The Impossible Knife of Memory(5)

“All hail the demon overlords!” Finn called loudly.

I shot him a glance because I had been thinking the exact same thing, but when he looked back at me, I pretended I was doodling on the back of my hand.

The screen scrolled the morning announcements:

. . . the following colleges will have reps in the cafeteria this week . . .

. . . memory stick turned into the lost and found . . .

. . . no loitering around the flagpole . . .

And finally a list of the sorry souls who had to report to the Attendance Office, the Counselor’s Office, or go straight to hell and see the principal.

Finn punched me in the shoulder.

“Ow! What was that for?”

He pointed at the monitor. “You made the Doom List, Miss Blue! In trouble with the authorities this early in the year? You’ll make a great reporter.”





_*_ 7 _*_

The halls surged with a parade of beautiful strangers. They laughed too loud. Flirted. Shrieked. Raced. They kissed. Shoved. Tripped. Shouted. Posed. Chased. Flaunted. Taunted. Galloped. Sang.

Fully assimilated zombies.

I could laugh at them when I was with Gracie. When I walked through their herd in the east wing hall—alone—I was transformed from my confident freakself into a gawping pile of self-conscious self-loathing. Their shiny-teeth smiles made happiness look easy. They never tripped over their own feet. They could laugh without snorting and tease each other without sounding dumb. They could remember being six years old together and eight and eleven and giggle about all of it.

The flaunts, the taunts, the poses, they were all part of the lie. My brain understood this because I’d heard the whispers. The Honor Society officers who started their day off with a little weed that melted stress like chocolate. The cheerleaders who cut themselves where the scars wouldn’t show. Debate team members busted for shoplifting. Mommy’s pills being shared like cookies, and the way Daddy’s vodka made first-period Latin fly by.

As I walked down the east wing hall, I could feel their sticky fingers reaching for my brain. Puffs of yellow smoke curled toward my ears, my eyes, my nose and mouth. The hivemind wanted to penetrate and infect. Colonize. The danger was so real, so close, I didn’t dare open my mouth to ask directions. Or to howl.





_*_ 8 _*_

The school counselors shared a waiting room that held uncomfortable chairs, overloaded bulletin boards, a secretary named Gerta with blood-red talons, and a coffeepot that looked like it hadn’t been cleaned since the turn of the century.

When I walked in, the doors to all of the counselors’ offices were closed. I stood in front of Gerta’s desk. Her fingernails had worn off most of the letters on her keyboard. Only the Q and the X had any pigment left. A girl behind one of the closed doors was sobbing, but I couldn’t make out what she was saying.

Ms. Benedetti stepped into the office carrying a cup of coffee from the gas station closest to school. Good call.

“My name was on the list,” I said.

“We have a few things to discuss,” she said. “Let’s talk in here.”

I followed her into her private office, a box barely big enough to fit her desk, a file cabinet, and two chairs. It did have a window, however, that looked on to the student parking lot. Some people said that Benedetti filmed the activities out there with a secret camera. Given that her computer looked older than me, I doubted that.

Ms. Benedetti hung up her jacket on a hook, sat at her desk, and took the lid off her coffee.

I sat in the chair by the window, mouth shut.

The trick to surviving an interrogation is patience. Don’t offer up anything. Don’t explain. Answer the question and only the question that is asked so you don’t accidentally put your head in a noose.

“How are things going?” she asked.

I stared at her through the dust that hovered in the air. “Fine.”

“I didn’t see your name on the community service list for September,” she said.

“So?”

“You can’t postpone your service requirement, Hayley. All students are required to perform two hours a month, every month. You signed up for,” she glanced at her screen, “for St. Anthony’s Nursing Home.” She handed me a sheet of paper. “There are some sweet old people living there, you’ll like it. A staff member needs to sign this attendance log. Be sure to turn it into Gerta so you get credit for your hours.”

“Mandatory community service” seemed like hypocrisy, but Benedetti cared more about attendance lists than philosophy. I took the paper without committing to anything.

“Can I go now?”

“Not yet.” She picked up two packets of sugar, the real stuff, and shook them. “You’ve had detention eleven times since school started.”

That was a statement, not a question, so it did not require a response.

“It seems like you’re struggling a bit with the adjustment to traditional schooling.”

Another statement. She was making this easy.

She ripped open the packets and poured them into the coffee. “Particularly in calculus. How is that going?”

“Precalc,” I corrected. “It’s fine.”

I was fluent in practical math: checkbook balancing; gas mileage calculation; how many gallons of paint it would take to make the living room look nice. Precalculus was taught in dog whistle, a pitch too high to hear. I generally spent the class drawing predatory zeppelins and armies of bears in my math notebook.