Page 14 of Forget Me Not

It was a cool evening. Cool for Draper, at least, screen door cracked to let in the breeze as Marcia recited her scripture slowly in the living room. Pressed dress grazing the skin of her ankles, hair draped down to the small of her back.

“Ye should be humble, and be submissive, and gentle,” she said as she attempted to keep her voice balanced and calm. “Easy to be entreated; full of patience and long-suffering.”

Her dad was in a rocking chair to her left, hands clasped tight as he closed his eyes and nodded gently, the familiar words a silky balm soothing some damaged part of his soul.

“Being temperate in all things,” she continued, ignoring the nervous beating in her neck she hoped her father couldn’t see.

Instead, she focused on the tick of the clock on the wall like a metronome, holding her steady.

Keeping her still. Her mother in the kitchen, scrubbing the dishes.

The gentle clink of the plates and the familiar flick of a candle flame breathing softly in the barely there breeze.

“Being diligent in keeping the commandments of God at all times.”

“Good,” her father said, opening his eyes. “That’s very good, Marcia.”

She smiled, raised her gaze slightly, that gush of pleasure in her chest leaking out slowly, filling her up.

She hated that feeling; her latent desire for approval.

No matter how hard she tried to tamp it down, keep it contained, it always reared up when she heard those words, very good, the need to receive them as real and necessary as food, as water.

The very sustenance that sustained her hammered into her slowly, deliberately, since as early as she could recall.

Ye should be humble, and be submissive, and gentle.

Easy to be entreated; full of patience and long-suffering.

“Go ahead and get ready for bed,” her father said next, jerking his neck to the stairs. Then she watched as he took off his glasses, those thick black rims that darkened his eyes, and rubbed the lenses against his shirt, one by one, before putting them back on. “Don’t forget to say your prayers.”

It wasn’t even dark out, but of course, she nodded, closing the book and slipping it back into its hallowed spot on the shelf.

Then she ducked into the kitchen and gave her mother a peck before ascending the carpeted steps as quickly and quietly as she possibly could.

Her heartbeat hard in her neck, hot blood rushing like a river in her ears.

Slipping into her bedroom and twisting the lock on the door behind her, a quiet click she hoped her father couldn’t hear.

Two hours later, she was on the sidewalk, walking quickly through the brisk night air.

Her parents were asleep, they kept early hours, and it was dark, finally, but only just. The darkness didn’t bother her, though; she was only a few blocks from her destination, anyway.

She had lived in this bubble of South Carolina her entire life.

She had these streets memorized, could probably walk them blind.

Her school was two blocks south of here; her church, four blocks east. It was a small community, tightly knit, which was precisely part of the problem.

If she ran into anyone she knew out here, anyone she recognized, her parents would surely find out in the morning.

A flashing marquee signaled her arrival and she walked up to the box office with practiced confidence, forcing her chin to stay parallel to the ground.

“One for Romeo and Juliet, please.”

She pushed over two rumpled bills as the clerk slipped her the ticket; then she hurried into the theater, found a seat in the back. Waited for the lights to dim and the darkness to descend and the screen to light up with forbidden stories of love and passion; violence and death.

Temperate in all things, she thought, the words rearing up uninvited like a stranger was sitting in the row behind her, leaning forward.

Whispering it softly into her ear. This certainly wasn’t temperate; of course she knew that.

But the older she got, the more she felt herself starting to change.

Starting to question things. Starting to wonder if she really believed the commandments that came trickling out of her mouth each night or if they were empty shells, drained of all meaning.

Starting to wonder if there was even a difference.

But if stories were a sin, she couldn’t bring herself to care.

It’s not like she was drinking or doing drugs; she had never been with a boy, though she was embarrassed to admit that the thoughts were there.

The fantasies bubbling up from the pit of her stomach every time she saw those movie stars on their promotional posters, the bands of boys on their vinyl covers.

Bands she wasn’t even allowed to listen to.

This, in comparison, seemed so mild. A fleeting break from reality, a few hours of fiction.

What could possibly be the harm in that?

Still, she wouldn’t dare tell her father.

She knew how he felt about books and movies, music and art.

The way those things polluted young minds, distracted them from the stuff that actually mattered.

He didn’t even believe in going to college, waxing on about the liberal brainwashing of America’s youth.

He doth not dwell in unholy temples, she thought, the chisel picking away slowly at the supple edges of her pliable mind. Neither can filthiness or anything which is unclean be received into the kingdom of God.

She pushed the words out again, listening as the sound started to trickle out of the speakers.

The glow of the screen reflecting back in her eyes.

Then she smothered the guilt the way she had practiced so many times, snuffing it out like stomping down hard on a kindling flame, and began to lose herself in the unfolding story, tumbling slowly down the warm, black hole.

Observing as two teenagers met behind masks, an illicit love beginning to bloom that was made so much sweeter by the fact that it was something forbidden.

Star-crossed lovers doomed from the start.

She watched as Juliet ingested that vial of poison, plunged a dagger deep into her heart.

Would it be better to die , she wondered, than not be allowed to live at all ?

Leaving the theater, it was the plume of smoke that caught her attention. It erupted from nowhere like a fat, hazy cloud and she coughed, hand waving, before glancing to the side at the person in the shadows. His body leaning hard against the brick wall.

“Excuse me,” she said, a rare moment of nerve, but the boy just looked at her, subtly amused.

“You want a drag?”

He reached his arm out, handing her a cigarette that looked hand-rolled, but she simply stared, mute. Eyes wide as if he were holding a gun.

“I don’t smoke,” she said at last.

“That’s too bad.”

He went back to it, those thick lips sucking it down.

He had a mop of brown hair that was abnormally long; scruff on his cheeks like those pictures of hippies she used to see on the news.

She knew bad things happened out there, out in other parts of the country; her parents didn’t let her watch TV, of course, but she caught glimpses sometimes when she hid on the stairs.

Besides, they told her all about the horrors of the world, the litany of things that could go wrong.

They made sure she knew about violent men and the chaos they craved: a killer in California who left ciphers for the press, a guy in Chicago with bodies in his crawlspace.

There was even a man named Ted who drove across the country, targeting young girls just like her.

Still, all that seemed so far removed. Draper felt immune, bubble-wrapped, but the mere presence of this person before her felt like a sharp needle poke, the sphere of safety suddenly popping.

The wide-open world bleeding its way in.

And it should have scared her, she supposed, based on the way her father talked, but instead, she felt a little shiver of excitement trail its way up her spine.

A subtle curiosity, like finding a foreign coin in a handful of change.

“You shouldn’t be out here this late by yourself,” the man said, regarding her more carefully now. She listened to the crackle of his cigarette, the gentle exhale as he blew the smoke out. It smelled different, rancid, like the tobacco inside had started to decay. “It’s not safe.”

“I’ll be fine,” she said, her heartbeat picking up as his big brown eyes took her in. It felt like he was sizing her up, making some kind of calculation in his mind. A predator suddenly locked in on its prey.

“What’s your name?”

She hesitated, arms stuck by her sides as she let him judge her the way men judged livestock at the county fair, lips licking as they assessed their worth.

Why couldn’t she walk away? She should be getting home.

She needed to get back to her room, get tucked into bed, but for some reason, her shoes stayed planted on the ground beneath her like the soles themselves had fused into the concrete.

“Marcia,” she said at last.

“Marcia,” he repeated. “You’re very pretty, Marcia. Especially those eyes.”

She felt her cheeks flush hot and she crossed her arms, suddenly unsure of what to do with her hands.

“I get the feeling you don’t hear that enough.”

She tilted her head. He was older than her, certainly.

Maybe late twenties, early thirties at the latest, and she realized, distantly, that this might be dangerous, the two of them alone in a cold, dark corner.

But it was more of a suggestion than anything, one she quickly flicked away.

Instead, she felt the static of excitement growing slowly, a crackling in her skin like someone, somewhere, had flipped a switch and her body had been awakened from some long-dormant slumber. Bundles of cells buzzing back to life.

“I’m Mitchell,” he said, not waiting for her to ask.

“Mitchell,” she repeated. “You’re not from around here, are you, Mitchell?”

She didn’t know why she said it, but there was something about him that was so different, so strange.

Dirty jeans and a rumpled cream Henley, the open buttons at the top revealing a tuft of curly brown hair.

His voice was gentle but rough, elusive but friendly, and she had the sudden urge to rip off her mask and let this stranger see her fully.

Nobody had ever seen her fully before. She, herself, had never seen herself fully.

And how could she? Her life, up until that point, had been one never-ending series of sameness.

The same thing, day after day, like a movie with no plot.

A book with the same words repeated across each page.

And it was suffocating, really, the idea of this being it. The whole point of it all.

“I’m not from around anywhere,” he said at last.

“How is that possible?”

He just shrugged, took another drag. But when he went to toss the roach onto the ground, stub the remainder of it out with his foot, she found herself stepping forward, her hand reaching out to touch his arm. Grabbing his wrist, taking it from him.

Letting the smoke fill her up as he watched in the dark.