The Memory Jar by Elissa Janine Hoole

Author:Elissa Janine Hoole
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: elissa hoole, alissa hoole, alissa janine hoole, memory jar, ya, ya fiction, ya novel, young adult, young adult novel, young adult fiction, teen, teen lit, teen fiction
Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide, LTD.
Published: 2016-02-16T05:00:00+00:00

Then

(To Joey)

I used to tease him about his indecision, give him grief about how I had to make all the choices all the time. He was a Pisces, you know. Is, I mean. Anyway, he couldn’t make a decision to save his life, his two-fish mind always swimming like mad in opposite directions. You’ve seen what happens when you take him to a restaurant he hasn’t been to before, a place where he doesn’t have a “usual order.” Torture. He stares at the menu in an agony of indecision, switching rapidly from choice to choice, and then he spends the whole meal regretting his choice. It made me absolutely nuts.

Once, I was helping him write a paper for his college comp class. It wasn’t anything difficult, but Scott wasn’t really the kind of guy who spent a lot of time writing. “That’s your thing,” he always said, and like a lot of people, he didn’t really trust himself when he wrote. I sat on the foot of the twin bed while he swiveled crazily in the chair, balancing the laptop on his knees. We were alone in his room, a luxury born of Dani’s ingenious lies, and I didn’t want to waste the whole time on a stupid paper.

“It’s just an argument,” I told him, but the screen in front of him remained blank. “Pick something you’re passionate about.”

He leaned back in his chair so that his head pushed up against my arm. “I’m passionate about you,” he said, and I guess it was a sweet thing to say, but for whatever reason it annoyed me, got me all prickly.

“So you don’t have any opinions? You can’t think of a single thing you stand for?” I pushed his head off me and sat up straight, getting angrier by the second but unable to pinpoint why. Scott raised his eyebrows, but I didn’t stop. I frowned and stood up, started pacing the narrow space between the two beds and listing controversial subjects. “Immigration reform, gun control, biological warfare, privacy on the Internet. Vaccinations. Global climate change. Metal detectors in schools, whatever. Just pick a stupid topic,” I said. I stopped in front of him, my hands on my hips. “You can’t write a paper about me.”

I don’t remember much more of that night, only that moment of frustration when I stood in front of Scott and told him he had to find something other than me to feel passionate about, like couldn’t he have written about hockey, or hunting, or something else he liked? It was claustrophobic, in a way, this idea that his world was narrowing down to a single focus, but a couple weeks later he showed me his paper. It was passable—it had a thesis and unobjectionable structure. But the thing that caught me off guard was the argument he’d finally decided on. The title of the paper: Does True Love Exist?

Scott’s position was yes, and I was his proof. Even now, thinking of that paper embarrasses me.

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