He does. It’s quiet for a moment, except for the chorus of drunken guys belting “All the Small Things” coming from below.
“Whoa.” He’s reading from his phone. “Yeah, 62,210.” He returns the phone to his pocket. “That’s incredible.”
“It’s kind of cool, I guess,” I reply. “It’s definitely useful. Except, of course, when I unintentionally memorize conversations with people I’m definitely not into.” I elbow him and earn a laugh, low and soft. “But,” I go on, “having a great memory won’t change the world. It’s not like having a talent for inventing things or creating things. If I could exchange my memory for new ideas, for ingenuity, for dreaming new dreams, I would.”
“I don’t know,” Fitz says beside me. “Memory is more than just useful.”
The declaration hits me with guilty weight. This is a boy whose mother’s memory is going to disappear, and here I am telling him the things I’d trade for mine. I feel insensitive, helplessly ineloquent.
“Because memory is . . . it, right?” he says. “It’s who we are. It’s everything. Everything we love, everything we fear, everything we think is important or necessary or exciting. It all comes from what we remember. The compilation of experiences that constitute a person. Without them, we’re dreaming of nothing, working for nothing. We’re unable to love people because we’re unable to know people. We’re no one.”
“You can’t think that’s true.” I remember working on homework in the restaurant, walking home from school with Matt, smelling tamales from the kitchen on winter nights. They’re not me. Not the entire me. I want the chance to be more than the person I was yesterday, or the day before, or years before. In my family, memories are nothing but reasons to keep me who I’ve been. “Memory is part of who we are. It’s just not everything. We can’t re-create or relive things endlessly. I want my future to be bigger than my past.”
We’re facing each other, neither of us moving. The curiosity in Fitz’s eyes is gone. They’re haunted houses now, darkness behind broken windowpanes. He’s wrong to think memory is everything, but I understand where he’s coming from. While I might resent my family for wanting to tie me to home, I would be terrified to forget them.
I say nothing. I don’t know how to express to Fitz I don’t not understand his fear. I just wouldn’t know how to live with his fear either.
Finally, Fitz turns. He faces the night, his features hardened in contemplation. “Logically, I understand your point. I don’t know—I don’t want to be implacable. I just don’t know if I have the kind of future you do.”
I want to tell him we both can have whatever futures we fight for. My situation is nothing like his, but I have my own forces pushing me not to leave home, forces I’m fighting so I can pursue what I want. I don’t know if he’s ready to listen, though, or if it’s even my place to say.
“Implacable?” I say instead, wanting to ease the heaviness of the conversation. “What’s with the obnoxious vocabulary? First, you use compunctious without flinching. Now implacable? You talk like the thesaurus function on Microsoft Word.”
Fitz laughs, and I feel his relief that I changed the subject. “I like words,” he says simply. He pats his front pocket, where I remember he’s put his book. “It’s why I travel with this.”
“Your book?” Without thinking—because I know what I would and wouldn’t do if I bothered to think—I reach over him. The gesture is not wholly unflirtatious. My chest touches his forearm while I pull the book from his pocket, and I disregard the heat in my cheeks, knowing it’s only a reaction to my own boldness. Nothing deeper.
Fitz goes completely motionless. The little clouds of his breath disappear while I reach over him.
I hold the book into the light from the street to read the cover. “Bishop’s Dictionary of Unconventional Usages. Huh.” I open the book, hearing Fitz release his breath beside me. “Unconventional usages,” I repeat. “Why didn’t they just put obnoxious words for impressing girls?”
“I thought you weren’t impressed,” Fitz replies.
I turn away to hide my grin, but poorly. “I meant trying to impress girls. Obviously.”
“Obviously. Right.”
I shake my head with pretend scorn. “No, really,” I press. “You travel with your own dictionary of unconventional usages because, what? You just like words?” I’m going for joking, but my voice won’t cooperate. It’s endearing, the way Fitz feels this passion deeply enough to physically carry it on his person. The idea of putting photographs of fascinating buildings in my purse, or downloading them to my phone, flits through my head.
“Yeah, pretty much,” Fitz’s voice cuts in. “My mom’s an English professor, and she has this policy that whenever we’re in a bookstore, whatever I want, she’ll buy. It’s . . . really generous. I mean, my family’s not . . .”
I nod, understanding. “Yeah. Mine’s not either.”
“It’s meaningful, you know? I try not to overextend my bookstore requests. But this one day, I found the Dictionary of Unconventional Usages and flipped open to petrichor—I remember the exact page—and by the time Mom found me in the reference books, I’d been there for twenty minutes. The words just fascinated me. The world feels comprehensible when you can find the right labels for it.”
While he’s explaining, I feel my phone vibrate inside my coat pocket. It must be Matt. I texted my parents good night earlier—they’re in-bed-by-ten people and it’s nearly midnight—and I haven’t texted with friends recently. My heart does this unexpected lurchy up and down. I’m enjoying tonight. But obviously I want to find Matt. But I’m enjoying tonight?
I place the dictionary beside Fitz and unzip my pocket. He watches me pull out my phone, then looks away while I reply to Matt, telling him I’ll find him later.
“Hey,” Fitz says, his voice tentative but even. “Do you think a guy who dreads forgetting the past and a girl who’s focused on the future could, you know, be friends?”
I sit up, pulling my knees to my chest, and look out on the view. Providence glitters brightly, undimmed. A guy who dreads forgetting the past and a girl who’s focused on the future. We’re an improbable coincidence, he’s not wrong there. Two perfectly unlikely people to collide in cities like the one before us, buildings and boulevards bustling with people in motion. “I don’t know,” I say. “But no matter what, I won’t forget tonight. Or you.”
Fitz props himself on his elbows behind me and lets out an audible sigh. “High praise from the girl who remembers everything.”