Forget You(16)
Author: Jennifer Echols

Then she reached for my dad’s hand and spoke in that calming, motherly tone I did not like at all. "Clyde. They said the concussion confused her and that’s very common. They said she might not remember the entire night, and if she didn’t, there wouldn’t be anything they could do." She turned back to me. "Y don’t remember last night?"

"Oh, sure, I remember," I lied. My words came out gravely. I cleared my throat. "My head really hurts. I was hoping a nurse had taken mercy and slipped you some pills for me on our way out."

"Sorry," Ashley said with an exaggerated sorry face, bottom lip poked out. "The nurses were preoccupied with your boyfriend."

"Doug?" The gremlin in my head had given up on the balls of increasing size and was now taking whacks at the inside of my skull with a baseball bat. "Y know my boyfriend, Brandon. He worked at Slide with Clyde with us this summer? Y hired him?"

ou ou

"Ohhhh." She and my dad gave each other another look through their sunglasses. Ashley said, "We thought you’d gotten together with Doug, the way the two of you were acting last night."

"Right. That was because of the wreck. We were so relieved to be alive." I hoped I sounded embarrassed instead of mortified. No wonder Doug had thought we were together now and I would break up with Brandon for him. What had I done? Had I freaking humped Doug Fox in the ER?

"Wasn’t he the one there with the policeman last Monday at the emergency room?" my dad barked. "And suddenly you’re in a wreck with him?"

"I have almost every class with Doug, and we’re on the swim team together." I had been ready to accuse Doug with some conspiracy theory a few minutes ago, but now that my dad verbalized it, I heard how ridiculous it sounded.

"Honey!" Ashley patted my dad’s hand insistently, glancing at her diamond watch. "We need to leave for the airport right now and we haven’t finished packing, haven’t showered . . ."

My dad stood and held out a strong hand to help up his fianc�e. Ashley continued to fill the void among the three of us with busy talk until they escaped inside, leaving me alone on the edge of my seat, straining my ears for the familiar breath-sounds of the ocean.

Dizzy and sick, I wandered into my bathroom and found a bottle of over-the-counter pain pills. I took two. Examined the label. Under absolutely no circumstances was I to take more than two at a time. I shook out another and swallowed that. Read the label again and wondered who had written it and how serious she was. Then slammed the bottle into a drawer. It was too much, calculating the line between reasonable under the circumstances and overdose.

I filled the bathtub. This would use all the hot water and ruin the showers for my dad and Ashley, but they probably were taking one together anyway. Then I pulled off my damp clothes. And got another shock when I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror.

Mottled purple extended from my left shoulder diagonally down my breast and disappeared at my waist on my right side.

I squinted into the mirror and tried to picture the wreck. It was dark. It was raining. A deer appeared in the road. I swerved and stomped the brakes. My car skidded on the slick road and crashed into Mike’s Miata, hard enough to heave me forward and snap my seat belt. My head whacked the rearview mirror. I sat up and saw the boys past the crumpled hood of the Miata, in the front seat: Mike trapped behind the wheel, fumbling for his phone, Doug in pain and struggling to open the passenger door.

No, I didn’t remember a bit of this.

I shook my head–mistake, renewal of throbbing–and sank into the bathtub. This would make me feel better, to scrub off the dirt and germs and God knew what from unknown people and places. I wanted clean, dry clothes. I wanted straight, smooth, tangle-free hair.

But first I wanted to soak. Not to relax, exactly. That would have been impossible with the noise of Ashley and my dad in their room over my head, rushing around getting ready for their trip (or just Ashley rushing around and my dad lying on the bed watching CNBC). At a particularly hard bump overhead, I jumped, sloshing water against the sides of the tub. That was okay. The way I felt, I would never relax again. I just tried to clear my mind and start over, like rebooting a computer when it got clogged with spyware, so I could make sense of what had happened.

My mind wouldn’t reboot. The same window kept popping up, the one snippet of the last twelve hours I did remember: Doug coming to my car and pulling me out of the wreck. I suppose it was because of the concussion, but I didn’t recall the snippet with shock or fear or pain or anything but giddiness at being saved by Doug. If my memory of this was accurate, I’d acted like such a dork, no wonder he thought we’d connected and I’d fallen for him for real.

His wet black hair lay against his skin glowing white in the headlights. His voice rumbled in my ear. He smelled like chlorine. After twenty replays, I realized my subconscious was trying to tell me something. The wreck had been awful, but some elements of it I needed to be true, only changed a bit. I’d had sex with Brandon last Monday, and despite my best efforts, I hadn’t seen him since–or if I had, I didn’t remember. What if he’d been in the other car instead of Mike and Doug? What if he were my hero?

"Zoey," said Brandon. Did he have a broken leg like Doug? No, he wasn’t hurt–at least, not yet. He reached into the Bug, lifted me out, and carried me across the grass. Behind us, the Bug exploded (the deer was clear of the blast zone). Even as big and solid as Brandon was, the shock wave slammed him to the ground. He twisted in midair so he took the brunt of the landing and I was cushioned on top of him.

"Brandon, I’m so sorry," I murmured.

"Sorry!" he groaned, in pain because of his heroics. "It’s not your fault. Hush now." He stroked his fingers across my scalp. My hair didn’t tangle. It wasn’t raining.

This new and improved scenario was less satisfying. Maybe I’d been with Brandon earlier in the night, and that memory was more appealing than this fantasy, if only I could access it. After making love with Brandon at the beach party and dropping him off at his house in the main part of town, maybe I’d been headed home when I wrecked.

The thought made me flush in the hot bathwater. If we’d done it, would I be able to tell? The first time I’d felt it the next day. How about the second?

I glanced into the corners of the ceiling as if cameras would suddenly materialize in my bathroom, of all places. I pressed my fingers into myself, then outside. I rubbed my fingertips in wider and wider circles. I wasn’t sore.

That didn’t mean anything. I’d taken painkillers for my head. They might have dulled the soreness. Maybe Brandon and I had done it after all.