Memento Nora Read Free

guardian for the first time”—he turned to Mom—“but we also like said parent or guardian to set an example, when possible.”
     
    Mom swallowed hard and clutched her Louis Vuitton purse in front of her.
     
    “Don’t worry, Mrs. James,” he said almost kindly. “The young lady won’t remember what you say.”
     
    She nodded, still clutching her purse.
     
    “Please describe the event you wish to erase,” the chubby doctor said more briskly. “This will activate the memory so the drug will work appropriately,” he told me. Then he added some standard legal blah-blah-blah about the session being recorded for our protection.
     
    Mom started talking. I braced myself to hear the gruesome details. The explosion. The body. The ash. Instead, Mom said something about Dad. This time he was angry with her for taking me downtown, for exposing his princess to the death and violence in the world, for letting me see what I saw. Wife, you’re always disappointing me , he’d said. Then he’d called her a stupid cow and slammed her face into the door frame.
     
    Mom looked as gray as I felt. She didn’t look at me. She washed down the pill the doctor handed her with greedy gulps of water. Her face went slack. Glossy. Not all there.
     
    Then the doctor turned to me. I told him about the body falling and the ash covering everything, but all the time I was thinking about Mom. And Dad. She came to the clinic at least once a week. Now I knew why. How long had this been going on? And this time it was because of me.
     
    Would she have put up with her life if she remembered? Would anybody? Would I?
     
    I stared at the white pill in the doctor’s fat, pink hand.
     
    “It doesn’t hurt, Nora,” Mom said. Her nonglossy smile told me I wasn’t getting out of here without taking the pill.
     
    I put it in my mouth and took a tiny sip of water.
     
    On my way out of the clinic, I spat the pill in the trash can.
     

I Am Such a Douche
     
    Therapeutic Statement 42-03282028-12
Subject: WALLENBERG, MICAH JONAS, 15
Facility: HAMILTON DETENTION CENTER TFC-42
     
    It all started with a girl. Sure, I tagged some walls and boarded-up windows with a goofy word I’d found in some old art books. Memento is Latin for “remember,” like a command. Remember! And Memento Mori is this kind of art that’s supposed to remind you you’re alive by reminding you that you can die. Memento Mori! Remember you must die! Crazy cool. Lots of skulls and shit. I thought it would be all rebellious and rage against the machine to graffiti it on some nice, clean, vertical surfaces.
     
    And I did. I tagged that Home Security Depot billboard on Market Street the day the bookstore blew up. Actually, I tagged it before its pyrotechnic number. I was skating away from the scene of the crime—the billboard, not the bomb—when this black van sideswiped me. Broke my arm in two places. The van didn’t have any plates or markings, and the windows were totally blacked out. When I told the cops in the emergency room about the van, they put away their mobiles and told Mom I ought to go to TFC. For his own good , they said. He’ll have nightmares .
     
    Mom buys that shit. I don’t.
     
    I’ve learned not to fight her on TFC, though. It does a lot of good for her patients, she says. She’s a nurse. And she’s seen people go either all manic or zombielike after something bad happens. She’s always telling me about Mr. So-and-So at Sunny Oaks who still has night terrors decades after he saw the World Trade Center collapse because he refuses to take the pill. Or Mrs. Such-and-Such who was watching the news and saw her daughter’s car slide into the San Francisco Bay when that plane struck the Golden Gate Bridge. So Mom insisted I go to TFC. She always insisted. Plus, we needed the points. And I planned to do what I’ve always done before—at least that I can remember—spit it out.
     
    When in doubt, spit it out.
     
    Damn. I wish I’d thought of that