The Memory Thief Page 2

  I shuffle them all together. Then I carry them down to the metal garbage can that stands outside the kitchen, off the patio, and dump them in. I know how to handle fires just like I know how to fix the refrigerator and reset the furnace and order everything I need on the computer with a credit card—after years of having to do things Mom doesn’t.

  I get the garden hose unraveled and ready, to be safe. Then I take a match and drop it into the can, and watch the papers begin to burn. All those words I’ve spent so much time unfolding from my brain—tales of injured dogs that find their way home, elves who give the breathless new sets of lungs, stories about rescues against all odds and lights in the darkness—flame up into ash before my eyes and float away on the ocean breeze.

  The firelight flicker illuminates the trees and burns like a beacon in the dark yard. I imagine it must look, from the water, like a miniature lighthouse, the lonely peninsula of Seaport tacked to the eastern edge of Maine like a lonely outpost. Above, the sky lies, cloudy and heavy, over the crescent moon.

  I think again about how stories are how Germ and I met. On the first day of kindergarten, Germ laid herself at the foot of our classroom door, screaming for her mom. All the other kids steered clear of her—I guess because of the banshee-like wailing. I knew what it was like to miss someone, even though for me it was someone right nearby. So I sat beside the wild-eyed, wild-haired stranger and awkwardly patted her back and told her a story I made up on the spot about a bat who ate ugly old mosquitoes and burped out stars instead. By the end of the story, Germ had stopped crying and I’d won a friend for life.

  Now I snap back to attention as the fire sputters out. I close the lid and go inside to get ready for bed.

  I ache over what I’ve done. But Germ is right: my stories are fairy tales I don’t really believe in anymore—that anyone can just save the day. I’m too old, I’ve realized, to hope for things like this.

  And despite the ache, I swell a little with pride. Because I think I’ve figured out the three main things about life:

  If the person you love most in the world does not love you back, you can’t keep hoping they will.

  If you are not loved (and if nobody cares about polar bears on the news), there is no magic in the world to speak of.

  If there’s no magic in the world to speak of, there’s no point to writing stories.

  I am done imagining things differently than they are. I feel a distinct tingle behind my eyes and ears and in my heart—as if I have really changed—and I wonder if the tingle is a growing-up thing, and I hope it is.

  Outside, the crescent moon glimmers for a moment through the clouds, then is swallowed up by them.

  I get into bed and drift off to sleep.

  I have changed my life forever. I just don’t know it yet.

  * * *

  I wake sometime deep in the night to the sound of someone talking. For a few moments I’m half in and half out of a dream, trying to make sense of what I’m hearing. Then my eyes flutter open and fear sets in.

  There is a man whispering outside my door—his voice low and rumbly like sand being shaken in a glass jar.

  “The nerve of her. I hate her. Hate her. It’s my place. MY PLACE!”

  I lie still. The moon peeks out behind a cloud for a moment through the window, then disappears. I stay as stiff as a board, but my heart thuds at my ribs like hooves.

  The voice moves off, as if whoever owns it is heading down the hall toward the stairs, though I hear no footsteps. And then, silence.

  I wait and wait. Several minutes go by. I start to think maybe I’ve been dreaming, but my skin crawls. I wish I could get into bed with my mom, tell her I heard something strange. But those wishes have never worked out. I am the protector of this house; no one else is going to do it.

  After several long minutes I force myself to silently slide out from under my covers, grabbing my Lumos flashlight from my nightstand as I go. I tiptoe to the door, pull it open silently, and peer out into the hall.

  There’s no one there, but—with a jolt—I hear the voice, still there, though moving away from me and down the stairs.

  I step out onto the threshold and peer in both directions as all goes silent again. I tiptoe down the hall and then descend the stairs, my heart thudding.

  At the landing I step into the parlor and come to a stop. Because there, hovering in front of the door that leads to the basement, someone is watching me.

  He is shimmery and glowing bright blue, frowning at me, his eyebrows low. He floats at least a foot off the ground.

  He stares at me for a long moment, as if in surprise. Then he turns and floats through the door into the basement, and is gone.

  I stand gaping for just a moment longer before I turn and run up the stairs, hurtling up to the attic. I slam the door shut behind me, then stand with my back to the door, trying to catch my breath.

  Then I walk over to my mom’s bed, and after hesitating a moment, I shake her awake.

  She blinks at me, groggy.

  “Mom, there’s a ghost downstairs,” I whisper.

  Mom squints at me, trying to wake up.

  “I’m sleeping,” she says, annoyed. And then she covers her head with the pillow.

  “Mom,” I whisper again, shaking her arm, my voice cracking. “Mom, I need your help.”

  My mom reaches out from under the covers and gently bats me away. “Leave me alone,” she says, her voice cold and far away.

  After a moment, I hear her breath get steady and even. I step away from the bed and sit down on the floor with my back to the door, watching her sleep, trying to steady my own breathing.

  There’ve been so many times when I’ve had to do things on my own: comforting myself after nightmares, nursing myself through colds and the flu. One time a raccoon invaded our house, and I had to trap it in a towel and throw it out the front door. Still, it makes me almost breathless, the hurt. I feel starkly alone.

  I listen in the dark, but all the noises of the house have gone silent.

  I give myself a talking-to:

  There’s no such thing as ghosts, sweetie, I tell myself. You’ve always had an overactive imagination. This is exactly the kind of thing you’ve decided you don’t believe anymore, as of this very night.

  And then, when that doesn’t quite work:

  If you can just make it to morning, you’ll be fine. Ghosts only come at night. I think.

  I wish Germ were here. Together we would know what to do. Together it’s like we make one fully formed human. I just have to make it to the bus and Germ in the morning, and everything will be okay.

  I sit staring out the window all night, until the sky begins to lighten above the horizon. And when the day grows hazy outside, I watch my mom get up from bed and pull on her robe and walk to the door, like a person in a trance. She doesn’t see me till she nearly trips over me.

  She blinks at me a moment. And then she merely waits for me to get out of her way.

  I follow her into the hall and peer downstairs.

  The parlor below, the hallway, the kitchen, all seem quiet and normal.

  I come to the bottom of the stairs and look at the closed basement door awhile. All normal at first glance.

  And then I see the clock hanging in the parlor. I’m going to be late for the bus.

  CHAPTER 3

  Dazed, I rush into an oversize sweater and a pair of stretchy pants and two socks that don’t match and put my flashlight around my neck. I make a jelly sandwich and hurry back up to the attic to check on Mom, who’s already in front of her computer working.

  I set the alarm on her computer to remind her to eat. “There’s spaghetti in the fridge,” I say. “And drink some milk. It’s good for you.”

  I kiss her—a gesture she pulls away from. And then I race outside to the safe harbor of the bus just as it pulls up.

  When I see Germ, I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. Seeing her familiar freckles, her impatient gestures for me to sit down, ma
kes me feel like I’m safe, even if she is wearing that goofy eyeliner again, and now lip gloss too.

  I plop down next to her as the bus lurches into motion. I’m on the verge of telling her everything that happened last night, when she turns to me.

  “I think Eliot Falkor has a stomach virus,” she says. “He’s not acting like himself. I think he may have a fever. I tried to take his temperature by sticking a thermometer under his armpit, but his armpit isn’t really an armpit, you know?”

  I do know. Eliot Falkor is Germ’s iguana. He doesn’t completely have armpits.

  Germ continues, talking faster than I can think, with her usual lack of decibel control. “Maybe he picked something up when I took him to the park yesterday. I thought he’d start barfing. I mean, I don’t think iguanas barf, but he was green. I mean, not the normal green but a pukey green. But I read this thing once in Reptile Enthusiast…”

  I glance back at the other kids as they board the bus. Should I interrupt and say something? What if someone overhears?

  “Did you watch the news last night, the thing about polar bears?” Germ is obsessed with the news. She lies awake worrying about it, or sometimes stomps around in anger about something she saw. It does seem, even to me, that things on the news are always getting worse.

  She talks about polar bears as we pass the immense Seaport Civil War cemetery and Founders Square, which make up the center of our small town. “Sometimes I feel like the world is ending,” Germ goes on, and then enumerates why. By the time we get to school, she hasn’t paused for breath.

  And so, before I know it, we’re at school and my secret is still bursting to get out. But in the light of the day, my fears are also beginning to fade a little. The more I look around at kids doing the things they do every day, and the bored face of the bus driver, and the cars converging on the school parking lot like always, the more it feels like last night was a strange dream, and impossible. I guess it feels like ghosts couldn’t possibly exist in a world where some kid just threw fish filet all over the front of the bus.

  And then, as a last aside as we’re walking through the double doors into school, Germ says—a little awkwardly—that she’s doing a talent for the Fall Fling with Bibi West on Sunday night, and I nearly fall over my own feet.

  Of all the things Germ and I are known for in our class, the biggest is that once, in second grade, I bit Bibi West because she called Germ “Germ Fartley” instead of her real name, Gemma Bartley. Germ is famous for then promptly adopting the nickname and introducing herself that way from then on. The cruelty of the nickname, though, was not an isolated incident.

  Bibi is this complicated combination of cruel and charming. She likes to make up funny dances and do them behind teachers’ backs (charming). She gives the people she likes little presents constantly—scented erasers, squishy soft pencil cases, special candy from her trips to Portugal to visit her grandparents (also charming). Once, in third grade, she even handed out lemons to a select few third graders, setting in motion a trend of lemon-giving that lasted several months and worked its way down to the kindergartners. She is the kind of person who can make you want lemons for no reason at all.

  On the other hand, she loves to talk about people behind their backs (cruel). And she has a way of finding out people’s secrets and using the resulting information like money in the bank.

  But recently Bibi—and seemingly everyone else in the sixth grade—has decided she wants to be friends with Germ.

  Germ holds funerals for her lunches every day. She likes to run laps around the playground at recess to see if she can beat her previous time. She is blond and freckled and fleshy and restless, proud of her large, round, powerful body when some people seem to think she shouldn’t be.

  But it feels like she came back from summer vacation with a new kind of air around her, or at least everybody else came back different. Because now the loud self-confidence that used to put kids off is something people admire. Kids who used to tease her have started seeking her out. Even the name “Germ” sounds suddenly cool in people’s mouths.

  The new air has definitely not extended to me. I’m so small and quiet that sometimes people forget I’m there (although, I do have a bit of a kicking-biting streak). I’m ridiculously clumsy and unathletic and always get picked last for teams. I cut my own hair, so my head is kind of a disaster, and that doesn’t even come close to my clothes, which are a combination of Mom’s old oversize things and the results of a yearly shopping trip I talk my mom into, where she stares into space while I fail at figuring out the rules of coordinating. I barely talk to people I don’t know. Even when I make the effort (which is rare), my tongue just freezes in my mouth. Long story short, I tend to fade next to Germ. Although, Germ says that if I’d just share the contents of my brain with the rest of the world, they’d see it’s like the ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz in there.

  I’d rather keep to myself. But now kids gather around Germ in corners to talk, or laugh, or just linger. I walk into rooms and find Germ sitting with people I don’t know, chatting, and it makes my heart pound a lopsided jealous rhythm, because I’ve never seen Germ look so happy or flattered (and also nervous, tucking her hair every few seconds). And even though I’m really, really scared of the ghost I think I saw (did I see it?) last night, the Bibi thing is my worst fears realized.

  * * *

  We make our way to our lockers. I still can’t get a word in because Germ is telling me all the details of the Fall Fling excitedly: how Bibi asked her; how the talent they’re doing is so secret, she can’t even tell me.

  And then my chance to speak up comes because Germ pauses to catch her breath. And instead of my telling her about the ghost, something else entirely comes out.

  “But, it’s Bibi,” I say. Germ gives me a sideways, wary look as I falter on. “Remember when she used to chase Muffintop the stray cat around the parking lot, trying to step on his tail? Remember when she used to call Matt Schnibble ‘Freckly Little Schnibbles’ and make him cry?”

  Germ gets quiet. “She’s not like that anymore,” she says, uncertain and a little annoyed at the same time. Her freckles stand out on her cheeks as they flush. “She was going through a hard time then. She was really insecure. She’s not that bad.”

  I don’t reply. Something about the way she defends Bibi, like they’ve had deep talks, makes me shut up like a clam. For the moment, my thoughts of the ghost have flown to the back of my head. I don’t blame Bibi for wanting to be friends with Germ. Germ is bottled lightning; Germ is the most likable person I know. But my feelings are swirling a million miles a minute and…

  “Bibi will be good, but I’m gonna be terrible,” Germ says. “They’re gonna spitball me.”

  I think this is probably true, so I try to be helpful.

  “Just make sure you don’t wear eyeliner,” I blurt out. It’s like the words just escape my mouth before I’ve really thought about them.

  Germ is silent for a moment, blinking at me. “I like eyeliner.”

  “I know. It’s just, it’s not very, um, you,” I muddle out, biting my tongue.

  “I can like new things,” Germ says quietly.

  I nod silently.

  We get to our lockers. I unpack the lunch I made, and scribble a quick note to myself on my lunch bag before putting it into my locker. (I write poems to myself on my lunch bag every day in my mom’s handwriting so that people will think my mom is really loving and no one will think I’m being neglected. Probably 89 percent of the energy I spend at school is on making it look like everything is normal at home so no one will ever have a reason to take me away.)

  D’quan Daniels, who Germ used to crush on in fourth grade, passes us and waves at Germ, who picks at her hair before waving back. He looks at me as if he might wave to me, too, but then quickly breaks eye contact. Some of the boys are scared of me because last year I kicked a kid in the shins when he tried to tackle me in keep-away.

  Germ, blushing with a combination
of self-consciousness and pride, watches him walk away. It’s a look she wears more and more, and I don’t like it. Germ has never cared what people think, but these days she seems to care a lot.

  Still, as her eyes catch mine, she suddenly zeroes in on me. She cocks her head, looking at me and placing a hand on her hip, her annoyance with me gone.

  “Are you okay?” she asks. “You look kind of off.”

  “I’m fine,” I say nervously, now unsure how to tell her about last night, or even if I want to. “I didn’t get much sleep.”

  Germ folds her arms, unconvinced.

  “What’s going on with you?” she asks sharply. “Tell me.” Now that she’s focused on me, she reads me like a book.

  I look around the crowded hall. Everyone is busy talking, laughing. My throat tickles with nerves. I suddenly feel ridiculous.

  But I lean forward and tell her anyway.

  “I think I saw a ghost last night,” I say, low, feeling my face flush.

  I wait for Germ to laugh, or be annoyed, or both, as she looks at me for a long moment. Sometimes I worry that she is losing that strange, wild, fighting-spirit piece of herself that makes us fit together so perfectly.

  But now she lets out a breath decisively.

  “I’ll ask my mom if I can sleep over,” she says.

  CHAPTER 4

  We go over it all several times on the bus ride home: the sound of muttering in the hall, the glowing man hovering by the door of the basement. Germ makes me slow down over this or that detail now and then, but she never laughs. She looks uncertain but not amused.

  “Nobody’s gonna believe you,” she says, ruminating. “And your mom won’t be any help, no offense.” She gives me an apologetic smile. “I guess the first thing we have to do is see if he’s there again tonight.”

  “And then what?” I wonder aloud.