Amy Chelsea Stacie Dee (9 page)

He grabs another beer off the counter, pops it open with his keychain, and hands it to me. “If you drop this one, too, you have to pay.”

I still can't think of what to say.

“Just kidding. Girls never pay.” He pulls a five-dollar bill out of his wallet and stuffs it in a jar on the counter, then grabs a beer for himself. As he pops it open, he grins down at me. “That's okay; it's the usual response I get from girls. What are you talking about, Vinnie? Stop talking, Vinnie.”

“I . . .”

“But I never stop talking. Kind of like your coz over there.”

A laugh spills out of me. I cover my eyes with my hand. Vinnie is trying to be nice to me. I know that. He's Mini Vinnie, the little guy with the
figurative
big mouth, the guy who was always cracking jokes and being totally random. It's just Mini Vinnie.

“So, seen any good movies lately?”

I take my hand down.
Mini Vinnie. Mini Vinnie.
“No,” I say.

“Me neither. Read any good books?”

“Um . . .”

“Me neither. I hate reading.”

“I'm going to go to the library soon,” I say. “I used to go to the library.”

“Just kidding—I love the library. I read lots of books. Well, comic books. They're called graphic novels now, did you know that? I don't know what you know since you've been, like, in a cave for six years.”

“It wasn't a cave,” I say. “It was a . . .”—
a cabin
—“. . . a house.”

“Oh, well, you should read some graphic novels. Get you started up again. Pictures. Easy.”

“I'll do that,” I say.

“I could let you borrow some. You know, if you don't want to go to the library. They have a bad selection there anyway.”

“Okay,” I say. “Thanks.”

Lee walks over with the other two girls. “Come on, Vinnie, do you ever stop talking?”

“Said the pot.”

“Ha ha.”

“He's not bothering me,” I say. But even so, I'm ready to step away, to not be standing next to someone so big.

Lee grabs my arm and pulls me with them. She pulls me all the way into the living room, leaving Vinnie behind. “Sorry about that,” she yells over the music. She goes over to the stereo and turns down the volume, then comes back to me. “I hope he wasn't coming on too strong.”

“No, it's all right,” I say. The music pulses, but it's not so bad now. It's contained.

“This is Kara”—she points to the girl with the pumpkins, who has short, curly red hair—“and this is Christina.” Christina
is skinny with brown hair kind of like how mine would be if it were long. She's wearing jeans and a white tank top with the words
cool beats
written in red. “Guys, this is Amy.”

“Hey,” Kara says. She smiles, but it's uncertain. She lifts her hand like she's going to hold it out to shake, and then she leans forward like maybe she's going to hug me, but then she rocks back on her heels.

“Hey,” Christina says.

We're all silent. Even Lee is silent.

I don't know what to do, so I take my first sip of beer ever. It's disgusting, but I swallow. I feel like wiping my mouth, but I don't.

“Remember the science fair?” Kara blurts.

My mind spins. Science fair. Science fair.

Kara talks fast, like she has to finish the sentence before a bell. “It was you and me and Rowan Michaels, and Mr. Fisher stuck us in a group together, and we had to extract DNA from a banana, only it didn't work, and then Rowan's dad helped us write it up so it looked like it worked, but it was all a lie. And we got an A, which was my first A in a science class ever.”

It comes rushing back to me. Kara was this girl who was sort of cool, and she didn't want to be stuck with me, and I didn't want to be stuck with her, and it was all a disaster. But it's one thing we have in common. By bringing it up, it's like she's thrown me a rope, and I grab it.

“Yeah,” I say. “It was a cool project.”

“It was terrible!” Kara says. She turns to the others. “We
couldn't get along at all. Remember how we got in a fight over which banana to use? You wanted one with spots, but I
had
to have the one that was perfect.”

Lee and Christina both laugh at this.

I laugh too. But the truth is, I don't remember that part.

“I moved here in eighth grade,” Christina says. “So I guess we've never met before.”

“We're glad you're back,” Kara says, almost cutting Christina off. “The whole town is glad. I remember looking for you.”

“
You
did?” I ask.

“Of course she did,” Lee says. “We did that thing where everyone walks together and they cover a whole area. Everyone at school was there.”

That's what people do when they're looking for a body, I think. We're all thinking it.

“It means a lot,” I say. “I never knew what was going on. I figured my family would look, but . . .” But there was never any chance of them finding us. Even that first week, when I kept telling Kyle that someone would find us, I never really believed it. It was like my parents and the whole town of Grey Wood and the whole ten years of my life were erased the moment we pulled up to the cabin. But none of it was ever gone at all. While I was there, Lee and Kara were becoming friends, and Christina moved to town, and Mini Vinnie grew into a huge hulk of a man, and my brother grew up, and my dad moved to Colorado and got fat and remarried with stepchildren. People just like the people here at this house had parties just like this
one and went to school and graduated and went to college and got jobs and had lives and children, and I didn't even know it was all out here. I couldn't contemplate any world beyond our cabin and the river.

I miss them. I see Stacie's face. Her blue eyes stare at me. She is calm for one second. One second that turns into hours. She has stopped moving as if frozen in the frame of the DVR, her arms raised, her mouth open. She was calm even in her rage, just for that one second.

“Chel!”

“Chel!”

They're calling for me. Not in my memory, but now. Somewhere out there, they're calling for me. They don't understand why I had to leave. They ask for me every night.

“Daddy, where's Chel?”

“When is Chel coming back?”

“Daddy, where's Chel?”

“Daddy?”

I realize I'm still standing in the living room of this boy Ben's house, and my hand is over my face, and there are people around me. Slowly, I remove my hand.

Kara has moved next to Lee, and I can't see Christina. Marco is on the other side of Lee, and behind him, Mini Vinnie is staring at me.

My beer is on the ground. The bottle didn't break, but liquid spreads out onto the carpet. The music is still playing, now fast and urgent. I walk toward the door. One foot in front of another, until I'm through it. I walk between two boys who are
sitting on the steps smoking. A weird sweet smell washes over me. I walk faster, until I'm on the sidewalk. I look both ways.

But there is nowhere I can go. They live in a world I can't get to.

“Amy? Or . . . Chelsea?” Lee comes up behind me.

“I'm all right,” I say. In the back of my mind, I realize that she called me Chelsea and that something about that is wrong. Or is it wrong that she first called me Amy?

“I'm sorry,” she says. “I told them not to bring it up, but I guess there was no way . . .” She sits down next to me on the curb. I never even realized that I was sitting.

“We knew people would look, but we didn't think anyone would find us,” I say.

“Oh,” Lee says.

“I'm sorry about the beer. Two beers.”

“Nobody cares about the beer.”

“Sometimes I go back. You know, in my mind. And it's like for a minute I'm really there and not here.” I think I'm all right now. I can see the street in front of me. Two girls are heading toward us, toward the house. One of them waves at Lee.

Lee waves back.

They look at me, then at each other, and then walk faster.

“I shouldn't have pushed you,” she says. “I just thought you might want to get out, do something normal. Because I guess you couldn't go to parties, and maybe you wanted to.”

“I couldn't really want anything,” I say.

“Oh.” Lee is crying. She's trying to hide it, but she wipes a tear away with one hand.

“I don't know what I'm supposed to want—what Amy is supposed to want. I know I don't want to be locked in my room, though.” I put my arm around her. “Thank you for making me come out.” A tear rolls down my face, too. I may not be ready for this, but I know I don't want to be locked up. She was right about that. I never want to be locked up again.

“Really?” She wipes her face again. “I thought I'd just made things worse.”

“Really,” I say. “What happens, going back there, it would happen whether I was here or alone in my room.”

“I guess you're working with that therapist lady,” Lee says.

“Yeah.” Actually, we haven't even gotten there. Dr. Kayla is still trying to get me to tell her what happened to me and where Dee is. We can't get to her actually helping me until she finds that out, and I'm never going to tell her. I'm never going to tell anyone, even if it means that I can never forget, that I have to live with the memories my whole life. I don't want to forget anyway. I want to remember them, every minute of every day.

Dee would have loved to go to a party. Lee is right about that, too.

“Let's go back in,” I say.

Lee eyes me sideways. “Are you sure?”

“I won't try to have another beer,” I say. I guess Dee probably would have liked to try drinking, but that part of being a teenager will have to wait. Just being in a room with other people is enough weirdness for one night.

“If you want to leave, just say it,” she says. “Or give me a look. I can see these people any time.”

“Okay,” I say. We stand up and turn back to the house, and Mini Vinnie is sticking his head out the door. He waves at us and grins big. “Okay,” I say again. And I lead the way back through the two smokers into the house.

I END UP
with Vinnie's phone number, scrawled on a piece of paper towel. He said he'd show me his comic books. Which is something that maybe I would have liked back when I was ten, but it's all right with me. I don't mind doing kid stuff, especially if it's going to be with a boy; kid stuff is a lot better.

I rub my hand over the paper towel as we drive home.

“I hope he didn't bother you,” Lee says.

“No, I like him,” I say. “He treated me like I was normal. I mean, everyone was trying to avoid it, but he just brought it up straight out. Like, maybe you don't know what comic books are because you lived in a cave.” I smile at the memory.

“Oh my god,” Lee says. And then she starts talking. She tells me about how the guy Ben who lives in the house used to date a girl named Felicia who wasn't there. “. . . so Felicia started going out with this
old
guy. His name is
Gordon
and
he goes to college, but he's old to even be in college. Like, he must be
twenty-five
or something. And she brought him to the
prom
with her, and Ben was there with Holly but they're just friends, and he got
wasted
and that's why the whole wall on the side with the sliding door looks like it got attacked by a coyote or a pack of wild geese or something.”

“You mean he scratched up the wall?” I ask.

“I guess. And now Felicia is texting him again. But she's
still
going out with this old guy.”

I try to think of something to say, but I can't.

“And he's not even cute,” Lee finishes as she parks a block away from my house, far enough so that hopefully we won't wake my parents. “I mean, at least Ben is cute, right?”

“Yeah,” I say, even though Ben is far from
muy guapo
, in my opinion. Maybe it's the fact that he looks like he doesn't shower. Maybe if he cleaned up, he'd be all right. I wonder if I'm supposed to think Ben is cute. Is that something all girls are supposed to know?

“Remember, I was never here,” Lee says. “If Aunt Patty finds out I took you to a party . . .” She runs a finger across her neck dramatically.

I smile and put the paper towel in my pocket. “You were never here,” I say.

She watches me while I walk the block back to my house, and I don't realize that I'm only taking shallow tiny breaths until I'm through the window, and I take a deep breath in, and the breath doesn't really catch. The room is
dark, covered in shadows. The new twin bed sits in the same spot my twin bed used to sit in, before. And all of a sudden there we are, nine-year-old Amy and eleven-year-old Dee. I'm on the twin and she's on the trundle, the extra mattress that rolled beneath it. We're supposed to be asleep, but of course, we aren't. We're eating Red Vines that we bought at the convenience store on our way home from school. We're giggling as we eat them, because it's illicit. We're getting away with something.

I blink and shake my head, and the scene disappears. I'm looking at the new bed again, and I'm alone in the room. I don't turn the light on, but I look at myself in the full-length mirror that's hanging on the closet door. In my skirt, with my new haircut and my makeup, I don't look like either Amy or Chelsea. I look like a completely new person. This is the person who met Lee's friends tonight, who got Vinnie's phone number and took her very first sip of beer. Maybe this is the person I'm supposed to be now, I think. Maybe I should just be this person, this new Amy. Maybe this Amy is the person I was supposed to be, who I would have become if the past six years had never happened. If I could forget, then it would be easy. But how can I be the girl who drinks beer and cares about parties and friends and boys when I know what it's like to be a mother? I know what it's like to love someone more than anyone could ever love their parents or their friends or a boy. But I can't know that, I think. I
have
to be Amy. It will be better for them if I pretend like they don't even exist.

I sit down on the bed and close my eyes. “There was an old lion who was missing half of his hair,” I whisper. Lola liked this one the best. “This was no ordinary lion that lived in Africa, but this was the kind of lion that lived by the river. He liked to eat crawdads and play with the snail shells . . .” I lie down. Maybe I can be this new Amy on the outside, but on the inside, when it's dark out and no one else is awake, I can still be myself, and I can still remember.

•   •   •

My dad is yelling at someone. I wake up in the clothes I was wearing last night.

“Get out of here!” my dad yells.

I change my clothes in a flash and wipe my face with an old T-shirt to get the rest of the makeup off.

“I'm calling the police,” my dad says. “This is trespass!”

He must be yelling at reporters. They've been calling us, and now they've stopped being polite. I knew it was going to happen someday, but I still don't like it. I don't like to hear my dad yell.

The door slams. My dad is still yelling, but now he's yelling at my mom. I can't understand the words, though. I can't stand this. I have to make him stop.

“Dad,” I say, coming out of my room.

“. . . as if she's not a person, as if she's something to gawk at,” he rants. It's not just my mom in the living room. Jay is there, too. He's sitting in his usual spot on the couch with his arms crossed, as if the whole speech is directed at him.

My mom sighs as I come in. “We're sorry we woke you,” she says.

Jay rolls his eyes.

“I'm sorry about the reporters,” I say to him.

My dad shakes his head and turns away.

“They'll forget about me pretty soon.”

“Not until they find Dee,” Jay says.

“Jay!” My mom's face goes crimson.

I don't think he's right. I think that they ended up forgetting about both of us after a while. My parents may not have forgotten, but the reporters did. Once some time goes by, they'll stop wondering what happened to Dee. I just have to let time go by.

“You could stop all of this,” Jay says. “If you just tell them.”

“Jay, that is
enough
,” Mom says.

Jay looks down.

Dad turns back around to face me. I can see in his eyes that he agrees with Jay. If I would just tell them, things would be better. He thinks that Dee is dead, and if I tell him, then he'll be able to go back to Colorado. But that's not fair. Maybe he thinks that if I'm alive, so is Dee, and he really wants to save her. Maybe he wants to stay here with us, but he also wants to go home. I know how that feels because I feel exactly the same way.

I know Jay wants him to stay and never go back to Colorado. He still won't say much to Dad, but that's because he's hurting. If he didn't want Dad to stay, then none of this would
hurt so much. But me telling the truth won't make Dad stay, and even if it could, I wouldn't. Because nobody matters as much as Barbie and Lola.

I go back to my room, and I stay there until Monday, when it's time for Dr. Kayla.

She asks me about my childhood, about how Amy became best friends with Dee. I tell her that Dee acted young for her age, and I acted old. I tell her about how we used to go to the river, and how we used to have slumber parties, and how we used to sneak candy into my room at night.

“Candy was the best thing,” I say. “Because our moms hardly ever let us have it. And it was our secret.”

“What kind of candy did you like?” Dr. Kayla asks.

“Well, it's very bad for you,” I say. “We shouldn't have eaten it.”

“But it was something fun you did together,” she says.

We couldn't do it anymore, after. I shake my head.

Dr. Kayla pulls out a package of Red Vines from a drawer in her desk and holds it out. “Would you like some?” she asks.

My mom must have told her I like Red Vines. I know I didn't tell her.

“No, it's bad for me,” I say. I put my hand over my face.

Dr. Kayla doesn't seem to notice when I do this. “Why do you say that?” she asks.

“It's bad,” I whisper.

“Is that something this man told you?”

If I keep my hand over my face, maybe she will stop asking
me questions. And now I'm thinking about ice cream. Chocolate ice cream and gummy bears and pretzels and muffins and Froot Loops. It's bad of me to think about these things. Bad people eat like this. They poison themselves.

“It's all right to have a treat once in a while,” Dr. Kayla says.

“I know that,” I say. “I ate some ice cream. At the mall.”

“How did that make you feel?” she asks.

I take my hand away from my face, but I keep my eyes closed. I remember the taste of the chocolate ice cream that Lee bought for me. “It was good,” I say. I open my eyes. Dr. Kayla is smiling.

I take a Red Vine, but I don't eat it. Red Vines were Dee's favorite, and I'm not ready for that yet.

•   •   •

The police are waiting outside with my parents; it's a man and a woman. The cops have a huddled talk with Dr. Kayla, and my mom puts her arm around me, and I stand there and watch them, and then they come over to me.

“Amy, would it be okay if we ask you a few questions?” the woman cop asks. I think she's the same cop who came to see me that first night. She has short blond hair and a large, flat nose. Her eyes are sad, and I know she's only doing her job. The last time she asked me questions, when I didn't answer, she went away.

“Yes,” I say. “It's all right,” I tell my mom.

We go back into Dr. Kayla's office. I sit in my usual chair in front of her desk, and Dr. Kayla stands by the door, trying
to look as if she's not there. For once, I'm glad she is. She's not going to let them push too far.

“I know what you want me to tell you,” I say. “But I can't.” It's the first time I've been honest with them, admitted that I know the answers.

“This man has told you that he has the power,” says the lady cop, “but it isn't true. You have the power now. Once you tell us where your cousin is, we can go find her, and we can take this man away to jail.”

I have never told them that it was a man. All they know is what some random person saw, far down the riverbank.

“We are very experienced in bringing dangerous people into custody,” the man says. “We won't let him hurt Dee.”

“I know you would try,” I say. I stare at them. I am going to sit here and stare until they give up and go away. But the woman won't just let me do that.

“Amy,” she says. She sits down next to me in the other chair in front of Dr. Kayla's desk. “We know that you love your cousin. We know that's why you're doing this.” She reaches out and takes my hand. She has brown eyes. There is a doll that she looks like, but I can't place the name. I don't understand how I could have forgotten. I can see the doll as if she's right in front of my eyes. And that makes me like this woman more. She could be like me.

“You don't know what I know,” I say.

“That's why we're asking you these questions,” the woman says. “We want to understand. Amy, it's been more than two
weeks since you came home. Every day that passes makes it harder for us to find her.”

•   •   •

In the forest, there was a tree. There were lots of trees, of course, but there was this one tree that was bigger than the other ones around it. I used to tell Lola and Barbie that the tree was magic, that there were fairies, and that was why there were mushrooms on it. The fairies lived in the mushrooms. Lola would always ask me, if there were really fairies, why couldn't we see them? I would say that fairies can make themselves invisible, and then I would put my hand over my face, and I would say, you can't see me, I must be a fairy. And then she would laugh and say that I was not a fairy, I was just putting a hand over my face. But one night, I saw her doing it. She put her hand over her face and then Barbie said, a fairy! And then Barbie put her hand over her face, and Lola pretended that she couldn't see her.

They knew it was just a game, but they also knew it was magic.

•   •   •

“That's enough for one day,” Dr. Kayla says. I hear the cops shuffling around and the door opening and closing, and I know that Dr. Kayla is still there. I can feel her breathing.

“You can take your hand away. It's just me,” she says.

I do it, but I look down at my lap. When the police look at me, they see either a crazy person or a monster. They see a person who would let her own cousin die instead of telling
them what they need to know. It's right for them to see me that way because there is part of me that is a monster. And there is part of me that is crazy, because when you get beat up by a big man and you listen to your cousin being raped, and you disappear into the woods for six years, that is what happens. But there is another part of me that's not crazy, that's doing what's right for Stacie and for Barbie and Lola. They will not convince me that what I'm doing now is wrong.