Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac(56)

“It’s a step,” I said.

“An infinitesimal one,” he added. “I still have a lot to work out.”

I held his hand the whole time. It was a really beautiful campus, and the sun was out so bright and lovely, it could almost make you forget things.

At the airport, he kissed me, but I tasted goodbye in it.

“I’ll see you when you get back to school on Tuesday,” I said. “Assuming my dad ever lets me out of my room again.”

A security officer yelled at James to move his car, so he had to go. Part of me was scared I’d never see him again.

When I got to the doors of the terminal, I realized that I had left my dad’s book in James’s car.

10

ON THE FLIGHT BACK, I ALTERNATED BETWEEN WORRYING about James and worrying about the trouble I was in, probably about seventy-five percent in the James direction. In lieu of thinking, I would have preferred to be sleeping, but planes are one of the noisiest “in theory quiet” places on earth, and I couldn’t.

I put on my headphones and placed a CD in my laptop’s drive. I hadn’t really noticed what I was packing when I’d left the house, but I’d managed to grab not one but two of Will’s stupid mixes. The first one I put in was the one he’d made me when I’d lied to him about the play, but something about it made me anxious. (Maybe it was the song choice; he had, after all, been pissed at me at the time.) So I put in a different one instead, the one from my birthday, Songs for a Teenage Amnesiac, Vol. II. A prompt came up on my computer, asking me if I wanted to launch the DVD player.

I clicked yes.

It was a movie, no more than fifteen minutes long.

To call it a movie would probably be an exaggeration. It wasn’t in the least professional, not like James’s video installations for the play, for example. It was a simple slideshow, set to the Velvet Underground song “That’s the Story of My Life.” He’d added some text, but mainly it was pictures.

It was all the years I had missed. He had gotten whatever videos and images he and the school and even Mom (yes, he had contacted my mother) possessed, and he had edited them together chronologically.

There I was.

There I was graduating from the lower school at Tom Purdue. I’m easy to spot. I’m the tallest girl in the picture.

And Mom giving birth to Chloe. My sister. I knew I hadn’t been there that day, and yet it was undeniable: there I was.

And moving with Dad to the new house—our whole life in boxes. And Ace pulling my ponytail on the tennis courts. And me taking a picture of someone taking a picture of me. It was Will—of course it was Will—I could see him dimly reflected in my camera lens.

And in that black formal dress. My hair had been dirty blond, but you could see the roots even then.

Nothing all that thrilling, I guess, but there I was.

There I was, there I was.

As soon as it was finished, I played it again.

And then, I played it again.

How surreal to see my whole life, as compiled by Will, from a plane ten thousand feet in the air.

He’d obviously done it before I had my memory back—he still didn’t know I had my memory back. It must have taken him a lot of time to assemble. It was probably the nicest, most thoughtful gift anyone had ever given me, and I hadn’t even bothered to look at it for three months. No wonder he’d been mad at me. I was a jerk, unworthy of the effort.

I spent the next three hours feeling horrible. I tried to use the phone on the back of the seat to call Will, but I couldn’t get it to work.

As soon as the plane landed, I turned on my cell, but the battery was dead. I knew that Dad would be waiting for me outside the security checkpoint, and that would effectively mark the end of my freedom for some time. I stopped at the nearest pay phone. I didn’t have any change, so I had to call Will collect.

“I have Naomi Porter on the line. William Landsman, will you accept charges?” asked the operator.

“Why not?” was Will’s reply. “Well, what do you want?”

“I’m sorry about having to call collect,” I began. “My phone died.”

“Fine.”

“I…I got your birthday present. I mean, I got it before, but I hadn’t watched it until today. I just wanted to say that it meant a lot to me.” The words weren’t coming out right. They sounded so stiff and not at all what was in my heart.

“Well…Well, that’s fine. Do you need something else? I’m on my way out actually.”

“Will, I—”

“What?” he snapped. “I’m going out with Winnie.”

“Yearbook Winnie? Winnifred Momoi from yearbook?”

“Yes, Winnie Momoi. I’ve been seeing her since the beginning of the semester. You’re not the first person in the world to have a significant other.”

“Goodbye, Coach.”

“See you.” He hung up the phone first.

I went out into the lobby to meet Dad. I felt like the sole of a very old shoe.

The first thing Dad did was hug me, and the second thing he did was ask me for my cell phone.

“It’s dead,” I told him as I handed it over.

“It’s staying that way, kid.” He put my phone in his pocket. “I’ve never had to really punish you before, and I’m not even sure I know how to do it.”