Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac(23)

“Sad, but true. The only thing we ever worried about was which one of us would be made editor, because there was just one editor. By the time it came to interview last year, we had come up with a plan to apply together, to be co-editors, even though it was entirely unprecedented and fairly controversial, us being juniors and all. That’s how we became the first co-editors in the history of The Phoenix.

“And now we are running the show. Pretty cool, right?”

I nodded, but, truthfully, I had found Will’s whole speech disheartening. I could see and hear his conviction and, in contrast, I felt none of that. Maybe I had in the past, but I didn’t anymore.

When we reached my house, Will got out of the car and walked me to the door. Like his mother, he hugged me surprisingly hard, then he patted me on the back twice to indicate that the hug was over. “Okay, Chief.” He did this comical salute with his hand before returning to his car.

I was about to unlock my front door when I realized I didn’t have any idea where I’d put my keys. I rang the doorbell, and about five seconds later Dad answered.

“I lost my keys,” I started to say at the same time Dad said, “You forgot your keys this morning.”

Dad asked me how my first day back had been, but I wasn’t in any mood to talk. I told him I had a headache and went to my room to lie down.

Dad must have let me sleep, because I didn’t wake up until my phone rang around nine-thirty that night.

“I’ve been thinking about your question. And I thought of another reason I like yearbook so much,” Will said.

“Okay.”

“You know that we both joined the staff in ninth grade, right? But what I didn’t mention to you was the year before ninth grade had been pretty rough for both of us. You had the thing with your mom. I had some…family stuff, too. Well, I think yearbook sort of saved me. It gave me something to do every day instead of just, well, fixating, I guess. And for me at least, yearbook is sort of inseparable from you. You really are my best friend in the whole world, Chief.”

I could hear all sorts of things in his voice. Tenderness. Worry. Love even. How odd to be someone’s best friend and not really know them at all. I couldn’t come up with anything to say, so I waited for him to speak again.

“I’ve been feeling sort of bad about this evening. I think I might have been, for lack of a better term, an ass,” Will said finally.

“You were, but I forgive you,” I said just before hanging up.

It was late and I was starving. I hadn’t eaten anything at lunch and I’d slept through dinner. I walked down the hall to Dad’s office. If I haven’t mentioned it before, Dad’s sort of a gourmet. All the years he and Mom had been wandering, he’d also been collecting recipes for the books. The only thing my mom knew how to make was dessert.

His office door was closed. I was about to knock but I could hear he was on the phone with someone. I didn’t want to interrupt him—Dad hated that—so I loitered in the hallway outside his door and waited for him to be finished. I wasn’t meaning to eavesdrop, at least not at first.

“…looks normal, but I’m worried, babe,” he said. Silence, and when I next heard him his voice was muffled. “…psychotherapy…”

I wondered who Dad was talking to about me. Mom, maybe? But he wouldn’t be calling her “babe”…

“…break it slowly. Everything in its time.”

Break what slowly? Was I still the subject? I tried to listen more closely, but he moved somewhere else in the room where I couldn’t hear him at all. The next time I heard him he was laughing. It was definitely not my mother. “Caracas!” he said. “I wish I could…”

Dad had always traveled a lot for his job; in addition to the books he wrote with Mom, he wrote articles for travel and men’s magazines. I concluded he was probably talking business. It made me resentful, actually. I hated being small talk, just another one of his stupid anecdotes. To tell you the truth, I didn’t care who he was talking to. I didn’t want to be anyone’s topic of discussion.

As I stalked back to my bedroom, I vowed to be less anecdote-worthy. That way, people wouldn’t talk about me over late-night phone calls or in the goddamn bathroom at school.

As much as it was in my control, I would be normal.

By the end of the week, I had obtained a doctor’s note permitting the sunglasses, and I gleefully presented it to Mrs. Tarkington. “Well, it’s certainly not orthodox,” she said, but she wasn’t the type to argue with something on hospital letterhead.

Other than that, I occasionally got lost; I occasionally heard people talking about me; I occasionally told them to go screw themselves. Under my breath, of course—I was normal. In order to tolerate our arctic cafeteria, I brought a couple of extra sweaters. I let Ace hold my hand in the hallways. I never went back to the greenhouse.

On Saturday night, my campaign for normalcy continued when I went with Ace to a party that a tennis buddy from another school was hosting. Ace didn’t bother to introduce me to the friend—maybe I already knew him?—and I never figured out who he was on my own either.

For all practical purposes, Ace abandoned me nearly as soon as we arrived. He became enmeshed in an elaborate drinking game that involved shots, dice, quarters, darts, a bull’s-eye, and chest bumping. Although I watched the game for about fifteen minutes, I came out with no sense of the rules or how the winner was determined. I suppose it was like any drinking game. Last man standing.