“I guess.”
“Huh.”
“Yeah.”
Finn’s first instinct turned out to be right. From that day on, she could feel memories everywhere she went. At school, on the playground, between the dim library stacks. Bathrooms in particular were a hot spot for bad memories. It’s where people came for privacy when they needed to cry. Finn couldn’t walk into a stall without feeling like Moaning Myrtle was in there with her. Zadie assumed she didn’t like bathrooms because of the decades’ worth of smells, which is why she sometimes called Finn’s gift “Smell-O-Vision.”
During the years that followed, Finn got used to the “echoes.” They weren’t usually complete memories, just sensory fragments: the sound of a doorbell, the drag of water running through hair, the sour scent of newly laid mulch. Most of the time, Finn had no idea whom the echoes belonged to. But sometimes, if she held the echo in her mind long enough, she could pull on the thread and glean a little more information about the original owner. It wasn’t something she did often, because she sometimes discovered things she would have preferred not knowing. It was for this reason that she linked her pinkie finger around her sister’s and repeated after her, “I promise to never use my ability on you.” To this day, she’d held true to that promise. They both had.
Finn…Kathy was calling her name, but her voice was mostly drowned out by the sound of firecrackers from last year’s Labor Day picnic.
Hey, Finn!Kathy was now looking directly at her. Finn hadn’t yet told her foster family about her echoes. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust them. She just couldn’t imagine a universe in which they took her at her word and didn’t ask a million probing questions and didn’t spend an hour on the phone with their psychologist friend, Greg, who didn’t set up an appointment for her with Greg’s colleague, Jill.
No. They couldn’t know. For now, at least, she would continue to let them believe she was just a spacey kid whose attention sometimes required a loud dog whistle.
Finn inhaled a deep pocket of air and let it out slowly. As shedid, the firecracker pops faded away and were replaced with a sound equally as jarring. “Finn!” Kathy shouted. “What do you think? Folding chairs or hay?”
Finn thought for a moment. “Why don’t you just put blankets on top of the hay?”
Kathy made a clucking sound with her tongue and fired a finger pistol at her. “That’s why you’re the high school graduate!” Then she turned back to the planner and said earnestly, “We’re so proud of her.”
Finn felt a pang of sadness. She loved her foster parents and wanted to make them proud, but implicit in their pride was the absence of her real mom. Nora was the one who should have been throwing her a graduation party. It probably wouldn’t have had a caterer or a hayride or more than twelve people in attendance, but it wouldn’t have mattered. They would have ordered pizza with extra cheese and hogged the karaoke machine until their guests got bored and left. That’s what they did for all of her birthdays growing up, and she would expect no less—or more—to celebrate her graduation.
For the last few weeks leading up to the party, Finn had fantasized that her mom would show up unannounced. Before she’d disappeared, they’d often talked about the things they would do once Finn turned eighteen: the trips they would take, the exotic food they would eat, the men they would trick into thinking they were wealthy socialites. It would be fitting that Nora would reemerge only weeks before her eighteenth birthday and whisk her away on some grand adventure.
In these fantasies, Finn imagined her mom showing up to her party wearing a hilarious disguise. Although she had a hard time picturing what Nora looked like under the neon wig and rhinestone sunglasses. Finn worried that her memory of her mother was beginning to fade. Did she take her coffee with milk or sugar, or milkandsugar? Was her hair naturally auburn or did she dye it that way? Was she tall or did she just wear heels a lot? What did her laugh soundlike? What about her voice? Would she even recognize her mom if she called her right now?Probably not,she thought. Finn was scared that what memories of her mom she had left, she’d made up to make herself feel better. Sad kids have some of the best imaginations.
“Thanks for the help, Finny.” Kathy sidled up to her and squeezed her around the shoulders. Milly’s tail thumped on the grass.
“No problem. Just don’t use my comforter. I don’t want hay in my bed.”
“I would never. I’ll use Steve’s sleeping bags.”
“That’ll be a fun surprise for him the next time he goes camping.”
“He probably won’t even notice. You know, I once found a pinecone in there. Flat as a flapjack, like he’d slept on it all night. Can you believe that? Apinecone.”
“Nope.” Although Finn had seen Steve sleeping on a pizza box once, so maybe she could.
Kathy gasped and touched the brim of Finn’s sun hat as if she had just noticed its presence (even though she had ducked under it to give Finn a hug). “Love the hat, by the way. Very Coco Chanel. Did you get it for the party?”
Finn wasn’t exactly sure what Coco Chanel was, but it sounded fancy. She flashed a smile and said, “No, it’s for the trip.”
Kathy’s tone flattened a little. “Ah. Right. The beach.”
Finn knew her foster parents weren’t thrilled with the idea of her taking a trip with Zadie. For reasons she didn’t completely understand, the three of them had never gotten along, so it had taken some convincing to get her foster parents to agree to it. They said yes on the condition that Finn text them every day and call them immediately if Zadie tries to offer her any “age-inappropriate substances.” Finn had to bite her lip to stop herself from laughing. She opted not to share the fact that she’d already partaken in such substances without Zadie there to offer them to her.
“Well, you look just like Audrey Hepburn,” Kathy said, shrugging one shoulder to her chin like a starlet from old Hollywood. Finndoubted the accuracy of that statement, mainly because Audrey would never pair her hats with Hawaiian-print board shorts.
“Well, I should probably go get those sleeping bags.” Kathy gave Finn another quick squeeze. “Hey. Before I go… have you given any more thought to our offer?”
Finn stiffened. She’d thought about it a lot, but she hadn’t made a decision yet. On the one hand, she’d be lucky to have adoptive parents like Steve and Kathy. From day one, they never treated her any differently from their own son. On the other hand, she was still holding out hope that Nora was out there somewhere, making plans to return to her. The memory of her mom may have faded with time, but if there was one thing she was certain of, it was that her mom would never have left her daughters on purpose.
“I’m still thinking about it. Is it okay if I let you know when Zadie and I get back?”
Her foster mom gave her a muted smile. “Of course. And no matter what you decide, we love you.”
“Love you guys, too. And I think Iwillwear the sun hat to the party.”