The Half Life of Molly Pierce (11 page)

He spreads the blanket on the sand and I sit on it without accepting his tentative offer of help.

And then I start talking before he’s even settled himself. Because if I don’t just jump right into it, I may never start.

“I remembered the warehouse, with Lyle, and I remembered the time before that. We were in a graveyard. The graveyard in town, next to the beach.”

“And then?” He seems to know there’s something else.

“I remembered us at a coffeehouse. We were watching your friend play guitar. Parker. He played a song I liked. He waved to us. You told me not to worry about what Lyle thought and then I said I’d tell him about us. Then you kissed me and you told me you loved me. I think it was the first time you said it. And then I left. I said I had to go and it felt like it was really important. That I had to leave immediately or something bad would happen.”

“The warehouse,” Sayer says. He’s staring straight ahead at the water. “The warehouse and then the graveyard and then Parker’s show. And that’s how you remembered them? That’s the order?”

“Yes. You said you’d never met me before.”

And then—

“The hospital,” I say.

I feel sick to my stomach. A feeling I’m getting used to.

“At the hospital, when I called you from Lyle’s phone. You said my name. I knew you said my name.”

I realize it’s been a week exactly. A week since Lyle died. A week since I watched Lyle die.

“I’m sorry,” he breathes. “I didn’t want to upset you.”

I don’t know what else to say so I wrap my arms around my legs and hug my knees to my chest and put my chin between them.

“Why is the order important?” I mumble.

“It’s backward,” he says. He looks at me like he wants to comfort me, put his arm around me, but he doesn’t.

I don’t want him to, but I do want him to. I am somewhere equidistant between not wanting him to and wanting him to.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re remembering everything backward. The last time you saw Lyle, right before the accident, was in the warehouse. The time before that was by the graveyard. When you told him about us. That last time you saw me was right before that—”

“When you told me you loved me and I told you I’d tell Lyle,” I interrupt.

“Yeah,” he says.

More facts, Molly.

You have more facts.

There’s a series of memories, right? All the times from my blackouts that I didn’t remember before. And it seems like they all have to do with Lyle and Sayer and my relationship with the two of them.

And I don’t remember the moments, aside from the warehouse and the graveyard and the coffeehouse. I can’t remember any of them.

But somehow, when I blacked out . . .

When I was in them.

I remembered everything.

Like a two-way mirror.

Like a one-way street.

Like a—

Stop, Molly.

Breathe, Molly.

“Molly?” Sayer says.

I look at him. Startled.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry I lied to you.”

“Did you have to?” I ask.

I don’t know where that came from.

I was about to say something awful. I was about to yell at him.

I’ve never really been good at sticking to my guns.

He seems relieved. He seems sort of grateful.

And he seems like he means it.

When he says, “Yes. I did.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

Y
ou take it for granted. Waking up. Going to school, talking to your friends. Watching a show on television or reading a book or going out to lunch.

You take for granted going to sleep at night, getting up the next day, and remembering everything that happened to you before you closed your eyes.

We take it for granted.

We forget stuff along the way, sure, but mostly it’s little stuff. We forget where we put our keys or we forget to turn the curling iron off or we lie awake in bed in the middle of the night, convinced we left the stove on. Convinced we left the front door unlocked. Convinced we forgot to set the alarm.

And as we grow up, we accept that our memory gets worse. Sometimes we can’t remember what day it is. Sometimes we can’t remember if we washed our hair already. We stand in the shower dripping, unmoving.

We forget to put deodorant on.

We forget our sunglasses on the kitchen counter.

We run out of the house without our car keys. Without our purse.

Older still and now other things start to go. We cannot remember our children’s names. We call them every name we can think of until we get to the right one. We know we’re right because they finally answer us.

We put our blouse on backward.

Maybe we wear two different socks. Two different shoes.

We get into the car and we forget where we’re going, or we remember where we’re going but we forget how to get there.

And then one day maybe we forget everything altogether. We forget how old we are and we forget our names and we forget when to eat and when to sleep and we lose weight and we get big circles under our eyes.

This kind of forgetting, this is almost okay.

Because it is expected.

But when you are young, when you are my age, you take it for granted.

You get up. You have your day. You go to sleep.

You remember everything you did.

This is normal.

We remember.

We live and we remember.

You live and you remember.

But me.

Me, I live and I forget.

Except now.

Now I am remembering.

And I’m not sure what I liked better.

Being in the dark or being thrust unceremoniously into the light.

Lyle tells me how he feels about me. It is early fall. September. I knew this was coming.

I knew this was coming, but it is still a surprise when the words leave his mouth. He brings to me a small Mexican restaurant. It’s out of the way and a little run-down, and from the outside it looks like some kind of trap. There is no one else there. I get quesadillas. I sip water the entire time he talks to me, and when he’s finished, I can’t even meet his eyes.

What is worse, to have your heart broken or to be the one doing the breaking?

I’ll take the first choice, any day.

I’m good at being unhappy.

I’m good at accommodating my sadness.

I can’t be with Lyle.

I can’t be with anybody, really, but I’ve made an exception for Sayer. Why? I have no idea. Because I like the way he looks at me, I guess. I like the way he smells. I like his hands, his fingers. I like the way he talks. I think he is the first person who has ever known me. The real me. Not the Molly everyone is accustomed to, but the other me who lives deep inside her. He’s the only person who’s ever seen me before.

“Is it because of everything that happened?” he says.

I shake my head. “No, Lyle, it has nothing to do with that.”

“Is there someone else?”

Yes, there’s someone else.

I love your brother. I love Sayer. I think he’ll tell me soon. Maybe in a dark coffeehouse while someone is playing the guitar he will tell me and I’ll be able to stick around long enough to tell him back.

“Don’t be weird,” I say. “There’s nobody else.”

“Not some guy at school?”

“Not some guy at school.”

“Not Luka?”

“That’s not funny.”

“So it’s nobody. It’s just not me.”

“You know it’s complicated. You know I love you.”

“Sure, I know you love me. Sure.”

“I’m not exactly in a place to . . .”

What?

I’m not exactly in a place to what?

To commit myself to anyone.

To be committed, maybe. To a mental institution. To an insane asylum.

But not to a person.

Even with Sayer, I know it’s impossible. It’s an impossible situation I let spin out of control. It’s not fair to him and it’s not fair to me, but for now it is warm and it is nice and I think about him all the time.

When I can think about anything, I think about him.

I finish my water. I shake the cup and sip from the straw, get only air and bubbles.

“You know how much I care about you,” Lyle says. “Right? You know I would do anything for you.”

“Yeah,” I say. Weak, I know, but I can’t think of anything else.

Yeah, I know you would do anything for me, Lyle. You already have.

And maybe that’s the problem. Maybe I don’t like feeling, on some weird level, that I am always in your debt.

That you consider me to be always in your debt.

How can someone live with that hanging over her? How could you expect two people to have a successful relationship with that always in between them? Hogging the bed. Backing up the drain in the shower. Leaving the lights on.

“That’s it, then?” he asks.

I maybe nod. I try and nod, but I’m not sure if my neck obeys my command.

“It’s okay,” he says. He’s even smiling a little. “I guess I have time.”

Everything is about you, isn’t it, Lyle? You have time or you don’t. You love me or you don’t. I owe you something. You are owed.

I guess I roll my eyes, because he asks me why I rolled my eyes.

“I don’t know, Lyle. Maybe I have something in them.”

“You’re upset?”

“No. I’m fine.”

I flag down the waiter. He takes our empty plates and leaves the check on the edge of the table.

“How are you possibly upset?” Lyle asks. “You’re not the one who—”

“I’m never the one, am I?” I ask.

“You’re always the one! Didn’t I just—”

“Never mind. Please, just forget it.”

I pick up the check. I show it to him. We split it.

“I’ll never get you,” he says in the parking lot. He shakes his head.

Of course you won’t. It is impossible to get me. Because you could never understand how it is to be fleeting. To be momentary. To be detached and to be alone and to be always dependent on somebody else.

To be transitory and to be ephemeral.

“Come on,” I say, grabbing his hand. “I don’t know how much time I have left.”

Alex waits until I open my eyes. His office seems overexposed and blurry, and he is just a bright shadow against a brighter, indistinct landscape.

Wednesday. More pieces fall into place. More memories come into focus.

Something has developed between yesterday and today: this weird feeling that I am not watching myself but a copy of myself. Some of the things I say, I would never say in real life. The Molly in my memories, she is bolder than I am. She is less inhibited. She is prettier. She does her makeup better than I do. Her hair. She holds her shoulders differently and she always smiles like she knows what everyone is thinking.

I never know what anyone is thinking.

As soon as my eyes have adjusted to the light, I tell Alex about this fresh memory and we talk about
what I think it means
and
how it makes me feel
.

Gone is my insistence that he tells me what happened to me.

Gone is my anger toward everyone I know.

Gone is my indignation that they have kept me in the dark.

Because I guess it makes sense, what Alex told me. I think I have to figure it out for myself.

I talk for an hour, and at the end of the hour I feel better than I have in one week and one day. Since I pulled Lyle’s helmet off and ruined my favorite gray sweater.

One week. A lot has happened in one week.

When I leave Alex’s office, I find Clancy in my car, listening to the radio with his eyes closed. He must have taken the spare set of car keys from my parents.

“Hey,” I say, sliding into the driver’s seat.

“Drive me to the bookstore?” he says. He’s wearing his signature uniform. Black jeans, black band T-shirt, black zip-up hoodie.

My brother. The only one I don’t have to pretend around anymore. Everyone else thinks I’m blissfully ignorant.

“How did you get here?”

“Walked,” he says.

“I thought it was Hazel and me tonight.”

“We switched,” he explains. “She has some book report to finish.”

I pull into traffic. Every time I pull into traffic now, I have to stop myself from looking in my rearview mirror. Searching for the boy on the motorcycle.

“How’s Alex?” Clancy says.

“I’m not going to talk about my therapy session with you,” I reply immediately.

“Well, how was Sayer yesterday?”

“I’m also not going to talk about Sayer with you.”

“What would you like to talk about, Molly?”

“Nothing. I don’t really want to talk about anything.”

“Cool. So next time you pull me out of my class, I won’t want to talk about anything either,” he says.

“Look, I’m sorry,” I say, backpedaling.

I really am sorry. And I meant what I said: I’m not angry anymore.

But that doesn’t mean I particularly embrace talking about everything.

“Alex was fine. I remembered some more stuff and I talked to him about it. He said he’s happy with my progress.”

Clancy laughs, a sharp, abrupt laugh that makes me jump a mile. My eyes shoot to the rearview mirror, shoot back.

“What was that for?” I ask.

“He actually said that? ‘I’m happy with your progress, Molly’? I didn’t think shrinks said shit like that.”

He’s beside himself. Giggling, my brother.

“They don’t call them shrinks anymore,” I mumble.

“And Sayer?” he says, when he gets a handle on himself.

“It was okay. We’re in love, I guess. Only I don’t remember any of it.”

“Must be weird.”

“Yeah. Hey, Clancy—what happens? When I black out, what am I like?”

He takes a deep breath. “At first, I couldn’t even tell. It was always Hazel. She knew even before . . .”

“Before what?”

“Before anyone,” he says. “But then, you know. It got easier. Over the years.”

“The years? But it’s only been happening—”

“The past year, whatever. I’m not a calendar,” he says dismissively. “Most of the time, yeah, I can tell. Even though you act basically the same. You’re not that different. Just little things.”