The Archived Read Online Free PDF Page A

mother’s name is Allison) and P ’s (my father’s name is Peter) around the living room, but no B ’s. A sick feeling twists my stomach.
    “Mom!” I call out, pushing up from the bed and heading back down the hall.
    Dad is hiding out in a corner of the living room, a box cutter in one hand and a book
     in the other. He seems more interested in the book.
    “What’s wrong, Mac?” he asks without looking up. But Dad didn’t do this. I know he
     didn’t. He might be running, too, but he’s not leading the pack.
    “Mom!” I call again. I find her in her bedroom, blasting some talk show on the radio
     as she unpacks.
    “What is it, love?” she asks, tossing hangers onto the bed.
    When I speak, the words come out quiet, as if I don’t want to ask. As if I don’t want
     to know.
    “Where are Ben’s boxes?”
    There is a very, very long pause. “Mackenzie,” she says slowly. “This is about fresh
     starts—”
    “Where are they?”
    “A few are in storage. The rest…”
    “You didn’t.”
    “Colleen said that sometimes change requires drastic—”
    “You’re going to blame your therapist for throwing out Ben’s stuff? Seriously?” My
     voice must have gone up, because Dad appears behind me in the doorway. Mom’s expression
     collapses, and he goes to her, and suddenly I’m the bad guy for wanting to hold on
     to something. Something I can read.
    “Tell me you kept some of it,” I say through gritted teeth.
    Mom nods, her face still buried in Dad’s collar. “A small box. Just a few things.
     They’re in your room.”
    I’m already in the hall. I slam my door behind me and push boxes out of the way until
     I find it. Shoved in a corner. A small B on one side. It’s little bigger than a shoe box.
    I slice the clear packing tape with Da’s key, and turn the box over on the bed, spreading
     all that’s left of Ben across the mattress. My eyes burn. It’s not that Mom didn’t
     keep anything, it’s that she kept the wrong things. We leave memories on objects we
     love and cherish, things we use and wear down.
    If Mom had kept his favorite shirt—the one with the X over the heart—or any of his blue pencils—even a stub—or the mile patch he won in
     track, the one he kept in his pocket because he was too proud to leave it at home,
     but not proud enough to put it on his backpack…but the things scattered on my bed
     aren’t really his. Photos she framed for him, graded tests, a hat he wore once, a
     small spelling trophy, a teddy bear he hated, and a cup he made in an art class when
     he was only five or six.
    I tug off my ring and reach for the first item.
    Maybe there’s something.
    There has to be something.
    Something.
    Anything .
“It’s not a party trick, Kenzie,” you snap.
    I drop the bauble and it rolls across the table. You are teaching me how to read
—
things, not books
—
and I must have made a joke, given the act a dramatic flair.
    “There’s only one reason Keepers have the ability to read things,” you say sternly.
     “It makes us better hunters. It helps us track down Histories.”
    “It’s blank anyway,” I mutter.
    “Of course it is,” you say, retrieving the trinket and turning it over between your
     fingers. “It’s a paperweight. And you should have known the moment you touched it.”
    I could. It had the telltale hollow quiet. It didn’t hum against my fingers. You hand
     me back my ring, and I slip it on.
    “Not everything holds memories,” you say. “Not every memory’s worth holding. Flat
     surfaces
—
walls, floors, tables, that kind of thing
—
they’re like canvases, great at taking in images. The smaller the object, the harder
     it is for it to hold an impression. But,” you add, holding up the paperweight so I
     can see the world distorted in the glass, “if there is a memory, you should be able
     to tell with a brush of your hand. That’s all the time you’ll have. If a History makes
     it into the Outer
—
”
    “How would