The Memory Jar Read Free Page B

we made it out there without incident, though Scott pointed out several dangers along the way, including the ridges made by people driving out here with plows on their trucks or ATVs. “You hit one of those going fast enough and your machine will crunch up like a pop can,” he said. I remember that.

Now
    My face is pretty badass, even in the weird yellow light of the hospital bathroom. The toilet is close to the little sink, and I have to sit sort of tilted to one side to keep out of the way of the stainless steel stability bar. On the wall beneath the toilet paper hangs a little chain with a red plastic disc on the end. Pull for nurse assistance . My fingers idly flip the little disc, spin it. I wonder how the nurse would assist me, if I pulled. Me here, with my pants around my ankles and my split lip and my guilt.
    I stand and flush, even though I can’t remember if I peed or not. My head is foggy, and my face is terrible, and the water that runs from the tap is icy cold. I pool a little in my palms and think about splashing it onto my face, but it seems like too much work and I let it go, down the drain. Like my life. Oh, the melodrama, right? I stare again at my wrecked face and try to remember what happened, right before the crunch.
    â€œThe ice ridge.” My voice is husky, and I wonder what would happen if I stayed in this bathroom all night talking to myself. It sounds like I smoke a pack a day, but I haven’t had a cigarette since last Tuesday, when Dani made me stop. Scott would be so happy, since he always hated the smoking thing, and I wonder if that’s why I did it. It was Joey who got me started, actually—the realization makes me a little uncomfortable. I squint at myself in the mirror, baring my teeth in a grimace. Do they look whiter? Do I look pregnant?
    I read an article once about how if you look into a mirror in dim light and stare at yourself for some crazy amount of time, you’ll start to hallucinate. Your face will turn into something else entirely, a demon or something. It happens to everyone, I guess, everyone who tries it. I tried it once, in my mom’s bathroom, at midnight just to make it creepier. I guess I overestimated my tolerance for creepy shit, though, because after a couple of minutes something strange and taffy-like happened to my chin and then my forehead, and they kind of stretched out for a second like I was some kind of weird science experiment, and I freaked out. I was all alone, my mom out of town, and I didn’t want to be a monster. I couldn’t get my heart to stop racing for the longest time.
    The light is plenty bright in this sterile little closet, but I don’t have to look long before my own image repulses me.

Then
    Dani. I told her first, of course, way back when I peed on the stick and the little line said MOMMY despite all Scott’s precautions. I don’t know what I’d do without Dani, but that’s the thing, right? That’s the best friend thing. I mean, it used to be we were this little trio: Taylor-and-Dani-and-Evelyn. But Evie got too cool for us and joined the girls who decided Sterling Creek needed a lacrosse team and a Wannabe Ivy League Club or some stupid thing like that, and then it was just me and Dani, the Trashy League Club or something equally stupid like that. We weren’t really trashy, but you know. My mom is a receptionist for a therapist who works with troubled teens in the foster care system, and my dad skipped town while I was hovering somewhere between the zygote and embryo stage. Dani’s moms own a sleepy little yarn store just off Sterling Creek’s thriving Main Street shopping district. Neither one of us will be going to Harvard when we graduate without some kind of miracle. Not this particular kind of miracle, in case that’s not clear.
    She didn’t speak, not right away. For all her perky looks and loud cheerleader yells—her pink nail polish and shiny black