Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac(38)

James tossed off my praise. “Yeah, turned out pretty decent. I’m only doing this play thing to have something extra to put on my college applications in case my first choice doesn’t work out.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter why,” I said. “It was beautiful anyhow.” I turned to leave.

He finished his cigarette in a single inhale. “Wait a second. Don’t I get to compliment you, too?”

I shook my head and told him it was too late for that. “I’d probably assume it was in response to mine.”

“I was afraid of that,” he said.

“It was nice seeing you, James.” I pointed him in the direction of the drinks and the partygoers with curfews later than mine.

“I don’t drink. I mean, I used to. But not anymore,” he said. “And besides, the person I came to see was you. You remember that class I told you about?”

I did.

“They’re showing Hannah and Her Sisters on Tuesday night. You said that was one of your favorites, right?” he said. “It’s cool if you bring the jock, too. Do you have a piece of paper?” I held out my hand, palm facing out, and he took a black Sharpie from his pocket and wrote the screening information on my palm.

I had no intention of going. The play had made me fall farther behind in my schoolwork, and I had yearbook, and James did not seem like a good bet for a boyfriend or even a friend, not that I was looking for either. In fact, I tried to wash his note from my hand that night before bed, but those Sharpies really have staying power, even on skin. Tuesday rolled around, and as I could still see it, ever so slightly, I decided what the hell.

Dad dropped me off, and he told me to call him when the movie was done. It was a pain not to be able to drive myself places, but I didn’t really have time to take driving lessons until the summer.

It seemed to me that every senior citizen in Tarrytown was there. Having seen the movie before, I didn’t have to pay too much attention to it, which was lucky, because the old people made quite a lot of noise unwrapping candies and whispering to each other, What did she just say? I found myself thinking of the last time I’d seen it with Mom. Mom’s favorite part was when this guy tells this woman (not Hannah, one of the sisters) to read a certain page of a book because it had a line of poetry on it that reminded him of her. The line was “No one, not even the rain, has such soft hands,” or something like that, and it always made Mom cry. I wondered if Nigel had done stuff like that for Mom, and if that’s why she’d left Dad for him.

The movie ended, and I decided to wait for James to come out of the projection booth, just to be polite.

When he finally emerged, he asked me how I had liked seeing the movie again.

I guess I was still thinking about Mom, because I found myself telling him all about Dad and Mom and Nigel. How I kind of wished Mom had seen the play, because she really got a kick out of that sort of thing. How I kind of wanted to see her, but I didn’t know how to do it without making a big production of it. The horrible name I’d called her the last time I’d seen her—

James cut me off. “None of that matters. If you want to see her, you should go. Take off and do it. Don’t wait.” He started talking about his brother, and then he cut himself off, too. “Oh, you don’t want to hear all my sad stories. I can’t even bear to tell them anymore. Screw the past, right?”

Screw the past. It made me so happy to hear someone say that. I felt lighter, like when I first cut my hair.

His gray eyes clouded for a moment, and then he laughed. “Say, Naomi, there’s something real serious I’ve been meaning to ask you,” he said, his voice suddenly filled with gravity again.

“What?”

He grinned. “Whatever happened to that shirt I lent you?”

The dress shirt was hanging in my closet at home. “I washed it,” I told him. “Come get it now, if you’d like.”

Dad was locked away in his office working when we got there.

“Do you want to meet my dad?” I whispered.

“I’ve already met him,” James reminded me. “In the hospital.”

“Right. I’m sure he’d like to thank you, though.”

“Next time,” James said shyly. “I don’t always go over so well with people’s parents.”

I led James to my room and located his shirt in the back of my closet. As I handed it to him, my hand brushed up against his forearm, but James didn’t seem to notice.

“Thanks,” he said.

We were both standing in the entrance to my closet, which was a walk-in. James was looking around when he said, “What is that?” He pointed to a stack of CliffsNotes on the top shelf.

“I know. It’s very scandalous. In my defense, I can’t remember buying them.”

James set down his shirt and took the top booklet off the stack. “Slaughterhouse Five. For God’s sake, who buys CliffsNotes to Slaughterhouse Five.”

“Apparently that was the kind of girl I was.”

“The very bad kind,” James said. He picked up his shirt and moved to leave my closet.

James had run hot and cold in the months since I had met him, so I’m not exactly sure what possessed me to do what I did next. They say that people who have had brain injuries sometimes suffer from strange emotional outbursts, and I guess this would qualify. “Do you remember what you asked me back at the hospital?”