"Because losing your memory sounds crazy! Like my mom."
He tilted his head way over to one side, as if looking at me from a different angle would help. "This is nothing like your mom."
"It feels the same." I transferred the box to one hip and chewed on my thumbnail--normally something I did not do because it ruined my manicure and projected weakness, said my mom.
I was finally talking about this with someone.
Even if it was Doug Fox.
"My dad told me it was the same. He threatened to lock me up with her if I ruined his trip to Hawaii."
Doug closed his eyes, looking pained. He shook his head. Then he leaned on a crutch and spun the other on its rubber tip in the dust, one of the many tricks he'd invented over the past few days. Gazing at the spinning crutch rather than me, he told me, "Y said you didn't remember the wreck. But you
ou did remember me pulling you out of the car. And you remembered me calling you a brat at the game."
I laughed. "I remember all the good stuff."
He stopped spinning the crutch and looked up at me.
"That's why I was so confused when you came over Saturday morning and acted like we were together," I explained. "I don't remember what happened in the emergency room."
He stared at me.
"So . . . ?" I prompted him.
He didn't say a word.
"So, what did happen?" I insisted.
"Don't worry about it," he said gruffly, elbowing me just a little as he crutched past me, toward the Benz.
I watched him go, my face and chest burning with anger in the hot sun, not believing he had just blown me off.
He rounded the Benz and executed the five-step process of entering a car with crutches. That's when I ran toward him. I ran at full force like I was swimming the fly, powered by fury. I jerked open the driver's side door and threw the box hard over the headrest into the backseat. The box hit the rear window, and a few condom packets slipped out as the box tumbled to the seat, then the floor. "Don't worry about it!" I yelled. "What the f**k, Doug?"
His arms were crossed, head against the window, eyes closed. "Right--" he started.
I slid into the driver's seat and slammed the door as hard as I could. "I've already told you--"
"Okay--" he said without opening his eyes.
"--this is really important to me--"
"Y es--"
"--and it's not fair for you to withhold information!"
"What happened was, I told you I loved you." Without moving his body or his head, he opened his eyes and gave me a look that said so there.
I cranked the car and backed it carefully out of the junkyard parking lot. Or, I backed it carefully out from between the junk cars where I'd parked it. I couldn't tell whether the other cars parked near the office were working or not, but the Benz certainly looked out of place between them.
Doug shifted his shoulders away from me and gazed out the window.
It took me until we'd passed the high school and maneuvered through the courthouse square to say, "I'm having a hard time believing you."
"Thanks," he said flatly.
I drove down the country highway, toward the beach and the wharf, puzzling this out. I believed him. He had no reason to lie. I simply couldn't picture it. We lay in the wet grass together and he said, "Zoey, I'm sorry for calling you a spoiled brat and I love you." We held hands between stretchers in the emergency room. He kissed my fingers, whispering, "I should never have called you a spoiled brat, and by the way, I love you."
As I turned onto the beach road I asked, "Did I say it back?"
"Y said it first."
He braced himself against the seat and the door as the car bumped over the curb. I jerked the wheel to steer back onto the road, eyes darting left and right, hoping Officer Fox wasn't watching from his police car.
"Doug," I finally exhaled. "I don't know what to do. I hope you'll give me a while to get my brain around this. I mean, I'm dating Brandon--"
He whacked his head against the window.
"Ouch, please don't do that." I put my hand out to touch his head. I even wiggled my fingers, but I couldn't quite reach. I put my hand down. "I don't want to lose you. I realize I don't have you, but I don't want to lose that chance. Like you said, I want a chance with you."
"Y do?"
"Y I said, "but not right this second. Because I'm dating Brandon--"
es,"
"Jesus!"
"--and I don't want to be a cheater."
"Y ou're not married, Zoey!" Doug shouted. "Y Just wait. It's this kind of f**ked up thinking that will make you wind up married to Brandon Moore."
et.
I tried to laugh, but it came out more of a choked gasp. "I'm seventeen!"
"My point exactly."
I felt him looking at me, but I didn't dare turn my head for fear of running off the road again.
I parked at the wharf and asked as pleasantly as I could under the circumstances, "Is this okay? I could drop you off at your house instead. Do you have paperwork to do?"
"Y He opened his door and pulled himself out, leaning on the car.
es."
"Well, wait. It's still early. We could grab a burger and talk some more. Do you have a lot of paperwork?"
"Stacks, and then I need to swab the deck and scrape barnacles off the bow." He closed the front door and opened the back to slide his crutches out.
"I'm serious," I called over my shoulder. "We need to talk this out or it'll fester."
"What do we have left to talk about?" he demanded. "Why don't you say `I'm dating Brandon' ten times fast to get it over with? When that changes, then you have my number." He slammed the door.
I SHOULD HAVE DRIVEN HOME, HEATED up a frozen dinner, finished my homework, read ahead for English, and watched TV until I fell asleep.
The idea of this night at home with myself twisted my stomach. Over the past few days I'd had more and more trouble concentrating on homework or English or even TV. I was never alone. Doug and Brandon stood at the periphery of every room, scowling at me with their arms folded. And of course I really was being watched by my dad on candid camera.
Instead, I drove thirty minutes along the oceanfront road, to the mall in Destin. I bought dinner and ate it in the open-air food court while I worked on calculus. If I couldn't be alone with myself, the next best thing was surrounding myself with a happy crowd who had serious concerns like what gifts to give and what clothes to wear. I stayed there, drinking refills of Diet Coke, doing extra calculus problems from the back of the book, until groups of shoppers passed me for the third time and whispered about me because I'd sat at the same table doing calculus so long.