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Back Memories in the Drift Save as PDF
Chapters (39)
  1. TITLE PAGE
  2. COPYRIGHT PAGE
  3. DEDICATION
  4. CONTENTS
  5. CHAPTER ONE
  6. CHAPTER TWO
  7. CHAPTER THREE
  8. CHAPTER FOUR
  9. CHAPTER FIVE
  10. CHAPTER SIX
  11. CHAPTER SEVEN
  12. CHAPTER EIGHT
  13. CHAPTER NINE
  14. CHAPTER TEN
  15. CHAPTER ELEVEN
  16. CHAPTER TWELVE
  17. CHAPTER THIRTEEN
  18. CHAPTER FOURTEEN
  19. CHAPTER FIFTEEN
  20. CHAPTER SIXTEEN
  21. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
  22. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
  23. CHAPTER NINETEEN
  24. CHAPTER TWENTY
  25. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
  26. CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
  27. CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
  28. CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
  29. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
  30. CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
  31. CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
  32. CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
  33. CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
  34. CHAPTER THIRTY
  35. CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
  36. CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
  37. CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
  38. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  39. ABOUT THE AUTHOR

She shrugs, sticks out her bottom lip, and holds up her pointer finger. “One, I was born on February 23”—lifts the middle finger beside the first—“Two, I’m a pescatarian”—up goes her ring finger—“And three, my mom used a slingshot to take down a giant. But that’s not really about me, ’cept it is, kinda.”

The last one makes me pause, and my pen hovers above the page, my mouth opening to say something. She looks at me—blinking once, twice, behind the broken lenses of her too-big glasses—and I’m not at all sure how to respond. It’s a lot of information at once, so I dutifully write each one down before it slips from my head. I hear Maree pull in a sip of air like she’s going to say more.

“Only three?”

Her chin juts out when she leans over to read what I’ve written. She chews off a nail while she thinks, shrugs. “I guess,” she says.

I point to number two. “Pescatarian?”

“Yup, it means vegetarian ’cept I eat fish. My dad fishes all the time.” She rolls her eyes when she says all. “And I also think that killing animals is wrong, ’cept fish ’cause they’re so yum, you know? And there’s a lot of them, too, but killing animals isn’t okay. Especially baby animals.”

It’s a lot of information, but I jot a few notes under pescatarian because I think her social stand is sweet, if slightly misguided, and obviously important to her. My eyes slide over number three: my mom used a slingshot to take down a giant. It’s loaded with nuance, and I don’t have enough information to know exactly what to ask, but I take a stab at it anyway. “So what’s this about your mom and the giant?”

A smile spreads across her face, and she rushes to her feet. “Oh yeah, that’s the best one. I’m writing a book about it at school. I can read it to you when you come in to volunteer tomorrow.” She pushes a scrapbook across the table. “I’ll leave this here so you can stare at my face some more, and maybe it’ll burn into your brain like the camera does, okay?”

My fingers itch to turn back the pages of my notebook, to read everything we’ve done, to make my notes on this girl, to remember as much as I possibly can about her. Instead, I fold my arms over the notebook and take her scrapbook into my hands. “Thanks, Maree, I look forward to staring at your face.”

She giggles. “You’re funny.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Wednesday, February 13