The Memory Jar Read Free

that were making me feel half-crazy and one hundred percent queasy. “But you know. Still.”
    He didn’t freak out. This isn’t a sad story about an irresponsible boy who ran away from his knocked-up girlfriend, leaving her to turn to prostitution and smuggling drugs across the border (of Minnesota?) in her dirty infant carrier. It also isn’t a thriller about a boy who flew into a rage when his girlfriend ended up pregnant and planned an elaborate murder-suicide scene in the woods behind his parents’ garage but at the last minute chickened out of the suicide part and had to flee across the wilderness and ate slugs to stay alive, while police dogs followed, hot on his trail. This is a story about a careful boy who carefully purchased a moderately priced engagement ring and asked me if I wanted to take a ride on his brother’s snowmobile across the lake to the island. He said he would make me cocoa. That’s not as weird as it sounds, you know. The island was sort of our place.
    â€œI know you can’t drink or anything, so I didn’t get any wine,” he said, and I put on my jacket. It was cold out, enough so that your breath would freeze a little in the time between exhaling and the air actually leaving your mouth or your nose. I put on a red hat, with a little tuft of yarn on the top. When I bent down to grab the back of my boots, to sink my heels into the hollows I’d been trudging down all winter, it felt strange, like something was already changing the way my body moved, the way I stooped.
    â€œI’ll get an abortion,” I said. It was the first time I had said those words out loud.
    â€œIt’ll be okay,” he said, and he ushered me toward the garage. “You’ll see, Taylor. I promise.”

Now
    Joey pushes his way past the foot of the bed, running into my shoulder as he goes by. My phone almost drops to the floor. “Joey,” I say to his retreating back. “I don’t know what you want.”
    He shakes his stupid hair out of his eyes. He’s so tough, so full of bravado, this kid, and any girl can see the fragile center of him playing around with the idea of getting broken, just because. He’s like a cold deep lake, sharp rock bottom visible. Scott was the kind of lake that has sturdy docks and patches of lily pads, a pleasant place to swim where you probably wouldn’t drown. He was only nineteen, but inside he was at least forty, all safe and sensible. Is. Scott is.
    â€œMy brother didn’t drive like that” is all Joey will say, and he gives his hair another shake and stalks off, toward the vending machines or some other place where he wants to be alone. His brother didn’t drive like that. Like that meaning fast, reckless even. Out of control.
    I sigh. I would like something from the vending machine, maybe. I can’t tell if I should eat every couple of minutes or if I should never eat again. The nausea. I slide my phone back into my pocket and follow him.
    â€œJoey, listen.” His shoulders are narrow beneath his black jacket, some kind of skinny canvas thing like a mechanic would wear, faded patches, ragged edges. He wears skinny jeans, too, and the kid is like nothing but a nervous wiry mess. He punches the letters and numbers and waits, metal coiling slowly, for his dill pickle chips to fall into the bottom of the machine.
    â€œCan we—can we talk about it?” It occurs to me then that I have nothing to say, no plan for what to tell him. I have no excuse.
    Joey is forcing himself to stay put, keeping himself from running away from me. He wants to fight me but he doesn’t want to win. His fingers fumble with the top of the shiny bag.
    â€œYou’re going to end up with chips everywhere.” I take it from him and pull the top open carefully. “Have you ever done that?” I try to smile. “I have. My mom always buys the big box with the two bags. They make them so hard