Say You'll Remember Me

Ellison

Fair midways are my happy place. Rides with merry, shrieking people are to my right, and to my left are the bells and lights of games.

Dad and Mom brought me to May Fest so I could be present for Dad’s press conference, and they allowed me a few hours this afternoon to explore. I should be in my zone, filled with so much joy I could combust, but I’m not. There are two guys who have been stalking me for the past five minutes, and they’re ruining my mood.

My cell buzzes in my hand, and I step away from the crowd and between two game booths to read the text. I’m hoping if I appear interested in my phone, the two boys will keep walking—away from me. I’m also expecting a text from my cousin Henry. He’s twenty-four to my seventeen, in the army and should be home any day now. It’s been too long since he’s been in Kentucky, and I miss my best friend and older “brother.”

To my complete happiness, it is Henry: I’ll be in state tonight. Can you drive down to Grandma’s tomorrow?

I sigh because I’d rather he put aside his differences with Dad and come home to stay with us during his leave, but I won’t push him on this...for now. Some things are best done in person.

Me: I should be able to. I have nothing planned then. I’m at May Fest now. Dad has a press conference later this afternoon.

Henry: Sounds like hell.

Me: It’s not so bad.

Henry: Liar.

Really, the press conference will be boring. The fund-raisers and campaign events are often soul crushing, but admitting so will only add fuel to Henry’s current anger at my father, so I switch subjects.

Me: I have good news.

Henry: What?

Me: I’m a finalist for the internship!!!!

Henry: That’s awesome! Congrats, Elle!

I’m smiling like a fool at my cell. Since this past spring, the last semester of my junior year, I’ve been competing for a final spot in the interview process for a four year college internship with a computer software company. I found out an hour ago via email that I’m in the final round, and Henry’s the first person I’ve told. It feels good to finally share the joy.

Because I wasn’t sure that I would make it as far as I have in the application process, my parents are on the dark side of the moon with all of it. Mom and Dad have high expectations of me, and lately, they’ve been disappointed that I haven’t truly shone in any area of my life. I’m good at things, and they know this, but they want me to be first place for once instead of third.

So now I need to tell them, and I need to tell them soon, since I’m required to have a signed permission slip for the next phase of the interview process. My parents might not be thrilled that I’ve omitted some critical goings-on of my life, but I’m hoping they can see past what I’ve been withholding and instead focus on my win.

“You really are beautiful,” a guy with a red baseball cap says from my right. He stinks of too much aftershave and a hint of alcohol.

Fantastic. They followed, and my texting didn’t tip them off to leave me alone.

I drop my cell into my purse, grab my bottle of Pepsi out of the side pocket and start walking again, praying that I’ll lose this jerk and his friend in the crowd. Yet they somehow have the uncanny ability to twist and weave through the fair’s packed midway to remain at my side. I try to ignore them.

Last week in an email, Henry challenged me to be happy, because lately a lot of the fund-raisers for Dad were making me miserable. Nothing makes me happier than thrill park rides, games and, because I’m feeling rebellious, a real Pepsi. My health nut of a mother abhors all things in cans.

Somewhere between exiting off the Himalayan and purchasing my drink, these two guys, Idiot One and Idiot Two, obtained the wrong idea that I wanted their company.

I’m a big girl and can take care of myself. Much to my mother’s dismay, Henry taught me how to throw a punch and knee a groin. But I’m not stupid enough to think that doing either of those things is going to impress my parents. In fact, it would infuriate them to the point of implosion.

The two annoying guys are a bit older, walk with that I’m-in-college swagger, and have that sharp-edged jaw of a frat boy with a money-to-burn-and-wallet-wielding daddy. I know the type as Henry was friends with many of them during high school and his two years of college.

“Hang out with us,” Idiot One says. “It’ll be fun.”

“I’m not interested,” I respond, “and I would appreciate it if you would leave me alone.”

Idiot Two, the non-baseball cap wearing one, steps into my path. “But you really are beautiful. Blond hair, blue eyes, kicking body beautiful.”

“I said no.”

“Have you considered you don’t know what you want? Come with us, and you won’t have to make a single decision. We’ll show you a whole new world. Listen to me, and I’ll make sure you have a great night, beautiful.”

Won’t have to make a single decision. Beautiful. He must believe there’s nothing in my skull beyond the beginnings of hair follicles.

My muscles tense, yet my perfectly practiced smile slips upon my face because Mom has told me to never let my anger leak out in public. I hate the word beautiful. Hate it. The word beautiful somehow gives the world permission to make wrongful assumptions about me, like that I don’t have a brain. Beautiful somehow gives men permission to say the phrase as a secret password in my direction, and I should therefore fall at their feet. Beautiful makes people believe they can say anything they want about or to me and that I shouldn’t be angry.

Nothing in the universe could be more wrong.

Disapproving of their existence, I force the smile higher and have a pretty good feeling that it’s starting to appear as nasty as my current thoughts. I then step out of the path of Idiot Two and over in the direction to my game of choice: Whack-A-Mole. There is a large snake calling my name, and I will be the victor.

Unfortunately, Idiot One and Idiot Two have never been taught kindergarten social cues, and they follow.

“You look familiar,” one of them says, and my internal warning system flares.

For most people, I’m a case of déjà vu. One of those big, white fancy furry cats that crosses their path more than once, and it causes their mind to glitch. I’m not nearly famous enough that people follow me on the streets, but I’m more of a mere shadow of a newspaper clipping memory: I’m the governor’s daughter.

Best course of action? Push them away. It would mortify my mother, but if, for some strange reason, she learns of this, I’ll claim it as an accident.

I glance over my shoulder as I loosen the cap on my Pepsi. “Really? Who do I remind you of?”

“I can’t remember. A movie star maybe?” Idiot One brightens like me responding means I agreed to strip naked in the back seat of his car and have sex. Me hooking up with them is somehow a reality in their pathetic lives. I’m half wondering what their success rate is, and if it is high, there should be a mandated course on how girls are to avoid guys like them.

“Which movie star?” I spin on my toes, “accidentally” lose my footing, fall forward and my much-anticipated Pepsi becomes a sacrificial lamb. Brown fluid drips down the shirts of both boys, because I’m just talented that way.

“Oh, my gosh.” Hand to my mouth, fake wide eyes. “I’m so sorry. You should go dry off. Get some napkins. There are a million sweat bees here, and if you don’t clean up, they’ll swarm.”

Death stare in my direction complete with splotched red face from Idiot Two. “You did that on purpose.”

Yes, I did, and it’s hard not to smile when the first sweat bee lands on his arm. Sting, buddy. Just do it. I’ll forever be grateful if you cause him pain.

“Come on.” Idiot One places a hand on Idiot Two. “Let’s go.”

My fingers flicker in a shoo motion, and I finally turn my back to them. They can either go clean themselves up or die of sweat bee stings. Either option works for me. Now, it’s time for me to be normal for a few minutes. Well, to be normal and win. I’m sure normal people are also highly competitive.

* * *

The red light in front of me flashes, bells ring and I raise my arms in the air, savoring my victory. I even mimic the dance I performed in my limited and excruciatingly failed days as a cheerleader for Pee Wee football by slightly swinging my hips side to side.

I split my “v,” I dot my “i,”, I curl my “ctory.” Pee Wee football cheer taught me I not only lacked rhythm, but I lacked enthusiasm for my team when it was thirty degrees and raining. But in my defense, how many six-year-olds love cold rain?

The group next to me toss their padded mallets onto the game. Only one groans as if their loss was monumental. The rest laugh and good-naturedly tease each other. They’ve been fun to beat. For three games in a row, these two rugged guys and two girls have hung with me. Three times digging into their pockets to ante up, three times we’ve trash-talked the other in ways that are only done on fair midways, three times each one bites the dust.

Whack-A-Mole is not for the faint at heart. This game is for the serious, and only the serious win, and I’m a serious type of girl when it comes to carnival games and hard-earned stuffed animals. Someone’s got to play and win, and it’s going to be me.

For a few minutes I forgot I had to be perfect, and being just me felt great.

“Good game.” One girl of the group offers me her fist, and the multiple bracelets on her wrist clank. She’s my age, has curly black hair in tight rings and friendly dark eyes. Her clothes, I love. Tight jeans, a tank that ends at her midriff and a jeweled chain around her flat, brown stomach that’s attached to her belly button ring. She has a daring grin and style. Both I admire.

I’m not the type to fist-bump, and by how long I’ve hesitated, the girl’s aware this is out of my territory. I finally do fist-bump her, though, because I’m not only highly competitive, but I rarely back down from a challenge. For those reasons alone, it’s amazing my mother lets me out of the house. “Good game.”

Her grin widens, and I hold my breath as she tilts her head in that familiar déjà vu. I silently pray for her to shake it off, and when she does, turning so she can talk to her friends, I blow out a relieved breath.

Most of her group appears to be the same age as her, about the same age as me, except one guy who I’d hedge is in his twenties. By the way they all listen when he talks, it’s apparent he has their respect.

I watch them longer than I should because a part of me envies the way they all seem to belong to each other. Henry is twenty-four and loves me, but about the only thing we have in common is my parents, and he hasn’t talked to them in two years.

The carnie clears his throat, and I’m drawn back to the sounds of people laughing on rides and the scent of popcorn. I offer the pink-and-black-striped medium snake I’ve already won to him and motion with my index finger that I’m on the hunt for the massive, big daddy snake that could wrap around my body a few times. To the victor goes the spoils.

The carnie doesn’t accept my medium snake and instead hands me a green-and-black-striped small one. “You have to win four times in a row in order to get the big one.”

Four times. Good God. At five dollars a game, I could have bought five of these hardened toys, but that’s not the point. Winning is the actual prize.

I pull my cell out of the small purse I have crossed over my body. I ignore Andrew’s “Where are you?” texts and check the time. I’ve got an hour to make it back to the convention center, change and be ready for Dad’s press conference where it is my job to sit, smile and “look pretty.”

If I’m really careful, there won’t be time for my mother to berate me for taking off without Andrew. He’s a friend of the family a few years older than me, and my mother chose him to “babysit” me for the afternoon. She allowed me to go to the midway with the understanding I was to tag along with him. But I don’t like Andrew and Andrew doesn’t like me, so I turned right while he walked left and neither of us looked back to see if the other was following. Maybe Andrew will rat me out that I abandoned him. Maybe he won’t. Either way, I’m happy with my choices.

Any way I look at it, I have time for at least one more game. I flip my blond hair over my shoulder and give a tempting grin that’s meant to rub it in that I not only won, but won three times in a row. “You know you guys want to play again.”

You know you hate being beaten by me.

From the expressions of the guys, I pegged them correctly. The girls...I could totally become best friends with because they knowingly laugh at their expense.

“I’ll play.” It’s a small voice belonging to a child, and my smile falls. Long unruly ringlets over a chubby preschool face. She stands on her tiptoes to hand money to the carnie, and he accepts it without giving her a second glance. “I’m going to win this time. I have to. Daddy says it’s my last game.”

The aforementioned daddy hands another five dollars to the carnie worker and picks up a mallet next to his daughter’s spot. Ugh. Knife straight to the heart as he throws me a pleading glance. He wants her to win. He needs her to win. He wants me to help her win.

I totally hate being conned, but if I’m going to lose, it will be to a five-year-old.

“Are you going to play?” the carnie asks me because it’s his job to make money. I want to answer no, but because I was once five and my father did the same thing for me, I fork over my five dollars, then tilt my head in a princess-worthy stare over at the boys.

It takes four to play, and I need one of them to lose so this kid can win. They glance at each other, waiting to see which one is going to man up.

“Your ego can handle being beaten by a five-year-old,” I say.

A guy in their group that had been hanging back strides up. “I’ll play.”

For a second, there’s a flutter in my chest, the lightest touch of butterfly wings. I secretly wish this guy would chance a look in my direction, but he doesn’t. Instead he hands the carnie five dollars and claims the spot next to me.

Wow. I’m definitely okay with this.

He’s taller than me and he’s in worn blue jeans. His white T-shirt stretches against his broad shoulders, and he’s gorgeous. Drop-dead gorgeous. The defined muscles in his arms flex as he switches the mallet from one hand to another, and I’ve stopped breathing. His blondish brown hair is shaved close on the sides, but the rest of his longer hair is in complete disarray. His freshly shaved face reminds me of a modern day version of James Dean, and everything about him works well. Very well.

I’m staring, I need to stop and he’s also aware that I’m staring and haven’t stopped. He turns his head, our eyes meet and those butterflies lift into the air. Warm brown eyes. That’s when I’m finally scared into having the courage to glance away. But I peek back and sort of smile to find he’s now looking at me like he can’t stop.

For the first time in my life, I like that someone is looking. Not someone—him. I like that he’s looking at me.

“We let her win,” I whisper.

He nods, and I lift my mallet. It’s tough to not get into position—to be poised and ready to strike. I love this game, I love winning, and losing to be nice is all fine and good, but I have to fight the instinct to go full throttle.

“You’re good at this,” he says.

“I play this game a lot. At every fair and festival I can. It’s my favorite. If there were an Olympic event for Whack-A-Mole, I would be a gold medalist several times over.”

If only that were enough to make my parents proud—or to make a living at when I graduate from college.

“Then I’m in the presence of Whack-A-Mole royalty?” The laughter in his eyes is genuine, and I watch him long enough to see if he knows who I am. Some people do. Some people don’t. I’ve learned to read the expression of recognition, and he has no clue who I am.

My body relaxes. “Totally.”

One corner of his mouth edges up, and I become tongue-tied. That is possibly the most endearing and gorgeous grin I’ve seen. He twirls the handle of the mallet around in his fingers, and I’m drawn by the way he makes the motion seem so seamless.

This incredible fantastic humming begins below my skin. To be brutally honest, I’m not sure what attraction is. My experience with boys has been limited, but whatever this is, I want to feel it again and on every level of my being.

The bell rings, my heart jumps and I inhale when the worn plastic moles pop up from the holes. The instinct is to knock the hell out of them, but the tinkling laughter of the little girl farther down causes me to pull back. I hit one. Then another. I have to score something. She needs to think we at least tried.

The guy next to me hits a few moles, but in a rhythm. A crazy one. A catchy one. One that my foot taps along with. The bell rings, the little girl squeals and my hopes of winning the large snake die.

A chirp of my cell, and I immediately text back my mother: Still at the midway. Heading back now.

Mom: Hurry. I think we should curl your hair for the event.

My hair, my outfit. That’s what’s important to her. I squish my lips to the side. It took her an hour this morning to decide she wanted me to wear it straight. Then it took her another hour to decide what I should wear on the midway, in case I should be recognized. Then there was the painstaking additional hour to decide what I should wear to the press conference.

When I look up, disappointment weighs down my stomach. The boy—he’s gone. Not really gone, but gone from beside me. He’s rejoined his group, standing with them and belonging. I will him to glance one more time my way, but he doesn’t.

That’s okay. I’m just a girl on a midway, he’s just a boy on a midway and not everything has to end like a daydream. Truth is, once he found out what my world is really like, he’d have taken off running.

But I have to admit, it would have been nice if he had at least asked for my name.

Hendrix

Holiday smacks my arm and wrath owns her eyes. “Why didn’t you talk to her?”

I glance around at my family—Axle, Holiday, my best friend, Dominic, and his younger sister, Kellen. I’m searching for at least one of them to have my back and tell her to step off, but instead they’re curious for the answer. Even Axle’s giving me a questioning gaze, and the last thing my womanizing brother deserves is an explanation from me in my decisions regarding women.

Last time I was home, his reputation was as bad as Dad’s, minus the progeny. There are three siblings in this family, and we have three different birth mothers. Dad not only didn’t know how to use a condom, but he didn’t know how to stay true to one woman.

“I talked to her.”

My younger sister throws her arms out and drops her voice to what I’m assuming is to mimic me, but I don’t sound like an idiot. “You’re good at this.” She resumes her normal tone which is entering high-pitched. “Seriously? That’s all you’ve got? Did you get some sort of amoeba that eats your brain while hanging out in juvie?”

I fold my arms over my chest and wonder if my sister can read pissed-off body language.

“You can still catch the girl and talk to her,” Holiday continues, proving she doesn’t care I’m silently informing her to quit. “Don’t make me chase her for you because that would be embarrassing. Embarrassing for you. Not me. I’ll have to tell her you sent me, and because you’re a wuss, I’ll have to ask her out for you like we’re in sixth grade.”

I find myself missing the middle of nowhere. Trees, bonfires, mosquitoes, mud, bears...company that didn’t talk.

“She’s out of my league.” I haven’t spoken truer words in months. She was beautiful. She was poised. She was a cool breeze after a hot humid rain. She was that first ray of sunshine in the dark woods. She was the smell of honeysuckle in bloom. She was the first damn thing that made me forget who I am and what I’ve gotten myself into over the past year. That means she was out of my league.

Granted, she was out of my league before I was arrested. Everything from her manicured nails, to her brand-name clothes, to her high-end purse, to the way she held herself said she was about a hundred times higher on the social and economic spectrum than me, but the person I was before would have made the play because I was smooth—just like my father.

“She is not out of your league.” Holiday hounds me. “She smiled at you. I know when a girl likes what she sees, and she liked what she saw in you.”

Tension builds in my neck. Yeah, the girl smiled, but she didn’t know what she was smiling at. I’m a pretty façade on the outside. On the inside, I’m a house of cards teetering on a bad foundation.

Axle throws an arm around Holiday’s shoulder and edges her away. “Let’s get some food. Drix is going to have to talk soon, and we don’t want him to do it on an empty stomach. Passing out on TV isn’t a great first impression.”

Wouldn’t want that to happen, would we?

“Hamburger?” Axle calls as he walks backward for the food truck. “With everything?”

I nod. My brother knows me...at least who I used to be.

“I’m agreeing with Holiday on this,” comes a deep rough voice to my right. “Pathetic.”

I do a slow head turn toward my best friend and cock an eyebrow at an even slower rate.

He smirks at my expression. “We picked a game we always let you win, and you didn’t even try.”

They picked that game because I used to kick their asses at it, and they were trying to get me to be the old Drix. But I only offer one sloppy lift of my shoulder because I don’t know how to explain that it’s tough to engage.

“It’s creepy hanging with you,” Dominic continues. “It’s like you’re the Walking Dead. I’m half expecting someone to jump out with a samurai sword and slice out your heart.”

“Brain,” Kellen corrects as she adjusts the Spider-Man beanie on her head. It’s a hundred degrees outside, and she wears that hat like it’s thirty below. “They’d take out his brain.”

“That, too.”

Dominic and Kellen stand side by side. Siblings who look and act nothing alike, except for their attachment to me and my family.

Kellen’s barely sixteen, the baby of our group. She’s blond braids with black bows at the ties, and she wears her beloved fitted black Captain America T-shirt and worn jeans with rips. It’s weird seeing her with lip gloss and eye shadow. I’m betting that would be Holiday’s doing, but at least Kellen’s somewhat the same.

Since we were kids playing baseball in the street, Kellen’s been a sucker for a comic book hero. It gives the possibility to her that the world might make sense. Good guys in one corner. Bad guys in the other. It’s how Kellen found her way to survive in a very gray household.

Something about her makes me feel protective. Maybe it’s how Dominic hovers over her. Maybe it’s because Kellen still has the limp from a bad bone break she got when she was eight. Maybe because playing hero to her might make me redeemable.

“I’m the Walking Dead because I didn’t play a game?” I ask.

Dominic jerks his thumb toward the game. “Because you didn’t hit on the girl.”

The girl no longer needs to be part of our conversation. I liked her. She liked me. I’m on parole for a crime I didn’t commit. A plus B doesn’t equal C in this equation.

“And you only played after we lost. How much did we lose? Three games, five dollars a shot. That would be...”

“Fifteen dollars,” Kellen says, the math freak that she is. Don’t get me wrong, I respect the hell out of her for it. I’ll also admit her nonstop ticking brain scares me. Someone that smart is going to take over the world—in a lab-coat, stroking-a-cat, manic-laughter type of way.

“Fifteen dollars,” Dominic echoes. “Times five.”

“Seventy-five dollars,” Kellen pops in.

“Seventy-five dollars in total. Just to get you to play.”

“I never said I wanted to play,” I say.

“But I wanted that snake. That girl is walking away with my prizes. You’ve been gone a year, and you can’t help a brother out? That would have completed my collection.”

“He needed the pink one,” Kellen adds.

“See, my world is now incomplete.”

Dominic grins, and I can’t help the automatic grin in return. It feels strange on my face, especially when joking with him used to be as natural as breathing.

Where Kellen makes me feel like I need to clear the path, Dominic is a category five tornado; a broad-shouldered brick wall. He has to be for the neighborhood we grew up in. He has to be because his home is even worse, and he considers himself the protector of him and his sister.

The deep scar across his forehead tells one of many war stories. So does the long one on his arm from a surgery when he was ten. He has black hair, blue eyes and is a good guy to have in a tough spot. My best friend is cool on the outside, but deep down he’s two pieces of uranium always on a collision course. He’s volatile. Too many emotions and nowhere safe to store them. They stew until there’s an explosion, and Dominic hates explosions. He hates fallouts. Most of all—he hates tight spaces.

But he loves a guitar, loves music, and from all the letters and emails he sent while I was gone, he loves me. Kellen, Dominic and I are more than friends. We’re family, and I’ve missed my family.

“You let us down,” Dominic continues. “We got beat by some little blonde, and she was a sore winner. And the worst part? I didn’t hit on her because she smiled at you, you smiled at her, and I thought you were settling in and returning to playing the game.”

“You didn’t hit on her because she would have laid you out flat with her no.” I mock a jab to his jaw. “That girl was fireworks.”

Kellen smiles at the dig, Dominic snorts, and a heaviness avalanches onto me. There’s a pause they’re waiting for me to fill because that’s what I used to do: announce what’s next, but I don’t have a next. This should be easier than what it is, and I hate that it’s not.

“Dominic,” Axle calls from a food truck. “Get over here and help.”

Kellen starts before Dominic does because where she goes, Dominic does, too.

Dominic steps forward then stops. His shoulder next to mine. Us facing two different directions. It’s the first time we’ve been alone since before I was arrested, and I lower my head as the two million things I’ve wanted to say to him become stuck in my throat.

With the way he sucks in a breath, he’s feeling the same.

My heart beats faster at what he might say and what I might say in return. Did he do the crime? If so, will he confess? What about beyond the crime? Will he bring up how he screwed me over the night I was arrested? Does he have the balls to explain how he left me high and dry, and will he apologize for that? If he does, can I forgive him? Because I’ve struggled with that—forgiveness. It’s not something that occurs naturally for me.

Dominic angles his head so he’s looking at me, waiting for me to lock eyes with him, but I can’t. I watch the blonde as she walks the midway. She’s beautiful. Possibly the most beautiful girl who’s talked to me. When she smiled at me, it was like I was being warmed by the sun, and I was her only planet. What I envy is that she seems to know where she’s going, where she’s headed in life. I’ve never been so jealous of anyone.

“I’m going to make this up to you,” he says.

Sharp pain in the chest. Of all the ways I saw this moment playing out, those weren’t the words I imagined. It’s not an apology for leaving me behind. It’s not an admittance of guilt. It’s a promise.

In my final therapy session in the woods, sitting next to a bonfire I created, my therapist asked what would help me transition back into the real world. I told him I needed the truth. He told me there’s no such thing, but he did tell me that forgiveness was real.

Forgiveness. In my mind, forgiveness and the truth go hand in hand.

“Why did you leave me behind that night?” I ask because I’ve waited a year for that answer, and I can’t wait anymore. Not if Dominic and I are going to be friends again. “We had a pact—never leave one of us behind, and you left. Why?”

“I thought you went home.”

“I didn’t, and you need to admit you didn’t try to find me. Something big had to have happened for you to have ditched me. What was it?” Or did he really think I was gone from the store and saw that as his opportunity to rob it?

“Dominic!” Kellen calls, and she’s juggling several drinks. “I need help.”

Yes, his sister needs help, but I need help, too. I look straight into his eyes, and there’s no way he doesn’t see the plea in them to talk to me, but he doesn’t talk. Instead, Dominic pats my back and heads to help his sister.

That night, Dominic had walked me to the convenience store, and dared me to shoplift, but then disappeared, and I passed out behind the store. I was too drunk and too high to know my own name, and he left. Disappearing, leaving anyone he loved behind, wasn’t his style, but he was desperate for money. Did his desperation cloud his judgment when it came to me and our friendship?

And that night, Holiday was closer to the crime scene than I had known. Both of them had something to gain, both of them felt as if they had nothing to lose and both of them had motive.

But it’s hard to imagine Holiday holding a gun. Dominic, on the other hand, he was capable of aiming a gun, and at the time, he was crazy enough to pull the trigger.

Good thing that bullet missed the store clerk or I would have been charged with more than robbery with a weapon and attempted assault. Manslaughter would have messed up my day—for twenty years.