Pretty Amy Page 17

  “Mom, I’m sick.”

  “I’m tired of your excuses.”

  I thought about something to say in response, but I didn’t really have the energy. Well, maybe I had the energy, but I certainly didn’t have the time. I ran past her to the comfort of my bathroom.

  “What? Do you think it will be cool to go to jail?” my mother yelled from outside the bathroom door. She leaned into it and turned the handle. I was glad that even in my hurry to get inside, I hadn’t forgotten my habit of locking it.

  “Mom, go away,” I said. Not like I would have responded to this anyway. It was my mother’s favorite chorus during a bitchfest—If everyone jumped off a bridge, would you?

  “Why is this locked?” she asked, like she always did.

  Usually I would have been in there smoking, or putting on way too much makeup, or trying on the thong Lila had given me, but now my mother was attempting to barge in on me when I was food-poisoning sick because she wanted me to turn on my best friends to avoid my own punishment.

  When had things gotten so crazy?

  “I already told Dick Simon and you and Dad and now Connor and everyone he knows—I’m not interested.”

  Why were they all making such a big deal out of this? I mean, I knew it was a big deal, but it felt like everyone cared a lot more about it than I did.

  Like everything else.

  “Fine. Get convicted, then. See if I care.”

  “Mom, you’re making things worse,” I said.

  “I’m making things worse,” she said. “That’s a riot.” She started laughing.

  I didn’t respond. This was what she always did. Why bother talking when she didn’t listen anyway? I grabbed the trash can next to the toilet and threw up.

  She was supposed to be getting me a warm washcloth and some toast; she was supposed to be asking me if I was okay, if I needed anything, like Connor’s wife had.

  But maybe there were things I was supposed to be doing, too.

  She knocked. “Open the door. I want to talk to you,” she said.

  “Mom, gross,” I said.

  She knocked again. “Amy, I mean it. Open the door.”

  I flushed the toilet, if only so I could shut out her voice.

  “Amy, are you still there?”

  I wasn’t sure why she was asking. Did she think I’d flushed myself down the toilet? The sad thing was that if it were a possibility, I might have considered it in that moment. Gone down the pipes and floated up again into a new life, with a new me and new parents and two new best friends.

  “Honey,” she said, “I know you’re scared.”

  “I’m not scared. I’m sick,” I said, retching into the trashcan. Sick was truly the only thing I felt for once.

  “How can you be so ill?” she asked.

  I put my head into my hands. “I’m detoxing from heroin, obviously,” I said sarcastically.

  She didn’t get the joke. She screamed my father’s name as she ran down the hall. I had just two minutes of reprieve before he knocked on the door.

  “Heroin, Amy? What’s next?” he cried.

  “Dad, come on, I was kidding,” I said.

  “Try telling your mother that.”

  “Dad, please, I feel really sick.”

  I heard him exhale.

  “Dad.” I wanted to say something else, but I didn’t know what. I wished that whatever sickness I had would make the words that usually stayed inside come out, too.

  He sighed. “Your mother and I hope you will come to a decision soon.”

  I heard him walk down the hall and slam their bedroom door. This was life in our house now.

  The only decision I could be sure of that night was never to go to Denny’s again.

  Twenty-five

  The next morning, I took AJ out of his cage and perched him on my finger. His yellow feathers were as bright as the sun I would barely ever see if I did end up in jail.

  “What should I do?” I asked, peering into his little black eyes.

  Everyone could ask me as many times and in as many ways as they wanted to about whether I would turn on Lila and Cassie. The only person’s opinion I trusted was a bird’s.

  AJ was rarely silent, especially after prompting, but he didn’t say anything—he didn’t move. He just kept staring at me with those tar-colored eyes. It seemed like he was telling me it was my decision to make.

  That was why I liked him better than most people.

  I put him on my shoulder and called Lila. I guess I wanted to make sure that even though we hadn’t talked about it, we were still standing together. I guess I wanted to make sure my indecision wouldn’t leave me behind.

  Her phone rang and rang. I couldn’t help thinking that maybe she wasn’t answering because she could see it was me.

  That maybe I had already been left behind.

  Even though I wasn’t ready to admit it to anyone else, I was worried. I called Aaron. He had been through this. I took his number from my pillow, even though I didn’t need to; I’d memorized it. Taken the numbers and used them instead of counting sheep to lull myself to sleep at night.

  “What’s up?” he asked, after I said hello.

  He knew my voice. Or—I let myself believe the even spazzier thought—he didn’t give out his number to that many girls.

  “Nothing,” I said. I guess even with him the words were hard.

  “Sorry I didn’t answer last night,” he said. “I was at the skate park and my phone was in my bag.”

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  “So, what’s up?” he asked again, not in a mean way. I guess he could tell I was holding back. I heard laughing and music in the background.

  “Where are you?” AJ still sat on my shoulder. I could feel his claws digging in.

  “You know, just hanging out at my friend Brian’s.”

  Brian’s. I wondered if Lila was there. I wondered if they were talking about me. I wondered why he couldn’t have just been there on prom night.

  I heard him walk down the stairs, go outside, and close the front door. “It smells like piss out here,” he said.

  Cassie. It smelled like Cassie’s piss out there. She would kill me if she knew I was even talking to Aaron after what he had done to us. Sleeping with the enemy. Well, not yet.

  “Did something happen?” he asked.

  Since I’d last seen him, yeah, a lot had happened. I’d been called on my bluff and my colon had basically fallen out, but other than that, just your average day.

  “Not really,” I said.

  I heard his Zippo snap open, heard him light a cigarette, heard it snap closed. I wanted to listen to that sound forever.

  “You want me to come get you later?” he asked.

  I saw myself riding in his convertible, the top down, feeling the feeling I’d tried to solidify into concrete memory, but I knew I couldn’t act like that girl, not tonight. The night before had scrubbed me raw.

  “It’s okay,” I said, not wanting to say no.

  “All right, later.” He ended the call before I could say anything else.

  It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay, AJ repeated, flying back to his cage.

  I looked up at the basement window. The sun was bright. So bright, it made me blink. It was the kind of beautiful summer day when, in my old life, Cassie, Lila, and I would have made our way down to the rocky shores of Lake Erie.

  It was a whole forty-five-minute drive away. There were closer places to go, but we liked that no one knew us there. That we could be whoever we wanted to be.

  We lay next to one another in the sun, waiting for some boys that Lila knew to meet us, the smell of dead fish and suntan lotion and hot sand all around. Lila was in a black bikini. I was wearing jean shorts and a blue tankini top, and Cassie had a flannel over her one-piece bathing suit.

  “Aren’t you hot?” Lila asked, leaning on her arm to look at Cassie. Her skin was shiny with suntan oil.

  “Aren’t you cold?” Cassie sneered. She drank
from a plastic canteen. Then she passed it to me.

  “I feel just right,” I said, opening the cap and sniffing. It was strong, like ammonia strong.

  I’d gotten used to our routine. Cassie was brash. Lila was beautiful. I was quiet and plain. Like human versions of the porridge in Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Being ordinary was exactly what had made me feel out of place around other people, but Cassie and Lila wanted me to be that way.

  I braved it and took a sip. It tasted like spoiled apple juice. I coughed. “Yuck, what is that?”

  “Seagram’s, I think. My dad has had it hidden in his underwear drawer since the day I was born,” Cassie said.

  I passed it over to Lila. She took a drink, her mouth puckering. “It tastes like crap.”

  “You’re going to start being picky now?” Cassie said.

  Lila shrugged and took another swig. “I had a cousin who used to drink mouthwash to get drunk.”

  “Are you serious?” I asked.

  She nodded, her sunglasses pointy like cat eyes. “I caught him on Thanksgiving one year. I never told anyone.”

  “That’s so weird,” I said.

  “I know, right?” She laughed. “I would have to be so hard up to try that.”

  I doubted Lila would ever be that hard up.

  “Your family is so fucked up,” Cassie said, grabbing the canteen back from Lila.

  “All the best ones are,” Lila said, smiling devilishly.

  “Right.” I laughed. “The Mansons.”

  “Burn,” Cassie snapped.

  “The Kardashians,” I added, bolstered by Cassie’s encouragement.

  “Ha!” Cassie laughed. “Double burn.”

  “Funny,” Lila said, not laughing, which I knew meant she didn’t think it was.

  “Where are they?” Cassie asked, lighting a cigarette and looking around.

  “They’ll be here,” Lila said. She could get away with saying things like that. She put her sunglasses on her forehead.

  “Maybe we should go,” I said. We had been waiting all day. My skin was hot and pink. The SPF 45 suntan lotion I had put on at my house had more than worn off. I hadn’t had the nerve to bring it with me.

  “We’re waiting,” Lila said.

  “Whatever,” Cassie said.

  I knew we were. There was nothing Cassie or I could say to change Lila’s mind. She actually liked the boy who was coming for her. I never knew what Cassie thought of her partners, but mine always seemed like leftovers.

  Maybe I seemed like leftovers to them.

  “We should come here every day,” Lila said.

  “Totally,” I said. Sunburned or not, boys on the way or not, I would rather be there, far from Collinsville with Cassie and Lila, than anywhere else.

  “You got the gas money for that?” Cassie said, shoving her spent cigarette in an empty soda can.

  “They’re here,” Lila said, squinting and putting her sunglasses back on.

  It was Kyle, Chris, and Nick. The guys who seemed to wave like cattails as they smoked cigarettes every morning before school on Farber Lane—taunting the administrators, daring them to do something about it. I’d never talked to any of them. Of course, Lila had. Or more likely, they had talked to her.

  I watched as they walked over. They looked like variations on the same theme: clothes that hung on their scarecrow bodies, hair that was too long to be accidental.

  “Stop drooling, Amy. You want them to know we’ve actually been waiting for them?” Lila asked.

  “Sorry,” I said, looking away.

  “Kyle’s mine,” Lila whispered as she stood up. He was the cutest: dark brown hair and eyes, skin the color of caramel. There was no doubt he was hers.

  “Hey,” Kyle said, smoke leaking through the gaps in his teeth as he smiled.

  “Took you long enough,” Lila said, putting her arm around his waist and walking away with him.

  Chris kicked at the sand like a stubborn horse. Some of it landed on Cassie. She stood up and pushed him. “What’s up, slut?” he said. He was tall, gangly; he reminded me of a giraffe.

  “Not much, fuckface,” she said, but it was obvious she was smiling. “See you losers later,” she said as the two of them walked in the other direction.

  Nick stood there. His bathing suit hung so low that I could see a sliver of his underwear. Who wore underwear under his bathing suit?

  Someone who wasn’t going to the beach to swim.

  “Hi,” he said, his cheeks blooming pink.

  “Hi,” I said, trying to tell myself he was cute—cute enough.

  He sat down next to me and handed me a McDonald’s cup, the straw as gnawed as a nervous child’s pencil. “Want some?” he asked.

  “What is it?”

  “Vodka and orange Hi-C,” he said.

  I gulped it down. Anything to help me get ready for what was about to happen. It felt like an old woman’s hand traveling to my stomach, her brick-colored nails and costume rings clawing at my insides. “Yum,” I lied.

  He leaned over and started kissing me. At least he didn’t waste any time, so we didn’t have to sit there feeling uncomfortable. So we didn’t have to try to fill the dejected silence.

  We kept kissing. That was the whole point. Why Lila and Cassie had walked in opposite directions. So they could have privacy to do more than kiss.

  I was used to it. Lila got the hot guy. Cassie got the mean guy. I got the guy who blushed the minute he saw me, whether we were in the sun or not. It was fine. What would I have done with the hot guy? What would I have done with the mean guy? What would the mean guy have done to me?

  When it felt like Nick and I had kissed for long enough, we watched the sunset, passing his McDonald’s cup back and forth—the sun a bright orange circle, like a tea bag being dunked into the water. After that, we stared off into space and waited for our friends.

  I dealt with the weird quiet, because I knew I could be more interesting later. Lila and Cassie would tell me about their boys on the ride home while we passed truckers and got them to honk their horns for us.

  “His tongue tasted like honey,” Lila would say.

  “His body wasn’t the only thing about him that was tall,” Cassie would sneer.

  Then, they would tell me more in Lila’s backyard, as we lay on her lawn under the skim-milk stars. They would tell me about life through the feel of a kiss and a hand and a breath, with the goose-bump tickle of grass at our necks and the hum of mosquitoes in our ears.

  They would fill me up with their secrets. They would make me feel like my silence was a choice. Like being left over was a choice.

  Twenty-six

  I found Daniel standing in the doorway of his office with his arms up like he was doing a jumping jack. He was wearing yet another tie-dye. It looked like a purple bull’s-eye radiating from the center of his chest. “I’m not letting you in until you assure me you are clean and sober.”

  “You don’t look like you’re clean and sober,” I said, indicating his shirt.

  He didn’t answer me. I walked under one of his arms. He didn’t try to keep me out.

  Apparently he had been briefed on the heroin I was phony-detoxing from. Was everyone that gullible, or was I really that much of a screw-up?

  I sat on the couch and waited for him to follow. “You found me out. I’m on the dope, the hard stuff, the smack, the junk, the p-funk. I do it all day long and I hide it in my mattress,” I said, shrugging.

  “If you’re really doing this to yourself, I can no longer treat you.” He sat back in the beanbag chair and crossed his legs.

  I was tempted to tell him I was on heroin, if only to end our annoying appointments once and for all. But then there really wouldn’t be anyone besides Aaron who listened to me.

  “Fine. I’m not hiding heroin in my mattress, but if my mother asks, don’t tell her that.”

  “I don’t tell your mother anything you say to me.”

  “What have I said to you?” It was a serious q
uestion. I couldn’t remember where my thoughts ended and my words began. What he knew about me and what I let him know about me.

  “You need to stop diverting attention away from what you should really be focusing on.” He looked at me like he was a cat and I was a mouse he had been chasing, and he had finally been able to back me into a corner.

  “I know, I’ve heard, turning on Lila and Cassie,” I said.

  “Yes, making the decision whether or not to testify,” he said.

  “It’s not a decision, it’s a mandate, and I’ve said no. It’s not good enough.”

  “Why did you choose to say no?”

  “Because Lila and Cassie would hate me forever,” I said. Because Aaron would think I was weak, I didn’t say. I looked at Daniel’s shirt, each circle of purple a little darker than the one inside it, like the layers of a Gobstopper.

  “Don’t you care about what happens to you?”

  “Of course,” I replied, but as I said it, I realized it was more a reflex than a statement with much feeling behind it.

  I guess he realized it, too. “There is very little I can do if you won’t let me help you.”

  “Fine, help me, then,” I said.

  Help me like you help your daughter, I thought. Tell me what you tell her to make her smile the way she does in her softball picture, to make her want to play softball, to make her want to get out of bed every morning.

  I waited. He had to know something, to be able to share some little scrap of knowledge that would make everything better.

  He shook his head. I’d finally asked him for help and he couldn’t even respond. I thought about AJ looking at me silently the day before. Maybe no one knew the secret.

  “Your fly is open,” I said. It wasn’t, but I wanted him to look in any direction but at me. If he couldn’t help me, I didn’t want him staring at me, studying me, analyzing me.

  “I know it’s hard for you to believe that people care about you, but they do.”

  “They care about what I’m going to do.”

  “That’s the same thing.”

  “It really isn’t,” I said, feeling my throat catch, close up. Feeling the rest of the words I didn’t want to say fall back down it, the letters scrambling in my stomach like Scrabble tiles.