Forget You(47)
Author: Jennifer Echols

"Now," I said, "is there a place we can talk about this without being observed? This whole crew meeting is getting a little–"

"Pedophilic?" he suggested.

"Intense, yes."

With a nod he threw the glove and knife into the bucket, retrieved his crutches, and heaved himself upward very slowly. I walked with him toward the house, so close to him I thought I’d tripped him a few times. I kept him between me and the circle of men.

"Going to take care of business, Doug?" one of them called.

"Barry, shut the f**k up," said Officer Fox. 14 Doug’s bedroom was the entire basement level of the house. At a glance I took in the walls of homemade bookshelves, boards stacked on cement blocks and filled with paperbacks, with more books piled on the floor. The walls that weren’t lined with books were wallpapered with foreign movie posters. Japanese men and women locked in embrace, Japanese men taking on a ring of warriors and kicking ass.

Doug limped toward his bed against the far wall. "Y want to find out where we were headed in the Bug at two thirty in the morning," he said. "Y were

ou ou just taking me home, in a roundabout way." He eased down on the bed and patted beside him as a seat for me.

"Oh, well then. That explains everything!" I said in his sarcastic tone. I sat on the bed and poked him in the chest, looking straight into his eyes. "Doug, you were in my car at two thirty AM after you called me a spoiled brat at the game. Y told me you loved me, after I told you first. Y tell me what

ou ou happened !"

His green eyes were wide and surprised and serious. He glanced toward the door, visualizing salty dogs listening in. He reached for the stereo beside his bed. Fell off his bed with a thunk and an oof.

"My Lord." I slipped off the bed to sit beside him. "Are you okay?"

He detangled himself from his crutches and sat up. "I’ve got it." He slid a CD off the teetering stack on the nearest shelf and popped it into the player. Hard rock blasted through the room from speakers in every corner. I felt the bass line in my gut.

He extended his cast in front of him and pulled his good knee up to his chest, then leaned his head toward mine so I could hear him over the music. "Y know how Gabriel always says he’s not going to get drunk, so he drives to a party, and then he gets drunk? I knew he would do that." He flattened one

ou hand like a notepad and used the opposite finger like a pen to draw a diagram–not so much for me as for himself. "I left my Jeep at school" (tip of pointer finger) "and drove with Connor to the beach party" (heel of his hand). "When the party was over I could drive Gabriel’s Honda to his house, drop him off" (thumb tip), "and then walk to school to get my Jeep" (tip of pointer finger). "At the party, you and I hooked up, so Ian and Connor got Gabriel and his Honda home. But you still had to drive me back to my Jeep at school when we were done."

"When we were done hooking up," I said, nodding as if this made perfect sense, as if my skin weren’t tingling and the room weren’t spinning. "Tell me how we hooked up."

He shrugged. "Y wanted to leave the party and go parking with Brandon. I talked you out of it."

That was the end of my patience. I leaned forward, grabbed his good thigh with both my hands, and squeezed. "Douglas. Do me a favor and do not shrug again like this is all obvious or doesn’t matter so much, because when you shrug it makes me very angry."

I’m not sure whether it was his depthless eyes staring at me, or my hands around his thigh, or our heads so close together that I could make out every black hair in the stubble on his upper lip. But the air vibrated with the energy between us. We were still, yet everything moved. The FSU on his T-shirt quivered as he breathed. The tip of his tongue snaked out to lick his lips.

"I wanted to go parking with Brandon," I prompted him. "Y talked me into going parking with you instead?"

He shook his head no ever so slightly, his eyes never leaving mine. "That just happened. As we were talking."

"But why did you talk me out of parking with Brandon?" I asked. "Brandon is my boyfriend."

The spell broke. Doug collapsed against the bed. "Brandon is your boyfriend, right. Y keep saying `Brandon is my boyfriend,’" he moved his fingers in

ou quote marks, "and it makes as much sense as `I am balancing the planet Pluto on my big toe’ or `Kumquats make the best nuclear physicists.’"

I knew he was growing more upset because his gestures grew bigger. The finger quotes had exclamation points attached. Furious as I was at this boy, I smoothed my hands across his thigh, inching farther up. "Okay, okay. Just tell me what happened."

"What happened is, Brandon is cheating on you with Stephanie Wetzel." He clasped both my hands in his big hands, brought them up between us, and shook them. "I don’t have to tell you this. Y know in your heart that Brandon’s been cheating on you for your entire tumultuous week-and-a-half love affair,

ou but you pretend you don’t see it. Y had sex with him once but now you’ll stay with him forever just so in your mind it will mean something. He’ll get you

ou pregnant–"

"I’m on the pill," I interrupted with my logic.

"I know," Doug said meaningfully. "But he’ll get you pregnant anyway because shit happens to you, Zoey, and he’ll keep right on cheating on you, and you’ll keep right on telling everyone including yourself that he’s the love of your life. Y ou’ll stay here in town and raise the baby while he’s off at FSU partying. When he gets kicked out for his low GPA he’ll come crawling back to you and marry you. Why not, if your wife doesn’t mind you screwing Stephanie Wetzel?"

When he took a breath to go on, I interjected rationally, "You’ve made this up. Y realize that, right?"

My pulse quickened and my blood went strangely cold as he looked straight at me again, green eyes focused on me and deadly serious. "I can see the future."

As quickly as he’d zeroed in on me, he was gone again, gesturing widely. "Y ou’ll have more kids with him. He’ll get the job in town that doesn’t require a college degree and pays the most with the least effort expended. Insurance salesman. Something large and blank, just like Brandon. And you’ll get a job too. Eventually maybe you’ll even leave him. But your chance to do something bright and beautiful, like you–that will be long gone."

He stared at one of his speakers in the corner of his ceiling, as if a camera hung there like in my dad’s house. And I stared at the underside of his chin dusted with black stubble, gathering my self-control around me like my comfy swim team sweatshirt so I didn’t burst into tears in Doug Fox’s bedroom with ten salty dogs outside. "It doesn’t sound so bad when all you really want in life anymore is to get your mother home safe and avoid going insane yourself." I hadn’t even realized this until I spoke the words out loud.