In the car on the way home, Will couldn’t stop talking yearbook. The guy was obsessed, and I guess with seven hundred twenty hours a year, you’d have to be. I mainly found myself ignoring him. I’d nod every now and again and that seemed to be all the response that was required on my part.
I wanted to ask him why he (I) liked yearbook so much, but I thought it might hurt his feelings.
“You’re awfully quiet,” he said.
I told him I was tired, which I was.
“I’ve been talking too much,” he said. “I guess I just got excited that you were back. It’s not anywhere near as much fun without you, Chief.”
We were halfway to my house and stopped at a red light when I spotted James Larkin walking along the sidewalk. It had started drizzling, and even with whatever strangeness had passed between us in the greenhouse, I felt like we should offer him a ride. I asked Will if he would mind pulling the car over, and he replied, “The chap looks like he wants to be by himself.”
I reminded him how much James had helped me in the hospital, and how I had never had a chance to really thank him. “Plus,” I added, “he was nice enough to return the yearbook camera.” I knew that last part would definitely get Will. He sighed like it was really putting him out and muttered something about it “costing a lot of money to keep starting and stopping the car all over the place.” So I told him he could just drop me off, that I’d walk the rest of the way home. “Yeah right, I’m really going to leave my injured friend in the rain,” he said. “I don’t have all day to chauffeur you and your buddies around.”
I got out of the car and called James’s name. “Do you need a ride?” He turned real slow, and for a second after he saw me I was pretty sure he was just going to keep right on walking. Finally, he ambled over to Will’s car. He didn’t look all that enthusiastic about seeing me again. I was starting to wonder if I had hallucinated the boy I had met in the hospital.
“Still cold?” he asked politely.
“A little,” I replied. “Your shirt’s in my locker.”
James shrugged.
I was about to say how I’d been hoping we’d run into each other again when Will decided to get out of the car. Will edged himself between James and me and stuck out his hand. “Larkin, nice to see you, and thanks again for dropping off the camera. Naomi’s the other editor of the yearbook, not that you asked.”
“I did not know that,” James said. His mouth threatened to smile for a second. “Well, it was…good seeing you both.”
“The thing is,” I said, “I was sort of hoping I’d run into you again. I didn’t get a chance to thank you for all your help at the hospital—”
James cut me off. “Really. Don’t mention it,” he said. He stuck his hands in his coat pockets and turned to walk away.
“Wait!” I called out. “Can’t we at least give you a ride?”
Will pinched me on the arm and muttered, “He doesn’t want a ride.”
But Will shouldn’t have worried, because James just shook his head. “It’s not raining that hard.”
We got back in the car, and Will started chattering about yearbook again. “It would be really great, for once, to have some decent artists on staff.”
“Is he an artist?”
“Who?”
“James.”
“I think he does something with video, I’m not sure. The point is, all the good ones go over to newspaper or lit mag or even drama, but none of them ever want to work yearbook. And it’s so stupid when you think about it. ’Cause no one’s even gonna see the lit mag or the newspaper like a week after it comes out. But everyone’s gonna have their yearbook when they’re really old. You know? Hey, Chief?”
“What?” We were stopped again at that same light, and I was watching James cross the street.
“Forget it,” Will said.
“What’s his story?” I asked.
“How am I supposed to know?”
“Aren’t you supposed to know everything? He was kind of rude, don’t you think?”
Will shrugged. “No, he just didn’t want a ride.”
At that moment two things happened. The traffic light turned green, and it began to pour. “I suppose we should offer him a ride. Again.” Will sounded about as unenthusiastic as it is possible for a person to sound. He drove up alongside James.
“James!” I leaned over Will and yelled through the driver-side window.
“I don’t mind the rain!” he yelled. His hair was already soaked.
“James,” I said, “get in the car, would you?”
We locked eyes for a second. I raised my eyebrow. He shook his head the tiniest bit.
“I’m fine,” James repeated.
“But it’s storming,” I protested.
“Listen, Larkin, she’s not gonna give up, and I’m wasting gas. Just get in already,” Will barked.
James obeyed Will.
“Thanks,” James said to Will.
“Where to, sir?” Will asked.
“Just my home, I guess,” James said. He gave a few directions, and Will indicated that he knew where that was. In the rearview mirror, I watched James take off his jacket, which had gotten wet. I could see that leather cord with the ring on it again.
Will had noticed the ring, too, and he asked, “What’s the ring?”
“Oh, it’s my brother’s,” James said, slipping the ring under his T-shirt.
“Why isn’t he wearing it then?” Will asked.
“I guess that’d be”—he paused to dry off his hair on his shirt—“’cause he’s dead.”
“Hey,” Will said, “I’m really sorry about that, man.”
James shrugged and said something about it having happened a long time ago. It was clear to me that he didn’t want to talk about it, so I changed the subject. “I’ve been thinking. You never came to visit me in the hospital.”
“Yeah…I meant to. But I don’t really love hospitals.”
“I was waiting,” I said, turning around to look at him through the gap between the headrest and the front seat. “And you could have visited me at home, too.” My sunglasses slipped down the bridge of my nose a bit, and James reached into the gap to push them back up. He let his finger lightly graze the space above my brow before returning his hand to his lap.
“Does it still hurt?” James asked.
“Not too much,” I said.
“Do you remember what happened?” he asked.
“Nope, she doesn’t know anything past sixth grade,” Will answered for me, which was annoying. He was behaving rather badly.
I turned back around. “That’s not entirely true. I do still remember math and science.”
“What more is there in life?” Will quipped.
“I’ve just forgotten everything else,” I continued. “I’m basically a blank slate.”
James laughed. “Lucky girl.”
“I don’t see what’s so lucky about it,” Will grumbled.
“Aren’t there things you’d rather forget?” James asked him.
“No,” Will said. “There are not. If I were Naomi, I’d be screaming mad.”
“Well, are you?” James asked me.
I thought about it for a second before shaking my head. “Not really. There’s nothing I can do about it, is there?”
James nodded. “That’s an awfully mature attitude. I still get plenty pissed about things I can’t do anything about.”
Like what? I wondered, but didn’t say. “Besides, my memory might still come back.”
James’s house was on its own private road. The house was gray stone and not really a house at all. A mansion, I suppose. It would have seemed larger had it not been in the middle of an even more expansive lot. It reminded me of estates I’d seen in France when my parents had “wandered” there the summer I was seven. I didn’t even know they had such houses in North Tarrytown.