Girl, Forgotten (Andrea Oliver 2)

“Feel that way about me,” Emily finished. “Yes, I know. Your minions have all repeated the line.”

Clay sighed again. He kicked at the gravel. A streak of dirt was left in his wake. Emily would have to smooth over the mark after he left. Which was unsurprising. She and everyone else in the clique had been smoothing over Clay’s mistakes for almost their entire lives.

He asked, “What are you going to do?”

Emily shrugged. No one had asked her what she was going to do. Her parents had decided, and now she was doing it.

He asked, “Can you feel it?”

Emily followed his gaze. He was looking at her stomach. Without thinking, she had rested her palm flat to her belly.

“No.” She moved her hand away, slightly sickened by the thought of something moving around inside of her body. She didn’t even know what a baby looked like at six weeks. Was it still considered a zygote? She had learned enough about gestation in health class to pass the exam, but the details had seemed esoteric back then. Emily imagined a cluster of cells pulsing around in a blob of liquid as they waited for a shot of hormones to tell them whether or not to turn into a kidney or a heart.

“I heard you got a marriage proposal.”

Emily felt her brain reaching back for the calmness of the carousel. She forced herself to stay in the present, asking Clay, “Did they send you here?”

“Who?”

“The clique.” She normally appreciated his coyness, but now she found it annoying. “Ricky, Blake, Nardo. Are they worried I’ll ruin your life?”

Clay looked down at the ground. He kicked a deeper furrow into the gravel. “I’m sorry, Emily. I know this isn’t what you wanted.”

She would’ve laughed if she’d the energy.

“Are you …” Clay’s voice trailed off. “Are you going to name someone?”

“Name someone?” she asked. It sounded like McCarthyism. “Who would I name?”

Clay shrugged, but he had to know the list. Nardo, Blake, Dean, Jack. Not to mention himself, because even though he kept saying he wasn’t interested in Emily, he’d still been at The Party and they had clearly argued about something.

She felt a spark of Columbo. Maybe Emily wasn’t so resigned to her state after all. “Clay, I’m sorry about arguing with you the night of The Party. It wasn’t—it wasn’t your fault.”

His mouth twisted to the side. “I thought you didn’t remember anything.”

“I remember yelling at you,” she lied. And then she tried to build on the lie. “I shouldn’t have said all of those things.”

“Maybe.” His shoulders shrugged. “I know I can be selfish, Em. Maybe it’s because I’m an only child.”

She had always found it cold-blooded that he so easily dismissed his other siblings, even though they hadn’t grown up together.

He said, “I can say that I’ll try to do better, but you’re right about that, too. I probably won’t. Maybe I should accept who I am. You seem to.”

Emily felt an echo of a memory. They were standing by Nardo’s swimming pool. She had screamed at Clay that he always promised to do better but then he never actually did. He simply made the same mistakes over and over again and expected other people to change.

He added, “At least I’m not as bad as Blake, right?”

Emily was at a loss as to how to answer. Was he talking about what Blake had done yesterday or Blake in general? Because either could work. Blake had been a sleazeball yesterday. But as with Clay, he was never going to change. His ego wouldn’t let him ever admit that he was wrong.

“You should know,” Clay said. “Blake is telling people you’re into drugs and partying.”

Emily took a deep breath and held it in her lungs. The news was unsurprising. Blake had a level of cruelty that none of them could fathom. Jack had called it this morning. Nardo was just mean. Clay was easily bored. But when Blake took against you, he really took against you. Not to mention Ricky, who was part Wicked Witch, part flying monkeys.

She said, “Nardo told me—he said that Jack—Cheese was at The Party.”

Clay turned to look at her. The light blue of his eyes was bleached out by the sun. She could see the fuzz of hair beneath his chin. He was so handsome, but she didn’t feel the same stir she had before.

He said, “You were stoned that night.”