Pretty Amy Page 4

  I thought about it. He probably shouldn’t. Considering what had happened last night, the place would probably burn down just because I was in it. I shook the thoughts out of my head. I wasn’t about to start crying in front of this guy.

  “Do you not want the job?” he asked.

  I didn’t want it. I needed it; a much worse position to be in. “I can start right away,” I said, forcing myself to smile so hard that my face hurt.

  He seemed like he should be chewing on a cigar, but instead he chewed his pen, and then rapped it against his capped molars as he waited. “Good enough for me. I had this guy come in today wearing only one shoe, and he was the best person I’d seen up until you.” He looked back at my application. “Don’t know why I interviewed him. I wouldn’t even let a customer walk in like that, but in this business that’s the caliber of people you come to expect.”

  I guess that meant I was now in that caliber of people. After having worked for four years to claw my way to the middle of the high school social-status pyramid, one night had kicked me all the way back down to the bottom.

  “Never thought I’d be doing this myself, but life gives you shit, you make a sandwich. You know what I’m saying?”

  I nodded. With the shit I’d been given last night, I should have been able to make a forty-eight-inch party sub.

  “Honestly, I don’t care why you want this job. I don’t care what you do when you’re not here. I don’t even care if you like me. All I care about is that you get here on time. You work when you’re supposed to. You stay awake behind that counter, and you don’t steal from me. You can do whatever you want, as long as you don’t cost me a dime other than your salary.”

  I wanted to laugh at him calling the measly $7.25 an hour I would be making a salary, but the fact that I actually needed it kind of dampened the humor.

  “And if you ever do think about stealing from me, I have twenty-seven cousins named Salvador who I won’t hesitate to sic on you in a dark alley.”

  I guess that was his way of telling me I got the job.

  I walked out of the store, lit a cigarette, and headed quickly toward home, hoping to avoid seeing anyone I knew. Then I remembered that prom had been the night before and that anyone I knew would probably be sleeping, in a hotel room or on their best friend’s floor, the music still buzzing in their heads, hung over and happy.

  That was where I wanted to be. That was where I wanted to be with Aaron. Twenty-four hours ago, I had been in a bubble bath shaving my legs and daydreaming about slow dancing under sparkly lights. Now I just wished I could go back there, live in that before for a little while longer.

  I was a block away from my house when I saw Joe walking toward me. I threw my cigarette in the gutter. His suit jacket was off, his purple tie around his head like a headband. His cummerbund was missing. Maybe Leslie had kept it as a souvenir.

  I looked down and walked faster.

  “Where’s your dress?” he asked. I could tell he was still drunk, which was probably the only reason he even bothered to stop. It was the most he had said to me in three years—well, not counting last night.

  “Where’s yours?” I asked, channeling Cassie. Afraid that if I let my guard down, he would be able to tell what had happened, would be able to break me right in two.

  “You used to be nice,” he said, putting his hands in his pockets. He did that when they started to shake. That was why he loved playing volleyball. I wished he’d never told me that.

  “Go away, Joe,” I said.

  “Exactly,” he said. His pupils were big; big black moons in his hazel eyes. He shook his head. “You used to be you.”

  He was definitely drunk, but not too drunk for me to know what he meant. “What do you want?”

  “You ever find your date?” he asked, slurring.

  Things had gotten so past finding my date. At least he didn’t know that yet. At least he was still living in the before.

  I looked at him with the eyes I used anytime I walked past him on my way to Gas-N-Go to buy cigarettes, or saw him in the hall at school, or stood across from him in gym class, waiting to be picked for a team. Eyes that said, I can’t see you.

  He wobbled forward. He took his hands out of his pockets to steady himself, but they were still shaking. It had started after his dad left. I wished he’d never told me that, too.

  I wished I’d never told him any of the things I told him, either.

  “Happy prom, Amy,” he said, walking past me, starting to whistle.

  He had a day of sleep ahead of him—that beautiful, warm, liquid sleep that comes from a night without any—then waking up to his mom making him fresh waffles and asking him all about his special, perfect night.

  I had no idea what I had ahead of me.

  Six

  Dick Simon’s secretary led us into his office and told us to take a seat.

  “Water, juice, coffee?” she asked in her rehearsed secretary voice.

  The way things had been going, I wanted vodka, straight, but I figured that was out of the question.

  We waited for Dick on a caramel leather couch with gold buttons like bullets at the center of our backs. It felt strange sitting with my parents like that. We never sat that close to each other unless we were at the movies together, and it had been years since we’d done that.

  I tried not to think about how much I used to love those times, and how horribly different this was.

  He walked into the office like he was making a stage entrance, palms out at his sides waiting for applause. He took my father’s hand and shook it, along with his whole body. He gave my mother a kiss on the cheek. She accepted, and then he came to me.

  “Amy? Gosh, is this Amy?” he asked, grabbing both of my hands and pulling me up. “I haven’t seen you since you were ten years old. Look how big you are.”

  I didn’t remember meeting him when I was ten years old, but there was no doubt I would remember him now. His face was pockmarked and craggy and he smiled too much—smiled and licked his lips so it looked like he was ready to get down and eat something.

  Dick guided me back to my seat, then sat down himself behind a desk the size of a dining-room table.

  He looked at his computer and laughed. “This is a good one. My buddy Warren sent me this,” he said, looking directly at my father. “You know why women play with their hair at traffic lights?”

  My mother glanced at her watch. I knew this was grownup code for I have other things to do and other places to go. You are only the first of the many annoying appointments I have today.

  “Because they don’t have any bleeps to scratch,” he said, laughing again. “You can fill in the blank yourself. I realize there are women and children present.” He winked at me.

  This was the guy who was going to rescue me.

  He stood and smoothed out his pants. “You all look like someone’s died or something.” He came around the front of the desk and leaned on it.

  “Dick, we’re not here for jokes,” my mother said, as if he had forgotten.

  “I know, I know, I’m just trying to lighten the mood,” he said, smiling his stupid laugh-at-me smile.

  “Dick,” my father said. Considering the way this guy was acting, he could have been saying it for more reasons than just because it was his name.

  “All right, fine, back to work,” Dick said. He held a manila folder above his head. “This is your folder.” He shook it for emphasis. “What we need to do is fill this up with stuff that proves your innocence. So far, as you can see, we have nothing.”

  This was my parents’ solution? I was going to be working my ass off to pay for this guy and so far he had nothing?

  “I’m not going to ask you if you’re guilty, because I don’t care,” he said, sitting on the edge of his desk in that way people sit on the edge of their desks that is supposed to let you know they are being serious.

  I was glad. There was probably a lot I was guilty of. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time: check.
Being a horrible disappointment as a daughter: check. At least I didn’t have to admit to any of it out loud.

  My mother gnawed on her cuticle like it was a dog bone. “She’s also been suspended for the last week of school for being intoxicated while coming from a school function.”

  She and my father had received the call from Mr. Morgan the night before, once he had been alerted to our arrest and the fact that we had been stoned out of our gourds on the way from the prom. The police had asked Cassie where we were coming from and she’d told them, trying her best to pretend she was sober.

  Obviously, it hadn’t worked.

  My parents were horrified, but I was glad for the reprieve. If I’d thought people whispered about me before, there was no way I was prepared for what they might say now. Besides, the last week of school wasn’t really “school” for me. As a fourth-semester senior, I was done with my finals, so classes were redundant. I’d had a week ahead of me of locker cleaning-outing and yearbook signing and senior pranking and study halls with nothing left to study for.

  There wasn’t anything in my locker I wanted anyway.

  “How are your grades?” Dick asked.

  “Fine,” I said.

  “Honor roll,” my father said.

  “They got her into State,” my mother said. “She’ll still be going, right?”

  I wasn’t surprised she asked about that. She had been orchestrating my college career since the day I was born. What she didn’t know was that I was planning on deferring my acceptance for a year and traveling around the country with Lila and Cassie. We were going to work at owner-operated truck stops and stay at seedy motels. We were going to be free of stupid Collinsville, New York, and have hot wind blow on our faces as we drove from town to town. Of course, I wasn’t planning on telling her that until I absolutely had to.

  Besides, I wanted to prolong college for as long as possible. Even I knew that the way things really were was the exact opposite of what my parents had told me. Hard work and a college degree no longer meant anything other than moving right back in with the parents who had lied to you about it in the first place.

  “We’ll do everything we can,” Dick Simon said.

  Would I even have the choice to not go to college, or would it be made for me?

  I felt sick.

  “The Assistant District Attorney is a very old friend of mine, something your compatriots don’t have,” Dick said, clasping his hands together, then pretending to pull them apart and being unable to.

  Lucky me. Dick Simon had jerked off with the Assistant DA when he was thirteen.

  “Who cares about her compatriots?” My mother laughed. The first real laugh Dick Simon got out of any of us.

  When she said that, I realized I hadn’t been thinking about them at all. I wondered if they were thinking about me. I wondered if they were in rooms just like this one with their own lawyers, trying not to think they were in rooms just like this one, the way I was.

  “What is she being charged with, specifically?” my father asked.

  “Oh, you know, the big PISS,” Dick said, waving the folder around. “Possession, Intent to Sell, Sale.” He paused and looked down at a paper on his desk. “Your little friend Cassandra’s got a DUI on top of that.”

  “I bet you’re happy now I didn’t let you borrow the car,” my mother said, sounding satisfied.

  I couldn’t help rolling my eyes.

  “The good news is I got my buddy to issue a continuance on your arraignment. Give us some time to get our ducks in a row.” He paused. “The bad news is I tried to get you charged as a juvenile, so we could keep you out of jail-jail if it ever got to that point, but you’re seventeen.” He shrugged. “He wants to try you as an adult.”

  “I’m going to jail?” I asked, my voice hesitating, afraid to say it out loud.

  Jail. The word felt like I’d swallowed a bug—I wanted it out of my mouth. I’d been wishing my whole teen life to be treated as an adult. This was not what I’d meant.

  “Dick?” my mother shrieked. “Jerry,” she shrieked again, looking at my father.

  “Dick?” my father repeated, reaching over me and putting his hand on my mother’s knee. I fought the urge to grab his hand.

  “Don’t worry,” Dick replied. “The law says you could end up with a year inside, but we can probably get you off with probation if you cooperate. At least that’s the feeling I’m getting from my buddy.” He paused and pointed at me. “He’s going to need to see a real commitment before he’s willing to give you any deal.”

  “But we weren’t even doing anything. We didn’t sell anything or intend to sell anything,” I said, using the words he had given me for what I was supposed to be sorry for doing, even though I hadn’t done it. “It wasn’t even ours,” I added.

  “Whose was it?” he asked.

  My mother looked at me from one side, my father from the other. I looked down.

  “Welcome to the twisty web of drug law,” Dick said. “It wasn’t what you were doing with it, or even that it wasn’t yours, but the amount you had when they picked you up.”

  I found myself wishing that we had been pulled over later, after we’d had a chance to smoke more. Though I’m guessing the amount we would have had to smoke would have taken six months or killed us in a week.

  “She’ll cooperate,” my mother said, looking at my father. I knew she was picturing the scandal, the whispers and shaking heads.

  “Just tell her what she needs to do,” my father said, finally taking my hand and squeezing. I squeezed back harder, involuntarily, a game we used to play when I was little, going back and forth until our hands ached. But he wasn’t paying attention.

  “You need to be just like corn. All ears,” Dick Simon said, looking at me and pointing to his head.

  His secretary walked in and handed a piece of paper to my mother. She looked at it and handed it directly to me.

  It was my first bill. My mother was really going to make me pay him. As he listed everything I would have to do to keep myself out of jail, I stared at it. The amount listed made me consider surrendering. The time I would need to spend working to pay him for just the first hour of his services—not to mention everything else he was telling me I would have to do—made being locked up seem like an easier option.

  I knew I had to pay him. Just like I knew I had to do everything else he told me to. I could barely survive standing in line at Starbucks. There was no way I could last any amount of time waiting for freedom, when I couldn’t last five minutes waiting for a latte.

  Seven

  For my mother, finding the therapist Dick Simon insisted I start seeing was as important as finding my future husband. We even sat at the dining room table, which we never did unless it was a special occasion. Evidently I was supposed to believe this was.

  She walked into the kitchen to grab the phone book, and for the first time that week I thought about my cell phone—still turned off, still up on that high shelf.

  I found myself craving it at first. I wanted to talk to Lila. I wanted to talk to Cassie. I wanted to talk to anyone my own age.

  Then I realized that everything waiting for me on it would probably be in response to the arrest. Unending unanswered texts and e-mails asking WTF happened? and I was suddenly thankful it was locked away, jealous that I didn’t have an off button, too.

  “Why am I even here for this?” I said as she sat down. The question was not just one I was asking that day, but about the whole process. The world would still be making plans for me, whether I was present or not.

  She ignored me and dialed the first number. As the phone rang, her face looked like she was waiting at a starting gate. I noticed her eyes contract as someone on the other end answered. She took a deep breath and began. The voice that came out was one I heard only rarely. It was her first-impression voice. All enthusiasm and inquiry, all How do you do and Gosh, you’re sweet. It was enough to make you puke.

  She talked with one pencil behind he
r ear, another quickly jotting on a stationery pad next to her. As she wrote she looked at me, as if seeing how well I would match up with the therapist she was considering at the moment.

  Down the line she went, crossing out names in the phone book for those who were not accepting new patients or for therapists she knew were seeing her friends or her friends’ children. There was no way she was taking the chance that my arrest and her subsequent shame would leak out.

  I couldn’t help wondering whether, if this therapist she finally found wasn’t the first or second or third choice of any of her friends, that meant he probably wasn’t all that good.

  But then I wondered if it mattered, anyway. I wasn’t going to a therapist because I wanted to, but because I had to. It didn’t really matter if he helped me, as long as it looked like he did.

  …

  My mother and I sat next to each other in the waiting room. Magazines formed glossy Chinese fans on the end tables around us. The walls were decorated with the sort of monochromatic fuzzy pictures you find in hotels. A red barn and pinkish-hued pond, sunset-induced. A brown, thatched-roof cottage in a field of wheat.

  The man who would be my therapist came to greet us with his hands clasped behind his back like a waiting butler. He was short and had glasses with thick black frames that sat so close to his eyes they made him look like a raccoon. He had a long brown ponytail and wore a tie-dyed shirt that looked like a tornado had collided with a rainbow.

  “Amy, it’s very nice to meet you,” he said, his hands still behind his back.

  I liked that he chose to ignore my mother and only introduce himself to me. But as the three of us walked down the hall to his office, I wondered if he was just acting like doctors or dentists act when you’re a little kid and they’re meeting you for the first time, pretending to treat you like an adult but treating you like a child in the process.

  My mother looked behind her. I could tell she was questioning her decision, realizing that she had sent her daughter, who was up on drug charges, into the care of a hippie. But I guess that’s what can happen when you try to cure your kid by playing Eenie, Meenie, Miney, Moe in the phone book.