The Memory Key Read online

  Dedication

  FOR MY PARENTS

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Acknowledgments

  Back Ad

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1.

  MY EARLIEST MEMORY IS OF MY MOTHER.

  I run toward her, small feet smacking the floor, and when I’m in her arms, so relieved to be in her arms, she is the softest skin, the sweetest smell, a voice that is my favorite song. I must be around three years old—late, I know, for an earliest memory. But I didn’t get my memory key implanted until I turned four.

  My best friend Wendy thinks she can remember being born, although Keep Corp claims this is impossible. Their user manual clearly states: “Your first memory will be of a time not before infancy.” But Wendy says she has nightmares about the bright and cold and shock and fear. I believe her. She’s my best friend and though she likes to exaggerate, she doesn’t lie. Besides, her key was implanted early, just after her first birthday.

  Wendy is normal in that way. Most parents rush to get their children memory keys because they think it’ll give their kids a competitive edge. My mother thought otherwise. It’s a preventative measure against Vergets disease, she would say, not a learning aid. She thought such early implantation was unnecessary and possibly detrimental to brain development. I suppose she would know since she was a scientist at Keep Corp until she died—five years ago, in a car accident.

  Five years. On the one hand, it’s only been that long. On the other hand, it’s already been that long. I flip-flop between these two ways of thinking, but in either case, the problem remains the same: lately, I’ve noticed my memories of her seem fainter, vaguer, as though worn down from overuse. I used to be able to see her by just closing my eyes. Now I strain to call her image to me, reminding myself of the facts. Black hair, pale skin, twisty half smile. Even then, the pieces don’t necessarily form a picture.

  Occasionally I wonder whether I’d remember more, or better, if my mother had had my key implanted sooner. I know I’m being irrational. Memory keys are designed to work just like natural human memory; as natural memories grow dusty and faded, so do memory key memories.

  Still, sometimes it feels as if I’m losing her all over again.

  I don’t mean to sound so tragic.

  I’m fine, really. I’m fine.

  This is how fine I am: the day after our high school graduation, Wendy and I are drinking milk shakes at the Middleton Mall and we’re not talking about loss or grief or memory. No, we’re discussing her new boyfriend, a football player named Dan. “He can bench-press three hundred pounds,” she says.

  I tell her I don’t know what that means.

  “His arms are huge.” She holds her hands apart to show how huge.

  “He should probably see a doctor about that,” I say.

  “Dan has this cute friend . . . ,” she says.

  I shake my head. Wendy is always setting me up with her new boyfriend’s friends, and it always ends one of two ways. Either I like the friend and we all double-date until Wendy and her boyfriend break up. Or I don’t like the friend and we all double-date until Wendy and her boyfriend break up.

  She looks at me with eyes mournfully wide, lips a squiggle of sadness. Wendy is famously good at using her face to convince people to do what she wants them to do. “We’ll all go out this weekend. It’ll be so much fun,” she says. “Please, Lora?”

  “No, thanks,” I say, immune to her miserable expression. We’ve been friends for so long that I know all her tricks.

  She glares at me. I glare at her.

  She frowns at me. I frown at her.

  Then we’re suddenly interrupted: “There you are, girls!” The words soar across the room, somehow simultaneously cheerful and reprimanding, while also being clearly directed at us; the voice is that impressively expressive.

  Wendy and I look up apprehensively, as if we expect to be punished for fighting. But we smile when we see the elderly woman shuffling toward us. She is so frail it seems a miracle that she is able to stand upright unsupported, let alone shout at us with such strength. It takes a long minute for her to walk to our table.

  “Good morning, Ms. Pearl!” Wendy and I say together, perfectly together, as we used to do in middle school, even though middle school is years past. Even though it’s not morning, it’s mid-afternoon. But every day our class used to greet her this way, and the habit is too strong to break.

  Ms. Pearl tilts her head to one side, accepting our greeting as her due. It’s been a while since I last saw her. She retired after we started high school. There was a rumor she was forced out by parents claiming she taught a partisan view of current events. I didn’t believe any of it: not that Ms. Pearl was biased (I recall her being critical of everyone and everything, regardless of political affiliation), and not that the school would force her out. She was the history teacher there for decades. It had surely been her time to retire.

  “It’s so nice to see you!” says Wendy. Then she asks Ms. Pearl about her shopping, and her summer, and isn’t it a hot day, and so on, and so forth, all charmingly polite. This is Wendy’s way.

  But Ms. Pearl appears distracted, though that might be the effect of her outfit. She used to wear trim pantsuits, but today she is dressed in a faded floral smock and white sneakers. It’s unsettling; it’s like we’re seeing her in her pajamas.

  “Girls, please remind me of your names,” she says.

  Wendy and I glance at each other. Ms. Pearl never forgot anyone’s name. She was known for remembering students she had dozens of years earlier, in contrast to our grumpy chemistry teacher who seemed to forget us the instant we left his classroom. I suppose these two opposite examples prove the power of mind over memory—mind over memory key—demonstrating that with enough effort, anyone can remember or forget anything.

  Except now even Ms. Pearl has succumbed; she waits for us to remind her of our names. As we reintroduce ourselves, a boy in a blue jacket hurries over to our table. “Ms. Pearl, I’ve been looking for you,” he says.

  “No, I’ve been looking for you,” she says, her tone so dry it crackles, and for a moment she is exactly the teacher I know, chiding an impertinent student.

  But the kid takes it agreeably. “You’re probably right,” he says.

  Ms. Pearl nods and turns back to us. “This is my assistant, Raul.”

  Wendy smoothes her long hair over her shoulders as she says hello. I can tell she is flirting by the way her voice lilts.

  “It’s nice to meet you.” Raul smiles, a smile that takes up the whole of his face. I guess he’s around our age. He has wavy brownish hair and dark skin, and he’s cute. That’s why Wendy is flirting. Though truly, she flirts with everyone: boys, girls, cats, dogs, lampposts. It’s automatic.

  “It’s nice to meet y
ou, too.” Wendy beams.

  I sip my milk shake.

  “These young ladies were my students,” says Ms. Pearl.

  “When we were in sixth grade,” says Wendy. “Six years ago? Seven?”

  “A million years ago,” I say.

  “A million years? That’s a long time.” Raul looks at me, eyebrows raised.

  “Everybody knows time flies,” I say.

  “Then I suppose we’d better be on our way,” says Ms. Pearl. She tells us it was nice to see us, and we tell her the same. Raul tells us it was nice to meet us, and we tell him the same. Then he takes Ms. Pearl’s arm and she allows him to lead her away. We watch them move slowly across the marble mall floors.

  Wendy says, “Ms. Pearl is really old. Was she always so old?”

  “I can’t believe she couldn’t remember our names.”

  She chews on the tip of her straw. “Raul is cute.”

  “Are you ready to go? It’s getting late,” I say.

  “Everybody knows time flies,” she says mockingly. Then she grins. “You should go out with Raul.”

  “You’re hopeless.” I get up from the table and push in my chair.

  “No, Lora, I’m hopeful.” She stands and adjusts the straps of her dress. Wendy is tall and long-limbed, but the rest of her is so small and delicate—dainty nose and rosebud mouth, fine bones and slim hands—that she somehow seems altogether small and delicate, even though she is four inches taller than me.

  We link our arms and glide together across the slippery floor. The place is unusually quiet, despite the music thumping down from the speakers in the ceiling. It’s because there aren’t many other people here. A number of stores have recently closed. We pass a stretch of dark windows, AVAILABLE FOR LEASE signs plastered on the dingy glass. “When did it get so empty here? It wasn’t like this last time, was it?” I say.

  Wendy shrugs and asks what I’m going to wear tonight. Her family is having my family over to celebrate our graduation. Her family consists of her, her parents, her brother Tim, several uncles and aunts, and assorted cousins of assorted ages. My family consists of me and my dad. And Aunt Austin, if she doesn’t have to work late. But she probably has to work late. She always has to work late.

  The exit doors slide open at our approach, and we step into the sunshine. It’s hot outside, a drowsy, drowning hot that is almost unbearable.

  “Welcome to summer,” says Wendy.

  “Maybe I’ll wear my blue dress.” I look across the street. There’s a white van at the curb, and that boy Raul is helping an old man into the backseat. I squint. No, it’s not Raul, just another kid in another blue jacket identical to Raul’s jacket—that’s what confused me.

  “The dress with the flowers?” asks Wendy.

  “Embroidered straps, no flowers.”

  “Tiny white flowers along the hem,” she says.

  “Definitely no flowers.” I look again across the street and see Ms. Pearl walking toward us. “She’s back,” I murmur to Wendy, but Wendy is still trying to convince me she knows my wardrobe better than I do.

  Then I notice the car.

  I notice the car and I stop noticing everything else: the searing sun, the lustrous white of the van, the insistence in Wendy’s voice, the sweat sticky on my face.

  So it is not until my skull cracks against the concrete that I realize I’m no longer with Wendy, walking and talking. No, I have raced into the road and grabbed Ms. Pearl away from that oncoming car with such momentum that I’ve crashed us both down to the burning black asphalt.

  There is a rubber screech.

  A burst of horn.

  Flailing voices.

  Ms. Pearl sighs a quivering sound. And then we are surrounded. We are surrounded and separated and lifted upright and asked if we’re all right.

  “Lora?” Wendy grips my hand. She is sitting beside me on the curb.

  “Where’d Ms. Pearl go? Is she okay?” I ask.

  “She’s fine, totally fine,” someone else says. “How do you feel?”

  I tilt my gaze and find Raul staring at me, his stare so intense it makes me dizzy.

  Or maybe I’m just dizzy from hitting my head on hard ground. “I’m fine,” I tell him.

  “I’ll take her to the hospital,” says Wendy. “My car is down the block.”

  “No, really, I’m fine.” I lean forward, eager to get off the hot concrete, reluctant to go to the hospital. Wendy reaches out, but Raul is there first. His arm slides around my shoulders.

  “Is that all right?” he asks.

  “Yes, thanks.” I firm my feet and straighten my legs as he holds me up. Then once I’m up, he still holds me. And I’m suddenly aware of the warmth of his palms, the minty-musky smell of his skin.

  “That was amazing,” he says.

  “Well, I stand up all the time,” I say.

  But Raul is still staring at me in that intense way, which makes me suspect he’s gotten the wrong idea, a suspicion proved true when he thanks me for saving Ms. Pearl.

  “It was nothing.” I step out from his arms.

  “It was not nothing,” Wendy says.

  “Can we go? Let’s go,” I say.

  We say good-bye to Raul. As we walk to the car, I insist to Wendy I’m fine, really fine, until she agrees to take me home, instead of to the hospital.

  And I am fine, I truly believe I am, until we’re speeding along the highway and all at once the images come upon me like a shower of stones, bruising hard, cutting deep; and I cry out in pain, I try to cry out, but I can make no sound, no noise, nothing; so Wendy keeps driving, and the car keeps going, and the images keep falling, and I am battered down and down and down.

  2.

  “LORA? WE’RE HERE.” WENDY IS STARING AT ME WITH WORRIED eyes, and I see her worried eyes and that we are parked in the driveway of my house, but I also see something else, somewhere else. I see a dark-haired little girl sitting next to me on the first day of school. My name is Wendy, she says. What’s your name?

  Her face is all cheery smile, but I’m scared of her. I’m scared of everything: this unfamiliar room, the teacher with her powdered face, even this wooden chair I’m sitting on, which seems unnaturally hard. I want Mama, I think. My desire is so strong it makes my head ache. The dark-haired little girl is still talking. Lora, let’s be friends, okay? Want to draw?

  “Lora? Are you all right?” she asks.

  I want Mama, I think. But then I see Wendy’s worried eyes, and I see that we are parked in the driveway of my house, and I know my wanting is useless.

  “I’m fine,” I say.

  Despite my protests, she comes inside with me, into our two-story, one-family house. Wendy lives on the other end of the same neighborhood, a residential area in the southern part of Middleton, a city appropriately named for two reasons: because it’s located in the middle of the country, almost exactly; and because it’s midsized, smaller than the big cities on the coasts, bigger than the small cities scattered between us and the coastal cities. My entire life I’ve lived here, in Middleton; here, in this house.

  Wendy helps me upstairs to my room. “Should we call your dad?” she asks.

  “No, he’s got a class now. He’ll be home soon enough.” I ask Wendy to get some pain medication from the bathroom, then I stretch out on my bed and close my eyes. My head hurts, it hurts, it hurts so much.

  Wendy returns with a bottle of drugstore pills and a glass of water. “I’ll stay with you until your dad gets back,” she says.

  “You don’t have to.” I swallow one tablet with one sip of water. “And what about our dinner?”

  “We’ll reschedule.” She pats my shoulder.

  “We can’t reschedule, your whole huge family is coming.” I swallow another tablet with another sip of water. “I’m fine.”

  She looks skeptical. “Are you sure?”

  “Go home and get ready. I’ll see you tonight.”

  “You better rest till then.”

  “I promise I’l
l do nothing more than lie here and ponder my near-death experience and human mortality and the possible meaning of my existence,” I say.

  Wendy groans, but doesn’t argue. She tells me to call if I need anything, anything at all. Then she finally leaves. Then I’m finally alone.

  I make the mistake of glancing at the dried flower pinned on the corkboard above my desk. It’s a mistake because once I see it I’m not just looking, I’m leaping, I’m twirling. There’s a pink fluff of tutu tight around my waist. The music trills to an end. All us girls march carefully off the stage while the audience cheers. My parents are waiting. Mom holds out a bouquet of pink roses. Lora, that was wonderful. You were wonderful.

  Then I’m back in my bedroom, in my bed, and smiling. It’s been years since I’ve remembered her so clearly. Closing my eyes, I summon her back.

  I’m slouched in my chair at the funeral home. The casket is closed. My father sits on my right side and Aunt Austin sits on my left side. My black dress is too small; it pinches at my arms and waist. My aunt had offered to buy me a new one, but I refused. I didn’t want a new one. I stare down at the floor. The carpet is a wine-colored paisley that matches the wine-colored walls. I rub my sore eyes and find that I’m crying.

  Then I’m back in my bedroom, in my bed, and crying. I crush my face into my pillow, trying to smother away the grief.

  I’m at the department store downtown, standing in the bedding aisle, squishing all the different pillows. I decide they all feel the same and grab the second-cheapest one from the shelf. The cashier is a middle-aged man in a red sweatshirt. He grunts and asks me if it’s started snowing yet. Not yet, I say.

  Then I’m back in my bedroom, in my bed, and frowning. The pillow-buying episode is so unimportant, so uneventful, so unworthy of being remembered. Yet here I am, recalling every detail. The checkout clerk’s name tag read MICKEY. Next to his register was a rainbow display of bubble gum. And it’s not just that I can remember all these stupid, insignificant, little details. I can see them. I am seeing them. I am standing at the register. Mickey the cashier grunts.

  I sit up in my bed, so fast, too fast, and have to lie immediately back down because of my poor pounding head. But I don’t much notice the pain. I’ve figured out what’s wrong with me: it’s my memory key.