Forget You (9 page)

Sure enough, as it drew closer, I saw it was Officer Fox, with Doug in the passenger seat. My heart sped up again.

I released the tape measure so it wound back up into its metal coil, slapping my legs as it went. Then I stuffed it into my back pocket like I wasn't already caught.

"Busted!" Keke squealed at me as the truck pulled onto the shoulder in front of the Datsun. Doug opened the passenger door and stepped out, crutches first.

"Soliciting charitable donations is not illegal," I called past him into the cab to Officer Fox.

"It's not safe to do it on the highway," Officer Fox said. "But you're right, being stupid isn't illegal. Otherwise half this town would be behind bars, and Doug would have gotten the death penalty by now. Hey--" Officer Safety opened the driver's side door and fell out of the cab onto the highway with the engine still running to avoid Doug reaching across the seat to grab him.

Doug gave up, slammed the passenger door, and righted himself on his crutches, hopping a little. "What'cha doing?" he asked me in his sweet, sarcastic voice, pretending he hadn't seen the tape measure.

"Getting some fresh air," I said. The wind at my back flipped my ponytail over my head. I brushed it away. "I've been hanging out at Keke and Lila's house. They have, like, fifteen or sixteen siblings."

"We have
three,
" Keke called from the payload as the pickup drove past to retrieve Lila.

"Seems like more," I called back. I stared after the retreating pickup, and Keke knocking on the window to bother Officer Fox, so I wouldn't have to meet Doug's gaze. I should thank him for insisting Keke take me home with her last night. I didn't thank him because all I did lately was thank him and apologize to him and hope he wasn't ruining my mother's life behind my back. I wished we could go back to the way we were at the beginning of the school year, when we avoided each other. Before he called me a spoiled brat at the game. Before he knew I liked to snuggle in the grass. Before I knew what he smelled like.

Because now the wind swirled around us both and wound me up in his scent of chlorine and ocean.

He reached for my mouth. I didn't know what he intended, so I willed myself to stay still and not make a big deal out of his hand moving in slow motion toward me, beside my cheek, almost out of my line of sight. With his pinky he brushed a strand of my hair from the corner of my mouth where the wind had blown it into my lip gloss. His fingertip trailed fire across that tender corner.

And then he put his hand down and smirked at what he'd done to me. At least, that's how it seemed. He stood in the hot air and the cool wind, taller than ever on his crutches, and looked me up and down with his distant green eyes. "So, a little hair of the dog?"

"Where?" I glanced around. Now that Keke and Lila weren't guarding the road, a car could fly by and cream whatever wandered into its path.

Doug whistled and passed his hand in front of my eyes to get my attention. "Hair of the dog. Bloody Mary after you've spent the night drinking. As in, revisiting something helps you get over it."

My eyes followed the path of his hands down as he grabbed the handle of his crutch before it fell over. Did he mean we'd spent the night drinking? I didn't drink. Doug didn't drink while he was in training. Mike did drink. However, he hadn't been drinking before the wreck, or Doug would have been driving Mike's Miata.

Doug's fingers caressed the worn wooden handle of the secondhand crutch. My gaze trailed up his big hand, his wide wrist, his strong forearm meant for pulling his body weight through the water rather than maneuvering himself on land. Slowly I realized he was speaking metaphorically.

And I lashed out. "I do
not
need to get over you," I said more forcefully than I'd intended, because I was lying. Oh God, I was lying again, and now I was confused, but this had to stop. "I am happy dating Brandon. I didn't know you would drive by while I was here. How could I know that?"

He stared at me without blinking, and tilted his head ever so slightly to one side. "I meant you're getting over the
wreck.
"

"Right!" I turned toward the skid marks in the road to hide my red face. He would use this to embarrass me in public. Embarrassing me in private was bad enough.
Zoey likes me after she swore she didn't. Zoey has been fantasizing about my knee on her thigh.

Miraculously, instead of pressing the subject, he gave me a way out. "That's where my brother and I have been, looking at the Bug and the Miata in the junkyard." He waved past me, inland. Then he glanced pointedly at my pocket. "I didn't take a tape measure, though."

I watched past his shoulder, way down the road. In the distance, Lila set down her bucket and poster board, put her hands on her hips, and argued with Officer Fox inside the truck. I willed her to stop arguing and come back to save me from this conversation and this beautiful, snarky, way-too-perceptive boy. The cool breeze caught the poster board and blew it down the shoulder. Lila abandoned her act with Officer Fox and galloped after the poster. No help there.

"I . . ." I said, thinking hard.

Doug raised one black eyebrow at me.

"I'mmmmm still a little confused about what happened. What time did we wreck?"

The suspicious look he gave me let me know I shouldn't have asked this. "About two thirty," he said.

I'd made him suspicious with this question and the answer didn't even give me any information. When I'd lived with my mom, every curfew had been negotiated in detail, taking into account the activity, location, and company associated with said revelry (and sometimes I typed out a contract in legalese like this just to poke fun at her).

But my dad didn't care what time I came in. When we'd wrecked at two thirty in the morning, I could have been headed south for home. Or I could have been headed north to Brandon's house, or elsewhere.

Where?

Officer Fox had gathered Lila and cruised back in our direction. I could slip one more question in and then escape quickly if Doug's eyebrow rose again. I brushed past him and walked along one of the skid marks. I asked over my shoulder, "So, I was driving along like this? And then, all of a sudden--" I threw out my arms. "Deer drama! Right?" I turned around to grin at him.

Uh-oh. His eyebrow was up. "You don't remember which direction you were driving?"

So I'd aroused his suspicion again. At least I knew now that I'd been driving in the
other
direction, north toward Brandon's.

Or did I? Maybe Doug wasn't telling me I was wrong. He was only saying it was a weird question for me to ask. I was getting dangerously close to admitting I didn't remember the whole night.

The pickup reached us and pulled to a stop, bringing the cool breeze with it. I shut my eyes against the sand in my face.

Lila sobbed from the payload, "Now we'll
never
collect enough money to fund the swim team trip to District!"

"There's no one here for you to bullshit," Doug told her.

"Oh, right." She and Keke climbed out and ran for the Datsun, hampered by the breeze against their poster boards and their buckets.

I beat them to it. Before Keke could slip into the driver's seat, I pushed the seat forward and dove into the back, which smelled strongly of used bubble gum. I owed Doug some kind of good-bye, but maybe the surprise escape would take his mind off my blond questions.

No such luck. He crutched forward and knocked on Keke's window until she cranked it down. (This was a very old Datsun.) "Zoey," he said, angling his head to look past Keke and the headrest, straight at me. "You don't remember which direction you were driving?"

I leaned between Keke's seat and Lila's, out of his line of sight, and hissed, "Go, Keke, before Officer Fox arrests us."

"I thought you said this was legal!" Lila whined. "Your mom is a lawyer!"

"It might be just a
little
illegal," I admitted. Keke was already spinning the tires in the soft sand of the shoulder to make our getaway.

Doug had wisely maneuvered out of our path. As Keke sped away and she and Lila both bitched at me for getting them in trouble and wondered aloud whether the wreck had given me brain damage, I stared out the back window, between the old-fashioned defrost stripes, at Doug watching us go.

If he asked me again at school tomorrow, I would deny everything while maintaining a friendly distance so he didn't get pissed at me and give away anything about what we'd done together after the wreck. Or about my mom.

In the meantime, I would go to my father's house and take a long swim in the ocean. Stroking against the tide would restore my strength and help me think. As I planned my next step in finding out what had happened to me, I would swim away from shore, and my dad's house on the beach would grow smaller and more distant. Just like Doug leaning on his crutches in the middle of the country highway, smaller and smaller until his green eyes disappeared.

8

"Zoey!" the three chicks on my relay team screeched at the same time Coach bellowed, "Commander!" Then I hit the water.

I knew I'd jumped the block almost before I jumped it. Starts were one of the key parts of relay practice. Swimming fast and growing stronger were important, but I also had to make sure I didn't dive into the water before the person ahead of me touched the block I was standing on. If I did, I let down all three teammates in the relay with me.

I surfaced quickly so the team would have less time to talk trash about me. I caught Stephanie in the middle of, "Not
again
!" Then I swam to the edge of the pool and held on to the side, waiting for Coach's rant.

He didn't rant or even kneel down to give me a talking-to. He barked, "Dry off, Commander," like that was the end of our discussion.

"Coach!" I shrieked. "I'm fine. I won't do it again."

"You've done it three times in a row," Stephanie pointed out. Swim caps and goggles didn't enhance anyone's natural beauty, but I thought Stephanie looked particularly googly-eyed and sea-monsterish as I hoisted myself out of the pool and slapped to the bleachers to drip-dry in the afternoon sun.

Swim practice started the last period of school and extended an hour and a half after school was over. I'd done fine at first. And my head wasn't bothering me. As a precautionary measure I'd taken painkillers all day--only two every four hours, exactly the recommended dosage. Maybe Coach would let me back in the water after a few minutes.

Because I could focus now. I'd finally accepted that Doug wasn't coming to swim practice. He'd skipped English this morning. I'd spent a long hour in fear that he wouldn't come to school at all, I would stay in the dark about our accident for another day, and something had gone wrong with his leg. Gangrene.

Then he showed up in biology after going to the doctor to get the splint off and a cast put on. You couldn't miss him when he entered the classroom. He was enveloped by boys hooting, the weak ones capitalizing on a strong boy's downfall. The thought crossed my mind that he would punch them for this, and I wondered if it crossed theirs. I wasn't sure why he had attacked that guy outside history class and had gotten suspended for it two years ago.

I didn't cross the room and talk to him myself. After sleeping with him on the bus Saturday, I didn't want to give anyone reason to tell Brandon something was going on between Doug and me. Besides, now that Doug was back at school, I knew I could talk to him during swim practice without so many people around.

And now he'd gone missing. When I'd taken roll at the beginning of swim practice, Gabriel had told me Doug was in Ms. Northam's class making up the English test he'd missed this morning. That accounted for his absence last period. It didn't explain why he still wasn't here after school.

I shivered in the cool autumn breeze that had settled in despite today's hot sun. We would need to put up the massive dome over the pool this week if the wind kept up. Then I sat on the bleachers, pulled my phone out of my backpack--as always, checked first for a message from my mother--and pressed Doug's number. Cringed in anticipation of his voice mail announcement, which is what I usually got when I called him about a change of swim team plans. Sighed with relief when his phone rang. Tensed again after the third unanswered ring, hoping he was okay, revisiting thoughts of gangrene. The rest of the swim team splashed back and forth across the pool in front of me. Doug should be in the pool with them.

The wreck hadn't been my fault. He'd said that himself. So why did I feel guilty?

"Zoey!" he yelled through the phone, and I jumped. "Are you okay?"

"Well, yeah," I said. "Did you think I wasn't?" He sounded like he was as worried about me as I was about him. But that was impossible. Doug didn't care that much about
anybody
.

Static sounded on the phone as he let out a long breath. "I didn't expect you to call me."

"I wanted to make sure
you're
okay," I said. "You're not at swim practice."

"Oh,
swim practice
." The bittersweet sarcasm was back. "You know me. Normally nothing could keep me from supporting my teammates. But my dad got a charter for the afternoon, and I need the money. I guess I haven't totally given up on the idea of going to college someday. Hold on." There was more static, and his muffled shout at someone with his hand over the phone. Then he was back. "I need to go. We're trying to land a marlin."

"Do you plan to avoid swim practice for the rest of the season because you don't want us to see how upset you are?"

In the background, a man shouted, "Doug! A little help!"

When Doug didn't answer me, I rushed on before he hung up on me. "You're overreacting. Yeah, six weeks in a cast is a setback, but you were so far ahead already. College scouts know that you had an injury and that you'll recover. You need to come to practice and show Coach how committed you are instead of catching marlins and feeling sorry for yourself. Break your leg, take one day off, fine. Now get back to work." I got more excited and louder than I'd intended. Coach looked over at me from the edge of the pool and gave me a thumbs-up.

"Doug!" shouted the man on the boat.

Without putting his hand over the phone this time, Doug hollered back at the man, "What the fuck? I'm on crutches." Then he lowered his voice for me. "I guess I was waiting for somebody to tell me that. Coach hasn't told me that."

"How could he tell you? You didn't come to practice!"

Silence fell, except for the calls of seagulls through the phone, circling Doug's boat. Or maybe they were the seagulls swooping above the school. I couldn't tell.

"I'll come tomorrow," Doug finally said. "Thanks for calling, Zoey. I'll see you in English."

"Wait. That's not what I called about," I said quickly, cupping my hand over the phone. Stephanie and the others were pulling themselves out of the pool to line up behind the block again. There was no reason to keep it a secret that I wanted to see Doug. I
needed
him for information, to figure out what had happened to me Friday night. But I didn't
want
him. Brandon had nothing to worry about. Still, I tucked the phone away behind my hand so the swim team couldn't read my lips. "What time are you getting to shore? Could I meet you? Maybe take you to dinner? Just as friends. Just to talk."

His voice turned dangerously sweet. "What do you want to talk about? Us?"

"No," I said. Definitely not us. "The wreck. I still don't remember everything."

"Do you want to talk about your mom?"

I sucked in a breath and held it, my mind reeling, grasping for something to say. He hadn't brought up my mom all week. He'd lulled me into thinking he wouldn't.

"That's why I came to swim practice late every day last week," he said. "I knew you didn't want to talk about it in public, and I was afraid to call you and make your dad mad and get my brother fired. I was trying to get you to call me."

"Doug!" The man on the boat was cursing at him now.

"I planned to sit by you on the van to Panama City on Saturday," he said in a rush. "But on Friday you turned me in to Coach for being tardy. Logically I knew you hadn't betrayed me. How could you betray me when we'd never been friends? But that's what it felt like. I figured you'd go to the football game to see Brandon play. I paced around the parking lot forever, planning exactly what to say to you. And then I came in, and I said the wrong thing, and you mentioned Brandon, and I was an ass."

"You called me a--"

"Spoiled brat," we said at the same time.

"And I apologized for calling you a spoiled brat," he said. "I wish you remembered
that.
"

I clung to the underside of the bench with one hand, trying to breathe normally, refusing to go back to my mother's bedroom and try to fix everything. It had been a week since I'd found her. I couldn't melt down every time somebody mentioned her.

"All right," Doug said kindly. "Yes, Zoey, I would like to meet you after I get to shore, and go with you to dinner, and talk about the wreck, and nothing else."

* * *

I
PARKED THE
B
ENZ AND WALKED
around the docks crowded with polished yachts and dilapidated fishing boats until I found the empty space and the big wooden sign for the
Hemingway.
Taped to the sign, a sheet of green paper advertised the rates for fishing trips. The trip this afternoon appeared in a special box with the caption
YOUR HOST BY SPECIAL REQUEST, PEGLEG DOUG
.

I glanced at my watch. It was exactly time for the cruise to be over, yet they weren't here. Maybe a storm had popped up and they'd capsized. What if Doug couldn't swim with one serviceable leg? What if his cast took on water and weighed him down?

I told myself to get a grip. Friendly white clouds puffed across the hot autumn sky. The
Hemingway
was running a little late, and why hurry? No one was waiting for it. Except me.

I paced under the
Hemingway
sign. Then I walked up the dock to the shallower water, reasoning that moving away would cause the
Hemingway
to sail closer. On the bottom of the shallows, hermit crabs, all legs and claws under borrowed shells, picked across the rocks and oysters. I counted five of them in the small section I could see before the sand fell away from the shore and the water grew deep and dark. Five crabs moving in different directions, each headed where another had just been. If I knew what their goal was and what destination would best help them achieve that goal, I could line them up and send them there in an orderly fashion. Doug would scoff at me for this.

I longed for him to scoff at me. It was awful. I was only attracted to him because I couldn't have him. I was with Brandon. If I broke up with Brandon to be with Doug, even if Doug did want me, I wouldn't want Doug anymore and I'd pine away for Brandon. This was how it worked, being a cheater. I hoped Ashley was enjoying her time in Hawaii, because her days with my dad were numbered.

I knew this, yet the sign that said
Hemingway
pulled me back down the crumbling pier. I examined the water hoses, the plastic buckets, and wondered whether Doug had touched them. Had he taped the Pegleg Doug sheet to the
Hemingway
sign? I pictured him balancing on one leg, dropping his crutches, and bracing himself against the sign with one hand, a stapler in the other. In school today I could tell he'd already grown accustomed to his crutches and had developed a routine for letting them go, throwing himself into a nether realm without balance, and gracefully taking his next handhold just before falling. I knew the movements of his dance as if I were dancing it myself.

And there was Doug, facing away from me, braced against a rail around the bow of the
Hemingway
. The boat glided fast through the green-blue inlet, already so close that I stepped back in surprise. Then, because Doug was arguing with his dad, I kept backing up. I sat on a clean space on a nearby bench, between blobs of dried seagull poop, to wait.

I didn't recognize Mr. Fox. I didn't think he'd ever been to a swim meet. But I knew who he was right away because Doug argued with him. And because even though Mr. Fox was blond with a ponytail and a beard, he was built like Officer Fox, a tad shorter and thicker than Doug. As Doug ducked below the rail, working, Mr. Fox scanned the shoreline. His eyes moved over me without stopping.

The boat bumped gently against the padded dock and backed up a little, engine churning and water boiling. Over this noise I heard Mr. Fox cursing the boat pilot. Then he watched Doug struggling for a moment and said, "Put your weight into it. What are you, a fag?" He turned on his heel, disappeared into the cabin, and came out with a beer can in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other. Holding the beer perfectly level so not a drop spilled, he jumped from boat to shore and headed for a small charter office behind me without a word to any of the passengers or crew, and without a glance at me.

Every few seconds Doug's head popped up from beneath the rail. Still struggling.

On the phone he'd said at first that he didn't want me to pick him up here. He'd suggested he crutch up to Jamaica Joe's on the corner and meet me there. Then he'd suggested he crutch up to his house, which he'd said was not inland, as I'd assumed, but on a bluff nearby. Neither of these suggestions had made sense to me. Why should Doug hobble when I could drive? I'd insisted on meeting him as close to the boat as possible. Now I understood the problem. Everybody was embarrassed of crazy parents.

The crew and the fishermen and the fish they'd caught spilled from the boat onto the wharf. Doug came after them, pushing a barrel in front of him and holding on to the boat rail with the other hand to keep from toppling over. He bent to retrieve his crutches and hobbled into the boat's cabin. He came out in a different T-shirt and shorts. He crutched to the side of the boat, paused a moment to consider the bobbing bow and the two-foot gap to the wharf, and finally hopped across the gap as if he'd been on crutches all his life. When one of the crew tossed a hose to the concrete, Doug picked it up and squirted off his good foot, flip-flop and all.

Then he crutched toward me. "Hello," he called without smiling. Just as he stopped in front of me, the cool breeze whipped around him, carrying his scent to me. No chlorine today. He smelled of soap and ocean.

I stood up. "Hi," I tried to say casually, as if I were still innocent and hadn't heard what his dad said to him. The dark look he shot me let me know I was a bad actress.

I cleared my throat. "You didn't get the marlin?"

"We did. We like to take a picture of it and then let it go. When men bring home a seven-foot-long dead fish, their wives don't want them to come out with us again. What happens on the
Hemingway
stays on the
Hemingway.
" His words were light, his tone somber.

I laughed. "I take it you've seen a lot happen on the
Hemingway.
"