I STARE AT THE WATER SHOOTING OUT FROM THE showerhead. My lips are open wide, drinking it in, trying to moisten my cottony mouth. Bringing my hands up, I study my fingertips. They are puckered and pruny. My soaked clothes cling to my body.
I’ve been standing here for a while then.
I pat my wet pockets, looking for my phone. Needing it to place myself in time.
Nothing.
Wildly, I search the tiled room. All ten showerheads are on full blast. Steam billows out into the connected bathroom. Water creeps out as well. I look down and see it beginning to lap over the tops of my flip-flops. Taking a step back, I feel something squish beneath my foot. It’s a sodden ball of cloth, oozing red. Gingerly I pick it up, exposing the covered drain. With a relieved gurgle the water rushes down. I give the shirt a hard shake and it opens up, revealing its secrets.
A Swiss army knife that echoes loudly when it hits the floor. I drop the T-shirt over it, and it falls with a familiar alligator symbol on top. Not a T-shirt then, but a polo. I pick the whole bundle up so that the knife is once more swaddled inside.
Flip-flops squishing, I step into the bathroom, not bothering to turn off the still-running water taps. There’s a row of urinals to my left.
The boys’ locker room.
The door to a bathroom stall yawns open in front of me. The tape recorder and my cell sit on the back of the toilet inside. I rush forward, reclaiming the phone first—my lost love. The screen lights up at my touch, delighted to see me too. The picture of the field full of forget-me-nots that I set as my wallpaper is unmistakably mine. But the time can’t be right. Three a.m. I couldn’t have lost an entire day. I’ve had some fuzzy moments, maybe even a few seconds that have slipped away completely, but never the white-outs that hardcore notters experience. I push the phone into my pocket, not caring if the wet kills it. It has betrayed me.
A drop of water from my soaking hair plops into the toilet bowl. I stare down at it, transfixed by the pretty violet-colored water. Then I see the five pills floating in the center. Their purple coloring has bled away, revealing a bland gray interior.
Fishing the pills out, I try to shove them into my other pocket, but a wad of wet paper gets in the way. Pulling the pocket inside out, I peel the paper from the cloth and shove the pills in its place. The paper is folded into a neat little origami square.
That’s when I remember a hand pushing it into my pocket. Jonathan. And then a text from . . . Oswell Young. Ozzy to his friends. He works at the reformatory. We have an arrangement. He’s been trying to find out for me whether or not Piper is inside the reformatory. He feeds me false hope and I give him—
I remember. His mouth and hands on me. Lately he’s been pressing me for more, which makes me think it was no accident that he chose a Monday to meet up. If the door hadn’t flown open . . .
My mind runs through the memories again, but it’s all fuzzy and then goes completely black. After I get some sleep and sweat out the rest of the forget-me-nots, it’ll come back to me. Probably. Maybe.
Somewhere nearby, a door bangs shut. Quickly, I shove the note back into my pocket. Slipping out of my shoes, I pick them up and then creep out of the bathroom and into the rows of lockers.
I scan the room, making sure no one else has stayed behind. It’s empty.
My legs are stiff as I edge my way around the pool, not wanting to get too close. The sound of my ragged breaths echoes through the room by the time my fingers close around the door handle. It is a relief when the door shuts behind me, but I am not out of this yet. The hall is bright and empty. I hurry down it, feeling exposed. And then, finally, I’m at the south exit.
The early-morning air is as damp as my skin, and heat lightning flashes against the far edges of the sky. I jog across the deserted parking lot, heading toward the housing development that borders this end of the high school. Jonathan’s bloody shirt, along with the knife, has me shaken. Probably better to stay off the streets; I’ll cut through backyards to get home.
Heart thumping, I reach the chain-link fence, a quiet green lawn stretching out on the other side of it. I lean against it, unable to believe it was so easy to get away. Wishing I knew exactly what I was running from. I look back, and that’s when I notice the football field at the other end of the school is all lit up. They would never have practices this late; all the players are afraid of the dark.
I should go home. I should rinse the toilet water from my remaining pills, take another, and hope that this time it takes everything awful away. Instead, staying along the edge of the parking lot, I walk toward the field and its too-bright lights.
Broken and twisted, Oswell lies on the black asphalt that runs like a ribbon around the outer rim of the stadium. Directly above him the press box hovers menacingly. I look up toward it and then trace the line back down to Oswell. He started up there, that much is clear. The only question is what happened between up there and down here. I have a suspicion. Or maybe it’s a hope. I take a step forward, with the idea that if I can get closer, if I can touch him, I might know for sure.
A hand grips my arm, stopping me. “No time for a close-up. You need to get out of here.”
I turn and see Foote. A bandage is wrapped around his bicep. He is always bandaged up in one place or another. On his head he wears his fedora, tilted low so that it shadows his eyes.
“When I told you to run, I meant away.” He increases the pressure on my arm, forcing me to take little steps farther and farther away from the light.
I stare at him. “When did you say that? What happened?”
“I thought the whole point of taking those pills was not remembering?”
“You don’t want to tell me? Fine.” I jerk my arm away from him. We are now deep in shadows and his face is nothing but a dark blob I’d like to drive my fist into.
“Wait.” Foote’s words stop me before I’ve gone two steps. “Elton said he needed your help getting the truth out of someone. We tracked you down in the library study room with that guy.”
“Oswell,” I say, and then, “Why are you even working for Elton?”
“Why wouldn’t I? Once I heard you worked for him, I thought he was golden.”
“He’s not. And I don’t work for him. We have a history, and I . . . It’s really none of your business.” I glare at his hidden face, wondering what I would see there. A part of me is tempted to reach out, but a competing instinct tells me to keep away. I listen to the latter one and take a step back. I should walk away, but Oswell is still there, silent and broken beneath the lights.
“Elton send you to clean that up?” I indicate Oswell with a jerk of my chin.
“That’s not Elton’s to clean up. Mine neither. We weren’t even here when it happened.” Foote pulls his hat off, and the moonlight hits his eyes, so I can see them glaring down at me. “But you were.”
My stomach twists and I’m unable to hold Foote’s gaze. I stare at my toes instead and then back at Oswell, again tracing the line from the top of the stadium straight down to the spot where he now lies.
“He jumped then.”
“Didn’t see it myself. Elton’s girlfriend was here with you, though. Way she told it, he took off like he thought he could fly. What do you think put that thought in his head?”
Not what. Who. And there’s only one person I know of who could do such a thing. Piper. The word is so loud in my own head, I wouldn’t be surprised if Foote could hear it too. Then again, he doesn’t need to; he’s been in town long enough to have heard about her.
“How many of those pills did you take?” Foote asks, abruptly changing topics.
“Well, this has been fun,” I say, deciding I’ve had enough of Foote. He’s too damn comfortable for a newcomer. “But I should get going.”
To prove it, I march back toward the fence line. Wishing I wasn’t still wearing my too-short shorts, I push one foot into a diamond-shaped opening for a boost, and then grip the top of the fence, pushing myself up.
“You stopped breathing. And that was after you puked up a bunch of vile purple junk. Even then, there was still enough of that stuff inside you that you forgot how to breathe.”
I feel right now like I’ve forgotten how to breathe. And how to move. And how to tell him he’s a liar even when what he says sounds like the truth. So much like the truth that I can feel the way my chest would’ve grown tight, squeezing in on itself, begging for air. My heart frightened and galloping—that almost feels like a memory too, along with Foote’s eyes staring into mine. “Breathe. Breathe.” A chant, an order, a plea. Helpless, I heard the words, but couldn’t remember what they meant any more than I could recall how to pull oxygen in and out of my lungs.
Somehow my toes find a grip on the other side and then I get my second leg over and hop down. Without looking back to see if Foote enjoyed the view, I start walking.
“Accidental overdose,” I call to him. “Happens to notters sometimes.” I shrug like it’s no big deal, like I’m not totally shaken. Had I really been that bad? Could I really have come that close to dying?
I push the questions aside, unable to deal with them right now.
In the distance thunder rumbles, and I start to run, hoping to get home before the storm breaks.