Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac(29)

I wondered if Rosa had felt that way when I tore that scarf off.

The worst of it was, what did I really know about my taste anyway? It had been a nice scarf and I had been cold, and if I was honest, maybe I had only been using that taste excuse as a way to hurt her feelings.

“Rosa wanted me to apologize to you,” Dad said before we got out of the car.

“For what?”

“Something about your amnesia. Something about her saying she knew how you felt.”

I nodded.

“But Sonny, her husband who died? He had Alzheimer’s disease. Do you know what that is?”

I nodded again.

“So Rosa Rivera has had some experiences with memory loss. I think that’s all she was trying to say. It probably came out wrong. It’s sometimes hard to talk to—It’s sometimes hard to talk. She didn’t ask me to tell you any of this. I just thought you should know.”

For a second, I felt like a jerk. Then I exploded at Dad. “I don’t see what any of that has to do with me! Not to mention, you lied to me. Not to mention I obviously didn’t like Rosa Rivera before, so why are you expecting me to like her any better now?”

“Well, Naomi, you were being ignorant then, so I had rather hoped you’d prefer to be enlightened now.”

“I’ll stick with ignorant, thanks.” I tried to say this as dryly as possible.

Dad turned off the ignition, but he didn’t move to get out of the car. “I banged my head. That doesn’t make me a different person. And it doesn’t mean I’m going to like your goddamn fiancée either.”

Dad shook his head and he looked as sad as I’d ever seen him. “You’re just like me, kid, and it worries the crap out of me right now. Because with the current state of things, it’s not necessarily a good thing to be like us. You’re going to need to let people in.”

I didn’t say anything.

Dad got out of the car. “Don’t forget to lock the door when you come in.”

That night in my bedroom, I took out my sophomore yearbook for the first time since I’d been back to school. I had originally been intending to look through it for inspiration for my photography project proposal, which was due the next day. Instead, I found myself turning to my class picture.

There she was with her light gray hair and her dark gray lips upturned into an impenetrable grin. I wished that she could talk and tell me everything she had ever felt or thought or seen.

“What were you like?” I asked her. “Were you happy? Or were you smiling because they told you to?”

I looked at myself in my closet mirror and tried to arrange my features like the girl in the yearbook. I didn’t quite have the trick of it yet.

I brushed some strands of hair in front of my face, the way the girl in the yearbook had worn hers. It looked wrong, though I couldn’t say exactly why at first. I studied myself some more before deciding that the pieces of hair in the front had gotten too long.

I took a pair of scissors from my desk drawer and cut a few pieces on each side of my head. The easy swish of the blades against my hair was satisfying.

I looked in the mirror to check my work. I hadn’t cut it evenly, so I took a little more off on each side.

Then, a little more.

As I cut, it occurred to me that it might be pointless to even try to look like the girl in the yearbook. It might be easier to be somebody completely different instead.

I cut pieces from the back and the front, until all that survived was a choppy short mane. With each piece, I felt like I was getting rid of someone’s expectations of me: goodbye, Mom, Dad, Will, Ace, those kids at lunch, my teachers, everyone. I felt giddy and light, like I might even start to float away. It was the end of normal.

The girl in the yearbook would never have had short hair.

I set the scissors on my desk, gathered up the strewn clippings as best I could, and then I fell quickly, peacefully asleep. I didn’t even take off my clothes or turn off the light.

When my alarm went off the next morning, I jumped out of bed without even looking in the mirror. I had actually forgotten all about my hair until I was in the shower. Little pieces slipped through my fingers like sand before they washed down the drain.

When I saw myself in the bathroom mirror, I felt sort of elated. It seems strange to say even now, but I finally recognized the person in the mirror as the person inside my head.

“Your hair!” Dad said when I came into the kitchen for breakfast. “What happened?”

I told him that nothing had happened. I had simply decided to cut it. I didn’t ask him what he thought either.

“If I’d known you wanted to cut it, I could have taken you somewhere to get it done.”

When I sat down at the table, Dad stood so that he could better appraise my mane from an overhead angle.

“It’s not bad. It’s cool actually. Kind of punk rock,” Dad said finally, gently tousling my hair. “I barely recognize you, kiddo.”

That hadn’t been the point, of course. Maybe just an amazing perk. If no one recognized me, they wouldn’t be upset when I didn’t recognize them either.

I am

5

THE REVIEWS WERE MIXED.

Ace walked right past me in the hallway. I had to call his name, and when he saw me he looked confused and betrayed, like Bambi when his mother bites it in the movie. “I liked it long,” he said finally. Then he kissed me. “It’s going to take some getting used to.” When we stopped kissing, I noticed that Will was staring at us from across the corridor.