The Memory Trap

By Greg Koren

This afternoon, Henry Dunne will be suspended from his new middle school for something he didn't do.

This evening, the principal's beloved car will disappear for the last time, as if by magic.

And tonight, on a rain-swept street far from home, Henry and his friends will fight for their lives against a shadowy figure who destroys whatever stands in his path—even memories.

Tomorrow is still hours away.

For Henry, it may never come.

__________

Greg Koren (Do Over, 2016) has written a novel for middle school-grade readers that Kirkus Reviews calls "thoughtful and perceptive, with offbeat humor, twisty puzzles, and exciting action." The Memory Trap isn't just for young readers, though. It's for anybody seeking a smart mystery that celebrates family, forgiveness, and living mindfully.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 28, 2019
• ISBN: 9781543964912

Book preview

19

Chapter 1

Friday

1:20 p.m.

One second they were watching a tornado touch down in a field of corn, and the next they were watching a dark screen because, mysteriously, the TV turned off.

Ms. Chu tsk-ed, got up from her chair, walked over to the TV, and turned it back on.

The tornado was tearing up the cornfield. It was an awesome sigh—

The TV turned off again.

Huh? Ms. Chu said. She’d just sat down one second ago.

Sighing loudly, she got back up and turned the TV back on. She stood there a moment, watching to see if it would turn off again, but it didn’t.

She sat down.

It did.

Okay, she said, what’s going on?

Several kids snickered. This was the sort of thing that happened to Ms. Chu. The science teacher might know her way around the solar system, or a weather system, but she absolutely did not know her way around electronics.

Last week, for example, she’d said, Machines don’t like me.

Henry Dunne remembered her saying that. He’d been tempted to raise his hand and tell her electronic devices weren’t machines, and even if they did have moving parts, which they didn’t, they absolutely would not have feelings.

But of course he’d said nothing.

Henry hadn’t raised his hand since the first day of class with Ms. Chu, almost two months ago. On that fateful day, she’d stood behind her desk and listed off her expectations, beginning with, Come to class prepared, and ending with, No monkeyshines.

Henry hadn’t known what monkeyshines were, so he’d raised his hand.

Ms. Chu had run an index finger down her seating chart, then she’d pointed that finger at him and said, Henry, question?

What’re monkeyshines, Henry asked.

Mischievous activity, she said.

At Henry’s old school, monkeyshines were considered willful distractions, like talking to a neighbor or eating in class. But this was his new school, and that day almost two months ago had been Henry’s first day as a seventh-grader at Fountain Green Middle. He’d simply wanted to know what Ms. Chu considered monkeyshines, so they’d be on the same page.

Unfortunately, Ms. Chu hadn’t slept well the night before (she never did on the eve of a new school year), and the large latte she’d drank on the way to school hadn’t taken, so she’d been more than a little irritable.

Which is why, when Henry raised his hand that second time, she’d assumed he would ask what mischievous meant, and she’d let her irritation show. She’d tsk-ed and rolled her eyes. Then she’d said, It means fooling around. Do you need me to explain to you what that means?

Henry had been so embarrassed, he’d just said, No, thank you, and sat down. But that hadn’t been the end of it. When he’d spoken, his voice had cracked a little, and somebody had shouted, LOL!, and the class had erupted with laughter.

Henry hadn’t seen who’d shouted, and apparently neither had Ms. Chu, so she’d had nowhere to direct her scowl but at him.

* * *

For the fourth time, Ms. Chu turned the TV back on.

An animated graphic showing how the tornado formed was on the screen, and a man in voiceover explained that two air masses—one of warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico, and the other of cool, dry air from Canada—came together to create instability in the atmosph—

Stay, Ms. Chu said as she backed slowly away from the TV. Her hands were up and she made patting motions, like she was trying to pacify a wild animal. Staaay.

When the back of her knees bumped up against the seat of her chair, she sank slowly onto it. Down, down, down.

The TV changed channels.

The classroom erupted with laughter, just as it had on the first day of class, when Henry’s voice had cracked.

Henry didn’t laugh. He didn’t dare to. Instead, he pulled out a deck of blue-backed Bicycle playing cards (his faves) and practiced double lifts. He knew he was asking for trouble, but he couldn’t help himself. The cards calmed him.

That’s it! Ms. Chu said, launching herself out of her chair and charging over to the TV. She stabbed at the power button three times before finally hitting it. The TV turned off. Take that!

She crossed to the light switch by the door and flipped on the overheads. Then she crossed back to her desk. Get out your books, she said, and sat.

The TV turned on.

What the? She rose.

The TV turned off.

Ms. Chu froze. Her eyes narrowed and her lips cinched together like a drawstring bag.

Henry glanced up from his cards and saw the wheels in her head turning, turning.

Ms. Chu sat.

The TV turned on.

She stood.

It turned off.

Sat.

On.

Stood.

Off.

Ha! Ms. Chu shouted.

This time, the kids didn’t erupt with laughter like an overflowing volcano. They exploded like Mount Vesuvius. The loudest was a guy with dirty blond hair. He sat behind Henry.

Henry kept practicing with his cards. He knew that was asking for trouble because what was happening with the TV right now wasn’t a software glitch. It was the latest prank being played by the Joker, a phantom-like individual who had everybody at the school on edge, and whose calling card, unfortunately, was the joker from a deck of blue-backed Bicycles cards.

Henry knew that too, without a doubt, but he kept on practicing because he was careful, and because he couldn’t help himself. The cards calmed him. Their feel, their weight, the unlimited possibilities they represented. They were like a little world. A little world he could control.

* * *

Movement in the doorway caught Henry’s eye. Uh oh. The principal was standing there, frowning at Ms. Chu, who looked like a prairie dog, popping up and down the way she was.

Everything okay in here? the principal asked Ms. Chu. He was still frowning, but he was smiling too.

Yes, she said breathlessly. I think…I think I figured…something out.

What? asked the principal, whose name was George Pal.

Watch the TV. It’ll turn on…when I sit down.

Unfortunately, Ms. Chu was lightheaded from all the prairie-dogging, and instead of sitting squarely in her seat, she only grazed the edge of it, causing the wheeled chair to squirt out from under her and shoot across the room like a watermelon seed.

Ms. Chu fell to the floor, hitting it hard. She cried out in pain.

Principal Pal rushed over to her. Hey, he said to the class, which had gone Vesuvius all over again. That’s enough.

As he helped Ms. Chu to her feet, he swept a stern stare over the quickly quieting classroom. Every kid met his eyes except for one: Henry Dunne.

Henry had a deck of cards in his hands, and with his right hand he was turning over the top card, first from face down to face up, then from face up to face down. He kept turning the card over and over, smoothly and unhurriedly, as he watched it raptly.

Principal Pal wondered if Henry even saw Ms. Chu fall.

Henry had, but he hadn’t found it funny. He’d fallen like that five weeks ago, when somebody pulled the chair out from under him in the cafeteria, and he bruised a bone in his butt the school nurse called the coccyx. Aka the tailbone, she said.

Whatever.

All Henry knew was it really hurt! And it took almost two weeks to stop hurting!

So he hoped Ms. Chu was okay, he really did, but he also hoped she was embarrassed—as embarrassed as he’d felt in her class that first day of school, when all he’d wanted was to get along.

Henry’s head snapped back. The guy with dirty blond hair had kicked his chair.

Quit it, Henry said over his shoulder.

The guy leaned into his peripheral vision. He was smirking. Teacher’s talking to you.

Henry looked at Ms. Chu. Her eyebrows were raised, as if she’d just asked him a question and was waiting for his answer.

I’m sorry? he said.

Under normal circumstances, Ms. Chu would’ve interpreted what Henry said as a request for her to repeat herself. But these weren’t normal circumstances. She’d just cracked her coccyx and was in excruciating pain. She also suspected Henry of being the practical joker. So what she heard from him wasn’t a request, but an apology.

Don’t make me laugh, she said to Henry through gritted teeth.

Principal Pal, who was helping Ms. Chu from the classroom, tried to quicken their pace. Let’s get you to the health office, Lian.

Shame on you, Henry, she said as she hobbled through the doorway.

Lian, please.

Shame on you! she shouted from the hallway.

Henry looked at the cards in his lap, his face burning with embarrassment.

He’d wanted to get along. Now he wanted something else even more.

Two something elses, actually: he wanted to figure out who the Joker was, and he wanted to stop him.

Chapter 2

Before

The reason Henry wanted to stop the Joker was because, like Ms. Chu, almost everybody blamed Henry for the Joker’s pranks. And the reason they blamed him was because two things were always present at the scene of each prank: a joker card from a deck of blue-backed Bicycles, and Henry.

Henry had been in the cafeteria four weeks ago when the stink bomb went off. His tailbone had still been hurting, so he’d been leaning a little to the left as he ate his lunch, to take the pressure off the injured area. Lamont had been sitting next to him. They’d been talking about parkour, which was something Lamont was super into, when somebody stepped on the stink bomb.

A stink bomb isn’t really a bomb, with black powder and a fuse. It’s a small glass bottle containing a chemical that Henry later described to his parents as smelling like a bunch of rotten eggs stuffed into a sweaty sock and boiled in old aquarium water.

The Joker placed not one, but two stink bombs on the floor by the cafeteria’s cleanup station, innocently balled up in a paper napkin, and it was just a matter of time before somebody stepped on them.

That somebody let out a scream that gave Henry goosebumps. But before he could wonder what happened, the smell hit him.

He almost threw up.

Nobody had to tell anybody to evacuate. The cafeteria cleared out in seconds, and it wasn’t until later that the joker card was found, stuck to the ceiling over the cleanup station. At the time, nobody thought anything about it. It was a curiosity. How did it get up there?

Then, a week after the stink bombs, the Joker released dozens of crickets into the perpetual night of the school’s ventilation system. The noisy insects took it from there, crawling first into the drop-down ceilings, and then hopping down onto the heads of shrieking students and teachers.

It took days to get rid of the crickets, during which time their constant chirping drove everybody just about crazy.

When the joker card was found, folded into quarters and slid into the panel covering a large hallway vent, the connection between that card and the one found in the cafeteria was finally made.

At which point both Principal Pal and Henry realized they had a problem.

For Principal Pal, it was a practical joker running amok at Fountain Green. For Henry, it was a practical joker trying to frame him.

Common cause, different ways of looking at it. Different ways of dealing with it, too.

Principal Pal sent an email to the faculty and staff alerting them to the problem and asking them to keep their eyes open.

Henry told Lamont.

Lamont didn’t believe him at first, even after Henry pointed out the two things the pranks had in common: a joker card from a deck of blue-backed Bicycles, and himself.

Not true, Lamont had said, tick-tocking his freakishly long index finger in front of Henry’s face. The locust plague didn’t happen in one place, like the stink bombs. It was everyplace!

Henry had to admit his friend had a point, so he presented Lamont with his next piece of evidence: the large vent. It was directly across the hallway from his locker (the locker door that now bore the crude drawing of a three-pointed jester hat).

Lamont tapped his lips with his freakishly long index finger several times before declaring the closeness of vent and locker coincidental, and himself still unconvinced.

Which is when Henry presented the most convincing piece of evidence: the paper bag. He found it crumpled up and stuffed into the back of his locker shortly after the locust plague began. Inside the bag was a receipt from the town’s pet store for sixteen dozen crickets.

No way that’s a coincidence, Henry said, and Lamont agreed. I think the practical joker let the crickets loose over there—he nodded at the vent—then he disposed of the evidence by ditching the bag in my locker.

How he’d get your combination? Lamont asked. And how do you know he’s a he?

I don’t, Henry said, answering Lamont’s second question first. And I don’t know how he got my combination.

But he could guess.

* * *

Henry’s locker was at the end of a row. Which meant there was only one locker next to his, on the left, and that locker belonged to Brook Leahy.

Brook Leahy wouldn’t steal his locker combination for the simple reason that Brook Leahy wouldn’t waste her time on him.

She’d called him a know-it-all who thought he was better than everybody else.

This had happened about two weeks ago, when they were at their lockers, and with no warning she’d turned to him and asked if he wanted to see a card trick.

Henry had been surprised because he’d assumed Brook didn’t like magic. He’d assumed that because Brook was a girl, and girls in general didn’t seem to care for it. But his surprise had been of the happy sort, so he’d said sure, and she’d done a really easy card trick using a key card.

A key card is any card you secretly use to keep track of another card. For example, say you know what card’s on the bottom of a deck. Say it’s the Ace of Spades. You have a card freely selected and placed on top