The Memory Jar by Elissa Janine Hoole Page A

thinking he’d betray my confidence like that. But after all, as recently as a day ago he was basically accusing me of murdering his brother. Attempting to murder.
    â€œSo.” Joey speaks into the room, which has fallen into that tired hush of people who’ve been spending a lot of time talking to each other in waiting rooms. “You guys could go take a walk or something, and Taylor and I could talk to Scott a little bit.” It’s the kind of thing I would never say to them, but the only way I’ll ever get a chance to be alone with Scott again.
    His parents sort of nod their heads and murmur their goodbyes and slip out of the room. Scott’s dad rubs his mom’s back as they walk toward the elevators, and it’s the sweetest thing. It’s the kind of thing Scott would have done for me. Caring. Selfless. This whole family is pretty much intolerably good. Even Joey, who walks his sister down the hall and gives me a moment alone with his brother.

Then
(To Scott)
    I put my mitten back on, and the damage was done—the ring was on my finger. I don’t mean that, Scott. I don’t mean that about the damage. I didn’t know what to do, okay? How can anyone expect me to know what to say about marriage when I’m barely seventeen years old? Did you even know what I wanted out of life? Did you know what my dreams were? Did you know what you were asking of me?
    I remember the mitten, I remember you holding me and me letting you, and you were warm and it was getting dark and then it was really dark, and there was no moon and the snow was freezing my feet and we sat on that chair so I could put my feet up to the fire as it died, but I wanted to go home.
    I wanted to be alone, but not this alone, okay? It’s the way I am; I need time to process things, and there was a lot to process. I asked you to bring me home and you said you would. I don’t remember.
    I can’t remember.
    Or maybe I won’t remember.

Now
    Joey comes back into the room, sliding into his dad’s seat by Scott’s left hand. He says hello, chats his brother up like it’s a normal day. I lean back into the chair on the opposite side of the bed, but I’m watching Joey, not Scott.
    â€œYou’re good at that,” I say after a while. “You’re good at talking to him so naturally.” He’s calling his brother back, over whatever time and space is squished up in between the impact of that ice and a few ounces of gray matter. “You’re talking to him like he’s the same.”
    Joey smiles. “I read this thing once about the guy who did the voice for Bugs Bunny, you know? ‘What’s up, Doc?’” Joey holds an imaginary carrot in his hand and makes this face that’s so hilariously similar to Bugs Bunny in that scene that I burst out laughing. “No, seriously,” he says. “The dude got into a car crash or something, and they couldn’t get him out of a coma or whatever until some doctor called him Bugs or something, and then the dude sat right up and started living again, his normal self.”
    We fall silent at that and turn our expectant attention to Scott, who does not sit right up and start living again, his normal self. There’s a long moment of quiet, and then Joey does the Bugs Bunny thing and we both burst out laughing. I look around and I realize, this is a memory I want to put in my memory jar.
    â€œI have a story for you,” says Joey after a while. “For Scott, I mean.”

Then
(Joey)
    That summer we were in Idaho, when Scott was nine and I was six, we played baseball every day all summer long at the school ball fields, up the hill and across from the old cattle-feed warehouse. Scott and his friends, they never let me play unless I did what they said. Monkey Boy, they called me, and they would make me climb to the top of the dugout, or up to the top of the chain-link fence behind home plate. They used