fair?”
“I wish,” Carla says. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, being third wheel to you and your guy isn’t so bad, but it’s been forever since I had a boyfriend. Speaking of which, Dan looks hot today,” she adds coyly.
Dan. I’d been hoping I’d be able to avoid him all day. It’s nothing personal really, I’m just not ready to deal with a boyfriend I don’t know.
Too late. Brawny arms grab me from behind and squeeze my shoulders, and this time I don’t attack him. “Babe, you look so cute in my old jeans,” Dan says. I glance down at my cutoffs. They’re his? “You took off so fast from the fair last night, we didn’t get a chance for a good-night kiss.” It hits me then that Dan also probably doesn’t remember Pete—his best friend, his teammate. Erased, maybe forever. While I’m reeling from that bombshell, he spins me around for a big, sloppy kiss.
“Good to see you too.” I’m barely able to choke out the words through his iron grip.
He lets me go. “I even called your house last night, since you weren’t answering your cell phone. Your dad told me you weren’t home and to stop calling.”
“He did?” Why would Jeffry want to keep Dan away from me? Is he so old-fashioned, he doesn’t let me date yet?
“I know, right?” He laughs again. “Two years. My brother says Kelly’s dad was inviting him on fishing trips after two years, and yours is still trying to get rid of me.”
I take a step back from him. What does Jeffry know about Dan that I don’t?
Then it hits me what Dan just said: He’s been calling me for two years. I’ve been with Dan for two years.
“So,” Dan says, “you and me, the falls, after work?”
Wait . . . work? Whose work? Do we both work after school? Do we often go up to the falls . . . to do what? Now that I’m finally talking to someone who knows me and things are getting interesting, I’m constantly risking exposing myself as an idiot with no memory.
“I don’t know.” It’s hard enough being separated from Marshall for a morning. He’s the only person who knows what I’m going through. But two years . . . don’t I at least owe this guy an explanation? Or a chance to make it work as the person I am now? He’d have to quit smoking of course but . . .
“Are you blowing me off?” Dan blinks at me as if he can’t believe I just said no to him. “Come on, it’s Friday. And we haven’t hiked all week because of the fair.”
Are we that into hiking? “Um, would it be just you and me?” I ask.
His lips part in surprise. “Well . . . yeah. Unless you’re into stuff you never told me you were into. If you are, Carla’s welcome to join us.”
Carla giggles. I feel sick to my stomach. So that’s what Dan and I do up at the falls together. I have a boyfriend, a serious boyfriend I hook up with, and yesterday I woke up naked with another guy. It’s not hard to do the math: I am a slut.
I can’t face him. I can’t face anyone.
The girls’ bathroom is behind him. “I’ll be right back,” I say, and duck through the swinging door.
Thank god no one else is in there. I look at the blond girl in the mirror, and I just . . . I hate her. I draw my wrist hard across her sultry pout, rubbing her mouth raw, even though I know for a fact that it’s not lipstick coloring those ruby lips. It’s just Elyse Alton’s face. I’m stuck inside her, but she’s not me. How could you do this? I glare at her with her own eyes, green marble irises. How could you cheat on your boyfriend, sleep with another guy, and leave me to clean up your mess? She shrugs back at me, shaking her shiny mane. Long hair, pullable, grabbable, yet another sign of weakness.
The hair. I can do something about the hair, if nothing else. I reach into my backpack, hoping for art-class scissors or nail scissors or a Swiss Army knife. There’s only a scrunchie. I pile half of my hair on top of my head like a bagel and wind the band around it. I study the effect from different angles. It looks kind of stupid, but at least now you see my face before all that hair. It makes my face look longer, less soft, less appealing. And the first chance I get, all that hair is going right in the trash can.
“You okay, Leese?” Carla pokes her head in. “Dan wants to know if you’re ever coming out.”
Tears come to my eyes. “Oh, hey. Carla, I—”
“Oh my god!” She points to my bagel-head and squeals, “Love your hair.”
And she reaches into her own backpack, pulls out a hair band, and quickly becomes absorbed in the business of creating her very own bagel-head do. I turn away in disgust. Any normal person would have figured out by looking at me that I’m not okay. That I’m broken. I need help. I need a friend. If Carla’s my BFF, how come she doesn’t seem to notice when I’m upset? How come I felt closer to Marshall two minutes after I met him?
“Love your hair,” calls a new female voice.
Behind me in the mirror are three cheerleaders.
“Adorable,” the second cheerleader burbles.
There’s a mad rush of backpack zippers as they scramble-search for pins and hair bands to tie up their own hair—the weird part is how fast they
do it. Like it’s a race. A life-or-death struggle. The last cheerleader with her hair down gets her head lopped off. “You don’t all have to do what I’m doing,” I say, feeling like I’m talking to small children or possibly monkeys.
One of them giggles, an obedient giggle. “You’re so funny. Of course we have to, you’re Elyse.”
“And we’re your friends,” another adds.
It’s so ridiculous that I can’t help but laugh too. And when I laugh, Elyse Alton’s face in the mirror tips back and her laughter rings out to the walls, rich and throaty. Cruel too. Suddenly the point of Elyse’s heart-shaped face looks sharper. Her (my) green eyes glow with a mean little power. A smugness. This was her realm, I realize. She wasn’t just another cutie-pie cheerleader with more hair than brains. She ruled these girls; she owned this school. I can’t imagine what kind of joy it brought her, considering how stupid and zombielike everyone here is, but maybe it was just better than the alternative. At least she wasn’t one of them. I feel a twinge of gratitude for that. And then I wonder, Why did she turn out different from the other kids here? What made her special? Her clear green gaze doesn’t look so innocent anymore. Her eyes look deep set, misty. Exhausted. Bewildered. That’s me, looking out.
I turn to face the new crop of bagel-heads. “All right, who’s got scissors?” I demand. “I need to borrow them. Actually.” Why not? “I need to keep them.”
I’m hardly even surprised when two girls rush to open their backpacks for me with no questions asked.
Chapter 20
MARSHALL
The cafeteria’s crowded and buzzing with conversation, laughter, and jeers, each metal table a tribe unto itself, but not a single person looks up as I walk in. When I glide into the middle of the line, the frizzy-haired girl behind me and the bespectacled geek boy ahead of me each silently shuffle aside to let me in, without glancing up or complaining.
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