Read (Don't You) Forget About Me Online
Authors: Kate Karyus Quinn
(Don't You) Forget About Me
We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.
â
ROBERT FROST
CONTENTS
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Everybody Wants to Rule the World
Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?
Flashdance . . . What a Feeling
Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want
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Four Years Ago
IT WAS A BIZARRE MAY DAY PARADE AT MIDNIGHT
instead of midday. There were no floats, no firefighters dressed in full gear tossing out bubble gum while their single siren blared, no horns tooting in time to the beat of the drums. The golden girls did not prance and smile with their silver batons spinning figure eights. Little kids with faces red and sticky from Popsicles and candy apples didn't shove and shout or cry when the balloon they'd forgotten they were holding escaped into the sky.
Your parade lacked those simple joys and sorrows, and yet four years later it still marches on inside me, advancing toward its inevitable ending.
Officially the parade was canceled that year. It's canceled every fourth year. Any excitementâeven the gentle excitement of an old-fashioned paradeâis enough to trigger disaster during a fourth year. No one complains when events are canceled; instead they remind each other of the many ways in which fourth years have stolen the best and the brightest of our young people away.
The February 4th when sweet little Danny Marker turned five people into statues just by shaking their hands. Or the August 19th when identical twins Olive and Olivia Snow had a disagreement over whether that day's matching outfits would be plaid or polka-dot. Neither would give way, and the argument escalated until in the same breath they each wished the other to the ends of the earth. Before they could inhale again, both girls blinked out of existence. Then there was the May 1st when the earth opened up right where Main and State cross. The convertible with the May Queen was swallowed so quickly that she kept waving and smiling even as she fell through the split blacktop and into the dark below.
People will tell you that this is just the way things go around here when someone is taken with the madness. Sometimes that means losing the May Queen and her convertible too.
On your night, Piper, there was no May Queen. Only you in your red cowgirl boots leading the way across the intersection of State and Main. Your spurs sparked as they struck against the memorial plaque set into the road. Behind you trailed nearly half the high school. Shirtless boys in boxers, girls with long tangled hair and traces of Clearasil on their chins or cheekbones. Stumbling from their homes in bare feet, their eyes wide open yet unfocused, they formed a single-file line that wound through town and followed wherever you led. All the different cliques and groups were equally represented. It was easy to identify status in the high school pecking order when walking through the cafeteria, but under the moonlight, the jocks, geeks, princesses, and freaks all seemed similarly fragile.
The parade took a turn down State Street. Usually the blooms of the dogwood trees lining State had come and gone by May. But winter had lingered that year, and the trees had only budded and flowered within the past two weeks. As if having a change of mind, the wicked wind that had kept the long line of sleepy feet shuffling forward suddenly began to shake the blossoms from the trees and shoot them high into the sky. They didn't fall fast and heavy like the wet snowfalls that had plagued early April, but danced through the air, tickling at the noses of the half-asleep as if trying to rouse them from this doomed dream.
It was no use, though. The parade turned again, down Spring Street and toward the trestle bridge, leaving the trampled blossoms in its wake.
Going out onto the trestle bridge is forbidden, and it isn't a law that needs a whole lot of enforcing. There is enough danger in this town that nobody goes looking for it. Except you, Piper. You were the exception.
Are the exception. Are.
So I was not surprised when we ended up at the bridge.
You stopped and the parade behind you instantly halted as well, swaying in place to the gentle gurgle and shush of the Salt Spring. I'd followed you this whole way, only a step behind the same way our dog Chance eagerly followed me, not caring where you went, just glad to come along. But that simple show of devotion wasn't enough for you, Piper. As always, you needed more.
“Do you believe in destiny?” you asked me for the second time that evening.
I hadn't answered the first time. You'd just woken me from a sound sleep and I was too busy feeling grumpy about having been pulled from my warm bed. That moment when you first asked the question and I'd failed to answer seemed like an opportunity lost forever.
“No,” I finally answered, even though I knew it was too late. You smiled at me, not even hearing, too far in the grip of whatever it is that claims the teens of Gardnerville during a fourth year.
“One and the same,” you said, prompting me.
No. That's what I wanted to say. But the time for rebellion was past, and who knew when I would see you again.
“One and the same.” I repeated the phrase that bound us tighter than other sisters, making us more like Siamese twins despite our four-year age difference.
You gave me another brilliant Piper smile in response, then blew a kiss before skipping away down the trestle bridge.
I didn't go with you. Instead I stood on solid land and tried to keep the sleepwalkers from following you. I shook them and shouted in their faces, while Chance barked and nipped at their heels. It didn't work. They were deep into dreams where the world was soft and warm and full of perfect first kisses. Eventually I stopped trying and let them pass.
The trestle bridge was over a mile long, which meant that by the time you and your followers reached the midpoint, you'd all shrunk to the size of plastic play figurines. I folded my hands together in a way that felt vaguely prayerful, and hoped that it would be enough to bring God into this and keep the train out. But there would be a train. I knew this the same way I knew that if you were the type to carry a gun, it would always be loaded. My body tensed, waiting for the telltale whistle and then for whatever would happen after that, when a man appeared beside me.
“Piper,” he said, grabbing hold of my arm.
“No, Mr. Elton, it's me. Skylar,” I corrected him, pulling away.
His appearance was another surprise that was not a surprise at all. He was a teacher at the high school. New that year and too young and too handsome to be a teacher. Of course, all the girls fell in love with him. You loved him too. Maybe he loved you back. But not enough. I don't know if anyone could ever love you enough, but he'd fallen so short that it had brought us all here to this fateful night.
“Piper left me a note,” he said. He handed a folded piece of paper to me, as if I'd demanded evidence. I opened it. Inside was a lock of Piper's hair, a mixture of golden brown and red, exactly like my own.
“Where is she?” he asked. Then he looked past me, his eyes following the long line of the bridge stretched out before us, until his gaze stopped, caught upon the vision of your silent parade. He took a step forward and then turned back to me. “What the hell?”
It wasn't a question that needed an answer, but it was answered anyway by the train whistle finally blowing, a long angry wail. A moment later, the glow of the train's light appeared on the distant horizon.
“Shit,” Elton said, stunned.
The whistle screamed again and the vibration of the train rumbled against my soles.
“Go.” I mouthed the word at the same time that you shouted it, your voice somehow cutting through the noise.
The light grew, Piper, spotlighting the sleepwalkers as you touched each of their shoulders, setting them in motion, giving them orders to fly. One after another, like dominoes set up and knocked back down, they climbed on top of the bridge railing, balanced, and jumped.
No, they didn't jump.
Jump
implies an understanding of gravity and a knowledge that up is only temporary. With spring-loaded legs and arms outstretched like Superman, those young men and women didn't jump. They launched.
You could see the exact moment they woke from the dream. Midair, seconds from the icy water below, their limbs pedaled wildly, seeking something solid, but there was only the full moon, and even though it was slung low in the sky, it was still too far out of reach.
The last sleepwalker jumped, leaving only the train, and in front of itâyou. Your red cowgirl boots thumped against the wooden boards while your arms pumped and your mouth stretched in a wide grin that was still not big enough to convey all the joy you felt at that instant.
There were screams from the woken sleepwalkers in the water below, and I wondered if I should help them somehow, but I couldn't swim and it didn't matter anyway because I couldn't take my eyes away from you.
You wouldn't jump. I saw that clearly. You were determined to outrun that train or let it grind you beneath its steel wheels.
Elton bolted past me, onto the tracks, toward you and the train at your heels. If I froze that moment, and cut the train from the picture, you might be long-separated lovers, running toward each other, arms outstretched, everything forgiven, and only seconds away from a happy ending.
But this was a fourth year in Gardnerville, and there were no happy endings.
Four Years Later
WILLS CROUCHES IN A DUSTY CORNER OF THE TRAIN
station intent on the poor cockroach he's discovered there. He gives it an experimental poke, then plucks it from the ground and, seeing an opportunity, quickly turns it into a caboose for his wooden engine. “Choo, choo,” he calls in his husky little-boy voice while the doomed roach twitches, trying to escape. Luckily, Wills's fat little four-year-old fingers are unwittingly merciful. The roach is dead long before its legs give way to the friction of being dragged across the floor.
“Wills, put that down,” Mom calls to him. Normally, she'd already be at his side, wiping his hands with the bottle of hand sanitizer she always keeps in her purse. With Piper and me, Mom followed the old “if you love something, set it free” model of parenting. That didn't go so well. Now she has a second chance with Wills and is taking a completely opposite approach. Attachment parenting, I think they call it. She begged the doctor not to cut the umbilical cord. That didn't work, so she just pretended like it was still there. I don't think she and Wills have ever spent more than half a day without being an arm's reach away from each other.
“Your mother and Piper only know how to go to extremes.” That's something Dad used to say. He would say it now if he saw Mom and Wills together. But he never met Wills. Mom was still pregnant when he went to an extreme of his own, flying to San Francisco to jump off their big fancy bridge when the one here would've done him just as well.
Today, though, Mom is distracted. Wills knows it too. Instead of obeying, he turns so that his roach train is hidden behind the curve of his back. Mom shifts on the hard wooden bench, like she's going to stand, but a moment later she folds her hands in her lap and turns her gaze to the double doors between us and the empty train platform.
I step in front of her, purposely blocking her view, and press my nose against the glass. The air conditioner wheezing in the corner has chilled the room enough so that my breath fogs the pane, slowly obscuring what little there is to see. Just a concrete slab with the empty train tracks below. No one is waiting to get on the train. Despite everything, not many people leave this town. The train station doesn't even have a ticket booth. It's free to leave. The only people this town makes pay are those who decide to stay.
“Skylar, please sit down.”
Mom's reprimand to me is as soft as the one Wills received. If she'd yelled, I could've ignored her and gone back to pacing the ten-by-ten station. But her voice quavers just slightly, and it is enough to make me stop. I don't sit though. That is an unreasonable request. It is all I can do to stand still, swallowing my scream of frustration at being here.
Most days I wouldn't care that much. I could put up with the discomfort of one morning spent at the train station if I had one of my precious forget-me-not pills at home waiting to make it dissolve. But I'm out of pills today, and with no more being sold until tomorrow, it's a good bet that most other notters are out too. A few of them might have been clever enough to hoard a pill or two away, and if I'd gotten an early start like I'd planned, I might've tracked one of them down. With every minute that passes, the odds of this plan working out become increasingly dim.
I sigh. Loudly. Ignoring me, Mom reaches for the pile of papers next to her on the bench and flips through them. She's done this at least a half dozen times in the fifteen minutes we've been waiting. Her lips move as she reads each person's name, committing it to memory along with their personal tales of woe that have driven them here.
“How many?” I ask the question even though I don't want to know.
Mom shuffles through the papers again, stalling.
“They keep packing the newcomers in. Every single month, the train's been delivering a fresh batch of them.” My voice, too loud and confrontational, fills the room. Wills looks up, his eyes wide and worried. “There must be a lot this time. Though why they'd send them now, during a fourth year that has already stretched into August, is beyond me.”
“Well, you have to admit that the last few years have been mild.” Mom doesn't look at me, but instead straightens the papers, tapping them against the bench beside her. “I think Mr. Elton's impulse-control programs are really starting to make a difference. Maybe this town is finally changing for the better. Isn't that what you always wanted?”
I bark out a noise that some might characterize as a laugh except that it is bitter and angry and should be accompanied by a belch of black smoke instead of a smile. Of course Mom wants to join the rest of the town in singing “happy days are here again.” Never mind that Piper's gone. Maybe I'd once dreamed of a perfect Gardnerville too, but I'm older now and if there's one thing I've learned, it's that there's always a price to be paid.
Always.
As if reading my mind, Mom says, “How about trying to look on the bright side? Would that hurt?”
The thing is, Mom doesn't read minds, but I do. And I can see that she's every bit as afraid as me that none of this will end well. I can hear her mulling over the idea of leaving this town and taking me and Wills with her, but her imagination never goes beyond us stepping onto the train. She never thinks about where we'd sit, if she'd hold Wills close or let him press his nose against the glass and watch the only home he's ever known turn into a memory. She never imagines the way our bodies would jerk as the train began to move, or the moment when the train would be swallowed by the tunnel and every last bit of daylight would disappear. And because none of that is in her head, I feel fairly safe in predicting that we won't be leaving Gardnerville anytime soon.
“Skylar, I'm sorry. Let's not fight.” Of course, she's apologizing. Dad taught her well. If I was a better person, I'd tell her there's nothing to be sorry about; maybe I'd even mumble an apology of my own. Instead, I say nothing, and watch as she hunches forward into a defensive position. Toward the end with Dad, she often looked like this, a turtle that had lost its shell but was still desperately trying to hide.
My father was a bully. A genial, smiling bully. I hate when people say we're alike. They mean it kindly. Everyone loved him, and to be compared to him is considered a great compliment. It's one I don't often receive. Piper was always more like Dad. Bright and charming and dangerous. I don't have any of those traits except that last one. I can be just as mean as my father was on his worst day but, unlike him, I never learned to hide it behind a smile.
“I should go,” I say, seeing the escape route I've been wanting ever since Mom caught me on the way out the door.
“You promised you'd come with me,” she had said, blocking the doorway.
“Oh, was that today?” I'd bluffed, pretending to know what she was talking about. Pretending to remember a conversation that might've occurred at any time in the past few weeks while I'd been wrapped in the haze of one purple pill after another. The tail end of one pill muffled a conversation, and the next one blotted it out entirely.
Of course, there was also the possibility that Mom was playing me and I'd never promised her anything. Mom may be a neglectful parent, but even she couldn't have missed the number of times in the past four years when I've stood directly in front of her and had to admit that she looked familiar but I couldn't exactly recall where we'd met.
In the end, though, it didn't matter if I'd promised or not. A train was coming with new residents and we had to be there to welcome them. Of course, the welcome mostly consisted of bubble bursting. Someone had to tell the poor schmucks that there was a downside to living in this magical town.
Mom inherited the job after Dad died. Although she's only a Gardner by marriage, she takes it a million times more seriously than he ever did. He never dragged any of us kids along and he was never on time either. Sometimes he'd leave the newcomers waiting in the station for hours after the train had chugged back out of town.
Mom always insists on us being early. Maybe because she remembers being one of those newcomers, sitting on that very same bench. Before arriving here, she'd spent the previous three years of her life in various hospitals, as her parents sought second, third, and fourth opinions. Then a recruiter approached them with stories of a magical place they could send their daughter . . . for a small fee, of course. The only problem was Mom's age. She'd just turned eighteen, which meant leaving everything and everyone she'd ever known behind. Her parents didn't hesitate, though. They sent her to Gardnerville, knowing that her good health would be guaranteed only as long as she remained here, and that no visitors were ever allowed.
I am brought back to the present when the papers flutter from Mom's hands, hitting my feet in surrender. Only then do I realize that instead of stomping away, I am still standing in the exact same place. Which means that I am here to see the pathetic lost look on Mom's face. And the tears. Always the tears. They fill her eyes, turning them into green swimming pools, and then they flow silently down her cheeks.
“It's just something in my eye,” she used to say when I was little, but I don't think I was ever little enough to actually believe it.
“I'll stay,” I say, breaking as I always do, and, as if in response, the train's whistle howls in the distance.
It sounds nothing like Wills's soft and husky “choo choo.”
Our small town is quiet with no airplanes flying overhead and few cars on the street. Even at the farthest edges of Gardnerville, where the trailer park gives way to the slippery ravines, you can hear the train's shriek as it is forced through the narrow mountain passage. At first it's perceived as an angry echo. From the edge of the water, it sounds like a dozen different trains are pushing their way through that long and skinny tunnel. Then the train bursts out onto the trestle bridge, and the whole town seems to sway just slightly in a way that makes people miss a step when going down the stairs or spill a hot cup of coffee onto their lap.
Now I put a hand to the wall. As it trembles beneath my fingertips, I can almost sense exactly where the train is and when it will screech to a stop in front of us. Wills drops his toy train and clambers to his feet, ready to run out to the platform, but Mom springs up and pushes the door closed before he's even opened it an inch. She keeps one hand against the glass barricade while the other grips the back of Wills's shirt. She has already lost one child to this train; I guess she doesn't want to risk another.
We all take several involuntary steps backward when the train pulls into view, as if we need to give it space. But when it comes to a full stop, it seems to shrink and becomes just a machine, no more noteworthy or frightening than a blender.
The passenger-train door opens, and a long moment passes before the first person exits. Then there is a flood of them, crowding the small platform. Putting on her Gardner face, Mom finally releases Wills as she steps out onto the platform and smiles like a hostess welcoming guests to a party.
“Hello, welcome to Gardnerville, please come in! This way, please.”
They are uncertain and blinking in the too-bright sun. Mom lures them inside with her pasted-on smile and gently waving hand. I count them as they fill the corners and edges of the room. The last two, a father carrying a pale girl in his arms, are numbers twenty-three and twenty-four. I look past them to see if anyone else is coming and catch sight of a lone passenger walking in the other direction.
I push past the father and sickly kid, and as I do a prickle of something secret and terrible crawls up my spine to nibble at my skull. I flick it away but not quickly enough. Secrets are already spilling into me in that loud whispery way they always have. Secrets are stupid things. They hate being contained and like nothing better than to be told everywhere and to everyone, even though this is what kills them, downgrading them to plain old common knowledge.
The father's secret will keep for now. “Hey,” I call after the newcomer, as I run across the platform. There's no acknowledgment of my words; he just continues walking.
I hustle down the stairs, to the gravel path running parallel to the tracks. My feet crunch loudly as I gain on him, until I am close enough to grab his arm.
But I don't touch him. I never touch anyone if I can avoid it.
“Hey,” I repeat instead. “You're supposed to go into the station for the welcome to . . .”
At last, he turns to face me. I recognize him instantly. He's a newcomer, but not one from this batch; he climbed off the train and heard the welcome speech three months ago.
“What the hell, Foote?” I ask, angry for no good reason except that Foote's annoyed me since the day he arrived and almost instantly became Elton's favorite guy. “You weren't on the train, were you?”
I eye him, taking in the jeans, white T-shirt, and old-fashioned fedora. He should look silly, but instead he has this knack for appearing different in a way that makes you think “cool” instead of “weirdo.” There's only one problem with his usual lookâtoday the front of his shirt is caked in blood. The edges of it are dry and crusty, but at the center of his chest there are three dark spots where the blood is still wet and shimmery and the T-shirt is torn away so that I can see the red skin beneath.
“It looks worse than it is,” Foote says as I turn green. “But I figured it would be best to clean up instead of going through orientation again.” His voice is deep and strong. It doesn't sound like the voice of someone who's dying. I force myself to pull my focus away from the wound and onto his face. And there are those intense blue eyes, even more vibrant when contrasted with his raven-black hair.
It's not often that I want to know someone's secrets, but ever since I first met Foote, I've wanted to take hold of both his hands and let the skeletons in his closet dance with mine.