The Guardians by Andrew Pyper Page A

anyway.”
    “So I don’t know how guys like you go about things.”
    “Well, let me tell you. I’m not flirting. I’m confessing. A man who thinks he can see someone in someone else, but is only dreaming.”
    “Memory lane.”
    “That’s it. That’s where I live these days.” My right hand fidgets at this, impatient at being still for the length of this exchange. “Trust me, I’m harmless.”
    “Trust you?”
    “Or don’t. Just know that a fellow doesn’t get to meet a true lady too often anymore.”
    She considers me another moment. Then, out of nowhere, she punches me in the shoulder. Hard enough that it takes some effort on my part not to let my hand fly to the point of impact to soothe the hurt.
    “Dad said you were pretty good. Back in the day.” She laughs.
    “Oh yeah? Good at what?”
    She laughs some more before ripping the receipt from the machine and sticking her pen between my trembling fingers.

MEMORY DIARY
Entry No. 8
    Over the days that followed the night we found Heather Langham in the Thurman house we repeatedly reminded each other to act normal, a direction that raised questions in each of our minds as to what our normal might be. However I ended up resolving this, I considered my act a fairly accomplished performance. It certainly convinced my parents, classmates and, for stretches as long as a couple of hours at a time, even me.
    Sarah, on the other hand, was a more skeptical audience. Right off she noticed something had changed. I assumed her main concern was that my feelings for her had waned, in the way Carl’s did for the girls he cast aside. With the benefit of honesty, I assured her that I loved her, that I was aware of howlucky I was to have her, that nothing had come between us.
    “This isn’t an ‘us’ thing,” she said. “Something’s wrong with
you.
”
    I recall one lunch period when we drove out to Harmony with plans for what Sarah called, in a singing voice, an “afternoon delight.” But to my astonishment, my normally enthusiastic teenage manhood offered no response to her attentions in the Buick’s folded-down back seat. There were now two secrets I had to keep: I couldn’t tell Sarah about finding Miss Langham, and I couldn’t tell my friends about failing to get it up with a naked Sarah Mulgrave.
    I don’t remember us talking about it, huddled under a blanket of parkas, studying the patterns of frost our breath made over the windows. The significance of our skin against skin, dry and cool, was clear enough. Something had turned. And even though I was the one who knew what she couldn’t know, I couldn’t say how this knowledge had found power over us here, in our place, in Harmony.
    “You guys ready?”
    Her question, the first words spoken since I rolled onto my back in defeat, so clearly matched the current of my thoughts I worried I might have been speaking them aloud.
    “Ready?”
    “The playoffs. First game’s on Friday, right?”
    “Seaforth. Sure.”
    “Seaforth sucks.”
    “Shouldn’t be a problem.”
    “I said hi to the coach today at school. It was strange.”
    I propped myself up on an elbow. “How do you mean?”
    “I don’t know. I’m standing there, and he stops and looks at me like I’ve grown a second head or something. Made me feel like a freak.”
    “Sounds like he was the one being freaky.”
    “It was just weird.”
    “He’s a weird guy.”
    That’s not true,
I heard Sarah reply through her silence.
He’s the most not-weird grown-up we know
.
    I pulled my pants on. The denim hard and unyielding as wet canvas left to freeze on the clothesline.
    “We should get back.”
    “Back to what?” she asked, and we both laughed. What was funny was how only two days ago we both would have been certain of the answer, and today we weren’t sure.
    I can’t recollect exactly what people said over twenty years ago, even if I repeat their words into this Dictaphone as though I can. These moments are memories, and shifty ones at