Forget You(52)
Author: Jennifer Echols

"That’s right," Connor said. "On a positive note, if you ever want to get Doug suspended from school, just make a joke about Asians and stand there until he hits you."

"I feel heady with power," Nate said. He and Connor both said, "Bwa-ha-ha!" and rubbed their hands together like evildoers.

"Zoey!" Ms. Northam called with her hands on her hips. "Please move across the room where you won’t disturb your classmates. I do hope we’re not making this a daily occurrence."

No, the daily occurrence was thinking about anything in English except English. After flopping my book closed and schlepping across the room to the back corner desk, I renewed my effort to be a good girl and pay attention to the lecture. I truly did. All the same, my eyes kept drifting from Ms. Northam to the door, impatient for Keke to reappear.

She didn’t come back to class until halfway through history. As she tiptoed to her desk across the room from me, she mouthed in my direction, I have to talk to you. I actually looked behind me to see who she was talking to, but I was sitting in a desk against the wall.

Well, that totally blew my concentration on the Boston Tea Party. She’d just spent the last half hour with Doug. Whatever she had to say must be about Doug, and about me. And whatever it was, good or bad, I was dying to hear it. I glanced at my watch five hundred times before the bell finally rang for break.

Lugging our backpacks, we walked toward calculus with our heads together conspiratorially. Which was very strange, because usually I walked fast to calculus to make sure I got across campus in time, and Keke ran toward calculus to get some energy out, checking the status of practical jokes she’d slipped into lockers along the way.

"I talked to Doug for a long time," she said.

I nodded, fighting down the butterflies in my stomach and suppressing the urge to shake her to get the information out faster.

"I told him about that big fight we had yesterday. He got really mad at me. With that on top of his leg hurting, I swear I thought he was going to blow a gasket."

I laughed. "He doesn’t know anything about cars," I said nonsensically.

"He said you always listen to me and put up with me," Keke said, "and the one time you really needed me, I turned on you. He made me feel like shit. So, I’m sorry." She stopped and held out her arms.

I stared at her for three full seconds before I realized she wanted to hug me. Then I stepped into her embrace. "It’s okay."

"I just thought we were really good friends," she said in my ear. She pulled back to look at me. "I couldn’t believe I had no idea something that big happened to you. People kept coming up to me asking how I could possibly not have known about your mother, like there was something wrong with me. It was embarrassing. But you went out of your way to hide it from me." She looked straight into my eyes, which she didn’t do often either, waiting for an answer.

Slowly I said, "I’ve been kind of screwed up. Keke, I’m really sorry." I felt the butterflies rising with the tears as I said this. By the time I coughed out sorry, I was crying there in the hall with sophomores streaming around us, in and out of the driver’s ed room. Keke’s arms tightened around me, which made me cry harder. "See," I sobbed, "this is why I don’t tell people."

"It’s okay," Keke said, rubbing my back. And strangely, it was. Just as I’d seen myself retching over the public toilet in the swimming pool bathroom, I could see myself crying in the hall. I could hear what the sophomores would whisper to their friends later: "Zoey Commander lost it outside driver’s ed. Y ou know, that senior whose mom tried to kill herself and went ape shit at the last swim meet." But that was okay, because I was also that senior with friends. At least I had Keke.

Calculus was still a long distance away. We jogged through the halls as I wiped at my eyes with the backs of my hands, and I started to tell her everything that had happened with my mom. I told her more in snippets as we walked from calculus to biology, and at lunch we settled across from each other at the swimmers’ table. I’d wanted to snag the end of the table away from the others so we could have a little privacy, but someone else had beaten us to it. Leaning across the table toward each other with their heads close together were Doug, looking like himself again (hot), and Lila.

Keke’s eyes slid over to them, then back to me. She spoke softly (Keke was full of surprises today) so the junior girls sitting around us couldn’t hear. "When I talked to Doug this morning, he also told me y’all had a huge fight last night. Y goal for the night was having a fight with everybody on the swim

our team?"

I cringed. "The one with Doug was special." I took a bite of salad.

"That’s what he said. Are you going to try to get him back?"

I glanced over at him and swallowed. "Doug is hot."

Grinning, she nodded at me.

I said, "Doug is also manipulative and controlling."

She frowned. "He asked me to watch out for you today. I guess you could say that’s manipulative and controlling. But you could also say he was worried about you and he cared about you. Any girl would kill to have a boy like that." I could hear the wistfulness in her voice. She and Lila must still be arguing about Lila going out with Mike. "A week ago, if you’d told me you were going to hook up with this criminal–"

"He’s not." I sighed.

"–I would have laughed."

"Y did laugh!"

"But after hearing the way he talks about you . . ." She shook her head. "Wow."

"I need to break up with Brandon first." I felt a flash of guilt that this was the first thought I’d had of Brandon all day. Automatically I pulled my cell phone from my backpack and turned it on to check for a text from him–or better yet, a message from my mother. Nothing from her, and no text from Brandon. I hadn’t heard from him in two days, since I saw him Wednesday night at the meet.

Keke shifted closer across the table and talked even more quietly. "Funny you should say that. Y know the swim team’s having a party after the

ou football game tonight. At least, we’re supposed to be. I’m holding up my end. If Lila doesn’t bring the hot dogs, that’s not my problem. Anyway, Stephanie swears she’s bringing Brandon as her date." I sat up straight in surprise, then leaned over my salad again. "Does Brandon know he’s Stephanie’s date?"

"As his girlfriend," Keke said, "you should definitely ask him."

AT THE BEGINNING OF PRACTICE, I was standing in front of my locker and I’d just pulled off my shirt to change into my swimsuit when the door to the pool squeaked open a crack. "Ladies," Doug called.