Pretty Amy (5 page)

“We didn’t—” I began.

“We,”
my mother interrupted. “What about
you
, Amy? You can’t hide behind your friends anymore.”

“I—I’m not,” I stammered.

Her eyes were wide, waiting.

“We…” I paused. “I…” The words came out in trickles. “It wasn’t our fault…”

“Really.” My mother chuckled angrily. “Whose fault was it?” She cocked her head to the side, waiting for my answer.

Whatever thought I had of telling her the truth was squashed down—driven into the back of my throat by her cruel laugh. She didn’t want to hear what had really happened.

She never wanted to.

“I don’t know,” I said again.

“Well, the police don’t agree,” she said, going at her nails like they were corn on the cob.

“The police are idiots,” I mumbled.

“And what does that make you?” She squinted.

I had no answer. I hated to admit it, but she was right. As much as I’d whined about my life before, it was about to
really
suck now.

“I’m sorry,” I said, yet again. I think it was the most I’d ever said it. Maybe I was going for the Guinness World Record.

“This is the worst thing you’ve ever done.” She started to cry. “You can deny it as much as you want, but it doesn’t change the fact that you have been arrested.” When she said
arrested
she started crying even harder, as if the words
you
and
arrested
coming out of her mouth in the same sentence made it all the more real to her.

It made it all the more real to me. I couldn’t deny it anymore. The sun was up and I was still arrested. Nothing had changed—which meant everything had changed.

“We’re through paying for your mistakes,” she said.

Apparently overnight my mother had become versed in the tough-love theory of child rearing. I could picture her under the covers with a flashlight, my dad sleeping next to her, reading those pamphlets she had gotten when they first suspected, and then kept in her nightstand drawer:
Teen Drug Use: 50 Warning Signs—Suggestions for Parents of Difficult Teens.
I saw her reading and rereading and, knowing her, using a highlighter to figure out what they were supposed to do with me. Reading through the prescribed lists:
Signs of drug use
.
Signs of rebellion
.
Signs that your teen is the Antichrist.

“You’d better start applying for a job today,” she said.

I had been hoping to lock myself in my room and crawl into bed, AJ on my pillow.

“I mean it, Amy,” she said, like she knew what I was thinking.

“Where am I supposed to find a job?”

“I honestly don’t care,” she said, walking out of the kitchen, the bottom of her robe trailing behind her. “Just make sure it’s legal this time.”

I guess that was all the help I was getting.

Five

My mother gave me back my wallet but kept my phone.

“Now I know what you really needed this for,” she said as she put it in the cabinet on a high shelf above the desk in the kitchen, like I was a little girl and having something up that high would keep it out of my reach.

I was grounded from my phone, from Cassie and Lila, and from breathing without asking first. I had to bring her my dress. She said she was going to take it back to the store, that she wouldn’t tolerate paying for something I hadn’t even used.

As I walked toward Main Street, I couldn’t help but smirk when I thought about how she was going to explain to the cashier how this dress that had never been worn had fingerprint ink all over it.

I stopped in at Gas-N-Go to buy cigarettes and filled out an application, one of those that come in a pack of fifty, white, light blue, and red, that asks when your earliest possible start date is. Then it asks you to list your job experience, your references, and your special skills. For that one I wrote,
You tell me
. Like Cassie would have.

My mother always called Cassie a hopeless delinquent. I guess that’s what I was now.

After I filled it out, I followed a sign that said I
NTERVIEWS
into the break room.

It was a cardboard box sort of room, with a vending machine that hummed and gurgled like an old refrigerator and a long cafeteria table ringed by orange plastic chairs.

A man I couldn’t help thinking looked like one of the cops who had arrested us sat in one of the chairs. He gestured for me to sit.

I was so tired that for a moment, I thought I was back in the police station. Until I looked down and saw the job application in my hand, my name at the top.

He was insanely sweaty and had to wipe his hand on his pants before he took mine, which he shook in a way that reminded me of an empty sock.

“Name’s Mancini. You get hired, you’ll be required to call me Mr. Mancini.” His hands were cut up and ruddy like he treated them every night to a massage with a meat grinder.

It made me look at my own hands. The fingernails were still painted the same light blue as my dress. I sat on them.

“Job experience?” he asked.

“I’ve done some babysitting,” I said.

He looked at me skeptically. We both knew that babysitting had given me experience in little more than eating other people’s food.

“Up to four kids at once,” I said, even though it was a lie.

I decided to leave out that I spent most of my time raiding the mother’s bathroom cabinet for makeup. I’d take her lipstick, daring pinks like Fuchsia Frenzy or Hot Salmon, and picture her getting ready for a night out, searching in every cabinet and drawer and then forcing her doting husband to go to the grocery store to buy more.

I liked picturing someone having a doting husband.

“You ever work a cash register?”

“Sure,” I said. I hadn’t, but how hard could it be?

“Why should I hire you?” he asked, in the same kind of voice my mom used when she didn’t believe something I told her. The voice she used all the time.

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.