Mixed Up, page 17
For the first time, the principal notices the truck tire we’re sitting on and puts two and two together—our “school project” for the electricity demonstration and “… rubber is the best insulator.”
“Get out of there! Now!” She stalks forward, reaching into the planetarium to pull us out. Her arm brushes against the line of hangers.
“Get back!” Declan lunges at her, shoving her away from the copper cable.
Unsteady on her spiked heels, the principal loses her balance and goes down. Declan trips over her and the two of them end up on the cupola floor.
The flash comes from everywhere at the same time, along with a boom so deafening that it cancels all other sound. A blinding point of light sizzles from the lightning rod to the hangers.
I feel a devastating jolt to every single cell of my body at the same time.
The world goes dark.
The first thing I remember is blinking.
The light is blinding, overpowering, and I can’t keep my eyes open for more than a split second.
“Reef?” comes a voice I don’t recognize.
That’s right! I’m Reef! And along with that thought comes a wave of other information. The cupola. The lightning! Surely that was lightning! What else could it have been? Once, when I was in kindergarten, I stuck my finger in a lamp socket while my teacher was changing the bulb. It felt like that times a gazillion. Or did that happen to Theo—
Theo. Is he all right? If I got zapped, so did he!
“Can you hear me, Reef?” that same voice persists.
With effort, I strain to keep my blinking eyelids open a little longer. No wonder it’s so bright. Someone is shining a flashlight into my eyes. I duck out of its path and see a white-coated man with a stethoscope around his neck.
I got struck by lightning! I try to say the words. I can almost hear them. But they don’t come out of my mouth.
My eyes are open now, and I can see that I’m in a hospital bed, hooked up to IV bags and monitors. My shoulder is bandaged three-quarters of the way to my wrist. Funny, it didn’t hurt before, but now that I know it’s bandaged, waves of pain radiate up and down my arm. Come to think of it, everything hurts. My head pounds, my jaw is sore, and muscle aches extend from my neck down to the tips of my toes.
“Are you able to speak?” the doctor asks urgently.
I’m trying to! I want to scream. Why can’t I say anything? Did the lightning burn off my tongue? No, it’s definitely still there. I wiggle it around my mouth, and finally, my first words tumble out.
“Where’s Theo?”
He looks pleased. “Very good,” he approves, making notes on a clipboard.
“Where’s Theo?” I demand, surprised at how hostile my tone is.
He seems taken aback for a moment, and then chuckles. “I see you’re going to be fine. Your friend Theo is fine too. He’s in the room next door. You’re a very lucky pair of kids. What were you thinking? If you hadn’t been sitting on a rubber tire, you’d probably both be dead.”
“What about Latimore?” I blurt, reassembling last night’s chaotic scene in my mind. “I mean—our principal. Is she okay?”
“Yes, thanks to the other boy,” the doctor confirms. “If he hadn’t pushed her clear of the lightning strike, she would have been electrocuted.”
“Did somebody tell her that?” I probe. “Declan—the kid—he has kind of a reputation. The last thing he needs is to get in trouble for tackling a principal.”
The doctor nods. “He’s a hero. So is your other friend— the girl.”
“Portia?” I ask.
“Remarkable young person. She was trained in CPR. She performed chest compressions on you and Theo. Without her, you might have both gone into heart failure.”
For the first time since coming awake, I feel a tiny urge to grin tugging at the corners of my mouth. Of course Portia is trained in CPR, just like she volunteers at a food bank, and plants trees on Earth Day, and is perfect in every way. Why didn’t I know that?
“As it is,” the doctor goes on, “you’ve suffered considerable burns. I’m sure you’ve noticed the bandages on your arm and shoulder.”
Burns! No wonder my arm hurts. “I ache in a lot of other places too. Especially my jaw.”
He nods. “The body responds to a shock by tensing all muscles. They usually relax again in a few days. The burns will be a slower recovery. In your case, though, the scarring will be minimal. As I said, you and your friend Theo were very lucky to be on that tire.”
I want to tell him that luck had nothing to do with it. It was careful planning, regardless of whether we used a bouncy castle or a rubber tire as an insulator. But then he might ask what we were planning for, and it’s not a good idea to answer that. The fact that we knew exactly what we were doing makes it look worse, not better.
So I just say, “I guess you’re right about that.”
The doctor jots a few more notes on my chart and steps away from the bed. “Your mom has been in the waiting room all night and all day. I think it’s time we brought her in.”
My mom? I don’t have a mom. He must mean Jenna.
But the thought causes me to conjure up a picture of my real mother—and it’s the same faceless image as before.
I still can’t remember her.
It didn’t work. The realization is so deflating that I’m amazed I don’t shrivel into something the size of a gum wrapper on the mattress. We almost got ourselves killed and it still didn’t work!
Of course we never had any guarantee that re-creating that first lightning strike when we were in the incubator would undo the Phenomenon. There wasn’t any scientific reason to believe it would work. There isn’t any science in the Phenomenon to begin with.
Fact is, this was always a long shot. And like most long shots, it failed.
And then Jenna’s at my bedside, hugging me, laughing and crying at the same time. It’s exactly what Mom would do if she was here. And since she can’t be, I’m glad I’ve got Jenna.
“What were you doing up there?” she sobs. “I’ve asked Declan again and again, and he won’t give me an answer!”
Good old Declan. I kept his secrets, and now he’s keeping mine.
But I have to tell Jenna something. No way are she and Willis going to believe that sheer random chance brought me to a mini-planetarium on the roof, connected to the lightning rod by coat hangers.
“It was a science experiment,” I offer.
“A science experiment? Getting struck by lightning?”
“We were studying the properties of insulation,” I lie. “You know, the rubber tire we were sitting on?” She’s about to go ballistic on me, so I quickly add, “You don’t have to tell me. Of course it was stupid. I promise I’ll never do anything like that again.”
“Why can’t you dissect a frog like everybody else?” she demands tearfully, but she lets the subject drop. I guess when you’re Declan’s mother, you learn to overlook a few things that defy explanation. A promise never to do it again is the best you can hope for.
I sleep a lot after Jenna leaves, and the next time I wake up, I’ve got more company. Theo sits propped in a wheelchair, looking approximately how I feel. Maybe worse. Some of his hair has been singed off, including one eyebrow. His burn bandage is on the left side—the mirror image of mine, which makes sense, since we were sitting opposite each other on the tire. An IV bag dangles from the pole over his chair, matching the one that dangles over me. A sticker on the armrest declares: PROPERTY OF MEMORIAL HOSPITAL.
Memorial. We’re right back where we started.
Theo breaks into a grin when he sees I’m awake. “Hey, sleeping beauty. How do you feel?”
I’m glad to see him—honest, I am. I’m thrilled that he’s okay. But I can’t keep my disappointment from bubbling over. “I feel like we went through all this for nothing!”
He seems surprised—doubly so because of that missing eyebrow. “For nothing?”
“It didn’t work,” I mourn. “I can’t remember my mother and I’m stuck with your plants and karate. The Phenomenon is still going, bad as ever. We couldn’t stop it—not even by burning our arms off.”
“You mean you haven’t noticed it yet?” Theo asks.
“Noticed what?”
“We haven’t gotten our old memories back—you’re right about that. But so far, there aren’t any new ones. Not since the lightning strike.”
I scour my mind, searching for the recollections that I’ve come to know as Theo’s. The gardening moments. The conflicts with his dad. Karate classes and meetings with Dr. Abagnale. Close encounters with Jaws. Theo’s memories just feel a little different because he’s the person they happened to. They even look slightly different because he’s a couple of inches taller than me.
My Theo memories seem familiar. I’m pretty sure I’ve experienced them all before. He’s right! There’s nothing new, and the fog of confusion that hung over everything is gone. “So what you’re saying is—”
“We thought we could reverse the Phenomenon and set everything back to the way it was before. But maybe it doesn’t work that way. Maybe you can stop it, but you can’t undo it. That would mean last night was a total success. The Phenomenon is over. But the memories we already swapped can’t be unswapped.”
I think it over. It makes sense. If two kids are trading baseball cards, the cards don’t automatically return to their original owners if their parents shut them down. Theo and I may have cut off the game, but the trades we made while the Phenomenon was in force are still with us, in one head or the other.
“It’s good news,” Theo persists. “I mean, we’ve got our lives back! We don’t have to worry about getting lost trying to find our own homes. We can relearn our class schedules. We can study for tests without forgetting everything by exam day.”
I nod soberly. He’s right. No question that the Phenomenon being over is a really great thing for both of us. Our situation was desperate. That’s why it called for such desperate measures. The blizzard of old memories out and new ones in was so dizzying that we couldn’t function anymore. I was afraid to take a shower for fear of washing my notes off my arms and legs.
We beat a phenomenon we had no chance of understanding, much less figuring out how to stop. It’s a success story. A miracle, really.
But.
“My mom,” I say quietly, because this is Theo, and there are no secrets between us. If anybody understands what it’s like to be me, it’s him. “I forgot her. And I’m never going to get her back.”
Theo taps his temple. “She’s not gone. I’ve got her right here, and I promise I’ll never forget. Anything you want to know—any one of your old memories you want me to tell you about—all you have to do is ask.”
I gaze at him dubiously.
“Like Halloween when you were eight,” he persists. “Your mom spent almost an hour painting a clown face on you. And before you even got out of the house, your hand got squished in the door and you cried, smearing all that makeup. So she switched your clown suit for a lab coat, spiked your hair on end, and you went trick-or-treating as a mad scientist. You got more candy that night than any other Halloween.”
I can’t help smiling. “Thanks, man.” And I’m grateful. Really, I am. But hearing about someone isn’t the same as remembering—seeing her in your mind, hearing her voice. And when that person is your mom, it’s extra important.
Theo and I have both lost chunks of our lives, but it isn’t equal—not even close. And it’s never going to be.
“There you are!” Mr. Metzinger barges into my room. “I found him!” he calls into the hall. To his son, he says, “What are you doing here, Theo? You’re supposed to be in bed!”
“I heard Reef was awake,” Theo tells his father. “I talked one of the nurses into putting me in this wheelchair.”
Mr. Metzinger flashes the two of us a broad grin. “You two guys—you slay me. I did a lot of wild things as a kid, but this was off the charts! And I was no slouch when I was your age. I used to rule the school!”
“Rule the school?” Theo looks blank. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Seriously? Theo must have heard his dad use that phrase five hundred times.
As Theo frowns in perplexity, I take stock of the memories lined up in my mind like toy soldiers.
I guess I’m not the only one who’ll need help with the missing pieces going forward.
Forward. We might not have solved everything, but at least there’s a way forward for us.
Portia has a boyfriend.
No, it’s not me, unfortunately. It isn’t Reef either. It’s this kid Nate Olberman.
Declan is disgusted with me. “You blew it, dude. All you had to do was ask. And you let yourself get stuck in the friend zone.”
He’s right about the friend zone, but not about the reason I got stuck there. I never asked Portia out because I knew Reef had a crush on her. And Reef knew how I felt about her, so he didn’t make a move either. So if Declan needs to blame something, try the Phenomenon. That’s what took us both out of the running and cleared a path for Hated Nate.
It’s an unfair nickname because Nate Olberman is actually a pretty nice guy. But one nickname deserves another—he was the first kid to call me Basket Case in my early days coming to Delgado. Anyway, I don’t mind so much that he’s dating Portia and I’m not. Okay, that’s a lie. But if I’d started going out with Portia, I might have lost Reef as a friend, and nothing’s worth that. Once you’ve been inside a guy’s head—and he’s been inside yours—you know the meaning of close. The Phenomenon was awful, but I can’t regret it because of what it created between Reef and me.
Besides, Portia and I are great friends. I try not to think of that as the consolation prize. We still volunteer together at Neighborhood Harvest—although nowadays I get a ride to Breezeway, rather than biking halfway across town in the winter. We hang out together with Reef and Declan and, yeah, even Hated Nate. We eat a ridiculous amount of fro-yo. Portia calls it burn-recovery medicine. For her, there’s no such thing as a bad reason to eat fro-yo.
Reef and I had to keep the bandages on our arms and shoulders for ten days, but by then, the worst of the pain had subsided. The itch is another matter. The doctor warned us to avoid scratching in order to allow the skin to heal. Sometimes it gets so bad I want to scream.
With the bandages gone, you can’t really tell I’m not a hundred percent. Well, not unless you’re expecting me to have a left eyebrow. That’s going to take months to come back.
“Have more fro-yo” is Portia’s recommendation. “It’s eyebrow-regrowth formula.”
It’s been three weeks since that night in the cupola, and the Phenomenon seems to be gone for good. All our forgetfulness, our confusion, our disorientation disappeared with it. It left a lot of our memories in the wrong head, but we can deal with that. At least we’re ourselves again. I erased my life notes from my phone. Reef washed his arms and legs for the first time in weeks.
It’s a pretty happy ending … except for the poor kid who can’t remember his mother.
“What’s a hound’s tooth?” Reef asks.
“Not a hound’s tooth,” I tell him. “Houndstooth. It’s the design on the skirt—kind of a small funky checkered pattern.”
He frowns. “So why didn’t you just say checkered?”
“You asked for details. Your mom was wearing a houndstooth skirt. The wraparound kind with a big safety pin.”
“Okay, okay,” Reef says quickly. “Keep going.”
We’re in Reef’s room at the Helmer house, sitting cross-legged on the carpet. We’ve been having these “remembering” sessions more and more often, where one of us narrates a lost memory to the person who should own it. Reef rocks gently back and forth, his eyes squeezed shut, trying to “see” what I’m describing.
“She’s got you in her arms and the two of you are going up and down as the merry-go-round turns. Pretty fast too. You can see the carnival going by, and it’s mostly just a blur.”
He’s concentrating intently. “How old am I?”
“Little. It’s not hard for her to carry you. Plus you’re scared out of your wits. You haven’t stopped crying the whole time. Kind of a wimp, to be honest.”
“Memories only,” Reef murmurs, still in the zone. “Keep your opinions to yourself. I’m having a nice moment with my mom.”
“Whoops—not anymore,” I inform him. “You just barfed all over the houndstooth skirt. Yuck. What was she feeding you?”
We both end up laughing. That’s definitely something different about Reef. He smiles a lot more, even when he’s thinking about his mother. The memories he’s lost to me are out of his reach forever. But I’m still here to describe them to him, so they’re never totally gone. He says that sometimes, when I give a lot of detail, he can block out all distractions and almost—almost—see his mom.
The day he told me that, I promised myself that I’d continue to do this for him until we’re both a hundred. Memory isn’t a total antidote to grief, but in a way, you can keep someone alive in your thoughts. That’s what Reef says.
We’ll make it work.
We have remembering sessions for me too, but mine aren’t nearly as meaningful. Usually, I just end up hearing about a fishing expedition or camping trip with Dad where I failed some manhood test and got chewed out. I know that sounds bad, but to be honest, my father and I have been getting along so well lately it’s almost scary. Maybe that’s because Dad knows how close Reef and I came to not making it off that roof. Whatever. The point is, sometimes what you have in the present is better than anything you can dig out of the past.
“Let’s do one more memory,” Reef requests. “Something where I’m a little older. No puking this time.”
“Got it.”
There’s a loud crash downstairs, followed by scrambling feet, and then Carolyn’s angry shout: “Reef, get down here! Your stupid rabbit’s loose again!”
Reef holds his head. “Jaws. I think he’s figured out how to open his cage.”
