Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac Read Free

that crap.
    “And well, I also wondered if it would be wrong to kiss you—not on the mouth, maybe on your forehead or hand—while I had the chance, while you were still thinking you were mine. And I decided that would be very, very wrong and probably uncomfortable later on. Plus, a girl like you probably does have a boyfriend—”
    I interrupted. “You think?”
    James nodded. “Definitely. I don’t give a damn about him, but I didn’t want to compromise you…or take advantage. I decided that if I ever kissed you, I’d want your permission. I’d want—”
    At that moment, my dad came into the ER.
    James had been leaning over the side of the gurney railing, but he stood up straight like a soldier to shake Dad’s hand. “Sir,” he said, “I’m James Larkin. I go to school with your daughter.” But Dad pushed right past James to get to me, and James was left with his palm in the air, and I saw the four puncture wounds my nails had made from grabbing him so tight.
    The doctors returned then, followed by a nurse, a specialist, and an orderly who began wheeling me away without even bothering to tell me where, and then I really had to throw up, and I didn’t want James to have to watch that (I didn’t want him to leave either), and somehow James slipped out without my seeing, which is something I would later find out he had a talent for.
     
    Once I was admitted into a room, Dad passed the time by asking me if I was okay. “You okay, kid?”
    “Yes, Dad.”
    Five seconds later, “Kiddo, are you okay?”
    In an amazing display of restraint, I managed to reply Yes, Dad three more times even though I had no earthly idea if I was. On the fifth or sixth time, I finally just snapped, “Where’s Mom?” She was better than Dad in these types of situations.
    “In the city,” he said. He kept pacing the room and looking up and down the hallway. “Christ, is anyone ever going to help us?”
    “Is she working?” Mom was a photographer and she sometimes had to go into New York City for that.
    “Working?” Dad repeated. His head was sticking out the door like a turtle, but he pulled it back inside so that he could look at me. “She’s…She…Naomi, are you trying to worry me?”
    “Dad, are you screwing with me?” Knowing my dad, this was not an unlikely scenario.
    “ Screwing with you?”
    I assumed he hadn’t liked my use of the word screw , though Dad was not normally the sort of parent who cared much about swearing. He always said that words were words and the only reason to ever eliminate any of them was if they were either hurtful (and you weren’t meaning to be) or inexpressive. I figured that the anxiety of the situation must be getting to him, so I rephrased. “Sorry. Playing with me, whatever.”
    “Are you screwing with me ?” Dad asked.
    “So you can use screw and I can’t? That doesn’t seem fair,” I protested.
    “I don’t give a damn if you use the word screw , Naomi. But is that what you’re doing?”
    “I’m not screwing with you! Just tell me where Mom is.”
    “In N.Y.C.” It sounded like slow motion. EHNNNNN. WHYYYYY. SEEEEE. “New York—”
    “City. Yes, I know what N.Y.C. stands for. But why?”
    “She lives there. Since the divorce. You can’t have forgotten that.”
    I’m sure you’ve already figured out that I had.
    Everyone always says how much I look like her—my mom, I mean—which is ridiculous because she is half-Scottish and half-Japanese. We both have light blue eyes though, so I guess this accounts for the misunderstanding. No one ever says I look like Dad, which is ironic because he is actually part Russian. The rest of him is French, and all of him is Jewish, though he’s not observant. All this makes everyone sound much more interesting than they are—my mom’s really just a California girl, and my dad was born in D.C., and they met in college in New York City, where we used to live until I was eleven. If you’re a wine-drinking type, you might