The Impossible Knife of Memory (21 page)

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Finn was less Finn-like in the days after Halloween, distracted and quiet. His junkie sister was playing head games with his parents, but he didn’t want to talk about it. His phone was usually turned off (or maybe he was screening my calls), but he showed up faithfully to drive me to school every morning and home in the afternoon. We didn’t joke as much in the library or in the halls. Sometimes we barely talked, but his arm was always around my shoulders and my hand liked to slip into the back pocket of his jeans.

(Honestly? I was relieved. The secrets we’d shared at his house belonged in the dark. Seeing him in the light of day or the light of the cafeteria, made me feel like my skin had become transparent and the whole school could see inside me.)

Wednesday morning, he picked me up late, yawning and bleary-eyed. He said he hadn’t gotten any sleep, but when I asked why, he shrugged and turned on the radio. I leaned against the seat belt strap and tried to doze.

Having Trish around was making Dad worse. He’d woken up screaming around two thirty that morning. It was the third time in four nights that he’d woken up like that, hollering that the truck was on fire or trying to call in air support to take out a hornet’s nest of insurgents. After he settled down, he and Trish had spent the rest of the night talking in the living room. I tried to hear what they were saying, but the ticking of that damn clock made it impossible.

I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I knew we were at school.
Topher took one look at the two of us, bleary-eyed and yawning, and bought us both huge cups of coffee to go with our deliciously greasy breakfast burritos. He waggled his eyebrows. “What were you guys doing last night?”
“Nothing fun,” I said.
“We had a family Skype meeting.” Finn blew on the coffee. “Chelsea and Dad in Boston, me and mom here.”
“Really?” It was the first I’d heard of it. “Sounds nice.”
Finn shook his head. “It wasn’t. Chelsea wants to go to rehab, but there isn’t any money. Mom is thinking about selling her jewelry and her car.”
“Dude,” Topher said.
Gracie scratched at a piece of gum that had hardened on the table. She was short on sleep, too, from eavesdropping on her parents’ custody arguments. Her father was demanding Sundays through Wednesdays. Her mother was demanding that he not be allowed to introduce his girlfriend to Gracie and Garrett.
“What happens then?” I sipped the coffee and burned my mouth. “Will she take your car?”
“She said she’ll take the bus to work.”
“What about grocery shopping and stuff?”
“My car,” Finn admitted.
Grace looked up. “Did you trying saying no to her?”
“What about the insurance bullshit?” Topher asked. “What did she decide about that?”
“Something’s wrong with your insurance?” I asked, confused why Topher knew more than I did.
“Last week she said I have pay for it. Gas, too. Yesterday, Coach hired me to lifeguard during swim practice. I start this afternoon.”
“When were you going to tell me?”
“Sorry.” He looked into the coffee cup. “I forgot.”
“Sounds stupid if you ask me.” Gracie stole a sip of my coffee. “Your mom’s enabling your sister and screwing you over.”
Finn shrugged and bit into his burrito.
“Not to mention the obvious holes in her plan,” Gracie continued. “What if she gets fired? What if her boss doesn’t want employees who ride the bus, ’cause they’re always late?”
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” Finn said.
“You should,” Gracie said. “You’re enabling your mom the way that she enables your sister.”
“Your family calls it enabling, we call it taking care of each other.” Finn looked at Topher. “Changing the subject now. Did you hear about the shooting at the middle school in Nebraska?”
“The news is too depressing,” Topher said. “You should watch more cartoons.”
“Why do we have to change the subject?” Gracie asked. “We all have crazy parents, except for Topher.”
“They are pathetically well-adjusted.” Topher shook his head. “It’s so embarrassing.”
“Shut up, goof.” Gracie punched his shoulder lightly. “Shouldn’t we talk about this stuff and help each other?”
“She has a point, Finn-head,” I said.
“No, she doesn’t.” Finn turned to face me. “She’s being nosy and pushy. So are you. I seriously do not want to talk about this anymore.”
“Nosy?” I asked.
“So!” Topher said loudly. “Sports! Who wants to talk about sports?”
I should have stopped there, but I couldn’t. I was tired, frustrated, possibly a tiny bit in love and horrified by the thought. Plus, I was tired. (Did I mention that already?) My irritation was growing fast, the way a cartoon snowball gets bigger and bigger as it rolls down a mountain.
“The first thing you did when we sat down was to tell us about your family’s Skype visit, Chelsea wanting rehab, your mom selling her car and jewelry,” I said. “You told us that without anyone sticking their nose in your business.”
He didn’t say anything.
“And then you casually mention that you got a job that starts today, not that my life could possibly be impacted by that at all.”
“I already apologized for that.”
The snowball was the size of a dump truck.
“Apologies mean nothing if you don’t mean it.”
“So what am I supposed to do?” he asked.
“Not yelling at her would be a good start,” Gracie said.
Finn pointed at her. “Nosy and pushy, see?”
“Don’t yell at her when you’re pissed at me,” I said.
“I’m not pissed at you, but you’re picking a fight.”
Conversations at the tables around us were dying down. Zombie heads turned, smelling blood. My irritation had snowballed big enough to crush an entire village.
“I’m not picking a fight!” My fist pounded.
“Stop yelling,” Finn said.
“Okay, kids,” Topher said. “Time out.”
“Stop lying and I will!”
“I didn’t lie,” Finn said.
“You didn’t tell me about the insurance or the job, or the latest Chelsea disaster.”
“You don’t exactly give me minute-by-minute updates about your dad, but I don’t make a big deal about it.”
“Don’t talk about him,” I said. “Not here.”
He acted like he didn’t hear me. “I figure when you’re ready, you’ll tell me what’s going on. Why can’t you do the same thing for me? My family’s not half as crazy as yours. It’s not like you have to worry about my mom swinging an ax around or getting wasted and doing something stupid, right?”
“Stop it!” I stood up and pushed the table, sending the coffee cups flying and everyone scrambling to rescue their burritos and books.
“That’s enough!” called a cafeteria aide, pushing his way through the crowd to our table. “You boys need to move.”
“Whatever,” Finn muttered as he walked away.
The aide handed me a roll of brown paper towels, the kind that don’t absorb anything. “You caused the mess,” he said. “You clean it up.”
“Whoa,” Gracie said after the zombies in the cafeteria stopped staring. “You guys just had a fight.”
I ripped a useless handful of towel from the roll. “Shut up, G.”

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When the announcement came, Ms. Rogak was reading the scene where Athena tells the Dawn to show up late so Odysseus can enjoy a long night with his wife.

“This is a lockdown,” said the principal’s voice. “Anyone in the hall must find a room now. Staff please follow all lockdown drill procedures.”

Ms. Rogak rolled her eyes, closed her book, then locked the door and pulled down the blind to cover the window. By the time she got back to her desk, we all had our phones out, trying to connect with the outside world, just to make sure. I texted Finn first, Gracie second.

There was a 99.99 percent chance this was another drill, but we’d all seen security camera footage of armed lunatics and small bloody bodies on stretchers being raced across playgrounds. Memorials of soggy teddy bears and dead flowers. Sobbing friends. Catatonic parents. Graves. Even with a 99.99 percent chance, it felt like I’d just stuck a fork into an electric socket and someone had turned the power on.

“It’s a prank,” said Brandon Something. “Someone called in a threat to get out of a test.”

Threat
“Wish they’d done it earlier,” a guy on the far side of the room said. “They would have canceled school and I’d still be in bed.”
“Quiet,” Ms. Rogak said.
Gracie texted me back; she knew nothing. Finn didn’t answer.
I thought I heard a siren. My heart thumped hard. Was it headed for the school? I couldn’t tell.
Assess
The door was the only entrance. In theory, we could escape out the windows, except that we’d need a crowbar to break the thick glass, and we’d have to survive a three-story fall. I texted Finn again:
what’s going on?
???
Still no answer. The siren had stopped.
“What if it’s real?” a girl asked.
“Don’t get worked up, it’s just a drill,” said Ms. Rogak.
Jonas Delaney, sitting in front of me, gnawed on his thumbnail like he hadn’t eaten in days.
BANG!
The sharp noise in the hall made everyone hit the floor. I curled into a ball next to Jonas.
“It’s okay,” said Ms. Rogak, “it’s okay, um, but let’s stay on the ground for a minute. Okay? Stay quiet.”
My adrenaline screamed, rocketing me into hyperawareness, senses cranked to the max. Time fattened and slowed down so much that each second lasted for an hour. I could smell Jonas’s sweat, the mold growing in the old books on the shelves, the dry-erase markers at the board. I could feel the hum of the building under me, the air moving through the heating ducts, the electric current that tied the rooms together, the Wi-Fi signal pulsing in the air.
Jonas rocked back and forth, his lips pressed together, his eyes squeezed shut. I replayed that noise over and over. The more I thought about it, the less it sounded like a gunshot.
BANG!
The second noise made Jonas shake, but I was convinced.
“Don’t worry,” I whispered to him. “It’s not a gun. That’s some idiot kicking a locker, trying to freak us out.”
“Shhh,” he warned.
Static burst from the loudspeaker. “All clear,” the principal’s voice announced. “That was much better than last month. Thank you.”
Ms. Rogak stormed to the door muttering about suspending the chucklehead in the hall. The room held silent for a second after she left, then exploded into nervous laughter and loud conversation. A girl showed her shaking hands to her friends. Brandon Something joked about who had been afraid and who had been cool. I crawled back into my chair, pulled up my hood, and tried very hard not to puke. Jonas stayed on the floor.
“Dude!” Brandon shouted at him. “Get up.” He walked over and nudged Jonas with his foot.
Jonas rolled and leaned against the front of Ms. Rogak’s desk, his knees tucked tightly under his chin and his head down. I smelled it then. Unfortunately, so did Brandon.
“He pissed himself!” Brandon’s face lit up with horror and delight. “He literally pissed himself!”
Jonas wrapped his arms over his head as Brandon and his trolls laughed. A couple of girls said, “Eww!” The rest of the class looked away. Jonas was a quiet freak, not a zombie. The horde would not protect him. They’d stand by and watch the culling.
“Get up.” Brandon pulled on Jonas’s arm.
Before I knew what I was doing, I was out of my seat. “Leave him alone.”
“Shut up.” He grabbed Jonas by the shirt and hauled him to his feet so everyone could see the soaked crotch of his jeans. “The Urinator, ladies and gentlemen!”
Jonas thrashed, trying to break free.
“Really,” I said. “Let him go.”
Brandon sneered. As he shoved me backward, I grabbed ahold of his wrist and pulled him off balance. This allowed to Jonas break free. He sprinted for the open door and disappeared down the hall.
Then Brandon came for me.
Action

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Hours later, after letting the nurse check me out and meeting with Ms. Benedetti and the vice principal and talking to Dad and turning down the chance to go home early, Finn found me at my locker.

“I just heard what happened,” he said, panting. “Are you okay? Oh my God, did he do this?” His fingertips hovered above the swollen bruise on my cheek.

I pulled away from him. “It’s nothing.”
“Nothing? Some douche bag tried to beat you up.” “He pushed me, I pushed him, we both fell down. Rogak

walked in before it got serious.”
“I heard you kicked his ass.”
“It lasted two seconds.”
“I heard he’s suspended.”
“I guess.” I closed my locker. “I feel bad for Jonas.” “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.”