Forget Me Not by Carolee Dean

sure didn’t take that one.
    It’s pretty sick to send it now,
    after everything that’s happened.”
    At the mention of Will, I feel my stomach
    turning inside out.
    Images flash across my memory.
    Me with Will.
    Darla with a camera.
    “What picture of Will?” Elijah asks.
    “It’s been going around school all day.
    I thought you’d seen it?”
    Elijah opens his phone, and there’s a picture
    of me in the back of Will’s pickup.
    His pants are down around his ankles,
    and he’s lying on top of me.
    Elijah looks up at me in
    total disgust.
    “I didn’t send any pictures,” Bri says.
    But I don’t care anymore
    who sent the pictures.
    What I can’t stand is that look in
    Elijah’s eyes, because now he knows
    I really am a whore.
    Now there’s no one left
    to believe in me if I stay.
    Or remember me
    if I go.

ESCAPE
    I run through the crowd
    just trying to get lost.
    Every time a camera clicks,
    somebody dies.
    I hear Elijah following, but
    I don’t dare turn around.
    I can hear his footsteps,
    but I can’t bear the sound.
    ’Cause if he catches up to me,
    he’ll look me in the face.
    And I’d rather disappear
    without a whisper or a trace
    than see the disappointment
    in his eyes.

HIDE OUT
    I dash behind the cafeteria
    while Elijah gets stuck in the crowd
    on the quad.
    I see Will.
    He’s selling dime bags
    to the same freshmen
    he was beating up last week,
    taking their money
    with the same hands
    he used to unhook my bra.
    When we arrived at his pickup,
    the night of homecoming,
    he got a bottle out of the glove box.
    Then we sat on blankets he’d spread
    in the truck bed and started doing shots.
    I knew better than to mix pills
    with booze, but I didn’t care, because
    the pills had pretty much wiped out
    any judgment I had left.
    All I could think about was how awful
    it felt to have Davis ignore me,
    and how warm and wonderful it felt
    to be drinking tequila by moonlight
    with a varsity football player
    who couldn’t keep his hands off me,
    who kept saying over and over again,
    “I want you, Ally.
    I want you, Ally.
    I want you, Ally.”
    After a while
    my body was burning and
    the world was spinning
    so fast I just needed something
    to anchor me to the ground.
    All I ever wanted was for
    someone to want me.
    Was that so much to ask?
    So the next time Will said,
    “I want you, Ally,”
    I figured, what the hell,
    and I whispered, “Okay.”
    All of a sudden I was flat
    on my back with the full weight
    of him on top of me, my spine banging
    against the metal ridges of the
    pickup bed, with the blankets
    providing little buffer.
    He pushed up my dress and
    pulled down his pants so fast
    that we were already doing it
    before I had a chance to ask
    about condoms.
    He smelled like sour fruit,
    and I tried to scream out the word
    “Stop!” but his tongue was too far
    down my throat for me to say anything.
    All of a sudden I was blinking,
    because a camera flash
    was going off in my eyes.
    When I looked up, I saw Darla
    standing next to Davis.
    “I told you,” she said to him.
    What? What had she told him,
    I wanted to ask,
    but I couldn’t string together
    enough coherent words to speak.
    For a long moment Davis just stood there,
    looking at me in disgust,
    as Will continued to heave
    against me.
    He never even slowed down.
    Then Davis turned and ran away.
    And all I wanted
    was to disappear.

NOTHING MUCH CHANGED
    for the first few days after that,
    except that Davis turned away
    whenever he saw me.
    And that was before
    any pictures had been texted.
    Then one day at lunch,
    when we were all sitting
    together, Darla said
    to Megan, “Where’s Ally?”
    “I’m right here,” I said.
    “I don’t know,” said Megan.
    “I haven’t seen her all day.”
    “Very funny, Megan,” I said, poking
    her in the ribs.
    She didn’t even flinch.
    Why were they pretending
    I wasn’t there?
    “Just as well,” said Darla.
    “I really don’t like her
    that much. What do you
    see in her