Forget Me (2 page)

I
lifted the camera to my eye and focused on the lion's mouth.
Click.
Born of metal, plastic, and paint, he'd been a happy lion, with rounded teeth and lips curving into a smile. But now the paint was chipped, the plastic cracked, and bits of exposed metal were rusted. Graffiti morphed his happy smile into a sharp-toothed, menacing grin. Larry the Lion once welcomed children to King's Fantasy World Amusement Park. Now he warned people to stay away.

Inside the park there were many more shots waiting to be taken. The fun house with its broken windows. The thick weeds that climbed the track of the kiddie coaster. The mice that nested in the Skee-Ball holes. But I didn't climb the fence to enter the park.

Not that the No Trespassing sign intimidated me. Those were posted all over town, and they never stopped anyone. A rule meant nothing if there was no consequence for breaking it. No one was monitoring these places. Maybe at first, five years ago, when everything shut down, officers would swing by in a patrol car. But now . . . no one cared anymore.

The reason I wasn't going past the fence was that the last time I was inside King's Fantasy World, I met Flynn. My boyfriend. Who was now dead.

He'd been gone three months, and I still wasn't ready to revisit those memories.

I wasn't ready to say good-bye.

My town, River's End, had once been a shimmering oasis in our drab, rural area of central Massachusetts. But after the town's only major employer, Stell Pharmaceuticals, went under, several other businesses that relied on Stell soon followed, and River's End began its steep and sudden decline. Now half the McMansions stood empty. The mall's doors were shuttered. Happy Time Mini Golf was overgrown. And, saddest of all the forgotten places, King's Fantasy World was abandoned and rotting.

What used to be the happiest place in town was now the scariest.

I checked the display on my camera. The focus of that last shot could've been better. I adjusted and tried again.
Click.
Using my hand to shade the viewing screen from the sun, I squinted and then smiled. This one was a keeper. It captured what I was going for. The lion wasn't evil. He was just . . . lonely.

I packed my camera back into its bag and drove home. It was enough that I'd finally gotten that shot of Larry the Lion. I'd save climbing the fence for some other day.

I pulled my car into our empty driveway, not surprised that my parents were out. They used Saturdays to catch up on all the things they couldn't do during the work week: grocery shopping, the post office, the bank, the pharmacy. A never-ending list of errands.

My parents had both been biochemists for Stell. Great jobs, great money. But then people started dying from Stell's most popular product, a migraine pill. The company shut down and everyone lost their jobs. Even people who didn't directly work for Stell but depended on Stell employees to spend their money in town—at restaurants, retail stores—were out of work. Some businesses hung on longer than others, but eventually most had to give up and close their doors.

Now Dad took the train into Boston for work, a two-hour commute each way. Mom worked here in town but needed two jobs to earn anywhere near what she used to make at her previous job. But at least they
had
work. Not everyone in town was so lucky.

I swung the camera bag over my shoulder and closed the car door with my hip. I smirked as I spied Toni sitting on the front steps. Toni Klane was my best friend and had been since we were little. Her house was one street over, but lately it seemed like she lived with me.

She visibly shivered as she stood up. It was the end of March. That week that always seemed like such a tease. It was still cold, but spring was so close, you could almost smell it in the air. Toni wore jeans and a scoop-neck T-shirt, her arms wrapped around her abdomen. I'm sure she didn't mean to forget a sweatshirt or a coat. Sometimes she just had to leave her house in a hurry.

“Morgan Tulley, where have you been?” she said, tapping her foot in mock impatience. “Out snapping photos of creepy things?”

“Nope. Flowers,” I deadpanned.

Her face brightened momentarily and then shut back down. “You're joking.”

“Of course I am.”

She smacked my arm.

I unlocked the front door and we hurried inside, the warm air a welcome greeting. I didn't have to ask why she'd come over without texting or calling first. Why she was sitting on my front steps for who knew how long, shivering in the cold, waiting for me. If she wanted to talk about the Fight of the Day, she would. Most days, she'd rather not.

Toni's parents were having more trouble than most. The unemployment money was about to run dry, but the liquor was overflowing. Her family was exploding, and if Toni hung around the house all day, she'd be sliced by shrapnel. Collateral damage. So when she showed up here, I never turned her away.

I grabbed some sodas and a bag of Doritos from the kitchen. I wasn't hungry, but I knew Toni probably was, and she'd never help herself no matter how many times I told her it was okay. We climbed the stairs to the second floor and went into my room: our sanctuary. It had all-white furniture and bright, lime-green walls. I used to think it looked like the happiest room in the world, but now it felt like it was just pretending to be happy. If a room could feign emotion.

While Toni flopped onto the bed and opened the chips, I sat at my desk and uploaded the photos I'd taken to my laptop.

“Larry the Lion, huh?” Toni said between crunches.

“Yeah. I finally got that shot I've been trying for.”

“The one that makes him look lonely and not like a jacked-up plastic lion that wants to eat your face?”

“Exactly.” Even though my back was to her, I smiled. It was nice to know someone listened to me when I babbled about my photography.

“Are you going to submit it now?” she asked through a mouthful of chips.

I'd been building my portfolio to apply for a summer course at the local college. It was a small class and highly selective. “Nah. It's not ready.”

“You won't ever think it's ready,” Toni huffed. “Then you won't have to apply and risk being rejected.”

Toni's favorite hobby was psychoanalyzing me. I cast a look at her over my shoulder. “I'll apply. Just not yet.”

She pointed a chip at me. “No offense, Morgan, but you've always been the kind of girl who sits back and lets things happen to her.”

I resisted an eye roll. “And who should I be?”

“The kind of girl who goes out and
makes
things happen.”

I saved the photos and shut my laptop. “Believe me. I want to be in this program. That's why I'm taking my time. My portfolio has to be perfect.” I was a little aggravated, but knew her nagging came from a good place. I playfully stuck my tongue out. “So stop pressuring me.”

She made a face right back. “I'm your best friend, that's my job.” She paused, and her casual tone turned serious. “So did you go . . .
into
the park?”

I shook my head. “Not today.”

“How are you doing . . .
today
?” She emphasized the last word.

I should've known she'd remember the date. Three months ago today Flynn was killed in a hit-and-run accident. I hadn't gotten any messages or calls from my other friends. My parents never mentioned Flynn much after his death. They were raised in the school of “the problem doesn't exist if you don't talk about it.”

But Toni remembered. She knew today would be hard on me. That's what I loved about her. Her world was chaos back home, but she still worried about me.

I opened my laptop again and pretended to be doing something important. “I'm all right.”

“Look at me,” she demanded.

I twisted around to face her.

“He's been gone now longer than you were together,” she said, meeting my eyes.

Technically, she was right. We'd only dated for about two months, and he'd been dead for three, but that didn't make it okay. It wasn't like there was some grief formula. If you knew someone for X amount of time and he'd been dead for Y amount of time, you will be over the whole thing in X plus Y divided by Z.

I wish it were that simple.

“I just hate to see you so sad,” she said.

“Lots of people in the world are sad,” I countered.

“But they're not my best friend. Who cares about those losers?” She cracked a smile, and I mirrored it.

“I get what you're saying,” I said and gave a little shrug. “But I can't just magically shut the feelings off, you know?”

She sat up straighter on the bed and folded her legs underneath her. “What if we nudged it along?”

I narrowed my eyes. “What do you mean?”

“It's the three-month anniversary of Flynn's death. Maybe you should do something closure-y.”

“I love the way you make up words by putting a
y
at the end of them.”

“I love the way you avoid a conversation you don't want to have by making an astute observation about me.”

“Don't you mean astute-y?”

“Morgan.”

“Okay, okay. What would you like me to do?”

“Just some kind of closure.”

I leaned back in the chair and racked my brain. “Like . . . toss a wreath into the river to symbolize how he's drifted away from me?”

Toni rolled her eyes. “Nothing that cheesy. We can start with something simple like . . .” She chewed on the ends of her sandy-blond hair for a moment. “Upload a pic of him to FriendShare with a good-bye message or something.”

“How is that any form of closure?” I asked.

“It's public. It's showing your friends—who are worried about you, by the way—that you're starting to heal and move on. Having the balls to say something publicly makes it mean more.”

“I don't have balls. I have girly parts.”

She threw a Dorito at me, but it wasn't very aerodynamic and landed on the floor halfway between us. “Take this seriously, please.”

“Flynn hated FriendShare,” I pointed out.

“No offense, hon, but that boy hated everything except you.”

I shrugged. “He was just private. People have the right to be private.”

Toni placed a finger in her open mouth and pretended to gag. “He refused to talk about himself. He never invited you to his house.”

“He had family issues,” I said.

“He had issues, all right.”

I didn't want to get into this. I had always known Toni didn't like Flynn. And he hadn't exactly made an effort to be likable to her, either. I'd found his private nature mysterious and sexy. She'd found it “douchey.” But she never told me to break up with him and hardly ever complained. If the roles had been reversed and she'd been dating a boy I hated, I would've nagged her a lot more.

I searched her dark eyes. This small act of closure seemed important to her. And what did I have to lose? Maybe it would make me feel a little better.

“Fine,” I said, giving in. “I'll do it.”

She clapped and beamed like the proud parent of a child who'd made the right choice.

I logged in to FriendShare. My profile picture came up, a photo of Toni and me taken last year. We had our arms around each other's shoulders, which was a little awkward since I was so much taller than her. I glanced in the mirror resting on my desk and then back at the picture. It's amazing how a photo can tell you so much about a person in one quick glance. In the picture, my blue eyes were brighter, my black hair shinier. I glowed. Everything about me in the mirror now seemed dulled in comparison.

This was the right thing to do. I had to get on the “path of healing” (to quote one of Toni's well-meaning speeches).

I paused with my hands over the keys, then typed:
Gone, but not forgotten.

“Good,” Toni said from over my shoulder. “That's good.”

Then I clicked to upload the only picture I had of Flynn. One that he hadn't even known I'd taken. I took it the first day I met him, in King's Fantasy World. I went into the park to get shots for my portfolio and stumbled upon this mysterious boy, all alone, and it was like my camera had a mind of its own.

The icon in the center of the application swirled for a moment as the photo loaded. Then Flynn's face filled the screen. My chest squeezed as I fought off the urge to cry. Even in this innocuous photo, he seemed like a tragic figure. Leaning against the wall of the fun house, full lips slightly parted, his face tilted just a degree as his steely gray eyes searched for the source of the sound in the abandoned park. The sound had been me.

The outline of a box opened around his head as FriendShare's facial recognition software attempted to tag him with a name. It was a handy application if you were uploading a big group picture or a bunch of photos that you wanted done quickly. But I knew it was a waste of time for this picture. Flynn had never been on FriendShare. He thought it was “weird” and “intrusive.” Which was an observation I found poignant and smart, and Toni again found douchey.

But the operation ended and a message read:

Is this Evan Murphy? YES. NO. DONE TAGGING.

“What the hell?” I said.

Toni brought her face closer to the screen. “Who's Evan Murphy?”

“I don't know, but FriendShare seems to think he's my dead boyfriend.”

She shook her head. “Stupid website. It's probably glitchy or something. Just say ‘no' and then hit ‘post.'”

My finger hovered over the mouse, but I didn't click “no.” My muscles tightened into steel coils. It was probably nothing. It
had
to be nothing. But I needed to see.

With a trembling hand, I clicked on Evan's name.

“What are you doing?” Toni asked.