The Impossible Knife of Memory (5 page)

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2
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Gracie texted me at 11:30 that night:
fin wants your number who?

adrkabl fin no
ynot cuz
ynotynotynot
cuzcuzcuzcucuzcuz
I’d been cyber-stalking Trish for hours. She didn’t have any social media pages, at least not public ones. I found a couple of people from her high school class trying to track her down for a reunion, but no one knew where she was. They had all tried the phone numbers and addresses that I found in Texas, Nebraska, and Tennessee, but she wasn’t to be found.
Gracie buzzed me again:
y dos he wnt yr nmbr?
dunno ask him
Trish was mentioned in her mother’s obituary from three years ago. A couple of months after that, she was arrested for drunk driving. The paper didn’t cover her trial, if there was one. She probably slithered out of that, too. I texted Gracie:
so?
sowht
why does he want my number?
1 sec
I pulled a lighter out of the top drawer of my desk and lit a vanilla candle. The smell of mold from the wet insulation in my ceiling was getting stronger. (The roof leaked for a few weeks when we first moved in. It was going to be a while before we could afford to replace it.)
fin sez u stol hz pen
he’s a liar
he wnts it
I don’t have his pen
hes a swmr
?
finz a swimer buterfly u shuld c him nakd
the abs omg
when did you see him naked?
swm teem sutes betr thn nakd
*team
remove head from gutter, G
is he a good swimmer?
made states
he wnts yr lawrs number lawrs?
*lawyers
I peeked out of the curtains. Dad was still in the driveway.
he wnts yr crimnl hstry
tell him I killed my last lawyer cuz he annoyed me
I slipped my finger under the flap of Trish’s envelope and ripped it open. The sharp edge of the paper sliced into my fingertip. I swore and stuck my finger in my mouth.
he wnts 2 no if yr gay
yes
???? r u shur
you’re not my type G
wats yr typ?
people who can spell
fin sez he kn spl
It was cold outside, forty degrees. My father was still out there working on his truck, in the cold, wearing jeans and a T-shirt. He said he didn’t feel anything.
I pulled my finger out and looked at it under the light. The cut was invisible until I pressed my thumb just below it. Blood welled up, a wet balloon that burst and dribbled over my thumbnail and dripped onto the envelope. I pulled the letter out of the envelope, keeping it folded, and smeared my cut on it.
My phone buzzed again.
do u no how mny grls wnt fin 2 cll?
cll?
*call
g’night G zzzzzzz
I turned off the phone, opened the top drawer of my bureau, and pulled out my hunting knife from under my pile of socks. (Dad bought it for me in Wyoming when he decided that I was old enough to walk alone at night from the truck to the truck stop bathroom.) I sliced the letter into paper ribbons and stuffed them in the envelope, then carried it, along with the candle, into the bathroom. After I shut and locked the bathroom door and turned off the light and opened the window, I held the envelope into the flame of the candle and watched in the mirror as the fire ate through the paper until I had to drop it in the sink so I wouldn’t get burned.

wtf??
????!!!!????
rilly????

want to go out with me? J ???
chill, im not gay

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15
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My math teacher had a vendetta against me and as proof I offer the fact that I had not been told about Wednesday’s test. Or if I had been told, it was not made entirely clear exactly when the test was going to be, and the fact that we were talking Serious Test, not just a wussy quiz.

1. Find a polynomial with integer coefficients that has the following zeros: −1/3, 2, 3 +
i
.
2. Matthew throws a Pop-Tart at Joaquim while seated at the table for lunch. The height (in inches) of the Pop-Tart above the ground
t
seconds later is given by
h(t)
= −16
t
²
+ 32
t
+ 36. What is the maximum height attained by the PopTart?
3. It just got worse from here to the end of the test.

All of my answers were drawings of armored unicorns. Five minutes before the period ended, the principal’s voice lectured the entire school about how badly we’d screwed up last week’s lockdown drill. I drew a bomb attached to a ticking clock under one of the unicorns. Some guy I’d never seen before crashed into me in the crowded frenzy that was the math wing after class, sending my books to the ground and me into the lockers. His buddies, average IQ that of newly hatched turkey vultures, burst into laughter. The geometry teacher standing in her doorway looked me in the eye and then turned away.

“Need some help?” Finn knelt beside me and handed me my copy of
The Odyssey
.
“No.” I put the book on top of the stack and stood up.
“I can take him out if you want.”
“I doubt that.”
“Few people know this, but I am a trained assassin, skilled in jujitsu and krav maga. I can also, with a few folds, turn an ordinary piece of notebook paper into a lethal weapon. Or I can turn it into a butterfly, which is a great trick when I’m babysitting.”
I fought a smile. “A trained assassin who babysits.”
“Only the Greene twins and only because their family gets every premium channel on the planet.” He paused to let a gaggle of freshman girls walk between us. “The skepticism on your face proves that my cover story is tight. That’s good, reduces the chance that civilians might be harmed.”
“Cover story? You mean the fact that you’re a skinny nerd in charge of a nonexistent newspaper?”
“In development, not nonexistent. I am almost single-handedly reviving it. Where are we walking, by the way?”
“English.” We swerved around a guy who was roughly the size and shape of a Porta-Potty.
“Ramos,” the guy growled.
“Nash,” Finn responded.
“Friend of yours?” I asked, once the guy was out of range.
“We train together. Cage fighting. You should hear him squeal when I get him in a Maynard’s Kimura hold.”
“You just made that up.”
“What?”
“Maynard’s Kimura. That’s not real.”
“It totally is.”
The bell rang just as we got to Ms. Rogak’s room.
“Wait!” He slipped between me and the door. “You promised.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You promised me an article.”
“Did not.”
“Did too, just before you ran away from my car and roughly ten minutes after you coerced me into cutting physics. ‘World of Resources at the Library,’ that’s what you promised.”
A small bell went off in my head.
Duh
. This was why he was bugging Gracie for my phone number last night.
I’m an idiot
. He wanted to harass me about the stupid article.
“I didn’t coerce you into cutting class. You offered the ride.”
“You pleaded.”
“I asked.”
“You made puppy-dog eyes. That counts as pleading.”
“I’ve never made puppy-dog eyes at anyone in my life. You’re a lunatic.”
“Gracie said you liked to tease. Hey there, Ms. Rogak. How’s Homer doing?”
“Finnegan,” said Ms. Rogak with a brief nod. “Do I have your permission to begin my class?”
“Exquisitely executed sarcasm, ma’am.” Finn said as he started to walk backward. “Well played.”
“And you, Hayley Kincain,” she said. “Were you just going to menace us from the doorway or join us?”

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The seat I wanted in the back row was taken, but not by Brandon Something, so I grabbed the empty desk by the drafty window. Ms. Rogak pushed a button on her laptop to show a picture of a buff, tanned guy with long, graystreaked black hair shoving a bloody sword toward the sky, his face tilted back, his mouth open in a victory scream.

odysseus, read the caption.

Before the giggling and obnoxious comments got too loud, she pushed the button again. A tiny, old woman, dressed in a white robe, her hair covered by a long, white cloth, was kneeling on the ground, her arms wrapped around a skinny, half-naked kid who looked on the brink of death. She was holding a cup to the child’s lips.

mother teresa.
The third slide showed the two images side by side. “Which one is the hero?” Rogak asked. “And why?”

I dozed with my eyes open the rest of the period.

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17
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Finn was waiting for me in the hall after class. “Did you finish the article?”
“I never said I would.” I yawned. “Besides, did you think

I’d write it in class?”
“Of course.” He stayed by my side all the way down the
hall. “What do you have now?”
“Gym.”
“Perfect! You’ll have it done in fifteen minutes.” I shifted my books to my right arm so I could accidentally
poke him with their sharp corners. “I’m not writing it.” “But yesterday . . .” He paused as we merged into the
traffic that flowed down the stairs. “How’s your dad, by the
way?”
“Fine.” I dodged a group of onlookers who had encircled a brewing fight, then doubled my pace in the hopes of losing Finn. I would have, except for a roadblock by the cafeteria caused by the food line, which had snaked into the
hall.
I sniffed.
Taco Day
.
Finn caught up with me in a flash. “I’m glad he’s feeling
better. I only need two hundred words.”
“I. Said. No!” I said.
Well, actually, I sort of screamed it.
The lunch crowd quieted and a few wide-eyed freshman boys with feather-soft baby mustaches scooted toward
the walls, opening a path for me. I put my head down and
jogged through.
Finn stayed at my heels. “It’s just that I really need the
help,” he said. “Cleveland says the newspaper is back on
the chopping block. Getting an article from an actual student-reporter might help him convince the board to leave
the paper alone.”
I stopped at the girl’s locker room door. “Why don’t you
write it?”
He drew back, wounded. “I’m the editor. I don’t write, I
edit, with the exception of the sports section which I write
out of love, not duty. Besides—”
“Wait,” I interrupted. “Did you say Cleveland?” “Yep.”
“Mr. Cleveland? Calc teacher?”
“Precalc, actually. Also algebra and trig.”
“Even if I wanted to, which I don’t, Mr. Cleveland won’t
let me write for the paper. He hates me. Loathes me. If I
were you, I wouldn’t mention my name to him, ever. Raises
his blood pressure.”
Two girls walked between us and into the locker room. “I have to go,” I said, hand on the door. “Thanks again
for the ride.”
“You’re wrong about Cleveland.” He uncapped a Sharpie, grabbed my arm, and started writing on it before I could
react. “That’s my email. Two hundred words. Library resources.”

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18
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“What is wrong with him?” I asked, bouncing the ball on the Ping-Pong table. “And what is wrong with you?” “Me?” Gracie asked. “I’m totally innocent.”
“Innocent?” I served the ball so hard she squealed and dove for the ground. “He won’t leave me alone! Look what he did to my arm! That’s assault.”
“Assault with a Sharpie?”
“You dragged me into this. Make him stop bugging me.”
“Only if you don’t throw the paddle at my head,” Gracie said from under the table.
The gym aide blew her whistle. We all groaned and shuffled to the next station. Calling it “gym class” was an exaggeration because Belmont didn’t have gym teachers anymore. A couple of years earlier the state had fiddled with the law so school districts could save money by firing all the gym teachers. Students still had to take phys ed, but we only had to be supervised by volunteer “gym aides” (aka parents who couldn’t find a job) who took attendance and tried to keep us from breaking the equipment.
The aide blew her whistle again, louder this time, and hollered, “Let’s get a move on, ladies.”
Two soccer players commandeered the stationary bikes. A group of zombies put together a game of special-rules kickball. The goal was to kick all the balls behind the bleachers and then spend the rest of the period pretending to look for them. I wanted to work on push-ups and pull-ups, but Gracie dragged me to the corner where some fellow freaks were trying to copy poses from a yoga app on a girl’s phone.
“I’m not very flexible,” I said.
“You need to stretch more,” Gracie scolded.
Three girls pretending to have cramps approached the gym aide, whining that they needed to go to the nurse’s office. The gym aide wrote out a pass for them and returned to her magazine.
“I hate this place,” I muttered.
“Blah, blah, blah.” Gracie twisted her body and her legs in opposite directions. “Try this.” She lifted her chin up. “I don’t know why you’re so negative about the newspaper.”
I sat with my legs straight in front of me and reached for my toes. “Are you kidding me?”
She untwisted herself and lay down. “You’re always complaining about this place. Here’s your chance to do something about it.”
I leaned as far forward as I could, but stopped an inch short of my sneakers. “By writing about resources in the library?”
Gracie put her arms out on the floor. “That’s a test to see if you’re any good, which we both know you are. After that you can write what you want. Write about all the stuff here that you hate.”
“That is not a yoga pose,” I said.
“Is so. It’s called ‘resting crane.’” She raised her fingertips and bent her wrists back until she looked like a crossing guard stopping traffic in both directions, only lying on a gym floor instead of standing in a crosswalk. “Write for the paper.”
I bent my knees a little and grabbed my sneakers. “I have more important things to do.”