Forget This Ever Happened Read online

  Her van’s still in its parking place, the cockroach bobbing in the wind.

  The power plant looks empty, but Julie knows she’s not alone. The monsters are in the shadows; they’re hiding up in the windows. Watching. Planning, maybe. She doesn’t know what.

  Julie climbs in the van and turns on the engine. The air-conditioning blasts across her sweaty skin. Girl, the monster had said, in the yard of a house where a new girl lives. They’re interested in her.

  Aldraa may not have answered her questions, but Julie is determined to find answers anyway.

  The sheriff’s office is at the edge of town, a brown building emerging out of an empty field. Julie pulls into the lot and shuts off the van engine. She’s still sticky from the power plant, and the smell of the place clings to her skin, that smoky burning-metal scent. But at least she’s not there now.

  Julie climbs out of the van and goes inside, the arctic air chilling her as she walks through the door. It’s like crossing a force field. Inside, the office is as shabby and worn-out as always. The yellow fluorescent lights make everything look brown.

  Lawrence is sitting at the front desk, scribbling notes in the margins of a textbook. He sighs when he sees her.

  “What do you want?” he asks.

  “Hey, cuz, that’s no way to treat me.”

  “Don’t call me that. I’m on duty.”

  Julie rolls her eyes. “Yeah, but it’s from Shakespeare. It’s in Romeo and Juliet, cuz.”

  “I don’t care. I’m on duty and the only way you’re supposed to address me is ‘officer.’ Or ‘deputy.’”

  “I’m not doing that.” Julie grabs a chair from the waiting area and drags it over the floor so that she can sit across the counter from Lawrence. He sets his pen down and watches her, his brow drawn tight, the way it gets whenever he’s angry. Lawrence never shows his anger in the usual ways. He doesn’t yell or stomp around, just lets the anger seep through his skin and manifest as weird tics in his face. Julie knows it’s because he’s trying his hardest not to be like his father.

  She arranges the chair to face him and sits down.

  “I see you’ve got the van out there,” Lawrence says. “I take it you’re supposed to be working.”

  Julie shrugs. The truth is she doesn’t want to go back to the exterminators, doesn’t want to risk getting called out to trap another monster.

  “So maybe camping out at the sheriff’s office isn’t the best way to spend your time right now? Uncle Victor isn’t paying you to distract me.”

  “Distract you?” Julie asks. “You’re reading a freaking book! I bet the sheriff’s not paying you to do that.”

  Lawrence scowls at her, an expression that makes him look pouty, like a child. It’s hard to take him seriously. “I’m studying,” he says. “Something you don’t know anything about.”

  “Hey, I passed all my classes last year. Even got an A in history.”

  Lawrence folds up the book and sets it under the counter. Then he leans forward, steepling his fingers together like a villain in an old Bond movie.

  “Do you have a crime to report?” he asks.

  “Nope. But I do have a question for you—a real one,” she adds, when he looks like he’s about to start in on some first-class Lawrence nagging. “Related to you being sheriff’s deputy.” She pauses, trying to figure out the best way to ask it. Lawrence’s obsession with rules makes him annoying sometimes, but it can come in handy too. She thinks now is one of those times. “I just picked up a monster at Mrs. Sudek’s house…”

  Lawrence rubs his forehead at the mention of Mrs. Sudek’s name.

  “Yeah, I know. I didn’t actually have to talk to her, though, it was great. She’s got her granddaughter staying there.”

  “So what’s your question?” Lawrence asks.

  “Didn’t you hear me? I picked up at a monster! At Mrs. Sudek’s house!” Julie sighs. “In town.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah. Usually I’m driving out to those empty beach houses in hurricane alley to pick ’em up.”

  “Right.” Lawrence frowns. “This still seems more like a matter for Uncle Victor.”

  Julie slouches down in her chair. “Dad’ll just tell me not to get involved. You know how he is.”

  “He’s trying to protect you.” Lawrence sighs. “Everyone in town keeps our distance from them. It’s the safest thing to do.”

  Julie rolls her eyes. It’s true that most of the people in town do their best to pretend the monsters don’t exist. Julie knows why: Because everyone’s scared of them. Scared of the memory lapses, the eerie power plant, the possibility of what they might do to Indianola. But as an exterminator, she has to interact with them. It just sucks that no one will let her find out more about them.

  “This town’s full of rednecks. I don’t know why you’d listen to them.”

  “They pay my salary.”

  “Whatever. Look.” Julie leans onto the counter. “The whole thing was weird. I thought it might be related to Mrs. Sudek’s granddaughter.”

  “Why? What would she have to do with it?”

  “Because she’s new!” Julie sighs. “You know how this town is. She didn’t even know about the monsters. No one had told her! And then one shows up at her house—” Julie stops, startled by a new possibility. “Oh my God, is that why everybody wants to keep it a secret? Because otherwise the monsters will hurt strangers—”

  “Stop right there.” Lawrence lifts up the counter and joins Julie on the other side. He puts his hands on his hips and manages to fake a pretty convincing Stern Adult expression. “The treaties cover all humans within the boundaries of the town. They aren’t coming after Mrs. Sudek’s granddaughter. New or not, she’s protected.”

  Julie glares at him. Figures he’d say that. He’s nineteen now, and that makes him officially grown up. And the adults in this town are always doing this—saying you just shouldn’t worry about the monsters, setting up treaties and exterminators to handle them and acting like it’s all so normal.

  “Larry, you are not being very helpful.”

  Lawrence scowls. “Don’t call me Larry.”

  She knows he hates Larry; that’s why she only uses it whenever he’s pissing her off.

  “I’m just worried about her, is all,” Julie says, looking away from Lawrence, toward the door behind the counter that leads to the holding cells.

  “You don’t even know her.” Lawrence puts a hand on Julie’s shoulder, and she looks over at him. He’s got that concerned expression because he knows her secret, knows the way she is. The two of them have been friends since she was four and he was six, running around together in Aunt Rosa’s big backyard and looking for monsters hiding in the canna lilies. When they were older he found the girlie mags she stashed under her mattress. He didn’t tell her parents. That’s how she knows she can trust him completely.

  And she hates that now he’s dismissing her like some little kid.

  “Yeah, do you know all the people you help?” she demands. “Isn’t that why you decided to become a cop in the first place?”

  “I’m a sheriff’s deputy. And you’re right, I don’t know them. But nothing’s going to happen to this girl, as long as she keeps her distance like everyone else.” He smiles. “We have the treaties. Do you really think your dad would have you working at the exterminator’s if he thought the monsters would break them?”

  Yes, Julie thinks, but she doesn’t say anything out loud.

  CHAPTER

  Four

  CLAIRE

  Claire rides her bike to Audrey’s house. They made plans to go to the beach yesterday, when Audrey called just as Claire was clearing up the dishes from dinner. The timing was perfect, and it gave Claire a cold, shuddery feeling, like Audrey had been waiting for that exact moment to call.

  Which of course is ridiculous.

  Claire doesn’t have any cold, shuddery feelings right now, not in this heat. There are no clouds in the sky, just the bright,
searing sun. It’s a good day to go to the beach. Of course, Claire forgot to pack sunscreen. She can already feel her skin burning through her T-shirt.

  Audrey’s house materializes around the bend. It’s big and sprawling, with a three-car garage and a flower garden in the front. The flower garden is filled with roses, the blossoms big and heavy. Claire doesn’t think she’s ever seen such lush roses in June before. They ought to be burned up by now.

  Claire wheels her bike up the sidewalk and props it up out of the way. She rings the doorbell and waits, wiping her sweaty hands on her shorts. She has her swimsuit on under her clothes and it’s just making her hotter.

  Audrey answers.

  “Claire!” she cries. “I’m so glad to see you. Come in, come in.”

  The house is cool and dark and has the same silent buzzing on the air that Claire always associates with museums. Audrey shuts the door and the house vibrates with its own quiet.

  “You ready to go?” Audrey speaks in a normal voice, but Claire feels like they should whisper.

  Claire starts to nod. “Oh no, wait,” she says, and she hopes she isn’t pitching her voice too low. “I didn’t bring sunscreen with me and Grammy didn’t have any—”

  “Oh, you can borrow some of mine! No problem at all. It’s upstairs.” She gestures with one hand, and together they walk through the foyer and into the living room. It’s decorated with black and white furniture. The only spot of color is a vase of red flowers and a red abstract painting hanging on the wall.

  Claire blinks. It’s not the sort of living room she would have expected to find in Indianola.

  “Oh, is this your friend?” A woman breezes in. Her hair hangs in perfectly formed waves around her face. She wears a dress and an apron and pearls and high heels, exactly like a mom from an old television show.

  “It is! Mother, this is Claire.” Audrey gestures toward her and Claire forces out a smile.

  “Oh, it’s so lovely to meet you!” Mrs. Duchesne holds out one hand, her nails French-tipped and filed into expert ovals. Claire shakes it. “I’m so glad there’s someone new to the neighborhood for Audrey to be friends with.” She smiles so widely that Claire’s mouth hurts. “Well, you two run along. I’ve got some baking to do.”

  That does not surprise Claire in the slightest.

  “This way.” Audrey leads Claire up the stairs, which open up into a landing done in the same black-and-white-and-red scheme as downstairs. It makes Claire’s eyes hurt.

  A little boy runs across the landing, whooshing out of one door and into another across the way, so quickly Claire isn’t sure she saw him.

  “My brother,” Audrey says, but she doesn’t elaborate.

  They go into a bathroom. It’s white: white tile, white shower curtain, white rugs on the floor. It looks incomplete somehow. Half-formed. And although the floor is stone tile, neither Audrey’s nor Claire’s shoes make any noise against it; sound in the bathroom is as muffled as it is in the rest of the house, with its plush white carpet. Claire feels vaguely uneasy.

  Audrey pulls an orange bottle of sunscreen out of the cabinet, the color too bright against the white backdrop.

  “Is this kind okay?” She holds it up to Claire. Claire nods. The orange feels like it’s burning her eyes. She doesn’t like being in this stark, silent house. The way it muffles sounds means her heartbeat is even louder, so loud it sounds like a drum.

  “Great! Let’s go, then.”

  Claire steps out of the bathroom immediately—then jumps. A little boy with blond hair and solemn blue eyes stands out in the hallway. He stares at Claire, unmoving like a statue.

  “Oh, get out of here, Michael.” Audrey flicks her wrist and the little boy scampers off, disappearing into a nearby room. The door slams shut. Claire is glad for that: She doesn’t know why, but she has no desire to see what lies inside that room.

  They go downstairs and don’t see anyone else, although Claire hears a woman’s humming coming from someplace in the back of the house. She doesn’t recognize the melody, but it sounds old-fashioned. It makes her feel weird too, kind of empty and alone and hopeless.

  When Claire steps outside again, it’s like she’s been holding her breath.

  After the air-conditioned chill of Audrey’s house, the sun is pleasantly warm instead of sweltering, and Claire is grateful to be outside in the natural light. She smells the sea and exhaust from the road and realizes with a jolt that she didn’t actually smell anything in Audrey’s house, which is strange. All houses have their particular scent, a residue from the people who live there. Not Audrey’s.

  “You want to put your sunscreen on now?” Audrey asks.

  “I’ll do it at the beach.” Claire just wants out of here. Audrey shrugs and they climb into her car and zip off. The tree-lined road dead-ends into the main street leading into town. It’s a street that Claire recognizes. The rest of the way through town is familiar—normal, even. Slowly, the weird chattery feeling from being inside Audrey’s house subsides until it seems as intangible as a bad dream.

  They pull up at a stoplight. The exterminator building is on the other side of the intersection. The neon cockroach sign flickers. Claire wishes cockroaches were all she had to worry about.

  “I’m so glad we’re becoming friends!” Audrey chirps suddenly, yanking Claire out of her own head. “You’re so much more interesting than anyone else here in town.”

  “What? Oh, yeah, I’m glad too.” Claire shifts around uncomfortably. Her bare legs stick to the car seats. “I was afraid I’d be stuck at Grammy’s house all summer, bored.”

  The light changes. Audrey shoots out into the intersection, humming along to the Mariah Carey song playing on the radio. Claire watches the exterminator’s building go by. She wants to ask about the monsters, but Audrey’s so sickeningly normal, it seems wrong somehow to do so.

  “Oh, no, I’m definitely not going to let you be bored this summer.” Audrey shakes her head, her hair swishing around her shoulders. “Not one bit.”

  “That’s good to hear. Although since we’re friends, I hope you won’t mind me asking—” Claire fumbles around for the words. “You know about the monsters, right?”

  Silence. The song ends and the radio goes over to the frantic prattle of the DJ. Claire is clammy all over, certain she should never have asked.

  “Of course I do,” Audrey finally says. “Everyone does.”

  “No one told me.” Claire stares out the window. Businesses zip by. “There was one in my backyard. I thought I was hallucinating.”

  “Oh, you poor thing! Mrs. Sudek didn’t warn you?”

  “Grammy doesn’t tell me anything.” Claire scowls. “It’s like she just expected me to know.”

  “We’re all so used to them,” Audrey says. “We forget not everybody has them around. Plus”—she lowers her voice—“I think a lot of the older folks are ashamed, you know? Everyone thinks the monsters are the reason we don’t have any tourists.” She shrugs. “But wait’ll you see the beach. It’s not exactly a tropical paradise.”

  She turns down a side street, and the Gulf flashes between the gaps of buildings.

  “Besides, people forget about the monsters when they cross the city limits. It’s their way of hiding themselves, I guess. But when you leave town, you forget the monsters even exist.”

  Claire gets a clammy feeling in the pit of her stomach. Julie told her that too, but it still frightens her. She wonders, with a jolt, if she ever saw the monsters on her previous trips into Indianola, if those memories were washed away as her family barreled their way back to Houston.

  “You don’t need to worry. The monsters don’t usually come into town.”

  “People keep saying that,” Claire says, forcing away the strange reverse de´ja` vu of not remembering them. “But Grammy’s house is in town.”

  “I’m sure it was just a fluke.” Audrey glances over at her and smiles. “If you don’t agitate them, they won’t hurt you.”

  Claire shive
rs.

  Audrey drives past a Welcome to Indianola Beach! sign. The beach isn’t as crowded as Claire expects. A few families dot the sand, their brightly colored lawn chairs and towels spread out in front of the dunes. Audrey parks and they both climb out of the car. The wind blowing off the water is hot and damp.

  “I don’t think this is too bad,” Claire says. “At least it’s not too crowded.”

  “Yeah, that’s one benefit of not having any tourists.”

  Claire slathers on her sunscreen while Audrey peels off her tank dress, revealing a neon-green bikini underneath. She stands with her hands on her hips, facing the water, not speaking. Her face is glazed over. She seems lost in thought.

  The wind sweeps down the beach, blowing Claire’s hair around so that it sticks to her sunscreen. Indianola Beach is like every beach Claire has been on, but it’s also like none of them, although Claire can’t exactly say why.

  “Done,” Claire says, because she isn’t sure that Audrey will notice.

  Audrey blinks. Her features come back to life. “Great! Do you want to wait before we get in the water? So the sunscreen soaks in?”

  She sounds like a mom. Claire shakes her head. “Really, it’s not a big deal.”

  Audrey shrugs and together they walk down to the shoreline. It’s blocked by piles of prickly brown seaweed, and they pick their way through it, standing on tiptoes and giggling at the sliminess.

  “I hate seaweed,” Claire says. “It looks like something from another planet.”

  The first shock of cold water makes them shriek. The Gulf churns around them, the water frothy and greenish brown. They wade out until they’re about waist-deep and the tiny waves buoy them up. Pieces of seaweed brush past Claire’s legs, making her jump. She thinks of jellyfish.

  “So this is Indianola Beach,” Audrey says.

  “Is there usually this much seaweed?”

  “Sometimes. Better seaweed than jellyfish.”

  There it is again, that feeling that Audrey’s dipped inside her head.