Forget You(53)
Author: Jennifer Echols

Six girls screamed at once. I didn’t. I only felt a little warm.

"The boy band has left the building," he called when the squeals died down. "Coach said don’t change today because we’re putting the dome on the pool. Zoey."

Six girls jerked their heads toward me.

I felt my face flush. As casually as I could manage, I called back, "Doug."

"Coach has lost the dome instructions again." The door to the pool squeaked shut.

I found the instructions in Coach’s office where I’d filed them last year under D for dome and duh. When I took them outside, I saw Doug had used the word we loosely when he’d said, "We’re putting the dome on the pool." He sat on the pool deck with his cast extended and his back against the door to the bathroom, guarding it against girls going in there to faint. He read Howards End as the rest of us unfolded the enormous plastic tent across the water, hooking it around the edges of the pool deck and tossing heavy cables across it. The rest of the boys and Coach argued about the best way to install the plastic corridor between the dome and the locker rooms. Doug stayed put, nose in his book. They installed it around him.

We’d been a little worried about the blower toward the end of last season. We came to school one day to find the dome sagging, half deflated. So I crouched inside the corner of the dome opposite Doug, making sure the loud engine worked. The dome hadn’t filled completely yet and the ceiling was waist high, so I wasn’t sure who was fighting her way through the plastic until Lila dropped beside me.

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

"I noticed," I said, trying not to sound as jealous as I felt.

"I tried to convince him not to kill Mike so Mike will speak to me again. But Keke told Doug about that big fight we all had at the pool yesterday. He got really mad at me! Y should have heard what he called Mike for throwing your clipboard in the pool!"

"Good!" I laughed. "Doug knows I was very attached to that clipboard."

"Mike fished it out with the net after you left, if you still want it."

"That’s okay," I sighed. "I’ve moved on."

"Then Doug said you always listen to me and put up with me, and the one time you really needed me, I wasn’t there for you. He made me feel like shit. So, Zoey, I’m sorry." She scooted forward across the pool deck and hugged me.

"It’s okay." As I hugged her back, I listened for titters above the drone of the blower. It must be a cruel joke, two twins apologizing to me, using almost the same words, after they found out my mother was insane. Kicking me when I was down. But the rest of the swim team paid us no attention. They held the plastic corridor in place above their heads. Below them on the floor, Doug read on. I pulled back and looked Lila in the eye. "Have you and Keke calibrated your watches today?"

"No, we’re not speaking. Dad says we have to make up with each other by tomorrow morning or we’re changing our brother’s diapers for a month. Why?"

"Just wondering." Obviously I was doomed to live through everything twice, even now that I remembered both times.

She took my hand and squeezed it. "I thought you and I were really good friends. I couldn’t believe something that big happened to you and I had no idea! People kept asking me how I could possibly not have known about your mom, like there was something wrong with me! I was so embarrassed ! But you hid it from me on purpose."

Feeling the tingles of d�j� vu, I waited for my tears to come.

Lila’s eyes widened. She said, "Oh," and squeezed my hand again as she saw what was coming too.

"I’ve been kind of screwed up," I sobbed. "Lila, I’m really sorry."

She leaned forward to hug me again and murmured, "It’s okay, it’s okay," as I cried into her shoulder. After a while, when I could talk again, I told her about my mom. As I finished, she said with tears in her eyes, "I wish you’d told me."

"I wish I had too."

Screams pierced through the noise of the blower and echoed around the dome. We looked across the pool at the roof of the plastic corridor collapsing on the swim team. I decided I would give them five more minutes trying to figure it out for themselves, and then I would go do it for them.

And then I saw Doug watching me. He looked down at his book.

Lila saw it too. "Doug told me something else at lunch," she said. "That y’all had a huge fight last night. And then"–her eyebrows arched knowingly–"you did some other stuff. Some really good stuff. And then you argued some more."

I cringed. "That about sums it up."

"Well?" she demanded. "Are you going to try to get him back?"

I glanced over at him. Amid the commotion going on around him and over his head, he simply kept reading, then turned the page. "Doug is hot," I sighed. "He’s also manipulative and controlling."

"Y ou’re nuts," Lila said. When I gaped at her, she went on, "No offense and all, but Doug is worried about you and he cares about you. He saved you from an exploding car!"

"It wasn’t exploding. Doug just doesn’t know anything about cars."

"Neither do I. It’s perfect and dreamy!"

"Lila, that’s exactly what you said about Brandon less than a week ago!"

"Oh!" She pointed at me. "I almost forgot. Y ou’re coming to the swim team party after the football game tonight, right? Stephanie Wetzel says she’s bringing Brandon as her date ! What is up with that ?"

"I guess I need to come to the party and find out." And then, when I’d gotten that settled, I could have another talk with Doug.

A talk . . . or something else. I was touching my lips again, imagining what he would do to me, and how soon we’d do what we’d saved for later.

"Are you coming to the game?" Lila asked me.

I stretched and yawned. "No. I didn’t get much sleep last night."

She winked at me.

"Y eah," I said. "And I need a little quality time to recenter before the party."

RECENTERING INVOLVED THE FOLLOWING STEPS: I took a four-hour nap. I repainted my fingernails. I chose my beach party clothes carefully, including my lucky blue bra with white polka dots and blue bow. I removed the large box of condoms from my dad’s Mercedes. And I played sudoku to calm myself while planning what to say to Brandon.

He was so sweet and so clueless. I doubted he understood he was Stephanie’s date to the party. Someone who didn’t know him might look at the situation objectively, the fact that he hadn’t tried to see me since the incident with my mom, and might judge that he just wasn’t that into me. But Brandon and I were friends. We had this history. I was afraid he’d be very upset when I told him I wanted to break it off with him. My stomach twisted in knots at the thought, and I practiced my speech over and over.