Memory Girl (23 page)

More images blink by.

Tall buildings shining like rainbows in the night. Traffic honking and red-green-yellow lights flashing. Swarming sidewalks. Towering aisles at stores with more toys than I could ever play with, balloons floating over a banner spelling out, “Happy 4
^th
Birthday, Milly!” and so many gifts that I don't know which to open first, until Rosemarie points to the one she wrapped all by herself.

“Do what your teacher tells you,” the Mommy says on my first day of kindergarten. I hear “kind garden” and look for a garden. When I ask the teacher, she laughs and says,
“What a good idea, Milly. We'll make our own garden.” I love school and my teacher and the garden where carrots, tomatoes, and herbs grow. I take some home and Rosie shows me how to bake spaghetti sauce and carrot cake.

Sunshine, wind, blossoms, rain, and snow spin away the years. I'm taller, and the Mommy and Daddy change too, deep lines worrying their faces. They whisper at night, and I creep forward to hear odd words like “insanity,” “epidemic,” and “plague.” At school the next week, there's an empty desk. I cry when I learn my friend Haley won't be coming back.

Lessons, homework, recess games. We wear gloves and paper masks to school like an every-day costume party. We paint pictures on the paper cones that fit over our mouths and noses. I get the idea to sprinkle glue and sequins on mine, but Jeremy grabs my mask and stomps on it until the sequins are dead on the floor. My teacher quickly gives me a new mask to wear.

There are three empty desks at school now, including Jeremy's. I should be glad he's gone, yet a tight squeeze hurts my chest. I understand now about the “Mad Mind” disease that hurts people, especially children. I wake one night to flashing red and blue lights out my window and my brother screaming.

Now we're a family of four. Rosie and I don't go to school anymore. Strong locks protect our doors and black sheets cover the windows. The Daddy man warns me never to go outside after dark. Rosemarie and I play together in our room, pretending we're princesses trapped in a castle, waiting for handsome princes to rescue us. When I hear strange noises from outside at night, I climb into Rosemarie's bed.

We pack and drive a long way to a huge place called
an airport. I wear my face mask that's covered in red heart stickers. While we wait in a big room for our flight, a woman rushes by, screaming. She points out a huge window up at the sky. A plane blazes with fire, falling. “The pilot lost his mind!” someone screams, then others scream too. The sound hurts my ears, so I cover them with my hands. When a big boom shakes the building and cracks windows, Mommy, Daddy, Rosemarie, and I hold each other.

We don't take an airplane. Instead, we ride on a boat for so many days that I forget what land looks like. We leave the big boat for a smaller one that rocks my tummy so much I vomit on Rosemarie. We switch to an even smaller boat crowded with luggage and people wearing masks and gloves. I hear stories of family and friends who have died from the mind-plague. Mommy speaks softly of my brother. I want to talk about him too, but words are swallowed by sadness.

At nightfall, Mommy wraps a blanket around me and pulls me closer to her on the hard bench. “We're going to be safe,” she whispers. “My new job assisting scientists is in a safe place where sickness can't find us.”

“I feel sick now,” I say with a sour taste in my mouth.

“But you're not sick here.” She bends down to touch the top of my forehead. “And you never will be.”

Images shift to travels in an even smaller boat, until an island rises from the sea with trees so thick the land is smothered. There are no houses or highways or cities. The boat captain dumps our luggage and us on the shore and leaves. Rumbling shakes the ground, and a tank rolls on thick wheels out of the woods like a monster.

When I'm told to climb into the tank, I cry.

Rosemarie clasps my hand and whispers, “Don't be afraid.”

But I am afraid—of the darkness inside the tank, the wild jungle outside, the roaring engine, and the uniformed man at the wheel. When the roaring stops, the uniformed man flips open a ceiling hatch, and we climb out into sunshine.

We stand before a massive steel gate.

ShareHaven.

“Milly … Milly …”

Someone shakes my shoulders.

When I open my eyes, there's Rosemarie, looking the same as when we arrived at the health-keepers, yet so much more familiar to me. I see a shorter, round-cheeked girl with wispy black curls sharing birthday cake, popping balloons, playing princess games, and holding my hand tight when I'm afraid. She's always there for me, strong and loyal and true. I love my sister.

“Are you all right?” Rosemarie asks.

I can't find the words to answer. My brain is a sponge, overfilling with images. Faces, objects, and places swim like finless fish through my mind. I can't grasp the slippery images that squirm out of reach. My head feels like a pressure cooker ready to burst. Reaching up, I lift my tangled hair and rub a rough patch of skin on my neck.

“Would you like a pain tonic?” Rosemarie caresses my cheek, her hand warm.

“I'm not in pain,” I say in a voice that doesn't sound familiar. I look down at my hand too, and it's all wrong; the fingers too long and thin. Panic swells. Not my hand! I hit the hand against a chair, over and over, wanting to rip it from my arm.

Rosemarie grasps the hand gently, entwining her fingers
in mine. “Milly, relax. I'm here for you. It's natural to feel confusion after the first insertion.”

“I—I just want ….” I try to finish this sentence, but I can't.

“Would you like to go home?” Rosemarie slips her arm around me.

Home. A dark brown house with a large picture window over a planter blossoming with flowers, and two metal coaches—no,
cars—
parked inside a—a
garage.

“There are no cars here,” I say, rubbing my forehead.

Rosemarie chuckles. “No traffic or pollution either. Solar energy is much more efficient than dinosaur fuel. I'd almost forgotten cars.”

“We had a blue Chevy with four doors and a sunroof.”

“I don't remember,” she says with a shrug. “It was so long ago.”

“Your hair is shorter and you finally got boobs.”

She laughs. “Oh, Milly, that sounds so much like you. I can hardly believe it … and I'm so glad. What else do you remember?”

“We had a mother and father and little brother—but he died.”

Rosemarie nods sadly. “Gregory. He didn't have a chance. The early stages of the mind-plague struck little kids the hardest. We moved to ShareHaven a few months after that and were very happy here until ….” Her voice trails off.

“Until what?”

She sighs. “You'll get those memories next time.”

Next time.
I cringe, not sure I want memories that make her so sad.

“Dwell on the happy things,” she says. “What else do you
remember?”

“Voices and pictures spin in my mind, and most don't make any sense. But one thing never changes.”

“What?” she asks in a hushed voice.

“You.” I squeeze her hand. “You're always with me.”

“And I always will be, Milly.”

She leads me outside to the solar coach, where a man who looks familiar but somehow out of place jumps to greet us. Dizziness buckles my feet, and the man rushes to catch me. He has kind eyes and I think … I think ….

I struggle through memories, like being half asleep and trying to wake up from a troubling nightmare.

The man rushes to open the back door for me. “Milly?” He bites his lip as he peers into my face. “Do you remember me?”

Milly only sees a stranger. I concentrate hard, pushing Milly away. “Of course I do, Arthur,” I say, and he relaxes into a wide smile.

Rosemarie reminds me about my fashionizer appointment, triggering an uneasy sense of forgetting something. I sort through Milly's whirling thoughts, frustrated until we drive by a platform being constructed in the middle of City Central. A ladder leads up to a high, narrow stage—the execution podium.

Memory jolts into place. The packet for Nate! Do I still have it?

My fingers slide into my pocket. Graces good, it's still here! I need to give it to Nate. Only how? I have a plan, surely I do, but my thoughts are bubbles, floating out of reach.

“Are you hurting?” Rosemarie scoots closer to me in the solar coach. “You're rubbing your forehead.”

“I'm trying to remember … something important.”

“Allow your memories to settle. Don't push them.”

“They're pushing me,” I complain.

“Mems are like newly planted seeds, nurturing in the ground and connected by roots. They need time to grow into shape.”

There's not enough time
, I think anxiously. We're almost to the fashionizer shop, and looming above rooftops in the distance is a building of bricks

The solar coach stops. I don't move, though, clasping the packet in my pocket, struggling to piece together memories. A plan … to go to Nate … give him the packet. Sneak to the jail, crawl through the path in the bushes, and ….

Bushes, branches, darkness. Sirens scream and the Daddy warns, “Never go outside without your mask!” I reach up to my face and feel for a breathing mask that isn't there. I have to find it! Daddy will be angry.

“What's wrong?” Rosemarie says gently.

I blink. Visions shift back to the solar cart where I'm sitting beside Rosemarie. “Nothing,” I say with a shake of my head.

“If you're not feeling well enough, we can cancel your fitting,” she says.

“No. I have to do it.”

The world tilts as I walk into the fashionizer shop. It's strange to see Lorelei. She's not part of my new memories. The usual click of connection I feel with her is missing. Rosemarie and Arthur say they have an errand to run and ask Lorelei to take care of me.

“Surely,” Lorelei says, gesturing for me to follow her. “Come back to the style room.”

I go with her, but when I step into a room lined with fabric, tools, and cabinets for clothing, I look up at Lorelei and see a different girl—dark-skinned, with short, straight, ash-brown hair and freckles. Naomi, my best friend. She smiles as she places a half-heart bracelet around my wrist. “A friendship bracelet,” Naomi says.

“Why are you staring at me so oddly?” Lorelei asks.

My gaze shifts to a shelf of stitching needles. I see a building with sick people and healers.
Hospital.
“This won't hurt,” a man wearing a white jacket says as he pokes a sharp needle into my arm.

“No needles!” I jump away from the shelf.

Lorelei's mouth falls open. “What are you talking about?”

“I hate needles!”

“No, you don't. Remember our mini sword fights with needles? You made up the rule of first one to bleed is the loser—and you nearly always won.” She leans close to me. “You're acting odd. What's wrong, Jennza?”

Jennza.

My name.

Instantly, the fog in my mind clears. “Sorry, Lor, it's just so confusing. All the memories make me dizzy. I'm not myself.”

“Oh. My. Graces!” Lorelei's hands fly to her cheeks. “You did it. The big M! The huge leap from youth to adult. I can't believe you didn't tell me.”

“Don't shout … it makes it worse.” I rub my forehead.

“When I heard you had to change your appointment because of another appointment, I never thought it was The Appointment. Tell me everything! What was it like? What are your memories? How does it feel? I am so jealous I can hardly stand talking to you.”

“If your head ached like mine, you wouldn't be jealous.”

“Your first memdenity!” Her gaze shines. “I still have weeks before I get mine. You're so lucky to have yours early. Are the memories amazing?”

I pause, trying to come up with an answer. But there's no way to describe the voices screaming in my head, the overlapping of Jennza and Milly. My first steps; her first steps. My age celebrazes; her birthday parties. Her parents; my Instructors. Her best friends; my best mates. One face forms, then another colors over it with a different mouth, nose, and eyes. The emotions are so confusing. I'm happy to see Lorelei, yet I'm shy because Milly doesn't know her. Also, Milly feels a terror of needles, even though my Jennza thoughts know these needles are for sewing, not for medicine shots.

“Are you alright?” Lorelei asks. “Tell me what you're thinking, Jennza, or are you Milly now?”

“I'm … I'm me.” But I bite my lip, not sure of anything.

“Then stand still so I can measure. Arms out and legs slightly apart.” She purses her lips, giving me a look mixed with envy and fear. “Does it hurt?”

She's asking about the memdenity. “No, not really. But it's crowding my head with pressure like a canning jar close to bursting. My thoughts spin conversations and pictures and events from retro-century. They're
my
memories as if I was there … although I'm only age fifteen so I couldn't have been. Yet it feels like it's happening now.”