Forget You(33)
Author: Jennifer Echols

Brandon pushed me through the br**ststroke. Whoever heard of a serious senior boyfriend who put obeying his parents and studying algebra over sex with his new girlfriend? This was a mature and responsible decision on his part, but let’s get real.

And last but not least there was Doug, who had ruined my life. If it hadn’t been for Doug confusing me about my loyalties and priorities, I wouldn’t have been mad at Brandon in the first place. Doug made me dissatisfied with Brandon. Doug should pay. The force of that anger shot me through the free so quickly, I felt out of control, on a roller coaster gone wild. It was a great feeling. When I touched the wall for the final time, I was almost disappointed the heat was over.

"Way to blow it out, Commander!" Coach hollered, pumping the air with his fist. A few seconds later, when the other girls touched the wall, surfaced, and figured out what I’d done, they shouted, "Great time!" Even Doug on the bleachers gave me a thumbs-up before writing on the clipboard.

"You’re so awesome," Lila said between heaving breaths in the lane beside me. "What’s your secret?"

"If you told Lila, it wouldn’t be a secret," Keke advised me from the other side. Keke and Lila had been fighting all day. I had no idea why. In my normal state I would have delved into their problem and solved it by now .

"If Keke shut up, she wouldn’t be such a beyotch," Lila said.

Keke dove across my lane into Lila’s to slap her. Coach blew his whistle and the boys moved toward the pool. Ian observed the twins throttling each other for a few moments, then called to no one in particular, "Cleanup in lane two."

Bracing myself against the wind–it wasn’t as cold as it had been the past few days, but anything felt colder when I was wet–I stalked right over to Doug and said, "I want you to go with me to the junkyard. I’ve asked you nicely, and you have no reason not to."

He let me stand there dripping, waiting, while he penciled in a few more times. Long enough that I looked toward the girls on the other end of the bleachers giving Doug a wide berth. I felt self-conscious about talking to him alone.

Finally he said quietly, "I don’t think we should spend any more time together unless I have a chance with you."

I shivered, a movement big enough that he saw it. His eyes met mine. Then he looked down at the clipboard again, paging through the times.

"I’m dating Brandon," I told his bowed head.

"Really?" he asked without looking up.

"Yes!"

"I’ll print you a wallet card to whip out every time you need to say that, so you can save your voice."

"Could you laminate it?"

Finally he lifted his head and raised one eyebrow at me. "Don’t push your luck."

Coach chirped on his whistle. Apparently the boys had disgusted him with their weak leg work (or with their poor showing last Saturday without Doug), so the whole team had to pile into the pool with kickboards. I stomped away from Doug, grabbed a float, and plunged into the water. I had plenty of anger to propel me. And I had a fact-finding plan to reevaluate.

Finally practice ended. Coach told us we would get killed at the meet tomorrow night because we had a bad attitude (translation: because Doug was out). Coach blew his whistle and disappeared inside the building.

Dragging my kickboard with me, I ducked under three floating dividers and reached Mike’s lane before he escaped from the pool. I’d decided that if I couldn’t take Doug to the junkyard, I would ask Mike what had happened that night.

When I surfaced, Mike saw me out of the corner of his eye and half turned, then realized it was just me. He assumed I was headed somewhere else. And then, when I said, "Hey, Mike," he actually jumped.

"Sorry," I said, laughing so he’d think it was perfectly normal for boys to jump when girls came near them. I had sneaked up on him from underwater. "We haven’t gotten the chance to talk since the wreck. After we change clothes, would you visit the Bug in the junkyard with me? I wonder if it fused to the Miata in the wreck and the tow truck hauled them both away in once piece."

As I watched, Mike developed a severe sunburn. "I can’t," he said.

I’d approached him as nonaggressively as I could, predicting he’d turn red like this. And I wasn’t about to let him go. I put my back to the edge of the pool so he’d have to climb over me to get out, which he would not do. "Come on," I coaxed. "Doug and I went to dinner to talk about the wreck yesterday, and that was nothing." Lie.

"Mike has a date," Lila called, walking over from the bleachers while toweling her hair. "With me."

"Okay," I sang, attempting to hide my shock at Mike going on a date, Lila going on a date, and Mike and Lila going on a date. "Have fun–"

"Go ahead and ask Zoey for what you need, Mike," Keke yelled from the locker room door. "She has a whole discount club�sized box of condoms." The door thudded shut behind her.

I’m not sure whether the rest of the team milling around the pool got Keke’s dirty joke, but I got it. And Mike got it. His sunburn transformed to well- done for a lobster. And Lila got it. Going on a first date–not just a first date with a particular boy but a first date ever –was awkward enough. But to have your twin sister joke that you needed a condom because you would have sex on the first date? How humiliating.

Wait a minute. I had had sex on the first date with Brandon. But at least I didn’t have a sister joking to the boy about it! Lila, avoiding our eyes, frowned at the fluffy clouds scuttling across the blue sky. "Excuse me," she muttered, scampering for the locker room in her bare feet, towel clutched around her. A second later we heard screams through the school’s hurricane-resistant brick walls.

"I can’t give you a condom," I told Mike. "I left my condoms in the Bug." I pulled myself onto the deck, pried off my swim cap and goggles, and dripped my way over to Doug.

I caught him. He’d been watching me, and when I walked toward him he didn’t look down quite fast enough. I sat right next to him on the bleachers and scooted against him, soaking the hip of his shorts and leaving a bright red patch on the side of his faded red T-shirt.

He was busy writing something on the top sheet. I decided to be obnoxious and lean my wet head on his shoulder to see what he was doodling. A heart with B.M. + Z.C. inside.

"You shouldn’t start fights," he said. "It’s bad for team morale."

"Give me that," I muttered, snatching the clipboard from him. When I had trouble taking another breath, I realized how tired and how stressed I was. With effort I breathed as deeply as I could through my nose and let out a long sigh with my eyes closed. "I really want you to come with me to the junkyard," I said. "And I really think we shouldn’t spend any more time together."