Pretty Amy (22 page)

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.”

“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.

He looked at me and sighed, taking the door from my hand and closing it when he found the store empty. “I know you’re under a lot of stress right now, but your job should not suffer for it.”

“Don’t worry, there’s no one here anyway—it’s not suffering.”

“There are other things you could be doing. Other things
I
could be doing.”

Of course there were other things I could be doing. I could be with Aaron. I could be in my room with AJ, smoking. “Relax, Connor, it was just a joke.”

He shook his head. “I know, Amy,” he said.

“You know what?”

He reached for my hand. “It’s okay. Your mom told me.”

I shook his hand away. “How do you even know my mother?”

“She just needed someone to listen to her. She’s very upset.”

Who didn’t she have working for her? “Yeah, apparently her feelings are on the eleven o’clock news.”

He looked at me in a way that said,
I am so glad you are not my daughter
. “We thought it would be best if you came to prayer group at my church.”

“I’m Jewish, Connor.”

“You can be any religion to ask for Jesus’s help and guidance,” he said, looking up.

My mother was actually willing to put my life into the hands of Jesus—that was how bad she thought things had become. If only I had known that getting arrested could have been the thing that made my parents get a Christmas tree when I was a kid.

“We feel you are scared and think a circle of peers might help you make the right decision.”

“Your church freaks are not my peers,” I said, realizing I shouldn’t be taking this out on him. It was all coming from my mother. Connor was just a pawn in her game.

“Call them whatever you want now—after tomorrow night you’ll call them friends.” He paused to see if I would agree, and when I didn’t, he continued. “My wife and I will pick you up. We’ll have dinner beforehand. How’s Denny’s sound?”

“I’m not going.”

“You have no choice.”

I stormed over to the counter and started cleaning it. I wanted to do anything other than look at him, anything other than realize that my life and my decisions were still being run by my mother. Connor was right: I didn’t have a choice. I didn’t have a choice about anything anymore.

Didn’t anyone see that maybe this was why I wasn’t just going along with everything? I mean, besides not wanting to screw over Lila and Cassie, and Aaron’s hot breath in my ear. I finally had a decision that was mine to make.

“So that was all I had to say to get you to do some work?” he asked, smirking.

I glared at him.

“Come on, Amy. I just want to help.”

“You’re only doing what my mother is telling you to do,” I said, rubbing the counter hard enough to start a fire.

He stood there watching me. There was nothing else to say. My mother had him doing her dirty work. She was probably paying him, too.

“Please, just go away,” I said, still scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing.

“All right, all right,” he said, holding up his hands and walking away from me and into the back room like a gun had been raised at him.

I wished I had one.

The bell above the door rang to announce a customer’s arrival. Connor didn’t even run out when he heard it, which meant I had to deal with whoever it was. I turned away from the counter and fiddled with the cigarette rack, hoping that if I ignored the customer, he or she would go away.

I heard someone walk up to the counter and the drumming of her nails against it.

No such luck.

“Salem 100’s.”

I turned and found Cassie’s mother standing on the other side of the counter. Her hair was shorter and darker, oil black.

I touched my own hair. I was barely even bothering to brush it anymore.

“Oh, it’s you,” she said, her eyes squinting.

“Hi, Mrs. Wick,” I said, feeling my legs start to shake. It was what I always said to Cassie’s mom, but I doubted it would fly this time. I reached for the emergency bat under the counter.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“I work here,” I said, indicating my shirt. Though it probably wasn’t really what she was asking. She was asking,
What are you doing in my line of vision? And how long until you are out of it?

“How’s Cassie?” I asked before I could even stop the words from coming out of my mouth.

“How do you think?”

I knew how I was doing, but I wanted her to reveal some secret about how Cassie was surviving. I wanted her to tell me anything.

I saw her turn and glance at her parked car. Cassie was sitting in it, her head down. I dropped the bat and made a move to go outside.

“Stop right there,” she said. “Don’t bother. She doesn’t want to see you.”

It couldn’t be true. Could it?

“Just stay away from her.” She put her hand on the huge pickle jar that sat on the counter. Maybe she was looking for a weapon. Thinking she could break it over my head so that when I fell to the ground, my skull would be haloed by a briny, bloody puddle like a fertilized chicken egg.

“Is she okay?” I asked.

“Yeah, she’s great,” she said. “How about those Salems?”

“I miss her.” I wasn’t sure why I was bothering. It sounded more pathetic than I had planned. I guess I was lonelier than even I thought I was.

“Good for you,” she said. She handed me a twenty.

“Everything will be fine,” I said, which was what I wanted everyone to say to me.

“Maybe for you, maybe not,” she said, taking the cigarettes and her change.

“I’m sorry,” I said, surprising myself. Wondering why I could say it so easily to her when I couldn’t even really say it to my own parents, other than thoughtlessly repeating it because I hadn’t known what else to say the morning after the arrest. Maybe because saying it to Cassie’s mother didn’t have to mean anything.

“Right, that’s what Cassie keeps saying, too,” she said, walking out of the store.

As I watched them drive away, I tried to picture Cassie saying it, wondered where she found the strength to keep saying it. Maybe she didn’t know what else to say, either.

…

My mother was waiting for me when I got off work that night. Which meant Aaron wasn’t. His car wasn’t there. He’d probably been scared off by her suburban-mom minivan. She was really racking up reasons for me to be pissed off at her. I passed her, determined to walk home alone. Dealing with Cassie’s mom had been enough mother for one night.

She drove up next to me and rolled down the window. “Ignoring me is not going to make this go away.”

She had a point, but I didn’t care. “I can’t believe you told Connor.” I didn’t say what else I wanted to say, which was that in telling him, she had taken away the one place I could go where I could act normal, like nothing was wrong. Even Aaron knew I had been arrested. As good as I felt when I was with him, I couldn’t pretend.

“I wish we could talk,” she said.

I wondered if we ever had. Wasn’t that why she had gotten me AJ, so I would have someone to talk to, even if that someone was a bird?

I kept walking while she drove next to me at a crawl. “What did you expect me to do?” she asked, and I could hear tears in her voice. But at least I didn’t have to look at her.

I lit a cigarette.

“Put that out,” she said, the tears subsiding under her stern parental voice.

“Why are you doing this to me?” I asked.

“Amy, I just want to help you. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

“You can’t, okay? You can’t.” It was mean, but it was also true.

I heard her tears coming back. “Amy, I’m your mother,” she said, putting the car into park. “I love you.”