Free Memento Nora by Angie Smibert Page B

spikes were red now. She didn’t look at me, but Micah did.
     
    “I told you to nip that in the bud,” Maia said as we sat down at our usual table. I knew she meant Micah.
     
    “There’s nothing to nip,” I said as coolly as I could.
     
    “Uh-huh.” She didn’t sound convinced.
     
    “Did you hear Zack Smith got suspended for making copies of that comic?” Abby asked. “The cops even thought he wrote it.”
     
    That made Maia laugh. “He couldn’t even spell memento .”
     
    “He’ll be okay,” Hunter said. “His mom’s a big wheel at TFC.”
     
    The conversation continued like that for a while. I didn’t say anything. The girls talked about several kids either getting detention (little d , the school variety) or suspended for trying to send Memento to friends. Maia kept looking at me. It wasn’t like me to be so quiet, I know, but I just didn’t feel up to the chatter. Then one of the guys from the next table said he’d heard Mike Delaney wasn’t here today because his folks had lost it when they’d found his copy of Memento . They were talking about putting him in private school.
     
    It was getting hot and close and way too noisy in the cafeteria. I told the girls I wasn’t feeling well and practically sprinted to the trash can to toss out my lunch. Scraping the lettuce and creamy French dressing into the smelly waste bin didn’t help. The room started to spin.
     
    “Are you okay?” a voice behind me asked. It was Micah. He slid his bloodred spaghetti into the trash.
     
    I had to get air. I made for the door out to the courtyard. The band geeks eat lunch out there. I headed for the big apple tree by the edge of the school grounds. The breeze felt amazing against my hot skin. I leaned up against the knobbly bark of the tree and watched the squirrels scamper and the blossoms begin to fall to the ground.
     
    Then I felt something cold being pressed into my hands. Micah was handing me a chilled bottle of water. I drank the whole thing in one big, greedy gulp.
     
    “It comes back up on you sometimes,” he said as quietly as the breeze rustling through the trees. “The things we’re supposed to forget.”
     
    I nodded. We sank down into the grass by the tree. I didn’t bother to see if anyone was watching us. It felt good just sitting there in the grass. With him.
     
    “It pisses me off.” I said it a little louder than I’d intended. “I don’t feel safe anywhere anymore. Not home. Not school,” I added at a slightly more reasonable volume. I thought about mentioning the move to Los Palamos but didn’t.
     
    Micah nodded. I told him about the dream I kept having. He nodded again.
     
    We sat there watching the squirrels chase each other along the security fence that separated us from the outside world.
     
    “Want to see where I feel safe?” Micah asked after a long silence. “You’ve got to swear to keep it secret.”
     
    I nodded. I couldn’t imagine where he’d take me, but I felt safe with him.
     
    He said it wasn’t far—and we needed a few hours off. We could be back in time for the car service to pick me up, same as usual.
     
    Believe it or not, I’d never ditched before; but getting out of school isn’t a problem, Micah explained as we went through the security checkpoint.
     
    “The corporation that runs this place just cares about liability on campus. They don’t want you to bring in anything disruptive or explosive—or steal anything expensive.” He stopped talking and smiled oh so innocently as the rent-a-cop scanned our bags.
     
    From the school we walked a couple of blocks, across an old pedestrian bridge that ran over the highway, and then another block to a place called Black Dog Architectural Reclamation and Bakery. The bakery part hung below the main sign on a painted wooden panel.
     
    “Your safe place is a junkyard,” I said, astonished.
     
    It was an old brick building with antique bathtubs and stone gargoyles in one window—and