Everything I Thought I Knew by Shannon Takaoka

Author:Shannon Takaoka [Takaoka, Shannon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781536216097
Google: NGfUDwAAQBAJ
Amazon: 1536207764
Publisher: Candlewick
Published: 2020-10-12T23:00:00+00:00

What makes us who we are? Do we actually have souls that exist apart from our flesh, blood, and bones? Or are our personalities determined by the cells that surge through our bodies and the codes embedded in our DNA? Where do our thoughts and memories fit in?

I think of all the bits and pieces of my existence that I have stored up over seventeen years. The things I’ve learned. The names and faces of the people I love. The feel of sand sifting through my fingers. The smell of the warm, freshly laundered sheets my mom used to dump over my head when I was little. My dad cooking pancakes and bacon on Saturday mornings. Running. Laughing so hard while sitting at Emma’s kitchen table that milk exploded out of my nose. The first time I saw snow. Where does all that go when we die? All of my memories, all the things I believe and know, all the colors that I’ve seen, all the voices and music and words that I’ve heard, the textures that I have touched, will they still exist somewhere out there in the cosmos? Will they continue to drift through time and space? Like waves?

I pull off the shirt I just put on five minutes ago and toss it on the floor. As I root through my closet for another, I decide that I hate every single item of clothing I own. I want something different. Something that will make me feel less . . . annoyed. Less unsettled. Less like this person caught in some weird limbo-land where nothing about me feels quite right. A new wardrobe. Maybe that will do the trick. I could get a cool haircut like Jane, put on a fabulous new outfit, and maybe everything will be better, like on one of those makeover shows on TV.

What would Sarah Harris wear? I say to the me who looks back from the closet door mirror.

Are her memories the ones that won’t stop living in my head? The tunnel. The hospital. The dog. Did she ride a motorcycle? Did she know the man who visited my room after my transplant? How old was she? I Googled her last night but didn’t come up with much. All the Facebook and Instagram profiles I found for “Sarah Harris” were for people who are currently active. So, unless she’s posting updates from the afterworld, they’re not hers. I also tried a number of different spelling combinations, all of which yielded similar results. It’s like she was a ghost, even when she was alive.

There is one more thing I can do on Monday: request a death certificate. Provided I’m spelling her name right, the Alameda County records department should have one on file, which would confirm the specific date and cause of her death. But, according to the county website, this will take at least a week.

In the meantime, I have five more days until I can get back into the medical records system with Jane.

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