He rubbed his hands on his thighs and looked around the junkyard, suddenly uncomfortable. "Y know how Gabriel always says he's not going to get
ou drunk, so he drives to a party, and then he gets drunk?"
I nodded.
"I left my Jeep at school and rode to the party with Gabriel so I could drive his Honda to his house afterward. Then I could walk over to the school for my Jeep."
That made perfect sense. Doug never drank while he was training. He served as designated driver for people all the time. "But?" I prodded him.
"But somebody else took Gabriel home early, and Mike was the only person left to drive me back to school to get my Jeep."
"So you and Mike were driving north," I mused. "Which means when we hit each other, I was driving south, toward the beach. Toward home. Brandon says I wasn't with him. Where could I have been?"
"It's a mystery."
I glared at Doug. The constant snark was one thing. I'd put up with it because I felt like I'd done him wrong times a hundred, even if I couldn't quite put my finger on why. But for him to make fun of me about this . . . It was too much to take.
Scooping up my megabox of condoms and wrapping both arms around it, I stalked across the junkyard toward the Benz.
Behind me I heard the door of the Bug slam. I could tell from the screech of metal and the thud that the door had fallen off its hinges, but I didn't turn around.
"Zoey," he called.
I stopped between a tower of TVs and a pile of wheelchairs. The tricky thing about trusting Doug was that I had to stay on his good side so he didn't tell everyone in my school about my mother despite his promise not to. I didn't walk back to him, but I did turn with the condom box in front of me like a shield. I waited for him to maneuver down the narrow path winding through the trash.
The afternoon wasn't hot as Florida went, but when he crutched to a stop in front of me, two drops of sweat loosed themselves from his hairline and raced down his cheek. "I didn't realize how much memory you lost, Zoey. Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because losing your memory sounds crazy! Like my mom."
He tilted his head way over to one side, as if looking at me from a different angle would help. "This is nothing like your mom."
"It feels the same." I transferred the box to one hip and chewed on my thumbnail--normally something I did not do because it ruined my manicure and projected weakness, said my mom.
I was finally talking about this with someone.
Even if it was Doug Fox.
"My dad told me it was the same. He threatened to lock me up with her if I ruined his trip to Hawaii."
Doug closed his eyes, looking pained. He shook his head. Then he leaned on a crutch and spun the other on its rubber tip in the dust, one of the many tricks he'd invented over the past few days. Gazing at the spinning crutch rather than me, he told me, "Y said you didn't remember the wreck. But you
ou did remember me pulling you out of the car. And you remembered me calling you a brat at the game."
I laughed. "I remember all the good stuff."
He stopped spinning the crutch and looked up at me.
"That's why I was so confused when you came over Saturday morning and acted like we were together," I explained. "I don't remember what happened in the emergency room."
He stared at me.
"So . . . ?" I prompted him.
He didn't say a word.
"So, what did happen?" I insisted.
"Don't worry about it," he said gruffly, elbowing me just a little as he crutched past me, toward the Benz.
I watched him go, my face and chest burning with anger in the hot sun, not believing he had just blown me off.
He rounded the Benz and executed the five-step process of entering a car with crutches. That's when I ran toward him. I ran at full force like I was swimming the fly, powered by fury. I jerked open the driver's side door and threw the box hard over the headrest into the backseat. The box hit the rear window, and a few condom packets slipped out as the box tumbled to the seat, then the floor. "Don't worry about it!" I yelled. "What the fuck, Doug?"
His arms were crossed, head against the window, eyes closed. "Right--" he started.
I slid into the driver's seat and slammed the door as hard as I could. "I've already told you--"
"Okay--" he said without opening his eyes.
"--this is really important to me--"
"Y es--"
"--and it's not fair for you to withhold information!"
"What happened was, I told you I loved you." Without moving his body or his head, he opened his eyes and gave me a look that said so there.
I cranked the car and backed it carefully out of the junkyard parking lot. Or, I backed it carefully out from between the junk cars where I'd parked it. I couldn't tell whether the other cars parked near the office were working or not, but the Benz certainly looked out of place between them.
Doug shifted his shoulders away from me and gazed out the window.
It took me until we'd passed the high school and maneuvered through the courthouse square to say, "I'm having a hard time believing you."
"Thanks," he said flatly.
I drove down the country highway, toward the beach and the wharf, puzzling this out. I believed him. He had no reason to lie. I simply couldn't picture it. We lay in the wet grass together and he said, "Zoey, I'm sorry for calling you a spoiled brat and I love you." We held hands between stretchers in the emergency room. He kissed my fingers, whispering, "I should never have called you a spoiled brat, and by the way, I love you."
As I turned onto the beach road I asked, "Did I say it back?"
"Y said it first."
He braced himself against the seat and the door as the car bumped over the curb. I jerked the wheel to steer back onto the road, eyes darting left and right, hoping Officer Fox wasn't watching from his police car.
"Doug," I finally exhaled. "I don't know what to do. I hope you'll give me a while to get my brain around this. I mean, I'm dating Brandon--"
He whacked his head against the window.
"Ouch, please don't do that." I put my hand out to touch his head. I even wiggled my fingers, but I couldn't quite reach. I put my hand down. "I don't want to lose you. I realize I don't have you, but I don't want to lose that chance. Like you said, I want a chance with you."
"Y do?"
"Y I said, "but not right this second. Because I'm dating Brandon--"
es,"
"Jesus!"
"--and I don't want to be a cheater."
"Y ou're not married, Zoey!" Doug shouted. "Y Just wait. It's this kind of f**ked up thinking that will make you wind up married to Brandon Moore."
et.
I tried to laugh, but it came out more of a choked gasp. "I'm seventeen!"
"My point exactly."
I felt him looking at me, but I didn't dare turn my head for fear of running off the road again.
I parked at the wharf and asked as pleasantly as I could under the circumstances, "Is this okay? I could drop you off at your house instead. Do you have paperwork to do?"
"Y He opened his door and pulled himself out, leaning on the car.
es."
"Well, wait. It's still early. We could grab a burger and talk some more. Do you have a lot of paperwork?"
"Stacks, and then I need to swab the deck and scrape barnacles off the bow." He closed the front door and opened the back to slide his crutches out.
"I'm serious," I called over my shoulder. "We need to talk this out or it'll fester."
"What do we have left to talk about?" he demanded. "Why don't you say `I'm dating Brandon' ten times fast to get it over with? When that changes, then you have my number." He slammed the door.
I SHOULD HAVE DRIVEN HOME, HEATED up a frozen dinner, finished my homework, read ahead for English, and watched TV until I fell asleep.
The idea of this night at home with myself twisted my stomach. Over the past few days I'd had more and more trouble concentrating on homework or English or even TV. I was never alone. Doug and Brandon stood at the periphery of every room, scowling at me with their arms folded. And of course I really was being watched by my dad on candid camera.
Instead, I drove thirty minutes along the oceanfront road, to the mall in Destin. I bought dinner and ate it in the open-air food court while I worked on calculus. If I couldn't be alone with myself, the next best thing was surrounding myself with a happy crowd who had serious concerns like what gifts to give and what clothes to wear. I stayed there, drinking refills of Diet Coke, doing extra calculus problems from the back of the book, until groups of shoppers passed me for the third time and whispered about me because I'd sat at the same table doing calculus so long.
I went shopping. I didn't need anything. I never wanted anything. My mom always had to convince me to buy new clothes to present an organized and confident appearance to the world. She would arrange her schedule so she wasn't catching up with work on Saturday afternoon, bribe me with a promise of a Starbucks frappuccino, and bring me here.
So it's more accurate to say that this time, rather than shopping, I walked through the stores, inhaling their familiar scents. My favorite anchor store smelled just a tad like mildew. The boutique next door reeked of dizzying perfume, a chemical brainwashing me into buying something more fashion forward than my usual comfort zone. Macram? leggings. I didn't fall for it this time, but I might have fallen for it with my mom working on me too. The sales chick smiled with dollar signs in her eyes, said she recognized me from other shopping trips, and asked where my mother was.
She wasn't being catty, I told myself over and over as I swam through the vast parking lot under the mile-high streetlights to the Benz, trying to reach that life raft before I drowned, struggling to stay on the surface. The sales chick didn't know about my mom. Nobody knew but me, and my dad, and Officer Fox, and Doug.
*** Baby, r u still coming to swim meet tonight 6 pm?
I shouldn't have sent the text before English. Then I wouldn't have ached for class to end so I could turn my phone back on and see whether Brandon had answered. We turned our phones off during class or they were confiscated. A fishbowl on the counter in the school office swam with phones on vibrate.
And I wouldn't have glared quite so hard at the back of Doug's head. Somehow he knew I hadn't heard from Brandon since Saturday. He knew I'd texted Brandon this morning out of desperation. Brandon did give a shit about me, I could have sworn. When the bell rang I grabbed for my backpack and clicked on my phone. No message.
Doug didn't turn around. He hadn't met my eyes the whole class. But he glanced over his shoulder, looking while trying to look like he wasn't looking. If I'd been half an actress I would have busied myself thumbing my phone, composing a fake response to Brandon's fake answer. I didn't think of this until history class.
Finally, during break, after Doug had already limped out of the room so it didn't even matter, I got Brandon's response:
Glad u remindded me. Ill ask Stepane.
For a ride, I finished for Brandon. Surely he only meant he'd ask her for a ride. I PLUNGED OFF THE BLOCK INTO the water and glided until the precise moment when stroking would propel me faster. Then I broke the glide and kicked for all I was worth, with my anger at my mom and my dad and Brandon and Doug behind me.
I had fresh reason to be mad at Brandon. Stephanie Wetzel had brought him to the meet, all right. And she had visited him in the stands several times. Once I glanced up from the pool deck to wave at him and caught him sipping from her Coke, then passing it back to her.
Right then I vowed that I would win the 400 IM--which I had never done before. Usually I came in sixth or so. I would recapture Brandon's attention. I would make him feel the pride I felt for him when I watched him score a touchdown. Actually I hadn't seen it happen last Friday because Doug had distracted me, but I would be sure to see it this Friday.
And I had a fresh reason to be mad at Doug, like I didn't have enough reasons already. After his show of caring about the team yesterday, he'd spent most of tonight's meet texting on his phone. I wondered whether he was LOLing and ROFLing with another girl from Destin who didn't know he'd been to juvie. He'd decided I wasn't worth the wait.
That got me to the first turn in record time. Between strokes I couldn't raise my head far enough to see the clock on the wall, but it felt like the cool water slipped past my skin faster than ever, and the chicks from Crestview and Niceville in the lanes on either side of me were nowhere in sight. Anger was a beautiful thing.
I pushed off the wall hard. Every time I took a breath, I heard Doug yelling my name. Amazing that I could pick out one voice from the hundred or so in the bleachers and around the deck, especially when my ears were full of water. If he thought hollering for me would refresh my anger and make me swim even harder, it was working. Then it occurred to me Brandon might not like Doug cheering himself hoarse for me. I decided Brandon was not as jealous as I'd thought. Brandon had shared a Coke with Stephanie Wetzel. Brandon did not in fact give a shit about me. My kick was powerful, my whole body in sync. Angrier and angrier, I would win this race. At the next turn I flipped toward the wall.
Something grabbed me like the cold tendrils of the undertow snagging me in the ocean. It grabbed me and wouldn't let go. I screamed underwater, inhaled pool, and thrashed to get away until I didn't know which direction was up. The thing dragged at me, pressing me against the side of the pool. But now I could tell from the warmth of the setting sun that my head was above water. Gulping air, I pushed up my goggles and came face-to-face with my mother. 11 "Zoey," she gasped. She was lying on her stomach on the pool deck. With both arms around my back, she still pressed me toward her, into the hard cement of the pool. "Oh God, Zoey, are you okay?"