(Don't You) Forget About Me (20 page)

“Ha,” I can't resist interjecting.

“Yes, Sky, you are not the only one who prefers to dispose of inconvenient memories. Try not to look so surprised, dear; it makes me wonder if there's anything left in your head at all. Anyway, it was Piper's poem—the one about things falling apart—that brought it back to me.”

I know the line she means. It's the same one she recited at my retreating back the other day. Now it comes tumbling from my mouth before I can stop it. “‘The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.'”

GG gives a low whistle of admiration. “My, my, my. Amazing, isn't it, the things that stick in your head, refusing to go away?”

I don't respond, because for a moment I am struck dumb with admiration for GG, stooped but strong. It's a nice change from my usual annoyance. But it's a little disorientating as well, to go from seeing her as someone standing in my way to someone who can show me the way.

“What should I do now?” I ask, certain she will have an opinion and for once actually wanting to hear it.

Instead of answering, GG turns and begins to stride down the hallway. “Well, come on,” she calls back impatiently. I run to catch up and feel the old annoyance return. Of course, GG can't just give me a straight answer. It's going to be a whole thing.

My suspicions are confirmed as GG begins climbing up the stairs leading to the science labs.

“Sometimes,” she explains as we walk, “the answer is not simple. As much as we both wish it was otherwise, and this is one of those times.”

“And what do the labs have to do with that answer?”

“Oh, nothing,” GG replies. “I just wanted to pop in and say hello to the quints while I'm here. They are my great-grandchildren as well, after all.”

“I always wondered,” I murmur in response.

GG snorts impatiently. “You could've just asked. It was never a big secret, and once they started producing all those pills, there was no doubt that they could be anything other than Gardners.”

“What are you talking about?” I demand, as we reach the top of the stairs.

“Come now, Sky. Did you honestly believe those children were picking bouquets of forget-me-nots out of the fields and synthesizing them into your beloved purple pills?”

I shrug. “I hadn't really thought about it.”

“Clearly.”

“So, it's not the flowers then?”

“Mostly no.”

“It's them.”

“Mostly yes,” GG confirms. “It's them.”

I am braced for some big shock, but this makes too much sense to be a surprise. “Since you obviously disapprove of the pills, why don't you just tell them to stop?”

“Tell them.” GG laughs with a distinct lack of amusement. Then she sweeps down the hall and into the science lab where the quints hold court.

When I walk into the lab, I find all five of them lined up, each one bent over a book. They don't look up when I enter, which is fine by me because it gives me a chance to study them.

They are completely identical in all ways, and I find myself searching for some small feature to distinguish one from the next. It is an impossible task. They are not just tiny but thin and reedy. Knobby knees hang out of baggy shorts, and their little feet barely touch the floor. They share the same white-blond hair styled in the same short cut, even though three out of five of them are girls. The style makes them look like evil little pixies.

Almost no one knows their individual names. No point, really, when you can't tell them apart. Most people call them the quints. Elton calls them his lab boys. Piper and I always called them the creeplings.

“Hello, dears,” GG chirps in a rather sweet voice that I can't remember having ever heard before.

Several long moments pass until finally the one on the end holds up a finger, signaling for us to wait.

“Seriously?” I mutter. GG shoots me a look that seems like it should be aimed at the quints.

As if reading my mind, GG says softly, “You are a spoiled idiot. They are temperamental geniuses.”

It stings, but a moment later the hurt is allayed when GG presses her hand to my wrist and with it sends a secret that spreads through me like a healing balm. Having secrets literally handed to me is the only way I have gotten anything out of GG since I was three years old. That's when the whole family figured out what I could do. GG was the first one to take me aside. Kneeling down so that we were eye to eye, she softly explained that if I ever looked inside her head, she would cut my ears off, candy them, and make me eat them for dessert. All these years later, I have never found the guts to call her bluff. Or to eat her candied orange peels.

At any rate, this is the big secret: the quints have been making her special pills, called black-eyed Susans, that have saved her from complete blindness. She owes the quints a debt. And she pities them. But she does not love them.

I pull away from GG, unsure what to say about what she's just shown me, and look up to see that the quints have closed their books and are now watching us. It's disconcerting to have all of their eyes and attention on me. Then, even worse, they smile in a way that makes them look almost feral.

“Hello, Great-Grandmother and Half Sister.” They speak in unison, in a strange monotone devoid of feeling.

“Hey, what's up?” I say.

As one, they look up to the ceiling and then back at me. “Nothing,” they reply.

I laugh, but no one else does. They watch me expectantly, as if waiting for me to say something else. “I'm a big fan of the forget-me-nots,” I tell them. “So good job on those.”

I'm not sure what response I was expecting, but the huge smiles that overtake their tiny faces aren't it. “Do you find clarity in them?” they ask, for the first time looking interested in what I have to say.

“Um, well, I guess,” I reply, uncertain.

They nod as if this answer confirms something. “They're meant to clear the mind of clutter, to allow it to focus in on what is truly important so that one forgets it not.” They chuckle—the same tinkling titter—as one.

“I don't know if that's quite how it's worked for me.”

Their brows furrow. “You don't disappear into darkness?”

“No, I do, I guess.”

“And you don't reemerge from that same darkness, as weak as one reborn?”

“Ye-ah. That's about right.”

“Ahhh.” Their expressions clear and become pleased. “The clarity is there. At the center of the experience. The pill works.”

The conversation is apparently over as they turn their attention back to GG, who has been avidly watching our exchange. I should be relieved to be out of the spotlight, but instead I step forward with a follow-up question while my heart pounds with the possibility that everything I've forgotten can be found again by listening to those tapes on Piper's dresser.

“Um, about that center—or, well, the notters call it the sweet spot—but anyway, would it be possible to record something, like on a tape, while in the middle of the darkness, and then not remember it later?”

They stare at me silently, and I think they're not going to answer when finally they nod as if coming to a decision. “Possible and probable. Yes. Forget-me-nots. The name was deliberately chosen.”

“But I did forget.” I can't help but nitpick. “Over and over again. It's just in the past few months that I started making these recordings, and I couldn't even remember doing it afterward.”

They blink three times before responding, with more than a hint of condescension, “That is illogical. You cannot forget over and over again, without having first remembered over and over again. Therefore, the pills worked as intended.”

“Wait a minute—” I start to say, but they cut me off, clapping their little hands, officially dismissing me. It's obvious they aren't willing to accept any criticism of their precious pills. Never mind that their carefully engineered “moment of clarity” is bookended on either side by being a drooling idiot.

“Your pills are by the door,” they announce to GG in their freaky way.

“Wonderful. As always, I can't thank you enough,” GG quickly replies.

They blink in unison but say nothing.

“And also, I wanted to say hello and see how you all are doing,” GG adds. The quints remain unmoved, and GG, looking uncomfortable, clears her throat. If I weren't so creeped out myself, it would be funny. “So hello,” she says at last.

“Hello,” they respond.

“Would you mind if Skylar and I went into the lab next door for a chat?”

As one, they shrug and then flip their books open and begin to read once more.

GG exits, and this time I am right behind her without any prompting necessary.

HOPELESSLY DEVOTED TO YOU

Four Years Ago

IT'S FUNNY, BUT AS MUCH AS I THINK ABOUT THAT
May Day four years ago, I spend almost as much time fixating on the night before. By the time the parade began, it felt as unstoppable as the train roaring across the trestle bridge. Too much steam had built up, and you could either let it out or let it explode.

I understand that.

That's why the night before bothers me. It feels like a moment when our whole lives might have swung in another direction. When if I had only been able to find the right words, disaster might have been averted.

Is that true, Piper? Was there something I could have said? Would it have fixed anything? Or were you already set on your course?

I guess it's silly to think I would've been able to change your mind once it was set. Maybe I'm not even really wishing that I had changed things. Maybe I'm just wishing that I'd at least tried. When you burst into my room with the news that Angie Walters was pregnant with Elton's baby, I could've tried to calm you down. I could've said, “Who cares about Elton—he's just a newcomer. A nobody.” Instead I gasped like the injury was my own. In some ways it was. I felt insulted and outraged all the way down to my toes at the idea of Elton choosing someone else over you.

“It's not true,” I'd said.

“He told me,” you answered. “He told me himself.”

I didn't say anything then because you started to cry. Not just a few tears, but great, heaving sobs that shook you off your feet, until you were on the floor, pounding it with your fists. It was a temper tantrum. A messy, dirty, undignified fit. And it went on and on.

It scared me. To see you broken like that. To know you could be broken. All the fourth-year horrors, they'd barely even fazed you, but this . . .

That's when I blurted it out.

“Piper, it's a fourth year.”

I'd meant it as a warning, I think. Maybe as a distraction too. We both knew that every fourth-year disaster was the result of someone letting their emotions carry them away. But it wasn't meant as a call to action. That couldn't have been what I wanted to happen.

You looked up at me. Your eyelashes were wet with tears and they fluttered, like a butterfly working its way out of a cocoon. You stared at me with an intensity that literally took my breath away.

“Yes.” That's what you said.

“Piper.” I drew the syllables of your name out slowly, part scolding, part warning. Like I was already trying to talk you off a ledge.

“This is my year.”

“No.”

“I can see it,” you said, and you were smiling in this distant way, like you were already in the next day. Like it had already happened.

“Piper.” Again I said your name, trying to bring you back.

You took my hands. “You should see it. Let me show you.”

And that's exactly what you did. Without saying a word, you gave me every single detail of the final piece in your grand plan.

I'm pretty sure this wasn't the ending you'd originally imagined. Over the last few years, we'd taken dirt from the reformatory and used it to poison ourselves and others. You'd befriended Ozzy so we'd have an in at the reformatory. Those things made a crazy sort of sense. The last part of the plan had always been for you and me to end up in the reformatory, but not like this. This new part of the plan didn't fit. It felt improvised and angry. Sloppy too. But I couldn't say that to you. It was our secret by then. Our plan.

I didn't protest after that. I did my part the next morning. You didn't even have to ask. I was up and waiting to walk with you to the high school. And when we got there, I stood at the front doors and took the secrets of everyone who walked past. Anyone who had been untrue—in thought or deed—would walk in the May Day parade that night.

Why did I go along so easily at that point? What if I'd refused to give you the names? What would you have done then?

It wouldn't have stopped you. You just would have chosen your victims a little more indiscriminatingly.

Still I could've stayed out of it, not made myself an accessory, which could have landed me in the reformatory with you.

But of course, that was exactly why I did it. This wasn't going to be like when you did two weeks for the Ms. Van Nuys debacle. No, this time I was going to the reformatory with you.

Just like always, Piper. I was afraid of being left behind.

You hadn't really given me the full plan, though, Piper. You left out the part about the trestle bridge and the train. You left out the part where this wasn't simply revenge or justice—it was suicide.

FOURTEEN

IT IS A RELIEF TO ESCAPE FROM THE QUINTS' LAB, BUT
the feeling is short-lived because a moment later the ground rumbles beneath our feet and the whole building trembles around us. GG stumbles and I quickly grab for her, pulling her close while we wait for the shaking to stop. Even after it ends, we still stand there, frozen and afraid.

“Was that a fucking earthquake?” I whisper at last.

“Things fall apart,” GG answers, and then adds as an afterthought, “Watch your language.”

I step away from her. “Enough with the cryptic crap. What's going on? Is this the beginning of the end?”

“The beginning of the end?” GG gives a sharp bark of laughter. “That already happened when you and Piper put the dirt from the reformatory into food. The reformatory needs to feed, but you made the food tougher to eat. And at the same time Elton found a way to make teenagers stop losing their minds. That's great for our stress levels, at least as long as we keep pretending the pressure isn't constantly building, demanding an explosion. A delicate balance is what's kept Gardnerville running these many years. It couldn't last forever. I always knew that, but I'd never guessed it could all go wrong so quickly. Skylar, believe me when I tell you this: It's not the beginning of the end. It's the end of the end.”

“What does that mean?” I demand. “Why can't you just explain things clearly?”

“I'll do you one better. I'll show you where it started.” GG lunges at me, her fingers outstretched and then tangled in my hair and pressing against my skull.

I fall to my knees, clutching my head. The secrets sting me, an endless swarm of bees. Until finally they die down and then disappear, leaving me to pull the stingers from my skin.

My stomach rumbles, warning me I'm about to heave. I hold it in. Cold sweat drips from my forehead as I uncurl my body and force myself to my feet. My eyes meet GG's.

I thought we'd come to an understanding, reached some sort of détente where we both realized we were on the same side.

I was wrong.

“Lachman Gardner,” I croak. “The founder of Gardnerville was also . . .” I can't say it. It's too absurd.

“Your father,” GG finishes for me.

“Great,” I say, and then I lean forward and puke all over her shoes.

After that GG disappears, muttering something about people with weak stomachs. She tells me to stay where I am, so as soon as she's out of sight I push myself to my feet. Between the earthquake and the regurgitation, I'm a little weak-kneed. Stumbling back into the quints' lab, I head toward the open windows at the far end of the room. The quints, meanwhile, take one look at me and immediately stand and exit the room in single file.

“You're not going to say good-bye?” I somehow find the strength to yell after them.

Big surprise, they don't respond.

They didn't even pack up their things. Books and beakers and piles of pills cover the tables. Only a few short days ago I would've filled my pockets with the purple ones and fled. It's tempting. To leave the puzzles and questions behind.

I am torn between an inescapable need to know and a wish to be left blissfully ignorant. It's similar to the way I view horror movies—peeking between my fingers, wanting to watch, but so terribly afraid of what I will see.

Leaning out the window, I feel the cold air of the science labs press against my back as it flees the room and gives way to the sticky wave of humidity. The fresh air clears my head a bit, enough to sort through the mix of information GG filled me with and try to put it into chronological order.

Lachman was a small-time con man who spent his whole life searching for something. He didn't know what that something was; he just figured he'd know it when he saw it. And when he found Gardnerville—he did.

Of course, it wasn't Gardnerville then. Back then our town wasn't a place so much as an idea. It had no name. Or no official one anyway. Some people called it a sanctuary, because they had arrived stumbling up from the ravine, half starved, certain they were going to die alone in the wilderness. Only those who were lost found their way here; no one ever discovered this place while they were searching for it. Those who left did so knowing they would never return.

By the time Lachman arrived, a thriving village existed. It was rustic compared to the outside world, perhaps even a bit backward, but the people who lived here were content with their home. They welcomed Lachman, like they did all the lost who came upon their village, and he in turn smiled at them in the same way a wolf brought into a flock of sheep might.

Lachman was not stupid, and when he wished, he could be very charming. He had a gift for making people love or hate him. He decided to make them love him, to become one of them, because the more he saw of this strange place, the more he began to suspect that this was what he had spent his whole life seeking.

That thing wasn't fame or money or beautiful women. It was something so much grander than those fleeting pleasures that it shamed him to realize he'd spent so many years thinking so small. That thing was eternal youth and life everlasting.

It took a week for Lachman to realize that there wasn't one person who looked older than forty, and yet every single one of them had lived in the village for at least that many years. Quite a few may have been there for hundreds of years. They didn't exactly know; they'd stopped counting long ago. After another week, Lachman understood that if he continued to live there, he could live forever too. It was that simple. One more week passed, and by then Lachman had already decided: it wasn't enough.

He wanted more than this quiet life full of simple pleasures. But he couldn't leave and go back to his old life, where he would grow older and older, always knowing what he'd left behind. Unwilling to walk away, Lachman put to use all he knew of schemes and scams and confidence games. Slowly, yet steadily, he spread discontent through the village as thick as the butter upon his bread.

He did this with no more than a word or a look directed at what he'd decided should be the target of the village's ire—the vermin. The vermin, or as they'd been called rather more simply and with considerably less disgust prior to Lachman's arrival, the rats.

Before Lachman began referring to them as vermin, the villagers had seen the rats as generous landlords. Everyone knew the rats had been there first, that in many ways this place belonged to the rats and they were incredibly generous to share it for nothing more than the promise of a bit of food left out for them at night.

After Lachman changed them from rats to vermin, the people began to see things differently. Now the rats were a nuisance. And worse: a pestilence bringing sickness and disease. This was obvious after one of the odious vermin bit Lachman, and the poor man was laid up sick for days, so weak and feverish he couldn't get out of bed.

When Lachman finally felt strong again, he announced—with the greatest reluctance—that he would have to leave. He simply could not live in such a place where vermin were given more respect than people. The people of the village, who had seen so many other outsiders leave and usually only shook their heads at such foolishness, this time shook their heads for another reason. They would not, they could not, let Lachman leave. If they had taken more time to think things over, they might have asked themselves why they cared so much about Lachman. And they might have concluded that while he had brought excitement and color to their formerly dull lives, he had also taken away the simple joys they'd once cherished. But they did not, could not, take that time, because Lachman did everything but pack his bags and demand, “It's them or me.”

It was decided—by a unanimous show of hands—that the rats would be the ones to leave.

But getting rid of them proved more difficult than Lachman had anticipated. He poisoned them and watched them die, but the next day they were back again. He caged them, then drowned them, but the next day they were back again. Other men might've been discouraged, but Lachman simply saw it as an opportunity.

The simple shacks in the village were not to his taste, and he'd been working out how to introduce the idea of building something a little grander. There was a spot set up in the mountains where the villagers went when they were seeking an extra bit of peace. It overlooked the entire valley. A man who lived in a house built upon that spot would be the king of everything spread below him.

So it was that the rats were poisoned once more, but this time Lachman had their bodies crushed, mixed with clay, and made into bricks. The bricks were brought up the mountain and a wall went up. The next day more rats arrived, more rats become bricks, and another wall went up. It went this way for days and weeks, until finally no more rats were left and a grand brick building jutted from the mountainside, foreign and dreadful.

The day Lachman moved in, it began to rain. The water that fell tasted salty. Like tears. Not a single person said it, but they all thought it.

This was the first misgiving.

After all the business of killing and building, there was at last a lull, and regret quickly settled in. Second thoughts were followed by third thoughts, but it was already too late. By the time the rain stopped, the Salt Spring had formed at the base of the mountain, and Lachman had moved back down to the valley. He complained that the villagers had built his new house poorly. They would try again, he said, but this time they would build something a little closer to the new town center; it wouldn't do for the founder of Gardnerville to live so far away.

Life continued in the place now known as Gardnerville. At first nothing really seemed different. New houses and other buildings were built; that was the most obvious change. Other things, like aging, weren't noticed until someone looked down and didn't recognize their own wrinkled hands. And it was only once people realized their youth was slipping away that they also noticed there were no more newcomers. Not a single person had stumbled upon their town since Lachman had arrived. It seemed that they would die, and Gardnerville with them, but Lachman wouldn't allow that.

Yes, he now realized there had been some flaws in his vermin-removal plan. And yes, his tinkering may have resulted in killing the very thing he'd cherished about this place. But he was not ready to admit defeat, because while the residents of Gardnerville no longer looked youthful, they were still healthy. Most importantly—they were still alive. They were no longer living forever, but most people reached at least a century before they gave in to the need for an eternal rest. Lachman decided this was enough for him, and he thought it would be more than enough to make other people want to live here too.

Lachman set the young and able-bodied to work once more, this time digging into and through the mountain, until they came out on the other side.

It took time, years and then decades, and during that interval Lachman began to see signs of his own mortality creeping up on him. Suddenly a century did not seem like enough time to live; he wanted the immortality this place had first promised. His gaze settled on the empty brick edifice built into the mountainside. For so long he'd avoided looking at it. What he saw there scared him. That building made out of the dead rats had somehow come to life. It could not speak or move, but it radiated its intentions in a way that was unmistakable. It was hungry. Angry and betrayed too. It did not respond to his charm, except as something it could feed on. Lachman recognized that insatiable hunger; it was not so different from the thing that drove him. Although he'd once run from the building, now he saw an opportunity to give it something and get something from it in return.

Lachman married a sweet young girl, and a year later she gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl. On their second birthday, Lachman pulled them from their beds and carried them up the mountain. The children's mother was frantic; she didn't know where her family had gone. A week later, Lachman and the little girl came back down the mountain and they were not the same after that.

The little girl seemed stuck at two for years afterward, but eventually, slowly, at half the speed of other children her age, she grew older. No one knew what the girl had seen in that house on the mountainside, but it must've been terrible. It was no surprise that she grew up with the ability to make other people see things too.

As for Lachman, his charm had changed. It was no longer soft and oozing, but a weapon similar to Cupid's arrows—he had access to all hearts and he pierced every single one. People now loved him without knowing why. They loved him without reason and without the will to do otherwise. Perhaps if they did not love him they might've wondered how it was he no longer seemed to age. Or they might have asked what exactly had happened to his son. Lachman would only say the boy was gone.

His wife died soon thereafter, some said of grief, although Lachman saw it as a betrayal, that her love for him wasn't enough to sustain her. By the time he married again, the tunnel through the mountain was complete and the trains were running into town, and his daughter from his first marriage now looked older than him and had begun to refer to herself as his grandmother.

Fourth years were also an accepted part of life. The first one occurred a few years after Lachman's son was lost. It wasn't called a fourth year then, of course. That came later, after a pattern emerged. Then it was just called madness when a young boy, upset about something so unimportant that years later even he couldn't remember what it had been, started screaming. Those closest to him lost their lives. Others, at a farther distance, became completely deaf.

The town was shocked. Lachman was relieved. The building needed to be fed again, and now he had a volunteer. Lachman decreed that the building set into the mountainside would become a reformatory for young troubled souls like the poor screaming boy. They would be sent there until it was deemed safe for them to become part of society again.