Read Online Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin - Free Book Online Page A

mathematics necessary for mastery of physics.” He handed me a large heavy envelope, crammed with papers.
    In other words, a review. I thanked him. It was nice to know that the school was not peopled entirely with Mrs. Tarkingtons.
    “It is interesting, this. Why you have lost some things and not others…” He studied me, much like you would expect a lab technician to watch an ape. “Maybe it is because you place different things in different areas of brain? We know nothing about brain, yes?”
    It had certainly seemed that this was the case.
    “And four years, is it? This is very odd. Maybe it is puberty onset that alters the place in which you are storing long-term memories? So you have everything before puberty, but nothing after?”
    I wasn’t sure what he was trying to say, but I really did not want to discuss puberty with Dr. Pillar.
    “Perhaps a traumatic event from your youth that you have been very much longing to repress?”
    “Um…perhaps.”
    “Forgive me. I like to make theories for what cannot be readily explained. It is my nature. Do you have any theories about your memory loss, Miss Porter?”
    “I lost a coin toss and I fell down the stairs. Bad luck and clumsiness?”
    “Or, perhaps, randomness and gravity. In this respect, you are walking physics experiment, yes?”
    That was certainly one way to put it.
    Fifth period was lunch, and Ace was waiting for me outside physics to lead me to our place in the cafeteria.
    “You didn’t say you were coming today!” He hugged me and lifted my backpack from my shoulder.
    “It’s fine, Ace. I can carry it myself.”
    “I want to,” he insisted.
    We sat with a group of about twenty kids at a long benchlike table. It was a mix of boys and girls, and I recognized some of them from my classes and a few others from elementary school. Our table was, by far, the noisiest one in the place. You could tell that the kids I ate with considered themselves to be the celebrities of the school. It was like they were putting on a show of having lunch as opposed to actually eating it.
    A curly-haired blonde named Brianna introduced herself and then said, “I just want you to know how brave I think you are. What happened to you is so, so tragic. Isn’t she so brave?”
    I didn’t feel at all brave. Even though her words were ostensibly addressed to me, she seemed to be talking to Ace or the table at large or the whole school.
    She took my hand in hers. “It’s strange because you look like yourself, and yet you’re so different, Naomi.”
    “Different how?” I asked.
    Brianna didn’t answer. She had finished talking to me and was on to the next person.
    Four or five of the people sitting nearest to me also introduced themselves. Some of the girls spoke too loudly, as if I were deaf. Others wouldn’t quite look me in the eye. And then everyone just resumed The Lunch Show and ignored me, which was fine. I figured out pretty early on that these were Ace’s friends, not mine. I wondered where James Larkin sat—I hadn’t seen him yet. Or Will.
    “Does Will usually eat with us?” I asked Ace.
    “Why would you want to know about that?”
    His reaction surprised me. “Did I say something wrong?”
    “No…I know Landsman’s your friend, but I just don’t get that little dude at all.” Ace shook his head. “He eats in the yearbook office. You sometimes eat there, too.”
    In addition to being loud, the cafeteria was kept at near-arctic temperatures, as if the administration was afraid our food might start to spoil while we were in the process of eating it. I actually started to shiver. On the way in, I had noticed kids eating in the courtyard. I said to Ace, “It’s such a nice day, maybe we could eat outside?”
    Before Ace could say anything, Brianna answered, “Um, I guess we could, but we always eat in here.” Then Brianna and a girl whose name I couldn’t remember giggled, like I had suggested we eat on Mars.
    “It’s true,” Ace said with a