Page 30 of Forget Me Not

“So,” I nudge her side with my elbow and smile at her when she turns my way. “Where are we headed?”

She shrugs, her mouth full of breakfast. “School?”

I shake my head. “Nah. I’ve got a total bitch for first period. Not feeling it. I say we take off. Fuck all of ‘em.”

She stops, an empty set of pancake edges still flapping in her left hand she’s probably not going to finish now. “We can’t just take off, Gunnar. You finally have a decent place.”

“It’s a fucking group home, Coop. Not the Brady Bunch.”

She rolls her eyes at me in lieu of verbally calling me out on my bullshit. Then she decides to do that too. “They make you pancakes for breakfast.”

“So does IHOP.”

“Gun.”

I exhale loudly. I don’t yell. Not at Coop. Ever. But I have my ways of making enough noise to get her attention. “No. I’m not sticking around to eat paaancakes,” I elongate the word dramatically just so she knows how ridiculous the argument is, “while you’re stuck in a house you don’t feel safe in.”

She turns away from me and starts walking again. A flick of her wrist and what’s left of her breakfast lands in the grass along the sidewalk. “It’s not that bad,” she mumbles. “I’ll deal with it. I won’t come running to you again.”

I take two long strides before I catch up with her. “You know damn well that’s the last thing I want. Just tell me what’s happening and I’ll take care of it.”

“No.” She repeatedly presses her lips together like she’s pissed, but I know that’s not really it. She’s trying not to cry.

“Coop.”

“You can’t, Gun. There’s nothing you can do, okay? It’s their son. I caught him standing over my bed last week while I was sleeping. I screamed when I saw him and his mom came rushing in. He told her some bullshit story about how I was having a nightmare and he came to check on me and that was the end of it. Didn’t matter how much I insisted that wasn’t what happened, no one believed me.”

I clench my fists so hard my nails would be digging into my flesh if I hadn’t gnawed them all off already. My knuckles hurt from the building pressure and I’ll probably crack a molar or two if I don’t unlock my jaw again soon. But I can’t let go of either. Not my fists. Not my jaw. It’s all I’ve got to hold in the rage barreling its way through my body, fighting to get out and do the sort of things that can’t be undone. Bad things, to bad people.

“You can flash your eyes at me all you want, Gun. I’m not going to let you screw up your good thing just because I’ve hit another little snag on the road through foster hell. It’s senior year. We’ll both be eighteen before the summer. We almost made it through. Let’s just stay on track and get there.” She sounds determined. She wants me to believe her. I don’t. I know her too well. Know when her words are empty. When her armor’s up and the lights are on and she’s checked out. Been watching her perfect the move for the last eight years. She can fool the rest of the world. She’ll never fool me.

“Look, Coop. You’ve got two choices. Either we head for the train station and get the hell out, or I’m walking you to school and I’m tracking down the piece of shit who left a mark on you – yeah, I saw your wrist – and I kill him. It’s as simple as that.” I’m not bluffing. When it comes to people I’d like to see dead, this creep is just the newest name on the list and I don’t mind starting there and working my way back.

“Don’t be stupid.” She kicks at a rock on the sidewalk. She thinks downplaying my outburst will make it less true. She’s wrong. “You’re not going to kill anyone.”

“The only thing I’m not going to do, is sit on my ass and eat pancakes while someone is threatening you.” I cross in front of her and stop her mid step. “See this?” I wave a wad of cash back and forth in front of her nose. I’m so close she nearly goes cross eyed from following the bills move. “It’s enough money to get us by for at least a week. Maybe longer if we’re smart about it. By then, we could be on the other side of the country. Why the hell wait for eighteen? Let’s just go now.”

“Where did you get that money?”

Of course she’d get hung up on that.

“I stole it, what do you think?!” I shove the cash back into my pocket. “Before you freak, it was cash Mr. B took out to pay some dude to replace the downstairs carpets. It wasn’ttheirmoney.”

“Fantastic.” She throws her hands up and pushes me out of the way so she can keep doing her angry girl march down the sidewalk. “So now it doesn’t matter what I say or do, you already fucked up your chances of ever going back there.”

“I really think you’re putting way too much importance on some fucking pancakes, Coop.”

She lets out a gravelly growl and stops to stomp her foot in place several times. She’s about to cave.

When she turns back around to face me, I tip my head sideways and grin. “How do you feel about Arizona? I’m thinking we need to stay south. Let’s be real. You’re not cut out for any sort of winter.”

“I hate that you did this,” she huffs. “I hate that you’re always ruining your life for me.”

“Don’t hate that I’m doing it. Hate that there are shitty people out there who don’t give me a choice but to do it.”

She comes up beside me, hooking her arm into mine and leaning her head on my shoulder as we start to walk again.

“Colorado. I don’t care what you think. I want to see snow.”

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