Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac(71)

“I don’t,” he conceded. “But the last time I used it, it wasn’t a commentary on the educational system, so it’s different. Also, ‘Ghost World’ by Aimee Mann.”

“I don’t know that one.”

“You’d like it. I ought to play it for you sometime.”

It went on like this for the whole walk home. It was dark out by now, and it was as if Will and I were alone in the universe.

“‘At Last.’ Etta James.”

“Clever.”

“‘Teenage Spaceship’ by Smog.”

“Or ‘Teenage Wasteland.’”

“It’s actually called ‘Baba O’Riley’ after composer Terry Riley.”

“I always forget that. But how about ‘Race for the Prize,’ the Flaming Lips?”

And then, up the path to my house.

“…Bob Marley, is it? There’re covers, too. Or is his the cover?”

Down the hallway.

“The tempo’s probably a bit erratic for marching, Naomi…”

I stopped in the kitchen to get myself a glass of water.

“…haven’t been enough fast ones. You don’t want to get bogged down in slow songs. Maybe Fatboy Slim’s ‘Praise You’ or ‘Road to Joy’ by Bright Eyes?”

In my room.

“That Whitney Houston song they used to use for that ad with the kids in the Special Olympics. What the heck’s it called?”

I was lying on my bed.

“I’m so tired,” I said.

“That’s not what it’s called.”

“No, I meant that I’m exhausted.”

“Well, you ought to go to bed, Chief.”

“I’m in bed, but I don’t want to stop talking,” I told him.

“Okay. When you’ve been silent for more than five minutes, I’ll know to hang up. Your cell phone’ll time out after thirty seconds anyway.”

We kept naming songs…

“‘Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard.’”

“‘The Only Living Boy in New York.’”

“Too elegiac?”

“That’s what’s good about it for a graduation, I think.”

…until I was asleep.

Ten months and one or two lives later, I was back where I started: alone again at The Phoenix at around seven on a Wednesday. There’s not much to do yearbook-wise for the couple of weeks after the books have been distributed. I was thinking how unnaturally quiet and lonely the office was without anyone in it when my phone rang. It was Will.

“Are you at the office?”

“Just locking up,” I told him.

He said that maybe I could stop by later, and then he hung up quickly, uncharacteristically so.

When I got outside, Will was at the top of the stairs, grinning sweet and crooked, like a swung dash. It was the first time he’d been on campus for three weeks, and he looked thin, but much better than that day when I’d seen him at the hospital. Arguably, his pants on this day looked worse: they were plaid “old man” pants, probably borrowed from his grandpa. He was better off in school uniform pants. But what could you do? That was my Will.

“Hey there! Why didn’t you come up to the office?” I called to him.

“The front door was locked, and you have my keys. I decided to wait for you here.”

I jogged over to him. “To what do I owe this honor?”

“A long time ago, I used to go to school here. I even used to be the editor of the yearbook.”

“Nope,” I said, furrowing my brow. “Can’t say I recall.”

He offered me his arm. “I’ve heard these stairs can be troublesome,” he said.

“I think I can make it down unassisted.”

“Just take my arm, Chief. It’s safer. Don’t you think that between us we’ve had quite enough calamity for one school year? If you fell…”

I interrupted him. “I didn’t fall. I dove.”

“Fine. Have it your way. Dove. In either case, I don’t think I could bear you forgetting me all over again.” He turned me toward him, so that we were looking eye to eye. When he spoke, his voice was low. “Take my arm, Naomi. I’d offer to carry your books, but I doubt you’d let me.”

I laughed at him and linked my arm through his. We were the exact same height, and his arm fit well in mine.

We walked slowly out to the parking lot, where Will’s car was parked. I was mindful of Will’s health, but also it was probably the nicest hour of the nicest day of the year. Seventy-three degrees, and the sun was just going down, and the air was thick with grass and a hint of sunblock and something in the distance, something sweet and delicious that I couldn’t quite identify yet.

I don’t remember who it was, but one of us finally said to the other, “Isn’t it funny that all those months ago we flipped a coin so that we wouldn’t have to take this very same walk?”

One or the other of us replied, “And now I wouldn’t mind if it were even farther, if we could just go on like this forever.”

For the longest time after that, neither of us said anything. I was unaccustomed to his silence, but I didn’t mind it. I knew near everything about him, and he knew near everything about me, and all that made our quiet a kind of song.