By Christopher Thomas 

Everybody was in the school production of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’. By that I mean all my friends were in the production; and by that I mean we all auditioned and everybody who didn’t get cast was in the backstage crew. I was Scout Finch, which is probably why I remember it all so much more than anyone else.

Six months later Sigourney Trinh was reading the squad list for hockey. “Why aren’t you going to state trials?” she asked. “You’re the freak with eyes in the back of your head. How come they left you out?”

“I missed games at the start of the season for rehearsals, remember?”

“Yeah, so? I missed a game too ’cause of the play.” Sigourney was Mayella Ewell.

“But I missed three,” I said, “and we lost those three,” I muttered.

“I don’t remember that. Why did you miss three?” she scoffed, disbelieving.

“I was Scout.”

“Yeah, so?”

Six years later Marion Taylor was doing my makeup on the morning of my wedding. “This reminds me of ‘Mockingbird’, Mari,” I babbled. “You did my makeup then, too. I am so happy we’re still such friends after all this time.” I was feeling superb.

“What’s ‘Mockingbird’?” said Mari, pulling a face.

“‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, the play we did in high school,” I said (less than superbly).

“I wasn’t in the play,” she snorted.

“You did the makeup, I was Scout.”

“Who’s Scout?”

Have you ever had a conversation where someone has forgotten the events you are recalling, and they ask questions that imply it didn’t happen, and it sounds like they are trying to trick you, to make you contradict yourself, to prove you’re making it up?

No?

(Oh, wait. I see what you did there. Have we had this conversation before but I’ve forgotten so I’m behaving like it never happened rather than accepting you may have remembered something I didn’t and so you think we’re having one of those conversations right now?

No?)

So it’s just me then.