Pretty Amy Read online

  “I mean, if you want my help.” He ran his finger up and down my thigh.

  “Sure,” I said. It came out like a breath. I wanted anything he wanted to give me—help, his tongue, whatever.

  “Your lawyer will say he’s trying to help you, too,” Aaron said, taking one last drag of his cigarette and throwing it at the Dumpster. It sparked like a small firework when it hit.

  Why was he talking about my lawyer? How did he even know I had a lawyer?

  “That’s what mine did,” he said, taking a long drag.

  I looked at him. He was trying to help me. He was trying to tell me what it had been like for him.

  “Said he would take care of everything.” Aaron shook his head.

  “When you did what you’re not supposed to talk about,” I teased, picturing the day of my arraignment, his finger shushing his lips. Lips I could kiss whenever I wanted.

  “This isn’t a joke,” he said.

  “I know,” I said, trying to ignore how much he sounded like Dick had in my backyard the other night.

  “Your lawyer will try to make you do whatever he says.”

  “Like my parents,” I agreed.

  “Yup.” He nodded. “Lawyers are soldiers for the monkey man.” His finger traced a circle on my knee.

  “Well, really for my mom, I guess.”

  “The monkey man can sometimes be a woman,” he said, his hand playing with the bottom of my shirt.

  I leaned in to kiss him again.

  “My advice would be not to listen,” he whispered into my lips. “You’re stronger than that.”

  I thought about the girl in the picture he’d drawn. Maybe I was. “Why are you being so nice to me?” I asked, finally having the courage he said I had.

  “I like you.”

  “I like you, too.”

  “Well, I guess that’s settled,” he said, kissing me again.

  I thought about Dick, his stupid jokes, his way of dismissing everything I wanted. “My lawyer is an idiot,” I whispered.

  “Exactly,” he said.

  “I won’t listen,” I said, my eyes closed.

  “Just to me,” he said, kissing me like I really was the girl in that picture, making me believe it, too.

  I guess Aaron was the only one I could trust.

  Twenty-one

  One good thing about living in the basement was that I didn’t have to make my bed anymore. That was something my mother had always insisted on when I was living upstairs. Even if I had gotten out of making it all day, she would still force me to make it at night before I went to sleep, as a way of teaching me a lesson about making beds. She didn’t bother teaching me that lesson anymore. She didn’t bother teaching me anything anymore.

  What she did do was make my life hell. She woke me the next morning when I had no appointments other than working at Gas-N-Go that night. There was absolutely no reason for her to come and wake me at six thirty in the morning. No reason, except that she was crazy.

  She stood above me. I could hear her breathing, could hear AJ flying around his cage as if he were warning me that she was in the room.

  “So what do you plan on doing about this, then?” she asked, like we had been having a conversation. In reality, she had just kicked my mattress and yelled like a madwoman.

  I guess this was her new question. She had given up asking me how this could have happened. Asking how didn’t get her anywhere when what she really wanted to know was what I was going to do about it.

  “Mom, I’m sleeping,” I said, putting the pillow over my head and hoping she would leave so that I could be asleep again soon.

  “I’m not leaving until you come to your senses,” she said, falling back on her tried-and-true colloquialisms.

  My answer was still no. I wasn’t any closer to agreeing to turn in Lila and Cassie than I had been when Dick presented it to me. I wasn’t sure what it would take to make me go along with it, but the fact that my mother wanted it so badly certainly wasn’t helping. Aaron was right; they were all just trying to get me to do what they wanted me to do.

  Even though Dick was the one who told me about it, it had definitely been her idea. It was like her way of making sure they would never want to be friends with me ever again.

  “Go away.” I wasn’t in the mood for one of my mother’s talks, with her sentences that flew around and around like flies, never really landing on anything. I could hear her standing there, watching me. Then I could hear her gnawing on her thumbnail. “Please,” I said, and meant it. I wanted her to leave. The only time I ever got to truly forget what was happening was when I was sleeping.

  “You need to take Dick Simon’s offer.”

  “I don’t want to talk about this right now,” I said.

  “It’s your best chance,” she said, starting to cry.

  “Mom, stop.”

  She continued. “You never listen to me. Fine, I’ve accepted that, but Amy, this is not for me. This is for you.”

  It wasn’t that I hadn’t thought about what Dick had suggested, but if I did what they wanted, it would be like my life was a house on fire, and I was leaving Cassie and Lila inside it to burn. I would be pushing them out of the way even as smoldering beams fell on them. And maybe that didn’t mean anything to my mom, but it meant something to me.

  No one but Aaron really understood. I turned away from her and pulled the covers over my head.

  She ran upstairs and slammed the door before I could say anything else. At least there was one good thing about her recent weakness for uncontrollable sobbing fits; I could keep what secrets I had left.

  I was almost back to sleep when my father came down. My mother was sending in the big guns. She knew it was hard for me to deny anything my father asked, and as much as I hated to admit she was right about anything, she was certainly right about that.

  “Dad, please, just let me sleep,” I said, sitting up and looking at him, hoping that if he saw my bloodshot eyes and pleading face, he would be his usual amenable self and leave me alone.

  “I was hoping you might join me for a walk,” he said shyly, like he had an ulterior motive that he was embarrassed about. It made me think of those douche commercials where a mother and daughter are walking on a beach and the daughter finally gets up the courage to ask the mother if she ever gets that “not-so-fresh feeling,” only in my case I guessed my father and I were not going to talk about my smelly lady parts.

  “How about in a few hours?” I said, hoping it would placate him enough to make him go away.

  “I’ll be at work,” he said. “Besides, your mother would like the two of us to talk.”

  “Then the answer is definitely no.”

  “Fine,” he said, looking down. “I would like it.”

  I pulled the covers off and followed him up the stairs. Maybe he meant it and maybe he didn’t, but maybe that didn’t matter.

  …

  My father and I hadn’t taken a walk together in years, but when I was a kid, we took a walk almost every night that it was warm enough, as soon as we finished eating dinner. When I was little, our walks were all about escape. We were escaping our house and my mother and her rules. My father would smoke a cigar and give me all the sugarless gum I could consume before we made it back home.

  He would tell me about Scribbles, the dog he’d had as a kid, and I would always ask him if we could get a puppy. Then he would pretend that we already had one, because he didn’t want to say no like my mother always did. He would pick up a stick and play fetch with the imaginary dog we were only allowed to have on our walk. He would bend down and pretend to pet it and when we were back at our driveway he would tell it we would see it again next time.

  But on our walk that day, there were no cigars and no sugarless gum. We didn’t talk about Scribbles; we talked about Dick’s offer. My father in his dress pants, pressed white shirt, and tie that he wore to work every day, and me in my pajamas.

  As we walked, other parents in our neighborhood were lea
ving to go to work or were waving from behind their screen doors, and other kids were still sleeping.

  “Have you come to a decision yet?” he asked, like my mother hadn’t told him what I’d just said. Maybe he hoped he’d get a different answer if he asked.

  “Dad, I can’t.”

  He nodded. “All I want you to do is what’s best for you,” he said.

  I wanted that, too, if I could figure out what it was.

  “I miss our walks,” he said, and I could tell he meant it. I knew he wasn’t just saying it to get what he wanted. I knew because I did, too. Our lives had been so much simpler then.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “We could still take them,” he said.

  “Sure.” For some reason I thought about spending a year locked up. If I was convicted, we wouldn’t be able to take walks anymore. We wouldn’t be able to do anything anymore.

  “When did you stop being happy?” he asked.

  I wondered if it was the same thing Joe had tried to say to me, just in a different way. I used to be happy. I used to be nice. Maybe my father just hadn’t noticed until now. Being at his office so much, he hadn’t watched me turning from his happy little girl into whatever I was now. He hadn’t seen it coming.

  “I never really was,” I lied. Lied so hard it made my stomach hurt. It was easier than telling him the truth—that I didn’t know the answer. That he was right. That Joe was right. That there was a before and an after, but the middle was a mystery.

  “It makes me sad to hear that,” he said, stopping to look at me.

  I shrugged because I couldn’t respond. He probably didn’t want the real answer, anyway. As a dentist, my father wasn’t in the business of being a conversationalist. His business was shoving stuff in people’s mouths so they couldn’t talk. It was easier that way.

  We circled around. A few more houses and we would be in front of Joe’s. Even from here I could see that the windows were still dark. He and his mother wouldn’t be up for hours. I knew Spud was still sleeping, too, under Joe’s covers, spooned up next to his legs.

  I wanted to go hide under his porch. Hide from my lie and from my father having to hear me tell it. But what if Joe found me in my pajamas, crying? Would he be nice to me? Or would he tell me I was a druggie loser and to get lost? Who was I to him now? I guess I didn’t want to find out.

  “I’ve got a bicuspid that’s been bothering me,” I said, changing the subject.

  “Call Peggy and make an appointment. If I’m booked, she’ll make time for you.” He put his arm around me and gave me a sideways hug.

  We walked in silence back to the house. I couldn’t help wishing that for my father’s sake at least, like our imaginary dog, I had never existed.

  Twenty-two

  Seeing how things had gone at the nursing home, Dick finally realized that forcing me to work with people was a mistake.

  “Animals,” he said.

  Whatever—I liked animals, and they were definitely better than trash.

  Even though I’d begged to go plenty of times while petitioning for that puppy as a child, I’d never been to the Humane Society in my town. They called it Lollipop Farm, which I guess was supposed to make you forget that the unpicked animals would in all likelihood be killed.

  I found the owner mopping up an empty cage. I decided to think good thoughts about that empty cage, even though the paperwork hanging on it told me otherwise.

  “You must be Amy,” she said, and held out a hand for me to shake.

  What was with being arrested and then having to shake people’s hands? After I got arrested, everyone wanted to shake my hand when they met me. Like being arrested turned me into an adult overnight, like I was on one long job interview.

  She didn’t introduce herself, but she was wearing a nametag that said Annie. Her hair was old-newspaper blond and as fluffy as the head on a badly poured beer. She looked like a zookeeper, one of those women who were so natural and comfortable and grounded that they could wear cargo shorts without even worrying about how they made them look fat.

  “Thanks so much for helping out,” she said, sounding like a cheerleader leading a pep rally where no one was listening. “We don’t get many volunteers here.”

  “Sure,” I said. “I love dogs.” This conversation was about as interesting as her Birkenstocks.

  “Your lawyer already told me your story, so you don’t have to worry about going through all that,” she said.

  It was something, anyway. At least I wouldn’t have a repeat performance of what had happened with Mrs. Mortar. I waited for Annie to continue over the sound of barking dogs echoing through the cement hallways.

  “I know you’ve probably heard it all before,” she said, taking my shoulder, “but you’ll get through this.”

  I looked at her skeptically.

  “I was just like you; scared, alone, unsure. Now look at me.” She nodded in that way sober people nod when they’re trying to make you see how much better their life is now that they are sober.

  She thought all my problems came down to drugs. If only they could be explained away that easily.

  “Thanks,” I said, not really knowing how to respond. It was definitely possible that she had been arrested, like me, but I doubted that her father had just asked her when she’d stopped being happy. I doubted that she had been told to turn on her two best friends.

  Then again, maybe she had, and did, and that was why she was here, alone with a bunch of dogs.

  “Here you go,” she said, handing me the mop and indicating the other empty cages down the line, and I realized quickly that I wouldn’t be working with animals at all. I would be cleaning up their crap.

  She left me to work while she went to feed the dogs that were alive—dogs that still had a chance to get out of there. From what I could tell, Lollipop Farm was a small, poorly run operation, with very little in the way of funds. I came to this conclusion because Annie appeared to be the only employee and because they only had one mop.

  Before the arrest, the small things I did every day to survive felt like they had meaning and purpose in them, but now, being forced to stop and think, I started to wonder what I was doing. I couldn’t help remembering that I was on a planet hurtling through space, that I was just one girl, in one town, in one country, with little choice in the matter. I felt like I had said a word over and over again and it had lost all its meaning.

  As I mopped, I held my breath. The cages were totally disgusting. It smelled like I was at the zoo. It smelled like the zoo was in my nose. This was worse than trash; it was worse than defending my life to Mrs. Mortar; it was worse than cleaning the bathrooms at Gas-N-Go. I was picking up actual poop with a shovel and scrubbing cement floors free of pee, and there was nothing I could do but keep cleaning.

  To try to keep my mind off the stench, I sang “It’s the Hard-Knock Life for Us.” Probably because the owner’s name was Annie, but also because for once in my life, being an orphan seemed like an interesting prospect.

  After I finished cleaning the cages, I found Annie out in the fenced yard. She handed me a bag of food.

  “These are the troublesome dogs,” she said. “That’s why they’re out here, so be careful.”

  Apparently, they made so much noise and were such a nuisance that they couldn’t be kept inside with the other dogs. They barked and yipped as we came by with our bags of food.

  “Go loudest first.” She opened the cage of a Saint Bernard whose bark sounded like the impatient hooting of an owl. “Trust me—your ears will thank you.”

  I headed for the next loudest, a Pomeranian who sounded like someone impatiently beeping during a traffic jam. As soon as I poured his food, he stopped barking and licked my hand.

  “You got any pets?” Annie asked.

  “AJ,” I said, “a parrot.”

  “Cool,” she said. “Birds are smart, much smarter than we give them credit for.” She squinted. “I hope you don’t keep him in a cage.”

&n
bsp; “No,” I lied. I’m not sure why.

  “Birds need to fly,” she said.

  I decided to focus on how lame that sounded, rather than think about how AJ had been in an essential jail forever and would never know any different. How I would always keep AJ in a cage. If I didn’t, he might fly away.

  I went on to the next loudest pen; it held a Husky with ice-colored eyes I would have killed for. She howled like a werewolf but quieted as soon as I delivered her food.

  I showed Annie my empty bag. “More in the shed,” she said.

  I let myself in and turned on the light. I could hear the dogs that were waiting to be fed still barking. I wondered if these dogs were really troublesome, or if they were just like Daniel had said I was: craving, needing attention. With all those other dogs around them, what else were they supposed to do?

  Twenty-three

  That night at work, I stood behind the counter and stared. Connor had given me another chance to see if I could man the Gas-N-Go cash register all on my own. Well, all on my own under his watchful eye.

  He still ran out of the back room like a woman with a towel on any time he heard the bell above the door ring. When I got sick of staring at nothing, I walked over to the door and opened it just to see him run from the back, out of breath, looking humbled when he saw that no one was there.

  And when he looked at me with his sad face, I shrugged, a shrug that said, Beats me, and went back to staring.

  If my mom and dad had their way, at the end of the summer I would be heading off to stare at the wall of a dorm room instead of the wall of a cell. But I would still be staring at a wall. I knew why it mattered what building it was in, but I also knew it was because I was scared out of my mind and thinking about what else I should be doing, wondering how the hell I could get out.

  I guess, even after you die, even if you think you’ve been happy your whole life and have been moving too fast to even stare at a wall, you’ll still be forced to stare at the top of your coffin for eternity, wondering why you never realized this was what it all meant.

  I went over to the front door again and opened it, to clear my head and laugh at Connor’s elephant-stampede run to the sales floor.