(Don't You) Forget About Me (26 page)

DON'T STOP BELIEVIN'

This Year

AUGUST WAS ALMOST ALWAYS TOO HOT AND
sticky for parades, or any other type of activity more strenuous than lifting a glass of ice-cold lemonade to your lips. And the August of this year in particular was one of the hottest anyone could remember. Despite this, toward the end of one especially steamy late-summer evening, a parade began to wind its way through town.

All the young people were a part of it. Their feet lifted and fell in an odd way, as if they were following the beat of some hidden drummer. Or perhaps it was more like they were being held in the sway of a snake charmer's flute, playing a tune only they could hear.

The adults, left out of the parade, watched their children walk along the route with a sense of distant alarm. Something about this whole thing felt wrong, but every time they took a sip of cold water, the feeling faded away. It must be the heat, they thought.

By the time the parade began to march up the hillside toward the reformatory, every child eighteen or younger was a part of it.

You probably think you know what happened that day, but you couldn't possibly understand it all. So I'm recording it for you, Wills. I'm using this last tape for my last Gardnerville story.

I used to do these recordings for Piper. It was her idea. All the good ones always were. She said that if we didn't tell our stories, other people would and they'd get it all wrong. Really, though, Piper wanted me to remember, and I think also she wanted me to see things the way she wished for them to be, even if that wasn't quite the way things truly were.

Now, Wills, I'm trying to remember things the right way, especially the things I'd rather forget.

Like Mom.

Before she died—weeks before, actually, when she was growing weaker but could still get around and we still had hope that she might make it—Mom said something I can't get out of my head. She was reminiscing about the time after she'd come to Gardnerville. She said that for the first couple of months she was here, she felt like she was inside a waking dream and kept waiting to return to reality. Now, though, she said, it was her life before Gardnerville that seemed like a dream: hazy and fuzzy and as substantial as a soap bubble.

I can't imagine ever feeling that way about Gardnerville. Sitting here on our old front porch, it seems impossible to think of this place as nothing more than a memory. But I guess it will become that way for everyone. The little kids like you will grow up without any substantial memories of the fourth years, and they'll never experience one, so it will feel like a story. Like someone else's dream. And for everyone else, I guess eventually time won't be counted in fours. The fear and anticipation won't go away immediately, but after a few uneventful fourth years, everyone will relax and then, soon thereafter, they'll forget.

Trust me on that, Wills. That's how it will happen. The Gardnerville where you were born and where I grew up is already gone. Funny how it never felt temporary, even when Piper and I were already beginning to destroy it. I never thought anything would really change. I believed that things would stay the way they'd always been.

And then Mom died.

Well, first she gave me this tape. All these years, she'd had one smuggled away, unable to give it up. The first song on the tape has this line about a girl who takes a midnight train. Mom said she listened to it, rewinding it and playing it again and again, for the entire train ride here. She gave the tape to me only after I promised not to record over that one song. Someday, Wills, I'll give you this tape, and that song will be the first thing you hear on it. Maybe it'll help you feel closer to Mom. To remember her and how much she loved you. I sure hope so.

I wish I could give you more of her than just that, Wills. And I hope you know that I didn't want to let her go. We'd already lost so much.

But she told me straight out, “I was lucky to have a wonderful extension on life. Now it's over and that's okay. It's time.”

“No.” That's what I said to her. “No. You can't. I won't let you.”

“I think you already tried that once,” Mom reminded me. “It didn't work out so well.”

That was when I was finally able to kiss her and say good-bye.

I guess that was also when I really and truly realized Gardnerville was gone. I walked through town. Buildings were boarded up. Milly had passed away too, and her empty restaurant already looked dusty and forgotten. And then I somehow ended up at GG's. When I told her about Mom, she said it would be her turn next. And I reminded her that I had fifty bucks with the bookie on her living another hundred years.

I still think it's possible for GG to make it that long—just out of sheer stubbornness.

Sometimes we talk about our father, Lachman. It's still mind-bending to remember that GG is technically my sister. I think that's part of what has allowed us to finally understand each other a little bit better. Well, that and the way everything ended on that horrible August day.

We haven't discussed it that much—hardly at all really—but GG did mention it once. She said, with this tone of voice she uses when announcing facts that cannot be argued against, “It had to be done.”

I wish I shared her certainty; maybe then I could stop replaying that day and wondering if it could have worked out another way.

Wills, I can almost see you squirming as you listen to this, waiting for me to get to the good part. The action. If you were at my elbow right now, you'd be demanding, “Tell me what happened to the reformatory. And Piper. And the rats.”

Have you ever tried to wrestle a ghost, Wills? It was no surprise, really, that Piper fought dirty. She'd knee me in the kidney and then when I attempted to return the favor she'd become smoke. My fist would waft straight through her.

In between taking swings at the air, I tried to reason with her. “Piper, what are you doing?” I'd say. “This isn't what you wanted. We wanted to keep everyone safe from the reformatory, and now you're trying to pack it fuller than ever.”

I don't think she even heard me. It didn't feel like Piper was even in there anymore. Her movements were somehow both skittish and sly, and her eyes had gone black and beady. She had been overtaken by the rats. She, they—whatever it was—jerked my feet out from under me and laughed when I crashed to the floor. A corner of the bed met my skull, and a bright flash of light was followed by darkness.

I couldn't have been out for more than five or ten minutes. I came to with a throbbing headache, and immediately searched the room for Piper. For the moment, though, it seemed I was alone. I dragged my aching body to the window and peered down.

The parade marched ever closer to the reformatory, and the gates were beginning to squeal open in anticipation of admitting its newest inmates. The steepness of the hill had slowed them down considerably; parts of the line were barely moving forward at all. Still, many of them were close enough now that I could recognize the faces of sleepwalking classmates, some of them hand in hand with their younger siblings, pulling one another along.

LuAnn and the other three Pipers led the way. I recognized one of the girls as the one who'd come crawling from the water on May Day, the one I'd used to keep Piper alive. I did that, Wills. In that moment I finally recognized the wrongs I had done. I accepted my part in the terrible uprising we were all caught within.

It felt like a new low, but then my focus shifted to the two big football players lumbering directly behind the false Pipers, each with a child slung over his shoulders. My heart nearly stopped when I realized one of them was you, Wills.

I spun around and ran from the room. My feet felt like they were made of cement, holding me back. I forced them to move faster, taking the stairs two or three at a time. You would not pass through those gates. I wouldn't allow it.

I burst through the front doors of the reformatory, nearly losing my footing as I sped toward the opening in the gates.

Without my bird's-eye view, it wasn't as easy to pick you out of the growing crowd of people patiently waiting for the gates to open and allow them in. I swayed, uncertain. And angry. And scared. And so many other things. All the emotions that had been tied into those forgotten memories filled me up and then overflowed.

You need to help them
, said a voice inside my head. It sounded like me, and yet not like me at all.
And the best way to help them
, the voice continued,
is to do what you do best. Go into their heads, but this time don't stop with peeping; this time, take. Make them forget. You know better than most that forgetting is a sort of kindness. A mercy. Be merciful. Not that they'll remember. They'll forget, the same way they forgot Piper. Now it's their turn to be forgotten. See how they like it. It's no less than they deserve.

I nodded in agreement, feeling more certain than I had in days. More certain than I'd ever felt in my entire life.
Yes
, everything inside me said,
this is right. This is what I was meant to do.

Catching sight of the Pipers, I advanced toward them, ready to rip every thought from their heads.
Yes, yes, yes
. The voice inside cheered me on.
Start with them and then go down the line, until every single one has been wiped clean.
My gaze traveled over the parade of people coming my way. All of those heads stuffed full of ideas and memories and observations, soon to be scrubbed clean.

LuAnn stepped forward, holding her hands out, willingly giving herself to me. I reached toward her and as I did, you, Wills, came into view again.

“No,” I mumbled aloud as the voice inside my head screamed at me to grab hold of LuAnn.
NOW!
it demanded.

Wills, I don't know how I beat the fourth-year madness, because that is what those voices surely were. They were all the way inside me—I had given myself to them completely—and then . . . they weren't.

“Wills!” I screamed, tearing you away from the football player and pulling you into my arms. You lay heavy and limp, but the steady rise and fall of your small chest reassured me that you were okay.

Slowly I sank to my knees and laid you on the ground. I peered down at your little face, streaked with peanut butter. The parade must have caught you in the middle of eating your afternoon snack. Finding a tissue in my pocket, I gently wiped your face clean. Then I gave your shoulder a shake. “Wills.” I stroked your hair. “Come on, Wills, it's time to wake up.”

You stirred and your eyelids fluttered. “Sky?” you said in a groggy voice.

I cried then. Giant tears rolled down my face, and as each one fell you reached up with your chubby little hand and scrubbed it away.

“Did you have a nightmare?” you asked, still confused by where we were and what was happening.

You weren't the only one asking that question. All around us the parade was breaking apart as the sleepwalkers woke from their strange dreams.

Just like that, I'd foiled Piper's plan. There would be no fourth-year event, nor any fresh meat for the rats. The cycle needed to repeat or else unravel. Unwittingly, I had undone it all. And in doing so, I lost her for the last time . . . and Gardnerville too.

In some ways, it felt like the same thing. Piper was Gardner-ville. Gardnerville was Piper.

A terrible rumbling noise came from the reformatory. I looked up at the gray and dark and crumbling structure. Then I searched every window until finally I saw Piper staring back at me. She brought her hand up and pressed it against the glass.

One and the same.
I watched her lips form the words.

This time I didn't say them with her.

Standing and leaving you behind, Wills, I marched toward the heavy front door of the reformatory. I was expecting another fight, but it gave way with only the slightest touch from my fingertips, swinging open and hitting the wall on the other side with enough force to make the whole building shake.

A moment later the inmates began to escape from the darkness of the reformatory and into the dying light of the day. Single file they staggered out, one after another, with the guards themselves leading the way. Bits of brick fell from the building, slowly at first and then, as the parade reversed itself and wound down the road and all the way into town, the tumbling debris increased to a steady cascade. When the last person exited, the whole building trembled.

I stumbled backward, afraid of being crushed in the inevitable collapse. Again, I couldn't help but search for some sign of Piper still standing in the window. There was too much dust in the air, though, for me to see farther than a few feet in front of me. I thought I could leave her there. I thought that finally I was able to let her go.

Instead, I found myself taking tentative steps forward again, straight into the air thick with the dust of crumbling bricks. The door had swung closed once more. I slammed my hand against it, but wasn't surprised when it stayed shut; the weight of the sagging bricks above had pinned it tight. It seemed unlikely it would ever open again.

The reformatory felt like a tomb then. A final resting place for Piper. It was the last thing she would've wanted, to be trapped inside.

I threw myself at the door, screaming at it to open. It creaked but didn't budge. Then from the other side, I could hear someone pounding against it. Someone who wanted out as badly as I wanted to get in.

BAM. BAM. BAM.

Frantic and desperate, I kicked at the door, pleading with it softly to please please please just open.

An avalanche of bricks came tumbling down. Covering my head, I retreated a few steps, and as I did so, the door flew open.

A river of black, at least a foot deep, rushed out. The current split around me, flowing over my feet as if it were one body, except now I could see that it was made up of rats. Hundreds. Thousands. Perhaps there was no number large enough to contain all those rats.