Unforgettable by Loretta Ellsworth Page B

though checking to see how she measures up.
    â€œWhat chance do we have to get someone like that anyway?” Roxie asks in a whispery voice. “Who’s going to support the Madison High Mental Club going up against a big company like Wellington Mines?”
    Gina opens her mouth, probably to say something about Oprah, but Eddie sticks a Frito in it. “She’s right,” Eddie said. “Nobody cares about what happens on the Iron Range. We’re at the mercy of the foreign investors.”
    â€œThe Department of Health,” I blurt out. I want to contribute, but my throat constricts at the thought of speaking up. I’m always worried I’ll mess up.
    â€œWhat about it?” Eddie asks.
    I look to Halle. She nods her encouragement. “If a study was necessary, it would be done by the Department of Health.”
    Eddie shakes his head. “If the Department of Health cared about us, they’d have done a study years ago. You’re on ‘The Range’ now. Blue-collar, beer-drinking, hell-raising miners and loggers who don’t matter shit to the rest of the world except for how much iron we produce. You ever hear of us in California? Did you even know what the Iron Range was before you moved here? No, because we’re in the middle of freakin’ nowhere, USA.”
    â€œLebanon, Kansas, is the geographic center of the United States,” I correct him.
    â€œWhat?” He stares at me as though I said I love Oprah.
    â€œDon’t harass the new kid,” Halle warns. “We’re not exactly garnering the support of our fellow students as it is.”
    She turns to me and whispers, “Lebanon, Kansas? Who knows that kind of stuff?”
    That’s nothing. I could tell her that I learned that piece of information on October 16 two years ago. I could tell her that I had toast with peanut butter and two glasses of milk for breakfast that morning and that a semi collided with a pickup truck and two cars thirty minutes later on the freeway east of our house. I could tell her the names of the three people who were killed.
    Shakespeare said that “ignorance is the curse of God.” He would have thought differently if he’d had my memory.
    It’s a problem of opening my mouth when I should just leave it closed. When I first met Dr. Anderson, I tried to impress him by memorizing pages of the phone book in his office.
    â€œHow do you do that?” Dr. Anderson asked.
    â€œI see them in my mind,” I told him.
    â€œI don’t think you have a photographic memory, but you do have an amazing ability to remember.”
    â€œWhy isn’t it photographic?”
    â€œWell, lots of people claim to have a photographic memory, but no one really does.”
    â€œI do,” I insisted, as though I’d been presented with a challenge.
    So Dr. Anderson did perform one test on me: the random dot stereogram test. He showed my right eye a pattern of ten thousand random dots, and the next day showed my left eye a different dot pattern. I mentally fused the two and saw an image of a three dimensional dinosaur, like one of those magic 3-D pictures that you have to cross your eyes to see. Afterward, Dr. Anderson said I had an authentic photographic memory.
    I’d puffed up when Dr. Anderson had told me I was the only person who’d ever passed the test. He said it was a special gift, like having absolute musical pitch.
    But someone with absolute pitch would know better than to belt out the lyrics of “Hey Jude” in the middle of the Environmental Club meeting. Why didn’t I have that filter?
    â€œBaxter is right,” Roxie says. I’m surprised that her soft voice holds that kind of strength. “Look at us. We’re a group of five. How much pressure can we put on Wellington Mines? But the Mesothelioma Research Association looks at these problems. They have some kind of environmental competition every year for school