The Memory Book(14)

In fact, I had no control over my body as it is. My body hated me.

Maddie had turned up the music as loud as it could go. My mouth tasted like pine trees.

I started to think of Freud’s theory of the Death Drive, the idea that organisms could oppose the life force intentionally—the idea that evolution could work backward—and instead of loving and living, people could want to destroy themselves. But I happen to know a different kind of way that death can work in people’s lives.

I know this is dark, Future Sam, but there’s something freeing about thinking about death. Like I didn’t think I was going to die right then in Maddie’s room, and I had no desire to die, but when you realize you’re close to death—when it’s that real—being scared of it, or being scared of even smaller things like people and parties and Stuart Shah; all of that seemed silly.

I have a bigger, more formidable opponent.

“Okay,” I said, and Maddie turned around from where she was shimmying across the room. I took the bottle from her and sipped, followed by a chug of seltzer. “I’m doing this. And guess what else?”

Maddie was punching the air. “What?”

I stood up. “We’re going to win Nationals.”

“Yeah! Yeah, we are!”

I started moving from side to side with her, my best attempt at a dance.

Then I got a wave of fondness toward Maddie, Future Sammie. A kind of fondness I had only felt before toward my siblings, toward my parents, toward people I trusted. I wasn’t going to find my own way home. And I wasn’t going to be a deadweight, either. As Maddie had said, we needed each other.

I picked up the cards off the floor and tossed them up in the air. “Do I win?”

Maddie smiled. Her brown eyes lit up underneath her electric hair. “Everybody wins.”





ROY, ROY, ROY


After a few more songs, when I was starting to feel light and warm and sort of pretty, I heard them coming up the stairs, laughing. I unbuttoned my top button. The door opened, and there was Stacia, a pale fairy in overalls, there was Maddie, her hair now dry and alight with red, her lean arms pulling Stacia’s hand, there was Dale, his freckles pulsing, his vintage shirt tucked into polyester, and there was Stuart.

He wasn’t wearing his usual black. He was in gray—gray jeans and a gray sweatshirt. His skin was darker than I remembered, dark brown, and his black hair was the same, shorn short and old-fashioned.

“Hey!” he said right away.

“Hey!” I said. Mimicry, I remember thinking. Just mimic the way everyone is talking and you’ll get by.

“Hi, Sammie,” Stacia said in her almost-whisper, folding herself on Maddie’s floor.

“Samantha,” Dale said in a robotic, sort of British voice. “Samantha McCoy, the reigning monarch of Hanover High.”

“The monarch? What do you mean?” Then, to make it sound nicer, I let out a “ha-ha.”

“The villa-Victorian!” Dale answered, twirling his fingers.

The valedictorian. I swallowed my instinct to correct him, and reminded myself what a joke was, and that people made jokes.

Maddie glanced at me with the trace of a smile and said, “Stu, do you know Sammie?”

“Not really,” Stuart said, sitting next to Stacia and extending his hand. “I remember you, but I don’t think we ever knew each other.”

I remember you, he said. I shook his hand. It was the shape and texture of a human hand but it almost burned me.

“That’s right,” I said, and when I took my hand away, blood was beating through it.

He was still looking at me. Maddie and Stacia passed around the bottle. Dale went to change the music.

“Yeah,” he continued, “you were in Ms. Cigler’s class when I was a senior. She read our entire AP class your essay on Huck Finn. She was like, look at this sophomore. Y’all better step up your game.”

“Huh,” I said, and nodded. I vaguely remember Ms. Cigler asking me for permission to share my essay, but I thought it was just for the other sophomore class. The thought of him admiring my work gave me goose bumps. I wanted to ask him about his writing, or how he liked being back in Hanover, but by the time I had picked which question and started to form the words the correct way, Maddie was passing him the bottle.

Stacia began to sway to the music, her dangly earrings swooshing. Maddie gave one of them a little tug.

“Ow!” Stacia said, and laughed. She flicked a spike of Maddie’s Mohawk. Maddie raised her eyebrows at me. I uncrossed my arms.

Stuart took in Maddie’s room. “Who’s playing?” he asked Maddie.

“The Knife,” I said before anyone else could answer.

Stuart nodded with a small smile, a smile like the clerks at the Co-Op give to Mom when she tries to ask them about how their day is going during a rush. Just let me do my job, it said. When his gaze came back to me, just for a second, I jumped on it.

“You’re in New York?” I asked.

“Yes. I love it. Maybe a little too much.”

“Me too,” I said. “I mean, I’ll be there, too, next year.”

“Oh?”

“At NYU.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Congratulations.”

On the end of his words, I couldn’t help it, I got intense. “What do you love about New York?”