(Don't You) Forget About Me (22 page)

“Anything but that.” Foote laughs and I join him. Then he starts speaking again, and all the mirth fades from his voice. “I don't know what happened to my mom. Or my dad either. The man who raised me said he was my uncle, but he was a con man, gambler, and professional liar, so I was never really sure that we shared any blood at all. Anyway, he told me that my mom didn't want me 'cause I was a freak. He told me he was the only person in the whole world who was able to put up with me, and I'd better pray that nothing ever happened to him, 'cause I'd be a goner without him. Every morning he'd ask me, ‘You got my back?' and every morning I'd tell him that I did. And then we'd get in his van, leave behind whatever motel or apartment we'd been staying at, and go find some suckers.

“My uncle made his money getting people to bet against him. Sometimes he'd have a partner, usually a girlfriend, who'd set it up for him. She'd gather a crowd out in a field or at the edge of a parking lot or in a deserted building. He liked to have around twenty-five to fifty people to make it worth his while, but when times were tough he'd settle for just five or six guys willing to pay. By the time I was ten, getting people wasn't a problem. Instead of us going into towns and explaining what he was about, people already knew and were waiting to see him. Sometimes he had to turn people away because we were attracting too much attention. There were just too many people who wanted to see ‘the man who couldn't be shot' for themselves.”

“This can't be good,” I say, unable to hold the words back, because I already have an idea of what is coming next.

“It's not,” Foote confirms. “He had this rickety delivery van with an ancient claw-foot bathtub in the back of it. When we got to the site, I'd take off my shirt and pants so they didn't get messed up and then lie down in the tub. It was always cold, even on a hot Alabama August afternoon. He'd blast heavy metal from the car stereo, cranking the volume as high as it could go so that no one would be able to hear me scream. It was all I could hear too; there was no hint or sound I could detect from the outside to give me warning. To brace myself. I just had to lie there and wait. That was the worst part—the waiting. I knew, though, from one of his chattier girlfriends, how it all went on the outside.

“Uncle Gage had a little platform he'd build. He'd stack bales of hay behind it with bull's-eyes pinned on them. Then he'd start his spiel, egging the crowd on, asking who dared to try and hit him. Telling them to step up and try their luck. Usually, the first one took the longest to convince. In the early days, he'd sometimes put a ringer in the crowd, to take the first shot and get things moving. It was anywhere from twenty-five to a hundred dollars for a chance at bat, depending how bad the crowd wanted it. Then the shooter would stand on this box set up about ten feet away. Gage's girl would give the guy a bow and arrow and he'd get five tries. If they all went wide, Uncle Gage'd let the shooter move the box up for half of what he paid the first time. They usually hit him then. Sometimes a few times. They'd see the arrow heading straight toward him and then it would just . . . disappear.

“After that first arrow, everyone wanted to watch it again. Everyone wanted to hold the bow and see what the trick was. If it was a bigger crowd, I'd usually pass out before it was over and not wake up until Uncle Gage started pulling the arrows out of me. That's when I started smoking. He'd light me one after another and tell me to practice blowing smoke rings while he worked.”

“Foote,” I whisper, not knowing what else to say.

“It's okay,” he says. “I mean, it isn't, but it was a long time ago and I survived. Right?”

“How long ago?” I ask.

“I was twelve the last time. Uncle Gage felt like we'd overworked the Southeast, so we went west. And it was amazing. In places we'd never been before, these huge crowds were turning out. Word was spreading online—there was even a shaky video that someone had made. I think it went to Uncle Gage's head. In New Mexico, when five hundred people showed up, instead of turning most of them away, he told them to stay and try their luck. When they ran out of arrows, he asked who had a gun. Turns out, a lot of them did. It took me three weeks before I could walk again, and I was coughing up bullets for even longer than that.”

Lost for words, I squeezed Foote's hand.

“Uncle Gage made almost ten grand in that one day, and he decided to do it again once we got to California, but this time he wanted to double that number. He probably would've too. I'd never seen a crowd so big. That was Uncle Gage's mistake. Well, that and parking on a hill. It made it real easy to put the car into neutral and let it roll away. Once I got some distance, I hot-wired it—a little something I'd looked up online a few days earlier.”

Foote pauses.

“Uncle Gage was still lucky in a way, I guess. Whoever shot that first arrow had a hell of an aim. It went straight into his eye socket. He died almost instantly.”

“He deserved worse.”

“Yeah, probably. I mean, it wasn't like I'd never thought about running before I finally did. For years, I wanted to get away. I even snuck out one night when I was ten, but after an hour in the dark by myself with nowhere to go, I got scared and went back. I guess that would've been the better way to do it, instead of leaving him thinking he was safe and then ending up with an arrow hanging out of his face.”

“He deserved worse,” I say again, this time with a snarl.

I feel Foote's head, which has been resting against mine, nod.

“It was the right choice,” I tell him, knowing he doesn't quite believe it and wanting to say it again and again until he does. Foote shudders, and I lean my body into his, trying to give him some small comfort. Wishing things were different. Then my gaze drifts out the window, and I realize we are at the base of the hill that leads up to the reformatory. Not much time before we're there. A terrible panicky feeling pushes against my chest. To keep us both distracted, I ask Foote another question.

“So what happened next?”

“At first things were pretty good. Some social workers got me into school and found me a family with a bunch of other foster kids to live with. It wasn't perfect, but it was better than anything I'd ever known.”

“At first,” I say.

“What?”

“You said that at first it was okay, which means that later it wasn't.”

“Yeah,” Foote agrees. “Later it wasn't.”

“But you were happy for a while.”

“Yeah,” he says again, this time in a lower voice.

“So was it worth it? What I mean is . . .” I take a deep breath as I struggle to put my thoughts into words. “Is it worth having something good when it's just gonna be taken away? When it's only temporary and later you're left wondering if you imagined it anyway?”

Beside me, Foote is silent. Then he takes a deep breath of his own. “One of the other foster kids was a little girl named Amy. A month after I moved in, they had her first birthday party. Over the years I was there, I got to see her grow up. She was a little behind for a kid her age.
F
's were especially tricky for her, so she called me Doot. She loved being held, and every time I sat down to eat or watch TV or do homework, she'd crawl onto my lap and plant herself there.”

When I asked him about the good being taken away, I was thinking of Piper. But now it is the thought of Wills that makes my throat tighten.

“Okay,” I say, meaning “that's enough.” But Foote isn't done.

“I had just turned seventeen when the fire happened. It was the middle of the night. I woke to hear this huge boom and I felt the whole house shuddering. Then I heard Amy scream. I jumped out of bed to help her, but couldn't get any farther. I was . . . burning. I didn't even realize it at the time—couldn't make sense of it—but my whole body was on fire. I was in a coma for two weeks, and when I woke up, the first thing I asked was if Amy was okay. They said she was, but that everybody else was in the hospital, too, and in pretty bad shape. It was some sort of gas explosion. This fireball just ripped through the house. They'd had to dig through the rubble for hours to find all of us. Amy was the last to be found. No one expected her to be alive, but when they found her, she was sleeping peacefully, not a hair out of place, not a single bruise.”

“So it was okay,” I say, surprised at how relieved I feel.

“That's what I thought—just my usual mix of bad luck/good luck. But then this guy showed up at the hospital and told me that he'd been looking all over for me. At first I thought he'd wandered in from the psych ward, 'cause he told me how he was the owner of a magical train. ‘People from all over the world want a seat on this train,' he said. ‘Some would even kill to ride.' I asked why, and he told me about Gardnerville. I called him a liar. ‘Look it up,' he said. Once he'd had to sell people on the place, but now the internet did all the selling for him. He said I could start out by helping a friend of his on the other side. If things there went well, expansion was almost certain, and I'd be in a good place to move up within their organization.

“I thought he was crazy, but I looked it up anyway. The things I read were insane, but kind of awesome too. And in some weird way, Gardnerville almost felt familiar. Like I'd been there before. Ten days later I boarded the train.”

“And Elton was the friend on the other side?” I guess.

“Yeah,” Foote confirms. “I gave him my protection.”

“Your protection,” I say, and then I remember not being able to breathe after taking too many forget-me-nots and the bicycle crash. “And you gave it to me too, didn't you?” I ask, but I don't wait for an answer. I press my warm lips against Foote's. After a moment of hesitation, he kisses me back.

My eyes drift closed as the kiss becomes more than just a mix of gratitude and sympathy. In a way the kiss becomes about nothing at all. Except Foote. And me. Right now, that's enough to make my head spin and my heart pound. It's enough to make me simply forget about everything else. Even Foote's deep pool of secrets has gone quiet—except for one small whisper that gently sighs
yes
.

Or maybe that one is coming from me.

Either way, like all good—no, great—things, it ends too quickly.

The van door rumbles open, and a pair of guards smirk at us. “Welcome to your new home, lovebirds,” one of them says.

“Sorry you can't carry her over the threshold, Romeo,” the second one adds.

They laugh loudly at their own wit, but the amusement never quite reaches their eyes.

Ignoring them, I help Foote climb out of the van. Then there is nothing to do but stand in front of the gates as they slowly creak open and the dread mounts higher and higher.

“This way,” Guard One finally says, and we step forward, passing through the gates, officially on the grounds of the reformatory.

I look over at Foote. Our eyes meet and we share wry smiles.

“Thanks,” I tell him. “For everything.”

His smile turns into a frown. “That sounds like a good-bye. I'm pretty sure they're taking us to the same place, and this may be kind of cheesy, but there's nobody I'd rather be locked up with.”

My throat tightens and I have to look away to blink tears from my eyes.

“Let's move,” my goon says.

Still not wanting him to touch me, I immediately follow orders.

“Sky—” Foote calls from behind me, sounding hurt and . . . betrayed.

Without stopping, I look back over my shoulder at him. “It's the reformatory,” I attempt to explain. “You don't understand, you won't . . .” I swallow hard, trying to keep my own fear at bay. “The reformatory is where luck runs out. Even yours.”

“Heh,” Guard One says, in a way that sounds more wistful than cruel.

Foote keeps looking at me, as if expecting me to say something more.

“I'm sorry,” I add, even though I know it's not what he's looking for. I am though. I am so very sorry for each and every one of us.

IF YOU LEAVE

Four Years Ago

“YOU SHOULD LEAVE.”

That's what you told me, that May Day morning on our way to school.

“Leave?” I asked. Not like I didn't know what you meant, but like I'd never even heard the word before.

I've learned with Wills that sometimes explaining a simple word can be difficult. “What's hope?” he'll ask me. “What's forever? What's normal? What's disappear? What's Tang?”

I usually tell him to go ask Mom. That last one, though, I figured I could handle in the time it took me to finish stirring his drink together. But even Tang was tough. I had to explain astronauts and outer space. Wills asked if we could order a spaceship and go there too. I told him it was too far away. Much farther than the end of our driveway. Farther than Main Street. Even farther than where the train tracks disappeared into the mountain. He squinted at me, trying to process it, and then he stared up into the sky. I have to admit, I found myself looking up too. Turns out trying to imagine something that far away, trying to imagine myself somewhere beyond everything I knew . . . that was a concept I struggled with as well.

Your May Day morning was bright and clear, Piper. The type of day that seemed so perfect, nothing could ruin it. But you did ruin it, with that one simple word.

I kept walking beside you, even though it felt like the ground was being pulled out from beneath my feet. “Leave?” I asked again.

You ruffled my hair and laughed, like I was being funny. “Yes, leave. You know, just get on the train and . . .” Your arm shot straight out, indicating the trajectory of the train. “Go. And don't pretend you've never thought about it before.”

“Just because I've thought about it doesn't mean I would do it. I don't do every little thing that comes into my head. And anyway, I can't leave—what about all the plans?”

“Oh, that.” You waved your hand in this dismissive way. As if it wasn't something we'd spent the last three years working on. As if we hadn't poisoned ourselves and half the town as part of the plan. As if you hadn't let Ozzy feel you up, to have eyes inside the reformatory. You acted like I was referring to a childhood game that we'd both outgrown a long time ago.

“Sky, can you just be serious for a minute?” You gave me one of those lowered-brows, disappointed looks that always cut right through me. You'd think I'd become immune to it, but nope—it got me every time. And this was no exception.

“I was being serious,” I muttered.

You switched tactics, disarming me with a sunny smile. “Just forget that, okay? So back to the topic of leaving. I wonder if it's even worth you finishing school first. . . .”

“What?” I stopped in my tracks, staring at you.

“Drama queen, chill out. I'm not saying you should leave tomorrow. You'd probably want to wait a few months at least.”

“Piper, no,” I said.

You steamrollered right over me, as if I hadn't even spoken. “One of us needs to see the rest of the world. Represent and report back. And I think it would be really exciting for you, Pollywog. I think you would do great out there. And it's what you always wanted.”

“No, that's a lie. I never wanted to leave.”

“No,” you corrected me. “That's the truth. Remember how you cried after seeing
The Wizard of Oz
the first time? Well, you don't really remember it, 'cause I made it up. You loved the movie. The whole thing from beginning to end. You insisted on watching it every time it came on. When it wasn't on, you acted it out with a pair of Mom's borrowed heels. ‘“There's no place like home. There's no place like home. There's no place like home.”' You stopped to click your heels together, imitating me imitating Dorothy. ‘Why did she have to say it three times anyway?' you continued. I think she was trying to convince herself. I think Dorothy really wanted to stay in Oz, but thought going home was the right thing to do. I couldn't let you have such a lame role model. That's when I told you the story. We were watching the movie together and when it got to that part, I turned it off. When you asked me why, I lied and said I didn't want you crying again like the last time. You didn't even question it, Sky. You believed me.”

My hands were held in your tight grip by the end. Your eyes were locked on me. “I always believed you,” I whispered.

“Then believe me now,” you said, matching my hushed tone. “You should go.”

I jerked my hands away and focused my gaze on my shoelaces. “We'll both go. We can leave right now, if you want.”

“Oh, Sky,” you sighed. “I wish I could, but that's not my part to play. But you, I think you'd thrive out there, and eventually you'd forget this place and wonder why you ever wanted to stay.”

“Stop.” I finally looked back up at you, not trying to hide the tears streaming from my eyes. “Just stop. I'd never forget you. Not ever. We're one and the same, remember?”

With a sad smile, you brought your hand up, and I pressed my palm against yours.

“Okay, you win,” you said. “Remember me. But do it the right way. Remember it all. The good, the bad, and the ugly. I'd rather be forgotten than remembered the wrong way.”

I promised that I would remember you the right way. It had seemed like an easy promise to keep. It wasn't, though, and I've broken it a million times without even meaning to.

Sometimes, Piper, it's like I can't remember or forget you—all at the same time.