The Speed of Mercy by Christy Conlin (good books for high schoolers txt) 📕

terrain. Some people wanted to travel to the moon. He wanted to travel through neuropathways. Now, when Stella closed her eyes and pictured her head, inside was a sea of mind, strange things living and swimming in it, shells on the ocean floor, the broken seahorse. She knew that before the Horrible Accident, she had a normal mind. And after the Horrible Accident and then the Horrific Affliction it all went dark.

They walked down the flights of stairs to the Vitality Room — tall, thin Dianne and short, stocky Stella, her little knapsack over her shoulder with her sketchbook and pencil inside. Dianne’s brain was reliable and firm, even with age. Her memories were well-polished souvenirs. She moved more slowly every year. She had paced the halls like a caged animal when they were locked down by the pandemic, muttering and shaking her head. Dianne’s philosophy was that life was about movement and forward motion — when the movement stopped, you were in trouble. For example, the meditation part of yoga. The surest way to die early was to meditate, Dianne enjoyed proclaiming.

Stella appreciated meditation. If a thought strayed through her head, she pictured an opened shell and tucked it away. Her mind matched the bookshelf in her room, except without end, the shelves stretching into a white haze, shell after shell lined up. She didn’t open the shells.

Stella rarely thought of the years behind her or the years before her. She knew something terrible had happened the summer she was almost thirteen, the summer her father took her from Athens, Ohio, to his childhood home of Seabury. She knew there had been a car accident in the spring. That was the Horrible Accident, the HA. And then in August they had gone to Seabury, Nova Scotia, and something else had happened, in early September, as summer ended, the second HA — the Horrific Affliction. She avoided, at all costs, remembering the HAHAs. And she was so successful she forgot she ever had a childhood.

It was cool and damp on the lower level in the Vitality Room. Stella put her backpack in the white cubed shelving unit at the end of the room. She watched Dianne take her cigarettes and lighter from her deep dress pocket and put them in the next cubby. The staff were always taking lighters from Dianne and she was always finding new ones.

They picked up mats from beside the shelf and went to their spot at the back. Today Dianne put her mat by the wall on an angle, watching the door. She saw Stella watching her. “Just keeping an eye on the door. Can’t be too careful these days.”

Stella kept watching Dianne.

“Don’t look at me so, Stellie. Nurse Calvin might come barging in, see how much she can piss us off before she’s gone.”

Stella shrugged. Karen would never allow Nurse Calvin to barge in. Karen had been teaching yoga for ten years and working as a casual when the centre had staff shortages.

They were waiting for Fred and Bob. The class was tiny, only a few other residents at the front, stretched out on their mats, quiet, maybe dozing.

Dianne wore her false teeth today and clicked along to the music. Dianne could barely tolerate yoga music. “Bluegrass is what we sang when I was a girl, that and the gospel music. Sang in the choir in the North Mountain Mission. We lived not far from the pastor’s family, the Swindelles. Used to sing down on the beach ’round a driftwood fire, down on the Fundy shore with my grandmother. Did I tell you that?”

She had, over and over and over. But Dianne repeated the stories for a reason. For Stella, so she would remember. Dianne knew about Stella’s memory problems, or what Dianne called a memory that resembled the ocean, coming and going, dead calm and then a North Atlantic storm, sometimes still water, sometimes lost in the doldrums.

Fred came into the room in navy blue track pants and flip-flops. He walked by Stella, shaking his finger at her, a wide smile on his face, reciting facts. He was obsessed with Russian history. He spent a lot of time in the east wing where the Learning Annex was located. Fred worshipped computers. Mind thieves, Dianne called them. Stella wasn’t sure how old Fred was, if he was in his thirties or forties. He pranced when he walked and his face was smooth and unlined — he seemed perpetually young.

“Rasputin was a hard one to kill,” Fred murmured. “Didn’t wanna die. Not good, being poisoned. Poisoned . . . shot at. And beaten. Then drowned. No dignity in that kind of death. No sir. Those Romanovs. Shot up like a bunch of targets . . . Charlotte’s coming on a plane. Charlotte Pacific will be here soon.” Fred clapped his hands together and smiled. Stella didn’t know what his official diagnosis was. Some people had lived there for years and their stories were still secret.

Fred’s grandfather came from Lebanon. Fred had black hair, lots of black hair, but no family alive now except an older distant cousin in Vancouver, Charlotte Pacific, who came every summer to visit. Charlotte was a retired social worker and always brought presents for Dianne and Stella. Charlotte would glide into the lounge with her pearls, a sapphire ring, and a vast handbag, her soft hair that was always light brown even though she was in her seventies. Stella remembered one Charlotte visit. She couldn’t remember which summer. What Stella remembered was Charlotte beside her when everyone else had gone outside for an afternoon birthday party. Stella was upset that day. They had changed her medication. Or maybe they had said she couldn’t go outside. Stella didn’t remember. Charlotte had held her hand as she spoke with Stella. “I had a different life when I was younger, Stella. My name was Bertram and I was a cartoonist. I don’t tell many people this.” Stella had squeezed Charlotte’s hand and Charlotte squeezed