The Memory Book(43)

I am so embarrassed. I’m sort of lost. I can’t quite remember why. So I’m reading this back and of course I remember that I’m going to this party at Ross Nervig’s and that Coop texted me the address, but I’m looking at the address and I can’t remember how to get there. So I’m just going to put it in the GPS, duh, but then I forgot what street I was literally on! So, yeah. I pulled over until this passes.





It’s graduation. Duh. I looked at what I wrote earlier. BUT now I’m just like WHERE AM I GOING AGAIN.

So, this is not a good sign.

I should proabbly call my mom but she would murder me, so I’m just going to let this pass.

Okay, I read earlier that I’m going to graduation, I know that, because I read it TWICE NOW because this is so embarrassing.

I mean, not graduation, to the party AFTER graduation.





hi is this okay its very dark and at least this is light and bright i shut off the car don’t worry

im okay i think im just not there yet but my hands are kind of shaky

future sam okay I am feeling a little better but i can’t rememebr where i was going! i took a little walk by the car. there were other cars heading somewhere and i almost flagged one of them down but they didn’t see me, their headlights are too bright and they look very bad and have mean eyes

i was driving to school I was coming from school

OK. Okay. This is stupid.

Boy I am lost. This looks familiar, this looks like my street.

once i read a story about a giant a friendly giant in london who blew dreams into peoples bedrooms in little bubbles and the girl saw him but he caught her and put her on his shoulder and took her to giant country

the friendly giant is a good one it was a whole chapter book

why was i talking about giants oh yeah

coop and i used to build houses out of pine needesl and play giants stomping on the houses did i ever tell you that the dark feles like the shadow of a giant down the road coming toward me and stomping on the mean cars





Did I call Coop? I’m not doing so well. I’m doing so well. I’m going to call COop again befre this get s worse

uh oh feeling weird agani FEELING WEIRD WEIRD WRIED WIERD I’m just going to sit for while until If eel better

write about things you know

when you’re scared you can write about things you know





RUNNING


I’m Frankenstein’s monster, lying in the cleanest room I’ve ever seen. I just woke up to a card from Bette lying on the table next to my hospital bed with just a big, blank circle that she drew, it says “get better”

Flowers from the Townsends

Flowers from Maddie

Flowers from Stuart

But the card made me cry because it continually reminds me of what I forgot I got lost on the route around the mountain, past town It reminds me of the maps we used to draw When she and Harry and Coop and me (Davy was too small) would spend the day circling through Strafford, first running down the mountain, then running to the creek, then running into Strafford, saying hello to Fast Eddy where he sits outside the general store—Fast Eddy, the self-appointed policeman who also acts as the mailman—and then into the general store for Cherry Vanilla Dr Pepper, then running back to the creek for lunch, then running back up the mountain to the backyard to play giants, then dinner Once we drew a map of our world and plotted our route, and of course it was very simple It was just a circle, and it was enough





PLEASE


Coop found me on the side of the road and took me home. I’ve been in and out of the hospital for a week. There are new updates every time I go in there, all of it reducing Mom and Dad into dark-eyed sacks of fabric next to my hospital bed, all of it bad. I have:

jaundice-like symptoms

an enlarged liver

an enlarged spleen

All of this contributes to the grand prize: I am also in the process of “mild retardation”! That’s why I saw giants on the side of the road and typed like an infant.

I haven’t written much to you until now because I don’t really want to remember any of this, Future Sam, and you, as I had initially conceived you, don’t exist anymore. Stock up on palm tree shirts. Resign to swollen lips, yellowing skin, droopy eyes. You will have a useless high school diploma and a gimp leg. You will drool a lot.

I can’t imagine what I look like now. All my bodily functions in one bed already grosses me out, but thankfully I haven’t seen anyone else.

I told Stuart my parents had changed their mind the night of graduation and made me stay home, where my phone had died. Then, when I found out I would be practically living at the hospital, I told him I was sick, a bad case of strep, and he shouldn’t see me because I am contagious. I wish Stuart would come find me anyway, find me sleeping and kiss me awake, like a Disney movie or something, and never leave my side. Then again, my mouth would taste like hospital Jell-O and dry rot from sleeping with my mouth open and barely getting to brush my teeth, so maybe that’s a bad idea. And it will never happen anyway.

We are waiting to find out whether or not I can at least go to college, at least first semester, before all this shit goes down.

Their initial answer was no, but I was like, please, please, this won’t last forever, just let me go, put me in classes for dumb people, just let me get out. The one thing I can still have, please. Please please please please please.