MY FIRST NIGHT AT HOME, DINNER IS “WHATEVER I want,” which ends up being takeout from Pals, the best Italian restaurant in East Greenwich. The kitchen is the same as the last time I saw it, which is comforting. Except Mom has new designer plates. These ones have tiny sprigs of rosemary that circle the rims.
There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance. Pray you, love, remember.
Ugh, of course I can recall a line from Hamlet with no problem, but the last year of my life? Nope.
Mom and Dad have given me a new cell phone, and it charges on a chair near the table while we eat. I keep my eyes on the TV because the news is going on and on about the scientific reasons that the fireflies have hung around. According to experts, they’ve tripled in numbers.
“Extra salt in the air coming in from the coast could be attracting all of these warm-weather-loving bugs!”
“Could be the extra humidity from the coast.”
Except, no one seems to know.
Dad explains to Mom about the Swiss company that’s interested in his newest carburetor invention. “I have to get back to the office sooner than later,” Dad says, and dips his garlic bread in his red sauce.
“Mom? What about you?” I ask. “When do you go back to work?” I take a bite of ziti. “Have any fun events coming up?”
Dad lowers his fork and Mom sips on her water.
“What?” I say. “What did I say?”
I check the wall for Mom’s event calendar. It’s not there. I check for her usual color-coded folders and files filled with seating charts and catering orders. Mom gets up without a word and clears her half-eaten baked lasagna into the trash.
“Your mom left the company,” Dad says carefully.
“I took a leave,” Mom says, keeping her back to us.
“Why? When?”
“It just got too hard,” Mom says.
“Conflict of—” Dad starts to say and I think he’s going to say “conflict of interest” but Mom jumps in.
“Not a conflict,” she snaps, and walks to the wine refrigerator next to the sink. She pulls out a bottle of white wine. “It was just—time.” Mom started that company when she was twenty-five. It was her entire life. What happened?
The wine bottle pops open, and I hear the familiar glug of it being poured into a glass. A memory sparks in my mind, bright in the dark like one of those fireflies in our yard.
Mom drinking.
Mom sad.
Me, disappearing into the theater, into other characters whose lives made sense.
I stand up quickly, and before I even realize what I’m doing, I’m reaching for the bottle.
Mom seems to snap out of her reverie. “What are you doing? Penny, you shouldn’t stand up so quickly like that, you could fall.” Just as she says it, I stumble back into my chair. The memory that was starting to come back fades away.
“I—I forgot,” I mumble.
Mom puts down her glass. “You’ve had a long day. Maybe we should help you up to bed.”
“I want to do it myself,” I say.
I stand up again, slowly this time. Dad watches me from the bottom of the stairs. Mom follows close behind in case I fall backward. The cushy carpeting running up the stairs makes it hard for me to sense the landing with my numb foot. I press hard so I can feel that my foot is on the step and move to the next stair using the strength of my left leg. Mom and Dad are silent and I guess it’s hard for them to see me dragging my right leg but I need to do it myself.
When I get to the top, Dad joins us, kisses my head but makes sure not to hug me too tight. I know he doesn’t want to cause my hand to spasm.
I feel like a bomb about to go off. My hand can spasm at any second, with no warning.
Dad looks concerned. “Maybe I should cancel my meetings this week,” he says. We both know he won’t, but it’s nice that he’s even thinking about it.
“You should go,” I tell him, and I mean it. “I’ll be fine.”
He heads downstairs into the basement where I am sure he will stay in his shop for the rest of the night. Mom lingers at the top of the stairs with me.
I look at her smooth, beautiful face, and search for evidence of a year’s time passed. Can one year show in a person’s face?
“What?” she says with her hand on the doorknob of her bedroom.
“I’m sorry about your job, I didn’t remember,” I say.
“Don’t apologize,” Mom says. “I just needed to take a break, for a while.”
Mom embraces me and the pressure of her palms against my body, even against my shirt, burns against the figures. She pulls away and I clench my back teeth to mask the pain. Somehow I manage a smile.
“You sure you don’t want me to set up your room?” she asks from the doorway.
“I just want to be alone awhile.”
“You always have to do it your way,” she says with a little shake of her head. “Fine. Get a good night’s rest. We have the nurse coming tomorrow, to do PT.”
When I go upstairs and step inside the bedroom, it feels like I should recognize it, but I don’t. The playbills are gone from the wall near my bed. The ticket stubs, newspaper clippings, and photos of May, Wes, Panda, Karen, and me—gone from the bulletin board above my desk. I limp across the floor and lean my hand on the back of the blue paisley love seat next to the bed.
On the big bulletin board are concert stubs, movie tickets, and dozens of photos. I nearly fall forward as I recognize not only the girls in the photos but the voice at the hospital. Kylie Castelli. Kylie is my best friend. Mom said it at the hospital, but it’s just now sinking in. I remove one of the pushpins holding a photo in place and lift it closer to me. I run my finger down the glossy image: me, Tank Anderson, Kylie Castelli, Lila Suffolk, and Eve Dennings sit on the sea wall in Narragansett, sunglasses on, smiling. These are my friends. I can’t help but zero in on Kylie’s cheek pressed against mine. I grab the next photo and the next . . . Kylie and me in matching bikinis, Kylie and me in matching leather bomber jackets and red lipstick. In another, I am on Tank Anderson’s back, red-and-orange leaves litter the ground, and he’s in his varsity jacket. God, I look glassy-eyed—like I could be buzzed. I look like Mom, a small voice says.
I need my computer. I shuffle some of the papers aside. I recognize English essays and there are a lot of various papers and folders. I check the desk some more, the night table, and anywhere that may have a flat surface where I might leave a laptop.
“Mom!” I call from my bedroom doorway. “Where’s my . . .” I am about to say laptop, but I don’t know if that’s what I have anymore. “Computer,” I finish.
“You’re not supposed to use it yet,” Mom calls. “Remember, no screen time until your eyes recover. You can have it back when Dr. Abrams says it’s okay.”
I sigh and close my door, then lean against it. My eyes are tired and suddenly I don’t have the energy to look at a computer screen anyway, much less argue about it. I know what I’ll do. I wasn’t ready to open the cards before, but I am now.
I sit down on my bed and pull the unopened cards out of my hospital duffel bag, spreading them in my lap. Each one is an unopened bomb that can explode another truth about who I’ve been over the last year and a half. I know that—but I need to know. I look around the room at the photos of Kylie, Lila, and Eve.
A card on the top says my name in blue scrawl on a salmon-colored envelope.
I don’t know that handwriting—it could be anyone. To open a card, I have to position my hand into a pinching motion, which could set off a spasm. But I do it anyway. When I open it, it reads,
Feel better, Penny. We miss your wonderful performances—Ms. Taft
I grab a piece of lined paper from a notebook on the night table. Thankfully, when I flip through quickly, it’s blank. I write down a question.
1. Why did I quit theater?
I pause, and add another.
2. How am I friends with Kylie Castelli?
I have about a million more, but I want to finish opening the cards. I tackle the next one, in a pale yellow envelope.
Get better soon, Penny Pen! So glad you are okay—Lila
And then a blue one, after that:
Penny! You are amazing—feel better ASAP!—Eve
Lila Suffolk. Eve Dennings. What the hell happened in a year?
I open the last card and on the front is a weird symbol that I don’t recognize right away: a white circle against a red background with a lightning bolt through the middle. It looks like the card is handmade. Inside is a message in a messy scrawl I recognize right away even though there was no writing on the front of the card.
Do you think you’ll have superpowers like THE FLASH? Get better soon, Berne.—Panda
He’s the only one of my old friends to send me a card.
I close my eyes, searching for something, anything. I want the memories to come back in a rush like they always do in the movies.
I reread the cards.
My eyes tear up again, blurring the Easter egg–colored assortment of cards in my lap. My nostrils flare, which I hate because I know I’m really on the edge of crying and I’m tired of feeling sorry for myself.
I am going to be strong—Clytemnestra in Iphigenia strong. No, I’ll be Beatrice from Much Ado strong.
I am going to put on the new costume of my life and be grateful I’m alive.
The next day, I blink away the morning light, reach up my arms in a big stretch, and a surprising twinge of pain makes me pull my arms close to my ribs. I sit up quickly to find the source of the ache.
It takes a heartbeat of a moment for me to remember.
Vines and figures curl and tattoo my whole body up to my collarbone.
I look to the massive horizontal windows across the room and push up as fast as I can in my sore state. Something else is missing. There should be a mobile made of geodes in the center window. May made it for me in 8th grade. It’s hung in the window and glinted in the sunrise every morning since. I limp across the room and draw my fingers to the cool glass.
It’s gone. And so is the past year.
Where did I put my theater playbills? I scan the room and check under my bed, pushing aside a black globe and some winter sweaters. I look through my room once more, eventually stopping at my old porcelain dolls. They sit on top of my wooden trunk, not on top of the bureau like they used to. I walk toward the trunk, and lower myself to the floor.
I move the dolls delicately aside so they rest next to one another on the floor. I can’t help being gentle with my dolls, no matter how cheesy it is. The top of the trunk creaks open when I flip the latch. Inside the cavernous space are the photo albums, playbills, old scripts, and even parts of costumes from almost every play I’ve ever done. I sit back on my heels and the figures on my body burn from the pressure. All the photos of May and me are in here, hidden in the darkness of this trunk.
I pull out a scrapbook from eighth grade and flip through the pages.
Take a front-row seat! Ocean State Theater Company’s star Penny Berne shines as Dorothy.
This garden is flourishing!! Penny Berne as Mary Lennox is riveting!
I stop on a black-and-white newspaper photo of me in sixth grade when I was in A Christmas Carol.
I stay on the floor for a long time with the tattered ghosts of my old life.
Photos of May and me sit on the floor near my fingertips. I still know her phone number by heart. It’s the password for all of my accounts. My brain knows that number. I grab my new cell and turn it on for the first time. It updates with all my old contacts.
I hope to see May’s name pop up in my texts. She and I used to exchange hundreds a day. Maybe she didn’t send a card because she’s been texting me. That makes so much sense. A dozen or so text message chimes come in quick succession right away, starting from the first few days I was in the hospital. My heart leaps.
LILA: Wish we could have seen you
KYLIE: Omg. I can’t believe the last thing we did was fight.
KYLIE: WHAT IF YOU DIED?
TANK: PENNY! Call me when u get out!
LILA: Dropped your homework at your house!
KYLIE: Penny, I miss you. I called the hospital!
EVE: Lunch is disgusting today. Do they even know what they are serving us?
EVE: Need my running buddy to burn off what I THINK are mashed potatoes!
PANDA: Holy shit, Berne. Your name is a pun!!
KYLIE: I’m sorry, Pen. For everything I said.
With the exception of Panda, I don’t know any of these people.
I let the phone rest in my lap and press my fingers against my temples.
The skin on my right leg burns where the first branch of Lichtenberg figures splits and etches out onto my thigh.
Above me in the long, horizontal window, lightning bugs bob in and out of the morning air. No—I’m never calling them that again. Fireflies. That’s their name from now on.
If I just keep my eyes closed and concentrate on my breathing, my arms won’t ache. My hand won’t contract and seize and these branches won’t crawl up and over my body.
Maybe if I close my eyes for long enough, none of this will have happened at all.
Once the texts stop coming in and it’s silent, I call May. It rings three times. I clench my jaw—too late now. Caller ID will definitely show who is calling.
May picks up.
I open my mouth to say something, but hello and sorry want to come out at the same time so I just croak.
“Penny?” She sounds surprised.
I swallow hard and just launch into it. “May, I’m freaking out. I don’t know what’s going on. I lost a lot of memories in the lightning strike. My mom told me we’re not friends anymore. I don’t remember.”
It seems to make sense that she be the first one I tell about my memory loss.
“Your mom told you?” She doesn’t follow what I am saying. Shivers run over me because I’m sitting in the midst of the scrapbook of our lives and I don’t know what to say to my best friend.
“A lot of things happened,” she says, and the tone of her voice, while soft, is guarded.
I want to say I’m sorry, but I don’t know how to say I am sorry when I don’t know what happened between us. I just miss her and the way she makes everything lighter, funnier even when I can’t see the humor.
“I know I must have done something really stupid. Like quit theater and let you all down,” I start to say, but May cuts me off.
“You think that’s what happened? You think because you quit theater that we all decided to stop being friends?” When she says it like that, I feel stupid for assuming so.
“I don’t know,” I go on. “I guess you guys had to pick up the slack or something. I just—” I am about to say, “miss you” when May says, “Look, Penny. I don’t want to talk about this when your memory is so messed up. It’s not right.”
“No, I have to know. I need to know why I have twenty get-well cards and none are from you, Wes, Panda, or Karen. Or why none of my friends came to see me in the hospital.”
She takes a deep breath. “Fine. You decided Kylie was a better friend to have. So you ditched Panda, Karen, Wes”—she pauses before she says—“and me. You wanted to party instead of be onstage.”
“I wanted to party? That sounds made up.”
“It felt like that to me for a long time too.”
A tear rolls down my cheek and I was so deep in her words I didn’t notice I was going to cry. I wipe my nose with the back of my hand, not caring that it’s gross and my skin is sticky. “But I don’t remember,” I whisper. “I don’t remember why”—I swallow hard—“we aren’t friends.”
May stumbles over her words and I hear things like, “secrets,” “popular,” followed by “you got kinda mean, people didn’t want to walk by you in the halls or sit near your crew at lunch.”
I don’t want to hear anymore.
“You were an ice queen all of a sudden—”
She’s midsentence when I hang up.
I lower my cell, placing it back on the carpet next to me. I hold down hard to turn it off so I don’t know if she calls me back.
I gently place the newspaper clippings and photo albums back into the trunk in the order I took them out, making sure to close the lid, sealing all the photos, the scrapbooks, and the memories back inside. I rest a shaking hand on top of the trunk. An ice queen?
“Penny!” Dad’s voice. “Kylie’s here.”
My stomach tightens when I hear Kylie say, “Thanks, Mr. B.” It’s so weird to hear her voice in my house. Now that I’ve heard it again, it’s definitely the same voice from the hospital corridor. God, I don’t want her to see the doll collection but my hand isn’t strong enough to get them all in and tucked away fast enough. I stand up from the floor and head back to sit at the edge of my bed.
I smell Kylie’s perfume first. The rose essential oil that I’ve coveted since freshman year is made bitter by the overwhelming taste of metal still lingering in my mouth. There’s a quick smack of Kylie’s flip-flops on the hardwood landing and they stop at my doorway. I haven’t covered my arms—it will be the first time anyone other than my parents and the people in the hospital have seen the strange burns on my body. I push up on the bed, scurrying to pull on the cardigan resting on my night table, but it’s inside out and I’m not fast enough to slip it over me.
Kylie steps into the room and before “hello” can escape her mouth, her tight puckered lips ease and part. There they are—the figures, twisting across my skin, and shiny from the oodles of burn cream I put on last night. I can’t hide my embarrassment.
But Kylie grins.
“Wow!” she says about the figures. “Pen, you are badass.”
“Thanks,” I say, not sure if that’s the right response. I cross the floor to my desk and place the weight in my heel so I am grounded as I walk. It doesn’t matter; my right foot drags a little anyway until I lean my hand on the back of the chair for support.
“You’re limping,” Kylie says. She tries to keep it cool, but it’s easy to see concern in her eyes.
“Thanks for trying to come see me at the hospital. I heard your voice, I think, in the hallway.”
“Ugh, I was so mad. They wouldn’t let me in the ICU.”
“I remember,” I say. “I remember that.”
“I was like, my best friend’s in there!”
Kylie plops down on my bed and leans back on her hands. She is in a black tank top and cut-off shorts. She has on what used to be white Converse sneakers but she’s drawn crazy designs all over them. My name is in block letters on the sides of the right shoe.
“So what are they?” she asks with a little lift of her voice, and nods to the branches. She is trying to be more casual now that she’s gotten over the shock of the figures, which I appreciate.
“Lichtenberg figures. They’re like bruises from where the lightning hit. They’ll fade eventually.” I wonder how many times I am going to have to say this when I get to school. Maybe not so many now that I’m telling Kylie. Her body language makes it obvious that she’s been here, at my house, in my room, before. I try to recall it, but I can’t. Nothing comes up.
Kylie takes a deep breath. “Look, I’m sorry about what I said at Tank’s party. It’s exhausting when you don’t tell me what’s going on. It’s like you keep all these secrets. . . .” She is talking so fast I have no idea what to say first or how to respond. She takes a big breath. “And I had to try to put it together on my own.”
Put what together?
“I watched you act all shady. Your mom would be drinking and you would act like it was no big deal. And it started me thinking about how I was acting. And I don’t want to be like that, you know? Closed off?”
I’m not closed off, I think, and tuck some hair behind my ears. The spot where the IV was is still tender. Kylie thinks we’re friends. She knows about Mom’s drinking. She doesn’t know about my memory yet. I have to tell her something.
“So when you were being all dodgy, I just snapped.” She exhales really sharply. “Sorry,” she says. “I’ve been wanting to get that out forever.”
“I’m sorry too,” I finally say. “For whatever I did. But . . .” She looks up at me, waiting for me to finish. “I don’t actually know what I did.”
“What do you mean?” She grins. “Too drunk to remember the party? Maybe I was wrong about one and done?”
“No,” I say, and I want to pace but my numb foot makes it hard to talk and walk at the same time. “Not just the party.”
“Oh, I bet you can’t remember the night of the strike. They say that can happen after traumatic accidents, right?” Kylie asks.
Kylie’s eyes follow all of my movements and I don’t want to lie to her.
“It’s a lot more complicated than that,” I say.
“What do you mean?”
I can’t explain it but I feel like I owe her the truth. “I can’t remember anything from the last year. Since last May, actually.”
Her grin fades. “What are you talking about?”
“The lightning . . . it affected my memory.”
She frowns and it makes her features sharp. Thick mascara is the only makeup she seems to be wearing. She blinks hard and her mouth makes a tiny O shape as she understands what I am saying.
“May of last year?” she repeats. “Like before eleventh grade?” Her voice rises an octave.
I taste metal more than ever. I want lemonade or a lollipop.
She crosses her arms over her chest. “You don’t remember Tank’s party?”
I shake my head. She doesn’t want to believe it.
“The Howl shows at the Joint?”
Again, no.
“My house? Pool parties? Riding around on Tank’s tractor? Smoking weed in Patelli’s basement?”
No. No. No. No. No.
“Fuck!” she cries. “Do you remember being friends with me?”
I whisper it this time. “No.”
She flinches at my response and stands up. My shame sits on my shoulders.
“I’m sorry,” I say, because I am. I’m so sorry.
Perfect, popular Kylie Castelli’s eyes tear up and she looks down at the bedspread.
“You don’t remember being friends.” She has her hand over her mouth. It’s only then that I see she’s wearing a ring, a thin silver band with a small blue stone. It’s identical to the one I’m wearing. They gave it to me at the hospital but I hadn’t thought much of it. I assumed it was a gift from Mom and Dad.
If I try really hard, maybe something will come, some shred of memory from the past year. I will it from the darkness. I struggle for any clue, but my mind is pitch-black and I can’t find my way to the light.
My legs aren’t strong enough, so I have to sit down. I grip the bedpost with my left hand. I have to press my heels into the floor to steady myself. If I grip too tight I might set off a spasm.
“I don’t know what happened. Or why I stopped hanging out with my friends.” I quickly rebound when she flinches. “My other friends. You know, May Harper, Panda Thomas, Wes Peterson . . .”
Kylie’s frown sets even deeper. “You said you didn’t want to be in theater anymore. That you wanted something different,” she explains.
I take a step closer to Kylie.
“When? When did I say that?”
She drops her eyes and searches the floor.
“All the time.”
“All the time?” I repeat. “I don’t talk to Wes? Or May? Or anyone from the theater?”
“No. Not really.”
“Why? There has to be some reason!”
She slaps her hands to her thighs. “God, Penny. I’m standing right here.”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. You’re right.”
After a moment she explains, “There’s not much to tell. My car broke down. You picked me up. I took you to Alex James’s party. That was the night we became friends—we’ve been friends ever since.”
“Alex James? The guy who always wears bright-colored Polos?”
“He asked you out right before Tank’s party. We were dying over it. Penny? Remember?” I don’t know what she reads from my expression but her eyes widen. “God, you really don’t remember, do you?”
“I wish I did. I remember you from school and stuff. It’s just . . . Kylie, I don’t know you.”
Kylie breaks into a sob and turns, running for the door. “I have to go,” she cries.
“Kylie, wait!” I call, and move too quickly. The screaming, needling pain blasts from the center of my right palm. The seizing comes in waves. The pain cuts off my words. The muscles in my palm clench so tight that my fingers are drawn together, straight and awkward. I have to bend over to tolerate the pain.
I yell out and fall to my knees in the middle of the room. My back shudders and my fingers close, pinching together tighter and tighter, until the fingertips touch. The spasms run from my neck to my tailbone.
I cry out and heavy footsteps run up the stairs. Not Mom’s, but Dad’s.
“It’s okay,” he says, and wraps his hands around me to steady the pain. “It’s okay, Penny. Just breathe.”
But I can’t.