Pretty Amy (13 page)

The judge released me until my trial. I would have that time to formulate a case, to come to some tough decisions. And, hopefully, to gain enough maturity to understand the “full impact” of what I’d done.

After my portion of the case was completed, Dick Simon rushed us out. Shielding us with his body, balancing his binders like pizza boxes, he pushed us from the courtroom like we were taking part in a fire drill. He closed the door behind him just as Lila’s name was called.

“You need to detach yourself now,” he said, out of breath and red in the face from hurrying us those ten feet. He leaned against the wall, wheezing. “You need to show up front that you are no longer associated with those girls in any way. That you have so separated yourself from them and from what you’ve done that you don’t care what happens to them.”

My mother and father nodded, engrossed in his every word. This was territory unfamiliar to them. They would take any advice Dick Simon gave.

But I wanted to see how Lila would react, what Cassie would say. I wanted to see if either of them would cry, or scream, or do any of the things I was too afraid to do.

I wanted to know if they were as scared as I was, and trying just as desperately to hide it.

Fourteen

“So, what are we in the mood for?” my father asked as he started the car.

What was I in the mood for? A gun with one bullet in it. A bottle of strong liquor. A rewind button. Certainly not lunch with Jerry and Beverly.

I didn’t know what other families did after their daughter had been arraigned on drug charges, but my family strapped on a feed bag.

“Whatever,” I said, which I had said on many other occasions when I had been asked for my opinion, but I had never truly meant it before. I hoped they didn’t see it in a crying-wolf kind of way and saw it in the way it was intended—as one more sign that I had given up.

My mother glanced at my father, a look that even in profile I knew said,
Why did we have this child if she can’t answer a simple question?

I saw her turn and face the window and go through a Rolodex of restaurants in her mind, side-referencing articles she had read in magazines giving you tips for every situation. Every situation, it seemed, but what to eat after your daughter has been officially charged for selling drugs that weren’t even hers.

We ended up going to one of those restaurants where the waiters and waitresses dressed up in costumes, like it was Halloween every day. It was exactly what I didn’t need—loud, boisterous, terrifying.

The person who came to seat us wore a penguin suit; as he waddled us over to our table I wondered how much worse it could get. Not only was I a suspected felon, I was at this place with my parents, in a
suit.
I had been so upset about the arraignment, I hadn’t even insisted that they let me go home and change first.

“I’m not hungry,” I said.

“Well, you have to eat something,” my mother said.

I pushed my chair away from the table and crossed my arms. I guess I was just supposed to deal with the fact that instead of actually talking about what had happened and what could happen, my parents were doing what they always did—ignoring my feelings and covering them up. On that day, it was by eating at a place they should have taken me for my birthday when I turned six.

“You can’t just sit there taking up space,” she said from behind her menu. “Just order something to pick at.” I could hear in her voice that to her, this conversation was over.

It wasn’t.

When the waitress arrived dressed as a sexy nurse, I ordered six entrees, soup, salad, and jalapeno poppers.

“Obviously someone needs a little more time. She can’t make up her mind; everything looks so good.” My mother laughed. Then smiled her
Please bear with my crazy family
smile.

The waitress smiled back her
The customer is always right
smile and said she’d put their orders in.

“We know what’s going on. You don’t need to be difficult. This is hard on all of us,” my mother said with a quiver in her voice.

“Then why are we here?” I asked. If it was so hard on all of us, why was she expecting us to stuff our faces like we were preparing to hibernate for the winter?

“Amy, listen to your mother,” my father said, which was his way of saying that he wasn’t, but at least one of us should be.

“So we can have one moment of peace in this horrible day.” She put her menu down on the table in front of her and turned full around in her chair. “This was a great choice, wasn’t it, Jerry?”

I wanted to give her the finger. Everything in my body was telling me to, but I couldn’t do it. I played with the ice in my water glass.

My father was cleaning his glasses with a napkin. He used the time we fought to clean and primp up various things—his nails, his wallet, his pockets.

“I just don’t understand why you can’t be cheerful like her,” she said, pointing with her chin to the waitress. “At least while we’re out.”

My father nodded, even though I was pretty sure he still wasn’t listening.

“Your grandmother was a nurse, you know,” she said, as if this solidified the point she was trying to make.

“She’s not a nurse, Mom, she’s a waitress. It’s her job to be
cheerful
.” There was an edge to my voice that I couldn’t control. Why were we talking about our waitress? Why weren’t we talking about me?

“Do you hear this?” She looked at my father.

He was elbow-deep in the French onion soup that had just arrived, and appeared to be more interested in the cheese that had melted over the sides of the bowl than in my mother. I couldn’t blame him; French onion soup cheese probably
was
more interesting than my mother.

“Amy, stop fighting,” he said, twirling the melted strands around his spoon.

“How am I supposed to react?”

“All I said was that you could at least try to enjoy yourself. She has to deal with customers all day and she’s still smiling.”

“Mom, she looks like a hooker.”

“Well, she might look like one, but at least she hasn’t been arrested for it.”

“So,” my father said, forever the subject changer, “Brenda’s getting married.”

Brenda was my father’s newest and youngest hygienist. I’d only met her once, and though it was while my father was filling several cavities for me, the only thing I could remember about her was a dried-out perm and dye job. She kept trying to hold my hand and I kept pulling it away and shoving it under myself like a fussy toddler. Her insistence on intimacy bothered me more than her hair, and her hair was pretty freaking bad.

“That’s wonderful. How lovely,” my mother said, her voice trilling. It didn’t matter who was getting married. It could be a twelve-time convicted rapist and a pit bull and it would still be
lovely
. “When’s the date?” she asked, not because she really cared, but because that was what you asked when someone was getting married.

My father said he didn’t know, and it forced me to think about where I would be on whatever date had been chosen. Maybe instead of going resentfully with my parents to Brenda’s wedding, I wouldn’t even have the option.

That day it was never more real that I could actually be locked up, and, instead of dealing with it, my parents wanted to talk about weddings and slutty waitresses.

I needed a cigarette. So I said what people say in movies when they need a cigarette. I said I needed some air.

As I walked out of the restaurant, all I could see in front of me was beautiful billowy smoke and the feel of it tugging at my lungs. Like a cartoon pie cooling on a windowsill with a beckoning finger of cinnamon steam.

The only place to smoke was right in front of the restaurant, next to one of those ashtrays that are really just trash cans filled with sand. I found the sexy nurse out there smoking with some guy dressed as a pirate and considered whether or not to tell my mother about it.

I took a cigarette out of my pocket and realized my lighter was at the table in my Liz Claiborne
barf bag
.

Crap.

Asking for a light from people you don’t know isn’t as easy as it sounds, especially when you’re dressed like a young Republican and are out with your parents. So I stood there with the unlit cigarette in my mouth, hoping one of them would notice. I must have looked like one of those guys who are about to get it from a firing squad, minus the blindfold.

After being ignored for what felt like days, I finally broke down and asked the pirate. There was no way I was asking the nurse.

He sighed and made a face like I had just asked him to help me move my grand piano across the street.

During the whole process he didn’t look at me once. Which was fine, because I didn’t want to look at him, either. The outer parts of his cheekbones were covered by big red zits with white pustules in the middle that looked like he had balls of butter-cream frosting stuck to his face.

The nurse did look at me. I knew she couldn’t help it—being a girl, she had to make sure that she was the best-looking one in a ten-foot radius and if she wasn’t, she needed to prepare herself for it.

She must have recognized me as the girl who had ordered enough food for six people and then insanely decided she wasn’t hungry at all, because she started laughing. At least, I hope that was why she started laughing.

Her laugh was the last, last straw during a time filled with last straws.

“Problem?” I asked, thinking that’s what Cassie would have said if she were standing next to me. Lila wouldn’t have had to say anything, because people didn’t laugh at Lila.

“What?”

I considered ignoring her, saying nothing and smoking my cigarette. But something in my empty stomach gave me courage. “I said, do you have a problem?”

She started laughing harder, then the pirate started laughing, which meant that anybody looking at this scene from far away would see these two and assume they were laughing at me, which they were.

I wasn’t scary without Cassie. I wasn’t cool without Lila.

I was just me. Wearing a suit.

Apparently the world didn’t care who I wanted to be. I couldn’t change who I was. And now, I didn’t have Lila and Cassie to hide behind anymore, either.

I walked around the corner and sat on the curb next to a Dumpster. I could still hear them laughing, the kind of uncontainable laughter that I hadn’t laughed since I’d been arrested. The kind of uncontainable laughter I would probably never laugh again.

I would definitely tell my mother I’d caught the waitress smoking.

I was just about to put out my cigarette and go back inside when I heard a skateboard coming down the street. It sounded like waves, like a conch shell against your ear. That full, empty sound.

Maybe it was Aaron. I conjured up my stupid daydream, the one I used to fill my head when I couldn’t deal with any of the other stuff in there—that he would find me, that he would apologize, that he would tell me that prom night hadn’t been his fault. I went through what he would say, what I would say. The same lines I had written and played over and over again.

The difference this time was that when I looked toward the sound, he really was there.

It was
him.

Aaron.

He was skateboarding down the sidewalk like it was made of water, his red hair pulled back, wearing the same loose, worn jeans with holes in both knees from his Facebook picture. He carried a backpack, like he might have been coming from the library, but I doubted he ever went to the library.

I ducked and hid around the side of the Dumpster.

It didn’t seem possible. I was full-on hallucinating. The arraignment had pushed me over the edge.

I peeked out to find him walking toward me, carrying his skateboard under his arm. He was real, but what was he doing here? Had he followed me?

I lit another cigarette with the end of my last one; any excuse to stay put, anything other than looking like I was waiting for him. Then I remembered I was wearing a suit.

“You got another one of those?” he asked. His eyes were blue. I hadn’t noticed that in his picture.

My hands shook as I gave him a cigarette. I thought about Joe putting his hands in his pockets. I concentrated on trying to make them stop.

He brought a silver-and-black Zippo to his mouth, flipped it open with one hand, lit his cigarette, and slapped it shut. The whole thing took seconds, but it felt like he was doing it in slow motion. “Thanks,” he said.

Maybe he had just stopped to get a cigarette. Maybe it had nothing to do with me.

It probably had nothing to do with me.

I tried to make myself say something, but I hated talking to boys. Unlike AJ, they couldn’t be controlled as to what they were going to say next. I took another drag.

“I know you,” he said.

I coughed and tried to pretend that what he’d said was not the reason.