The Impossible Knife of Memory(2)
Threat
Took my hands out of my pockets. Walked like I owned the sidewalk: legs strong and fast, hips made for power, not playing. The guys would size me up as female, young, five foot eleven-ish, one-sixty. Those facts were the language of my body, couldn’t change it. But the way I walked, that made the difference. Some girls would slow down in a situation like this. They’d go rabbit-scared, head down, arms over chest, their posture screaming: “I am weak you are strong I am afraid just don’t kill me.” Others would stick out their boobs, push their butt high and swing it side to side to say, “Check it out. Like it? Want it?”
Some girls are stupid.
I swallowed the fear. It’s always there—fear—and if you don’t stay on top of it, you’ll drown. I swallowed again and stood tall, shoulders broad, arms loose. I was balanced, ready to move. My body said, “Yeah, you’re bigger and stronger, but if you touch this, I will hurt you.”
Five steps closer. The guy facing me looked up, said something to his friend. The friend turned to look.
Assess
There was nothing in my backpack worth fighting for. In fact, it would have been a relief if they stole it cause I’d have a legitimate excuse about why I didn’t do my homework. If they grabbed, I’d twist so that their hands landed on the backpack first. Then I’d shove one of them against the cement church wall and run like hell. They both looked stoned, so I’d have a huge reaction-time advantage. Plus adrenaline.
Plan B: the Albany bus was two blocks away. I’d let them pull off the backpack, then sprint toward the bus, yelling and waving my arms like I didn’t want to miss it, ’cause if you act like you’re running from wolves on a street like that, people pretend not to see you, but if you’re trying to catch a bus, they’ll help.
My last defensive option was the empty bottle of Old Crow whiskey carefully set next to the base of the streetlight directly across from the two guys looking at me. The long neck of the bottle would be easy to grab. I’d have to remember not to smash it too hard against the wall or the whole thing would shatter. A light tink with the same amount of pressure you’d use to crack open an egg, that would be enough to break off the bottom. One tink and a sorry whiskey bottle turns into a weapon with big, glass teeth hungry for a piece of stoned wolf boy.
I was one step away.
Action
The eyes of the guy who turned to look at me were so unfocused, he didn’t know if I was a girl or a ghost. I looked through him to the other guy. Less stoned. Or more awake. Eyes on me, narrow eyes, cement gray with muddy hollows under them. He was the one who smelled dangerous.
For one frozen second I stared at him—glass bottle at eleven o’clock knee his nuts reach for the weapon cut everything—then I nodded curtly, chin down, respectful. He nodded back.
The second melted and I was past them and past the bottle and the bus rumbled along to Albany, loaded with old zombies staring at me with dead eyes.
I listened for footsteps until the empty lots and closed-up businesses turned into strip malls and then turned into almost-safe little houses. At the end of the last street, past a forgotten cornfield and the ruin of a barn, sat the house that I was supposed to call “home.”
_*_ 4 _*_
My father wanted me to remember the house. He had asked me over and over when we moved, carrying boxes in from the truck, filling the cupboards with groceries, removing rodent skeletons, washing the windows, “Are you sure you don’t remember, Hayley Rose?”
I shook my head but kept my mouth shut. It made him sad when I talked about how hard I tried not to remember.
(Don’t think I was crazy, because I wasn’t. The difference between forgetting something and not remembering it is big enough to drive an eighteen-wheeler through.)
A few days after we moved in, Daddy got unstuck from time again, like the Pilgrim guy in Slaughterhouse. The past took over. All he heard were exploding IEDs and incoming mortar rounds; all he saw were body fragments, like an unattached leg still wearing its boot, and shards of shiny bones, sharp as spears. All he tasted was blood.
These attacks (he’d have killed me if I used that word in front of him, but it was the only one that fit) had been getting worse for months. They were the only reason I went along with his ridiculous plan to quit trucking and settle down into a so-called “normal life.” I let him think that he was right, that spending my senior year in a high school instead of riding shotgun in his big rig was a practical and exciting idea.
Truth? I was terrified.
I found the library and a bank and made sure the post office knew that we were back and living in Gramma’s old house. On the third day, a girl named Gracie who lived down the street brought a basket of muffins and a tuna noodle casserole cooked by her mom, from scratch. She said she was glad to see me.
Gracie was so sweet—freakishly kind and non-zombified—that I forgot to be a bitch and I fell into like with her by the time I’d finished the first muffin, and suddenly I had a friend, a real friend for the first time in . . . I couldn’t remember how long. Having a friend made everything else suck less.
When the past spat Dad back out, he ate what was left of the tuna noodle casserole. (The muffins were already gone.) He went up into the attic and brought down a small box that hadn’t been damaged by mice or mold. In the box were faded photographs that he swore were me and his mother, my grandmother. I asked why didn’t Gramma keep any pictures of my mom and he said they’d been chewed up by the mice. By then, I could tell when he was lying.