The Forgetting Machine (4 page)

“Cool!” Billy said.

“Wouldn't that take up a lot of room in your brain?” I asked.

They both looked at me.

Mr. Rausch said, “And you are . . . ?”

“Ginger? Girl? Rather
thin
? Who you just met, like, sixty seconds ago?”

“Correct!” said the tutor, as if I'd just responded to a test question. “As for memories taking up physical space, that is not a problem. Even Gertrude, for example, has the capacity to remember tens of thousands of smells, sounds, and images, and her brain is less than half the size of yours.”

Gertrude looked up at the sound of her name and snorfled.

“She just radiates intelligence,” I said.

“She knows more than you can imagine,” Mr. Rausch said.

“I can imagine a lot,” I said.

He sniffed and returned his attention to Billy. “I thought we could start with history. Have you memorized the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution and its amendments?”

“Er . . . not exactly,” Billy said. “Isn't that like a hundred pages?”

“Not precisely.”

“I don't think that's something we have to do for school,” I said.

“My method requires a solid foundation in the basics,” he said. “Furthermore, it works best when my tutee and I are able to work without constant interruptions. In other words . . . ”

“I was just leaving,” I said.

  •  •  •  

So much for Billy being my secret weapon. The mystery of Flinkwater would have to wait until he was done getting tutored, or REMEMBERed, or whatever. I was a bit peeved at him, to tell the truth.

After what happened to him later, I felt pretty bad about that.

  •  •  •  

On the way home I was trying to figure out how to write my paper for Mr. Westerburg's class without subjecting myself to further mortification or library sneeze-fests, when I noticed I was being followed.

I'd been followed before, like a couple months ago when the Department of Homeland Security thought I was a terrorist.
^I
Their black SUVs are easy to spot, but they hadn't been bothering me lately.

But this was no black SUV following me. This was a familiar-looking gray cat.

“Mr. Peebles, is there something I can do for you?” I asked politely.

Mr. Peebles stopped walking, sat down on the sidewalk, and looked off at something utterly fascinating to him but completely invisible to me. The way one does, if one is a cat.

I continued toward home. Mr. Peebles let me get about twenty feet away, then continued to follow me. He followed me all the way to my front door, where I stopped to explain the situation to him.

“Mr. Peebles, inside this house there is a Siamese cat. His name is Barney, and he is a jealous cat who believes that all other cats are evil demons. You should go home.”

“Merp?” said Mr. Peebles, tilting his head.

“Yes, merp,” I said. “Now go home.”

If that cat understood what I was saying, he chose to ignore it.

“Scat!” I yelled, waving my arms vigorously.

Mr. Peebles backed up to the spirea bush and left his stinky calling card. He then trotted over by the maple tree, tucked his feet beneath his body, and closed his eyes to slits.

I
. Oops. I said I wasn't gonna do this.

My mother had made significant progress with the DustBots, if causing them all to clump up in the corner of the living room could be called progress. When I walked in, she was stabbing commands into the handheld control module while yelling at the bots to disperse. My mother is not a woman who is accustomed to being ignored. But the DustBots didn't seem to know that.

Just in case you have been marooned on a tropical island for the past two decades, I should explain about DustBots.

Imagine a gerbil. Bigger than a mouse, smaller than a rat, and cuter than either. Now imagine that instead of fur it has a shiny plastic case in your choice of eight colors, and instead of being alive it is a robot. Now imagine your home, only very, very clean. When activated, an ACPOD DustBot will seek out dirt, dust, and other undesirable substances and transport them to the kitchen trash can.

The DustBot was invented by Gilbert Bates seventeen years ago. It is the single most successful tech product in history—the average home in the United States has three DustBots. The average home in Flinkwater has nine. We have seventeen, and all of them were huddled in one corner of the living room, humming and buzzing.

This was not normal DustBot behavior.

Barney was crouched a few feet away, keeping an eye on them.

“Mom, what did you do to the bots?”

“I have no idea.” She thrust the control mod at me. “See if you can fix it.”

I checked the display on the mod and saw right away that she had accidentally activated the herding function. I turned it off. The pile of bots began to disperse, their randomizers sending them off in every direction, searching for dirt.

Barney sprang into action. Before I could stop him, he flipped three of them onto their backs. I scooped him up and turned the bots right side up.

“I was hoping to program them to avoid the cat,” Mom said.

“Barney does not choose to be avoided,” I said. “By the way, I went to the library. I looked through everything they had on Flinkwater”—a slight exaggeration—“and found nothing. So I'll probably fail history.”

“That is unfortunate,” she said, and from the set of her jaw, I saw that she would be no help, despite that fact that I had just helped
her
with the DustBots.

I went to tell Dad that Mom was going to let me flunk Mr. Westerburg's class. I found him standing in the hallway staring down at Barney.

“What is this creature doing in our house?” he asked.

“That's Barney,” I said. “He's a cat,” I added sarcastically.

“Who is Barney?” he asked.

“
That
is Barney,” I said. “Our
cat
?”

“We have a cat?”

“Dad!” I hated when he teased me.

“When did we get a cat?”

“Eight years ago!”

The look he gave me was one of utter confusion. He really didn't remember. Like most older people, Dad can be absentminded at times. I mean, he's in his forties. But not remembering Barney?

“Dad, are you okay?”

“Certainly,” he said, but he still had that puzzled look on his face. “How could I forget old Blarney?”

“Not
Blarney
! Barney!” I was getting more worried by the second.

“Yes, of course. Er . . . is there something I can help you with?”

“Not unless you've remembered how Flinkwater got its name.”

“Sorry. My memory's not what it used to be, Ginger.”

At least he remembered
my
name.

Mom was at the bathroom sink using a tint comb to touch up the roots of her spiky black hair. She is serious about her hair and her nails. Every hair must be raven black from tip to root, and every nail must be red, sharp, and gleaming. It's part of her patented witch-queen look. She likes to be intimidating. She says it comes in handy at work.

“Mom, Dad forgot we have a cat.”

“I wish I could.”

“It's not funny. He just asked me who Barney was.”

“I'm sure he was just distracted—as I am at this moment.”

“He told me this morning that there's an epidemic of forgetfulness at ACPOD. Maybe he caught something.”

“I'm sure he didn't mean ‘epidemic' literally, Ginger.”

“Yeah but what if he did?”

“It's not all bad. There are several things I would not mind forgetting. How do I look?” She leaned her head toward me. “Any gray showing?”

“There wasn't any before you started, Mom.”

“Good. That's when you want to catch it.”

A horrific screeching came from downstairs.

My mother looked at me and said, “I understand we have a cat.”

  •  •  •  

I ran downstairs and followed the caterwauling. All the yowling was coming from Barney, who was standing stiff-legged on top of the refrigerator looking down at Mr. Peebles, who had somehow gotten into the house and onto the kitchen counter. Several of the cupboard doors were standing open. Mr. Peebles was digging into the one we used for canned stuff, sorting through it with his paws, pushing aside the baked beans, stewed tomatoes, and various soups.

“Mr. Peebles!” I said. “How did you get in here?”

He looked at me over his shoulder and said, “Merp.”

Barney hissed.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

Mr. Peebles reached deep into the cupboard and clawed out a can of tuna. The can fell to the counter and rolled off the edge onto the floor. He hopped down next to it and looked up at me.

“Mrowr?”

Barney, who also knew his way around a can of tuna, fell silent. Both cats were staring at me with that insistent look—you know the one—where they are trying to eat you with their eyes. Frankly, it was a little spooky.

“Okay,” I said. “You win.” I opened the can and divided it into two bowls. Both cats were twining around my feet, best of friends now that they had a common mission. I put the bowls down and watched them eat. It took about twenty seconds. After they finished eating, Barney turned his back on Mr. Peebles and proceeded to lick his paws, having decided to pretend that there was no strange cat in the house. Mr. Peebles went to the back door and silently commanded me to open it.

“Hang on a minute,” I said. I went to get Barney's cat crate. If I could coax Mr. Peebles into it, I'd take him back to the Tisks, who lived just a few blocks away. Everybody knew where the Tisks lived. It was the only house in town with a life-size, smiling, blond, blue-eyed Jesus statue in the front yard. But before I could get the crate, I heard the screen door slam. I ran back to the kitchen. Mr. Peebles had somehow opened the door and let himself out. I caught a glimpse of him as he disappeared over the backyard fence.

I looked at Barney. Barney looked at me.

“I'm glad you're not that smart,” I said.

He lashed his tail and strutted off in search of a DustBot.

I figured if a cat was smart enough to read a book, break into a house, order dinner, and open a door, then
I
was smart enough to figure out how to write my Flinkwater report without wasting more time on unnecessary research. I'd just make something up. I mean, if the origins of the Flinkwater name were so mysterious, Mr. Westerburg probably didn't know either. I sat down at my desk and began to compose my report.

There are many theories as to the origin of the town name Flinkwater. Some believe that “flink” is a Native American word meaning “sweet,” or possibly “putrid.” Or maybe it is the name of a fish. Or possibly Flinkwater is a misspelling of Fairview or some other common town name, as back in the old days people did not have spell-check, and their handwriting was practically impossible to read. Even Charlotte, the spider in the book
Charlotte's Web
, could write and spell better than some of those people.