Free (Don't You) Forget About Me by Kate Karyus Quinn

into my ear. “Word is little miss diva got the lead for their recital and it went to her head.”
    â€œAnd she turned the other girls into trees,” I whispered back, as I detected impressions of their scared faces etched into the bark.
    â€œYes,” you sighed. “Amazing dancing trees.”
    â€œMaybe not so amazing for them.”
    I felt your shoulder shrug against my own. “Angela Young was turned into a cheetah a few years before I was born. You can hardly tell now.”
    This was not exactly true. Angela was a cashier at Al’s Grocery, so I had seen her plenty, and every time I had to remind myself not to stare. Even on the hottest days Angela favored turtlenecks, but they still couldn’t hide the brown circles covering her hands and wrists and her entire face. When she bent her head to count out my change, the circles were visible through the part in her hair. Someone once told me that it had been worse. For the first two years after the initial incident, Angela had also had fur.
    I sighed, while the trees creaked as they attempted to follow the girl in a low, toe-touching dip. “They’ll close Miss Shelley’s Ballet Academy,” I whispered.
    This was what happened after these types of things. The town board reacted by taking away whatever they thought caused the problem, whether that was putting down all the dogs in town after one kid turned his corgi into a ravenous killer, or shutting down dance classes that only a handful of girls attended anyway.
    If I thought Piper would care, I should’ve known better. My comment earned nothing more than another shrug. “Well, I doubt any of these girls will want to dance again after this.”
    That was probably true, but it didn’t provide any comfort as we watched the strange ballet and waited for its inevitable ending.

FOUR
    I STARE AT THE WATER SHOOTING OUT FROM THE showerhead. My lips are open wide, drinking it in, trying to moisten my cottony mouth. Bringing my hands up, I study my fingertips. They are puckered and pruny. My soaked clothes cling to my body.
    I’ve been standing here for a while then.
    I pat my wet pockets, looking for my phone. Needing it to place myself in time.
    Nothing.
    Wildly, I search the tiled room. All ten showerheads are on full blast. Steam billows out into the connected bathroom. Water creeps out as well. I look down and see it beginning to lap over the tops of my flip-flops. Taking a step back, I feel something squish beneath my foot. It’s a sodden ball of cloth, oozing red. Gingerly I pick it up, exposing the covered drain. With a relieved gurgle the water rushes down. I give the shirt a hard shake and it opens up, revealing its secrets.
    A Swiss army knife that echoes loudly when it hits the floor. I drop the T-shirt over it, and it falls with a familiar alligator symbol on top. Not a T-shirt then, but a polo. I pick the whole bundle up so that the knife is once more swaddled inside.
    Flip-flops squishing, I step into the bathroom, not bothering to turn off the still-running water taps. There’s a row of urinals to my left.
    The boys’ locker room.
    The door to a bathroom stall yawns open in front of me. The tape recorder and my cell sit on the back of the toilet inside. I rush forward, reclaiming the phone first—my lost love. The screen lights up at my touch, delighted to see me too. The picture of the field full of forget-me-nots that I set as my wallpaper is unmistakably mine. But the time can’t be right. Three a.m. I couldn’t have lost an entire day. I’ve had some fuzzy moments, maybe even a few seconds that have slipped away completely, but never the white-outs that hardcore notters experience. I push the phone into my pocket, not caring if the wet kills it. It has betrayed me.
    A drop of water from my soaking hair plops into the toilet bowl. I stare down at it, transfixed by the pretty violet-colored water. Then I see the five pills