Forget You (15 page)

I rolled over and gazed toward the front of the house, but my room didn't have a window in that direction, and I couldn't see through walls. "You're kidding. What was wrong with it?"

"You know how people speak Japanese and you know it's Japanese but you have no idea what they're saying and you definitely couldn't repeat it?"

"You mean you don't know anything about cars?"

He laughed. I pictured him throwing his head back and laughing.

"Wow," I said. "I'm so grateful to your brother. I think. Do you know how much it cost? I have a credit card." I hoped the garage bill wasn't too much--but if it was, at least I hadn't rolled a joint on the cutting board while my dad was gone. Of course, that was the sort of argument I'd make to my mom, not my dad.

"No charge," Doug said. "My brother and his friend may have drag-raced the Benz and the cop car."

"What?" I jerked upright again. "That's illegal! A damn sight more illegal than collecting donations in a bucket on the highway."

"My brother is a very bad policeman. So . . . you're coming to school, right?"

I was dying to see Doug. The low notes of his voice on the phone gave me chill bumps all over again. But as I ran my free hand through my hair, crispy from chlorine I hadn't washed out, I pictured Brandon giving me that awkward hug under duress last night. And behind him, the swim team watching me like an exhibit at the zoo. "Nnnnnnno."

"Come so you can be around people," Doug coaxed. "I don't think you should be alone today."

"I think I definitely should."

"Come so I won't worry about you."

He'd made the one argument that could persuade me. I owed him big-time. I owed him that much.

W
E
HUNG TOGETHER ALL DAY--EXCEPT CALCULUS
, of course. It was delicious. Like we'd hooked up. Or, okay, like I'd felt him up in the backseat of a cop car.

Really more like he was my dear friend looking out for me. We weren't doing anything that unusual. Since the school year started we'd followed each other along the same path from English to history, from biology to lunch. The only difference today was that we walked together. I wondered whether everyone avoided my eyes or just wasn't looking at me. I wondered whether they whispered about me and my mom. Doug knew how I felt without me telling him. He gave me someone to walk with and talk to so I wouldn't feel alone.

Since school started we'd eaten at the same lunch table too--just at different ends. Today we sat next to each other at the usual table with most of the swim team, his friends and my former friends who acted like I might bite them now. I'd dropped the ball breaking up the fight between Keke and Lila on Tuesday, but I'd brought them back together without even trying. Nothing cemented a relationship like mutual hatred of a third party. Lila sat between Mike and Keke, talking in turns to each of them. Every time she talked to Keke, she ate a spoonful of Keke's frozen yogurt, and the two of them looked at me with hooded eyes, then looked away. They prided themselves on knowing everything about everyone. They were furious at being kept in the dark about their best friend's mother. It was futile to explain I'd hoped no one would ever find out.

"Let's see the clipboard, Captain," Doug said, giving me something to do.

I set down my fork and pulled the clipboard out of my backpack for him. He flipped through the pages of numbers in his handwriting, really looking. "Your times the past few days have been amazing." He cocked his head at me. "Demons chasing you?"

"Maybe." Across the lunchroom, Stephanie Wetzel acted out a little skit with exaggerated motions for her friends. My mom pulling me out of the pool. A fisherman hauling a marlin on board. Hard to say.

"The trick is to get you swimming like that every time," Doug said, "even when you don't have something hanging over your head."

I turned to him. "I don't think that will be a problem for a while." I passed my hand in a circle above my head. "This is very crowded airspace right now. If it keeps up, I might even place at State." Keke and Lila watched me. I put my hand down.

"My dad's picking me up after swim practice today," Doug said. "On Thursdays we have a sunset cruise and then a crew meeting."

"Crew meeting?" I echoed. That sounded too New Age a concept for the ruffians I'd seen working on the
Hemingway.

"But I hear the swim team is planning a beach party after the football game tomorrow night," he said, "and they're trying to convince the football team to crash it. Keke and Lila aren't subtle. Want to go?"

I couldn't help cutting my eyes at Keke and Lila. They whispered together as Keke gazed at me. I told Doug, "I'm not invited."

"Of
course
you're invited--you're the captain of the swim team--but let's skip that issue. You're invited because I'm inviting you."

"As a date?" I asked quietly enough that no one around us could hear over the laughter and the clinks of silverware.

"Of
course
not as a date, because then you'd have to break up with your wonderful boyfriend who hasn't messaged you all day." How did Doug know this? He'd been watching me more closely than he let on.

"As friends, then?" I clarified.

He lowered his chin and gave me that sexy look through his long black lashes. "As whatever we are."

During swim practice he even convinced Gabriel to drag a lawn chair poolside so he could sit closer to me, protecting me. But as he'd said, at the end of practice he gave me a wave and limped out the gate to meet his dad. He couldn't protect me in the women's locker room anyway.

I knew it was coming. In my peripheral vision I saw Keke eyeing me as we showered, dried off, and dressed.

I could have sped up and beat the crowd out the door, robbing her of her chance alone with me. Instead, I slowed down. I'd had enough of the cold stares from her and Lila. Lila had hurried out of the locker room to meet Mike, but disarming Keke might disarm both twins at once. When the last of the junior girls finally giggled their way outside, I slammed my locker door and whirled to face Keke, catching her--what else?--midstare. "What is it?" I demanded. "Tell me."

Surprised that she wasn't the one to confront me first, she blinked and took a deep breath before dropping her bomb. "You didn't measure the skid marks at the wreck so your mom could get more insurance money for you. You measured them because you were trying to figure out what happened. You obviously don't remember anything about that night. If you did, you would have been freaking out completely. And you flat-out lied to Lila and me about it."

Yes, but only because my dad had threatened me. I opened my mouth to say this to her. I couldn't form the words. My brain fixated on what she'd said. Why should I have been freaking out about that night?
What had I done?

"Go home and find the accident report," Keke said. "Even after all the lies you've told me in the past two weeks, you need to know what really happened."

13

"Just tell me!" I shouted at her. If a copy of the accident report was at my house, I knew where it would be. And I wasn't allowed in there. "You know this big secret so just
tell me
instead of making me chase around for it!"

"Oh, I don't give away people's secrets." If Doug's words dripped sarcasm, Keke's gushed it like the biggest waterfall at Slide with Clyde. "That's why you didn't tell me your mom--" Even in the middle of confronting me, Keke couldn't bring herself to say it.
My mom was insane.
"And that's why you didn't tell me you had amnesia. Because you don't trust me with something that important. Now everybody knows my own best friend doesn't trust me. You made a freaking
fool
out of me--"

"Just tell me what happened!" I screamed. My voice set the locks buzzing against the lockers. "How did you find out? Who else knows?" As soon as the words left my mouth, I realized I didn't need to yell at her. I knew
exactly
who else knew and how she'd found out. I jerked up my backpack and stomped toward the door to the pool.

As I reached the door, Keke put her hand on my arm and pulled, eyes full of fear. "You can
not
tell them you heard this from me. Doug will kill Mike. Mike will never speak to Lila again. And Lila . . . and me . . ."

"Then tell me what it is."

Keke pressed her lips together.

I jerked open the door before Keke could stop me again. I headed straight across the pool deck, empty except for Lila and Mike sitting close together on the lawn chair. When Lila saw me, she jumped up, holding out my clipboard, almost as if she were ready to make up with me. "I can't believe you forgot this!" She saw the look on my face and stopped.

I closed the steps between us and took the clipboard from her. "Tell me what happened Friday night."

She gaped at me, then wailed over my shoulder at Keke, "You told her!"

"I didn't tell her what
happened,
" Keke clarified. "I told her she needs to find
out
. She can't go around not knowing, Lila, and I don't care if it
does
break you up with your boyfriend."

"You just don't want me to
have
a boyfriend," Lila squealed. "You can't get a boyfriend so you don't want me to have one either!"

"Whatever," I mumbled, skirting Lila and approaching Mike, who had edged toward the pool. He watched the twins silently as if he had nothing to do with any of this. I walked right up to him and stopped inches from his face so he couldn't pretend he didn't hear me, one of his usual tactics for saying nothing. "Michael." I smiled, skin stretched so taut across my face that it might break. "Baby. Tell me what happened."

He turned red as a stop sign and shook his head.

"Doug is
not
going to kill you." As Mike's eyes widened, my voice rose. "He is
not
going to beat you up or whatever he threatened to do to you." I wasn't sure Mike was really safe, but I was desperate. "Doug is full of shit, in case you haven't noticed. Now, for the last time, what the fuck happened?"

As a diversion, Mike jerked the clipboard from my arms and slung it into the pool.

Behind me, both twins gasped.

The plastic board floated for a few seconds. The wind stirred ripples that lapped at the pages, soaking them. Then the clipboard nose-dived.

I didn't stay to watch it hit bottom. My arms were still extended like I could grab the clipboard and save it. I put my arms down. Turning for the gate to the parking lot, I called over my shoulder, "Thanks for being true friends."

Never get into a shouting match with twins. They emptied their clips into my back, still shouting at me as I crossed the parking lot to the Benz.
Right back at you, pot calling the kettle black, talk about a true friend.

Bitch!

That last bullet jogged the keys from my hand as I reached for the door of the Benz. I bent to pick them up and noticed I hadn't repainted my fingernails since Saturday, which wasn't like me at
all.
A huge chip had formed in my thumbnail.

It wasn't like me to talk on the cell phone while driving, either. That wasn't safe. As I pulled out of the parking lot onto the street, I pressed the button to call Doug. I got his sarcastic voice-mail prompt.

Speeding down the straightaway where I'd wrecked, my thumb hovered above the button to call my dad's cell. But what good would that do me? If he had the accident report, it was in his office, which was off-limits to me. He would tell me no, I couldn't go in there to retrieve it. I could ask permission, be denied, and do it anyway. Or I could go ahead and do it. Or I could call to ask him what might be in the report that my ex-friends wanted me to know. But then I'd be admitting I was missing part of my memory and I was crazy like my mom, as he'd suspected all along.

When I reached my house I sat in the Benz in the courtyard for a few last seconds, soaking up the late afternoon sun on my skin. I had to go in, I had to find out, but these were my last breaths being innocent. I was afraid what I found out would change my life forever.

And then I walked into the house. Past the cameras in the living room, the cameras down the hall. My dad's office was so forbidden,
two
cameras were trained on the door.

Here I paused again. The room had become officially forbidden when I was in middle school and my dad found me looking through his office drawers for invisible tape for a school project. He grounded me from seeing Keke and Lila. I screamed and pitched a fit, because the only thing worse than being grounded when you're a kid is being grounded when you know you didn't deserve it, when you were only looking for tape for
school,
and my dad wanted me to go to
school,
didn't he? I remembered every detail of that drama queen day--the school project on the history of daylight savings time, the sheet of scrapbooking paper with little clocks I'd bought as a cute border for the report (thus the tape), the pink polo shirt I was wearing, the pink wristwatch I stared at as I rocked in the chair on the front porch, willing the hands to move and my mom to come home from her Saturday at work. Eventually she pulled up and I ran across the stone courtyard and threw myself into her arms. She told me she couldn't undo the punishment my dad had doled out because parents worked as partners, but she would talk to him. Eventually she got my sentence reduced from a week grounded to two days grounded. And she laughed at my idea that my dad didn't want me in his office because he had something to hide. No, he just needed an oasis. Starting a business like Slide with Clyde was stressful. Living with two women was stressful. He simply wanted one place in the house all to himself. I could understand that, couldn't I?

Looking from one camera to the other and wiping the tears from my eyes, I stepped through their invisible force field protecting the open door. Checked the top of my dad's desk, the in-box, the out-box, the drawers, the filing cabinets, the shelves, the counter. The accident report wasn't there.

Feeling more and more panicky about what could be in that report, I dashed out to the Benz. I had one more source to try for this report--the police station--but now it was after five o'clock, and with my luck, they'd be closed. I was shaking by the time I parked in the courthouse square, next to my mom's office.

But I heaved a huge sigh as I slammed the door of the Benz and saw I'd gotten my first break all week. Two parking spaces down, Officer Fox was just stepping from his truck in his police uniform. He must be arriving for work.

I hurried toward him. "Hey!" I said, trying to sound surprised and pleased to see him.

"Hi," he said warily.

"I was just coming to get an extra copy of the accident report, you know, for insurance and stuff."

He nodded shortly and kept walking past me, toward the door to the station. "You need to come back during regular office hours with your dad and a check for two dollars made out to the DMV." He disappeared into the building.

I stood there stunned for a few seconds. Then I galloped after him and swung through the glass door before he could escape deep into the office where I couldn't catch him. He was unlatching and lifting a section of the front counter to let himself through.

"Why?" I called to his back. "I'm a licensed driver in the state of Florida. I'm the driver, it's my wreck, it's my accident report, and my two dollars spends like my dad's."

"Hey there, Zoey," a deep voice boomed behind me. The police chief closed the glass door behind him, carrying a paper sack from the Grilled Mermaid.

"Hey, Chief," I said with a grin, hoping he'd caught only the tail end of me yelling at his deputy. My mom had introduced me to the chief around town when I was growing up. During parades and festivals along the beach strip, he always rode above the crowd on a horse. He and my mom worked together--or against each other, since my mom defended the people he arrested. But I'd never been in the police station before, and I hadn't thought of him when I stalked in here demanding my life back.

"Fox," he snapped. "Get Miss Commander whatever she needs."

Officer Fox disappeared into the back.

The chief turned to me and smiled sympathetically. "Heard about your car wreck."

That was more than
I
could say. "Yes, sir, it was scary."

"Heard your mom made a big jailbreak yesterday."

This
was why I'd hoped no one would ever find out about my mom. I grinned again and pretended I could laugh at it like he could. I needed his help. I needed that report.

"I've been over to the hospital a couple of times in the past few weeks," he said. "They're still not allowing her to have visitors?"

I opened my mouth to speak. For fear of sobbing, all I could do was shake my head no. He'd been to see my mom? I'd thought I was alone.

"You let me know if there's anything I can do for you or for her." He patted me twice on the shoulder and maneuvered through the counter like Officer Fox had. "Fox!" he hollered.

The chief and Officer Fox passed each other in the corridor, and Officer Fox slid the precious document onto the counter. "Two dollars," he grumbled.

I fished in my purse, tossed two bills on the counter, and slapped my hand down on the paper before he could take it away.

Just as quickly, he covered my hand with his. "Don't go to Doug's house."

He might as well have said,
Don't open the box, Pandora.
"Right." I snatched the report and ran.

"I mean it, Zoey," he called after me.

"Why can't I go over there?" I asked as I backed out the door.

"Because it's Thursday."

Whatever. Outside in the orange light of the setting sun, I scanned Officer Fox's diagram of the wreck, his quaint depiction of a stick-deer, and his clumsy legalese until I found what I was looking for.

Doug wasn't the passenger in Mike's car. He was the passenger in mine.

I
PLUGGED
D
OUG'S ADDRESS INTO THE
GPS from the swim team mailing list stored on my phone. At first I thought it steered me correctly. I drove in the general direction of the docks, then turned left toward the bluff.

But I began to wonder, as the Benz crept through a thicket that threatened to close in over the road. Palmettos scraped the paint and moths fluttered across the windshield. Satellites could be wrong.

I
really
wondered when the thicket opened to the starry sky and the full moon over the rolling ocean, with the docks almost directly underneath me. I drove across a causeway built up between islands so someone could live out here. Someone rich. Someone not Doug. But I couldn't turn around until I reached the other side. I inched the Benz forward, off the narrow causeway and underneath the canopy of an enormous live oak.

In front of me was Doug's house. I knew this because I saw his Jeep pulled to one side of the clearing and abandoned, the open interior strewn with leaves. The house itself was a 1970s split-level with blue paint peeling from the trim work.

And in front of the house, ten men sat in a circle around a campfire. I was close enough to see them shuck oysters and tilt up bottles of beer. In fact, I caught Doug, who did not drink while he was in training, in midswig. What had I driven into? Instinct warned me to back out the way I'd come, but I could never make it in reverse without backing off the narrow causeway and into the sea.

Doug limped toward me on his crutches. I'd thought maybe his dad let him have one beer on special occasions--but no, I could tell from the way Doug examined the ground before every step that he was buzzed. I parked the car and hurried to meet him before he fell down.

"Zoeyyyy," he called. "Just the person I wanted to see me at my lowest. Come have a raw oyster." When he reached me he set his chin on my shoulder and whispered, "My dad thinks we're together. Not because I lied to him, but because Friday night I thought we
were
together, and I was all happy about it until I went over to your house Saturday morning and talked to you and found out we weren't. But that's way too complicated to explain to a salty dog. So just smile and nod, if you don't mind." He hobbled away from me and made an enormous vertical circle with one crutch, gesturing for me to follow him.

Not buzzed. Plastered.

I caught up with him and whispered, "Is this your crew meeting?"

"Ha. Is that what I called it? Every Thursday all the deckhands from my dad's boat hike up here for oysters and beer. Also my dad's roughneck friends come, and their cousins who heard the words
free beer
, and anything else that might have wandered up from the wharf." The familiar snarky sense of humor let me know Doug was in there somewhere, but his delivery was low and rapid fire as if his playback control was set too fast, lubed by alcohol. "All of them get free beer, and raw oysters, and the chance to take potshots at Fox the Younger."

"What kind of potshots?" I asked, beginning to worry.