Read Online Escape from Memory by Margaret Peterson Haddix - Free Book Online

And your brain is already … occupied? Is that the right word?”
    I shrugged. “Can’t you just tell it the best you can?”
    I was surprised to see tears in Aunt Memory’s eyes.
    “But it is sacred….”
    “So Romans settled Crythe,” I prompted, suddenly terrified that Aunt Memory might shut off the explanation. I couldn’t really believe that the Roman Empire had anything to do with Mom’s kidnapping—or my own. But I had to keep Aunt Memory talking.
    “Yes,” Aunt Memory said. “Outside Crythe, most people have forgotten what the Romans excelled at.”
    “Building aqueducts?” I guessed wildly. “Fighting wars?”
    “No, none of that,” Aunt Memory said impatiently. “Remembering.”
    I stared at her blankly.
    “Paper was scarce, and they had a complex society. The petty bureaucrats would memorize tax documents. Their poets could recite long epics by memory. They schooled their children in methods of memory almost entirely forgotten in modern times. And in the supreme act of memory, in 447 B.C. , the orator Simonides remembered all two hundred and forty-one guests at a dinner party after they were killed by a falling ceiling. He’d been at the party earlier, then stepped out briefly. When he returned, everyone was dead, crushed beyondrecognition. But he identified them. Think if they had died unknown.”
    They were dead either way
, I wanted to say. I didn’t dare. Aunt Memory was clearly crazy. She had a strange glint in her eye all of a sudden.
    “This is your memory your heritage, your past,” she chanted. She nudged my arm and hissed, “Say it after me!”
    “This is your—,” I began.
    Aunt Memory frantically shook her head. “This is
my
—” she prompted.
    Halfheartedly, I repeated, “This is my memory, my—what was it? My heritage. My past.”
    Aunt Memory frowned but went on.
    “And in Crythe the heritage was not forgotten. We are what we remember. We do not forget,” she said, still in that hushed, reverent voice.
    I was out of patience.
    “So you remember the Romans?” I asked. “That’s what makes Crythe special?”
    “No, we remember everything,” Aunt Memory said. “What we had for breakfast on our fifth birthdays. Every book we’ve ever read. Every conversation we’ve ever had. Every person we’ve ever met. Everything.”
    “Yeah, right,” I said, more rude than I normally would have been. She was even crazier than I thought. “Sure you do. What was the first thing I said to you?”
    “You said, ‘Who are you? What are you doing here? Where’s my mother?’ Then I said, ‘I am your Aunt Memory.’ Then you said nothing, and I said, ‘She didn’t explain? She never told you?’ And you said, ‘Who? Told me what?’ And then, ‘You mean mymom. You mean my mom never explained.’ And I said, ‘I mean Sophia.’ And you said—”
    “All right! All right!” I interrupted. Aunt Memory even had my inflections down. It was like listening to a tape. I blushed. “But that was just a couple of hours ago. Even I remember most of that.”
    “September, the year you were born,” Aunt Memory continued smoothly, “I met your mother and father on the street, and they were showing you off. ‘Best baby ever,’ your father said. And your mother apologized: ‘Don’t mind Alexei. Every father has to think that.’ And your father said, ‘But I’m the only father who’s right. Kira is the best baby in the entire history of the world. And I should know, because I’m the one who had to memorize all those genealogy charts.’ And, Kira, you were an awfully cute baby. You had on a pink eyelet dress and a little bonnet edged in white lace, with a satin ribbon under your chin. And you were cooing.”
    Aunt Memory could have been making it all up. I wouldn’t have known the difference. But it sounded so real…. I wanted to believe that my parents had thought I was the best baby ever.
    It was my turn to have tears stinging at the corners of my eyes. I tried to stay