Page 33 of Forget Me Not

“You’ve also been screwing up plenty from day one,” he adds. “You screw up so frequently, and so effectively, it’s hard not to be distracted by it. And, I spent half of my time reading your file thinking just that, you were a total screw up and all I had to do was push you through the next seven months and past that final birthday and then, you’d be out of the system, out of my house, and no longer my problem.”

I’m not sure how to take any of this. He’s not wrong. But, for a dude who gives off a very happy go lucky vibe ninety-nine percent of the time, hearing him sound so cold and callous seems somewhat out of character.

I shrug, doing my best to make him think I don’t give a shit either way. “You could have two out of three right now. Walk out. I’ll be moved somewhere else. I’ll be someone else’s problem.”

“And I might have done just that tonight if I’d only read half of your file, drawn my conclusion and skimmed the rest. But I didn’t. I read the whole thing. And then, I read it again. And I wasn’t distracted anymore. I didn’t see all the ways you were screwing up. I saw something else.”

“What?”

“Not what. Who. Jane Cooper.”

I scowl involuntarily. It’s not his fault he doesn’t know her name. “It’s just Cooper.”

He seems confused but doesn’t argue. “Cooper. She’s the one constant in everything you do. She’s the one who’s been crashing in your room. The one you ran away with. Again.”

“So?”

“So, you’re not screwing up all the time.” He sits up, folds his hands over the table and leans forward maintaining eye contact the entire time, challenging me to look away, to lie. “You’re protecting her.”

I laugh but it’s a defensive move. This is the first time in nearly a decade anyone’s ever looked at my life and seen it so clearly. Figuring out what makes people tick, that’s my thing, it’s what I’m good at, it’s what’s given me the tools I’ve needed to manipulate this system and the people in it, to know when to push and when to lie low. Having someone on ‘their’ side see through all of my carefully constructed plans to see my full intentions, myonlyintentions, screams of a bad situation.

“I’m not protecting her,” I say as smugly as I can, “I’m fucking her.”

Mr. B takes my response in stride. “She’s your girlfriend.”

“Sure.” I roll my eyes. Condescending always goes nicely with cocky. “She’s my girlfriend. Whatever.”

“Oh, I get. She means nothing to you. She’s just a piece of ass. A means to an end. Sure. Then you didn’t care, last year, when you found out her foster mom’s boyfriend was taking those pictures of her?” He reaches for the folder that’s been lying here untouched and starts to flip through the pages as he talks. It’s not my folder at all. It’s hers. “Or the time she nearly died because one of the older girls in her house decided it would be funny to slip some roofies into her water one night when they were bored and home alone. I mean, if you’re justfuckingher, why would it matter?”

I’m staring straight down at the floor, focusing on the piece of gum that’s been worn into the ground so hard it looks like a dull pink stain, but it’s not enough. I can’t tune him out. And I can’t pretend I can’t hear, which means I can’t not feel what I’m feeling and the one thing I’ve never been good at hiding is my anger.

“Don’t talk about her like you know,” I snarl under my breath.

“Oh, I know. Probably a lot more than you think.” He rests his elbows on the table, leaning into them. If his face gets any closer to me it’s going to meet with my fist. “I even know how you two met. Sitting in a closet. In the dark. Probably starving. Two nine-year-olds, completely helpless. I’m sure that’s just the sort of experience that makes you not give a shit about someone.” His use of cold sarcasm isn’t what pushes me over the edge. It’s the thing he’s leaving out of the story. The thing he doesn’t know. The guilt.

“Shut up!” I’m on my feet and I don’t even know when or how I stood up. “Shut the fuck up!”

“Fine.” His whole demeanor changes. He leans back, waiting. He got what he wanted. I cracked and now, all he has to do is peel back the edges and watch all the shit spill out. “I’ll shut up...if you start talking.”

I don’t want to fucking talk about it. I used to. Used to try and tell everyone. For years, all I fucking did was talk about it. But no one ever listened. No one ever wanted to hear. So, I learned to shut up and take care of things my way.

Mr. B’s just staring at me from across the table. Not mad. Not even curious. Just, waiting. Like he really fucking gives a shit. Like hereallywants to hear. So, maybe I’ll start talking. Maybe I’ll tell him and he’ll be exactly like everyone else. And I’ll be right again. I could live with that.

“They said she liked to play hide and seek.” The disgust I feel at the sound of those words still turns my stomach. “Said it was her idea of a game. That she thought it was funny to scare the other kids in the house by locking them in there with her.” I kick at the floor, at the nasty old gum, but my foot can’t catch on something that’s been made one with the ground, so it just skids over the surface until my leg has no room left to stretch. It doesn’t make me feel any better. Nothing ever does.

“What really happened? How did you two wind up in there?” he asks quietly. I’m sure he knows. Doesn’t take a genius to figure it out. Just someone with enough balls to face it.

“Old Ray and his wife had a lot of kids in the house. Some coming and going, many of us were there to stay. Their idea of keeping control over the herd was displayed on hooks inside the pantry doors. Belts, paddles, a few feet of rubber hose, you name it, it was back there, a constant reminder of the consequences that came with breaking one of their rules. And they had plenty.”

“You ever break any?”

“Nah. Not at first, anyway.” The edge of my thumb slides into my mouth and I start to bite at the nub of nail still left there. “I spent the first few years of my life living in the backseat of my mother’s Volkswagen. Most of the time she was off either scoring a job or scoring a hit. I knew how to lay low and mind my damn business long before I ever wound up in that hell hole.”

“But something changed. You must have done something to wind up in that closet. Was it her? Were you helping her?”

I turn to my side to spit out a sliver of nail. “Cooper had nothing to do with it.” I scoot back into my chair. This is going on longer than I expected. He hasn’t changed the subject once. Hasn’t called me a liar. Hasn’t even broken eye contact. And I’ve tried. Every time I look back though, he’s still staring straight at me. “New kid showed up. He was little. Maybe three or four. Got in trouble more than anyone I ever saw there because he wouldn’t speak properly. Two weeks after he got there I figured out why. He did speak. It just wasn’t English. When I tried to tell them, they laughed and told me to leave them alone while they still thought I was funny. A few nights later, I found him crying. He was hungry. Wanted a fucking banana. No one understood. So, I got him one.” I laugh harshly. “Ray wasn’t all too happy with me after that. Stealing food, that was the worst offense. That was like stealing money right out of his pocket. You got worse than anything they had hanging in the pantry for that. You got solitary.”

“The closet.”

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