The Memory Giver (#Wattys2014)

Chapter 6

        Turtle had come to the decision he was going to ask Rita for her phone number the next day.  That would be the litmus test.  If she gave it to him it would prove that Rita was his girlfriend.

        But how does a guy just come out and ask a girl for her phone number?  He’d never done anything like it before.  He’d witnessed girls passing boys slips of folded paper with their phone numbers hastily scrawled on them.  He’d been a participant in passing these notes around the room while the teacher’s back was turned.

        Turtle wouldn’t pass a note.  Asking Rita for her number was nobody’s business, and if he passed a note, Ansley would probably get his hands on it, and then the teasing would start.

        Hey, Lard Ass, what do you want to talk to her about, Tastycakes?

        He’d ask Rita himself, in person, staring into her big green eyes, but he needed a reason to ask.  He didn’t want to seem stupid about it.  He didn’t want to seem lame, either, and he most definitely didn’t want to seem desperate.

        Teachers asked students to exchange numbers at the start of the semester in case a student was out sick and needed to call someone for homework.

        “Hey, Rita, can I have your phone number?”

        “Why?”

        “So if I’m out sick I can call you for the assignment.”

        “Don’t you have Ross’s phone number for that?”

        “Well… yeah.  But suppose we’re both out sick?”

        Okay, that plan had an obvious hole in it.  Besides, giving him her phone number to exchange homework wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement that she was his girlfriend.  Turtle needed something that said she was giving him her number because she wanted him to have it.

        He lay staring at the cracks road-mapping the ceiling, travelling down scenario after scenario of how to ask Rita for her number without seeming stupid, or desperate or lame, and he kept arriving at a dead end.

        So I can call you and talk? 

        That was the best he could come up with.  It was also the riskiest, because if he so blatantly laid his cards on the table with Rita, there he’d be, a sitting duck, waiting for her to blow his stupid, lame and desperate ass right out of the water.

        It also happens to be true, he thought.  He couldn’t think of a better way to spend evenings after supper than coming back to his room, spinning the night away with Rita on the phone.

        Tic, tic, tic.

        The sound he’d heard that afternoon started up again, interrupting his thoughts.  It was louder this time.  He knew it was louder because he could hear the ticking even though his door was closed.  He also knew with certainty it was coming from A.D.’s room.

        He got out of bed.  He didn’t want to.  He wanted to pull the covers up over his head, like he’d done so often as a child, laying there til daylight came and chased the boogeymen away. 

        He got out of bed for Rita.  He got out of bed because she deserved a boyfriend who was fearless, like A.D., and not a coward, like him.  He moved to the bedroom door.  For Rita.  He opened it.  For Rita. The corridor was dark and silent, and maybe he hadn’t heard the ticking sound, maybe it had been his overactive imagination.

        Scrunch, scrunch…

        The sound was different this time.  It sounded as if someone—or something—was crumpling paper. Someone was on the other side of A.D.’s door crumpling up paper. 

        His heart was a galloping stallion as he stepped out into the corridor.  The chill was on him, radiating off of A.D’s bedroom door like a fog, so thick he could almost see it.  Yet despite the chill, he was sweating.  He made short, halting steps toward the door, and with each step he told himself he was putting the strangeness to rest.  He’d open the door and discover his mother had left the window open, and that it wasn’t scrunching paper he was hearing, but curtains flapping against the sides of the window.

        He reached the door, gripped the icy doorknob, turned and pushed the door open.

        Inside the room, the Millennium Falcon box lay open on the floor, its contents spilled out onto the carpet in a hundred or so tiny pieces.  A.D. was sitting on the floor amidst the pieces of the Millennium Falcon.  He was wearing his Spiderman PJs, the ones he had to order special out of a catalogue because none of the local stores carried Spiderman pajamas that could fit a thirteen year-old.   A.D. was looking at the instruction page that came with the Falcon, holding it up in his hands, unfolded in the air, as if he were reading a map.  When the door opened, A.D. lowered the instruction sheet.  It made a scrunchy, crinkling sound.  A.D. smiled mischievously at his brother as if he’d been waiting for him.  “Get in here, quick, and close the door!” he called in a loud, conspiratorial whisper.

        Turtle closed the door, but he did not go into the room.  Instead, he retreated back into his own room; his heart beating so rapidly in his chest he thought it might burst.  He got back in bed and this time he did pull the covers up over his head.  He lay there thinking about Rita, about how she deserved a better boyfriend than him.  He lay quaking beneath the covers until morning.

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