Forget Me Not

"I was drenched in sweat," Block remembers. "I didn't know what he expected of me. William Morris Agency is like 'God Inc.,' with long banks of silent rooms full of secretaries. I was trying to charm him. But he wanted me to sit there for five and a half hours and go through the book with him, and he told me everything he thought I needed to do to make it salable. We went page by page through the book. And I was so exhausted from trying to impress him that, after three hours, I was dizzy."

Over the next two months they polished the book together, and after Clegg put it up for auction a handful of top publishing houses bid. Block chose Random House for its storied history, the chance to work with editor David Ebershoff (author of The Rose City and Pasadena) and its good vibes. Seemingly everyone from the company showed up to meet him, from the president to the marketing people. "It was just such a positive, exciting meeting," Block remembers. "Everyone seemed so behind the book and ready to support me."

In the months before its April 1 release, Block was already being subjected to some of the pitfalls of being a public figure. One particularly nefarious blogger met him at a party and pretended to be a booking agent for a network morning show. She proceeded to give him a fake phone number and slag him on her blog the next day.

In any case, it's clear that Random House sees him as a commodity whose appeal lies not just in his writing chops but in his youth and good looks as well. Soon after he was signed, the firm's PR department discussed making a play on his behalf for People's "Most Beautiful People" issue. Apparently that didn't work out, so they settled instead for a book review in the magazine.

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"One day in the middle of class, Stefan asked, 'Ms. Shepherd, do you and Mr. Shepherd have a good sex life?'" recalls Karen Shepherd, Block's 11th-grade AP biology teacher and science fair advisor.

Block has dropped in to Plano Senior High School's research lab to visit an influential mentor, and Shepherd is expounding on his tendency to push the limits in her classroom. "He tried to back it up, saying, 'Well, I was reading last night about how we are much healthier if we had a better sex life,' and that he was concerned about me. I just laughed and ignored the question."

"She threw a three-hole punch at my head!" insists Block.

Shepherd—a recent recipient of Texas' secondary teacher of the year award—notes that Block's humor and literary talents were complemented by his prodigious scientific abilities. Indeed, The Story of Forgetting is informed by a complex genetic back story, tracing Seth and Abel's ancestors to late 18th-century England. There, an early-onset Alzheimer's-afflicted duke named Alban Mapplethorpe IV impregnates scores of his town's women, thus ensuring his dubious genetic legacy would spread far and wide. (The townswomen line up as willing adulterers once they realize his ability to keep a secret.)

Though the strain described in the book, EOA-23, is fictional, familial early-onset Alzheimer's is real. The rare disease can affect its inheritors as early as their third decade and often is traceable to a single gene. (A patient can tell if he or she has it from a genetic test.) "Regular" Alzheimer's typically doesn't affect people until they are 65 or older and is not as strongly linked to genetics. Block says his family's variation lies somewhere in between, often occurring early and showing a strong inherited component, but is not the result of a specific gene mutation.

His understanding of the disease's biology comes from years of study, beginning during his years at Plano Senior High. There, he was a standout science student and won top prizes at international science fairs and the Intel (formerly Westinghouse) Science Talent Search, which helped him secure a scholarship to Washington University.

"Especially in ninth grade, I was so miserable, afloat in a sea of West Plano jocks," he says, though the science fair enabled him to "see that there were other people equally freakish."

That year he and Shepherd traveled to Louisville, Kentucky, for Block's first international science fair, where Block convinced the other attendees to take silly pictures mimicking animals and between judging made out with a girl for the first time on the banks of the Ohio River.

"Stefan always thinks he didn't fit in, and I always think Stefan fit in just as well as any other ninth-grade nerd," Shepherd says. "He was very creative and would always talk his groups into doing whatever it was he wanted to do, whether it crossed the line or not."

Of particularly questionable taste was a group project titled Tay-Sachs: The Musical, featuring 10 original songs on the crippling genetic disorder, including "'Don't Cry For Me, I Have Tay-Sachs" and "Tay-Sachs, Tay-Sachs," which was sung to the tune of Frank Sinatra's "New York, New York."