Read Online The Forgetting Curve (Memento Nora) by Angie Smibert - Free Book Online

quietly.
    Aiden’s face looked like there was a tug-of-war going on in his brain.
    “Okay, give. What did they tell you about me?”
    “Truth? Mom said you were having paranoid delusions about your parents being gone. Crazy shit about the government taking them. That’s why you went to the hospital. That’s why Uncle Brian and Aunt Spring came home.”
    And why Aiden came home.
    Maybe I was crazy, but the whole Japan thing didn’t add up.
    I needed to hear it from Mom and Dad. I needed to hear it from my Sasuke-san, but Mom was still too mad at him to let me talk to him. Or any of my friends, for that matter. Micah would know if I was crazy. Velvet would, too, but this is more the kind of thing I would have told Micah. He does serious better than Velvet. But someone had blocked my calls to anyone who might have been able to back me up. So Mom and Dad would have to do.
    Aiden caught my hand as I pushed away from the table. “Winter, why did you send me that book?” he asked in a hushed tone.
    That snapped me out my spiraling thoughts.
    “What book? I don’t remember sending you anything.”
    Aiden glanced at the security cams hanging over the food court. I hadn’t really noticed them before.
    “Come to the car with me,” he whispered. “I’ll give you a ride home,” he added more loudly.
    The hummingbirds fluttered in my brain.

12.0
     

AN ENIGMA WRAPPED IN A LIBRARY BOOK
     
    AIDEN
     
    “You’re as bad as Micah,” Winter said as we walked through the security checkpoint into the parking garage. “Paranoid,” she clarified when I raised my eyebrow Dad-style.
    Maybe she was right, but I couldn’t take the chance that the security cams would pick us up.
    The universe muttered its agreement as a camera swiveled and followed us to the waiting car.
    We slipped into the back of the limo, and I flicked on the privacy screen between us and Jao before taking out the book.
    “Nice.” Winter grabbed the book from my hands. It was a book on kinetic sculpture, after all. She flipped through the first few pages, devouring the pictures as if she’d never seen them before.
    “I sent you this?” she asked.
    “Keep going,” I told her.
    She flipped through a few more pages before she gasped. She’d found the secret stash.
    “Recognize them?”
    She pulled out the Memento s and studied them. “No,” she said. She pressed one of the pages to her nose and inhaled. “Uh, I don’t think so, at least.”
    But I could see she was scanning that hard-drive brain of hers, looking for some lost bit of data. I could almost hear the clicking.
    “The work definitely looks like Micah’s, though,” Winter finally said.
    She reminded me that Micah is her homeless skater friend who draws. And who is evidently paranoid. Maybe rightly so.
    “He’s good,” I said.
    She nodded, flipping through the comics again. “These must be new. I don’t remember them, and he shows me everything. I mean everything .”
    “But you sent them to me.” I said it slowly so it would sink in.
    She shrugged helplessly. “Sorry.” She pulled out her mobile and showed me a pic of a curly-headed kid with glasses and a scruffy goatee. Micah Wallenberg, her contact list said. “His number is blocked on my mobile. Same with Velvet and the rest of my friends.” She sounded angry now. Aunt Spring must have done that in her motherly zeal to keep Winter safe. From what, I don’t know.
    “Let me try.” I spoke Micah’s name and number into my mobile. I got a weird message saying this person was unavailable.
    Then I tried Velvet. It connected, and I handed my mobile to Winter.
    “Velvet? I’m so glad to hear your voice! My mobile’s blocked. Hmm? This is Aiden’s. You know, my cousin. I’m okay. No, I’m restricted to the compound—” They chatted for several minutes at an even higher rate of speed. Then Winter abruptly handed the mobile back to me. “She wants to talk to you.”
    It wasn’t much of a two-way conversation. I did a lot