The Forgetting Curve (Memento Nora) Read Online Free Page B

Where had they gone? Something in my head whispered, Japan . That didn’t sound right. The voice didn’t sound like mine, either. Where have I been that I’ve missed creating these sculptures? Hospital , the voice whispered again.
    I shook off the whisper. I didn’t remember being in the hospital. I remembered working on the Flailing Arm Windmill, waiting for Micah to come over. Or was I waiting for Grandfather to get home?
    I closed my eyes and tried to remember the first time I set foot in this garden.

     
    I could hear steps—no, running—shoes slapping in time, running in place, over this whirring sound in my head. Grandfather led me by the hand through the bamboo gate into this smooth oval of sand crisscrossed with gleaming bamboo walkways. The sand was bare, and the sun was bright overhead. He told me to be quiet, and he’d be back for me. I was scared, but I don’t remember why. I just remember the feeling—like something had been ripped away from me, or I from it. It was as if I had a big, gaping hole in the middle of me, and I just wanted to curl up and wrap myself around it, like a cocoon in the warm sun. I fought the urge for a while, listening for Grandfather or someone else to come, too scared to move. Eventually, I gave in to the feeling and fell asleep, my back pressed against the spot where the smooth walkways intersected. I dreamed of crazy, wonderful moving things growing in this garden.
    Later, Grandfather gently prodded me awake.
    “They’ve taken your mother and father, but you’ll be safe with me, Win-chan,” he said. “We’ll get them back.”
    Taken.

     
    I searched my brain for a memory of that word taken , of what had happened before I’d stepped into this garden, but it was like probing for a missing tooth with my tongue. It darted in and out of the empty space, finding only a hole where something solid should be.
    The step-whir sound came flooding back to me then, drowning out the whispers that said Japan and assignment . The sound sped up like the wings of a hummingbird inside my head. It was an oddly comforting sound.
    The hummingbird said it was all a lie. The voices lie.
    My sculptures agreed.
    I searched the gazebo and found the remote on the table behind the mask thing. I pressed the power button, and the Pawing Man slapped angrily at the water until it lapped up against the Shopping Bag Crab. The Crab crawled forward haltingly, weighed down by the bag it had made its home, only to falter at the top of the sand mound and slide back to where it started, defeated. The limbs of the Flailing Arm sculpture turned around their windmill, reaching for something at the apex, only to be dragged back down and around for another fruitless try. The cloth from the—uh, I wasn’t quite sure what I’d called this one, but it looked like sails—the Sail Thing quivered in the breeze but didn’t do much else. I remembered thinking about them, about making them into some sort of solar chime.
    I pressed another button on the remote. An eerie cacophony of low-fidelity sounds came from the canvas of the Sail Thing. Ringtones and other annoying electronic sounds mixed together to make my skin tingle. It wasn’t a soothing sound, but it captured a feeling I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
    Hummingbirds fluttered through my brain.
    I needed to tinker with something.
    My workshop off the garden was an old garage from back in the day before Grandfather’s car blew up. He’d never replaced the car. Bits and pieces of plastic, wood, and metal cluttered my workbench inside. Rusted pipes and a few sticks of lumber lay on the floor, pushed off to the side of the room. Richie’s backup guitar and amp rested on a side table. I guess I hadn’t gotten around to modifying them before I went to the hospital. (The hummingbirds fluttered at that word.) I know I had a bunch of old cell phones, but they seemed to have evaporated from the shelves. The ancient computer that anchored my garden network still