Unforgettable Read Online Free Page A

has always been a problem for me. But the Memory Boy persona is not what I’m aiming for at my new school.
    Ninety seconds later, which always seems longer when you’re sitting on a bus with the driver shooting daggered looks back at you, two figures hurry down the road, waving their arms and jostling backpacks.
    â€œYou’re late,” the driver says when they finally make it to the bus. “Next time I might not be here waiting.”
    I just shake my head. The driver’s voice is sour milk.
    â€œSorry,” the girls say in unison, but they’re smiling. The bus lurches forward and the girl in the white jacket almost falls on top of me. The bus driver smirks in the mirror as they land in the seat behind me.
    â€œThat guy is such a jerk,” one of them says.
    â€œI hate riding the bus,” the other one says.
    I turn around. “He wanted to leave you, but I made him wait.”
    â€œThanks,” white jacket says. “You’re new, aren’t you?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œYou’re a freshman, right?” the other one asks. Both of them have straight, brown hair and identical jackets, but her jacket is black.
    â€œYeah.” I want to say that I’m from California because that might impress them and God knows I need to say something impressive to make up for yesterday, but then they might ask what school I went to before or why I moved here and pretty soon I’d be telling lies upon lies, and I hate lying. I’d have to remember the lie forever and that goes against my grain of remembering things accurately.
    â€œCool. I like your tan,” she says, then they start talking to each other like I don’t exist. After feeling awkward for fifteen seconds, I turn back around. I could tell them that the bus was three minutes early today and that they might need to start out earlier tomorrow or the same thing will happen again, but I don’t say anything. Being a know-it-all never helped me win a lot of friends back at Pascal Elementary.
    I haven’t made a ton of friends yet, but it’s only the third day of school. Brad Soberg sat with me at lunch the first day, and yesterday a guy I remember from Geometry roll call as Bennet comma Kevin sat across from me. “How’s it going?” he said, then ate the rest of his chicken sandwich in silence.
    It’s not like I thought I’d be one of the cool kids. Well, maybe that possibility made a cameo in my mind when I imagined this new life in a town that’s less than a hundred miles from the Canadian border. I thought that being from the land of movie stars and beaches might make me at least appear to be cool. But the first day of school erased any hopes of that happening when I saw the football and hockey jocks pushing freshmen guys in the hallway, and some of those freshmen guys had forty pounds on me and wore letter jackets.
    Now I’ve readjusted the dream to just fitting in and having a few friends and not thinking about Dink, if that’s even possible. And not letting anyone find out about my past or my memory. Reinventing yourself is harder than I thought, especially when you don’t like to lie about your past. And especially when the past keeps getting in the way.
    But hope springs eternal, and today I’m seeing Halle Phillips again.
    Halle Phillips, who once brought a shark tooth for Show and Tell from her trip to Florida, then a postcard from that same place the next day, and the following week she brought a picture of her grandpa, and after that her favorite candy—green jelly beans, which she shared with our class; and … my head swims as more memories fight their way up. I focus on my watch, staring at the dials like Dr. Anderson taught me until I can push the memories back down. Sometimes it works. Other times it’s like trying to turn off a running faucet by using a broken spigot.
    When I look up I’m the last one on the bus. The driver is