The Impossible Knife of Memory by Laurie Halse Anderson
LAURIE HALSE
ANDERSON
the
impossible
knife
of
memory
An Imprint of Penguin Group (USA)
VIKING
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First published in the United States of America by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 2014
Copyright © 2014 by Laurie Halse Anderson
Excerpt, from The Odyssey by Homer,
translated by Robert Fagles, published by Viking, 1996.
Carl Phillips, “Blue” from In the Blood. © University Press of New England, Lebanon, NH. Reprinted with permission three lines from page 68.
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Anderson, Laurie Halse.
The impossible knife of memory / Laurie Halse Anderson.
pages cm
Summary: “Hayley Kincaid and her father move back to their hometown to try a ‘normal’ life, but the horrors he saw in the war threaten to destroy their lives”—Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978-1-101-62156-1
[1. Fathers and daughters—Fiction. 2. Post-traumatic stress disorder—Fiction. 3. Family problems—Fiction. 4. Veterans—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.A54385Im 2014 [Fic]—dc23 2013031267
Version_1
for my father
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
—These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished.
Memory fingers in their hair of murders . . .
Wilfred Owen, “Mental Cases”
Apparently misinformed about the rumored
stuff of dreams: everywhere I inquired,
I was told look for blue.
Carl Phillips, “Blue”
1
It started in detention. No surprise there, right?
Detention was invented by the same idiots who dreamed up the time-out corner. Does being forced to sit in time-out ever make little kids stop putting cats in the dishwasher or drawing on white walls with purple marker? Of course not. It teaches them to be sneaky and guarantees that when they get to high school they’ll love detention because it’s a great place to sleep.
I was too angry for a detention nap. The zombie rulers were forcing me to write “I will not be disrespectful to Mr. Diaz” five hundred times. With a pen, on paper, which ruled out a copy/paste solution.
Was I going to do it?
Ha.
I turned the page in Slaughterhouse Five, a forbidden book at Belmont because we were too young to read about soldiers swearing and bombs dropping and bodies blowing up and war sucking.
Belmont High—Preparing Our Children for the Nifty World of 1915!
I turned another page, held the book close to my face, and squinted. Half of the lights in the windowless room didn’t work. Budget cuts, the teachers said. A plot to make us go blind, according to the kids on the bus.
Someone in the back row giggled.
The detention monitor, Mr. Randolph, lifted his orc-like head and scanned the room for the offender.
“Enough of that,” he said. He rose from his chair and pointed at me. “You’re supposed to be writing, missy.”
I turned another page. I didn’t belong in detention, I didn’t belong in this school, and I did not give a crap about the Stalinist rules of underpaid orcs.
Two rows over, the girl wearing a pink winter jacket, its fake-fur-edged hood pulled up, turned her head to watch me, eyes blank, mouth mechanically gnawing a wad of gum.
“Did you hear me?” the orc called.
I muttered forbidden gerunds. (You know, the words that end in “ing”? The -ings that we’re not supposed to say? Don’t ask me why, none of it makes sense.)
“What did you say?” he brayed.
“I said my name isn’t ‘missy.’” I folded the corner of the page. “You can call me Ms. Kincain or Hayley. I respond to both.”
He stared. The girl stopped chewing. Around the room, zombies and freaks raised their heads, awakened by the smell of potential combat.
“Mr. Diaz is going to hear about that attitude, missy,” the orc said. “He’s stopping by at the end of the period to collect your assignment.”
I swore under my breath. The girl in the jacket blew a lopsided bubble and popped it with her
2
A quick lesson.
There are two kinds of people in this world:
1. zombies
2. freaks.
Only two. Anyone who tells you different is lying. That person is a lying zombie. Do not listen to zombies. Run for your freaking life.
Another lesson: everyone is born a freak.
That surprised you, didn’t it? That’s because they’ve been sucking on your brain. Their poison is making you think that freaks are bad. Dangerous. Damaged. Again—don’t listen. Run.
Every newborn baby, wet and hungry and screaming, is a fresh-hatched freak who wants to have a good time and make the world a better place. If that baby is lucky enough to be born into a family—
(Note: “family” does NOT only mean a biological unit composed of people who share genetic markers or legal bonds, headed by a heterosexual-mated pair. Family is much, much more than that. Because we’re not living in 1915, y’know.)
—lucky enough to be born into a family that has a grown-up who will love that baby every single day and make sure it gets fed and has clothes and books and adventures, then no matter what else happens, the baby freak will grow into a kid freak and then into a teen freak.
That’s when it gets complicated.
Because most teenagers wind up in high school. And high school is where the zombification process becomes deadly. At least, that has been my experience, both from long-distance observation, and now, up close and personal for twenty-four days, at Belmont.
* * *
Where was I?
Right. Detention.
* * *
By the time the bell rang, I had written “Correcting a teacher’s mistake is not a sign of disrespect” one hundred and nine times.
3
Between the attitude chat (lecture) by Mr. Diaz after detention and my stupid locker, I missed the late bus.
There was no point in calling my dad.
I had four miles to walk. I’d done it before, but I didn’t like it. I swallowed hard and started down the sidewalks of the neighborhood closest to school, my chin up, fake smile waiting in case an old guy at his mailbox waved at me or a mom unloading groceries from her van checked me out. My earbuds were in, but I wasn’t playing music. I needed to hear the world but didn’t want the world to know I was listening.
Fifteen minutes later, the safe little houses turned into strip malls and then a couple of used-car lots and then what they call “downtown” around here. I did a quick scan left and right every couple of steps: abandoned mattress store; house with boarded-up windows; newspapers covering a drunk or drugged or dead homeless body that reeked, but was not a threat. A tire store. Liquor store. Bodega with bars on the windows. Two empty lots with fields of gravel and grass and broken furniture and limp condoms and cigarette butts. Storefront church with a cross outlined in blue neon.
Two guys leaned against the church.
Threat
Took my hands out of my pockets. Walked like I owned the sidewalk: legs strong and fast, hips made for power, not playing. The guys would size me up as female, young, five foot eleven-ish, one-sixty. Those facts were the language of my body, couldn’t change it. But the way I walked, that made the difference. Some girls would slow down in a situation like this. They’d go rabbit-scared, head down, arms over chest, their posture screaming: “I am weak you are strong I am afraid just don’t kill me.” Others would stick out their boobs, push their butt high and swing it side to side to say, “Check it out. Like it? Want it?”
Some girls are stupid.
I swallowed the fear. It’s always there—fear—and if you don’t stay on top of it, you’ll drown. I swallowed again and stood tall, shoulders broad, arms loose. I was balanced, ready to move. My body said, “Yeah, you’re bigger and stronger, but if you touch this, I will hurt you.”
Five steps closer. The guy facing me looked up, said something to his friend. The friend turned to look.
Assess
There was nothing in my backpack worth fighting for. In fact, it would have been a relief if they stole it ’cause I’d have a legitimate excuse about why I didn’t do my homework. If they grabbed, I’d twist so that their hands landed on the backpack first. Then I’d shove one of them against the cement church wall and run like hell. They both looked stoned, so I’d have a huge reaction-time advantage. Plus adrenaline.
Plan B: The Albany bus was two blocks away. I’d let them pull off the backpack, then sprint toward the bus, yelling and waving my arms like I didn’t want to miss it, ’cause if you act like you’re running from wolves on a street like that, people pretend not to see you, but if you’re trying to catch a bus, they’ll help.
My last defensive option was the empty bottle of Old Crow whiskey carefully set next to the base of the streetlight directly across from the two guys looking at me. The long neck of the bottle would be easy to grab. I’d have to remember not to smash it too hard against the wall or the whole thing would shatter. A light tink, with the same amount of pressure you’d use to crack open an egg, that would be enough to break off the bottom. One tink and a sorry whiskey bottle turns into a weapon with big, glass teeth hungry for a piece of stoned wolf boy.
I was one step away.
Action
The eyes of the guy who turned to look at me were so unfocused, he didn’t know if I was a girl or a ghost. I looked through him to the other guy. Less stoned. Or more awake. Eyes on me, narrow eyes, cement gray with muddy hollows under them. He was the one who smelled dangerous.
For one frozen second I stared at him—glass bottle at eleven o’clock knee his nuts reach for the weapon cut everything—then I nodded curtly, chin down, respectful.
He nodded back.
The second melted and I was past them and past the bottle and the bus rumbled along to Albany, loaded with old zombies staring at me with dead eyes.
* * *
I listened for footsteps until the empty lots and closed-up businesses turned into strip malls and then turned into almost-safe little houses. At the end of the last street, past a forgotten cornfield and the ruin of a barn, sat the house that I was supposed to call “home.”
4
My father wanted me to remember the house. He had asked me over and over when we moved, carrying boxes in from the truck, filling the cupboards with groceries, removing rodent skeletons, washing the windows, “Are you sure you don’t remember, Hayley Rose?”
I shook my head but kept my mouth shut. It made him sad when I talked about how hard I tried not to remember.
(Don’t think I was crazy, because I wasn’t. The difference between forgetting something and not remembering it is big enough to drive an eighteen-wheeler through.)
A few days after we moved in, Daddy got unstuck from time again, like the Pilgrim guy in Slaughterhouse. The past took over. All he heard were exploding IEDs and incoming mortar rounds; all he saw were body fragments, like an unattached leg still wearing its boot, and shards of shiny bones, sharp as spears. All he tasted was blood.
These attacks (he’d have killed me if I used that word in front of him, but it was the only one that fit) had been getting worse for months. They were the only reason I went along with his ridiculous plan to quit trucking and settle down into a so-called “normal life.” I let him think that he was right, that spending my senior year in a high school instead of riding shotgun in his big rig was a practical and exciting idea.
Truth? I was terrified.
I found the library and a bank and made sure the post office knew that we were back and living in Gramma’s old house. On the third day, a girl named Gracie who lived down the street brought a basket of muffins and a tuna noodle casserole cooked by her mom, from scratch. She said she was glad to see me.
<
When the past spat Dad back out, he ate what was left of the tuna noodle casserole. (The muffins were already gone.) He went up into the attic and brought down a small box that hadn’t been damaged by mice or mold. In the box were faded photographs that he swore were me and his mother, my grandmother. I asked why didn’t Gramma keep any pictures of my mom and he said they’d been chewed up by the mice. By then, I could tell when he was lying.
* * *
So that day after detention, I made it home from school in one piece, pissed and hungry and determined to ignore all my homework. Dad’s pickup was parked in the driveway. I put my hand on the hood: stone cold. I checked the odometer: no extra miles since I left that morning. He hadn’t gone to work again.
I unlocked the one, two, three, four locks on the front door of our house. (Our house. Still felt weird to put those two words together.) Opened the door carefully. He hadn’t put the chain on. Probably slept all day. Or he was dead. Or he remembered that I had gone to school and that I was going to come home and that I’d need the chain to be off. That’s what I was hoping for.
I stepped inside. Closed the door behind me. Locked back up: one, two, three, four. Slid the chain into its slot and hit the light switch. The living room furniture was upright and dusty. The house smelled of dog, cigarette smoke, bacon grease, and the air freshener that Dad sprayed so I wouldn’t know that he smoked weed.
Down the hall, Spock barked three times behind the door to my father’s bedroom.
“Dad?”
I waited. Dad’s voice rumbled like faraway thunder, talking to the dog. Spock whined, then went quiet. I waited, counting to one hundred, but still . . . nothing.
I walked toward his door and gently knocked. “Dad?”
“Your bus late again?” he asked from the other side.
“Yep.”
I waited. This was where he should ask how my day went or if I had homework or what I wanted for dinner. Or he could tell me what he felt like eating, because I could cook. Or he could just open the door and talk, that would be more than enough.