“You want to try one?” Randy asked.

“Oh, no I don’t think so,” said Megan.

They weren’t disappointed about it, or outwardly happy. Megan stared at them while they were sitting in silence, Randy looking at the list and David looking at Randy. What’s in my Memory Palace? she wondered. A driveway. One with a basketball hoop on a pole. Megan was eleven and playing with her new friends. They grinned at each other and approached her, tied her to the basketball pole with two jump ropes, attached rollerblades to her feet, and then drew penises on her face. Her hair was dressed, then, with shaving cream.

Randy recited his list in the background.

They dragged her, on the end of the jump ropes, to a soft serve ice cream stand and forced her to order them all an extra large Twister with gummi bears. The guy at the counter was cute—though, in retrospect, he probably was not—and he pointed out to her that she had a penis and the words “I am gay” drawn on her face. As she had not yet learned to be self-deprecating, she had not handled herself well and she realized, just then on the couch, that she still held a burdensome grudge against those girls for what they had done to her.

She set down her beer and knew she was drunk.

“No, it’s cool, guys, I just did one in my head a second ago. A Memory Palace, I mean,” she said. This statement was unprovoked.

“Uh, ok,” said David. “Wanna do it for us?”

“Not really.”

“Aw, come on, why not?” said Randy.

“You don’t want to know what’s in my Memory Palace.” But since she was drunk and feeling moved by the re-discovery of the memory, she told them what she had just been thinking.

“That’s not really what a Memory Palace is,” said David. “That’s just a memory.”

“Well, it’s the setting of my Memory Palace,” said Megan.

“Yeah, but what were your items?” he asked. Megan looked at him. “And what’s the big deal, anyway? Everyone has bad middle school memories. That just sounds like a little bit of hazing.”

“Yeah, well that’s what you say,” said Megan.

Randy was annoyed with Megan for moodily describing past social disappointments. And he was well lubricated. “That’s not even the worst of Megan’s memories,” he said.

David laughed encouragingly.

“Honey, I’m surprised you didn’t choose your fourth grade living room as the setting for your Memory Palace,” said Randy.

“What happened?” said David.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said  Megan.

“You know, honey, the time your parents caught you masturbating to cartoons with that—what’s it called?—that Dizzy Doodler.”

David spit out his laugh. “What is a Dizzy Doodler?” he asked.