Forget You(54)
Author: Jennifer Echols

When I drove the Benz to the beach, the parking lot was packed with junkers I recognized from school. I had to drive quite a way inland to grab an empty spot, and I found myself wondering whether this was exactly the way it had happened last Friday night. Another hurricane churned in the Gulf, and though it wouldn’t hit us and we weren’t expecting rain until tomorrow, wind tossed the black silhouettes of palms against the night sky. Along the wooden walkway across the dunes, it whipped the red warning flags straight out. It almost drowned the wail of a boy band on a radio at the beach.

Even in the moonlight, it was hard to pick faces out of the dozens laughing together in circles. But one of the first people I recognized was Brandon standing with a group of hulking football players, sipping from a plastic cup with his arm around Stephanie Wetzel’s waist.

Keke stood in a group a few feet behind him. She saw me on the walkway and nodded frantically toward Brandon with Stephanie.

Lila was in the other direction, facing Mike and holding both his hands. When she saw me, she gestured to Brandon with exactly the same motion as Keke. I wished they would make up with each other so I could stop having every conversation with them twice.

Already in knots, my stomach pulled taut as I crossed the sand. I slipped between football players and touched Brandon’s elbow on the side opposite Stephanie. "Hey, can we talk?"

"Zoey!" Brandon called, smiling, as if there were nothing wrong at all.

Stephanie looked over at me in outrage, then up at Brandon. She snatched his arm off her and flounced up the beach. The football players said, "Woooooo."

She definitely thought Brandon was her date.

"Sure, Zoey," Brandon said, talking to me but watching Stephanie go.

Even so, I didn’t think he understood what was about to happen. We walked back to the stairs across the dunes and sat down. He lit a cigarette and cupped it in both hands to keep the rising wind from blowing the fire out.

"I wanted to–" we both started at once, then laughed.

"Y first, baby," I said.

"Okay." He took a long drink of beer. "Y know how you told me Saturday you didn’t mind I was doing Stephanie?"

Still scanning the beach, I finally found who I’d been searching for all along. Doug was using the tip of one crutch to draw a picture in the sand for Stephanie and the junior swim team girls. As I watched him, I realized I’d misheard Brandon. I could have sworn Brandon had just told me he’d had sex with Stephanie Wetzel. "I’m sorry. What?"

"Y know how you and Doug saw me and Stephanie doing it in the Buick last Friday night, and you were all upset? And then you came over to my

ou house Saturday morning and told me you weren’t mad and it was okay. Right?"

"Right!" I said, because if I’d said What the hell are you talking about? , he might not have told me the end of this story. You know how . . . ? always ended with a well . . .

"Well," he said, "Stephanie minds that I’m doing you."

She certainly did. I could tell from her steely glare, even in the darkness.

"Or, you know, that I did you the one time," he qualified. "That’s why I told you the Buick needed work, so I could ride to school with Stephanie, and so I couldn’t come to your house for the past week. I felt really bad about lying to you, Zoey. I tried to tell you at the swim meet Wednesday night. That’s what I came to the swim meet for. But Doug was being a dick about it."

I nodded. "He didn’t want you to break up with me right after my mom escaped from the insane asylum? He is a dick."

Brandon turned to stare at me like he was seeing me for the first time. He was having a realization, a breakthrough! Good for him. I asked innocently, "What?"

"I never heard you cuss before," he said. "Anyway, you and I talked all summer about my girlfriends. Y knew how I was, and you were cool about me

ou doing Stephanie. Stephanie had a cow when I mentioned you. And I think I might be in love with her. That’s never happened to me before. I really hoped you would understand."

"I do," I said brightly. "I’m in love with Doug."

Brandon took another sip. "Doug who?"

"Doug Fox !" I hadn’t thought there was another Doug in our school.

"Y are ?"

I began to get a little annoyed that Brandon and I were not having the same conversation. "Y We’ve been together all week. We have some things to

es. work out–"

Brandon talked right over me. "Doug told me you weren’t together!"

I sighed in exasperation. "Why is Doug telling you anything about him and me?"

Brandon took a long drag of his cigarette, shielding it with his other hand so it wouldn’t go out. "At the party last Friday, I was talking to some guys, I’d had a few beers, and I was kind of bragging about doing you. No offense, but that’s just how guys talk. Nobody thought you’d give it up until you were through law school, so they were real impressed. Well, a few minutes later Doug Fox corners me and says it had nothing to do with me, so I shouldn’t be bragging. Anybody could have gotten in your pants. He said you hated his guts and he’d still get in your pants in the space of two hours. All I had to do was let you catch me doing another girl. That’s why I was with Stephanie in the first place."

I nodded. "And you said, `Okay, Doug, see if you can have sex with my girlfriend. I’ll go have sex with this other girl. That’s fine.’"

"Well." He exhaled smoke. "I didn’t think you and I were together. I mean, I know we were together, but we weren’t really together together. We were just friends with bennies. And Doug Fox was up in my face, challenging me. What else could I do?"

I nodded again. It all made sense in the world of Brandon, a sunshiny plastic world very familiar to me because I had observed it all summer.

"The next morning when you weren’t mad anymore about Stephanie and me, I thought, cool." He smiled a dreamy smile, then remembered he was in the midst of ruining my life. "But Doug had called me earlier Saturday morning and said y’all didn’t get together after all, so I shouldn’t say anything to anybody about it."

"Y ou’re telling me about it now," I pointed out, still not quite believing. Or believing, because it made so much sense, but wishing it weren’t true.

"I would have warned you about him before, but you were both in that wreck. I figured he wouldn’t be making any moves on you with a broken leg. But if he has . . . Zoey, you need to stay away from him. I’ve seen defensive backs with less of a temper than that guy. Y know he’s been to juvie."

"Doug Fox has no idea what a temper is." Out the corner of my eye, I saw Brandon’s hand come up to catch me, but I was too fast. I leaped up from the stairs, stormed across the beach, and pushed past Stephanie Wetzel, dragging my feet across Doug’s picture in the sand. "Two hours?" I screamed up at him. "Y only needed two hours?"