Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac(60)

The sun went down.

Visiting hours were over.

I kissed him goodbye, and Will and I drove back home.

Will didn’t talk to me for the first hour and a half on the way back, and when he finally did speak, it was only to alert me to the fact that he wanted to stop at a diner.

“I just want to remind you that I am at liberty to order whatever I want on the menu,” he said.

All he ordered was a patty melt and a chocolate milk shake, which was lucky because I only had forty bucks on me and that had to get gas, too. I didn’t feel like eating, so I just watched him.

“So…so…if you’ve had your memory back all this time, does that mean you remember everything?”

I looked at him. “Yes.”

“Everything everything?”

I was pretty sure he was thinking of that time he and I had kissed, but I didn’t necessarily want to talk about it just then. “Yes.”

Will nodded and ate a couple of French fries.

“But that day I made you go back for the camera? Normally, I would have just gotten it myself. I was only being so difficult because I didn’t want you to think that things had changed between us. I guess I was overplaying the friends thing.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” I said. “I was the one who tripped.”

Will nodded. “I was hurt,” he said. “That day, I can truly say I was hurt. I was in love with you, and the next day you acted like us kissing was no big thing.”

“Will…” I sighed. “Of course, it was a big thing. How could it not have been? You’re my best friend, right?”

“I know I should have said something, right then in the parking lot, but by the time I had a chance, you’d forgotten everything. Me entirely. Then you quit yearbook. You met James. It was all too late. But the worst of it is, somewhere in there…somewhere after you and that idiot Zuckerman broke up, maybe I had a chance? But I didn’t say anything then either.

“But I don’t love you anymore,” he said firmly.

“Will.”

“I don’t love you so much.”

I couldn’t figure out anything to say. In a way, I sort of wished I was in love with him instead of James, because it would have been easier on everyone.

11

THE FOLLOWING WEEK, I GOT A POSTCARD FROM JAMES.

First off, the picture made me laugh, but he probably knew that it would. Big-eyed, cherubic, blond cartoon toddlers (were they brother-sister, or were they more?) on the beach, and the caption at the bottom, Wish You Were Here…Albany, NY. Are there even beaches in Albany? And considering where here was for him, I doubt he actually wished I was there.

Then I flipped the postcard over and read his personal message, which was only two words long and had no signature. “Forget me,” he wrote. That was it, that was all.

It seemed like the worst possible thing a person who knew me at all would ask.

Yes, I would leave him alone.

No, I would not forget him. It wasn’t his choice.

The only person I wanted to talk to about all this was Will.

I tried him on the phone, but he wasn’t picking up. I ran to school—the exertion felt strangely good—and he was still in the yearbook office, but he was talking to Winnie Momoi. I didn’t want to go in and interrupt, so I waited in the hallway for him or Winnie to leave. I guess he must have seen me through the window on the yearbook door. He came outside like fifteen seconds later, and I burst into tears, even though I could see Winnie watching us curiously.

I could tell he wanted to ask me what was wrong, but he didn’t. He put his arm around me, and we started walking out to his car.

The only thing he said to me was “You’re not wearing your coat.” He went back into the office and returned with his coat (this crazy orange suede one with a lamb’s wool collar) and he told me to put it on. I did. It must have weighed about sixty pounds. It was huge on him, so I was basically drowning in it.

He drove me home.

“It’s really over,” I said.

“I know,” Will said.

“I’m such a jerk,” I said.

“No, you’re not, Chief. You’re great.”

Somehow Will calling me great started me crying all over again. I didn’t feel at all great.

I wasn’t crying for James, though. I think I was crying for how much he didn’t know me and how much I didn’t know him and how I’d acted like such an idiot. How messed up it was that I didn’t feel like I could even tell him when I got my memory back.

I was crying a little for the boy I had wanted him to be and the boy he hadn’t turned out to be.

And I was crying for gravity. It had sent me down the stairs, and I’d thought that meant something, but maybe it was just the direction that all things tend to flow.

My heart was a little broken (is there such a thing?), but I still had to go to school. I buttoned my dress shirt over it and my winter coat, too. I hoped it didn’t show too much.

A sort of funny thing happened the next afternoon. I was standing at my locker talking to Alice when Will’s Winnie confronted me.

Winnie had long dark hair that reminded me of my mom’s, and made me miss my old hair a little. My hair was starting to look like crap by the way—it wasn’t short enough to be short or long enough to be anything else. I hadn’t considered how long it would take to grow out when I’d cut it in the first place.