Page 13 of Forget About Me

My mother’s voice is gentle, but it sends my heart to my throat anyway. Turning around, I make myself face her from the living room doorway. “What are you doing up, Mama?”

She doesn’t look like she has the energy to get off the couch, but her eyes are blazing. “Wondering where my daughter is.”

I shrug. “I told you I was going out.”

She lifts her chin. “If you’re going to make a habit of this, you’re not”—a sob tries to escape from her throat, but she swallows it back—“you’re not welcome to live here anymore.”

“You’re kicking me out?” I have been kind of wild since moving back home, and my mom would not be happy to hear that I don’t even know the name of the guy I screwed and did coke with last night. But I can’t believe she’d actually make me leave.

She takes in a deep breath and lets it out, her eyes on her clenched fists in her lap. “I can’t take it any longer, Lucy—not knowing where you are, when you’re coming home. If I’m going to hear from the police or the hospital that my daughter’s been in an accident. That she’s dead.” She looks up, her eyes brimming with tears. “We can’t go through it again.”

Part of me wants to roll my eyes and yell. Tell her that it couldn’t happen again because I’m the reason it happened in the first place. But I can’t. “Does Papa want me out too?”

“I don’twantyou to leave, Lucy. And no. So far, your father doesn’t know that you’ve been out until the wee hours most nights of the week. He goes to bed early.” She shakes her head. “Sometimes he leaves for work before you get home.”

The judgement in her voice pisses me off, but before I can come up with another justification for my irresponsible behavior, she cuts me off with a hand in the air.

“I know it’s the time of your life where you need to… sow your wild oats. But I can’t sit by and watch you risk your life. So it’s either stop it, or do it where I can’t see it. I’m sorry, I just… can’t.”

It’s not her words that get me. It’s the haunted look in her eyes that twists the knife of guilt and shame in my gut. And the fear that she’s right. Maybe I’m courting death, hoping that it’ll take me away from the pain I’ve been drowning in since my brother died on the way to pick me up from college.

But she’s also right. If I went the same way, it’d kill her.

So I decide to stop.

Pounding on the door brings me back to the present.

“Lucy, what the fuck?” Cindy’s voice comes through the closet door. “Did you not hear the bell? You’re up in exam two, and we’re crazy busy out here.”

Rushing to reel in my emotions as I stow away the time—my past echoing the Steely Dan song—and get out of the lab, my scrub pocket catches on the door handle and rips. “Goddamn it!”

I slap a hand over my mouth. I haven’t taken the Lord’s name in vain for years. That morning when I crept home smelling like alcohol and cigarettes and sex with some stranger, I vowed never to take that path again. Shaking like a wet dog, I force myself back to the present.

What the fuck, Lucy, is right.

Sorry, God.At least I didn’t say it out loud. That’s the best I can do today.

CHAPTER FIVE

“Every Little Thing She Does is Magic” - The Police

Lucy’s Totally Tubular Tuneage, Song #3

BEN

Zoning out in front of the Boston University theater building as I wait for Puck to do his business, I’m startled by a clap on the shoulder and a resonant voice in my ear. “How now, you whoreson peasant! Where have you been these two days loitering?”

Even though I’m usually up this early, my brain’s not as quick with the Shakespeare as Will Talbot’s. “Loitering” is the only word that sticks in my brain. “Um, am I late? I thought the meeting was at eight.”

Will shakes his head. “You answer: ‘Marry, sir, I carried Mistress Silvia the dog you bade me.’ Or Launce does.”

I puff out a laugh. “Not every actor has your freaky ability to recall Shakespeare quotes at the drop of a hat. I’m lucky I can get all of Romeo’s lines out every night.”

“Ah, nobody listens to you once you take your shirt off, anyway.”

“Right, thanks for the reminder.”

He opens the front door to the theater building and gestures for us to precede him. “Are you dog sitting or something?”

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