The Memory Jar (11 page)

Now

Joey and I stand in the concrete stairwell together to wait for my mom. Our voices echo.

“Do you think he and Kendall were … ” He shakes his head.

I shake mine. “I don't know.” And I really don't, but I remember that smell, and I know she was with him that day I drove down in secret, the day I told him. “I only know they were together. Close enough for me to smell her.”

“Scott was a good guy,” says Joey, and then I know he's done it, too. He's taken the Scott we know and relegated him to the past—a person we used to be connected to.

My phone buzzes. “She's here,” I say, and then I don't know what comes over me. It's the same thing that's coming over everyone, I guess, and I grab Joey up in a hug. His shoulders are every bit as narrow as I thought they would be—he's a dried husk of a winged thing with dark pools for eyes. I'm so tired of this. Joey's surprised, but he hugs me back. We're all clinging to each other in search of comfort.

“I'm going to find out,” he says. I'm not sure what to say, so I slip out the door.

Mom's tapping at her phone and doesn't seem like she's pissed she had to wait, so that's good. I give Joey one more little wave and then climb in, pulling my bag in over my lap.

“You're letting the cold air in,” she says, but she's absent, her fingernails scraping across the screen of her own private world.

“What are you looking at?” I know she hates it when I invade, but I can't help it. Look at me, talk to me. I lean in.

“I need a new cardigan,” she says, and sighs. “I guess
need
is too strong a word, but there's this thing I was going to maybe go see down in Duluth—” She stops, pushes me away. “I hate when you read over my shoulder.” She tucks her phone back into the console and looks at me for the first time since I got in the car. “So what did the shrink say? Is it all your awful mother's fault?” She smirks, but it's a smile that doesn't conceal much of her insecurity.

“Whatever.” I sink back into the seat, and this is the time, my chance.
I'm pregnant
would be all it would take, and what happened next would be on her. Would she slap my face? Kick me out of the house? Get pissed but stand by me? I think she'd eventually be on my side, that's the thing, even though I don't doubt there would be a lot of yelling, a lot of angry shit to wade through first. But would she sign the papers? That's what I want to know. Would she give me the choice to make?

“S
he told me to keep trying to remember, that's all.” I say this instead of that other thing, for now. I tell myself maybe tomorrow. Maybe the day after that. One moment, and everything changes. A relentless storm of her anger with the hope of a quiet shore on the other side. Not tonight. I hold up the jar that I decorated with Celeste's glue gun. “I have a memory jar, but it's mostly empty.”

“Whatever you end up remembering,” Mom says, “knowing you, you'll be sure to write it down.” She pulls away from the curb, and I can't tell, from her wry tone—from her sharp profile or her constantly drumming fingers—what she means.

Then
(Memory Jar)

I remember the way he cried. I would expect a guy like Scott to cry when his grandma died or when his favorite hockey team lost—or won, I'm not really sure how sports stuff works—but I didn't expect him to cry when he moved away from home. I rode along on the day Scott and his parents took all his stuff down, which I was nervous about because I knew I was going to have to ride back up alone with his parents, and I didn't really know if it would be awkward or what. I mean, they were nice people, but a four-hour car ride can be a lot of conversation to maintain.

Anyway, his mom was hugging him obsessively and his dad was keeping busy building the loft bed and assembling a bookshelf, and it was weird because there we were, in the middle of his bedroom essentially, with his parents, and every time Scott even brushed against my arm, I jumped back like they were going to arrest me. But finally Scott was like, “Can you guys go take a tour of the campus or something so Taylor and I can say goodbye or whatever?” And
I blushed at the whatever, but his mom gave him another teary hug and they promised to be back in an hour to pick me up.

It's not like we were going to have sex, okay? We were cuddling. We were sad. We'd seen each other every single day that summer except for two nights and three days when I was camping and canoeing with Dani and her moms in the Boundary Waters. I remember how he held my face in his hands—I loved the way that felt. His fingers touched my cheek so lightly, and his palm cupped my chin. He slid his hand up behind my ear and his fingers twined into the hair at the back of my neck. We looked at each other, and even through the blurry wash of my own tears, I saw his eyes fill up too. There wasn't enough time in all the world for us, then.

I wonder if he'd cry to leave me now. I wonder if I would have gone there for college the year after next. I wonder if we would have moved in together like we planned, or if we would have broken up and gone our separate ways, watched each other date other people from afar and sort of tolerated it, even though neither one of us would have liked it. I wonder if we would have had a baby, if we would have made that work. I wonder if I had killed myself, would he still be whole.

And I wonder about this Kendall person.

Now

This morning Dani's car turns into the school parking lot, and although I make the obligatory noises of protest, I feel mentally prepared to enter the building. It helps that Mom took me out shopping last night for a cute new outfit, and I feel safe ensconced in a gigantic blue and orange silk scarf. The wind is cold but there's a heavy damp in the air, too, which feels odd for early January.

“I can do this,” I say, and Dani pushes her shoulder into mine.

“Most obvious thing you've said, ever,” she says, and bumps me again. “You can do absolutely anything, Tay.”

“Cheesiest thing you've said, ever.” I push her shoulder back with my own, and she holds the door to the school open for me to step through. I hesitate, taking in a deep breath and letting it out again slowly. Peace breathing, Dani's mom Janie calls it. Janie teaches yoga in the back of the yarn store Saturday mornings.

“The truth is always cheesy,” says Dani. She gives me a pretend kick in the butt, and I walk in. I can do absolutely anything. Anything except remember the five most important minutes of my life. And my locker combination. I spin the lock quickly, hoping that my hands will automatically know where to stop, and after a couple of false starts, they do. Muscle memory. Dani's always talking about muscle memory, always studying with her hands waving all over the air. She connects the facts in her notes to little squiggly motions of her hands, and then when she's taking a test, you can see her at her desk, every so often, with her tiny hands twitching and swooping around her like hungry birds. She tries to get me to study with her like that, but I'd feel too silly moving around like that. She can get away with it, little miss cheerleader, captain of the danceline team. I'm the chubby girl with the glasses, writing an article for the school newspaper. My hands are a swarm of hornets dive-bombing a spilled snow cone.

Still, I wonder if I could get on a snowmobile again. If I could remember.

“Hey, Taylor,” says a voice behind me. Cecilia comes in with a concerned look, reaching in for a hug. I spread my arms and lean in, wondering what this is, this lowering of my hugwalls. “You're looking amazing. Really. Are you holding up okay?”

I smile, feeling the tug of my lacerations as I do. “I'm all right, thanks. And thanks for the card.” Cecilia's mom is my mom's gynecologist, which is a little weird, I admit. “And that crock pot full of … ”

“Sloppy joes,” she supplies, then gives me another hug before heading off to class. I reach into my locker for my stuff, wondering if I'll remember my schedule in the same way I remembered my combo. I'm going to have so much work to make up.

Between my locker and Dani's, a Cecilia-like scene replays about four thousand times—concerned face, compliments, hugs, smiles, thank you's for the flowers and the food and the gift cards and all the thoughts and prayers. Dani takes me by the elbow and escorts me, moving me among the curious throngs rather like a battering ram, and then drops me into World History with a tight squeeze of my shoulders. “I'll be back for you,” she says. “You don't have to do this alone.”

It's cool of her, but really, I'm fine, and I tell her that. “I'll see you at lunch.” Here at Gordon High, we're allowed to leave campus for lunch unless we're in trouble, so in the winter Dani and I usually eat in her car while she drives around aimlessly. In warmer weather we might eat on one of the benches around Sterling Lake if there aren't too many geese, or at the old rocket ship playground, but in the winter it kind of sucks that neither of us lives close to school with a working parent. We could hang out at the yarn shop, but then Dani would be forced to eat her Internet-famous lunch, and we'd have to talk in the soft-wool hush of Fran's listening ears.

“You can do this,” she says again, and she's gone. I slouch in the last desk and hope Ms. Smith feels like talking a lot today. Kids look at my face and quickly look away, but whatever. The face doesn't bother me anymore, except that the scab is starting to itch and it makes my skin all tight.

I pull out my notebook and think about the memory jar. What do I remember? What memory could get me a millisecond closer to the moment we hit that ice ridge? What are the options? Was it a fluke—a complete accident, a warping of time and space and speed and safety and Scott didn't realize he was moving that fast? Was there something he didn't see? Was I driving? Did someone tamper with the snowmobile? And then the worst possibility, the one that seems so likely, so probable: Did I drive the snowmobile into that ridge
intending
to crash? Did I want it all to be over, the decision made? My breath comes ragged, my vision narrowing with gray fuzz in the corners, and I should have known. Am I making a scene? Ms. Smith is standing beside me, bending down. She's making concerned sounds and nodding her head a lot, but her voice is really far away. I nod my head. She pats my arm and looks straight at me, but I barely see her.

There's this part of me that stands back and watches as I lurch up out of my desk chair at the same moment as Ms. Smith turns her back. I think I can see the crooked part on the top of my head, like through a crime-scene camera mounted high above the door. I stagger to my feet, and I wipe my sleeve across my face, and I have no idea why, but I just want to tell her. I want to tell everyone. “I can't remember it, okay?” The words spill out in my broken-voice need, and I can hear the buzz of whispers starting but I have to make sure they all know. I tuck my hands into the sleeves of my sweatshirt and hold my arms out stiffly at my sides. I'll break if anyone touches me. “I just can't.”

I watch myself pick up the plastic jar, all covered with glue and plastic doodads, and press it tightly between my hands. “I'm going to get a drink of water,” I say, squeezing the container. My elbows feel light, and they float upward. The plastic crinkles. “Please.”

Ms. Smith waves me out the door with a worried look, but I make it out of the classroom, and by the time I hit the hall I feel better. Still, I suck deep gulps of air and pace the distance between this door and the next. It's everyone staring at me, that's all. Making me anxious. The calming breaths help, and I curse myself for making a scene. Now I'm going to have to walk back in there with everyone looking at me.

I pull out my phone and I'm not sure why. Celeste gave me her number in case I wanted to text her—she said she wanted me to, actually—but I don't know what to say.
Help me, I have high school
?

I have a missed text. At first my stomach plummets, thinking it's going to be another
Abortion is murder
message. The last one came after midnight and was a photograph of little tiny feet with a caption that said simply,
Adoption, not abortion.
Again, no match on the number, and again I wonder who would go through so much trouble to target me with pro-life messages.

The missed text is from Joey, and it's the weirdest thing because I totally have Joey's number in my phone from before the crash, from before all of this. My boyfriend's little brother, you know? I can't get used to how everything has changed, and no warning, no chance to get our lives in order.

Shes here u hafta come to hospital.

How can anyone even think that's language? I message him back with a picture of my WTF face. Then the phone rings, and it's him. I pick up, quickly, before Ms. Smith comes out here to check on me. “Ew,” I say into the phone. “Why are you calling me? This is so archaic.”

“It's Soap Girl,” he says, and then he hangs up.
Shes in the building
, he texts.

Soap Girl? What?

Oh.
Kendall the Soap Girl? The one he …
I pause, my finger hovering over the screen. Fuck it. I hit send.

Joey's text comes so fast, I'm not even sure he saw mine first.
She says she has to see you immediately. Coming to pic u up.

Right now?

Ms. Smith comes to the door, smiles again at me with those understanding eyes, and I let her lead me back to my seat. The rest of the kids mostly look away, which is nice. I have to go to the hospital. Why the hell am I in history class? Joey's coming to pick me up. Everyone's taking a test, but I can't take a test. I'm still holding this memory jar.