Forget Me Always

  But still.

  It’s everything I’ve never known I wanted.

  I scroll though my email, to thank them for my scholarship, and pause at one particular message. It’s new, sent just four hours ago, from a weird address. At first I think it’s spam, but then I read the title:

  Isis, I know you’re there

  Creepy-possible-serial-killer title aside, I click on it. What’s the worst that could happen? My firewalls are tight, and if it’s a phishing email I just won’t click on anything inside it. There’s a single line in the body:

  Jack Hunter is evil, you know.

  It’s a joke. It has to be a crappy joke email from someone at school. I’ve heard these exact words from people there—but in an email like this, it’s creepy. It’s somehow more threatening, and real. I try to trace the email by putting it in Google, but nothing comes up. It’s a jumble of letters and numbers that might as well be a spambot, but it’s not. It’s someone who knows my name, and someone who thinks Jack Hunter is evil. I’m conflicted about him for sure, but I don’t think he’s evil. He’s cruel and callous. But evil? Really, truly evil? That’s going a little far.

  And that’s when I see it.

  There’s an image attached to the email.

  I open it. It’s blurry, but I see trees and the pine needles covering the ground. I see the dark lump that looks like it has limbs (a person?) lying on the ground, and I see the hand carrying a bat in the corner. A bat stained with something dark on the tip.

  My mouth goes dry. I know that hand. Memories surge up like a rapid tide. I grabbed that hand, with its slight veins and long fingers. I held it, both of us sitting on a bed, and I confessed something. Something that meant a lot to me. Thumping music. The taste of booze. Dancing. A bed.

  I know whose hand is holding that stained baseball bat.

  It’s Jack’s.

  Jack is looming over what looks like a dead body.

  Chapter Seven

  The thing inside me has no name.

  At the age of seven, after Father died, was when I first felt it. After his funeral, I didn’t speak to Mom for a long, long while. I didn’t speak to anyone. The beast demanded I be silent. The beast demanded I hurt others. I fought with my classmates in elementary. I bit teachers. And when there was no one around to hurt, I’d hurt myself, stabbing pencils into my hand. Mom took me to psychologists, of course, able and willing to shell out to keep her little boy from losing his mind with grief, even as she was losing her own. I was selectively mute after a traumatic loss, the doctor determined, and Mom was depressed. But with a lot of therapy and the good grace of passing time, we managed to pull through. I began speaking again. I made friends. With the help of Wren, Avery, and Sophia, my life began to feel normal again. I began to quell the anger with their friendship, and Mom’s unconditional love.

  The beast, however, remained. I could only tamp it down for their sakes. They couldn’t kill it. I don’t know if anyone will ever be able to kill it. Perhaps I’ll die with it. Perhaps it’ll be the death of me.

  Regardless, it waited, biding its time. It retreated deep inside me, bottled by my newfound adoration for the people close to me. Sophia, especially. When she was around, I felt the thing in me retreat so far away I could barely sense it anymore. She saved me from myself.

  And I failed her.

  The beast took my failure as a crack in the lid of its cage, and broke free, despite everything I did beforehand to keep it contained. I failed Sophia, and in doing so, failed myself.

  And I failed that man, the one whose body haunts my dreams.

  The beast hurt so many people, all in one night. The repercussions echo today, in Avery’s every avoidant glance, in Sophia’s lingering grief, in my own wounds.

  Since that night, I’ve lost the friends who kept it bottled and caged. Mom tries, but she’s only one person, and the beast is voraciously hungry for more, always. It wants to fight, to scream, to inflict pain on someone, anyone. It’s a deep scar I’ll never be able—and don’t deserve—to erase. No one can help me save myself. And I swore to myself I’d never let anyone get hurt by the thing again. The farther people stay away, the safer they are.

  And so, the “Ice Prince” was born out of necessity.

  It worked. It worked for three years exactly, the beast only barely peeking out when the football team wouldn’t stop bullying me. They learned quickly, though.

  For a while, a short, fleeting while, the war with Isis pushed the thought of the beast out of my head entirely. It was silent, not so much as rattling the bars of its cage. But then she forgot me, and its whispers have been turning to growls in the last few days.

  So I’m here, at a seedy warehouse in a part of town where no one knows me, to try to quiet it. I know how it works, what it wants. And this is the safest way to keep it quiet—a controlled environment, with enough people watching so that it never bites too deep.

  The roar of the crowd practically deafens me. The warehouse is dim and smells like rust and old cardboard. The place is packed with people I can’t see the faces of. All I can see is the man before me—twenty-two? Twenty-three? He’s college-aged and built lean and limber. He swims or does soccer. But on the side he takes boxing lessons. I can tell by his stance—square, firm, on the balls of his feet. Boxers always look like they’re about to tip over.

  “Are you ready?” a man bellows, a microphone clutched in his sweaty palm as he paces between us. His salmon-striped shirt isn’t exactly official referee colors, but a match in an abandoned lumber warehouse isn’t exactly an official fight, either. The crowd’s shouting surges with the ref’s encouragement. The boxer and I meet in the middle, shaking hands cordially. Hollywood might like to paint underground fights like these rife with dirty tactics and shit-talking, but it rarely ever comes to that. And if it does, the crowd only roars louder. Do it too much, and they’d get bored or pissed the bets going around were being cheated by an illegal head-butt.

  We part after shaking hands. I tighten the cloth belt of my loose pants. Tae kwon do demands fluidity and practice. Which is why I began to enter these a month ago.

  The ref throws his hand up, and the fight begins. Our feet shuffle around the makeshift arena, pushing aside remnants of sawdust and dried bloodstains from past competitors.

  My eyes are locked on my opponent. The boxer won’t strike first. They never do. Boxers excel at stalling—taking a beating and waiting for the enemy to run out of energy or get tired and lower his guard. I have to hit him hard, when he least expects it, or he’ll out-sustain me.

  The boxer suddenly lunges in. I swing back but not fast enough to avoid his right hook. It clips my shoulder, sending me in a half spin to the ground. The crowd cheers, leering down at me like bloodhounds on a fox. I’m the new guy. I’ve won barely two matches out of the five I’ve entered. None of them have bet on me. They aren’t here to see me win. They’re here to see me get beat on.

  I get to my feet. The boxer’s danced back to his original spot, a grin on his face.

  Wrong move.

  Boxers might be able to take a beating, but emotions make humans weak. Confidence makes us weak. I was so confident he wouldn’t strike first, and I was wrong.

  My memories nag at me with barbed tentacles.

  I was so confident, too, that Isis would always be there—always ready to fight me, always ready to snark at me, always ready to bring me down to size when no one else would.

  And yet I lost her.

  I step in, a quick and precise movement, and heel-kick the boxer square in the chest. He staggers, clutching his rib cage and blinking in soundless pain. His fury is immediate. He lunges for me with that right hook again. I dodge, but he’s there to meet me, all flying arms that pound my ribs, close and brutal, and I can’t get away until I catch my breath enough to duck out of his grasp. He’s still turning to face me when I lodge my fist into his back, just above his kidney. He howls, reaching for me, but I’m not there anymore. I’m on his other si
de, and he pivots just as I take his legs out from under him. He hits concrete with a fleshy thud, the sound reverberating among the crowd’s hysteria. People throw popcorn; someone sloshes a beer on the edge of the arena. The boxer is gasping for air, stunned. The concrete and gravity did most of the work for me—we are fragile little creatures.

  I remember the scar on Isis’s forehead and wince.

  The referee starts counting down. I watch the crowd. They move with a fevered hysteria the likes of which only violence can bring out. But one person—one out of the dozens—remains perfectly still. He watches me, hair streaked with white and his eyes serious. I can only give him a passing glance as the boxer struggles to his feet and throws a punch that nicks my lip. I taste blood. This man fighting me is not Leo; he doesn’t cower. Fear doesn’t cloud his eyes. Only cowards get scared when force is used against them instead of for them.

  I duck another blow. That’s what Leo is. A coward. And tomorrow is his trial.

  The boxer gets me with a hard jab to my stomach. I see stars, the pain sharp and leaving me breathless. The referee starts counting down, but his voice feels far away. All the voices of the crowd seem muted, underwater.

  I came here to work out all the stress of the impending trial. If Leo isn’t put away, Isis and her mother will still be in danger. Leo isn’t the type of guy to learn his lesson, no matter how badly I beat him. He’s the type of guy to take revenge.

  I couldn’t stop him from hurting Isis the first time, just like I couldn’t stop the men from causing Sophia harm that night in the woods. My own weakness hurt them. And I’d do anything to get rid of it.

  I crawl to my feet, swallowing the blood on my lips. The boxer is too busy taking the crowd’s admiration with his arms up to notice me.

  Boxing is a sport of punches, of outlasting an opponent. Tae kwon do is a sport of kicks, of forms, of landing one strong, good strike that puts your opponent out for good. He turns just in time to see my kick coming.

  The blood from his nose flecks my cheek. He drops to the ground, unmoving. The thing in me sings, my own blood pumping hot and fast through my veins, begging me to sit on his chest and whale on his face until it resembles ground hamburger. He’s not the boxer anymore. He’s Leo. He’s the men in the forest. He’s everyone who’s ever hurt me, ready and waiting for me to give him my anger.

  I stand over him, the referee trying desperately to push me away. I want to see more blood, to feel it on my knuckles, to douse it over the angry fire in my heart.

  A part of me is terrified of myself. Of the thing. Of the fact that I’m even thinking of destroying him. Since when have I started losing control over myself?

  I pull back, icing my heart with every emotionless, subzero thought I can conjure. The referee helps the man up and holds my hand as the winner. The crowd explodes, but I have no interest in their adoration. I only want quiet, somewhere I can gather myself. I slip through the crowd. The white-streaked man watches me the whole way out. What’s his deal? Warily, I push through the warehouse door, into the chilly night. I take a deep breath, letting out all the pent-up anxiousness in my chest. I don’t know who that guy was, nor do I care. I’m only here for me.

  I am Jack Hunter. And I am not my demons.

  In the car I wipe my face and pull on a clean shirt. I feel more grounded, but fighting that hard for that long leaves me ravenous. The highway is nearly dead, the city of Northplains nearly empty. The Red Fern is the only place open at this time of night. It’s where I took Kayla on a date Isis paid for, and she watched us here. It holds delicate memories of a time I miss, of a girl I miss.

  I walk in and instantly recognize the girl talking to the hostess.

  “Isis?”

  She looks up, purple hair streaks windswept around her face. Her warm cinnamon eyes light up, then dim ever-so-cautiously, but her words are just as exacting as ever.

  “You might wanna consider scaling back on the whole ‘eating at fancy places’ thing if you’re going to Harvard. I’ve heard the tuition is slightly life-ruining.”

  “Hello to you, too,” I deadpan.

  “Who am I kidding?” She sighs. “Your mom’s loaded. You’ll be fine.”

  “And what’s your excuse?” I ask. She shrugs.

  “Mom and I didn’t feel like cooking. And since the trial’s coming up, I figured I’d treat her to something nice, you know?”

  “How is your mom doing, by the way?”

  “She’s fine.”

  Isis’s lips are curled down, her eyebrows knit. She’s trying her best to look unaffected, light, airy, but the truth is easy to see on her face.

  “You’re a terrible liar,” I say finally.

  “And you’re a terrible butthead,” she instantly counters. A laugh bubbles up from my chest.

  “It’s when you resort to the uncreative ‘butthead’ insults that I know you’re really feeling awful.”

  “Did a girl’s boyfriend find out she hired you and socked you in the face or something? Why is your lip all puffy?”

  “A new serum,” I say. “To improve my pout.”

  “You pout all the time. You’re like, the expert on pouting. They should be asking you to donate cells to make their serum.”

  “That’s…rather disgusting.”

  “You know what else is disgusting?” She wrinkles her nose and holds up a plastic bag with food trays in it. “Peanut sauce. But Mom loves it. So.”

  “You poor overburdened thing.”

  “Shut the hell up.”

  We both smile at the same time, and I feel somehow more sheepish for it. How can I be smiling when she’s just barely remembered me and her mother’s trial is coming up? And then I realize that’s how it’s always been—she’s always been able to make me smile. No matter how cold I thought I was, how in control of my emotions, she always elicited humor. No one was ever able to do that for me, until her.

  The sudden urge to thank her for it overwhelms me, but I master myself and keep my mouth silent. It would only confuse her, and I don’t think I can explain it well enough to her myself. The feeling is foggy, indistinct, but more powerfully bright than any sunrise. I have no words for it.

  She would, I’m sure. Incorrect, entertaining words.

  I always counted on the fact that she’d be around to make me smile. So I didn’t fight harder to keep her by my side.

  “Anyway”—she rubs her nose, an adorable gesture I instantly talk myself out of thinking is cute—“I have to go. Mom’s waiting and texting me because she thinks I’ve been kidnapped slash sold to the human trafficking circuit. See ya later.”

  “Isis!”

  My call to her retreating back stops her. I hadn’t meant for my voice to sound that cracked, that desperate. That vulnerable. In the midst of the trial’s anxiety, Sophia’s surgery, and facing my own inadequacies, I forgot how rock-solid her presence was. Comforting, in a warm and sarcastic way. I want to stay in it, if only for a little longer. If only because it reminds me of the old days.

  “What?” Her eyes grow confused. She takes in my face as I struggle for the right words, words that won’t betray how I feel too keenly. Finally, she rummages in her purse and hands me a hand wipe and a Band-Aid.

  “Put that on your cheek, okay? It’ll keep it from getting infected.”

  “Isis—”

  “I’d hate,” she interrupts, “to have every girl in the world pissed at me because I let your pretty face contract gangrene.”

  She turns away from me, but before I can think, my hand darts out and grabs her wrist. She goes stiff from the spine up, her eyes mahogany whirlpools of confusion.

  “What are you doing?” she asks quietly.

  Stopping you, my brain says. Taking you home with me, where we can talk in my room over coffee, where you can sit on my bed, my sheets, the same sheets I toss in every night at the thought of losing you again—

  I let my hand drop, staring at it like it’s a monster.

  “I-I don’t know,” I
admit shakily.

  Isis looks torn for a moment, a faint blush creeping up on her cheeks. God, she looks so good flustered. She looks so beautiful when she’s red-faced and out of breath. The fight must’ve flooded me with testosterone, because I can’t control my thoughts as they rampage toward the downright obscene.

  No, I remind myself firmly. She barely remembers me. And I have Sophia. I have a duty to her. What I want is secondary, unimportant, and trivial.

  “Drive safe,” I finally manage in a hoarse voice. She nods, still glowing with a badly disguised blush, and leaves through the front doors. I watch her go, lit by the bright saffron streetlights.

  “Can I help you, sir?” the hostess of the restaurant asks. I turn to her, raking my hands through my hair.

  “No,” I say quietly. “I’m beyond helping.”

  Welcome to hell. Population: me, some idiots, and my mother.

  Three days before the trial, Aunt Beth comes to visit. I’m grateful for the support—Mom’s flashbacks haven’t been bad recently, but she’s still been withdrawing into herself, barely eating or sleeping. Aunt Beth’s arrival has Mom cleaning the house, making food, and getting dressed in the mornings, and that’s all I can ask for.

  We pick her up from the airport, her long, flowing tie-dyed dress somehow out of place in the dead of Ohio’s winter.

  “Aren’t you cold, Beth?” Mom frowns. Aunt Beth just laughs from the backseat.

  “Ice runs in my veins, Patricia.”