“It sounds Russian,” he says, typing the word into his phone. “Says here it means ‘traitor.’ ”

They both wait for me to explain. But all I can hear is the angry man shouting that Gram is a traitor as we run away.

14. Basal Ganglia

Neurons are nerve cells that help the brain communicate with the body. There’s a group of neurons that are hidden deep in the brain called the basal ganglia. Gram puts basil in her spaghetti sauce, and Dad says my legs are gangly, so I imagine this part of my brain as spaghetti noodles clustered together, helping me figure out how to move my feet and hands after I’m hit with the memory of this man shouting at Gram.

“When I was five,” I say, glancing up at Max, “I remember Gram meeting with a man. He kept shouting ‘izmennik’ to her. We were in the woods, and I remember running and Gram crying.”

“Holy crap,” Olivia mutters. “You were on a mission with her!”

“It was probably a meeting with her handler,” Max says.

“What’s a handler?” Olivia asks, starry-eyed. She looks at him like he knows everything.

He keeps his gaze on me. “A handler is the person who makes sure the spy is doing their job and tells them what the next one is. It’s important to help keep the deep undercover agents from forgetting their jobs.”

Suddenly, Gram being a spy doesn’t seem so far-fetched anymore. Could Max and Olivia really be right? And if that Russian man in my memory really is Gram’s handler, what will he do if he finds out she’s losing her memory?

“What do they do if agents stop wanting to, you know, spy?” My thoughts are spiraling, and I can barely keep up.

“Silence them forever.” Olivia slices a finger across her throat. “That’s what happens in movies.”

The panic I’m feeling must be written all over my face because Max frowns at Olivia. “Don’t worry about that right now,” he says in the same gentle voice he uses with the horses. “Can you remember what woods you were in when the man chased you?”

I close my eyes and freeze the picture of Gram and me running. I examine the trees and look for something I recognize. There’s a small sign near a bubbling creek.

My eyes fly open. “Samuel P. Taylor Park. We were by the creek.”

“Okay,” Max says with a quick laugh. “That was fast. Are you sure?”

Olivia snorts. “If she says so, then it’s true. Her memory is amazing.”

My stomach clenches at her words. She doesn’t have any idea how “amazing” my memory really is, that I could tell them what I had for breakfast the day the Russian stranger yelled at us, or that we went to the nursery and bought seeds for Gram’s garden. How would they look at me then?