Forget Me Always

by Sara Wolf

  Evans frowns. “I have been trying to make up for my mistakes. How much longer are you going to treat me like the bad guy?”

  “As long as you’re alive,” I say cheerily. “You just want me to tell you I got in early, so you can brag to your other bald principal friends.”

  “You did? Congratulations.”

  “Ah-ah.” I wag my finger. “Don’t assume, and don’t try to get me to say it. I know how you work.”

  “And how do I work, Isis? Please tell me.”

  “Underhanded tactics and simpering lead-ons. You’d have done well in 1700s France. Except everybody there got beheaded for that stuff.” I pause and stroke my chin thoughtfully, then smile. “Yup! You would’ve done well.”

  Evans is quiet. His eyes are set and hard, for once, instead of soft and evasive.

  “Let me guess.” I lean forward. “You want me to tell you I got in, so that you can feel better, feel redeemed, that you entered me in their applications process, like getting me into a prestigious college will make up for the pictures and the bullshit.”

  He doesn’t move or blink. I lean back.

  “News flash, Evans—it’s called bullshit because it’s shit. Because it’s already been pooped out, and nothing can be done about it. It can’t be cleaned up. It’ll always be there. The stink will linger. It’ll always be something you’ve done. So no, I’m not going to tell you.”

  Evans smiles. “You already have.”

  I scoff. “Yeah?”

  “You wouldn’t be nearly as arrogant if you didn’t hold the knowledge that you got in. If you didn’t get in, you’d have nothing to lord over me. You wouldn’t be dragging it out like this.”

  I inhale sharply. He’s right. He’s fucking right. I learned how he works, but he’s been learning how I work all along. Clever little rat.

  “For what it’s worth, I’m glad.” He smiles a softer smile. “I am glad you have the opportunity. I can rest easy knowing one of my brightest students has the opportunity to become brighter.”

  I’m quiet. He gets up and stands at the window, watching the people at recess below.

  “Because you are, you know. Bright. When you first came, I looked at your records and dismissed you as a troublemaker. But you’ve done so well. Your paper statistics were deceptive. And yet I judged you on that solely.”

  “Don’t get all cheesy on me,” I say.

  Evans shrugs. “I’m not. I know you dislike me, with good reason. And that won’t change. But I learned from you, Isis. I’d forgotten how to learn from students. Years of being principal, instead of a teacher, distanced me.”

  He turns back to me and smiles.

  “So, thank you, Isis. And I’m sorry for everything. You may go, if you wish.”

  I stand and put my backpack on. At the door, I turn.

  “I got in.”

  Evans nods, faint smile still in place. Just nods, doesn’t say anything preachy or high-handed, and turns back to the window.

  I leave, feeling a little stranger. A little sadder. I suddenly don’t want to hate him so much. Suddenly everything feels a little grayer, a little colder, the anger-fire burning low in my chest. People make bad mistakes, but so few of them ever apologize for it face to face. So few ever change themselves or try to make up for it. After what Leo did, I realized I couldn’t trust adult men to do anything right. I painted them all as villains incapable of doing the right thing. But Evans did this once. And for that and only that, I admire him.

  Hiking up to Avery’s lake cabin has me pondering several things, one of which stands out brilliantly: there are approximately nine trillion cells in my body and every single one of them hates hiking. And walking. Just moving for extended periods of time in general, really. All nine trillion of us would rather be in bed. In the shade. With a parfait.

  “I can’t believe I ran myself skinny.” I pant and lean on a tree. Kayla is yards ahead of me, pushing over the hill of the hiking trail leading to Avery’s cabin.

  “We’ve all done things we regret!” Kayla calls back.

  “Like living.”

  “Or not keeping up with a healthy exercise regimen!” she singsongs.

  I stare at an oak’s trunk, and it seems to share my incredulousness. Regimen? I mouth. The tree shifts in the sunlight—a planty shrug.

  “Have you actually been…studying?” I call.

  “We’re adults now. Adults have to know words.”

  “And here I thought the only words they knew were ‘booze’ and ‘meaningless sex.’”

  Kayla laughs as she waits for me at the top of the hill.

  “Don’t forget ‘bills,’” she adds when I catch up.

  “H-How could I?” I pant.

  “I think that’s what I’m most afraid of.”

  “Bills?”

  She nods. “Bills are scary. College doesn’t scare me. It’s just like high school, probably, except you live there.”

  “People drink a lot in college.”

  “We drink a lot now.”

  “There’s lots of STDs.”

  “What do you think Marina keeps itching her crotch in gym for?”

  “And your dreams of being a rock star get crushed.”

  “I’m thinking more of a rock-et star.” She points up into the sky.

  I sputter a laugh. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” She grabs her boobs. “These guys would appreciate the zero G. Also there’s like, neato space rocks and stuff. And aliens.”

  “There’s no Cosmo in space,” I warn.

  “Yeah but there’s the cosmos!”

  I smirk. I’m rubbing off on her.

  We walk for a bit. Or, Kayla walks, and I wheeze. But even through my burning lungs and running nose, the woods are beautiful—dappled with light and fresh air—and the sound of the lake lapping close by is a lullaby only the birds get to hear every night. Kayla stops on another hill and points to the cottage. It’s huge, with French windows and marble terracing, but at least there are no cars in the driveway. We’re free to snoop around, and as long as we don’t get too close to the house itself, we won’t trip any alarms.

  “Welcome to Château Avery.”

  “Thanks, ass-tronaut.” I tap her butt. She squeals and chucks a pinecone at my head. It sticks to my hair, and I don’t bother taking it out, because she gave it to me. She’s given me loads of stuff—cake pops and lattes and smiles—but somehow this pinecone means more to me than any of those things. It’s a little scratchy, a little uncomfortable sometimes. But it’s still with me, and it looks fabulous. Just like Kayla.

  “So where do we start looking?” she asks.

  “I have zero idea,” I admit. “I don’t know what we’re looking for or where. This journey into Mordor may be completely for naught. But this is the only lead I’ve got to go on, Samwise Gamgee.”

  “Ugh, why do I have to be the clingy hobbit?”

  “Wren said it happened in the woods.” I change the subject. “Avery asked them to come outside, so it couldn’t have been too far from the cottage. It couldn’t have been too close to the road, though, otherwise she’d run the risk of being seen. We gotta think like Avery.”

  Kayla makes a disgusted face. I thump her on the back.

  “Sacrifices have to be made. The brain cells will regenerate in ten hours. No one will ever have to know.” I whirl around and point south. “That patch of woods looks perfect. Far from the road, but not too far from the cottage.”

  “Okay, I know you’re, like, really smart or whatever, but I knew Avery way before you even got here. I know how she thinks and she would not go that way.”

  “Pray tell why not?”

  “Because there’s tons of mud. Ew.”

  “News flash—mud dries up! There might not have been mud five entire years ago!”

  “News flash—there’s always mud over there.” She looks around.

  I sigh. “What if there’s nothing up here? I mean, honestly, what are we trying to find? Evidence? I don’t e
ven know what kind of evidence we’re looking for, or even what it’s evidence of! For all I know this is a massive waste of time.”

  “It’s worth a try,” Kayla insists. “If I were Avery, and I wanted to lure people to do something bad to them, I’d do it in that direction. That’s where she and her brother went to let off fireworks when they were kids. You can’t see it from the cottage, so their parents never busted them. It was like her secret hideaway.”

  “I would kiss you right now, but currently it is six months too early to experiment with becoming a fabled college lesbian.”

  Kayla smirks, and we start toward the patch of forest. The trees get thicker as we go in, the trunks so huge they block out the view of the cottage and the lake. It’s a perfect, insulated border around a half mile of dastardly evil-has-been-done-here ground.

  “So what are we looking for?” Kayla asks. “Bullet shells? Blood? Human bones? Or—” She shudders and whispers, “Ruined clothes?”

  “Probably not any of those. Five years is a long-ass time for nature to do its freaky thing. The best we can hope for is nothing at all, but if we gotta search, look for anything that doesn’t seem right. Anything that doesn’t look like it belongs in the forest.”

  She nods, and we split up. My hands shake. I’m breathing shallowly. This is it. This is the place it happened. I’m standing where it took place. Jack became a cold, unfeeling husk on the outside here. Sophia got hurt here. Wren’s guilt was born here, and Avery started burning here.

  I’m not Sherlock Holmes or Veronica Mars. This excursion is half insane, half wildly hopeful. The past is buried in the hearts of Jack and the others. My memories are back enough for me to recall how hard it was to pry any information about that night out of them. But now I’m here, where it happened. Now’s my chance to pry an easier target—time and weather.

  I kneel on the forest floor, the layers of pine needles squishy. I dig. I turn over rocks. I look between roots and mushroom clumps and massive, rotting stumps. Kayla huffs and daintily inspects tree trunks and moves pine needles with her foot, but I can’t blame her. We’re not exactly CSI. She’s right. What the hell are we looking for out here? We’re just wasting our time.

  After a half hour of silent concentration, my hands are smeared in dirt and blood around my nails where I dug too hard. Oops. It doesn’t hurt, but it will later. It’s then I feel something cold and wet on my ankle, and I summarily expire. Loudly.

  “Get it off get it off GETITOFF! KAYLA! KAYLA! KAYLAGETITOFF!”

  “What are you screaming—”

  “GET IT OFF!”

  “It’s a piece of moss, Isis!”

  I stop flailing and look down. The slimy green offender peeks out of my jeans innocently. I pull it off, and Kayla rolls her eyes and goes back to searching.

  “Y-Yeah?” I adjust my jeans as I stand. “Well, next time a flesh-eating zombie crawls out to eat you, I will just sit back and watch. From a safe distance. Which slightly impairs my ability to hear you screaming for mercy.”

  “It was moss.”

  “Well, it felt like a zombie, and who do we have to blame for that, hmm? Mother Nature?” I look up and shout at the trees. “Thanks, M-dawg! Next round can you maybe tone down the moss-that-feels-like-a-zombie-hand thing? Thanks, love ya, big fan otherwise!”

  “Aren’t we supposed to be sneaky?” she hisses.

  “Yeah, but it doesn’t matter! There’s nothing here. I fucked up, okay? My big plan that was supposed to answer all the questions backfired and here we are, scrabbling around in the dirt like Cro-Magnons who haven’t learned about fire! Or gloves!”

  Kayla’s eyes are glazed, and she’s staring off into the distance. I wave a hand frantically in front of her face.

  “Hello? Don’t go to space yet, dumbo, you’ve got work to do and degrees to earn and boys to break the hearts of.”

  She grabs my wrist and looks at me slowly.

  “I remember.”

  “Remember what?”

  Kayla looks over my shoulder. “One summer, tenth grade I’m pretty sure, because I had my orange tankini and that was, like, SO cute and in style—”

  “Kayla!”

  “Right, um. So that summer, Avery, Selena, Jen, and I went way far down on the lake, like, took a walk in this direction, which was weird because it’s really rocky this way and we usually went the other way, but that day we decided to go this way, and we got about this far, maybe a little farther, and Avery told us—”

  Kayla inhales.

  “Avery told us to stop. She got really freaked out. Weirdly freaked. She was almost panicking, and she told us we had to go back, and we all asked her why, but she just kept saying, ‘because I said so’ and ‘it’s my cottage, you morons, so we go back when I say.’”

  My heart soars. I’ve only ever seen Avery panic like that, lose her porcelain-doll cool, when Sophia stuff crops up. Maybe this wasn’t useless after all.

  “And that was this way?” I ask. Kayla nods and points over my shoulder.

  “If we keep going, I can look over the edge of the cliff and down to the lake and tell you where she told us to go back.”

  I follow Kayla. She’s faster than ever, but adrenaline pumps my legs just as fast, and I can keep up easily. The sun’s still high, and it glints off the massive, ice-kissed Lake Galonagah. Kayla peers over the edge of the forest, where the woods and dirt crumble into rocks and shoreline. She shakes her head each time and keeps going, until finally, finally, she stops.

  “Right here. This is where she freaked out.”

  I look around. There’s nothing here that stands out—just more woods. But if Avery got scared as they walked this way, that means she was afraid they’d see something they weren’t supposed to. Something she’d hidden way out here. Something that could definitely be seen from the lakeshore.

  “Let’s keep going. Keep your peepers peeled for anything weird.”

  Kayla nods and follows me. We walk slowly, taking in everything. Kayla sees it first and grabs my elbow.

  “Isis.”

  I look to where she’s pointing, and my heart sinks. No, “sinks” isn’t the right word for it. It falls out through my butt. It’s gone, a heavy leaden thing in its place.

  There, against a tree and planted in the ground, is a wooden cross, and at the foot of the cross is a small pile of stones.

  “Is that—” Kayla swallows, hard. “Is that a—”

  “A grave,” I finish. “Yeah.”

  She stays, frozen in place, but I move toward it with careful steps. I kneel at the gravesite. The wooden cross is shoddy—somebody just put two thick sticks together with twine—but it’s withstood the test of time. The bark’s eroded off; bleached white wood is all that’s left. You could easily see the white color through the trees and from the lakeside, if you caught the right angle. Whoever made the grave knew their stuff, though. The stones probably kept scavengers from digging up the body and eating it.

  The grave is so small.

  I already know what’s inside. I try not to know, the same way you try not to know about a car crash or a pet dying. You close your eyes and block it out, keep it at arm’s length, but reality is stronger than any bodybuilder. It pushes its way in, brute strength smashing the truth into my soul.

  Even so, I have to see it with my own two eyes. I have to know. I have to finish what I started, what Avery and Jack and Wren and Sophia started all those years ago. I start moving the rocks.

  “Isis! What are you doing? Stop it!”

  “Go back to the car and wait for me.”

  “You can’t just— You can’t just dig that up—”

  I look over my shoulder at her. “The truth is in here, Kayla. And I have to know. So go back to the car and wait for me. Pretend I’m not doing it.”

  Kayla squeezes her eyes shut, but she doesn’t move. I pull the rocks off, one by one, and use a flat one to start digging into the soft square of earth. As I get deeper, I can hear Kayla start to sob. Her cries e
cho in the forest, and somehow I know they aren’t the first human tears these trees have seen. My arms ache, my fingers burn, and the blood from my torn cuticles flows over and mixes with the dirt, but I can’t stop. I couldn’t stop if I wanted to. It’s feet down. Two feet, three feet, and then—

  And then the dirt comes apart, and there’s a tiny piece of pink blanket sticking out of the ground. I bleed on it. I dig faster but more gently, just around the bundle that’s starting to form. I dig until it comes loose, and then I pull it out slowly. Brush off the dirt. Put it on the pine needle ground and open it. It’s pinned, but the safety pin is long rusted and snaps easily, and the edges of the blanket fall apart like a crusted, ancient flower to reveal the center.

  I feel Kayla’s heat to my left, her curiosity obviously overcoming her reluctance. But the second the blanket falls apart, she starts crying harder than ever and pulls away like she’s been burned.

  “No. No no no,” she cries. “No. No no!”

  A tiny, barely formed skeleton looks up at me, with eyes too small and too black to see anything. It never got to see anything. That much I’m sure of. It’s too small to ever have made it into the outside world. And next to the skeleton is a minuscule bracelet, with letter beads. My shaking fingers pick it up.

  Tallulah

  I stare at the name for what feels like hours. Days. Tallulah.

  Tallie, for short.

  As an escort, bars are an integral part of the job. It’s a place people go to drink, to ease the slog that is their lives. Clients always feel more comfortable meeting in a crowded place, and for good reason. Sometimes clients won’t even try anything physical with me—you’d be surprised how much rich, lonely women will pay to be listened to. That’s the part of my job I enjoy the most—conversing. Having a good conversation, a mindless conversation about work and people and life, fills me like a hearty meal. It reminds me people aren’t so different from me; they’re just as angry at the world, just as bitter, just as sad. Sometimes my clients have problems and pasts that eclipse even mine with their tragedy.

  I’m not the only one suffering in this life.