Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac(59)

When we got there, Will told me he would wait in the car.

“I need you to come in with me,” I said.

“Why? Are you scared?”

“No…well, I think there’s a small chance that he might not want to see me, so I need you to give your name at the desk.”

“He doesn’t know you’re coming?” Will was incredulous.

“Not exactly,” I admitted.

“Congratulations. This sounds exceedingly well planned,” Will said as he opened his door.

I had expected a prison, but Sweet Lake reminded me of Thomas Jefferson’s house, Monticello, where I had taken a field trip in fourth grade. Or maybe it looked like a very large B&B.

Visiting hours on Saturday lasted from noon to seven. I had called ahead. It had been that same receptionist, and I’m pretty sure he recognized my voice because he said, “You do know that patients have the right not to see someone.”

Will gave his name at the desk, and then we went to wait in the visiting room.

“Will,” James said, coming through the door. “Is something wrong with…?” Then he saw me. At first, I thought he was going to walk right back through those doors the same way he’d come, but he didn’t.

He walked to the sofa where Will and I were. After a while, James sat down, but he wouldn’t look at me.

When he finally did look at me about five minutes later, it was not in a very pleasant way at all. “So?” he said.

I had rehearsed what I wanted to say ever since I’d decided to come. I took a deep breath.

I thought about asking Will to leave, but I didn’t. “I think you”—I turned to James; I didn’t care if he wanted to look at me or not—“have gotten the idea that if I could remember everything, I wouldn’t want to be with you. And since that is the case, I shouldn’t be ruining my life by being with you in the meantime when you’re so…flawed. Is that right?”

He nodded and muttered under his breath, “Something like that.”

“Well, here’s the thing. I haven’t been an amnesiac since January. I love you now. It’s not gratitude or amnesia. It’s love. And I know you’re screwed up. Everyone is screwed up. I don’t care.”

“You’re a goddamn liar,” James said.

“I can’t believe it,” Will said. “How could you not say?”

I looked at Will.

“I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

His face was flushed. “I’ll wait for you by the car,” he said. And then he left.

James didn’t speak to me for a long time. Finally, he said, “Let’s go outside. I can’t be in here anymore.”

It was a nice day, and I don’t mean that it was sunny either. It was humid and not too cool, like winter was getting annoyed with itself and wanted it to be spring just as much as everyone else. We sat down at a picnic table.

I remember wanting to touch him, but not feeling like he would let me. Eventually he took my hand. “It’s cold,” he said. He cupped his hands, which were dry and warm, around mine.

“Sometimes,” he said after a while, “I was sort of jealous of your amnesia, I know how crazy that probably sounds. Because for so long in my life, I just wanted to forget everything that had ever happened to me…

“After my brother died, it became real easy to picture myself dying young. But recently I’ve realized that I’m probably not going to unless I do something to make that happen. I know this probably seems evident to you, but it’s, well, it’s news to me. And if I’m not going to die young, that means I’m stuck with the consequences of my actions. That means I have to figure things out, do you know?”

I did.

“Because now, I’m older than my brother ever was. And I’m going to go to college, which is something that he never did. The way I see it, now’s a really good time for me to get a handle on all of this.

“As for you…well, I just don’t want you to turn into another Sera,” he said. “But you make things difficult for me.

“I wish we’d met some other time,” James said. “When I was older and had my shit together. Or younger, before everything got so messed up.

“Someday,” he said, “we’ll run into each other again, I know it. Maybe I’ll be older and smarter and just plain better. If that happens, that’s when I’ll deserve you, Naomi. But now, at this moment, you can’t hook your boat to mine, ’cause I’m liable to sink us both.”

I promised to leave him alone until he got out. And then I couldn’t help it, I asked him when that might be. I’m ashamed to reveal this, but I might have been thinking a little about junior prom in May.

He said that since he was just in the “transitional” program, he was doing his schoolwork over e-mail and that he hoped to be back for graduation, maybe sooner, but he wasn’t sure.

“I’m…well, I’m glad to see you, but I’m embarrassed that you’re here in a way,” he said. “I kind of wanted you to think I was perfect.”

I told him that I knew he wasn’t perfect.

“Yeah, but I wanted you to think that I was.”

We sat on that picnic table for a really long time, until the world became darker and darker. For a second I wished that time might stop, and it might stay twilight forever. Maybe I could live my whole life on this park bench with James, who I loved, next to me.