Pretty Amy Page 6

  We watched his truck—which was teal with pink detail so that it looked like someone had swallowed a can of paint and then puked it all over the sides of the cab—as it roared away.

  “Let’s start with the cash register,” Connor said, indicating I should follow him behind the counter. He walked in that way you do when you’ve done something thousands of times before. A walk that said there were no surprises. A walk of resignation.

  “How long have you been working here?” I asked, eyeing the chip and candy aisle. Things were stocked in terms of their taste-bud quotient: the remarkably salty, the obscenely sweet, the mind-numbingly sour, the throat-hackingly bitter.

  “Does it matter?” He continued before I could answer. “You have to do this all manually.” He turned a key on the side of the register so it was in nonrecording mode. “Why don’t you try ringing up a pack of gum?”

  I tried, but it didn’t quite work out. I rang it up for $99 instead of $0.99.

  He came around my side and voided it. “All right, now watch this time.”

  I didn’t watch. I thought about how I had come into so many places like this without giving the people behind the counter a second thought. Now I realized they all had some reason to be there. There was no way you chose this without a metaphorical gun at your back.

  “Are you listening?”

  “Yes,” I said, but I think he could tell I was lying.

  “I know it’s not rocket science, but it pays the bills. It keeps my kid in diapers,” he said, shrugging.

  “You have a kid?” I covered my mouth, trying to hide the shock in my voice, but luckily he didn’t seem to notice.

  “Two. Here,” he said, reaching into his back pocket for his wallet.

  I hadn’t asked to see a picture, but I accepted it when he gave it to me, like you are supposed to do when someone gives you a picture of his children. “Cute,” I said, like you are supposed to say when someone shows you a picture of his children.

  It was one of those holiday pictures. The kids sitting on a bed of cotton meant to be snow, wearing red and green and bells and bows and holding fake wrapped presents in their hands. The cotton made them look like they were pieces of strange jewelry sitting in a box.

  He smiled, like parents do when they are presenting pictures of their kids. “Do you have any?” he asked, like he was hoping this was something we could bond over.

  “No,” I said, so quickly I think he could tell I was offended by the question. “I’m only seventeen.”

  “I had my first when I was your age,” he said.

  I tried to picture it—me, with a baby. It was obvious I could barely take care of myself, but I guess I couldn’t talk. What if I were still working at Gas-N-Go five years from now and training someone else? Would I tell her that I had been her age when I was arrested for the first time?

  The first time. I shook my head.

  “Listen, I get it. You think you’re too good for this place,” he said.

  I had thought I was too good for it, but I was realizing that what I thought had little to do with reality.

  “You think I want to be here?” he asked, his voice rising. “You do a poll and I would say most people would choose to be somewhere else, doing something else, and if they really had the option, being someone else.”

  He was right, and I hated thinking that even before all this, I was most people.

  “But, here we are,” he said. “You can choose to stay and make the best of it, or you can leave.”

  Make the best of it. That was something I had heard my whole life. Most of the time I could, because I wanted to believe something was waiting for me at the end of the tunnel I was perpetually looking through. But now, what was the point?

  He tapped his foot. “You just take all the time you need. It’s not like we’re on the clock or anything.”

  I looked at the cash register. I looked at him. I shrugged.

  “Why don’t you just get going on those bathrooms? I find the bathroom to be a place of serenity, especially the ones here. They’ll give you a lot of time to work things out.”

  “You find cleaning up after other people’s crap to be some kind of meditative experience?”

  “Only when I’m not the one doing it,” he said, handing me a mop and bucket.

  …

  After work, I walked home. The town was so quiet that it looked like a movie set—building façades darkened, houses with porch lights on, gaslights lining the street every twenty feet like Johnny Appleseed had planted them that way.

  On nights like this, Cassie, Lila, and I would hang out in the oceans of cemetery that surrounded our town. We would stumble, drunk, down the rows next to all those grocery-store flowers, still in their plastic, still with the price tags on. Maroon bows holding the stems together, sitting in their stands, petals fluttering and ribbons blowing like wind socks in the breeze. We would dance past the high obelisk stones set up like a giant chess game, past stones flat to the ground like fallen dominoes, past stones popping out of the soil like vegetables in a garden. I always wondered, if we could be there like that, could death really mean anything? Could life?

  Homework-doing and dishwasher-emptying and everyday-ness and who the hell we were meant to be became noiseless whispers when we were faced with the death that bordered our town, squeezed at it like a clutching fist.

  It would never be that way again.

  A few blocks from my house, I heard Joe’s bike coming up behind me. I’d ridden around with him enough after dinner in middle school to recognize the sound. It was so distinct that I used to know from the dinner table that he was coming up my driveway, in the summer when the windows were open. The bell was broken so it jingled when he rode it. You would have thought he would have just taken the bell off, but then you would have thought a lot of things about Joe.

  “I heard what happened,” he said, pedaling up next to me. He was wearing his varsity volleyball jacket. A big white ball on the right shoulder, his name embroidered on the left.

  I knew someone would confront me about the arrest eventually. I guess I’d just hoped it would be someone else.

  “Nothing happened,” I said. I looked up. The stars were faint, like they all needed their bulbs changed.

  “Okay,” he said, walking his bike next to me. The tires clicked like a prize wheel. “I won’t say I told you so.”

  “You never told me anything,” I said, lighting a cigarette. But that wasn’t true. He had told me to stay away from Cassie and Lila. Not that he knew what he was talking about.

  “No,” he said. “You just didn’t listen.” Then he made a big deal about coughing and waving the smoke out of his face.

  I tipped my head back and exhaled, the smoke shooting up like water from a whale’s blowhole. “I’m not in the mood, Joe.”

  “I’m not judging. I’m just talking to you.”

  “It’s the same thing,” I said. Maybe he thought that because he was on his bike, that bike, he could talk to me this way. But he couldn’t.

  He looked at me. The silence made me anxious. I tried not to think about what he’d said the last time I saw him. Maybe I used to be nice, but nice was boring. Nice hadn’t gotten me anywhere. I was still figuring out where mean was going to get me.

  “So, that’s it, then?” He gripped his handlebars tighter, another trick he used to keep his hands still.

  “I guess.” I was glad we were done. I was afraid that if we kept talking, I might break down and start crying right there on the street. It would have been easy to talk to him like I had when we were who we used to be. When we would hide under his porch with peanut butter and strawberry jelly sandwiches and grape-juice boxes. But I didn’t know him anymore. He was a stranger. Like Daniel, like anyone else who was trying to pretend they gave a crap.

  Joe had wanted to keep the old Amy in a little box that he could take out after school and on weekends to be her friend when he was bored. And when that wasn’t good enough for me, I became not
good enough for him.

  I stopped and stomped out my cigarette.

  “You should have stayed at the prom.” He shrugged.

  I guess we weren’t done. I guess he was going to try to present his simple Boy Scouts solution to a far more complicated situation. Like he always did.

  “You didn’t let me in, remember? You and your girlfriend.” I wasn’t sure why my voice had such an edge to it. Maybe because I didn’t want to believe the words.

  “Leslie’s not my girlfriend.”

  “Whatever,” I said. I didn’t care if Leslie was his girlfriend. I didn’t care about any of this. I started walking faster. It was stupid. It wasn’t like I could outwalk his bike, but I wanted to get away from him. From everything he made me think about and not want to think about.

  “You still should have stayed,” he said.

  I wondered whether, if he’d known how things would turn out that night, he would have let us stay, even without our sacred tickets. He probably would have, but he didn’t, and he hadn’t, and it was too late now.

  “My mom is even more naggy than usual, so…,” I said, making the international sign for Hurry up.

  “I’m on my way out, anyway,” he said, hopping back on his bike. He took his right hand off the handlebar and shakily saluted me. What he used to do when we were little and he thought I was being bossy.

  I stood there. I didn’t know how to react. If I had been the old me I would have laughed. I would have laughed and he would have laughed. But I was the new me, so I stood there. The street was dark and quiet.

  He pedaled away, the bell on his bike becoming fainter and fainter as his back reflector light got smaller and smaller, like a lens closing, as he made his way down the street.

  …

  I found my mother lying on the couch, waiting up to make sure I came home. Not only because this was what she always did, but because Dick Simon had told her that I couldn’t get in any more trouble, which just gave her another excuse to be a total pain in my ass.

  She was watching David Letterman with one eye open and one eye flat and closed against the pillow. She wore her flannel nightgown even though it was summer. I guess she wanted to look the part for her newly instated nightly vigil. Like some sailor’s wife on a widow’s walk, a lit candle held in her praying hands.

  “How was it?” she asked, sitting up and looking at me. The TV covered her pale pink nightgown and exposed skin with fluorescent blue.

  Freshman year, that used to be a question I could answer, when I went to dances and football games and came home at a decent hour. When I could say Fine and that was all I ever had to say, even if it wasn’t true. It was better than going back over whatever trauma I had suffered. It was easier than saying the real words.

  Not this time.

  “It sucked. I feel like I’m losing ten brain cells for every minute I’m standing behind that counter.”

  “Don’t take this out on me.” She squinted. “Besides, that’s probably less than you were losing when you were spending all your time smoking those doobies.”

  “Great, Mom, perfect. For your information, no one has ‘smoked a doobie’ since 1979.”

  I saw a light flick on behind her eyes, like she’d remembered our appointment with Daniel and she was determined to prove that she really was trying. “I care about you, Amy,” she said in her practiced I am a good parent and I’m doing the best I can voice.

  I turned away from her, practically running for the refuge of my room, which that night felt like no refuge at all. As I walked up the blue-carpeted stairs I had walked on every day since I was five, I realized that my room was not mine. I hadn’t chosen to live in it, just like I hadn’t chosen to live in this house, or live on this street, or be born into this family.

  I hated my room and everything in it. I hated the pink carpet. I hated the sheets on my bed. I’d liked them when I received them for my thirteenth birthday, to replace my cartoon-character ones. But that night, I realized sheets were a pretty crappy birthday gift.

  I lit a cigarette and smoked out the window, but it felt like Joe’s house was staring at me. I stubbed it out and yanked down the shade. I even hated my view.

  I hadn’t gotten any of the things in this room because I’d really wanted them. I had gotten them because they were what my mother thought I was supposed to have. She had bought me all of these things because she was trying desperately to turn me into the daughter she wanted me to be.

  There was no chance of that anymore.

  I grabbed a sleeping bag from my closet, and AJ’s cage, and made my way back downstairs.

  My mother was still lying on the couch. “There’s dinner in the fridge,” she said.

  I ignored her and unlocked the basement door.

  “What are you doing?”

  “This is my new room.” I rolled the sleeping bag down the basement stairs and hugged AJ’s cage tightly.

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  I walked down the stairs before she could say anything else.

  She followed me, ducking her head so she didn’t hit the ceiling. “There’s no reason to get dramatic.”

  “I’m moving out. I can’t live here anymore.”

  “Living in the basement is not moving out.”

  “It’s as close to it as I can get.” I set my sleeping bag on the small green carpet and hung AJ’s cage from one of the rafters on the ceiling.

  “This is insane. Where’s your father?”

  I got into the sleeping bag and turned away from her, watching AJ’s cage swing back and forth, back and forth.

  “Amy, please, it’s disgusting down here,” she said.

  Usually the wavering in her voice would have been enough to make me turn and look at her, but everything was different now.

  “Fine,” she said, walking up the stairs, “do what you want. Live down here all alone; see if I care. I’m going to bed.” She slammed the door behind her.

  It was dirty; I had to give her that. It was also uncomfortable, and I hadn’t had enough arms to carry both AJ and a pillow, so my head lay right on that terrible green burlap carpet that looked like puked-up spinach. It was itchy and with my only other option being sleeping on concrete, I made a covert mission back up the stairs to get my mattress and pillow.

  While I was in my room gathering supplies, I called Lila’s cell. My mother hadn’t thought to take the cordless phone out of my room.

  Before the arrest, Lila, Cassie, and I were together all the time. It was hard to believe that it had been almost a week since I had spoken to either of them. It made my stomach feel like I was going down the first huge hill of a roller coaster when I thought about it.

  “Amy, oh my God, how are you?” Lila whispered as she picked up the phone.

  “Horrible,” I said. It felt so good not to lie. I was horrible. I was worse than horrible.

  “Aren’t you on twenty-four-hour watch or something?” Lila whispered.

  “You still have your phone?” I asked. It was a dumb question. I mean, I had called her, but I was surprised.

  “The police said I should keep it in case Brian tries to call me.”

  She was talking to the police. Why wasn’t I talking to the police?

  I could hear her climb out the window to her balcony and light a cigarette.

  “Have you talked to Cassie?” I asked, mostly out of selfishness. I didn’t want them to become inseparable in my absence.

  “Forget Cassie.” She took a drag. “Have you?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Good,” she said.

  At least one nice thing was coming out of this—I was the favorite now.

  I heard her dog, Barnaby, bark as he settled down in his customary position next to her. She adored him, even though he was the most disgusting thing I had ever seen. He was sheared, with a terrier’s head and long spindly legs like a goat. Sometimes I felt like the human version of Barnaby.

  I listened to the air on the line. I could
hear cars going by and the smoke exhaling out of her lungs like a sigh.

  I wanted to say I missed her, that I didn’t blame her. But I was too scared, because I knew if I did she would have to reciprocate. “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “I’m bored,” she said. “And horrible.” She laughed.

  “I know,” I said.

  “My fingers are still black from that ink,” she said.

  I looked at my hands, still painted with that light blue polish. They were chipping.

  “Mine are okay,” I said. What were we even talking about?

  “This sucks,” she said.

  “I know,” I said.

  We sat there, quiet, listening to each other breathe, until she said she heard her mom coming and had to go. As much as I hated to realize it, we had nothing else to say anyway. This was my life now. Without Cassie and Lila it was like I was on a seesaw minus one kid, lonely and powerless.

  After I hung up I went to the bathroom. I poured nail-polish remover onto a cotton ball and breathed in, filling my nostrils with the horrible smell. I scrubbed my nails clean, until they were pink and raw. Then I took the bottle of polish off my nightstand and threw it in the trash.

  Ten

  The next morning I woke up facedown and open-mouthed on the basement floor. I looked with bleary eyes around my new home.

  I was surrounded by boxes filled with old winter clothes, shoes that had lost their mates, and clothes I had grown out of—hand-me-downs waiting to be handed down to someone who never came. They were filled with my parents’ old notebooks from college, photo albums from before they knew me, and wedding presents they’d never used. Things my parents no longer wanted to look at but couldn’t bear to part with.

  There were shelves stacked with the books I’d loved as a child. All the girls I’d wanted to be like. A pile of yellow hardback Nancy Drew books, shiny paperback Ramona books, a pale purple copy of Margaret. Ramona didn’t care; she told the world to piss off with her short hair and freckles. Margaret, with her hair like spun gold, cared too much. Nancy, the fiery redhead, was too smart to worry about anything.