Forget You(26)
Author: Jennifer Echols

Miraculously, instead of pressing the subject, he gave me a way out. "That’s where my brother and I have been, looking at the Bug and the Miata in the junkyard." He waved past me, inland. Then he glanced pointedly at my pocket. "I didn’t take a tape measure, though."

I watched past his shoulder, way down the road. In the distance, Lila set down her bucket and poster board, put her hands on her hips, and argued with Officer Fox inside the truck. I willed her to stop arguing and come back to save me from this conversation and this beautiful, snarky, way-too-perceptive boy. The cool breeze caught the poster board and blew it down the shoulder. Lila abandoned her act with Officer Fox and galloped after the poster. No help there.

"I . . ." I said, thinking hard.

Doug raised one black eyebrow at me.

"I’mmmmm still a little confused about what happened. What time did we wreck?"

The suspicious look he gave me let me know I shouldn’t have asked this. "About two thirty," he said.

I’d made him suspicious with this question and the answer didn’t even give me any information. When I’d lived with my mom, every curfew had been negotiated in detail, taking into account the activity, location, and company associated with said revelry (and sometimes I typed out a contract in legalese like this just to poke fun at her).

But my dad didn’t care what time I came in. When we’d wrecked at two thirty in the morning, I could have been headed south for home. Or I could have been headed north to Brandon’s house, or elsewhere.

Where? Officer Fox had gathered Lila and cruised back in our direction. I could slip one more question in and then escape quickly if Doug’s eyebrow rose again. I brushed past him and walked along one of the skid marks. I asked over my shoulder, "So, I was driving along like this? And then, all of a sudden–" I threw out my arms. "Deer drama! Right?" I turned around to grin at him.

Uh-oh. His eyebrow was up. "Y don’t remember which direction you were driving?"

So I’d aroused his suspicion again. At least I knew now that I’d been driving in the other direction, north toward Brandon’s.

Or did I? Maybe Doug wasn’t telling me I was wrong. He was only saying it was a weird question for me to ask. I was getting dangerously close to admitting I didn’t remember the whole night.

The pickup reached us and pulled to a stop, bringing the cool breeze with it. I shut my eyes against the sand in my face.

Lila sobbed from the payload, "Now we’ll never collect enough money to fund the swim team trip to District!"

"There’s no one here for you to bullshit," Doug told her.

"Oh, right." She and Keke climbed out and ran for the Datsun, hampered by the breeze against their poster boards and their buckets.

I beat them to it. Before Keke could slip into the driver’s seat, I pushed the seat forward and dove into the back, which smelled strongly of used bubble gum. I owed Doug some kind of good-bye, but maybe the surprise escape would take his mind off my blond questions.

No such luck. He crutched forward and knocked on Keke’s window until she cranked it down. (This was a very old Datsun.) "Zoey," he said, angling his head to look past Keke and the headrest, straight at me. "Y don’t remember which direction you were driving?"

I leaned between Keke’s seat and Lila’s, out of his line of sight, and hissed, "Go, Keke, before Officer Fox arrests us."

"I thought you said this was legal!" Lila whined. "Y mom is a lawyer!"

our

"It might be just a little illegal," I admitted. Keke was already spinning the tires in the soft sand of the shoulder to make our getaway.

Doug had wisely maneuvered out of our path. As Keke sped away and she and Lila both bitched at me for getting them in trouble and wondered aloud whether the wreck had given me brain damage, I stared out the back window, between the old-fashioned defrost stripes, at Doug watching us go.

If he asked me again at school tomorrow, I would deny everything while maintaining a friendly distance so he didn’t get pissed at me and give away anything about what we’d done together after the wreck. Or about my mom.

In the meantime, I would go to my father’s house and take a long swim in the ocean. Stroking against the tide would restore my strength and help me think. As I planned my next step in finding out what had happened to me, I would swim away from shore, and my dad’s house on the beach would grow smaller and more distant. Just like Doug leaning on his crutches in the middle of the country highway, smaller and smaller until his green eyes disappeared. 8 "Zoey!" the three chicks on my relay team screeched at the same time Coach bellowed, "Commander!" Then I hit the water.

I knew I’d jumped the block almost before I jumped it. Starts were one of the key parts of relay practice. Swimming fast and growing stronger were important, but I also had to make sure I didn’t dive into the water before the person ahead of me touched the block I was standing on. If I did, I let down all three teammates in the relay with me.

I surfaced quickly so the team would have less time to talk trash about me. I caught Stephanie in the middle of, "Not again !" Then I swam to the edge of the pool and held on to the side, waiting for Coach’s rant.

He didn’t rant or even kneel down to give me a talking-to. He barked, "Dry off, Commander," like that was the end of our discussion.

"Coach!" I shrieked. "I’m fine. I won’t do it again."

"Y ou’ve done it three times in a row," Stephanie pointed out. Swim caps and goggles didn’t enhance anyone’s natural beauty, but I thought Stephanie looked particularly googly-eyed and sea-monsterish as I hoisted myself out of the pool and slapped to the bleachers to drip-dry in the afternoon sun.

Swim practice started the last period of school and extended an hour and a half after school was over. I’d done fine at first. And my head wasn’t bothering me. As a precautionary measure I’d taken painkillers all day–only two every four hours, exactly the recommended dosage. Maybe Coach would let me back in the water after a few minutes.

Because I could focus now. I’d finally accepted that Doug wasn’t coming to swim practice. He’d skipped English this morning. I’d spent a long hour in fear that he wouldn’t come to school at all, I would stay in the dark about our accident for another day, and something had gone wrong with his leg. Gangrene.

Then he showed up in biology after going to the doctor to get the splint off and a cast put on. Y couldn’t miss him when he entered the classroom. He

ou was enveloped by boys hooting, the weak ones capitalizing on a strong boy’s downfall. The thought crossed my mind that he would punch them for this, and I wondered if it crossed theirs. I wasn’t sure why he had attacked that guy outside history class and had gotten suspended for it two years ago.