Memento Nora Read Free Page B

call for stricter European regulations. . . .
     
    Blah-blah-blah. It all made me so tired. And didn’t it seem odd that every so-called extremist in the world banded together into this Coalition thing? It came out of nowhere back when I was a baby—at least that’s what Mrs. Brooks said. Some guy plowed a plane into the Golden Gate Bridge, and the Coalition took credit for it. Then shit started blowing up all over the place. The Coalition was like some supervillain syndicate or terrorist Legion of Doom, but no Justice League had arisen from the chaos to combat the baddies. No, it was like the superheroes had abandoned Gotham, and we citizens were just supposed to pop a pill and forget all about it, until the next time the villains struck our fair land.
     
    Yet these baddies never seemed to do anything massively destructive anymore—they didn’t seem bent on destroying the world. These days it was mostly car bombs and the occasional store. I’m not complaining. It’s just hard to figure out what this Legion of Doom really wants. To make life suck even harder than it already does? For some people, at least.
     
    And speaking of sucking, the next ad was for that soccer-mom war-wagon monstrosity called the Bradley. All of Black Dog Village could sleep in there—with room left over for the dog.
     
    Then I had another thought—the kind that, believe me, doesn’t happen often enough or soon enough to keep me out of trouble. The thought was this: what if Nora James tells someone I spit out the pill?
     
    I can be such a douche sometimes.
     
    I didn’t know if they could do anything to me. You never know these days. And I didn’t want my mom to find out. It would kill her to know she went to all this trouble for nothing.
     
    When we got home, I called my friend Winter to see what she thought. She thought I was a douche, too.
     
    I can always count on Winter to back me up.
     

Remember the
Milestones in Her Life
     
    Therapeutic Statement 42-03282028-11
Subject: JAMES, NORA EMILY, 15
Facility: HAMILTON DETENTION CENTER TFC-42
     
    As we walked past the old Starbucks, I stumbled over a piece of broken concrete. Catching myself on the window, I came face-to-face with the graffiti again, that word, MEMENTO , in bright red paint, the color of socks, sprawling across the graying plywood. I wondered if the kid with the broken arm had done it. Or if he’d just copied it onto his cast.
     
    I also wondered, as I eased into the backseat of the car, another green-field blue-sky TFC ad staring me in the face, how I was going to even look at my father when he got home. I could barely look at Mom sitting next to me, so relaxed, reading an old romance novel from the beginning. I knew I had to act glossy. Otherwise they’d know I knew. And how could I have not known something so huge? Staring at the fluffy white sheep dotting the green TFC field, I did think about going back, maybe to another clinic, confessing it all and taking the pill.
     
    The ads changed about a half-dozen times on the way home, but I couldn’t have told you what they were.
     
    “Arlington Court, ma’am,” the driver announced.
     
    Again someone—this time the Home Defense guy, the rent-a-cop hired by the homeowners’ association—scanned our mobiles. We walked up to our house in silence. Mom lagged behind as if she were trying to enjoy the scenery. We do live in a pretty area. Eighteenth-century town houses in alternating blues and creams and grays. Tree-lined streets with big oaks and maples forming a canopy over the pavement. Cobblestone sidewalks.
     
    “So empty,” she said, sad. She pulled her coat tight around her and walked a little faster.
     
    I hoped she wasn’t going to go off on one of her rants about how things were in her day. She was forever saying she’d loved this neighborhood when she was a kid, when there were always kids playing outside on the streets and people sitting on their stoops talking.
     
    I stepped up to our