Forget You(21)
Author: Jennifer Echols

"Doug," I said. "Scoot. Y can’t take up a whole seat."

"Y I can," he said without opening his eyes. "My leg is swollen and I’m supposed to keep it elevated. Head or feet? Pick one."

es,

I looked doubtfully at his splint and his free foot, both of which seemed reasonably clean. His battered flip-flop must be somewhere on the floor. Again, I wouldn’t mind having his feet in my lap so much. It was the idea of other people seeing his feet in my lap. A sane girl with high self-esteem wouldn’t allow this to happen.

But I hadn’t forgotten the strange way Brandon may or may not have acted when he mentioned Doug in the wreck. Did he suspect Doug and I had gotten lovey-dovey in the ER? Was he jealous? If I held Doug’s head in my lap for forty miles, Brandon would find out.

The van braked hard.

Every girl screamed. I caught the seat back with both hands so I wouldn’t fly up the aisle. Doug wasn’t as lucky. The length of his body hit the seat back all at once, and he fell onto the floor on top of his crutches.

"Coach!" everyone yelled.

"Damn deer in the road," Coach yelled. Actually we were at a stoplight.

"Point taken," I hollered. "Enough already." I slid across the seat and held out a hand to help Doug, who eased up from the floor. "Are you okay?"

"Thank God for Percocet." He ignored my hand. But he asked, "Are you okay?"

"This time."

"Well, we’re almost to the four-lane. Sit the hell down before Coach kills you." Doug crawled back onto the seat. He was precisely as tall as he’d been before he fell down, and there was just as little room for me.

So I edged along the seat back with my backpack ahead of me, trying not to step on his crutches. When I drew even with his head, I gently slid my arm around his shoulders and eased him forward. He didn’t resist, but he didn’t help either. He was heavy. I slid onto the seat, crossed my legs under me, and laid his head in my lap.

I walked a fine line here. I trusted Brandon, but what if Stephanie Wetzel really was after him? I didn’t want to give her any ammunition to help break up Brandon and me.

On the other hand, I wanted Doug to like me. As much as he could like me now that I’d apparently seduced and then jilted him in a twelve-hour period. He knew way too much about me and my problems, and he was too much of a loose cannon to be allowed out into the world with a grudge against me. Everyone would expect me to take care of him while he was hurt. That’s how I functioned. And as long as he’d kept our secret, no one knew what had gone on between us at the wreck or in the hospital.

I looked down at him in my lap. He squeezed his eyes shut, hurting and wired. To me this didn’t say Percocet. "Doug."

"Zoey," he said evenly. His very evenness dripped sarcasm.

"Are you okay? Y don’t seem okay."

He licked his lips, just a tiny pink stroke, upside down. "I didn’t want to take these pills because they’re addictive. It’ll be hard enough for me to get a swim scholarship after all this. The last thing I need is a painkiller addiction. But the hospital warned me if you wait until the pain is unbearable, the pills don’t take the edge off."

"Oh." My concussion was bad enough. I could only imagine what Doug’s broken leg felt like when the IV wore off, he hadn’t taken Percocet yet, and he realized he was caught.

I placed my fingers on either side of his forehead and rubbed his temples. Even though he was upside down, I could tell he reacted properly. He tilted toward my fingers, tensing at the pressure and relaxing all at once. He went still. I kept massaging him for a long time. His skin was hot.

Finally I reached into my backpack on the floor and snagged my electronic sudoku. Ahhh, I still had problems, but nothing more pressing than where the nine went on the grid. Minutes passed. The conversations on the bus settled into a lulling hum. The van reached the four-lane.

Just when I’d exhausted my possibilities horizontally on the grid, Doug sighed. Without opening his eyes, he rolled just enough to turn his head to the other side on my leg. I returned to sudoku. The land of numbers was stark, with white columns towering in a white room, but familiar and predictable. I relaxed here, wiggled my toes in the sand.

I hadn’t yet exhausted my possibilities vertically when he sighed again. This time when he turned his head, he shook it a bit as if to place as much as possible of his longish black hair behind him to cushion his hard skull on my harder leg bone.

The van was freezing. Coach didn’t play around when he turned on the air conditioner. But I pulled off my swim team sweatshirt–carefully, so I didn’t wake Doug. I folded it in fourths.

I paused, sweatshirt in one hand, the other hand poised beside Doug’s head. We were already taking up the backseat of the van together. He lay in my lap. Putting the sweatshirt under his head would be the next step in making him comfortable. It was the least I could do after what we’d been through together last night. Y my arms tingled and my face flushed hot. For the first time ever I was glad not to be wearing a sweatshirt on the van. I looked up to

et see if anyone was watching me. It didn’t seem possible I could be blushing like this for no reason.

Fourteen backs were turned. Even fifteen and sixteen didn’t pay attention to me. Mike and Lila arm wrestled with their elbows on a calculus textbook, which I thought was weird. They’d brought their calculus homework on the bus. I usually finished my calculus homework during class, though sometimes I did extra problems for fun. And Mike was actually speaking to Lila. Mike never spoke.

But no one was watching me.

Gently I scooped up Doug’s head with my hand and slipped my sweatshirt underneath.

As I laid his head down, his eyes opened. Intense green stared up at me in the afternoon sunlight streaming through the van’s back window.

And then he was gone again, head turned on the sweatshirt pillow.

I picked up sudoku and tapped it to turn it back on. But now I didn’t feel comfortable holding something hard so close to Doug’s face. U.S. 98 wasn’t the most evenly paved highway, and I didn’t want to bang his nose with my electronics in addition to whacking his leg with my Bug. I didn’t feel comfortable touching him either. There was no place to put my hands. I tucked them under my thighs.

And stared down at Doug, drugged, sleeping hard. Black stubble barely shadowed his upper lip and chin and cheeks. His eyes were closed, his eyelashes long, his lips soft with sleep. He was a beautiful boy. It was hard to imagine him going to juvie in ninth grade, or getting suspended in tenth grade for fighting in the hall outside history class, or calling me a spoiled brat last night.

Even though he wore his own swim team sweatshirt, he was cold. His arms were folded tightly across his chest. His sweatshirt bunched around his ribs and stopped there, exposing a flat expanse of tanned stomach and a V of fine black hair that started around his inny belly button and pointed downward.