The Memory Jar (12 page)

Then
(Memory Jar)

I remember the swimming lessons. This was after like ten trips across the lake in that stupid tippy-ass canoe that was not romantic. You can't kiss a boy in a canoe until you know how to swim, and anyway, I wasn't eleven anymore.

I trusted him. He had me lean back and let my legs float up and keep my head back and my shoulders flat on his palm. He supported me in the water like that until I could do it myself, until lying back on the water's surface was almost natural. But the second Scott walked away, I felt every bit of courage drain away from me, lost in water that suddenly felt cold and dangerous. I flopped around, my arms and legs thrashing, until Scott yelled at me—he actually
yelled
, “Get a grip, Taylor! You can touch!”

It was true; I had forgotten. We were in water about chest-deep for him, so plenty deep on me, but still, I could touch. It gave me a chill to think about how close to pure panic I was in that instant. I didn't like the yelling, even though I know he was trying to pull me out of my fear.

“I told you to trust me,” he said, and he picked me up in his arms and I wrapped myself around him, warm in the cool water. I felt safe, and I did trust him. I know it sounds cheesy. The cheesiest. But I did, I trusted Scott, and everything that afternoon seems etched in my mind. That's exactly how it all is—all my memories from before the crash. Like an etching, a work of art careful and precise on my mental canvas. A story gone to press, ink to page. So what to do with these murky shapes beneath the surface, when the transparency of the past starts looking a little bit cloudy? I trusted him, that's the thing. What is all this about a soap-smelling girl?

Now

I have to get to the hospital. I crumple the memory into a ball and deposit it into the jar, along with the others. Trust. My mom told me this morning I have to go to school. It's the only way I'll be able to get into a good college. I can't let anything slip. The teachers have been really nice to me, understanding everything I've been through in the last week, but that's only going to get me so far, and then the sheer volume of lessons I've missed is going to catch up with me. My phone vibrates in my pocket, and I wait until Ms. Smith is looking the other way before I slide it out of my pocket and look, expecting Joey.

It's Dani.
I'm getting close on the other issue, btw. You can relax.

The other issue. My hand automatically slides over my belly. Relax, right. I have to get to the hospital, and the only way I can think of is to act like I'm the one with a medical emergency. There's got to be something I could fake, some kind of believable malady for a snowmobile crash survivor with a slight concussion to come down with several days later in class—no. Stupid plan. Anything I do that calls attention to my medical condition is going to be calling attention to the fact that I'm pregnant, and no matter how much they bust their asses on grades, teen moms don't usually win the scholarships.

I'm going to have to break loose, like in a prison movie or something. I'll get one of these kids to distract the guards and then I'll run, bullets bouncing in the dirt all around me. Ms. Smith's eyes keep landing on me—briefly enough so that it's not uncomfortable but deliberately enough so that I know she's looking out for me. Concerned face, ten o'clock. She perches on the edge of her teacher desk and sweeps her eyes across the class. Breathing. I count to five, count to seven, count to thirteen. My heart slows. It's the yoga that saves me—I've been rolling around on padded mats with Dani most of my life, learning to breathe even if I'm still the most unbalanced person in any room.

I raise my hand. “Ms. Smith?”

She's at my side in an instant. “Are you all right?”

“It's just … I've been having these … like anxiety attacks or something,” I say. All the adults can understand anxiety, but especially teachers. “Can I go get another drink of water?”

She looks closely at me, and I'm pretty sure in that second she knows everything there is to know about me, and then she smiles. “Of course,” she says, and hands me the hall pass.

I loop my hand through the lanyard and slip the pass around my neck without breaking eye contact. I want her to know that this isn't something I can escape. Then I walk out of the classroom, snagging my bag and my tablet on the way out the door. I stop at my locker and successfully retrieve my coat and hat. From here it's only a matter of looking like I have all the right in the world to walk out of school. I dip my head and pull my hood up before I reach the outer doors, hoping nobody will ask me to sign out. Wind whips into me, and my phone vibrates again, Joey.
Parked by the gym
.

“Thank god, I was nervous I'd freeze to death,” I say as he leans over the passenger seat to open my door. The inside of his car smells like lemons. “Do you
dust
your car?”

His response is to hit the gas and then the brakes, jostling me nearly off the front seat.

“Hey.” His face is like a cat's, unreadable. I swing my legs all the way into the car and close the door properly. Part of me is thinking that Joey is actually partly crazy and is going to kill me the way his brother did not, and part of me doesn't care. Part of me would be relieved.

Then
(To Joey)

I used to tease him about his indecision, give him grief about how I had to make all the choices all the time. He was a Pisces, you know.
Is
, I mean. Anyway, he couldn't make a decision to save his life, his two-fish mind always swimming like mad in opposite directions. You've seen what happens when you take him to a restaurant he hasn't been to before, a place where he doesn't have a “usual order.” Torture. He stares at the menu in an agony of indecision, switching rapidly from choice to choice, and then he spends the whole meal regretting his choice. It made me absolutely nuts.

Once, I was helping him write a paper for his college comp class. It wasn't anything difficult, but Scott wasn't
really the kind of guy who spent a lot of time writing.
“That's your thing,” he always said, and like a lot of people, he didn't really trust himself when he wrote. I sat on the foot of the twin bed while he swiveled crazily in the chair, balancing the laptop on his knees. We were alone in his room, a luxury born of Dani's ingenious lies, and I didn't
want to waste the whole time on a stupid paper.

“It's just an argument,” I told him, but the screen in front of him remained blank. “Pick something you're passionate about.”

He leaned back in his chair so that his head pushed up against my arm. “I'm passionate about you,” he said, and I guess it was a sweet thing to say, but for whatever reason it annoyed me, got me all prickly.

“So you don't have any opinions? You can't think of a single thing you stand for?” I pushed his head off me and sat up straight, getting angrier by the second but unable to pinpoint why. Scott raised his eyebrows, but I didn't stop. I frowned and stood up, started pacing the narrow space between the two beds and listing controversial subjects. “Immigration reform, gun control, biological warfare, privacy on the Internet. Vaccinations. Global climate change.
Metal detectors in schools, whatever. Just pick a stupid topic,” I said. I stopped in front of him, my hands on my hips. “You can't write a paper about me.”

I don't remember much more of that night, only that moment of frustration when I stood in front of Scott and told him he had to find something other than me to feel passionate about, like couldn't he have written about hockey, or hunting, or something else he liked? It was claustrophobic, in a way, this idea that his world was narrowing down to a single focus, but a couple weeks later he showed me his paper. It was passable—it had a thesis and unobjectionable structure. But the thing that caught me off guard was the argument he'd finally decided on. The title of the paper:
Does True Love Exist?

Scott's position was yes, and I was his proof. Even now, thinking of that paper embarrasses me.

Now

Joey takes his hand off the wheel to light a cigarette, then takes his other hand off to roll down the window. I restrain myself from reaching over to keep us on the road, and then I notice he's using his knee to steer. “When I go to a restaurant,” he says, offering me the smoke, “I order the special. I'm not picky.” I wave my hand and shiver, cold and queasy in the cramped space of the car. I feel like I'm expanding, my molecules drifting apart, shifting states of matter in a moment. Taylor vapor.

“What's she like?” I hope he won't tell me too much. I can only handle little bits at once.

He doesn't hesitate. He's been waiting for me to ask. “She calls herself random,” he says, and this little scoffing noise comes out of his mouth. “Like she's all bubbly and she has funny streaks in her hair and she prides herself on her randomness.” He glances over at me. “That was basically her autobiography when we met,” he says. He raises his voice to a silly falsetto. “Hi! I'm Kendall! I'm so random! I'm sorry about Scott, but honestly, I need to talk to his girlfriend!”

“Why would she want to talk to me?” My feet are up on Joey's dash right now, and I can tell by the sideways look he gives me that he's not really cool with it but he's not going to say anything because I'm a crazy pregnant girl or whatever. I hug my knees.

Joey's fingers tap on the steering wheel. “I don't have a clue, Tay.”

Tay. I can't remember him ever calling me that before. Scott didn't, and his family doesn't. Only Dani, and occasionally my mom. “But seriously.” I pull the engagement ring out of my pocket, still in its little bubble of cellophane. “Who is she, even? What does she want?”

He loved me. He wrote
term papers
about loving me. He wouldn't be with anyone else. I can't understand this.

Joey mutters, pulling the car into the hospital ramp and tearing the sunglasses off of his face as he does. He tosses them up on the dash and they slide all the way across to my side, every rattle a reminder of his anger.

I sigh. “Why are
you
so angry?” This girl isn't sleeping with
his
boyfriend. I didn't think that—I'm too tired for this. Fatigue hits, a sudden submerging as the car comes to a stop, and I lie back against the seat and close my eyes. “I don't want to see her,” I say.

“Take your time,” says Joey, and he snatches the sunglasses back off the dash—leaning across me all brusque and impatient in the process—and puts them on, reclining his seat and, presumably, closing his eyes behind the shades.

None of this should matter. I was about to break up with him. I blame it on the hormones, on this stupid pregnancy that makes me constantly want to puke. If he wasn't in this stupid coma, he could help me get this stupid abortion and he could go off with this stupid Kendall and be random to their little hearts' content.

I can't explain what it's like to not remember. When you're trying really hard to hear something, you can cup your hand around your ear, hold your breath, and listen. You can squint your eyes to see, or inhale through your nose to smell. You can even try really hard to relax, to the point that you can lower your own heart rate and blood pressure. But how do you try really hard to remember something that isn't there? I squint, and I hold my breath, and I
think think think
, but there's nothing I can hold on to. Every thought is slippery, and I can't hold on to what's real. I take out my memory jar and unscrew the lid. There's a soft smell of lotion or bath oil released with the lid, but there's no memory attached, and I try some more, to remember.

Then
(Memory Jar, top secret)

I remember the night this all started like it was yesterday. No, like it was five seconds ago. This goes nowhere, and nobody sees this. As soon as I get home, I'll burn this paper and put the ashes into the jar and that will be all that's left of this story, that's how serious I am about this.

It happened in his truck, and if that isn't reason enough to get the abortion, I don't know what is. How do you even look your kid in the eye when you know he was conceived in the front seat of a Chevy pickup. I don't think we really planned to have sex in the truck that night, but it was cold, and we stopped to look at the stars. I was distracted, thinking about school and college and my stupid ACT test. We got out of the truck for a while and we tried to sit on the hood, hoping the heat from the engine would keep us warm, but even with a blanket down, the cold crept into our bones and eventually we shivered our way back into the cab. The stars were really beautiful, but I couldn't stop thinking about what it would be like if I followed Scott to St. Cloud and whether that was going to make everything work out happily ever after, and I admit there was this moment when I was like, what if I go to college with Scott and then he ends up being my only boyfriend and I marry him and what if he's the only one I ever kiss, the only boy I ever … I worried about those tests. I'm not good at math when I'm rushed, when I'm calculating out how many seconds per problem I have left. If I could get enough scholarships, I could go anywhere. I could do everything.

This was what I was thinking about, and then Scott started kissing my neck and I let out my breath and then sucked it right back in again, and I know I already said I would burn this, but I have to say it again, this goes nowhere but here, and I'm turning away so that Joey can't possibly read it even if he does have his eyes open under those awful sunglasses. He kissed my neck and that's my weakness, I can't even. He kissed me and I melted and pretty soon my breath was coming faster and my whole body moved to push closer to him. I slid my seat back and he climbed over the console and the gear shift, laughing as he tried to fold his legs into the tiny space. I picked up my knees and he fell against me, his weight between my legs. This wasn't our first time, just so you know. We had some things figured out—the fumbling of the condom wrapper, the arrangement of clothing. Our breath steamed the windows, and then it was over. My mind settled again on scholarship possibilities, and I smoothed down my skirt and pulled up my leggings. We didn't notice anything gone wrong. I mean, unless you count the fact that I was sitting there breathless and unfinished and distracted by school. When had sex become this quick, practiced thing that we did without thinking about it? I pulled my seat back up and was quiet, but Scott didn't notice my change of mood. He was jubilant and ready to go out and devour French fries dripping in mayo.

It was this stupid thing, in my head. I couldn't stop obsessing about the fact that we had most of our clothes on. I have no idea why it mattered, but I kept on seeing the image of him, lifting himself back over the console into the driver's seat, his boxers showing where his jeans were unzipped and, like, pulled down on his hips. He barely even had his pants off, and that bothered me. It was cold. We were sitting there in the truck, and even though we were parked at the edge of town, there were still people who could have happened by. And to think now that this is when it happened—that was the beginning? Doesn't an actual baby deserve something more than that?

Okay, that's it. That's what I remember. I went home that night and I couldn't sleep and I cried for no reason I could explain, making pathetic little sobs until finally my mom came in to my room and asked me if I was all right and gave me some tissues and a sort of hug. “It's just the night-sads,” she said, and she went back to her bed looking a little pissed off, but her words helped. I slept after that, though the wanting
-to-cry feeling has been with me ever since.