Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac: A Novel
4/5
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About this ebook
From the author of Elsewhere and the Birthright trilogy, Gabrielle Zevin's Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac is an imaginative YA novel all about love and second chances.
If Naomi had picked tails, she would have won the coin toss. She wouldn't have had to go back for the yearbook camera, and she wouldn't have hit her head on the steps. She wouldn't have woken up in an ambulance with amnesia.
She certainly would have remembered her boyfriend, Ace. She might even have remembered why she fell in love with him in the first place. She would understand why her best friend, Will, keeps calling her "Chief." She'd get all his inside jokes, and maybe he wouldn't be so frustrated with her for forgetting things she can't possibly remember.
She'd know about her mom's new family. She'd know about her dad's fiancée. She wouldn't have to spend her junior year relearning all the French she supposedly knew already. She never would have met James, the boy with the questionable past and the even fuzzier future, who tells her he once wanted to kiss her.
She wouldn't have wanted to kiss him back.
But Naomi picked heads.
Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac is a 2008 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.
Gabrielle Zevin
Gabrielle Zevin is the New York Times and internationally best-selling author of several critically acclaimed novels, including The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, which is now a motion picture, and Young Jane Young. Her most recent novel is Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, one of the best books of the year, according to the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, Entertainment Weekly, the Atlantic, Oprah Daily, Slate, NPR, the Hollywood Reporter, and many other outlets. Her novels have been translated into forty languages. She lives in Los Angeles.
Read more from Gabrielle Zevin
Elsewhere: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Hole We're In: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
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Reviews for Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac
701 ratings66 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Find this review and more at On The Shelf!Well, here I am still catching up on some of my older reviews. I was on 3rd shift for the entire month of April, which really threw off my days! I couldn’t keep up with what day it was since I was at work on 2 different days. Tomorrow was today and today was yesterday, I’d think it was Tuesday, but really it was Friday; it was a jumbled mess when it came to when it actually was. I decided I like my M-F schedule much better than the alternating 12 hr workdays for 3rd. Anyway, here is my next catch up review!This book was really well written and one of the most realistic reads when it comes to amnesia. Naomi was an interesting character, when we meet her, it’s right before the accident has happened and her personality is different than before the accident, so we don’t get to know how she was before hand really unless somebody was talking about how she was before. I really liked Will. He was fun and funny, plus he knew Naomi the best of anybody and was really there for her, though there were points where Naomi wasn’t fair to him and some other people, but I can imagine 4 years of lost memory can really be quite stressful.There is a lot of stuff that happens to her while she has amnesia and a lot of questions she must ask herself and decide on what she wants since she doesn’t know what she wanted before since she can’t remember it. She makes several mistakes and almost loses people she is close to. Her life becomes a crazy ride for a girl who is missing a big chunk of memory. The story was a bit on the slower side, but I liked the way everything ended. It wasn’t an incredibly amazing story, but it was still enjoyable.Well-written, on the slow side, realistic, good characters.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sad and wonderful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/516-year-old Naomi falls down the steps in front of her school, and wakes up unable to remember anything about the past 4 years. As she pieces together the mystery of the missing years, she discovers there's a tremendous disconnect between the person she is now, and the person she was before the accident. Not only does she not recognize her boyfriend Ace, she doesn't understand what she ever saw in the handsome, popular athlete and instead is hopelessly drawn to the dark and brooding James. This story tackles the classic coming-of-age questions of identity and self-definition, (which Naomi, an adoptee, had been struggling with even prior to her accident)in a new and fascinating way.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5When Naomi falls down the school stairs and bangs her head, she loses all memories of the last 4 years. She doesn't remember her friends, or that her parents have divorced. She doesn't know why her best friend calls her "Chief" of why she used to love working on yearbook. She breaks up with her boyfriend, and starts dating someone with a history of issues. Then her memory comes back.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Great book, fast read.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A perfect Saturday-afternoon read.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Naomi is a popular athlete, a junior, and co-editor of her high school yearbook when an injury results in amnesia. Naomi can't remember the last 4 years of her life and a lot has happened in that time including the divorce of her parents. As each day passes, Naomi learns a little bit more of who she was and doesn't necessarily like what she learns. The story has lots of drama, humor, heartbreak, and a love story which will keep the reader turning the pages.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I was excited when I recently had to make a 6-hour roundtrip drive, which is conveniently about the length of an average 300-page YA novel. I settled on Gabrielle Zevin’s Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac, which I picked up as a free trial from eMusic’s audiobook service. It’s the story of high-school junior Naomi, who loses four years of her memory after falling down her school’s front steps. She doesn’t remember her best friend Will, her boyfriend Ace, or her parent’s divorce. Plus, she’s rescued by the mysterious new guy James, who makes her already confused life even more confusing. This unique premise gives Zevin plenty of room to examine the nature of identity. We see Naomi struggle to make sense of her relationships with not only her family, friends, and boyfriend, but also with herself. A lot happens in this not-very-long book, but none of it feels rushed and Zevin makes all of her characters likable despite their faults. Caitlin Greer deftly narrates the audiobook, giving life to each of the characters and keeping the listener’s attention throughout. Except for the memory loss, this is a fairly typical contemporary realistic YA book that should delight fans of the genre. It would also be a great book club selection, as the premise sets up some interesting questions for readers.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Compelling characters make this story of a girl losing her memory and trying to reclaim her identity a charming, moving read.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Read on January 29, 2011Would you like the people your friends with now if you lost your memory? This is the story of a teenager that loses any memory she had of the last four years. I'm really impressed with what I've read from this author so far, hopefully there's more to come!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Naomi finds herself suffering from amnesia during one of her high school years. While being a teenager isn't hard enough; not being able to remember how to drive or who your boyfriend is can make things much harder.Zevin has done a great job with the themes of memories, and our need to forget traumatic events within our lives. This is a great read for young adults, or adults, like me!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This was a pretty good book. It had an interesting plot. I liked the characters and it kept me wanting to read more and find out what happened next.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Sixteen year old Naomi is given the chance that hardly any of us have. With her recent bout of amnesia, she is now able to re-evaluate her life from an objective point of view. But this oppurtunity does not come without it's burdens. She can't remember her friends, her parents' divorce and their respective new partners, her boyfriend, French class, why she likes yearbook so much, why she has birth control pills, or even how to drive a car. Naomi must decide whether or not to try to relive her old life, or to reinvent a new one. This memory loss occurs right in the middle of high school, where people try so hard to fit in, not that Naomi remembers anything beyond sixth grade. Naomi seems to be popular- or at least her tennis-playing boyfriend is. She seems to be well-involved with the school- she is co-editor-in-chief at the school yearbook committee along with her best friend, Will. She seems to hate her mother for starting a new life with her new family and her father's new fiance. But everything is looking pretty much okay. Then why does it feel so wrong? Personally, I did not like the narrator one bit. I just didn't "connect" with her, if you will. I had no sympathy. I couldn't care less if she never got her memory back. I thought she was kind of harsh, to be honest. Every now and then she would catch herself being bitchy, but not enough to make up for it. I didn't like James at all. I just wanted him to go crawl back in his emo corner. Usually I'm all for the bad boy type, but James was a whiner who strands his girlfriend at the beach alone, without a cellphone, on the opposite side of the country from home. Not cool dude. Ace wasn't too likable, but I don't think Zevin wanted him to be. Actually, I wanted him to be even meaner. Maybe that would give him some life. Will was probably my favorite. I thought he was cool, yet quirky. A good best friend, if not a boyfriend. The dad was cool too. As for the rest of the characters, Zevin never gave them much personality or page time. But I never saw why Naomi hated her mom so much. Yes, she is allowed to be angry (her mom did cheat on her dad afterall), but not speaking to her mother or little sister who is completely innocent in the situation (and completely adorable)? I thought that was harsh. I also didn't understand many of Naomi's decisions, but hey, I'm not a amnesiac now, am I? They way it was written was okay, I guess. I had a hard time pinning down the tone. In the beginning, it was humorous. In the middle, it was all angsty. By the end, it tried to get all philosophical on me. The ending wasn't too good. Nothing really happened to conclude the book. Zevin just kinda decided to make a touchy-feely scene, plot be damned. To me, it made the rest of the book pretty pointless. I didn't see much of a difference between recent-amnesia Naomi and post-amnesia Naomi. Truth be told, I never felt compltely convinced of Naomi's amnesia to begin with. Yes, I understood she couldn't remember her friends and stuff, but besides that, she never felt that scared or helpless, like I imagine an amnesiac would feel. Overall, it was kind of a miss for me, which is a shame because I really liked Elsewhere by the same author. I would rate it 2.5 stars.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This story is about a high-school junior, Naomi, who after falling down a flight of stairs, loses the past four years of her memory. The reader goes through Naomi's ups and downs of discovering who she is, with all the drama any American high school.I liked this book even though it was slightly predictable -- does anyone ever become amnesiac and not become a "better" person than they were? -- but Zevin hits on a point that I think everyone can relate to: would it be better if you could just forget the past? Naomi struggles with this question, while surrounded by her colorful peers. The supporting characters were a titch stereotypical--the jocks, the drama kids, the yearbooks staff--but there were a few that I liked, particulary Will, Naomi's best friend. I would recommend this to 7th graders and up.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Ms. Zevin visited our school in October, and so of course I was intrigued to read a book from an author I had met in real life! This book is funny and smart, and both the protagonist, Naomi, and her buddy Ace are likable characters. The story is engaging and I couldn't wait to find out how it would end.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is the 2nd book I have read by Zevin (read Elsewhere). I loved it. I instantly fell in love with Naomi and her quirky friend, William. This is a love story that is different, but yet so normal. I think Zevin was able to capture the confusion that someone would feel if the last 4 years of memories is erased. How the people around you would want you to be the person you were and not the person that you are now. How the experience would make you see who you had become and question how it happened. It is brilliantly put together and the writing was simply stated and easy to read. The story kept me reading and I hated putting the book down to do other things. I loved the idea of the "orphan," and how many ways it played within the story. Highly recommended to anyone who likes a good love story.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Love this book!
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This was good, but could've been better. Quick read...can't really go wrong with a romantic amnesia storyline...
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5If Naomi had picked tails, she would have won the coin toss. She wouldn’t have had to go back for the yearbook camera, and she wouldn’t have hit her head on the steps. She wouldn’t have woken up in an ambulance with amnesia. She certainly would have remembered her boyfriend, Ace. She might even have remembered why she fell in love with him in the first place. She would understand why her best friend, Will, keeps calling her “Chief.” She’d know about her mom’s new family. She’d know about her dad’s fiancée. She never would have met James, the boy with the questionable past and the even fuzzier future, who tells her he once wanted to kiss her. She wouldn’t have wanted to kiss him back. But Naomi picked heads.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I did NOT like the ending
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5“memoirs of a teenage amnesiac” by Garielle Zevin is a story about a 17 year old girl who falls down a flight a stairs and suffers a head trauma. Naomi is the main character and because of the head trauma she “loses” the past four years of her life. This story is told from her point of view and begs the reader to ask themselves that if they lost the past four years, would they be the same person?In this story the focus is mostly on Will (aka Coach) who is Naomi’s best friend, Ace who is her boyfriend, James who is the bad boy, and Naomi’s dad. As Naomi tries to reconstruct the past four years of her life, she finds that she didn’t necessarily like the person that she was. As a reader, I find that I didn’t particularly like the person Naomi was before the accident. She is portrayed as a spoiled popular girl who is primarily focused on herself. Since her accident, Naomi has essentially become the opposite. Since her last memories were of sixth grade, she is amazed at how much has changed in the interim. Her mother is remarried with a daughter (when did her folks get divorced?), her dad has a girlfriend (does Naomi like her or not), she is dating the athlete (really, what did she see in him), and what exactly is her relationship to her best friend, Will. As we go with Naomi on this journey, we learn along with her what type of girl she was and what type of girl she wants to be. This was a good YA book. The title immediately caught my attention and drew me in. Ms. Zevin does a good job with her characters and capturing what it might be like as a teenager in high school. There were a couple of moments that were a little far-fetched such as when Naomi is left on a beach for 5 hours without any idea when her boyfriend (who said he would be back in an hour) will return. When he does, she isn’t mad. I don’t know many people who wouldn’t be furious if that happened to them.Overall this was a fun read. I felt that the author did a good job and that teens and adults alike would enjoy this story.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I borrowed this from the library purely because it had been on the suggestions stand for a while. It wasn't until I got home that i noticed it was Gabrielle Zevin.I think Elsewhere is more beautiful, brings tears to your eyes but this one felt more real, like even though you don't have a life anything like that you begin to become a part of it. I never expected what came next and I loved the way it was doe without trying to make this girl too perfect or two faulty. She felt like a real person. Brilliant.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I forund this book intreguing because if it's contents. It's about a girl who tries to remember her past after she hits her head. In this book she learnes about friendship. For readers 12- up
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I finally finished! Wahoo! This has been my backpack book, which means it never leaves my backpack so that I always have something to read when I’m early to class or class gets canceled, etc… Anyway, that also means that it takes me eons to finish. I’ve been reading this one for months! I liked this book, it was good, but I had thought I was going to love this book. I liked it right from the get go and thought it would only get better but instead it just went downhill from there.The whole story is pretty anti-climatic. The most exciting part is the beginning and after that you just follow Naomi through her daily life as she struggles with her feelings and coming to terms with not being able to remember her past.Honestly, Naomi drove me crazy. I understand she just lost her memory and all that, which must be extremely frustrating but she acted like such a baby afterwards. She used her memory loss as an excuse for everything. Another thing about Naomi that got on my nerves was how fast she jumped from guy to guy. She always had someone waiting in the wings for her, which was just really annoying and unrealistic.The best character in this book was Will, Naomi’s best friend. Will is quirky, confident, dedicated and sweet. He’s editor of the school yearbook, which is pretty much his whole life. I don’t know if yearbooks are really this big of a deal in high school or not but it seemed pretty insane to me! He loves music and is always making Naomi mixed CDs for every occasion, which I thought was really cute.Besides the few main characters, the rest of them fell flat. Ace, Alice, and Yvette, were all underdeveloped and stereotypical.I’m still excited to read Zevin’s newest book All These Things I’ve Done. Hopefully it will have more developed and complex characters and be a bit more exciting!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Naomi falls/dives down the fronts steps of her high school to save the yearbook staff's brand new camera. As co-editor of the yearbook, the camera comes first before her own head. The impact erases the last 4 years of her memeory. She forgets her parents difficult divorce (mom cheated), the new house she and her dad share, her best friend William Blake Landsman, her tennis champion boyfriend Ace, and her absolute love of the year book. By the time she remembers she has dumped Ace, fallen for James the new guy with a questionable character, quit yearbook, and ruined her relationship with Will. Can she unite her old self with the person she became after her fall? Good read.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I finally admit that I judge books by their covers. I do and I did in the case of Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac, which I find really strange since even now I'm not exactly sure what it is about this cover that I like. Maybe it's because it's one of the few female geared books I've seen recently without a long haired girl on the front. But I did judge it worthy of a read, even without actually reading the blurb. I mean the title is a bit self explanatory, isn't it?Zevin has a great sense of pacing, and I really felt that just as I was getting a bit tired of something, she moved the story forward. There seemed to be three separate stories going on for Naomi. There's her missing memories of her family, which is pretty much the exact opposite of what little life she can remember. It's heartbreaking to feel her going through her parents divorce, mom's remarriage and the birth of a baby sister instantly. The second story involves her friendship with Will. I felt that there was a bit too much obviousness to this, but it didn't feel forced. She makes choices that Will doesn't understand, but she still makes them. I liked that she didn't give in just because he kept saying she never would have done that.The third story was about her discovery of James. This is the story line that really drew me in. There was an honesty to James that I felt Naomi wanted to have herself, yet was scared to. Even thought she was completely redefining herself, she was doing it more just to not be what everyone else kept telling her she was. James new what he was and was attempting to make real changes, even if he was more messed up than Naomi was. On story alone I would have given this a five, but I found that a lot of the dialogue felt off. For the first two chapters I kept thinking the book was taking place in England, and even throughout the rest of the book the idea kept coming back to me. Maybe people on the East coast really do talk that way, but I just didn't feel like the vocabulary was natural for American teens (when was the last time you heard a seventeen-year-old boy refer to another as a chap?). I will however definitely look for more from Zevin.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5SPOILER--Memoirs of a Teenage AmnesiacNaomi and William are juniors, best friends, and co-editors of the yearbook. She's also a photographer. As they leave the school building one evening before classes begin in the fall, they realize they left the school camera in the yearbook office. Naomi loses the coin toss and must retrieve the camera. On the way out of the building she trips, and trying desperately to save the new camera, goes flying. She hits her head, conks out and gets amnesia. James Larkin, a new student, finds her and accompanies her in the ambulance to the hospital. She's immediately smitten.It turns out that Naomi has lost the last four years of her life--coinciding with the time her mother moved out, after having begun a romance with someone she knew in high school. Thus ended The Traveling Porters, a husband and wife team who wrote (father) and photographed (mother) travel guides.It turns out that Naomi also forgot her boyfriend, Ace, her parents divorce, her sister from her mother and her new husband, her father's new girlfriend, among other things. She easily resumes her best friend-ship with William but begins to wonder what is so wonderful about yearbook and all the required hours. Her locker neighbor, Alice, invites her to audition for Rosencranz and Guildenstern, which she does without telling William. James is involved in video taping the production. They begin going out. Of course, William becomes jealous. On a car ride with James discussing French (which she's forgotten), all of the sudden she remembers everything. She slipped on a styrofoam cup on the stairs. William kissed her the day before. The fact that she doesn't speak to her mother. She doesn't tell anyone that her memory has returned. In the meantime, it turns out that James has problems--attempted suicides, institutionalized, etc. On a trip to CA to visit his father and USC, he has a panic attack and calls Naomi to come visit him. She does so on the sly, but her father trying to locate her realizes where she is and forces her to return home. Her returned memory is revealed.As she contemplates life, she ask William questions because "he knows everything about her". Why is she going out with Ace? "I'm not in your head, so I'm only theorizing here. I think youlike being seen around with a good-looking jock. I hope that doesn't sound too mean." She ultimately realizes how much she and William belong together.Things I like about the book:1. Naomi compares her amnesia to being an orphan (which she was), not knowing her past. 2. She's concerned about being 'less a daugher', now that her mother has given birth.3. Ace gives her sweatbands as a present, which had meaning to him (the first time they kissed) but nothing to her. It comes back to her when her memory returns.4. She likes James because his past is a mystery as well, since he rarely talks about it.5. The book makes you think about starting over--if you lose part of your life, how would it be different? Naomi quits yearbook, acts in a play, breaks up with her boyfriend, encourages James, ultimately re-evaluates her relationship with her mother and her father's girlfriend. If you don't know why you like something, do you change it?6. The writing is easy, descriptive, very readable.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Forgive me, but although I remember enjoying it, now, three weeks later, I can't remember much else.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5When Naomi bumps her head falling down the stairs outside her school she loses four years of memories and, while it is frightening and unsettling, it gives her a whole new perspective on her interests, her social position in school, her estranged relationship with her mother, and quite possibly her taste in boyfriends. When she suddenly regains her memory she’s afraid to upset the new balance she’s achieved, but ultimately realizes what’s really important. The character of troubled James starts off strong, but fizzles a bit when he dips into mental strain, and his opposite, best friend and general good guy Will seems to be a bit one-dimensional. But overall the book is fairly good and would be easy to recommend to teen. It’s fairly clean (perhaps a bit of drinking and a cigarette or two) with no sex beyond kissing and a predictable romantic resolution for Naomi in the end with all loose ends tied up.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5An interesting variation on the theme of the teenage finding herself. Memoirs examines how much of our personality and behaviour is determined by the expectations of others and the desire to be liked.
Book preview
Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac - Gabrielle Zevin
I was
1
IF THINGS HAD BEEN DIFFERENT, I’D BE CALLED Nataliya or Natasha, and I’d have a Russian accent and chapped lips year round. Maybe I’d even be a street kid who’d trade you just about anything for a pair of blue jeans. But I am not Nataliya or Natasha, because at six months old I was delivered from Kratovo, Moscow Oblast, to Brooklyn, New York. I don’t remember the trip or ever having lived in Russia at all. What I know about my orphanhood is limited to what I’ve been told by my parents and then by what they were told, which was sketchy at best: a week-old baby girl was found in an empty typewriter case in the second-to-last pew of an Eastern Orthodox Church. Was the case a clue to my biological father’s profession? Did the church mean my birth mother was devout? I’ll never know, so I choose not to speculate. Besides, I hate orphan stories. They’re all the same, but most books are bursting with them anyway. You start to think everyone in the whole world must be an orphan.
I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know I was adopted. There was never a dramatic we have something to tell you
talk. My adoption was simply another fact, like having dark hair or no siblings. I knew I was adopted even before I knew what that truly meant. Understanding adoption requires a basic understanding of sex, something I would not have until third grade when Gina Papadakis brought her grandparents’ disturbingly dog-eared copy of The Joy of Sex to school. She passed it around at lunch and while most everyone else was gagging with the realization that their parents had done that to make them (so much hair, and the people in the drawings were not one bit joyful…), I felt perfectly fine, even a little smug. I might be adopted, but at least my parents hadn’t degraded themselves like that for my sake.
You’re probably wondering why they didn’t do it the old-fashioned way. Not that it’s any of your business, but they tried for a while without getting anywhere. After about a year, Mom and Dad decided that, rather than invest about a billion dollars on fertility treatments that might not work anyway, it would be better to spend the money helping some sob story like me. This is why you are not, at the very moment, holding in your hands the inspiring true account of a Kratovan orphan called Nataliya, who, things being different, might be named Nancy or Naomi.
Truth is, I rarely think about any of this. I’m only telling you now because, in a way, I was born to be an amnesiac. I have always been required to fill in the blanks.
But I’m definitely getting ahead of myself.
When he heard about my (for lack of a better term) accident, my best friend, Will, who I’d completely forgotten at the time, wrote me a letter. (I didn’t come across it immediately because he had slipped it inside the sleeve of a mix CD.) He had inherited a battered black typewriter from his great-uncle Desmond who’d supposedly been a war correspondent, though Will was unclear which war it had been. There was a dent on the carriage return that Will theorized might be from a ricocheting bullet. In any case, Will liked composing letters on the typewriter, even when it would have been much easier to send an e-mail or call a person on the phone. Incidentally, the boy wasn’t antitechnology; he just had an appreciation for things other people had forgotten.
I should tell you that the following dispatch, while being the only record of the events leading up to my accident, does not really convey much of Will’s personality. It was completely unlike him to be so formal, stiff, boring even. You do get some sense of him from his footnotes, but half of you probably won’t bother with those anyway. I know I didn’t. At the time, I felt about footnotes nearly the same way I did about orphan stories.
Chief:
The first thing you should know about me is that I remember everything, and the second thing is that I’m probably the most honest person in the world. I realize that you can’t trust anyone who says that they’re honest, and knowing this, I wouldn’t normally say something like that about myself. I’m only telling you now because it’s something I feel you should know.
In an attempt to make myself useful to you,
I have assembled a timeline of the events leading up to your accident, which you may or may not find helpful, but you will find below.
6:36 p.m. Naomi Porter and William Landsman, Co-editors of the national-award-winning¹ Thomas Purdue Country Day School yearbook, leave the offices of The Phoenix.²
6:45 p.m. Porter and Landsman arrive at the student parking lot. Porter realizes that they have left the camera back at the office.
6:46 p.m. Discussion³ ensues regarding who should have to return to the office to retrieve the camera. Landsman suggests settling the matter with a coin toss,⁴ a proposition which Porter accepts. Landsman says that he will be heads, but Porter states⁵ that she should be heads. Landsman concedes, as oft happens. Landsman flips the coin, and Porter loses.
6:53 p.m. Landsman drives home; Porter returns to The Phoenix.
7:02 p.m.⁶ (approx.) Porter arrives at the Phoenix office where she retrieves the camera.
7:05 p.m. (approx.) Porter falls down the exterior front steps at school. Porter strikes head on bottom step, but manages to hold on to the camera.⁷ Porter is discovered by one James Larkin.⁸
As I mentioned to you, I am always available to answer any other questions as they might arise.
I remain your faithful servant,
William B.⁹ Landsman
P.S. Apologies for the I
[i] key. Hopefully, you’ve figured out by now that the thing that resembles a trident is actually the letter I.
There’s a defect in my typewriter such that every time capital i
is pressed, U
comes down with it.
Of course, I didn’t remember any of this. Not the coin toss. Not the camera. Certainly not my best friend, the veracious William Blake Landsman.
The first thing I remembered was that cat
James Larkin, though I didn’t even know his name at the time. And I didn’t remember all of James, James proper. Just his voice, because my eyes were still closed and I guess you’d call me asleep. Or half-asleep, like when your alarm clock sounds and you manage to ignore it for a while. You hear the radio and the shower; you smell coffee and toast. You know you will wake; it’s only a question of when, and of what or who will finally push you into day.
His voice was low and steady. I’ve always associated those types of voices with honesty, but I’m sure there are loads of low-pitched liars just waiting to take advantage of easy prey like me. Even semi-conscious, I lapsed into my prejudices and decided to trust every word James said: Sir, my name is James Larkin. Unfortunately her family is not here, but I am her boyfriend, and I am riding in this ambulance.
I didn’t hear anyone argue with him. His tone did not allow for discussion.
Someone took my hand, and I opened my eyes. It was him, though I didn’t know his face.
Hey there,
he said softly, welcome back.
I did not stop to consider where I had been that required welcoming. I did not even ask myself why I was in an ambulance with a boy who said he was my boyfriend but whom I did not readily recognize.
As ridiculous as this might seem, I tried to smile, but I doubt if he even saw. My attempt didn’t last that long.
The pain came. The kind of pain for which there is no analogy; the kind of pain that allows for no other thought. The epicenter was concentrated in the area above my left eye, but it barely mattered; the waves through the rest of my head were almost worse. My brain felt too large for my skull. I felt like I needed to throw up, but I didn’t.
Without my having to tell him, James asked, Could someone please give her some drugs?
An EMT shone a light in my eyes. Not until she’s seen a doctor, maybe even had a CT scan. But it’s terrific news that she’s already up. Just five more minutes, okay, Naomi?
"Just five more minutes until what?" I asked, trying to sound patient. Until Christmas? Until my head exploded?
Sorry. Until we’re at the hospital,
said the EMT.
At this point, the pain in my head was so strong that I wanted to weep. I probably would have, too, but it occurred to me that crying might actually make me feel worse.
Are you positive she can’t have any drugs?
James yelled.
Distract her. Tell her a joke or something. We’re almost there,
was the EMT’s annoying, unhelpful reply.
I don’t think that’s gonna do it,
James retorted.
Laughter’s the best medicine,
said the EMT. I believe this may have been his idea of a joke, but it did nothing for my headache.
Complete and utter…
James leaned in closer to me. He smelled like smoke and laundered sheets left to dry in the sun. …bullshit, but would you like a joke anyway?
he asked.
I nodded. I really would have preferred drugs.
Well, I can only think of one, and it’s not that good. Certainly not analgesic good. So…okay, this man goes to a psychiatrist and says, ‘My wife’s insane. She thinks she’s a chicken.’ And the doctor goes, ‘Well, why don’t you just commit her?’ And the man says—
Just as he was about to reveal the punch line, a particularly impressive wave of pain pulsed through my head. My nails dug into James’s palm, piercing his skin, making him bleed. I couldn’t speak, so I tried to telegraph my apology with a look.
No worries,
James said, I can take it.
He winked at me.
In the emergency room, a doctor with eyes so bloodshot they made me tired just looking at them asked James how long I had been passed out, and he replied twenty-one minutes, he knew exactly. He’d seen it happen. At Tom Purdue, there’re these steps out front. One second, she’s walking down them and the next, she’s flying headfirst toward me, like a meteor.
Is it strange that I don’t remember that?
I asked.
Nope,
said the doctor. Perfectly ordinary to forget incident-associated narrative for a time.
She shined a light in my eyes, and I flinched.
At some point, another doctor and a nurse had joined the party, though I couldn’t have told you when with any confidence. Nor can I recall much about them as individuals. They were an indistinct blur of pastel and white uniforms, like chalk doodles on a sidewalk in the rain.
The second doctor said that she had to ask me a couple of questions, general ones, not about the accident.
Your full name?
Naomi Paige Porter.
Where do you live?
Tarrytown, New York.
Good, Naomi, good. What year is it?
Two thousand and…2000, maybe?
Even as I said it, I knew it wasn’t right. Because if it was 2000, I would have been twelve, and I knew for sure I wasn’t twelve. I didn’t feel twelve. I felt…I couldn’t say the exact number, but I just knew I felt older. Seventeen. Eighteen. My body didn’t feel twelve. My mind didn’t feel twelve either. And there was James, James proper—James looked at least seventeen, maybe older—and I felt the same age as him, the same as him. I looked from doctor to doctor to nurse: poker faces, every one.
One of the doctors said, Okay, that’s fine for now. Try not to worry.
This made me worry, of course.
I decided that the best thing for me to do would be to go home and sleep it off. I tried to sit up in the gurney, which made my head throb even more intensely than it had been.
Whoa, Naomi, where you going?
the nurse said. He and James gently pushed me back into a horizontal position.
The doctor repeated, Try not to worry.
The other doctor paraphrased, Really, you shouldn’t worry.
As they walked across the ER to some other patient, I heard the doctors muttering to each other all sorts of worrisome phrases: mild traumatic brain injury
and specialist
and CT scan
and possible retrograde amnesia.
I have a tendency to deal with things by not dealing with them at all, so instead of demanding that someone immediately tell me what was wrong, I just listened until I couldn’t hear them anymore and then decided to concentrate on matters more tangible.
James always said how ugly he was, but I think he must have known that he wasn’t. The only bad thing anyone could have said about him was that he was too skinny, but never mind that. Maybe because I couldn’t seem to remember anything else, I felt like I needed to memorize every single thing about him. His fraying white dress shirt was open, so I could see that he was wearing a really old concert T-shirt—it was faded to the point that I couldn’t even tell what the band was. His boxers were sticking out over his jeans, and I could make out they were a dark green plaid. His fingers were long and thin like the rest of him, and a few of them were smudged with black ink. His hair was damp with sweat, which made it even darker than usual. Around his neck was a single leather rope with a silver ring on it, and I wondered if the ring was mine. His collar had gotten half turned up. I noticed blood on his lapels.
There’s blood on your collar,
I said.
Um…it’s yours.
He laughed.
I laughed, too, even though it made my brain beat like a heart. In the ambulance…
For whatever reason, the phrase in the ambulance embarrassed me, and I had to rephrase. In the van, you said you were my boyfriend?
Hmm, I hadn’t known you were listening to that.
He had this funny smile on his face and he shook his head a couple of times, as if in conversation with himself. He let go of my hand and laid it on the gurney. No,
he said, I just said you were my girlfriend so they would let me ride with you. I didn’t want you to be alone.
This was disappointing news, to say the least.
There’s a joke about amnesiacs, which always reminds me of meeting James. It’s not exactly a joke, but more a funny
slogan you’d wear on a T-shirt if you were a) an amnesiac, and b) extremely corny, and c) probably had issues in addition to amnesia, like low self-esteem or the need to give too much information
or just plain bad taste in clothes. Okay, picture a really cheap, fifty-percent-polyester jersey with a white front and red sleeves. Now add the words Hi, I’m an amnesiac. Have we met before?
You know something funny?
I said. The first thing I thought about you was what an honest voice you had, and it turns out you were lying to me.
No. Not to you. Only to some jerk in a uniform,
he corrected. If I’d been thinking at all, I would have said you were my sister. No one would have even questioned that.
Except me. I don’t have any siblings.
I tried to make a joke of it. If given the choice, I preferred being his imaginary girlfriend to being his imaginary sister. Are we friends, at least?
No, Naomi,
James said with the same little smile, can’t say that we are.
Why not?
He seemed like the kind of person it might be nice to be friends with.
Maybe we ought to be
was all he replied.
It was and it wasn’t a satisfactory answer, so I tried a different question. Before, when you were shaking your head, what were you thinking?
You’re really gonna ask me that?
You have to tell me. I might die, you know.
I didn’t take you for the manipulative kind.
I closed my eyes and pretended to pass out.
Oh, all right, but that’s awful low,
he said with a resigned laugh. "I was wondering if I could get away with letting you think I was your boyfriend. And then I decided that would definitely be the wrong thing to do. It wouldn’t be fair—you don’t even know what year it is, for God’s sake. A good relationship is not built on lies and all that crap.
And well, I also wondered if it would be wrong to kiss you—not on the mouth, maybe on your forehead or hand—while I had the chance, while you were still thinking you were mine. And I decided that would be very, very wrong and probably uncomfortable later on. Plus, a girl like you probably does have a boyfriend—
I interrupted. You think?
James nodded. Definitely. I don’t give a damn about him, but I didn’t want to compromise you…or take advantage. I decided that if I ever kissed you, I’d want your permission. I’d want—
At that moment, my dad came into the ER.
James had been leaning over the side of the gurney railing, but he stood up straight like a soldier to shake Dad’s hand. Sir,
he said, I’m James Larkin. I go to school with your daughter.
But Dad pushed right past James to get to me, and James was left with his palm in the air, and I saw the four puncture wounds my nails had made from grabbing him so tight.
The doctors returned then, followed by a nurse, a specialist, and an orderly who began wheeling me away without even bothering to tell me where, and then I really had to throw up, and I didn’t want James to have to watch that (I didn’t want him to leave either), and somehow James slipped out without my seeing, which is something I would later find out he had a talent for.
Once I was admitted into a room, Dad passed the time by asking me if I was okay. You okay, kid?
Yes, Dad.
Five seconds later, Kiddo, are you okay?
In an amazing display of restraint, I managed to reply Yes, Dad three more times even though I had no earthly idea if I was. On the fifth or sixth time, I finally just snapped, Where’s Mom?
She was better than Dad in these types of situations.
In the city,
he said. He kept pacing the room and looking up and down the hallway. Christ, is anyone ever going to help us?
Is she working?
Mom was a photographer and she sometimes had to go into New York City for that.
Working?
Dad repeated. His head was sticking out the door like a turtle, but he pulled it back inside so that he could look at me. She’s…She…Naomi, are you trying to worry me?
Dad, are you screwing with me?
Knowing my dad, this was not an unlikely scenario.
"Screwing with you?"
I assumed he hadn’t liked my use of the word screw, though Dad was not normally the sort of parent who cared much about swearing. He always said that words were words and the only reason to ever eliminate any of them was if they were either hurtful (and you weren’t meaning to be) or inexpressive. I figured that the anxiety of the situation must be getting to him, so I rephrased. "Sorry. Playing with me, whatever."
"Are you screwing with me?" Dad asked.
"So you can use screw and I can’t? That doesn’t seem fair," I protested.
"I don’t give a damn if you use the word screw, Naomi. But is that what you’re doing?"
I’m not screwing with you! Just tell me where Mom is.
In N.Y.C.
It sounded like slow motion. EHNNNNN. WHYYYYY. SEEEEE. New York—
City. Yes, I know what N.Y.C. stands for. But why?
She lives there. Since the divorce. You can’t have forgotten that.
I’m sure you’ve already figured out that I had.
Everyone always says how much I look like her—my mom, I mean—which is ridiculous because she is half-Scottish and half-Japanese. We both have light blue eyes though, so I guess this accounts for the misunderstanding. No one ever says I look like Dad, which is ironic because he is actually part Russian. The rest of him is French, and all of him is Jewish, though he’s not observant. All this makes everyone sound much more interesting than they are—my mom’s really just a California girl, and my dad was born in D.C., and they met in college in New York City, where we used to live until I was eleven. If you’re a wine-drinking type, you might have heard of them. They wrote a series of travel memoirs/coffee table books called The Wandering Porters Do…and then fill in the blank with the exotic locale of your choice, somewhere like Morocco or Tuscany. My mom took the pictures, and my dad wrote the text, except for the occasional footnote by Mom. Her footnotes were usually something mortifying, like 2. At an Edam cheese factory, Naomi vomited in an enormous wooden clog.
Or 7. Naomi was particularly fond of the schnitzel.
As for my contribution, I made a series of increasingly awkward appearances in their author photo on the back jacket flap above the caption When not wandering, Cassandra Miles-Porter and Grant Porter live in New York with their daughter, Naomi.
That’s what popped into my head when Dad said they were divorced—all those Wandering Porter books and me as a kid on the back flap. In a strange way, I didn’t feel like their divorce was happening to me, certainly not the me
in that moment, the person lying in the hospital bed. It was happening to that little girl on the book jackets. I felt sad for her, but nothing yet for myself.
Did it just happen?
I asked.
"Did what just happen?"
The divorce.
It’s been two years, eleven months, but we’ve been separated close to four years now,
Dad said. Something in his tone told me he probably knew the precise number of days, too. Maybe even minutes and seconds. Dad was like that. "The doctors, they said you weren’t sure of the year before, but…Well, do you think this is part of the same