(Don't You) Forget About Me (15 page)

TEN

THE NEXT MORNING I STAND IN THE MIDDLE OF A
quiet street, waiting and second-guessing myself. I don't know exactly what I'll accomplish by going to the reformatory with Foote. The only way you get past the front gates is if you're doing time. But even if we can't get in, I can lie in the field where Piper and I spent so many afternoons together. I can watch the inmates do their daily walk.

The low bleat of a horn brings me back to my surroundings, and I see an ambulance slowly coming down the street toward me. The siren is silent, but the lights on top whirl as the vehicle rumbles past, almost luridly bright against the overcast sky. I turn to watch the ambulance roll through the stop sign at the end of the street and take the left that leads toward the Salt Spring.

It's not an active decision, but suddenly my feet are moving, following the ambulance's path. While I walk, my brain works, wondering what could be happening. If it was a fourth-year event, the siren would be screaming. Not to move people out of the way but as an early-warning system.
Get in your houses. Lock the doors.
If it isn't fourth-year-related, then somebody is drowning. Probably someone released from the reformatory after a long stint. They're often drawn to the water. Nobody really knows for certain what the link is between the two. Some say the spring formed when they were clearing the land to build the reformatory. Others say it's the tears of the inmates. All that's known for certain is that when former inmates are found there, they often seem to be searching the waters, diving in again and again, as if looking for something they've lost and will never be complete again without.

Shit.

Suddenly, remembering LuAnn, a girl who seems to have lost more than most, I start to run.

The land rolls in a steep downward slope toward the Salt Spring and I let gravity push at my back, propelling me faster and faster until the water spreads before me with the ambulance parked at its edge. The back doors are flung open, and a cot waits with an empty black body bag draped carelessly over the top of it.

Not a rescue operation then. I wonder why they even bothered with the lights.

My steps slow and I let my feet drag through the scrub grass and shale that make up the beach. I hear the sound of vomiting as I get closer, and I wonder if maybe the body bag was just a mistake and someone has been saved.

Up. Down. Up. Down. My heart is like a yo-yo attached to the thinnest of strings that sends it flying up and down with the slightest of tugs. I round the ambulance and the string is cut.

The ambulance driver, bent in half with his elbows braced against his thighs, heaves into the water. Beside him, just inches from the water—as if the spring chewed him up and spit him out—lies Jonathan. It's his blond hair I notice first. Maybe because it is so similar to his sister's. Or perhaps because it is the only part of him that looks the same, that has not bloated and deteriorated.

I am grateful I skipped breakfast. My stomach churns, but finds nothing to spit out onto the sand. I turn my gaze up toward the hills just in time to see Elton's Prius gliding down. There is no time to run from him, and even if there was, I find that I don't wish to. I want to look in his face when he sees Jonathan's body and I want to hear what Elton's secrets whisper. I want to know why he would have done such a thing.

But when the car stops, it is Foote at the steering wheel and Foote who opens the passenger doors to let two adults out. Jonathan's parents. They both worked up at the reformatory once but were let go after LuAnn went in. Standard policy. It's seen as a conflict of interest.

They hold hands tightly as they walk toward the ambulance. I think about stopping them. Warning them. But they have worked at the reformatory. They've seen worse. Caused worse. I let them go, and a terrible part of me is glad to hear their cries of anguish and sobs filled with sickness. It feels like justice, although, of course, it isn't. The reformatory is the main employer in this town, and most people end up working there due to a lack of other options. It changes the people who put on the uniform. Changes them for the worse. I watched it happen up close and personal with Ozzy. He was a sweet boy once, who wouldn't reach for a girl's hand without asking her permission first. After he'd been at the reformatory a few months, I could see the kindness decreasing, like a slow leak. Years later, if there was good left in him, it was buried too deep to be easily seen.

“You should stay in the car,” I hear Foote say.

I turn to see LuAnn sliding from the backseat of the Prius. In the brisk wind from the Salt Spring her long hair flies behind her, undulating gently as if imitating the waves. She ignores Foote's advice and walks toward her parents. As she passes by me, I notice that her clothes are wet and that she is singing softly, her lips barely moving with the words, “Don't, don't don't don't, don't you forget about me.”

LuAnn is not Piper, I know that, and yet . . . she is singing that song from the tape.

“Piper?” I whisper, the word escaping.

At the same instant, Jonathan's dad growls, “LuAnn, get back in the car. Now!”

It's like neither of us spoke as she stares out at the water and then slowly, as if it is calling to her, continues toward it with springy little steps.

“LuAnn!” her mother calls.

“Let her go. Let her drown.” Her father spits out the words. “Who is she anymore anyway? Not our daughter. Just someone who ruined our lives.”

“No,” her mother replies, but not convincingly.

Once she's waist deep in the water, LuAnn turns back to where her parents kneel beside their son's dead and bloated body.

“C'mon, little brother,” she calls, sounding young and girlish. “Enough pouting, you sore loser. You always were terrible at hide-and-seek. Your blubbering gave you away every time. Maybe you thought I wouldn't hear it if you were underwater. At first I didn't, but then you got so scared down there alone in the dark. You were always good at finding dark places but always had trouble getting out of them. Lucky for you the water's not as deep as it used to be.” She leans forward to splash at the water with her hands, sending a spray toward her silent and stricken parents. Then she turns to me. “I'm going to hide again. Want to come with me? When Jonathan wakes up, he'll come and find us.”

Her hands meet over her head, and she looks poised to dive and disappear into the water when Foote grabs her from behind. She flails her limbs and shrieks loud enough to drown out every other sound, but Foote has her in a tight bear hug and doesn't release her until they are back on dry land. As soon as he frees her, she sinks to the ground.

After a moment of hesitation, Foote reaches for her again, this time handling her more gingerly. A hand on her elbow to pull her up and then just the tips of his fingertips against the small of her back, pressing her into the car. Finally, he scoops up her feet, still dragging in the sand, and places them inside so that he can ease the door shut behind her with a soft click.

I have been staring at Foote this whole time, and when he finishes this task, his eyes meet mine. Our gazes hold for however long it takes for me to breathe a hundred shallow breaths. I can feel my heart racing, scared and hopeful and ready to be torn to pieces.

The sound of a zipper grabs my attention. I close my eyes, needing to extract myself from the laser beam of Foote's focus. It doesn't work. I can still see Foote on the backside of my eyelashes, the same way Piper pinned a picture of Elton to the back of her pull-down shade.

I turn my head and open my eyes just in time to see the body bag now filled and on the ground, being zipped up to the top. What's left of Jonathan is placed on the gurney and in the ambulance. The driver gets in and turns off the swirling lights before steering the ambulance across the sand and out of sight. Jonathan's parents watch until the vehicle disappears. Then they trudge back toward the Prius and get in without another word or sob.

I guess after the initial shock and denial wore off, they accepted it fairly quickly. Everyone knows that the chances of surviving adolescence are about fifty-fifty during a fourth year. Even if Jonathan's death wasn't exactly fourth-year-related, the end result is the same. A plot in the cemetery, with a headstone that labels him as “Taken Too Soon.”

Foote closes the car door behind them, then turns back toward me. I expect nothing from Foote. He doesn't owe me explanations or anything else. But as he has from the moment I first saw him, Foote defies my expectations. He crosses the space between us with his long-legged stride, takes hold of my elbow, and then leads me several more steps until we are at the edge of the water right beside the indention left behind by Jonathan.

It's hardly a romantic spot, but nobody told my central nervous system this, and the tingles in my arm where Foote is touching me spread like a wonderful disease through the rest of my body.

I wonder if Foote is feeling it too, and with his hand on me it would be all too easy to find out. So I take a step away and disconnect from his touch, evading secrets that aren't mine to take. I am left like any other girl starting to crush on a guy—staring at him and wondering what he's thinking.

His gaze is focused on the water and the train tracks beyond it that disappear into the mountain. I try to look at it through his eyes, but even with the forget-me-nots, I have too many memories of this place. I blink as one of those memories nearly overtakes me.

“Piper used to sing ‘Over the Rainbow' when we came here,” I tell him, not even sure why I'm sharing it with him. “We watched
The Wizard of Oz
so many times we memorized the whole thing.” I feel the need to explain this to Foote, even though chances are if he has a TV, he's already seen it. The same movies play on a constant loop.

“Yeah, I've seen it a couple times now,” Foote says. “Although personally, I prefer
The Maltese Falcon
.”

Of course, I've seen that one a million times too. It starts with a girl asking a detective to help find her missing sister. But it turns out there is no sister and she's just another bad guy.

“Piper and I always liked musicals,” I say, moving us back toward Oz. “And there was this one line in ‘Over the Rainbow' about troubles melting like lemon drops. That's what Piper always said the Salt Spring smells like.”

Even as I tell Foote this story, I can almost see Piper, farther down the shoreline, singing a different part of the song. The end part where Dorothy wonders why the bluebirds can fly over the rainbow, where she is unable to follow. “Why, oh why, can't I?” Sometimes Piper belted out that last line and at other times she sang it so softly the waves drowned her out.

In my memory the waves were bigger. The whole Salt Spring was bigger, in fact. I look at it again, remembering what LuAnn said about the water being deeper before. Could the Salt Spring be shrinking somehow?

“What is it about this place?” Foote asks, distracting me from my meaningless speculations.

“This place specifically, or the whole town?”

Foote pulls his hat off, and slaps it against his leg a few times. “I don't even know.”

“You can leave,” I remind him gently, not with the sneer I use for most newcomers.

He doesn't respond, just puts his hat back on and spends a full minute adjusting it so that it sits right. When he's done, he glances back toward the car where the remnants of Jonathan's family wait. “I was on my way to meet you when Elton called. He said that he received a call about a girl swimming in the Salt Spring and asked if I would come down here to pick her up. When I arrived, she wasn't swimming, she was on the shore next to Jonathan.”

I want to ask how Jonathan went from the bottom of the school pool to the bottom of Salt Spring. Did Foote help load him into Elton's car? Did they work together to fill Jonathan's pockets with rocks to make sure he'd stay sunken? The one thing that's certain is no one counted on LuAnn dredging her brother back up.

“I called the ambulance and then decided to take LuAnn home. She didn't seem . . . I just thought it would be best if she was with her family. But when I got there and explained what had happened, Jonathan's parents insisted on seeing him and I agreed to drive, and I believe you've been here for everything else.”

For a second I think I might tell Foote about the note from Jonathan, but then LuAnn bursts from the car and makes another run at the water. Her parents don't even try to stop her; they just stare out the car window with cold eyes and dead faces. Foote runs at her, but LuAnn is watching for it this time and quickly veers around him. He stumbles in the loose dirt, and then it is up to me. I throw myself at LuAnn, tackling her and bringing her down so that we are a tangle of limbs. She looks stunned for a moment, but then her eyes meet mine.

“Pollywog!” she exclaims, and her face lights up, like she's a toy that's just been given fresh batteries. Her arms wrap around me in a squeezing hug, her cheek presses against mine, and then she whispers in my ear, “The plan is the plan. She told me to tell you. It's the uprising. It's time.”

Before I can respond, she is jerked away by Foote. Apparently spent, she sags in his arms and her eyes drift closed.

Before reaching the car, he calls over his shoulder, “If you'll wait, I'll meet you in an hour. Same place.”

I nod, or try to, but am feeling pretty worn out myself. Foote, on the other hand, looks calm. That scene was enough to send most other newcomers screaming. It almost sent me in a similar direction. But Jonathan's note in my pocket acts like an anchor, holding me to this spot and making me wonder how much of what he'd told me was true. Making me wonder more than just that.

Collapsing onto the sand, I pull out Jonathan's note. He wanted me to find his sister. But she found him instead. And me too.