The Impossible Knife of Memory Read Free Page A

grenades. We won’t hear the one that gets
us, but it’s coming.
She tells us to show our hands.
We have never been so alive.
    Lunch. First period.
    Lunch served at o-dark-thirty. I couldn’t figure out why more high school students hadn’t risen up in armed rebellion. The only explanation was that the administration put sedatives in the chocolate chip cookies.
    The eraser end of a pencil was shoved into my left ear. “Leave me alone.” I pushed away the pencil and the hand holding it, turning my head so that my left ear lay flat against the cafeteria table.
The pencil attacked my right ear.
I gave the classic one-finger salute to my tormentor. “I hate you.”
“Twenty vocab words.”
“I’m sleeping, watch. Zzzzzz.”
“Just my Spanish, Hays. And a little English help for Topher. Pesadilla . A quesadilla with fish, right?”
I sat up with a groan. Across the table sat Gracie Rappaport, the casserole-and-muffin-girl. Draped over her was her boyfriend, Topher, Christopher Barnes. (You might have heard of him. When he dumped some girl named Zoe on Labor Day weekend she blasted a disrespectful description of his man-parts all over the Internet. Topher responded with photographic evidence that Zoe was lying. When I asked Gracie about it, all she did was giggle, which was way more information than I wanted.)
“What is ‘denotation’?” Topher asked.
“Denotation is when a plot blows up,” I said. “And yes, a pesadilla is a quesadilla stuffed with fish. You are a genius, Gracie.”
“Don’t write that down.” A shaggy-haired guy with expensive teeth and dark-framed glasses sat down next to me. “She’s messing with you.”
Topher looked at the newcomer. “Where you been?”
The guy pulled a ring of keys out of his pocket and dangled them.
“You got it running?” Topher asked. “What was it this time?”
“I don’t know, but Mom said it cost a ton of money. I’ll be doing chores forever to pay her back.”
“Dude,” Topher said.
“Right?” answered the guy. “So, I’m broke. Feed me.”
Topher handed him a ten-dollar bill. “Bring me back a bagel, too.”
“Why don’t I get paid for doing your homework?” I asked.
Topher handed me a quarter. “Denotation. For real.”
“Denotation: a noun that describes the action of a student refusing to take notes during class,” I said.
“Denotation,” said the new guy. “The precise meaning of a word, without any pesky implications attached to it.”
Topher took the quarter back and tossed it to his friend. “Butter, not cream cheese.”
“That’s it,” I said, laying my head back down. “I’m done.”
Gracie lobbed a crumpled napkin at my nose. “Just my Spanish, Hayley, puleeeeeze.”
“Why, exactly, should I do that?”
She pushed her books across the table to me. “Because you’re awesome.”
Along with tuna noodle casserole and the muffin basket, Gracie had been carrying a photo album that day she came to our door with muffins. In it were pictures of her kindergarten class— our kindergarten class, because I had been in it, too. Looking at mini-me in a hand-knit sweater and braids gave me goose bumps, but I couldn’t pin down exactly why. The only memory I had of kindergarten was peeing my pants during nap time, but Gracie said that never happened. Then she’d asked if I still liked peanut butter and banana sandwiches.
(Which, I will admit, freaked me out because they were my favorite and there was no way she could have guessed that.)
I did her vocab and handed it back to her as Topher’s friend returned to the table carrying a tray loaded down with bagels and cups of coffee.
“Seven and eighteen are wrong on purpose,” I told her. “To make it more realistic.”
“Good call,” she said. “Thanks.”
The flat-screen televisions mounted in the four corners of the room finally roused themselves and blinked on, tuned into one of the all-news stations. The students who were awake enough to notice gave a halfhearted cheer. I