The Impossible Knife of Memory

  “Yeah,” Finn said. “He’s a good guy.”

  We stood there, my backpack on the ground between us, staring over each other’s shoulders. The loudspeaker announced that boys soccer practice had been canceled and requested that the owner of a white Camry move their car from the fire lane or it would be towed.

  “You didn’t get in trouble at all?” he asked.

  “I didn’t start it.”

  “Doesn’t mean they’d pay attention to that.”

  “True enough, but they did, this time.”

  He picked up my backpack, but I pulled it out of his hands. “I got it,” I said.

  “You’re mad at me.”

  I shrugged, too tired to think about anything.

  “I had my phone turned off,” he said. “I didn’t see your text.”

  “I don’t want to miss the bus.”

  “You could stay,” he said. “Hang by the pool or in the library, then I could drive you home when practice is over.”

  Down the hall a locker slammed. The noise made me flinch.

  “You’re not okay.” Finn took hold of the bottom edge of my hoodie. “Can we forget about that stupid argument this morning?”

  “Seems like it happened years ago.”

  “The warped perception of time is a hallmark of trauma,” he said. “I’ve counseled a lot of superheroes. They all struggle with it.”

  “Oh, really?” My hand dropped to touch his.

  “Superheroes can be a pain in the balls,” he said. “Always acting tough, pretending nothing hurts.”

  “What do you do with them?”

  “Most of them go to a llama farm in New Mexico to meditate and spin wool. I don’t dare send you there.” He tugged gently, pulling me closer. “You’d scare the llamas.”

  “You defame me, sir,” I said. “I am a kind and gentle friend of llamas.”

  “You still mad at me?”

  “A little.” I laid my cheek against his. “Mostly, I’m confused.”

  66

  While Trish washed the dishes after dinner, I sat on the couch and killed hordes of attacking zombies with a double-barreled shotgun. Dad sat next to me, passed out. I could barely hear the sweet, wet sound of exploding heads between his snoring, the irritating tick-tock of the cuckoo clock, and Trish whistling in the kitchen like a demented mockingbird. She’d gotten a temp job on the pediatric floor, but wasn’t showing any signs of looking for an apartment. As far as I could tell, she really was sleeping in Gramma’s bedroom. (Thank all the gods.)

  I turned up the volume on the television, chambered another round, and pulled the trigger, taking out three zombies with one blast.

  Along with tacky clothes and cheap makeup, Trish had smuggled shards of my past in her suitcase: the way hair ribbons felt on my shoulders, the name of the girl next door at Fort Hood, the taste of pimento-cheese sandwiches, the sound of tennis balls being served into the net, and Trish telling me to toss her another one. I’d hear her voice as I was waking up and I’d open my eyes expecting to be in third grade. I’d catch the murmur of them talking when I was in the shower and it was the summer between fourth and fifth grades, only I didn’t take showers then, I took baths. And then I’d have to find my science notebook or remember the word for “bathing suit” in Chinese and I’d be seventeen again and confused.

  Every time I stepped out of the house, I looked up, expecting to see a bomb or a meteor hurtling toward us. It was just a matter of time.

  More zombies clawed their way out of the ground while I was waiting for my health status to turn green. I paused the game and stared at the screen, trying to find an escape. My only choice was to fight my way out, even if I didn’t think I would make it.

  Trish walked into the living room, zipping up her jacket. “I’m going to the grocery store. Do you need anything?”

  I put down the controller. “I’m coming with you.”

  * * *

  Trish threw out a few questions in the car, pretending that she cared about my life: did my face still hurt, was Brandon Something a bully to everyone or just me, was I going to play any sports, did I have friends. She asked about Gracie, said we should invite her for dinner one night. She asked if I had signed up for my SATs, and if I wanted her to talk to Dad about anything for me.

  Blah and blah and nosy none-of-your-business blah.

  I didn’t show her the shortcut that would have saved us ten minutes. I texted Finn and when he didn’t answer, I pretended that he had.

  * * *

  At the store, I stayed a few steps behind her, waiting until she had a cart, then grabbing one for myself. In the fruit-and-vegetable section, she picked over the heads of lettuce until she found one that met her high standards of lettuceness. Then she went through the same routine choosing bananas, apples, broccoli, and cucumbers. I scanned the prices to figure out what cost the most, then piled boxes of raspberries, gourmet salad dressings, and a couple of bizarre-looking organic things grown in Central America in my cart.

  In the meat department, she picked out hamburger and pork chops. I loaded up on steak and packages of buffalo sausages. I skipped the bakery and went to International Foods where I selected canned lemongrass shoots, curry-flavored almonds, and dried baby crabs, among other things.

  An announcement about tasty ways to turn tuna into a terrific treat interrupted the Christmas music. Trish passed me without a word on her way to cereal and crackers.

  I hit the jackpot in the fish department: lobster, shrimp, and a couple of small jars of caviar. I had about five hundred dollars’ worth of food in my cart and there were still three aisles to go.

  I turned into coffee/tea/creamers and ran right into Trish’s cart.

  “I’m not paying for any of that,” she said, looking over my bounty.

  “I know,” I said, wanting to kick myself for having been so obvious.

  She pushed past me. I followed so close behind that when she slowed down to take a box of chamomile tea off the shelf, my cart rammed into the back of her legs.

  I braced myself for the explosion, but it didn’t come. She tossed the tea in her cart, quickly maneuvered around a couple of old ladies and the guy restocking the condensed milk shelves, and took a right at the end of the aisle. The old ladies slowed me down, but I found her in frozen foods, comparing labels on two kinds of burrito.

  She put both burritos in her cart and closed the freezer door. “How long do you plan on acting like you’re five years old?”

  Here we go.

  “Until you leave,” I said. “He’s broke, you know. The house is falling apart and he can’t keep a job. He gets high now, too. There is no money for you to steal.”

  “Roy told me to come,” she said. “That’s the only reason I’m here. He’s worried about you both.”

  “You suck at lying,” I said. “You talked to my guidance counselor long before Roy showed up. He didn’t tell you anything.”

  “Why do you think Roy visited you guys in the first place?” she asked.

  A man driving an electric cart squeezed between us.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Andy started emailing me six months ago, right after you two moved here,” Trish said. “At first, it was friendly, which was more than I deserved. Around August, he started to sound desperate. Wrote some weird stuff. I forwarded the email to Roy and it bothered him, too. He was already planning the hunting trip, so he tacked on a day to stop at your house. When he told me what he saw, I quit my job.”

  “Sure you did.”

  She gave an exasperated sigh. “I haven’t had a drink in twenty-seven months, Lee-Lee. Twenty-seven months, three weeks, and two days.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “I don’t blame you for being mad at me,” she went on. “What I did was inexcusable. I am so, so sorry that I
left you. It was the worst thing I ever did to another person, worse than what I did to Andy, because you were just a kid. We can’t go back and fix that. I came up here to see if I could help because I still love you. Both of you.”

  “You’re so full of shit.”

  “I don’t think you realize how serious this is,” she said.

  “You show up for a couple of days and suddenly you know everything?”

  “Can you stop being childish for one minute?”

  I gripped the handle of my cart.

  “He’s scaring me,” she continued. “Not like he used to. I’m not afraid he’s going to hurt me. I’m afraid he’s going to hurt himself and I think you are, too.”

  “He was doing fine until you showed up,” I said.

  “We both know that’s a lie,” she said. “When you’re ready to start dealing with the truth, you let me know.”

  The desire to ram my cart into her gut and push her through the glass door into the freezer made my hands sweat. But if I did, she might see it as a “cry for help” and then she’d never leave us alone.

  “The truth is, I hate you,” I said.

  67

  The first snowstorm of the year (eight inches) that hit late on Thursday night should have canceled school, but all we got was an hour delay because the superintendent didn’t care if we died fiery deaths in chain-reaction pileups. Finn’s tires sucked but since his mom was home sick, he drove us to school in her ten-year-old Nissan. If she sold it, she’d be lucky to get enough to pay for half a day of rehab. The smell of her hair spray made me wonder if I was ever going to meet her. I shoved that question to the back of my mind and buried it under the mountains of junk stored there.

  Topher and Gracie pulled in next to us. We fell into the migratory flight path of students converging from all corners of the parking into a reluctant line that led inside the building.

  “Why are they wearing shorts?” I asked, pointing to a group of guys walking ahead of us. “It’s barely twenty degrees out.”

  “Baseball,” Topher said cryptically.

  “The team wears shorts all winter,” Gracie explained. “It’s like a badge of honor, proves they’re tough.”

  “Look at the leg hair!” I said. “Are they all related to bears?”

  A snowball skirmish opened up by the flagpole. We ducked and ran for the door.

  “If they were really tough,” I continued, “they’d shave their legs every day and then wear shorts.”

  “Exactly!” Gracie said.

  “If they did, maybe girls like that,” I pointed to the girl in front of us, who was wearing fake Uggs, a pink miniskirt, and a tight black sweater, “could grow out their leg hair to stay warm, and another gender inequity would be balanced, right?”

  “Hmmm,” Finn answered, mesmerized by the twitching miniskirt.

  Fake-Uggs Naked-Legs Girl slowed down and looked back at Finn over her shoulder like she had testosterone radar.

  “Did you hear me?” I asked him.

  “His other head is doing the thinking right now,” Topher said.

  “That’s gross,” Gracie said.

  Fake-Uggs Naked-Legs Girl winked at Finn. Before I could growl or rip her face off, she disappeared inside the building.

  “She’ll get frostbite, you know,” I told him as we walked through the doors. “Frostbite so bad they’ll have to amputate her legs and big hunks of her butt. Then she’ll die of despair, all because she forgot to wear pants on a day when it was fifteen degrees outside.”

  “Guess that means you’re stuck with me,” he said, stopping in the middle of the crowd. “Cleveland asked me to stop by his room before first period.”

  Before I could answer, Ms. Benedetti appeared out of nowhere and wrapped her cold fingers around my arm.

  “I need you in my office, right now,” she said.

  Finn gave me a quick salute and melted away in the crowd.

  “What if I say no?” I asked Benedetti.

  “I’ll follow you,” she said with an unnerving smile. “I have all day.”

  We both pushed against the wall as a group of impossibly pretty girls strode past, bare-legged and acting like it was eighty degrees outside.

  Benedetti tapped my shoulder. “My office.”

  “I’m claustrophobic,” I said. “It’s too small in there.”

  The bell rang.

  “Follow me,” she said.

  * * *

  The auditorium was cool and damp as a cave. Dark, too, with just a few of the wall lights turned on. I followed Benedetti down the aisle and across a row to the dead center of the room.

  “Is Finn in trouble because the newspaper isn’t done yet?”

  “We need to talk about you,” she said as she sat. “Will this work? I imagine it’s hard to feel claustrophobic here.”

  “You’re real funny.” I left an empty seat between us. “Am I suspended after all? Is that what this is about?”

  She shook her head. “No, but that little altercation gave me another chance to talk to your dad. Did he tell you? I bugged him again about joining us for the Veterans Day assembly.”

  I tried to think of something witty, but it was too early in the morning and I was freezing. “Not a word.”

  “I also told him that you didn’t take the SAT.”

  I shrugged. “What did he say?”

  “That he’d discuss it with you.”

  “His schedule is kind of booked right now.”

  “Why haven’t you asked any of your teachers for recommendation letters?”

  “Don’t want to watch them laugh at me.”

  “Some of your classmates applied early decision. They’ve already been accepted.”

  “You told me the deadline wasn’t until Christmas.”

  “Doesn’t mean you can’t apply now. The sooner you apply and get accepted, the better your chances at getting financial aid. Now look.” She leaned over the empty seat, crowding my air space. “It’s been a huge transition for you, coming here, but it’s time to suck it up.”

  “Do you yell at all the new kids like this?”

  “You haven’t turned in homework for almost two weeks. Before that, your effort was sporadic at best.”

  “I do the interesting assignments. It’s not my fault that most of them are boring.”

  “Colleges will scrutinize your grades this year, especially because you’re not a traditional student. You have to step up to the plate, get in the game.”

  “Baseball metaphors don’t work with me.”

  “Damn it, Hayley!” She pounded the armrest. “Quit screwing around. This is your future.”

  “The present can’t be the future, Ms. Benedetti. It can only be the present.”

  “What are you so afraid of?” she asked.

  “Do you get a bonus for every college application we file? Is there a quota you have to meet?”

  Benedetti paused, licked her lips, then continued like I hadn’t said a word. “I’d like to see a list of the colleges that you’re interested in by Monday.”

  “What if I don’t want to go to college? What if I don’t know what I want to do? I don’t even know how to think about it.”

  The doors opened and students streamed in, led by an English teacher.

  “Hope this is okay,” he called to us. “I want to show them how much better Shakespeare is onstage.”

  “Good idea,” Benedetti said.

  “So we’re done?” I asked, standing.

  “One more thing.” She glanced at the class making their slow way to the stage. “The school board had an emergency session last night. They cut a number of extracurriculars.”

  “So?”

  “They canceled Model United Nations, Latin Club, the Brass Ensemble, and the newspaper. Their revenue projections f
or this year were way off. That’s why Bill Cleveland wanted to talk to Finn, to break the news to him.”

  I shouldered by backpack. “If they really want to save money, they should just shut the whole school down.”

  68

  And suddenly, it was the tenth of November.

  The day before Veterans Day was traditionally the day when the crazy trapped inside my dad chewed its way out of the cage. This time a year earlier, we’d been in a small town outside Billings, Montana. Driving under bridges had started to become a problem so we stayed there a while. Dad got a job working the grill at a diner near the motel where we lived. I hung out in the library and sometimes fished in the small river that ran behind it.

  That Sunday, his day off, I caught three tiny trout. I burst through the motel room door to show him. He was deep into a whiskey bottle, watching the 49ers play Seattle. He mocked me about the size of the fish, slurring his words. I turned to leave, but he told me I couldn’t.

  I didn’t want to upset him. I stayed.

  I didn’t see the gun until the fourth quarter. (It was a pistol, a new one.)

  In the last second of the game, the refs blew the call that would have given Seattle the winning touchdown. Dad exploded, throwing his glass across the room, leaping to his feet, and yelling at the screen. As the official review dragged on, he acted like they were doing it on purpose just to piss him off. He cursed, his face red and sweaty. He stomped his boots on the floor. I wanted to tell him it was only a game and we didn’t like either team, anyway, but I didn’t open my mouth because I didn’t want him screaming at me. The station went to commercial. He paced—back and forth, back and forth—muttering things that didn’t make any sense, almost like he didn’t know where he was or what he was doing.

  The commercials ended. The camera focused in tight on the ref. Dad sat at the end of the bed.

  “The ruling on the field stands,” announced the ref.

  He never got a chance to declare the game over because Dad grabbed the pistol and shot the television in the guts. Then he picked it up and heaved it against the wall and sent a table lamp flying after it. I sat, paralyzed, while he raged, until finally he slid down the wall, crying, his right hand a bleeding mess.