Under the Light - By Laura Whitcomb Page 0,26
waved his hand in front of her then, as if erasing the last remark. “Sorry. Rewind that.”
“Do you think shock can bring you back from amnesia?” asked Jenny.
“Sure. I guess.” He studied her for a moment, not just her eyes. “It’s hard coming back.”
“Yeah.”
“Yesterday afternoon I felt like I was on the wrong planet.” He thought for a second, seeming haunted, then laughed it off. “I lay in the grass out in our backyard like an idiot, just staring at the sky.”
CHAPTER 11
Helen
SOME SORROW OR FEAR FLICKERED behind Billy’s eyes again, but he reined it in. “I felt like one of those animals that wakes up in the zoo after the tranquilizer dart wears off. ‘Hey, man, where’s my jungle?’” Billy used a comical voice for the animal, then looked embarrassed. “I mean, I wanted to come back and see Mitch again, but I felt like I’d left something behind somewhere else.”
“You did lose something,” Jenny said. “You lost time.”
“Yeah. Missing time and my memory,” said Billy. “Like, I don’t remember what I said or did that made you like me.”
Jenny’s cheeks and throat burned pink. Billy wasn’t James, but he had his own charm.
“Bet you don’t either,” he said. “I get the feeling if you got a do-over you wouldn’t hook up with me again.”
“Why do you say that?” Jenny asked.
His expression was not unkind. “Maybe I was less geeky during my blackout, and maybe you were temporarily insane while you had amnesia, but girls like you don’t even start conversations with me.”
Billy would have been shocked to know how appealing James had been in his “Billy” disguise and how mad I truly had been to be with him in my “Jenny” mask.
“Are you saying I’m stuck-up?” Jenny folded her arms at him, looking a little like Cathy. “If you can’t remember me, how would you know what I’m like?”
“I said I don’t remember hooking up with you,” he pointed out. “I didn’t say I didn’t remember you. I’ve been going to the same school as you since fourth grade.”
Jenny dropped her defenses. She tucked her legs up under her on the edge of the bed. “We were never in the same class in elementary school.”
“We had the same recess sometimes,” he said. “We took the same bus for a while.”
“Okay,” she said. “You knew I existed. But you didn’t really notice me.”
“I did so, but it’s not like I could just walk up to you and start cracking jokes.” When she looked unconvinced, Billy said, “You don’t believe I knew who you were? You sat in the front on the left in Mr. Fancher’s class.”
I could see that he was right. Jenny looked startled.
“One day during lunch when they were showing a movie in the library on one of those crappy old TVs, you were walking past the building and you stopped and watched through the window. It was some ballet thing.”
“The Red Shoes.” Jenny looked curious now. “Where were you?”
“Detention, in a folding chair outside the principal’s office.”
She smiled.
Billy looked determined now to prove her wrong, and it touched me that he had gathered and held so many memories of her.
“One day in the hall in seventh grade,” he told her, “you looked really sad and you dropped your math book and I almost reached down and got it for you, because you took so long to pick it up yourself, but my friends were with me.”
“You must’ve noticed lots of girls,” said Jenny.
“You were different,” he said. “You were mysterious.”
“Yeah, right.”
“I caught you in your lunchtime Bible club, or whatever it’s called, looking at the sky when everyone else had their heads down and their eyes closed. I wondered what you were seeing that they couldn’t see,” said Billy.
Jenny rubbed her arms as if she was chilled. I felt then like an intruder. But I was compelled to listen to this unfolding of their childhoods.
“I knew you,” Billy told Jenny. “You’re the one who never noticed me.”
“I did,” she protested. “I remembered your name, didn’t I?”
“You know, you don’t have to say hi to me at school, if you don’t want to.”
Jenny sat up straight. “What are you talking about?”
“At school people might think we’re going out, but it’s kind of like we’re just meeting for the first time here, so don’t feel like you have to stay friends with me.” Billy held up his hands as if to say there were no strings attached. “Everyone will just assume you dumped me.”
“Do you want to break