Forget You by Jennifer Echols Read Free Book Online Page A

Brandon's doing what the football coach tells him. If your scholarship is so important to you, why don't you come to swim practice on time?"
    Doug smiled. Maybe I should have smiled too, and laughed like I thought we'd come to an understanding. But I knew my laugh would come out nervous. So I continued to gaze earnestly up at him.
    He held my gaze. I had every subject except math with him because we were both in AP, but in most classes he sat across the room. In English he sat right in front of me, so I was familiar with the deeply tanned back of his neck and the way his black hair quirked into curls. I'd never been this close to the front of him, though, without his hair tucked into a swim cap and his eyes blurry behind goggles. Funny how he could avoid me since the ninth grade, but the instant I got him in trouble, he was in my face. I could see every black hair in the day-old stubble on his chin.
    His voice was so honeyed, I would have thought he was complimenting me, except for his words, and the subtlest sarcasm in his tone that I'd come to know well in the past year on the varsity team with him. "No, Zoey. The difference is that I actually need a scholarship, and you're a spoiled brat." He twisted his arm out of my hand and rubbed it like I'd hurt him, though I was sure I'd hardly touched him. "And I'm worried about your academic scholarship if you're dense enough to think Brandon Moore gives a shit about you."
    Then I was staring at Doug's back. He bounced down the stands, stepping over the seats to join some other guys at the edge of the swim team. He said something to them and they laughed. People complained to me privately about Doug, but when he was around, he was the life of the party. Now the huddle looked so conspiratorial that Ian walked along the bench below me to join it. Even Mike, who hated Doug, edged closer. I hoped they weren't talking about me. Or if they were, I hoped they were only talking about my argument with Doug, and not about my mom.
    And then in my mind I was back in my mother's bedroom at our apartment, trying to fix everything. I held my phone to my ear with one hand, whispering to the 911 dispatcher. With the other hand, I straightened her bottles of expensive perfume on the cheap rental dresser. I rubbed imaginary dust from the glass stoppers decorated with glass jewels and glass ribbons.
    I jumped and forgot the bottles as the marching band blared "Who Let the Dogs Out?" for the fourth time. In the end zone, the refs held their hands up, and Brandon's teammates slapped his helmet. My whole purpose in coming to the game was to watch Brandon play. Now Brandon had scored, and I had no idea how it had happened.
    And now Keke and Lila trudged back up the stairs. Their hands were full of Cokes and popcorn and cotton candy, junk they shouldn't be eating with a swim meet tomorrow. If they'd stayed with me instead of going to the concession stand, Doug wouldn't have attacked me like a lion on the savanna targeting the vulnerable gazelle at the edge of the herd. Or . . . the species that bounced hysterically instead of running. I confused the deerlike animals with each other. Impala. "What?"
    "I said, are you seeing Brandon after the game?" Keke asked through a mouthful of popcorn.
    "Zoey loves Brandon. It's perfect and dreamy," Lila said in a voice from TV commercials about princess dolls. She was a princess herself, with her gauzy top flowing around her in the breeze, and her red curls pinned up and cascading into ringlets around her shoulders.
    "Brandon's going to a party tonight with the football team at the city beach park," I told them. "Male bonding."
    "The swim team should crash the party," Keke declared.
    "Yeah!" Lila skipped a few steps down the bleachers to discuss this idea with the junior girls on the swim team.
    "No!" I caught Lila by the arm and dragged her back. She and Keke both waited for an explanation. I wished everyone would stop looking at me. Had I yelled no too loudly and