The Forgetting Place by John Burley

and Clayton— thank God —rolled to the left so the fat wood slammed into the earth instead of his face, and then he was on his feet and running, blubbering, slipping down the embankment in a wake of sobs and ratcheting, gasping breaths. I got up and ran to her, the knife slipping from my belly and landing, forgotten, in the leaves. I put my arms on her shoulders just as she was turning her attention back to Billy. She spun around to face me, and her eyes were just . . . vacant . . . not registering me at all. I remember looking right into that face and not recognizing her, either, wondering to myself, Who is this person? And there was . . . I don’t know, a moment . . . during which I thought she was about to turn that bat on me. Because she didn’t know me, you see? She was just . . . gone.”
    He looked at me beseechingly, implored me to understand. I swallowed once and nodded.
    â€œI screamed her name, screamed it right into her face. I’d forgotten about Billy Myers and the rest of his pathetic band ofdelinquents. I’d forgotten that, less than a minute before, he’d pressed a knife against the skin of my belly, threatened to carve into me. All I could think about was that empty, shapeless space between my sister and me. It was like she had taken an unsuspecting step backward off a precipice, and I was standing there watching her body plummet downward, her upturned face becoming smaller and smaller until I could no longer make out her features. She could have been anyone —or no one—and that scared me more than anything that had come before.
    â€œI kept yelling her name, shook her a bit, and at last her eyes seemed to focus. She blinked and looked at me— finally —like I was someone she knew. The other boys were gone, scattered like roaches beneath the threat of her merciless foot. I took the bat from her hands, let it clunk to the ground, and we stood there in the woods—just the two of us—for a long time. ‘You okay?’ I asked, and I guess it was strange that I was the one doing the asking, but she seemed to understand what I was talking about and nodded back at me. ‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘I’m good.’
    â€œThat was the most we ever talked about it—that day. I asked if she was okay, and she answered, ‘Yeah, I’m good.’ And that was the end of it. Billy Myers was absent from school for a week, and when he showed up again his right arm was in a cast and cradled in a sling. He didn’t look at me, didn’t say anything to me when I spotted him in the hall. None of them did. They averted their eyes when we passed one another, flinched away from me as if I were something venomous that might strike out at them again. I suppose I should’ve taken some satisfaction in that. But I didn’t. Instead, I felt sick, the nausea rolling over me in waves, my body lifting and falling in its surf. All I could think about when I sawthem was the whoosh of wood through the air, the splintering crack of bone, and Clayton rolling to the left as the bat buried itself in the earth where his head had been lying a split second before.
    â€œAnd the vacant expression in my sister’s eyes as she turned in my direction. That I thought of most of all.”

Chapter 15
    M arj’s Kitchen is a culinary and social mecca for locals in my town. The front entrance is so slight and unassuming that, if you arrived by car, you could easily miss it during your first lap around the block. Inside, however, the lights are turned up and the large dining area is typically awash in laughter and boisterous conversation. One interesting aspect of the place—and a likely deterrent for out-of-towners—is the communal dining. A vast wooden table stretches its massive torso from one end of the room to the other. Its flanks are lined with chairs, like ribs spreading to the floor. If you want to eat in this restaurant, you select an open