“Ma’am,” the officer said, “are you all right? Do you need me to call someone?”
Perri straightened her suit, inspected her fingernails, and brushed her hair back into place. “I’m all right,” she lied. She forced a calm expression onto her face. “Thank you for your prompt response.” As if she’d been the one to call the police.
“Ma’am, I don’t know what the history is between you and that girl, but you cannot be dragging people from cars.”
“They told me my son lived for another two minutes once they got him out of the car,” she said. “They tried to save him and they couldn’t. I wonder, could they have tried harder? Do you ever think that, officer? That you could try harder?”
“I try hard every day, ma’am.”
“I’m sure you think you do,” Perri said. “I mean no disrespect. But if that was your child lying in the wreckage, how hard would you try? Do you ever think that?” Her voice wavered. “I mean, you can try…to make sure your son doesn’t go around with a girl like her, who decides to end her life and instead ends your child’s…” Her voice faded. “I will always blame her. Always.”
“Ma’am, I am very sorry for your loss.”
“It’s not like it’s your fault. It’s her fault!” She pointed in the direction of the departed car. “She’s horrible. My son—”
But there was nothing the officer could say, no way to make it right.
ALL WILL PAY. If only that were true. If only she could make it true. But she couldn’t.
Perri turned and walked with dignity back toward her Lexus. She got into her car, her hands shaking. What if Jane told people about Perri attacking her? She had made such a show of not ever saying anything bad about Jane to people. She had felt so superior in her graciousness. People thought Perri was a saint for this kindness. That driver has a video of me dragging her from the car. I hit her. Not that hard. But still.
It wouldn’t matter. In Lakehaven, Jane Norton was a pariah. A cast-out killer. And Perri was always That Dead Boy’s Mother. That was why Perri hated Jane Norton—she had stolen not just David but her normalcy. Perri had defined herself as a mother from the moment she knew David was growing inside her, and Jane had stolen who she was.
She had done more than kill David. She had murdered the person Perri used to be.
4
Jane’s Book of Memory, written in the
days and weeks following the crash
An explanation for whoever reads this: my memory has been returning slowly since the crash, except for the past three years, so I’m a seventeen-year-old who feels like a fourteen-year-old, and Dr K said I should write down what I remember, that this would help me. Because my amnesia, she says, might have two causes: the physical damage and the emotional shock. MIGHT HAVE. We don’t know definitely. If there is emotional shock that is blocking my memory [here several words are scratched out], then writing might help me remember. Work through my issues. Kamala makes an air quote when I say “issues.” So grateful she is standing by me.
Also sometimes when amnesiacs can’t remember, they make up stories to fill in the blanks, this is called “confabulation” and so I record what I remember to be true so I don’t fill in the blanks wrong. I could lie to myself and never know. Dr K doesn’t want me confabulating.
So: I remember most of the big details of my life up until I was fourteen. My family, my friends, school. But high school years are a blank; I don’t remember my dad dying when I was a freshman. I don’t remember how I felt after he died. Apparently I had some “issues.” Dr K thinks losing Dad and the crash are sort of bookends of my lost years. Sometimes from that lost period…there will be a fleeting image, a blip of memory, I don’t always know what it means or what I’m remembering.
So I am supposed to write down important moments in my life that I do remember, and if I have memories that return, write those down as well.
Dr K told me to write down this journal instead of talking into a digital recorder on my phone since I like to write (although I think Mom probably bragged about being a writer, too, because she always says it’s genetic, that I’m not at all like my dad). So. Here are some things that I remember.
1. Must always remember the look on my mother’s face when she realized, after I woke up, that I didn’t know who she was. You don’t want to see a look like that again. Regaining all memories of her (up until I was about fourteen) took a few weeks. My first returned memory of her was her reading to me, me sitting on her lap, her mouth close to my cheek as she held me and read. I have some other memories, of her writing her “mommy blog” about what it was like to have me as a kid, but those are mostly of embarrassment. I might write about them later. But I looked at my own mother like she was a stranger. I’m sorry, Mom. No one knows how to act as an amnesiac at first. It’s so awkward. I pretended I remembered her in a few days after I woke from the coma. It was our first little lie of our new lives. No doubt she blogged about it.
2. Mom says that Mrs. Hall—Perri, I had just gotten old enough where she invited me to call her Perri—came and sat with me while I was in coma, the day after the crash. She said to Mom, “Our babies. Our babies.” And they cried and they held each other. And then the note was found in the crash debris, and they didn’t talk much again. Of course the first time I saw Mrs. Hall, I had no idea at first who she was. You cannot imagine. I can’t even write about it yet.
3. I learned to ride a bike when I was six. Dad was gone a lot and Mom didn’t like bikes (you can find her articles on her mommy blog complaining about bike safety—until she got a bicycle sponsor), so Mrs. Hall and David taught me. Mrs. Hall gave me lemonade when we were done. It was hot, summertime, and I was afraid the pavement would burn if I fell on it, so I decided I would not fall.
4. My favorite teacher in middle school was Mrs. Martinez, for English, and she came and visited me in the hospital, during the coma and after. I did not remember her—the world and everyone in it was a stranger—and she tried not to cry but she did. When I remembered her, weeks later, I knew she encouraged me to be a writer. I filled notebooks full of bad stories when I was a kid, but I loved writing them. I’m not sure I could ever be a writer now.
You have to understand people. A lot of that died in me.
5. Trevor says he kissed me when we were in first grade and we pretended to get married at recess, but I think he’s just saying that to make me feel better since nearly everyone hates me now. The level of hate is like a fog I walk through every day. He told me this in the cafeteria two weeks after I came back to school. And then he walked away. He is so weird. He’s a football player and I’m just going to assume there have been some concussions. (Like I can talk.)