The Impossible Knife of Memory(13)

edit, with the exception of the sports section which I write

out of love, not duty. Besides—”

“Wait,” I interrupted. “Did you say Cleveland?” “Yep.”

“Mr. Cleveland? Calc teacher?”

“Precalc, actually. Also algebra and trig.”

“Even if I wanted to, which I don’t, Mr. Cleveland won’t

let me write for the paper. He hates me. Loathes me. If I

were you, I wouldn’t mention my name to him, ever. Raises

his blood pressure.”

Two girls walked between us and into the locker room. “I have to go,” I said, hand on the door. “Thanks again

for the ride.”

“You’re wrong about Cleveland.” He uncapped a Sharpie, grabbed my arm, and started writing on it before I could

react. “That’s my email. Two hundred words. Library resources.”





_*_ 18 _*_

“What is wrong with him?” I asked, bouncing the ball on the Ping-Pong table. “And what is wrong with you?” “Me?” Gracie asked. “I’m totally innocent.”

“Innocent?” I served the ball so hard she squealed and dove for the ground. “He won’t leave me alone! Look what he did to my arm! That’s assault.”

“Assault with a Sharpie?”

“You dragged me into this. Make him stop bugging me.”

“Only if you don’t throw the paddle at my head,” Gracie said from under the table.

The gym aide blew her whistle. We all groaned and shuffled to the next station. Calling it “gym class” was an exaggeration because Belmont didn’t have gym teachers anymore. A couple of years earlier the state had fiddled with the law so school districts could save money by firing all the gym teachers. Students still had to take phys ed, but we only had to be supervised by volunteer “gym aides” (aka parents who couldn’t find a job) who took attendance and tried to keep us from breaking the equipment.

The aide blew her whistle again, louder this time, and hollered, “Let’s get a move on, ladies.”

Two soccer players commandeered the stationary bikes. A group of zombies put together a game of special-rules kickball. The goal was to kick all the balls behind the bleachers and then spend the rest of the period pretending to look for them. I wanted to work on push-ups and pull-ups, but Gracie dragged me to the corner where some fellow freaks were trying to copy poses from a yoga app on a girl’s phone.

“I’m not very flexible,” I said.

“You need to stretch more,” Gracie scolded.

Three girls pretending to have cramps approached the gym aide, whining that they needed to go to the nurse’s office. The gym aide wrote out a pass for them and returned to her magazine.

“I hate this place,” I muttered.

“Blah, blah, blah.” Gracie twisted her body and her legs in opposite directions. “Try this.” She lifted her chin up. “I don’t know why you’re so negative about the newspaper.”

I sat with my legs straight in front of me and reached for my toes. “Are you kidding me?”

She untwisted herself and lay down. “You’re always complaining about this place. Here’s your chance to do something about it.”

I leaned as far forward as I could, but stopped an inch short of my sneakers. “By writing about resources in the library?”

Gracie put her arms out on the floor. “That’s a test to see if you’re any good, which we both know you are. After that you can write what you want. Write about all the stuff here that you hate.”

“That is not a yoga pose,” I said.

“Is so. It’s called ‘resting crane.’” She raised her fingertips and bent her wrists back until she looked like a crossing guard stopping traffic in both directions, only lying on a gym floor instead of standing in a crosswalk. “Write for the paper.”

I bent my knees a little and grabbed my sneakers. “I have more important things to do.”





_*_ 19 _*_

The dining room table was covered with newspapers, cleaning rods, a double-ended breech-brush, used patches, and rags stained with barrel oil, solvents, and gunpowder.

*

Daddy’s guns—the rifles, the shotguns, and the pistols— were nowhere in sight.

Why would he clean all of them at once? I capped the barrel oil. Does he think he’s going to need them?

I headed down the hall, flipped on the overhead light, and knocked on his bedroom door. “I’m home.”

“Okay,” came the groggy answer.

“Where’s Spock?”

“Out back on the chain.”

There was a circle of grime around the doorknob from Dad opening it when his hands were greasy. A shredded spiderweb strung from the top-right edge of the door frame to the shade of the overhead light in the middle of the hall. The house was looking more and more like a place that squatters lived in, instead of what it was: a home that had been in Dad’s family for three generations.

“Did you eat anything today?” I asked. What is going on? I thought.

“Not hungry.”

“What do you want for dinner?” I asked. Why were you cleaning the guns?