The Memory Book(29)

Date. Date. I nodded in agreement.

He bent again and pressed his lips on my cheek, barely an inch from my own lips—one-one thousand, two-one thousand, three—and let go.





UUGGHHGHGHGHGGGGHHHHHH


Then the other shoe drops. When I got home, an email from Mrs. Townsend dinged on my phone:


Sammie,



I was sorry to hear about your debate loss. Don’t sweat it, kid! Hope you are healthy and rested. I also wanted you to know: Though they are not aware of specifics, I have informed your teachers of extenuating circumstances, and I have asked them to come directly to me with any issues or concerns.

I know you’ve got a heavy load these days, so I wanted to make you aware of the following assignments you may have missed over Nationals week: AP Chem

? Chapter 14–15 Review ? Chapter 16 Review ? Chapter 14–16 PreTest



Ceramics

? bowl with glaze



As we approach the end of the year, especially finals, please let me know how I can help. TAKE YOUR TIME.


And come visit me. I miss you.

—Mrs. T





How did I miss those due dates? They were written down on my calendar, on this very computer, on the same desktop as this very document. Green for biology, blue for AP Lit, orange for AP Euro, brown for ceramics, and yellow for chemistry. It’s right f*cking there! I’m looking at them so hard they’re burning a hole in my retina!

This is freaky. I do not like this.

I followed the path of each color through the days left on the calendar—just a few weeks—and double recorded each assignment and test coming up, once on my computer, once in my planner.

After I was finished, I noticed a new color, bright purple, an hour every day on the week leading up to graduation. On the day I graduate, it takes up the entire calendar.

It reads Valedictorian speech.

I flashback to my parents’ whispers, Agreed, and wondered how many inches I had taken in the long mile toward making them believe. Was I really fooling anyone? I picture blinking against the lights as I come through the Sheraton blackness, Maddie looking at me, angry, and the fear so cutting I want to cry.

I could blow the whole thing in a second, and if I do, NYU is gone.

Shit.





ALTERNATIVE RESOURCES, PHASE ONE


So I was in the corner of the ceramics studio, skipping lunch, scraping and kneading the hell out of wet clay, sweating with the effort. My chemistry homework was open on a stool next to me. I was pausing every few seconds to write the answers, then going back to molding this godforsaken bowl, which at this point looks more like the alcoholic cousin of a bowl, loopy and friendly and just not functional at all, like my dad’s cousin Tim, who at family gatherings always asks me when I’m going to put my brain to good use and go on Jeopardy! and win him some money; reason #5,666 why I need to keep said brain intact and get the hell out of here.

Anyway, in walked Coop, shutting the door behind him. He pulled out a Baggie and a pack of Zig Zag rolling papers from his back pocket.

“Sammie?”

I turned off the wheel. “Yeah, what are you doing?”

“Hey,” he said, not answering, and he giggled and walked over. In addition to the pocket for weed paraphernalia, Coop’s Carhartts had another back pocket for a folded-up notebook, and in the side pocket, a row of mechanical pencils.

“Nice storage facility,” I said, pointing at his pants with a muddy finger.

He sat across from me, pulling a stool between his legs, and began to work, hunched over like a craftsman, delicately pinching and sprinkling little green stubs. A strand of his hair fell in his eyes and he blew it back, brow furrowed. “Yeah,” he muttered. “Backpacks get too hot this time of year.”

“Were you really just coming in here to roll a J?”

“It’s my lunch routine,” he said, licking the edge of the paper with a shrug. “Then I saw you. So. What are you doing?”

“Catching up.”

“Oh, from Nationals, huh.”

“How did you know?”

“You told me that night at church. Plus, everyone was talking about it. I mean, not that you lost, but everyone was like, whoa, we went to Nationals in debate? People get excited about that stuff. I was bragging, like, ‘I know that girl.’”

I laughed. Coop rolled the impeccable little cylinder between his fingertips.

“But now I’m screwed.” I pointed to my chem homework, also muddy. “Not screwed, but. You remember…” I paused, wondering if we should get into this again. But Coop hadn’t told anyone after I had asked him to keep it quiet at the party. Which was nice. “You know how part of the disease is memory loss?”

“Yeah,” Coop said. “How is that going? Are you okay?”

“I forgot all these assignments. I never forget assignments. Never. And now I’m scared I will forget stuff during a test, or forget my speech at graduation, or…”

Coop smiled a lazy smile, and put the joint behind his ear. “So you’re worried you’re going to be normal.”

I gave him a little punch. “No…”

“Those are all the things I worry about, all the time.”

I considered that for a minute, and glanced at the joint. “Yeah, but you could just, I don’t know, stop smoking so much?”