Forget You(55)
Author: Jennifer Echols

He gaped at me for half a second, then looked over my head toward Brandon. "Motherfucker!" He crutched over to Brandon on the stairs.

I could have tried to stop Doug, but I just stepped out of his way.

"You told her?" Doug shouted at Brandon. "Man, you are stupider than I thought. Come on." He poked Brandon in the chest with the sandy tip of his crutch.

Some boys from the swim team crowded around. Every one of them had a hand on Doug, pulling a fistful of his T-shirt. But I just stood there watching it happen. Almost enjoying it.

"Scared?" Doug asked Brandon.

Brandon launched himself off the stairs at Doug. The swim team leaped out of the way. Brandon and Doug landed together on the beach. Doug’s crutches went flying, and a cloud of sand billowed up. The rest of the swim team and the football team came running, crowding around. They pulled Brandon off Doug and handed Doug his crutches.

"Brandon, you ass," Ian said, "he’s got a cast on."

"And he’s on Percocet!" Gabriel said.

"That just makes it hurt less," Doug said, struggling to stand. Propping himself up on his crutches, he pointed at Brandon. "And I’m not waiting three weeks until I get this cast off to kick your ass. Come in the ocean with me where I can stand up."

The crowd parted for him. He limped into the ocean, nearly falling again when the tip of one crutch sank deep into the wet sand. He looked over his shoulder. "Coming, or are you still chicken?"

Brandon looked around at us. No one was stopping him. He waded after Doug into the tide. The rest of us gazed after them.

"Y can tell neither of them is good at math," Nate offered. "The physics don’t support this. The waves are too high. And if they get deep enough for

ou Doug to stand without his crutches, they’ll be too deep to punch each other with any force."

"My money’s on Fox," said a football player. "That guy’s nuts."

"Money?" Connor repeated.

The boys knelt on the beach and pulled out their wallets, discussing terms. When I looked out at the ocean again, Doug and Brandon had disappeared. Clouds had rolled in, covering the full moon. The black ocean and the black night were one.

"Zoey."

I looked beside me to see who dared disturb me observing my boyfriends clobber each other. Stephanie Wetzel. "Y Stephanie?" I asked. "Brandon

es, was mine first, but you’re welcome to him. So whatever you want to tell me, we really don’t need to have that conversation."

She stepped closer and said breathlessly, "I can’t stop Brandon. There’s no way he’ll stop now with the whole football team watching. Y have to stop

ou Doug."

"They both deserve whatever they get," I told her.

"Y don’t understand!" she shrieked. "I have a pool at my house. Wednesday night after your swim meet, Brandon came over."

"It’s okay," I said. It wasn’t okay. She and Brandon were cheaters. But I was a cheater too. Anyway, I was so furious at Doug that I didn’t have much emotion left for Stephanie Wetzel. "Brandon told me you’ve been together."

"It’s not okay! I found out Brandon can’t swim."

I sucked in a breath. "Oh God." That’s why Brandon had refused to take a promotion to lifeguard at Slide with Clyde. And that’s why I couldn’t see or hear him and Doug now. I pictured it all. The stormy surf had swept Brandon out over his head. Doug had tried to grab him, but his waterlogged cast weighed him down. They were already gone.

And I’d just said they deserved what they got.

I kicked off my shoes, wiggled out of my jeans, and shouted, "Brandon can’t swim!" to anyone in hearing before I dashed into the black water. 17 I swam like demons were chasing me, like my boyfriend was drowning in front of me. When I reached the spot I thought they’d be, I tread water and shouted into the darkness, "Doug!"

"Zoey!" he shouted back, faintly over the roar of the ocean, way down the beach where the current had swept them.

I swam in that direction. Then I felt the current catch me too. It pushed me along too fast for comfort until suddenly, thankfully, I tripped over a warm body in the cold water and reached down to grab it.

Instead of grabbing me back, he shook my hand loose and struggled to the surface on his own. Doug panted, "Brandon can’t swim. I’ve got him. Help me," and he was underwater again. There was no way he would let Brandon go, and there was no way I would let Doug go. We would all go down together. I took one last breath.

"Zoey, we’ll get Brandon," Stephanie said, swimming past me. Another junior girl followed her, and they both dove under.

A wave crashed on top of me and pushed me down. In the blackness I put out my hands for Doug and felt only the sandy bottom where I didn’t expect it. I didn’t know up from down.

And then I felt him. Put my arms around him. Shoved off from the bottom as hard as I could and kicked until I ran out of breath, kept kicking past that threshold where I had to take a breath, kept kicking.

We hit the cold night air and both gasped.

"I’m okay," he heaved. "Get Brandon."

"We’ve got him," a girl shouted.

"I’ve got Doug," said Mike gliding beside me. "Zoey, just get to shore."

"We’ve got her," Keke and Lila said. One of them put her arm across my chest and said what lifeguards say. "Stop struggling and relax."

I didn’t want to struggle and take them down with me, so I lay back in the water and let them tow me. I knew how to do this. I’d taken my turn being the victim in months of lifeguard training. I glided across the surface, the water cold but seeming warm compared with the colder air. I looked up at the sky and saw a universe of stars.

Closer to shore they handed me off. A boy’s solid arm wrapped around me. I could tell from the shouts that Doug and Brandon were handed off too, a lifeguard relay.

My back raked across the sand, and the strong arm let me go. I flipped over and crawled the rest of the way up the beach to collapse in the frigid wind, one of a long line of parallel bodies. I allowed myself three deep breaths to recuperate, then sat up to look. "Brandon," I said, finding his bulk on the sand. I called, "Is Brandon okay?"

"He’s okay," the junior girls called back, all four of them in unison.

Beside me, I touched Doug’s soaked T-shirt stuck to his hard, flat stomach. "One," I said. There were seventeen people on the swim team, and I had to make sure we were all accounted for. "Two." I counted aloud to sixteen. "Where’s seventeen? Who are we missing?" My heart beat frantically as I stood up and scanned the dark beach. "Oh God, where’s number seventeen?"