CHAPTER 4

Mom’s voice is a Niagara Falls — a falling wall of sound.

Uh oh.

No parent uses your full name because they are pleased with you. Augustus Constantine, thank you for tidying your room! Augustus Constantine, I’m so proud that you shared your candy! Augustus Constantine, you wonderful boy, did you win another Nobel Prize? The cafeteria stops talking and stares.

My problem is that I forget things, even when I write reminders to myself. Things like doctor appointments.

Mom grabs my arm and pulls. The cafeteria is full. Everyone is watching.

“Go about your business, citizens!” I say, staggering a step or two. Mom still has my arm. “There’s nothing to see here. A boy being dragged to a doctor’s appointment — all very normal. Back to your lunches. Ow!”

Ow because my shoulder bangs the cafeteria door on the way out.

“Well, at least they laughed,” I say as we hurry down the hall. Mom doesn’t reply. Not a word.

Mrs. Gorby is waiting outside the office. “You found him,” she says.

Mom smiles and says thank you.

By the time we get to the parking lot she’s back to being upset again.

Dr. Basinski’s office is in a tall building downtown. Mom and I are the only ones in the elevator. She’s still upset. She’s been upset this whole time.

In the car she apologized for grabbing my arm. “I shouldn’t have done that,” she said. “It’s just that you are so frustrating, Gus. You go over and over and over a stupid detail, and then forget about …”

She’s still talking about me, but I’m not listening anymore.

The elevator is going up really fast. I want to count the floor numbers as they flash by. Dr. Basinski’s office is on the thirty-fourth floor, so I focus on the even numbers. That way I can end on a double top.

“Twenty-two … twenty-four … twenty-six,” I mutter. Thirty-four is after thirty-two. Good. The elevator stops. The door slides open. We get off.

“I’m glad we settled that,” says Mom. “I know it’s a difficult subject.”

“Not like square roots,” I say. “That’s a difficult subject.”

Mom frowns.

In the office, I sit in the patient chair. It’s comfy enough but it doesn’t move. Dr. Basinksi’s chair spins and adjusts. I’m envious.

It’s just us in the office. I left Mom, still upset, in the waiting room pretending to read a magazine.

The doctor asks a series of personal questions, like she always does. It’s like a test. I decide if the answer is never or sometimes or often or rarely. Which is a word I don’t use much. She records my answers and makes notes.

“Do you have to be reminded to get up?”

Questions like that.

“Do you make careless mistakes?”

“Do you have trouble completing simple daily tasks?”

“Do you feel trapped?”

“Do you fall asleep when it isn’t your bedtime?”

“Do you see or hear things that are not there?”

We’ve talked about my little dog who shows up and disappears. I think now about whether he’s really there. I mean, no. But also, yes. I see all the details of him — chipped tooth, swirls of black fur.

“Maybe,” I say.

“Does that mean sometimes? Often?”

“Oh, right. Uhhhh, sometimes.”

She nods, and goes on with her questions. I answer at random. Rarely never rarely. Often often sometimes. I’m thinking about why the dog scares me. Is it because I don’t know him? Or because I do?

When we finish, the doctor stares down at her notes.

“A month ago you said you never felt trapped, Gus. And that you rarely forgot things. Today you answered sometimes to both questions. That’s a change.”

“Uh huh.”

“Seems to me that you are still forgetting a lot. You forgot this appointment. Your mom sent you several reminders, but you forgot your phone at home. She had to go to your school to find you. Are you okay, forgetting that much? You may not realize that your mom is worried about you —”

“Oh, I know. Believe me, I know.”

“But how do you feel about yourself? Do you like yourself?”

This is a new question.

“I … I dunno, doc. Sometimes, I guess. Or part of me. I mean, who likes all of themselves all the time?”

Oops. I called her doc. She doesn’t like that. “Sorry, Dr. Basinski.”

She ignores it. “Do you like the part of you that forgets things?” she asks. “Have you thought why you forget them?”

I answer without thinking. “I remember what matters. I can tell you what Ruby said to me five years ago. Or what Gale said yesterday. I can remember just about every episode of Eeny Meeny Jelly Beanie or The Simpsons or Starkle and Twink. I forget about things I don’t care about.”

“Like these appointments?”

“Oooh! Good one.” Is she making a joke? Or is she mad? I can’t tell.

“What about your medication?” she asks. “Do you remember that?”

“Mom won’t let me forget.”

She stands up.

When she leaves the office, her cool chair spins slowly around and around.

I don’t know what the doctor is getting at. Birth to death, you’re going to remember stuff that matters more than stuff that doesn’t. And once you’re dead, you don’t remember anything. Unless you’re a zombie. And zombies only remember brains. Not good conversationalists, zombies. I wonder how a zombie debate would work? Two of them up on stage agreeing with each other. You said braaains? That’s what I say too. Braaaains.

Mom and the doctor stand in the doorway, talking in low voices, while I try to imagine a zombie debate. Be it resolved that brains are good.

Brains!

Brains!

End of debate.

Dr. Basinski writes on a small pad, and tears off the sheet.

“Here’s the new scrip,” she says. “It’s been sent to the pharmacy already — they’re expecting you. Let’s see how it works. Come back in two weeks, okay, Gus? We’ll see how the new dosage is working.”

What are they talking about? New pills, probably. I told you about them, right? No? Oh. Well, every morning for the last month or so I’ve been taking a pill to help my brain. I don’t know what’s in the pills. The name sounds like every other chemical. Methagraba Tylophene Isothensic Plasmadoo. Like that. You know? They’re supposed to help me focus and remember better, and not get distracted. Have they helped? Well, I did forgot today’s appointment. So I guess the piece of paper in Mom’s hand is for better pills.

Silence in the office. Mom and the doctor stare at me, boring holes into me with their eyes. What were we talking about? What was the question? Oh yeah.

“Sure,” I say. “Back in two weeks. Unless there’s a real problem — a zombie apocalypse or something.”

“Unless there’s a what?”

“Nothing, Doctor. Come on, Gus.”

I follow Mom out the door with my arms out in front of me.

“Braaains. Braaains.”

There’s a lady in the waiting room. I guess she has the next appointment. She lowers her magazine and bursts out laughing at my zombie impression.

Mom lets me play with the radio on the way home. We cycle through the channels, jumping from station to station: refugees from disastrous flooding in — A busy violin section leading to — Unbelievable deals of up to fifty percent off if you act in less than — A blockbuster trade that could help both teams as they fight for — Baaaaaby, you’re the only one who — But only if you accept Jesus as your saviour with all your — Violins but not busy at all now, lazily floating behind — A stalled tractor-trailer is causing a delay of seventeen minutes along the — Time is now approaching … I love this mishmash. Usually Mom can’t take it for more than a minute, but today she doesn’t seem to mind.

“We’ll park at home and walk to Solarski’s,” she says. “The pills should be ready.”

Solarski’s is the drug store on Denman, around the corner from our place. I know it well. I buy licorice there.

“What pills?”

Mom punches the radio off.

“Don’t do that, Gus. You know what pills.”

Oh. Right.

The woman behind the counter hands the pills to Mom and smiles at me. I must know her. I smile back. It’d be polite to say something, but what?

“Nice uniform,” I say. “Very hygienic looking.”

She looks puzzled.

I guess that was the wrong thing to say.

The sun isn’t right overhead anymore. Now it’s way over there. What I mean is that it’s later than I thought. Where did time go while I was in the doctor’s office? Where? To the park? The movies? The library? Probably the library. Time likes to hang out there.

Left turn onto our street. School’s out. There are kids all over. And cars. And old people. And birds and dogs and squirrels. They move in patterns, like dots on a graph. They cluster here. Then a bit farther along. I stand in front of our building to watch. There they go. And again.

“C’mon, honey,” says Mom. “Let’s do this.”

We go inside. The patterns shift and break behind me.

Mom hands me a pill and a glass of water. “Take one now and another tomorrow morning. Then we’re back to our routine.”

I hesitate. I’ve seen more than one movie where a spy or president takes a pill and immediately starts choking. A pill or an apple. A spy or a princess.

Poison is everywhere! Lele! Now I think of it, I can’t remember a movie where that doesn’t happen.

Bambi.

All right, one.

The pill — plasmado or whatever — is long and white, lemony and kind of chewy. Not bad.

I don’t need water to get it down but I take a drink anyway.

“That’s my boy.” Mom gives me a hug, which doesn’t happen very often.

“Oh my gosh! July 25th!” I say.

“What about it?”

“It’s my birthday! I just remembered! Because of the pill? Lele! It’s already working! So I remembered! The pill is already working! Soon I’ll remember Christmas. And our pet dolphin’s name!”

Mom sighs. “We don’t have a pet —”

“This is going to be great. I’ll have a memory like a computer. As long as I remember to take the new pills. I wonder if there’s a pill for that?”

Mom leans against the counter with her arms crossed in front of her and her eyes closed.

I can feel the pill dissolving inside me, spreading its message all through my body. Things are going to be different.

You know what? I was wrong before.

I didn’t need to talk about the stuff at school; Funn and Gorby, Arminder and Gale.

The story should start here. Because here is where things really start to happen.