Pretty Amy (31 page)

“I think I’ll call you Brat,” she said, like I was a puppy she had just been given.

“Well, I’d better be going,” Dick Simon said, standing. Then he pulled up his pants and adjusted himself.

I stood, too, thanking whomever I had to thank for getting me the hell out of there before Stubby had a chance to give me another nickname. Maybe there
was
something to all that Jesus stuff.

“Not you,” Stubby said, grabbing for me.

“My parents would never allow this,” I said, looking at Dick Simon with all the fear I had been attempting to hide during the car ride.
Feeling
all the fear I had been attempting to hide during the car ride. Though I knew they had to be behind it all. “And AJ—he’s still in the car,” I said, grasping at any excuse to leave.

“Don’t worry,” Dick said. “I’ll take AJ back home—I mean, to Connor’s for you.”

Home was now Connor’s. I was now here. Now totally sucked.

Dick crossed the room and waved a little wave like his hand was working a paper-bag puppet.

Then he was gone.

“Now we can get to know each other a little better.” Stubby smiled, her mouth as wide and jagged as a jack-o’-lantern.

She took me on a tour of the facilities, starting with her cell. Well, really, she showed me her toilet, which was in the middle of her cell. Taking me by the hair and shoving my face into it, asking me if I’d ever been this close to shit.

Which I didn’t answer, because what I had learned in the time I had already spent with Stubby was that if she wanted an answer from you, you would know it.

“Well, I sleep in it every night,” she said, shaking my head harder.

I couldn’t believe it, but I was actually counting the seconds until I saw Dick Simon again.

She was allowed to treat me this way. Apparently, along with this being my parents’ idea, they had also given permission. They had signed some release that parents who are at the end of their rope sign that allows their misbehaving child to be taught a lesson by a criminal.

My mom was always looking out for me.

Then Stubby went through in more gory detail basically everything Dick Simon had already told me about being locked up. The whole time she talked, she smoked cigarette after cigarette.

I had asked her for one, and when I did she looked at me and smiled a smile that made her face look like the bunched-up end of a sausage. “What will you give me for it?”

It was what the bartender at Hully’s had asked. I still didn’t have an answer. I looked down at myself, thinking about what I could give her. My wet pajama pants stuck to my legs.

“That’s the way we work things around here,” she said, raising her eyebrows.

I let her voice become a low murmur and tried to inhale as much secondhand smoke as I possibly could. I focused on the soft sizzle of paper and tobacco burning. I could see her mouth moving, but I just watched the smoke going in and going out, going in and going out, going in and going out.

I focused on the smoke, because if I had let myself listen to what she was telling me, to really think about what she was saying, about the fact that I was sitting there, next to her, on her bed, in her cell, and that as she inched ever closer to me, the bed groaning and squeaking like a dying pig, I would have finally started to cry and I think that would have really put her over the edge.

My parents were willing to do anything to keep me out of this place. Why wasn’t I?

…

Hours later, back in the car with Dick, I was still voluntarily heterosexual. Thankfully, my mother hadn’t added a line item on the release form allowing Stubby to violate me. Stubby had left me with a warning that if she ever saw me again, she would be the last person who ever saw me.

Dick dropped me off in front of Connor’s apartment. AJ was waiting inside for me, along with a hot bath and dinner. As badly as I wanted all of that, I did
not
want my parents to know that Stubby had gotten to me. And if Connor saw me, there would be no way I could hide what I was feeling from him or from them. There was no way I could keep pretending that I was still strong enough to say no to everything they wanted.

I went to Lollipop Farm. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do once I got there, but it was one of the only other places I could think of where I was still welcome. At least the dogs couldn’t tell me if I wasn’t.

Annie wasn’t there. It was closed and dark and I heard the troublesome dogs howling from their yard in the back. The gate wasn’t locked. I guess Annie figured that if someone wanted to come in and go to the effort of stealing a dog, they would want to take care of it, too.

I let myself in the gate and they went crazy, barking, wanting whatever I could give them. I grabbed some treats from the supply shed and distributed them down the line, stopping to pet that ice-eyed Husky on the head. She pushed into my hand, as if she were touching me back, saying thank you for giving her the smallest kindness.

I got that. I guess kindness was hard to come by, especially when you were stuck in a cage, or about to be.

I let myself in and sat with her, petting her, just petting her, as the sky went from gray to black, the stars glittery specks.

I remembered learning in Biology that pain was the only thing that could counteract fear. Like, if an ax murderer were chasing you, you wouldn’t feel afraid once his ax sliced into you. The excruciating pain would cover up your trembling fear, or maybe it was the other way around. I guess it didn’t really matter. I wasn’t ready to give in to fear yet, so instead of thinking about my day with Stubby, I thought about Cassie.

If she had gotten pregnant before all of this happened, I would have been standing there with her, finding out at the same moment she did. Huddling with her and Lila in whatever was the closest public bathroom to the closest drug store where we’d bought the pregnancy test. The three of us, staring at the plastic stick and willing it to translate to negative in urine hieroglyphics—one vertical blue strip, a minus sign, an empty circle.

But now I was finding out from Ruthie Jensen, and Lila was gone and everything was different and wrong and terrible. Everything was just like it had been freshman year.

Everything was nothing.

Thirty-three

Finding myself in a cage the following morning, I felt a rush of raw panic in my first moments of waking up, until the Husky that was sleeping next to me started barking and licking my face.

“Look who’s awake.” Connor was watching me on the outside of the bars, standing with his arms crossed.

“What are you doing here?” I sat up and looked at him. Anything was better than the smell coming off the cement floor I was sleeping on. It hadn’t been mopped in a while.

“Right back at ya,” he said.

“What time is it?” I croaked.

“Why, are you late for something?”

I thought about it and honestly didn’t know. I was sure I was supposed to see someone or do something. I shrugged.

“You’re burning your bridges, Amy,” he said. It sounded like something my mother would say—he’d probably already talked to her that morning.

“What are you doing here?” I repeated.

“Why didn’t you come home last night?” he asked, grabbing the bars. I couldn’t help thinking that he resembled an orangutan.

“You lied to me,” I said. “You all lied to me.”

“Oh, please,” he said, reminding me that the things I had done were worse.

“How did you find me?”

“Your mother called. I guess the owner called her,” Connor said.

Annie had called my mother to tell her I was asleep in one of her dog cages; that must have been a great conversation. But if Annie had called my mother, why wasn’t my mother standing in front of me?

“Am I in trouble?” Had she really sent Connor, rather than have to face me herself?

“Not with Annie,” Connor said, opening the cage to let me out.

I felt guilt fill my empty stomach. I’d had nowhere to go, but I probably shouldn’t have broken into Lollipop Farm. I probably shouldn’t have made this yet another place I would no longer be welcome, regardless of what had happened to me the day before.

“Is AJ okay?” I asked. I’d left him
again
. He was all alone in his cage, probably squawking for someone to feed him.

I wondered if, after receiving the call from Annie, my parents had seen me that way. And, in having still left me in Connor’s care, how fed up they must have truly been to be able to ignore those feelings.

“Cayla’s taking care of him,” he said. “Come on, it’s time to go to work.” He handed me a Gas-N-Go polo to put over my pajamas. Once again, he had neglected to bring me pants.

On our way out, I stopped in at Annie’s office to apologize. I felt like one of the troublesome dogs, looking down, ready to be scolded.

Annie watched me with her recovering-addict eyes and told me she understood, that she had been there, maybe thinking I would offer the kindness she was offering to some other utter failure someday. It was enough to make me want to lock myself back in that cage.

…

I stood behind the counter at Gas-N-Go crunching on barbecue potato chips and drinking lime Gatorade. Trying to lose myself in the chew, chew, chew.

In salty sweetness. In tart, toxic green.

Connor was in the back doing inventory,
again
. I knew he was avoiding me. I could tell he felt guilty for his part in sending me to Stubby’s cell for the day, even if he was just a pawn in my mother’s and Dick Simon’s game. Even if the things I had done really were worse.

The Save Amy Brain Trust had succeeded. I was officially scared. But was that enough reason to finally do what they wanted?

The bell above the door rang. I wiped my barbecue-powdered hands on my pajama pants, expecting to find a nameless, faceless Gas-N-Go customer, someone I could mindlessly serve and then send on his or her way.

Instead, I found Aaron, his skateboard under one arm.

“No,” I said, coming around to the front of the counter. “Get out.” I thought about what scared women say in movies to their assailants—
Get out
or I’ll call the police
—but I was not in the mood for the police.

I’d had enough of the police.

“Please,” he said. He put his hands in front of him like he was trying to show me he wasn’t going to hurt me. It was too late for that.

I shook my head hard, shut my mouth tight. I just wanted him to leave.

It was bad enough I had to think about what he had done without him standing in front of me with his skateboard and chalk-pastel-stained hands and terracotta ponytail and crooked tooth to remind me that I had actually liked him.

That I had actually believed he liked me.

“I have to talk to you,” he said.

I looked at him. I couldn’t tell if he was dragging it out because he was nervous or because he wasn’t really sure what he was going to say yet. Maybe he thought that when I saw him I would run from behind the counter and jump into his arms, apologizing and telling him I would do whatever he wanted, whatever he needed.

I wished I could do that. It would have made everything so much easier. It would have been nice to have someone’s arms to jump into.

“It was Brian’s idea to do that to you guys on prom night,” he said.

“I don’t believe you.” I shook my head again. Maybe he was telling the truth. I didn’t know, but I also didn’t care. Not anymore.

He stared at my pajama pants. I moved back behind the counter before he could ask me about them. Before he realized that what he had done to me was not even the worst thing that had happened in the last forty-eight hours.

“It was,” he said. “I didn’t even know you then.”

“Why would he do that to Lila?” I said, unsure why I was even asking. Brian had left with Lila. There was no way he would have stood her up on prom night if he was willing to leave his whole life behind for her.

“I don’t know,” he said. “But that’s the truth.” He dug into his pocket for a cigarette and put it behind his ear.

“I don’t care,” I said. What had happened on prom night was nothing compared to everything else he had done. It was nothing compared to everything else that had happened. Aaron standing me up was one of the better things that had happened that summer.

“I did actually like you,” he said, propping his skateboard against his leg and leaning on the counter. Putting his hands on it like he might have put his hands on me, if it had been weeks ago and dark and we were in his father’s car. “Really,” he said, making his eyes go soft, like they would just before he leaned in to kiss me.

I thought about that age-old story where the main character’s friends bet him to go on a date with the dorky, ugly girl, and he realizes she’s not so bad. I didn’t want to be that girl.

Maybe it meant I wasn’t.

“I’m still not doing what you want,” I said.