Forget You (19 page)

When I drove the Benz to the beach, the parking lot was packed with junkers I recognized from school. I had to drive quite a way inland to grab an empty spot, and I found myself wondering whether this was exactly the way it had happened last Friday night. Another hurricane churned in the Gulf, and though it wouldn't hit us and we weren't expecting rain until tomorrow, wind tossed the black silhouettes of palms against the night sky. Along the wooden walkway across the dunes, it whipped the red warning flags straight out. It almost drowned the wail of a boy band on a radio at the beach.

Even in the moonlight, it was hard to pick faces out of the dozens laughing together in circles. But one of the first people I recognized was Brandon standing with a group of hulking football players, sipping from a plastic cup with his arm around Stephanie Wetzel's waist.

Keke stood in a group a few feet behind him. She saw me on the walkway and nodded frantically toward Brandon with Stephanie.

Lila was in the other direction, facing Mike and holding both his hands. When she saw me, she gestured to Brandon with exactly the same motion as Keke. I wished they would make up with each other so I could stop having every conversation with them twice.

Already in knots, my stomach pulled taut as I crossed the sand. I slipped between football players and touched Brandon's elbow on the side opposite Stephanie. "Hey, can we talk?"

"Zoey!" Brandon called, smiling, as if there were nothing wrong at all.

Stephanie looked over at me in outrage, then up at Brandon. She snatched his arm off her and flounced up the beach. The football players said, "Woooooo."

She definitely thought Brandon was her date.

"Sure, Zoey," Brandon said, talking to me but watching Stephanie go.

Even so, I didn't think he understood what was about to happen. We walked back to the stairs across the dunes and sat down. He lit a cigarette and cupped it in both hands to keep the rising wind from blowing the fire out.

"I wanted to--" we both started at once, then laughed.

"You first, baby," I said.

"Okay." He took a long drink of beer. "You know how you told me Saturday you didn't mind I was doing Stephanie?"

Still scanning the beach, I finally found who I'd been searching for all along. Doug was using the tip of one crutch to draw a picture in the sand for Stephanie and the junior swim team girls. As I watched him, I realized I'd misheard Brandon. I could have sworn Brandon had just told me he'd had sex with Stephanie Wetzel. "I'm sorry. What?"

"You know how you and Doug saw me and Stephanie doing it in the Buick last Friday night, and you were all upset? And then you came over to my house Saturday morning and told me you weren't mad and it was okay. Right?"

"Right!" I said, because if I'd said
What the hell are you talking about?
, he might not have told me the end of this story.
You know how . . . ?
always ended with a
well . . .

"Well," he said, "Stephanie minds that I'm doing
you.
"

She certainly did. I could tell from her steely glare, even in the darkness.

"Or, you know, that I did you the one time," he qualified. "That's why I told you the Buick needed work, so I could ride to school with Stephanie, and so I couldn't come to your house for the past week. I felt really bad about lying to you, Zoey. I tried to tell you at the swim meet Wednesday night. That's what I came to the swim meet for. But Doug was being a dick about it."

I nodded. "He didn't want you to break up with me right after my mom escaped from the insane asylum? He
is
a dick."

Brandon turned to stare at me like he was seeing me for the first time. He was having a realization, a breakthrough! Good for him. I asked innocently, "What?"

"I never heard you cuss before," he said. "Anyway, you and I talked all summer about my girlfriends. You knew how I was, and you were cool about me doing Stephanie. Stephanie had a
cow
when I mentioned you. And I think I might be in love with her. That's never happened to me before. I really hoped you would understand."

"I do," I said brightly. "I'm in love with Doug."

Brandon took another sip. "Doug who?"

"Doug
Fox
!" I hadn't thought there was another Doug in our school.

"You
are
?"

I began to get a little annoyed that Brandon and I were not having the same conversation. "Yes. We've been together all week. We have some things to work out--"

Brandon talked right over me. "Doug told me you weren't together!"

I sighed in exasperation. "Why is Doug telling you
anything
about him and me?"

Brandon took a long drag of his cigarette, shielding it with his other hand so it wouldn't go out. "At the party last Friday, I was talking to some guys, I'd had a few beers, and I was kind of bragging about doing you. No offense, but that's just how guys talk. Nobody thought you'd give it up until you were through law school, so they were real impressed. Well, a few minutes later Doug Fox corners me and says it had nothing to do with me, so I shouldn't be bragging.
Anybody
could have gotten in your pants. He said you hated his guts and he'd
still
get in your pants in the space of two hours. All I had to do was let you catch me doing another girl. That's why I was with Stephanie in the first place."

I nodded. "And you said, 'Okay, Doug, see if you can have sex with my girlfriend. I'll go have sex with this other girl. That's fine.'"

"Well." He exhaled smoke. "I didn't think you and I were together. I mean, I know we were
together,
but we weren't really
together
together. We were just friends with bennies. And Doug Fox was up in my face, challenging me. What else could I do?"

I nodded again. It all made sense in the world of Brandon, a sunshiny plastic world very familiar to me because I had observed it all summer.

"The next morning when you weren't mad anymore about Stephanie and me, I thought, cool." He smiled a dreamy smile, then remembered he was in the midst of ruining my life. "But Doug had called me earlier Saturday morning and said y'all didn't get together after all, so I shouldn't say anything to anybody about it."

"You're telling me about it now," I pointed out, still not quite believing. Or believing, because it made so much sense, but wishing it weren't true.

"I would have warned you about him before, but you were both in that wreck. I figured he wouldn't be making any moves on you with a broken leg. But if he has . . . Zoey, you need to stay away from him. I've seen defensive backs with less of a temper than that guy. You know he's been to juvie."

"Doug Fox has no idea what a temper is." Out the corner of my eye, I saw Brandon's hand come up to catch me, but I was too fast. I leaped up from the stairs, stormed across the beach, and pushed past Stephanie Wetzel, dragging my feet across Doug's picture in the sand. "Two hours?" I screamed up at him. "You only needed two hours?"

He gaped at me for half a second, then looked over my head toward Brandon. "Motherfucker!" He crutched over to Brandon on the stairs.

I could have tried to stop Doug, but I just stepped out of his way.

"You
told
her?" Doug shouted at Brandon. "Man, you are stupider than I thought. Come on." He poked Brandon in the chest with the sandy tip of his crutch.

Some boys from the swim team crowded around. Every one of them had a hand on Doug, pulling a fistful of his T-shirt. But I just stood there watching it happen. Almost enjoying it.

"Scared?" Doug asked Brandon.

Brandon launched himself off the stairs at Doug. The swim team leaped out of the way. Brandon and Doug landed together on the beach. Doug's crutches went flying, and a cloud of sand billowed up. The rest of the swim team and the football team came running, crowding around. They pulled Brandon off Doug and handed Doug his crutches.

"Brandon, you ass," Ian said, "he's got a cast on."

"And he's on Percocet!" Gabriel said.

"That just makes it hurt less," Doug said, struggling to stand. Propping himself up on his crutches, he pointed at Brandon. "And I'm not waiting three weeks until I get this cast off to kick your ass. Come in the ocean with me where I can stand up."

The crowd parted for him. He limped into the ocean, nearly falling again when the tip of one crutch sank deep into the wet sand. He looked over his shoulder. "Coming, or are you still chicken?"

Brandon looked around at us. No one was stopping him. He waded after Doug into the tide. The rest of us gazed after them.

"You can tell neither of them is good at math," Nate offered. "The physics don't support this. The waves are too high. And if they get deep enough for Doug to stand without his crutches, they'll be too deep to punch each other with any force."

"My money's on Fox," said a football player. "That guy's nuts."

"Money?" Connor repeated.

The boys knelt on the beach and pulled out their wallets, discussing terms. When I looked out at the ocean again, Doug and Brandon had disappeared. Clouds had rolled in, covering the full moon. The black ocean and the black night were one.

"Zoey."

I looked beside me to see who dared disturb me observing my boyfriends clobber each other. Stephanie Wetzel. "Yes, Stephanie?" I asked. "Brandon was mine first, but you're welcome to him. So whatever you want to tell me, we really don't need to have that conversation."

She stepped closer and said breathlessly, "I can't stop Brandon. There's no way he'll stop now with the whole football team watching. You have to stop Doug."

"They both deserve whatever they get," I told her.

"You don't understand!" she shrieked. "I have a pool at my house. Wednesday night after your swim meet, Brandon came over."

"It's okay," I said. It wasn't okay. She and Brandon were cheaters. But I was a cheater too. Anyway, I was so furious at Doug that I didn't have much emotion left for Stephanie Wetzel. "Brandon told me you've been together."

"It's not okay! I found out Brandon can't swim."

I sucked in a breath. "Oh God." That's why Brandon had refused to take a promotion to lifeguard at Slide with Clyde. And that's why I couldn't see or hear him and Doug now. I pictured it all. The stormy surf had swept Brandon out over his head. Doug had tried to grab him, but his waterlogged cast weighed him down. They were already gone.

And I'd just said they deserved what they got.

I kicked off my shoes, wiggled out of my jeans, and shouted, "Brandon can't swim!" to anyone in hearing before I dashed into the black water.

17

I swam like demons were chasing me, like my boyfriend was drowning in front of me. When I reached the spot I thought they'd be, I tread water and shouted into the darkness, "Doug!"

"Zoey!" he shouted back, faintly over the roar of the ocean, way down the beach where the current had swept them.

I swam in that direction. Then I felt the current catch me too. It pushed me along too fast for comfort until suddenly, thankfully, I tripped over a warm body in the cold water and reached down to grab it.

Instead of grabbing me back, he shook my hand loose and struggled to the surface on his own. Doug panted, "Brandon can't swim. I've got him. Help me," and he was underwater again. There was no way he would let Brandon go, and there was no way I would let Doug go. We would all go down together. I took one last breath.

"Zoey, we'll get Brandon," Stephanie said, swimming past me. Another junior girl followed her, and they both dove under.

A wave crashed on top of me and pushed me down. In the blackness I put out my hands for Doug and felt only the sandy bottom where I didn't expect it. I didn't know up from down.

And then I felt him. Put my arms around him. Shoved off from the bottom as hard as I could and kicked until I ran out of breath, kept kicking past that threshold where I
had
to take a breath, kept kicking.

We hit the cold night air and both gasped.

"I'm okay," he heaved. "Get Brandon."

"We've got him," a girl shouted.

"I've got Doug," said Mike gliding beside me. "Zoey, just get to shore."

"We've got her," Keke and Lila said. One of them put her arm across my chest and said what lifeguards say. "Stop struggling and relax."

I didn't want to struggle and take them down with me, so I lay back in the water and let them tow me. I knew how to do this. I'd taken my turn being the victim in months of lifeguard training. I glided across the surface, the water cold but seeming warm compared with the colder air. I looked up at the sky and saw a universe of stars.

Closer to shore they handed me off. A boy's solid arm wrapped around me. I could tell from the shouts that Doug and Brandon were handed off too, a lifeguard relay.

My back raked across the sand, and the strong arm let me go. I flipped over and crawled the rest of the way up the beach to collapse in the frigid wind, one of a long line of parallel bodies. I allowed myself three deep breaths to recuperate, then sat up to look. "Brandon," I said, finding his bulk on the sand. I called, "Is Brandon okay?"

"He's okay," the junior girls called back, all four of them in unison.

Beside me, I touched Doug's soaked T-shirt stuck to his hard, flat stomach. "One," I said. There were seventeen people on the swim team, and I had to make sure we were all accounted for. "Two." I counted aloud to sixteen. "Where's seventeen? Who are we missing?" My heart beat frantically as I stood up and scanned the dark beach. "Oh God, where's number seventeen?"

"
You're
number seventeen," Doug said.

"Oh." I fell to my knees in the sand beside him. "I need another nap."

"I need another beer," Gabriel called. Boys cheered their agreement.

"I need another cast," Doug said. "And some crutches. My dad's going to kill me."

I put my hand on his stomach again. I was still mad at him. Seeing his life pass before my eyes hadn't changed that. But I felt better with my hand on his stomach. "I'll take you to the emergency room."

"I'll call my brother to take me," he said.

"I want to take you," I insisted.

"I'll get your dad's car all wet."

"Serves him right. That's what you get when you go out of town and give your daughter the keys to the Benz. Everyone knows seventeen-year-olds are irresponsible." I sat up and yelled down the line, "We could have died out there. The whole high school swim team plus one running back, gone. And you know what the people on the beach would have said? 'It all happened so fast.'"

Lila piped up, "It is
amazing
how quickly we can be stupid."

Mike snorted laughter, and Keke cackled, "Lila, I love you."

"You wouldn't say stuff like that to each other in public if you could see yourselves," said a football player walking over. "Did you
all
take your pants off? The swim team really knows how to throw a party."

Keke laughed. "You have no idea."

"T
HE LOVEBIRDS ARE BACK!" SAID A
doctor in a long white coat over pink scrubs. She brushed my damp bangs aside. "How's the head?"

I glanced down at Doug filling out forms. He sat in a wheelchair with a blanket around his shoulders. We both looked like we'd half drowned in the ocean. It was a wonder the doctor recognized us. We must have made quite an impression last week. Of course, then we'd been soaked with rain, so we probably looked similar now.

Doug tried to say something to the doctor but coughed instead. All the way from the beach, he hadn't said a word. Now he coughed, and coughed, and finally hacked out, "Zoey still doesn't remember much about that night. Is that normal?"

"Oh, sure," the doctor said. "When I was in junior high, I was break dancing on roller skates one afternoon and you can imagine how
that
ended. I fell and hit my head. At least, that's what my friends told me later. They also told me I'd been shopping for new leg warmers earlier in the day. All I remember is sitting up in the middle of the roller-skating rink, screaming, 'Where are my leg warmers? These aren't my leg warmers!'"

Doug and I looked at each other. Doug raised one eyebrow.

"My memory of that afternoon never did come back," she said. "But twelve years later I graduated from medical school, so I must be okay."

"You could have told me that before!" I wailed at her. "It would have made me feel a lot less crazy."

"I
did
tell you that before." She grabbed a file from the counter and disappeared through a door into an examining room.

Doug scrawled something across his last form, set a soaked insurance card on top of it, and handed it all to the nurse. I wheeled him back through the double doors into the empty white waiting room that was way too familiar to me. I positioned him by a seat where I wouldn't be staring at those doors again, and I sat down next to him.

"I guess you don't want to hear why," he said softly.

With my eyes on the gray specks in the white tile floor, I said, "I'm here, aren't I?"

Doug talked in a monotone, staring at the blank white wall opposite us. "That Monday night after I saw you here, I was so worried about you. I was afraid to call you because I didn't want to get my brother in trouble with your dad. I looked for you at the beach party. The next day I expected to hear this big hullabaloo at school. I thought the whole swim team would support you. I never heard a peep. But football and swimming dress out at the same time. I go in the locker room and there's Brandon Moore bragging about how he tapped your ass."

He held up his hands to shield his face like he thought I might slap him. When he saw I only glared at him, he slowly put his hands down.

"Brandon's words, not mine. You have a reputation for not putting out, so I knew something was wrong with you. I knew exactly what you'd done. I know that feeling. You have to do something. You have to change something radically, because you can't stay like you are for another second, or you're going to explode."

He was talking about running away to Seattle. I felt for his hand inside the blanket. It was ice cold.

He sighed. "But Zoey, the problem is that when you feel that way, your brain has already shut down. So whatever you do next to change your situation, it's bound to be stupid." He shook his head. "I tried all week to get you to call me. I tried to talk to you at the football game and screwed that up. And then, at the party, Brandon started talking smack about you again--"

"And you are so much better than him," I said, "because the first words out of
your
mouth were, 'I'll bet you I can seduce Zoey Commander in the next two hours.'"

He turned to me for the first time, green eyes pleading. "I was trying to get you away from him, but I honestly could not have predicted we would do it. Still, if you were going to do it with
somebody,
I wanted it to be with me, because you could trust me." He laughed bitterly. "If it hadn't been for the wreck and everything that came after, that wouldn't sound the least bit ironic. I guess you don't want to hear that I've had a crush on you since seventh grade." He brought our hands out from under the blanket. His hand had been so cold and so still, I'd forgotten I was holding it. Now he placed my hand palm-up on his thigh and traced his finger to the tip of my perfectly polished pointer finger. "Or that I thought about you when I went to juvie. That I probably never had a chance with you long-term anyway, but now I'd sealed the deal." He traced his finger to the heel of my hand. "Those are explanations, but not excuses. Juvie is fond of that distinction." He traced his finger to the tip of my thumb. "Or that I couldn't stand to watch anything bad happen to you, because it was like it was happening to me too. Is that love?" His hand clasped my hand again and squeezed.

I swallowed. "It could be."

He kissed my hand. "Anyway, we shouldn't have done it. I shouldn't have let it go that far when I knew how vulnerable you were and I wasn't being completely honest with you. I realize that now, and I'm sorry." He squeezed my hand once more and let it go.

Suddenly the idea that this was the end of Doug and me seemed horribly wrong. No matter what path we'd followed to get here, now we sat side by side in the ER. Again. I whispered, "We shouldn't have done it so soon."

He kept staring at the opposite wall. But he went absolutely still. He'd stopped breathing.

Or was that me?

"I'd like to try again," I said. "Slower this time."

He turned to me. We shared a long look, and then he put his hand up to touch the corner of my mouth. I had the smallest lingering doubt that he was teasing me even now. And then he leaned forward to kiss me.

It was slow, all right, and very sexy, back to his thorough exploration of my mouth. In swim practice sometimes we took our pulses to see if we could keep our heart rates above a certain level for a long time. This kiss was as good training as any. While Doug was still in his cast, I would suggest we do this every day for his rehabilitation.

Someone bustled through the corridor. We kept kissing. Just as the double doors slid shut, the doctor called to us, "No PDA in the emergency room. I told you
that
before too."

I broke the kiss and blinked at Doug. "Did she?"

He nodded.

"Show me what we did."

He pulled my hands under his blanket. He was much warmer now. His lips found the most sensitive spot on my neck.

"I think a little of my memory of that night is coming back," I said, panting. "This seems so familiar. I remember being happy."

And that's when my phone rang. I pulled it out of my purse and looked at the screen blinking with the caller ID of the mental hospital, finally. I whispered, "My mom."

Probably it wasn't my mom. I couldn't get my hopes up. It was a psychiatrist calling to tell me my mom was worse, my mom was crazy, my mom was dead. The phone kept ringing. I took a deep breath and held it. Held on to this moment, not knowing who was calling or why.

Doug said, "Answer it or I will."

I exhaled and clicked the phone on. "Hello?"

"Zoey, are you okay?"

So she'd had another vision of my death. She was calling instead of visiting this time because hospital security had gotten wise to her. "I'm okay, Mom."

"I thought you were. What are you doing?"

My eyes wandered to Doug's lips. "I brought Doug Fox to the emergency room. He fell in the ocean and got his cast wet."

"Mmm-hmm," she said drily. "I know Doug Fox. I'll bet there's more to it than that." This was something she would normally say. This was something she would say if she were normal. But again, I didn't want to get my hopes up.

She went on, "Your father just called me all freaked out from the Los Angeles airport, coming back from Hawaii. He installed cameras at the house to watch you while he got married. In case this pseudoparenting scheme didn't contain you, his backup plan was to call his ex-wife in the insane asylum."

"Yeah," I acknowledged, "he was real keen on going, so I didn't point out this problem. I figured I could just stay out of trouble for a week. I almost made it."

"Mmm-hmm," she said again.

"But Mom, I swear, it didn't even cross my mind that I'd get in trouble for staying out late last night. I came home at exactly the same time I came home a couple of weeks ago, while Dad was still in town, and I didn't get in trouble then."

"Oh, you're not in trouble for coming in late." I could almost see her stroking her long blond hair away from her face with her manicured middle finger. "You're in trouble for going into your dad's office."

"I needed something," I grumbled.

She sighed. "This is totally up to you, Zoey. But if you want me to, I'll get custody of you again just as soon as I can. Okay?"

"Okay." I wanted desperately to move back in with her if she was normal. If.

"Just be prepared," she said. "When you do come back to live with me, you are
so grounded
for calling me the chicken that crossed the road."

I burst into laughter so big and good it hurt.

"What is it?" Doug asked, green eyes wide. He thought I'd finally lost it.

Between giggles I told him, "My mother is feeling more herself."

* * *

F
IVE
F
RIDAYS LATER, I DROVE ALONG
the beachfront road in Doug's Jeep, which I'd borrowed until he got his cast off. It had plastic sheeting for windows so I couldn't leave valuables in it and lock it. It was like driving a small pool dome. And it was lots of fun to drive. Not just the wind in my hair but whole-body wind. In short, the Jeep was quirky and high maintenance but worth the trouble. Like Doug.