Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac(43)

“So,” James was saying, “why don’t I just take you out for coffee before you go to yearbook? I’ll have you back by three-thirty, I swear.”

James was wearing this black wool peacoat, which he looked particularly tall and handsome in. Some girls like suits or tuxedos; I’m a sucker for a guy in a great coat. I knew I couldn’t refuse him. Plus, after my talk with Mr. Weir, I really needed to get out of school.

We drove into town. James had a cup of black coffee and I had a glass of orange juice, and then we took our drinks outside and walked down the main strip of town. Even though the day was gray and moist, it was nice to be outside instead of where I was supposed to be: cooped up in that yearbook office where every part of me felt dried and tired, my hands always covered with these oppressive little paper cuts.

“I don’t want to go back to yearbook,” I said.

“So don’t” was James’s reply.

“I don’t just mean today. I mean ever.”

“So don’t,” he repeated.

“It’s not that easy,” I said. “People are counting on me.”

“Honestly, Naomi, it’s only a stupid high school yearbook. It’s just a bunch of pictures and a cover. They make a million of them every year all around the world. I’ve been to three different high schools, and the yearbooks always look more or less the same. Trust me, the yearbook will get published with or without you. They’ll find someone else to do your job.”

I didn’t reply. I was thinking how if I quit yearbook, I’d have more time for everything else: school, my photography class that I could no longer drop, therapy, and James, of course.

“It’s three-thirty,” James said after about ten minutes.

I told him I wanted to keep walking awhile, which we did. We didn’t say much; above all, James was good at keeping quiet.

James dropped me off at school around five.

Since it was the night before the holiday, I knew most of the kids would be gone early. Except, of course, for Will.

From the beginning, the conversation did not go well. I tried to be nice. I tried to explain to Will about my schoolwork and my photography class. I tried to tell him how he could run the whole show without me, that he already had been anyway. Will wasn’t hearing any of it, and before too long I found myself making some of James’s points, which had made so much sense when I was outside in the daylight.

“It’s just a stupid yearbook.”

“You don’t think that!”

“It’s just a stack of photos in a binder!”

“No, this is all wrong.”

“You said you’d understand if I had to quit!”

“I was being polite!” He was silent for a moment. “Is this because of James?”

I told him no, that I’d been unhappy for some time.

Will wouldn’t look at me. “What is so great about him? Explain it to me.”

“I don’t have to justify myself to you, Will.”

“I really want to know what is so f’n great about him. Because from my point of view, he looks like the moody guy on a soap opera.”

“The what?”

“You heard me. With all his moping around and his brooding and his cigarettes and his cool haircut. What does he have to be so upset about?”

“For your information, not that it’s any of your business, he has someone in his family who died.”

“I was there when he said it, remember! And hey, let’s throw a goddamn parade for James. Lots of people have people in their families who died, Naomi. I’d wager everybody in the whole damn world has people in their families who’ve died. But not all of us can afford to go around screwing things up all the time. Not all of us have the luxury of being so exquisitely depressed.”

“You’re being a jerk. I don’t see why you’re attacking James just because I don’t want to be on yearbook!”

“Do you actually think you’re in love with him?” Will laughed. “’Cause if you do, I think you lost more than your memory in that fall.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that you’re acting like a dope. The Naomi I knew honors her commitments.”

“Get it through your head. I’m not her anymore. I’m not the Naomi that you knew.”

“No shit!” he yelled. “The Naomi I knew wasn’t a selfish bitch.”

“I hate you,” I said.

“Good…I h-h-ha…Good!”

I started to leave.

“No, wait—”

I turned around.

“If you’re really quitting, you need to give me your office keys.”

“Right now?”

“I want to make sure you don’t steal anything.”

I took them out of my backpack and threw them in his face.

Sometimes these things take on a momentum of their own. I had gone in there just to quit yearbook, but I had ended up quitting Will, too. Maybe it had been naive to think it could have gone any other way.

When I got outside, James was waiting for me.

“Thought you might need a ride,” he said.

“But not home. Somewhere I haven’t been before.”

He drove me to the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, which seemed a strange place to take a girl, but I went with it.