The Memory Jar (10 page)

Now

We both look at Scott now, quiet and still, and the note of victory in Joey's story falls a bit flat. “It didn't work,” says Joey, and he looks as heavy as I've ever felt.

“You don't know that,” I say. “On some level, he's hearing every word.”

He nods, slowly. “I guess I wasn't talking about right now,” he says. “I was thinking that it didn't work, getting Scott to take me seriously as a person.”

I want to argue, to reassure, but I don't have anything. I don't even have a sibling to know what it's like. “Let's keep trying,” I say, and I take a peanut butter cup out of my backpack. “It was last Halloween.”

Then
(To Joey, for Scott)

We were too old for trick-or-treating, obviously, but we wanted to dress up and we wanted to eat candy, and none of us had our own place to hold a party, so we ended up driving around in Scott's truck. Looking for trouble, I guess, but nothing big. A little mischief at most. It was me, Scott, Dani, and her artist friend Melinda, I think, in the front seat. We were all squished into two bucket seats, basically. I was straddling the gear shifter and pretending to get mad at Scott when he took advantage of that. Or tried to, since my mummy costume wasn't exactly easy to take advantage of.

“Every girl dresses slutty on Halloween, but you're all wrapped up in bloody gauze like a wisdom tooth extraction,” he said.

“It's fucking cold,” I said. For the rest of the night, whenever someone asked about my costume, I said I was dressed up as a wisdom tooth extraction. It was much more fun than a mummy. Halfway through the night, we even stopped and picked up a sale-price doctor's costume for Scott, so he could be the dentist, and he gave up his giant werewolf head to his buddy Cody, who was stuffed into the tiny backseat of the truck with this girl Maren. He was dressed like a hockey player, which was lame because he played hockey in high school just like Scott. Werewolf hockey player was much better. Maren wore a gigantic referee shirt and didn't say much, though she took some really cool pictures of us with an old Polaroid.

We did all the usual things—coffee and creamer-flipping at the Village Inn, walking around downtown halfheartedly trying to get served in a couple of the less-attentive bars, succeeding in one, driving over to the fast food taco place and eating more than we should have, and finally it was late enough and dark enough and creepy enough for us to sneak into the graveyard with the Ouija board. This wasn't the new cemetery near the highway and the mall, the one with lighted statues and those big mausoleum things that some lumber baron bought back in the day and they moved them and all the dead bodies over when they dug out the mine pits underneath that edge of the town. This was the graveyard, the one between the elementary school and the old water tower.

The sky was overcast, even though there was a bright moon shining out every so often. It was cold, enough to see your breath. We could stay warm enough if we huddled together, and my bandages made nice layers.

Under a shifty dark sky, we shushed our way through the overgrown path and over the wrought iron gate. Scott and Cody positioned themselves on either side of the gate and helped the girls over. We stumbled and giggled, trying to stay quiet and mostly failing. There was a path around the edge of the graves, but it was overgrown, and we tripped in the dark over patches of weeds and brambles.

Scott kept eating these peanut butter cups, the little ones, popping them in his mouth one after another, and I was like following his peanut buttery trail through the dark, wondering about ghosts. Dani read us this poem by Edgar Allan Poe, about some dead lost girl, and it gave me these little tingles up and down the back of my neck. As always, I kept on thinking about Petra Jarvi, tugging on my feet off the end of the dock, and then even my mummy layers couldn't keep me from shivering violently.

“Ask it when I'm going to die,” Scott said. He was cocky, or filled with bravado, anyway. The plastic triangle on the Ouija board settled beneath our fingertips, all of us with two fingers touching. It seemed to vibrate, like the board was a liquid and it was a windblown leaf, and then it clattered across the board in a haphazard circle.

“It's really moving,” said Dani, crowding her shoulder into mine. “Seriously, who's pushing it?”

But it didn't feel like anyone was pushing it. The planchette flew across the board, our fingertips sliding at times trying to keep up. It swung around and around, erratic and fast. A giggle rose up in my throat, and my hands were like ice. I was freezing.

“I changed my mind,” said Scott, laughing, but the thing moved swiftly to NO.

“No?” It was Dani, her face absolutely surreal in her zombie prom queen makeup. Her tiara sat crookedly over a very realistic head wound. “What do you mean, no?” She looked at Scott, and the plastic triangle flew over the board, whipping from letter to letter. As it flew by each letter, the planchette seemed to stop—decisively, quickly—how could one of us be pushing it? It made an urgent circle and then flew on to the next letter. DREAMNODEAD.

It was done. Gone. The plastic triangle sat flat and still against the board. “You have to say goodbye,” said Dani. “You have to release the spirit.”

“I think the spirit's gone,” muttered Maren, and she took her fingers off the planchette so she could operate her camera. We dragged the spirit across the words GOOD-BYE anyway, just to be safe.

Scott chuckled. “Dream no dead,” he said. “Dream. No. Dead.”

“Dude, I think it means you're a zombie,” said Cody.

I was a little creeped out, but Scott smiled and pushed Cody's arm. “Everybody's a zombie tonight, buddy,” he said, and then he pretended to bite Cody's face off. “Braaaaiiiiins.”

Dani took my hand, though, and she leaned in close. “Dream no dead?” she whispered. “What the fuck does that mean?”

Now

Joey and I exchange a wide-eyed look. “Dream no dead?” We both look at Scott's prone form and then back at each other.

“That's creepy,” he says, his hands curling into fists. “I don't like that shit at all.”

“I didn't realize until … ”

“Yeah.” He looks away, breaking eye contact. “I'm sorry. I still don't know how to feel if I don't feel angry. I'm losing my mind.”

I wave it away. “Look at him.” I reach across Scott to show my phone to Joey. “He had some kind of
tool
in his truck, like a real creepy dentist.” In the picture, Scott is making evil butcher dentist faces and pretending to dig in my mouth with these metal clamp things. By this time we had splattered fake blood all over his scrubs. It was pretty gruesome.

Joey has an easy laugh, for once. “The clamps,” he says and laughs even harder, but he won't tell any more, even after I protest that I've been sitting here spilling my guts and he can't even tell me the only thing that's made him relax in three days? He refuses, grinning the whole time though, like a person whose life might go on even if his brother is in a minimally-persistent/partially-vegetative/slightly-conscious/barely-even-there kind of way. Even if his brother's girlfriend is horrible.

“Whatever,” I say. “It's probably disgusting.”

“It probably is.” He doesn't say anything more, but he fiddles with the brim of his hat again, pulling it lower and then lifting it off, over and over. He still smiles, his face relaxed in a way I'm not sure I've ever seen it, even before the crash. And I'm staring at him like a creeper.

We're quiet, and the room is quiet, and I clear my throat because the air is dry.

“Ahem.” The sound comes from the bed.

Joey and I look at each other, then back at Scott. He's not moving, not looking any different at all. Was it a coincidence? Did he and I clear our throats coincidentally at the same time? Joey repeats the same noise, twice. “Ahem, ahem.”

There's a long pause, and nothing. Joey's shoulders sink down in a way that lets me know he was holding his breath, and mine probably do too. He reaches into his jacket pocket then and pulls something out, holding it in his hand. “Found this,” he says, and he tosses me this little cellophane packet. I catch it. Sealed in the cellophane from Joey's cigarette pack is my engagement ring. “Didn't want it to get dirty,” he says. The ring looks like drugs, something illicit nestled in a pillow of plastic.

“Thanks.” I put my hand into my hoodie pocket, cradling the ring, and there's this look—I can't explain it—between me and Joey. It's like, I want to say it's like we
understand
each other, but that's not exactly it. It's like we're acknowledging each other's enigmas and coming to the decision that we can like each other anyway. Then there's another noise from the bed.

“Ahem ahem.”

Then
(Memory Jar)

Dream No Dead. Do I dare hope for him to wake up, miraculous, and start telling us all about his trip to Oz? I remember the time when we fell asleep together, a rare overnight in Scott's dorm room when his roommate was out of town and Dani could cover for me with my mom.

Scott woke up first, and he was looking at me, propped up on his elbow, when I opened my eyes. There was a soft look about his mouth. “I dreamed about you,” he said, and he smiled.

I smiled back. “Was I crushed by an avalanche or charged by a runaway bull or something?” Most of the dreams I can remember involve things like that happening to me.

His eyebrows bobbed in amusement. “Not exactly,” he said. “But you did turn into a bird for a minute, I think. Or else you were just covered in feathers, I don't know.” He shook his head. “I never saw you fly.”

I wonder if he wakes, if he'll have memories of the time he's been sleeping. I wonder if he'll remember the stories.

Now

Joey rings for the nurse and describes the throat clearing. She listens without changing her expression and promises to update Scott's doctor. Scott's mom comes back and sits beside him, and she makes a number of noises in the hope that he'll repeat them. We all hang around and listen for a long time, but either the whole thing was a complete coincidence or it was an isolated incident, because nothing seems to be happening now.

I check my phone and see that it's almost time, and my mom is going to be here soon to pick me up. My stomach is queasy at the uncertainty of everything, especially everything involving my mother. If things were always like this afternoon, I could tell her what was happening. I'd tell her and we'd figure it out together. Would she sign an agreement to let me abort?

“It's progress,” says Emily, with another embrace. So many people hugging me who never did before. And me, accepting the hugs. Leaning into them, even. “What's in your little container?” She points to the memory jar.

I hold it close to my chest. “It's for my therapist. I'm writing down the memories I have of Scott.”

Her whole face lights up—she believes I'm doing this
for
Scott.“That's a wonderful idea, Taylor. Maybe we should all be doing that.” She pulls me close one more time, presses her mouth up close to my ear, and whisper-sobs, “I truly believe he's going to pull out of this.”

I nod, my eyes glazed over with tears, and squeeze her back. I don't even know what I'm feeling, but it might be helplessness. It might be hope. In my pocket there is a little crinkle of cellophane as she hugs me tight.

“You want me to walk down with you?” says Joey, shrugging like he doesn't care.

“Cool,” I say, and I shrug too. We're cool as anything. “Let's take the stairs instead of the elevators.”

Joey descends with both hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched. “Do you think he's going to wake up?” His voice echoes in the stairwell.

I like the spiraling of staircases, and I lean on the center rail a little, even though there's this strange undercurrent of thinking about germs, about vulnerability. “I don't know, maybe.” The yellow light makes everything look sick and sallow. “I want to know what his brain is going to be like. What
he's
going to be like.”

Joey nods, takes a hand out of his coat pocket to hold open the door to the parking garage. “I do and I don't,” he says.

I walk through the door, into the chill of the evening. No sign yet of my mom on the street outside, and the wind when we step out past the entryway of the garage is bitter cold. I pull the scarf up around my throat and bury my face in it. “This is ridiculous.”

Joey pulls me back into the stairway before I realize what he's doing, and for an awkward second we bump into each other and his arm is wrapped weirdly around me and everything is all strange and close, and then we fall apart from each other and look away. “I'll wait for her out there, and you can stay warm,” he says. “No sense both of us freezing our asses off.”

“Thanks,” I say, but he hesitates, and I don't want him to leave.

Then
(To Joey)

I remember the smell. That day I first told him, when he hugged me, I remember what it was that made me uneasy. It wasn't perfume; that would have been too easy, too expected. He was working out, sweaty. I smelled him, but there was something else, there must have been. Deodorant, maybe? Could he have borrowed someone else's deodorant? Could someone else have been in his arms, someone else who was working out? Someone who smelled like soap.

We knew it was going to be difficult, with him at college and me in high school. “It's the way it goes,” I told him. “The girl back home? You think that ever actually works?” The whole long-distance relationship thing didn't seem all that likely to make it, honestly.

Scott swore that I was the one for him, and I think he actually believed it, which was fine with me. I didn't worry about him cheating on me, I don't know why. I suppose you'll jump to the conclusion that I didn't care, but that's not true. I cared, but I was also busy living, you know? I had Dani and high school, and I still got to see him every other weekend or so when he came up, even though my mom wouldn't let me go down to St. Cloud to see him. That pissed me off, the way she wouldn't even listen, absolutely refused to let me see him when he wasn't “at home,” like we're on a freaking play date. She kept telling me I'd thank her some day when she saved me from a life of single motherhood on welfare. Surprise! You can get pregnant right here in Sterling Creek. You'd think she would know that.

The drive to and from St. Cloud got more and more unpredictable as the weather turned cold and snowy, and there were a few weekends we were supposed to see each other and Scott couldn't make it. I fully admit that I thought about breaking it off several times, more because I felt like he should be able to enjoy being in college and not be moping around missing me or something, but then he'd have a break and he'd come home, and it would be just like it always had been between us.

We basically spent the entire summer after Scott's freshman year in college at the island. You know how he loved to build fires? At first he made coffee, but neither of us really liked coffee as much as we liked hot chocolate, especially without the little flavored creamers like at the Village Inn. But Scott could make a fire and he'd get the water boiling, and then he'd whittle up some little cocoa stir sticks. We had special tin cups that lived inside his little cook-kit, and we'd sit together in that one old chair and slurp our hot chocolate and I would say everything that was rattling around in my thoughts and he would listen, or seem like he was anyway. It was a comfortable thing, having Scott as my boyfriend for brief, intense periods (some far
too
intense, obviously), and then to have him gone, too. That was nice in its own way.

The next fall, when Scott joined the intramural hockey team, things got a little different. It was only a no-check league, and they didn't practice all that often, but I could feel Scott settling in with his own friends, his own life away from Sterling Creek. I convinced myself that it was good that he didn't call as much, didn't come home every single weekend he was able to. I didn't want him to be lonely. I wanted him to have a life there like I had with Dani and my other friends here, no matter how lame my life might have been. I trusted him, but I harbored no illusions either. We had already made it through a year apart, but high school was my world, and his was in college. I settled into the idea that it might not be forever, even though I truly loved him. That doesn't make me a bad person.

Dani covered for me to drive down to his games, but I was still separate from his friends there, and he didn't really talk about them either. I don't know, maybe I didn't want to hear it. We spent our time together talking about
us
, about our future, about how much we loved each other. Maybe we didn't have that much to say, truthfully. If I'd been allowed to visit him in St. Cloud more often, maybe it would have worked out differently. Maybe I would have been a part of their group, someone they would have embraced, but I sat on the bleachers alone and cheered for my boyfriend.

Scott's team won the playoff finals—a close, exciting game, and the stands had been pretty much packed, mostly with freshmen who lived in the dorms. It was a big deal, I guess. Scott didn't know I was going to be there, since I'd come the night before and it was hard for me to sneak down. Anyway, they won, and I waited there after the game, like a big dork, by the door to the locker room. I was experimenting even then with writing on my phone, and it was okay. Not perfect, but it made me unapproachable, which is how I like to appear.
Snarly
, says Dani's mom Janie. In fact, and this is a little weird, but that's my name on her blog. SnarlyGirl. She's written about raising Dani since Dani was about six years old, and retroactively shared most of Dani's known life before that, so I guess it's fairly natural that occasionally her daughter's prickly best friend plays a part in the drama that is “Raising a Rumpus,” as Janie's blog is so adorably named.

So there I was, being all SnarlyGirl, typing away on my phone, when I realized the hallway outside the men's locker rooms in the basement of the intramural hockey rink was louder, more celebratory than usual. Sure, sometimes after a game Scott would be invited to go out for a burger with some of his teammates, but he always took me out instead. This time, though, there were like fifteen rowdy friends of his—mostly guys from his floor, but a few girls, too. One of them was a tall girl with one of those wiry, athletic builds. It's not like I wanted to be that way, but I admit to a sort of fascination with women whose body types are completely different from my own. I wasn't jealous, but I could tell just by looking at the easy way she stood there in that hallway that she'd been in and out of the corresponding women's locker rooms more times than she could count. This rec center was her second home. The group was talking loudly, their sentences running into the sentences of their friends, reliving great moments of the game, and when Scott emerged from the locker room, they erupted into a cheer that was so boisterous it completely embarrassed him.

“Shut up, you guys,” was all he said, but he pushed through the center of the crowd with his head bent, shouldering his giant duffle. His hair was curly and wet from his shower. He was going to have frozen hair and a cold head. I slid my phone into my pocket and jumped off the little ledge where I'd been perched.

“Hey,” I said, walking toward him. “Good game.”

He looked up and the little smile on his face faded, just for a brief instant, and then lit up more purposeful and broad to let me know he was happy to see me. “I didn't know you'd be able to make it two nights in a row,” he said.

“Took some planning, but Dani's the best liar ever.” We stood, looking at each other for the slightest of beats, and then I jumped into his hug. It was good—he was my boyfriend. I wore his team colors of yellow and black.

“Do we finally get to meet your girrrrrrlfriend?” said the athletic girl. I read her smile as genuine, but there were reservations. She teased Scott like they were friends. Good friends.

Two other girls lagged behind the rest of the group, giggling and pushing each other in a way that let me know they'd probably insulted me when the group walked by. Called me a creepy fat girl or some other thing a million people have said before. Girls like that are not known for their originality.

Within seconds, the group had closed in around us, even the giggly girls, who were extra nice when they introduced themselves like everyone did. Their names were a swirl of details I couldn't pin into my brain, but the tall girl, the one with the easy posture and the ponytail, her name was definitely Kendall. And she smelled like soap.