Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac (13 page)

“Say what you mean, Ace.”

“I
hate
your stupid hair,” he said, his voice rusty with truth, bitterness, feeling. Everything else he’d said the whole time we’d been together had sounded merely confused or frustrated, but this was different. This was unmistakable. This was passion! It was what was missing from every other element of my relationship with Ace. It was what I’d heard when Alice spoke about the play, or Will about yearbook, or Dad about Rosa Rivera. It was what I’d heard when James had said he’d wanted to kiss me in the hospital.

For the record, I didn’t know boys could care so much about hair. Maybe this was asking too much, but I wanted someone who felt as strongly about the rest of me. Poor Ace. The boy had been in love with a haircut.

I knew what I had to do.

“I think we should take some time off. From each other, I mean,” I said. Then I tried to make a joke. “Give my hair some time to grow.”

Ace didn’t laugh. “Are you saying you want to break up?” he asked. Did I detect a hint of relief in his voice?

“Yes.”

“But that’s not what I want!” Ace protested a little too adamantly. “I want you to get your memory back and for everything to be like it was.”

“Well, maybe that will happen. But in all likelihood, it won’t. And you’ll be in college next year anyway, so this was bound to happen sooner or later,” I reasoned.

“Is it Will?” Ace asked.

This annoyed me. It only confirmed how much Ace didn’t know me. If anyone, it was James, and it wasn’t even James. It was no one. Or, more to the point, no one except Ace. “Will’s my friend, which is more than I can say for you.”

Ace closed his eyes. “This wasn’t the way I saw tonight going.”

I asked him if he could drive me home. When we got to my house, he walked me to the door. I kissed him on the cheek.

“I know this is probably dumb, but I feel like I’m never going to see you again,” he said.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Ace. I’ll see you at school,” I replied, but of course I knew exactly what he had meant.

“What I said about your hair…” he began.

“It’s okay. You were being honest.”

By the following Tuesday, everyone at school seemed to know about our breakup. The story got back to me that Ace had dumped me because I was a “prude” in bed since the accident and “not entirely there,” both of which had some basis in truth while not conveying the essential nature of what had happened. I didn’t know if Ace spread these rumors or if they were just the idle speculation of my peers. People like Brianna, who’d had it in for me even more since I’d tried to stand up for her in the car. She could really let loose now that Ace was no longer required to defend my honor.

I would have understood if it had been Ace—maybe he was saving face, or maybe that was how he actually saw things? In any case, I did not go out of my way to set the record straight. People could think what they wanted to. Screw them.

I STILL HADN’T TOLD WILL ABOUT THE PLAY
. Maybe it was because I felt like I was betraying him; maybe it was plain cowardice. I was late to yearbook about half the time and I let him think I was either with tutors or at the doctor. If my chronic tardiness annoyed him, Will was too much of a friend to let on.

He probably wouldn’t have found out about it at all, if Bailey Plotkin hadn’t shown up to photograph rehearsals. Bailey was the arts photographer for
The Phoenix
, the same position I’d held my freshman year, according to that year’s masthead. If I’d been paying any attention to yearbook matters, I might have guessed someone from the staff would eventually come.

Bailey was a mellow person in general, and he didn’t appear particularly surprised to see me. “I didn’t know you were in the play, Naomi. Cool,” was pretty much all he said about the matter. Still, I knew I had to tell Will, and preferably before he saw the pictures.

I went to the yearbook office as soon as rehearsal was over, and Will barely glanced up at me when I came into the room. He asked me if I’d had time to look over the cover mock-ups. I hadn’t, so I went to do that. The cover Will liked was all white with just the words
The Phoenix
in raised black text, all caps, right justified, halfway down the page. It was extremely plain and not the sort of thing you usually see on a high school yearbook. He had mentioned that it was a reference to an album or a book, but I hadn’t been paying enough attention. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it yet.

For the next two hours until yearbook was over, Will said nothing to me about the play. He was all business the whole time: very polite questions and no wisecracks. This was unlike him and only confirmed my belief that he already knew but was waiting for me to bring it up.

At the end of the meeting, I asked him for a ride home. “So that we can talk,” I added. He was quiet on the walk out to the parking lot. It was the end of October and I felt a chill, but it wasn’t from the weather. That fall had been particularly mild, and I was wearing a hoodie and a parka besides. I think the chill might have been something like déjà vu. I felt as if I had taken this very same walk before. Of course, I had. I had gotten many rides from Will since I’d been back at school, but there was something specifically familiar that I couldn’t quite identify.

“Are you cold?” he asked me when we were halfway to the parking lot. “I should have offered you my gloves.”

I shook my head. Will was always so concerned about me—even now, when he likely knew I’d been lying to him for weeks. It made me feel like the smallest person in the world.

When we got to the car, he stood there for a second without unlocking the doors.

“So?” I said.

“So, you’re the one who wanted to talk, Chief.”

“Well, um, in the car’s fine,” I said.

“I’d rather hear it here,” Will said.

I told him. “I’m in the play. I don’t know why I didn’t mention it before. That thing about the additional therapy was a lie.” I glanced over the roof of his car to see his reaction. He didn’t have one really, so I rambled on. “It happened almost by accident,” I continued, “but it’s only another two weeks, and then I’ll be back full-time.”

Will nodded for a second before replying, “You had sure as hell better comp me, Chief.” He loosened his school tie and then he laughed, so I asked him what was funny. “The thing is, I’d been afraid you were going to quit.”

“Why?”

“For the last couple of weeks, we’ve barely spoken. At least now I know there was a reason.”

I assumed he meant the play.

“And your heart hasn’t really been in it for a while. It’s only natural that I wondered. I want you to know I would probably have understood if you
had
quit with everything that’s happened to you, but I’m relieved that you didn’t.”

Will unlocked the doors to his car and we got in.

“The play…is it fun?” he asked me.

“Yeah, it is,” I admitted.

“I’m glad.” Will nodded and then he started the car.

When he got to my house, he asked if he could come in. He said he hadn’t seen my dad in a while.

I asked him why in the world he wanted to see my dad.

“Well, I really like his books. We’re pals, Grant and me.”

I told him that Dad was probably writing.

“Come on, Chief,” he said. “I haven’t been over to your house in eons.”

We went inside, but Dad wasn’t even there. Instead of leaving, Will sat down at the kitchen table. “I heard you and Zuckerman broke up,” he said.

“Yeah.” I didn’t really want to talk about it with Will, but he wasn’t taking the hint.

“Why?” Will asked.

“Because he hated my hair,” I said.

“I always thought he was a dick,” Will said.

“A dick?”

Will blushed for a second. “Maybe not a dick, but not good enough for you.”

“He’s okay.”

“Is there somebody else?” Will asked. He took off his glasses and wiped them on his pants.

“Nope,” I said. “I’m not planning on it either.”

He said he didn’t believe me.

“Well, you can believe what you want. But I’ve got enough on my plate without a boy.” Then I told Will I needed to study, which was true.

I’d finally gotten him to the front door when he spun around and said, “You know how I call you ‘Chief’?”

I nodded.

“Didn’t you ever wonder what you call me?”

“Uh, ‘Will’?”

“No, what you used to call me.”

I hadn’t.

“Coach. You know, short for
co-chief
. You could call me that again if you wanted to, Chief. If it ever should happen to just pop into your head.”

“Coach,” I said. Despite the fact that he couldn’t have been less athletic, the nickname suited him well. A good nickname tells you something about the person it belongs to, and it was so with this one. In all he did, Will was fiercely loyal, a good motivator, intelligent, passionate, and thoughtful. He was everything a coach ought to be. “It’s a good name for you,” I said. “I wish I’d thought to ask you about it before.”

“There are all sorts of things I could tell you,” he said, “if you ever wanted to know them.”

The play opened the second weekend in November. Each of the cast members was allotted four tickets. I gave one to Will and two to Dad, who gave one to Rosa Rivera. I thought about giving my last ticket to Mom, but my part wasn’t all that big for her to bother driving in from the city. Plus, I didn’t have enough tickets for Nigel and their kid anyway.

The show ran for only two nights, so in a way it wasn’t all that different from yearbook—a lot of effort for not much product. But, well, I think it was a good play. That must count for something. Will, his mother, Dad, and Rosa Rivera came on the second night, and everyone told me it was a good play, and that I was good in it. I was really only in a couple of scenes. To commemorate the occasion, Will made me a new mix CD,
Songs for Acting Like You’re at Your Therapist When You’re Really Just Acting
(“Hilarious,” I said), which he gave me after the show was over; I hadn’t finished listening to his last mix yet. Dad said how he liked the video installation part that James had done. The footage
had
looked pretty amazing projected—you would never have known that we shot it at a park in Rye. James had treated the footage so that it looked like an old silent movie. All black-and-white and faded and flickery.

The cast party was at Alice’s house. Or behind Alice’s house by her pool. It being November, the pool was covered over with a green vinyl tarp.

Yvette hugged and congratulated me. In return, I told her how amazing the costumes had looked. “Have you seen James?” she asked.

“Why?”

“I didn’t get a chance to tell him how beautiful his images were. Best part of the play. Don’t tell Alice,” she whispered.

I swore that I wouldn’t.

I hadn’t encountered James since that day at the park. He didn’t need to go to actor rehearsals, and at the few rehearsals he did attend, he was occupied with technical matters. Truthfully, I had been too busy to care. Besides, I was past expecting that anything might happen between us.

Alice came up to me next. “Where’s your cocktail, cookie?” This was the drama crowd—while there was no beer, there was plenty of harder stuff.

“I’m abstaining,” I said.

“Do you have a problem with drinking?” Alice asked me.

“Yes. I have no tolerance to an embarrassing degree.” No one really wants to hear about your medical problems at a party.

Alice laughed. “Sounds like it’d be fun to get you liquored up, cookie.”

I just shook my head.

Alice kissed me on both cheeks and told me she was so proud of me. And then the guy who had played Guildenstern called her. “Who do you think is cuter? Rosencrantz or Guildenstern?” Alice asked. “I simply can’t decide who I prefer.”

“What about Yvette?” I asked her.

“Yvette, Yvette, sweet Yvette.” Alice sighed heavily. We both turned to watch Yvette, who was laughing with another girl in the play. “We are in high school, and that means I don’t have to marry anybody.”

My curfew was midnight, and I was about to get a ride home with the doomed Yvette, who like most doomed people seemed to have no clue, when someone tapped me on the shoulder. “Hey, Hamlet,” James said.

“You’re late,” I replied.

He shrugged. “I didn’t think I was going to come.” He took a cigarette out of his jacket and lit it.

“Aren’t you gonna offer me one?” I asked.

“I would, but I didn’t think you smoked.”

“Still, it’s nice to be asked. Courtesy, you know?”

“Truthfully”—James inhaled deeply, and his gray eyes were lit by the flame from his cigarette—“truthfully I don’t want to be the guy who ruins your pretty pink lungs.”

It sounded an awful lot like flirting. I’d been down that road with James before, and it never led anywhere.

I said that I had to go home. He offered to drive me, but I told him that Yvette was driving me. “In case I don’t see you again,” I said, “I just wanted to say that I thought the installation was beautiful.”

James tossed off my praise. “Yeah, turned out pretty decent. I’m only doing this play thing to have something extra to put on my college applications in case my first choice doesn’t work out.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter why,” I said. “It was beautiful anyhow.” I turned to leave.

He finished his cigarette in a single inhale. “Wait a second. Don’t I get to compliment you, too?”

I shook my head and told him it was too late for that. “I’d probably assume it was in response to mine.”

“I was afraid of that,” he said.

“It was nice seeing you, James.” I pointed him in the direction of the drinks and the partygoers with curfews later than mine.

“I don’t drink. I mean, I used to. But not anymore,” he said. “And besides, the person I came to see was you. You remember that class I told you about?”

I did.

“They’re showing
Hannah and Her Sisters
on Tuesday night. You said that was one of your favorites, right?” he said. “It’s cool if you bring the jock, too. Do you have a piece of paper?” I held out my hand, palm facing out, and he took a black Sharpie from his pocket and wrote the screening information on my palm.

I had no intention of going. The play had made me fall farther behind in my schoolwork, and I had yearbook, and James did not seem like a good bet for a boyfriend or even a friend, not that I was looking for either. In fact, I tried to wash his note from my hand that night before bed, but those Sharpies really have staying power, even on skin. Tuesday rolled around, and as I could still see it, ever so slightly, I decided what the hell.

Dad dropped me off, and he told me to call him when the movie was done. It was a pain not to be able to drive myself places, but I didn’t really have time to take driving lessons until the summer.

It seemed to me that every senior citizen in Tarrytown was there. Having seen the movie before, I didn’t have to pay too much attention to it, which was lucky, because the old people made quite a lot of noise unwrapping candies and whispering to each other,
What did she just say?
I found myself thinking of the last time I’d seen it with Mom. Mom’s favorite part was when this guy tells this woman (not Hannah, one of the sisters) to read a certain page of a book because it had a line of poetry on it that reminded him of her. The line was “No one, not even the rain, has such soft hands,” or something like that, and it always made Mom cry. I wondered if Nigel had done stuff like that for Mom, and if that’s why she’d left Dad for him.

The movie ended, and I decided to wait for James to come out of the projection booth, just to be polite.

When he finally emerged, he asked me how I had liked seeing the movie again.

I guess I was still thinking about Mom, because I found myself telling him all about Dad and Mom and Nigel. How I kind of wished Mom had seen the play, because she really got a kick out of that sort of thing. How I kind of wanted to see her, but I didn’t know how to do it without making a big production of it. The horrible name I’d called her the last time I’d seen her—

James cut me off. “None of that matters. If you want to see her, you should go. Take off and do it. Don’t wait.” He started talking about his brother, and then he cut himself off, too. “Oh, you don’t want to hear all my sad stories. I can’t even bear to tell them anymore. Screw the past, right?”

Screw the past. It made me so happy to hear someone say that. I felt lighter, like when I first cut my hair.

His gray eyes clouded for a moment, and then he laughed. “Say, Naomi, there’s something real serious I’ve been meaning to ask you,” he said, his voice suddenly filled with gravity again.

“What?”

He grinned. “Whatever happened to that shirt I lent you?”

The dress shirt was hanging in my closet at home. “I washed it,” I told him. “Come get it now, if you’d like.”

Dad was locked away in his office working when we got there.

“Do you want to meet my dad?” I whispered.

“I’ve already met him,” James reminded me. “In the hospital.”