“Do you want to know what his nickname was at his old school?”

I rolled my eyes.

“Crazy James.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked him.

“Duh, it means he’s”—he twirled his finger in a circle around his ear in the universal sign of psychotic—“crazy. Loco.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. It’s not even a real nickname. It’s his name and an adjective.” Will was being so childish.

Will shrugged, as if to say, Don’t blame me.

“You made up the whole thing with the nickname, didn’t you?”

“No, of course not!” Will sighed. “Maybe. But the point is, it could have been his nickname. It was for illustrative purposes. All the other stuff was totally, totally true, Chief.”

We got to my house and Will patted me on the shoulder. “Don’t worry if all the yearbook stuff seems overwhelming at first. I’ll pick up the slack until you’re feeling completely up to snuff, okay?”

Will was fond of old-lady phrases like up to snuff, which probably would have amused me if I hadn’t been feeling pretty annoyed with him at this point. “Thanks. Say, Will, why do we like yearbook so much anyway?”

About a million colors passed over Will’s face. He began by sighing and that turned into a laugh. His brow furrowed for a second, and then his blue eyes seemed to cloud, like he might cry. He didn’t cry though.

“Is it a hard question?” I asked.

“No. It’s probably ludicrous…I just hoped it might be something you would remember on your own. I know it might seem lame to some people, but we both really believe in what we’re doing. I’d say you even more than me. To us, it’s not just a book with a bunch of pictures. It’s an icon, a symbol. It gives the younger kids an ideal to aspire to, and the older ones who’ve graduated something to hold on to when the world is hard. We both really believe that it can define the school and the way people see the school. A good high school yearbook can make a better school. And better kids. And a better planet. And a better universe. We write the story of the year. If you think about it, it’s a huge responsibility.”

“Good speech,” I said sincerely.

“I’ve given better. We used to always talk about all the things we would do when we were finally running the show. How we’d really include everybody in the yearbook, and make it democratic and personal at the same time. How we’d make sure it wasn’t just pictures of the popular people and the athletes and the kids who were friends with people on the staff. You’re all three, by the way.”

“I am?” I knew the athlete part to be right, but I hadn’t felt at all popular in my one day at Tom Purdue.

“Sad, but true. The only thing we ever worried about was which one of us would be made editor, because there was just one editor. By the time it came to interview last year, we had come up with a plan to apply together, to be co-editors, even though it was entirely unprecedented and fairly controversial, us being juniors and all. That’s how we became the first co-editors in the history of The Phoenix.

“And now we are running the show. Pretty cool, right?”

I nodded, but, truthfully, I had found Will’s whole speech disheartening. I could see and hear his conviction and, in contrast, I felt none of that. Maybe I had in the past, but I didn’t anymore.

When we reached my house, Will got out of the car and walked me to the door. Like his mother, he hugged me surprisingly hard, then he patted me on the back twice to indicate that the hug was over. “Okay, Chief.” He did this comical salute with his hand before returning to his car.

I was about to unlock my front door when I realized I didn’t have any idea where I’d put my keys. I rang the doorbell, and about five seconds later Dad answered.

“I lost my keys,” I started to say at the same time Dad said, “You forgot your keys this morning.”

Dad asked me how my first day back had been, but I wasn’t in any mood to talk. I told him I had a headache and went to my room to lie down.

Dad must have let me sleep, because I didn’t wake up until my phone rang around nine-thirty that night.

“I’ve been thinking about your question. And I thought of another reason I like yearbook so much,” Will said.

“Okay.”

“You know that we both joined the staff in ninth grade, right? But what I didn’t mention to you was the year before ninth grade had been pretty rough for both of us. You had the thing with your mom. I had some…family stuff, too. Well, I think yearbook sort of saved me. It gave me something to do every day instead of just, well, fixating, I guess. And for me at least, yearbook is sort of inseparable from you. You really are my best friend in the whole world, Chief.”

I could hear all sorts of things in his voice. Tenderness. Worry. Love even. How odd to be someone’s best friend and not really know them at all. I couldn’t come up with anything to say, so I waited for him to speak again.

“I’ve been feeling sort of bad about this evening. I think I might have been, for lack of a better term, an ass,” Will said finally.

“You were, but I forgive you,” I said just before hanging up.

It was late and I was starving. I hadn’t eaten anything at lunch and I’d slept through dinner. I walked down the hall to Dad’s office. If I haven’t mentioned it before, Dad’s sort of a gourmet. All the years he and Mom had been wandering, he’d also been collecting recipes for the books. The only thing my mom knew how to make was dessert.

His office door was closed. I was about to knock but I could hear he was on the phone with someone. I didn’t want to interrupt him—Dad hated that—so I loitered in the hallway outside his door and waited for him to be finished. I wasn’t meaning to eavesdrop, at least not at first.

“…looks normal, but I’m worried, babe,” he said. Silence, and when I next heard him his voice was muffled. “…psychotherapy…”

I wondered who Dad was talking to about me. Mom, maybe? But he wouldn’t be calling her “babe”…

“…break it slowly. Everything in its time.”

Break what slowly? Was I still the subject? I tried to listen more closely, but he moved somewhere else in the room where I couldn’t hear him at all. The next time I heard him he was laughing. It was definitely not my mother. “Caracas!” he said. “I wish I could…”

Dad had always traveled a lot for his job; in addition to the books he wrote with Mom, he wrote articles for travel and men’s magazines. I concluded he was probably talking business. It made me resentful, actually. I hated being small talk, just another one of his stupid anecdotes. To tell you the truth, I didn’t care who he was talking to. I didn’t want to be anyone’s topic of discussion.

As I stalked back to my bedroom, I vowed to be less anecdote-worthy. That way, people wouldn’t talk about me over late-night phone calls or in the goddamn bathroom at school.

As much as it was in my control, I would be normal.

By the end of the week, I had obtained a doctor’s note permitting the sunglasses, and I gleefully presented it to Mrs. Tarkington. “Well, it’s certainly not orthodox,” she said, but she wasn’t the type to argue with something on hospital letterhead.

Other than that, I occasionally got lost; I occasionally heard people talking about me; I occasionally told them to go screw themselves. Under my breath, of course—I was normal. In order to tolerate our arctic cafeteria, I brought a couple of extra sweaters. I let Ace hold my hand in the hallways. I never went back to the greenhouse.

On Saturday night, my campaign for normalcy continued when I went with Ace to a party that a tennis buddy from another school was hosting. Ace didn’t bother to introduce me to the friend—maybe I already knew him?—and I never figured out who he was on my own either.

For all practical purposes, Ace abandoned me nearly as soon as we arrived. He became enmeshed in an elaborate drinking game that involved shots, dice, quarters, darts, a bull’s-eye, and chest bumping. Although I watched the game for about fifteen minutes, I came out with no sense of the rules or how the winner was determined. I suppose it was like any drinking game. Last man standing.

I’m not being fair. Ace did ask me a couple of times if I was having a good time. I lied and told him I was. To tell you the truth, I was glad that he was occupied because, aside from tennis, I hadn’t been able to figure out one thing that we had in common. If our conversations were a play, they would have been like a high school version of Waiting for Godot:


Ace: Do you remember that time Paul Idomeneo got really stoned and jumped off the roof onto his dad’s trampoline?

Me: No.

Ace: Well, it was pretty awesome.

Me: Sounds amazing.

Ace: Yeah, that kid was hard-core as hell. So, do you remember that time…

(And repeat. Endlessly, endlessly repeat.)

I suppose he was trying to be helpful, telling me little things that might jog my memory. Unfortunately, Ace had no sense of what would interest me, and I was too embarrassed/polite/normal to question him about anything important, like, for example, What do I see in you? From the stories he told, our relationship had consisted largely of a bunch of parties where people acted like jerks interspersed with the occasional game of tennis.

I probably should have broken up with him. I didn’t, though, mainly for two reasons: one, I didn’t want to end it if it turned out that I really did love him (and I still held out some hope that my feelings would all eventually come back to me); and second, I’m a little ashamed to say, though it was probably the more important one, being with Ace made school easier. He protected me from those nasty lunch girls. Despite my memory being gone, I wasn’t a moron. With my multiple sweaters and not knowing who anyone was, I knew how I looked to people, and I knew how vulnerable my situation at school was without Ace to define me socially. Being with him went a long way in my campaign for normalcy.