Pretty Amy (33 page)

Thirty-four

I woke up to find AJ’s cage next to me on my father’s stool, his little yellow body watching over me like a sentry. I put my hand out and held it. The metal felt cool.

I turned and saw my mother on a stool on the other side, sitting in the dark. She was staring out the window and didn’t notice I had woken up. I might have gotten away with closing my eyes again and falling back asleep, falling back into the nothingness of whatever my father had given me, but AJ started repeating,
Pretty Amy, pretty Amy, pretty Amy.
Even more evidence, considering how I must have looked, that AJ just said whatever I’d trained him to.

“Don’t try to talk,” my mother said, wheeling herself over. I was glad to be given the reprieve. There was really nothing to say anyway.

We had been in this position before, any number of times, when my father had to fix something that had gone wrong in my mouth, but until that moment, I had forgotten she had been the one to watch over me afterward to make sure I was all right.

I tried to sit up.

“Take it easy,” she whispered. “Just rest.”

I closed my eyes, because I was tired and because it was hard to look at her. I might have been able to say I was sorry to my father, but there was more I had to say to her, and I wasn’t ready to say it yet.

“How did this happen?” she asked, though having told me not to talk, I didn’t think she expected an answer. She might have been talking to herself, or she might have been talking to AJ. Wondering how things could have changed so much since the day she’d brought him home for me when I was eight.

When I was so happy to have a pet, so deliriously happy to have something to love, that I had sung,
I love you, Mommy
, over and over again as I danced around her. Perhaps she was commiserating with AJ, wondering how after that day, the three of us could have ended up here, like this.

She touched my forehead, petting it lightly like I was a cat in her lap. It was the first time she had touched me since the arrest, the first time she had wanted to and the first time I had let her. I tried not to think about how natural it felt. How easily I could fall back into just being her little girl.

“Here,” she said, putting three pills into my hand. “They’ll help you sleep.”

I took them from her and gobbled them up like candy, closing my eyes again.

“What are you so afraid of?” she asked. A question she had never asked me when I could respond, probably because
she
was too afraid to hear the answer.

I guess to her it looked like I was more scared to be friendless than to be locked away.

That was true, but I had always been locked away; a confinement of caring so very much about what other people thought of me, the bars around me made up of my own perceived inadequacies. Lila and Cassie had made me not have to think about any of those thoughts.

Without them, I was locked up again, anyway, whether I signed the paper or not.

I heard the pill bottle shake as my mother stood. She handed me my cell phone. “You should check your messages,” she said.

I turned on my phone, that familiar buzz and tinkle in my hand. I had messages. My mom had obviously checked them.

“I’ll leave AJ here for you,” she said as she locked the office door behind her.

It had been the first time in weeks that she hadn’t yelled at me, that we hadn’t started fighting, and I couldn’t help thinking that maybe it was because I couldn’t yell back.

I put the phone to my ear. Five voice mails. Was it Lila saying good-bye? Cassie saying she had something important to tell me? Was it Aaron having gotten my cell number in one last attempt to try to convince me to do what he wanted?

No. It was Joe.

All of them were Joe: that first night on my way home from work, the day I was sitting on my porch in my suit smoking and he hadn’t stopped, the night I was afraid he would see me in the car with Aaron, the day of my front-porch freak-out, and finally, the morning of graduation.

The first message said he was waiting under the porch if I wanted to meet. Each one repeated that, wondering if I was even getting his messages, wondering if I really did just want to be left alone. Until the last message, saying he wouldn’t bother me anymore. That was why he had been so angry when I saw him on graduation night. He’d thought I didn’t need him. That even as crappy as things had become, I was still choosing my new life over my old.

I pictured him leaving the messages, the wooden slats above him letting in lines of sunlight or porch light, the smell of wet earth, the only safe place he could talk to me, the only safe place I might be able to talk to him.

I put the phone in my lap. The only thing stopping my tears were the pills taking over.

Joe.

Thirty-five

I woke again to find Daniel, Connor, Dick, my mother, and my father standing over me. The light was on, and their heads were big, floating above me like a mobile made of beach balls. They looked at me like a newborn they were regarding through glass.

AJ’s cage still sat on the stool next to me. He looked at me and tweeted,
Good morning
, his yellow feathers bright in the fluorescent office lights.

For a moment, I felt like I was in my own head, that all of them were figments of my imagination. That I had been pushed so far over the edge, I’d taken them on as my own personalities, and now they were left to fight with one another over who would get to tell me what to do next.

But then Dick Simon burped. Loudly. And I knew my supposed nightmare was all too real.

“I think she’s awake,” Connor said.

“How are you feeling, honey?” my father asked.

“Can she hear us?” Dick asked, waving his hand in front of my eyes.

“Of course she can. She got hit in the mouth; she’s not deaf,” my mother said with certainty, then looked at me and said, “Is she, Jerry?”

“Her hearing shouldn’t have been affected,” my father said.

“She could be in shock,” Daniel said.

“She was fine two hours ago,” my mother said, sounding worried.

“I think she can see. Her eyes are open,” Connor said.

As fun as this was, I figured I should say something, because I knew if I didn’t, there would be an ear, nose, and throat doctor added to the Save Amy Brain Trust. I couldn’t bear having one more person wonder what was wrong with me. “I’m fine,” I said.

“You’re back here with us now,” my father said, “safe and sound.”

“What is this, some psychedelic
Wizard of Oz
?” I asked, looking specifically at Daniel’s Technicolor tie-dye.

“I guess I’m not the only one she talks to that way,” Dick Simon said.

“No,” Connor said.

“No,” Daniel said.

“No,” my mother said.

No, no, no
,
AJ repeated.

“At least she’s talking,” my father said.

It was true. I was being snarky, but it did have that feeling. Connor as the Scarecrow, Daniel as the Tin Man, Dick as the Lion, AJ as Toto, and me as Dorothy just wanting to get back to Kansas, back to a life I could understand.

Of course, I was one punk-ass Dorothy.

I tried to sit up. My head didn’t seem to want to comply.

“Everyone was worried about you,” my father said. He was breathing heavily, his nostrils opening and closing slightly.

I figured I might as well play along. They were all being so nice to me; I kind of liked it. “I’m okay,” I whimpered, covering my eyes with the back of my hand like some young woman who was prone to swooning, and probably British.

“Are you ready to tell us what happened, Amy?” my mother asked.

“Did someone threaten you?” Dick Simon asked.

I shook my head, but I couldn’t help thinking about Aaron. He hadn’t threatened me, but what he had done was just as terrible, maybe worse.

“She must be protecting someone,” my mother said.

“If Cassie or Lila or one of their friends came after you, you need to tell us,” Dick said.

Cassie
, AJ squawked,
Lila, Cassie, Lila, Lila.

My life was so much less interesting than they thought it was.

“It was me,” I said. “I fell.” It wasn’t the complete truth, but how could I tell them about Aaron? I was too embarrassed. I was too ashamed.

“You fell with a bat in your hand?” my mother asked.

I nodded.

“No robbers?” Connor asked, looking disappointed.

I shook my head.

“None of this would have happened if she had just signed that paper,” my mother said, starting to cry. Apparently she’d gotten over my self-inflicted injury and was on to the next drama.

“She still can,” Dick said.

“She still should,” Daniel said.

“She still might,” Connor said, looking up.

“Hopefully, this makes your decision easier,” my father said.

I wished it did, but the truth was, I could no longer deny that this wasn’t about Lila and Cassie at all. That it really was about me trying so hard to hold on to this person I thought I wanted to be. This angry girl that I could hide behind, so I didn’t have to look at myself, so no one else could look at me.

“Should we take her to the doctor?” Connor asked.

“There’s a doctor right here,” my mother said, pointing to my father.

“I can’t say for sure if there’s something wrong with her head. What if she has a concussion?” he asked.

I let them keep talking about me and thought back to the confession I would have written. I thought about that little girl on the swings in my backyard. All these people in front of me were trying desperately to help her. She would want me to let them. That girl was not alone. She had herself. She had me. And, hopefully, she wasn’t too late to have Joe.

“Yes,” I said. “I’ll do it.” Tasting the Y-E-S—positive, strong, the way I wanted to feel, even though I was terrified.

Yes
, AJ tweeted,
yes, yes, yes
.

I’d wanted the words to be perfect. It seemed like they should be profound or something for as long as everyone had been waiting to hear them, but all I could say was yes
.
I guess sometimes saying what you mean is enough.

No one asked me if I was sure, no one said anything. I think they were afraid that if they started talking, I would change my mind.

Five pens were shoved in my face, waiting to be picked like kids on a playground. I took my father’s and signed my metaphorical death warrant.

My hand shook as I wrote my name. It was scary enough to admit that I was alone, without having to admit I had no idea who I was anymore. I would deal with that another day.

Dick Simon took the paper and touched the back of my head, which for some reason I allowed. I hoped that my fall hadn’t caused a form of brain damage that made me want to respect my elders, because that would make the rest of my life a major drag.

Thirty-six

Even though I’d signed the paper, I still had to go to the judge’s chambers to hear my sentencing. “It needs to be made official,” Dick said. “Nothing is definite until the fat lady sings, and my wife ain’t much of a singer.”

Basically, it meant that the judge had until the last minute to decide whether or not to give me another chance.

Was that what I was being given? It didn’t feel that way. It felt like I was starting over, which I guess was the same thing, except starting over sounds terrifying by comparison.

Dick met us on the courthouse steps. The sun was so bright that the white concrete columns seemed to reflect light like mirrors. I could feel myself sweating under my suit jacket. Hope-fully this would be the last time I would ever have to wear it.

“It’s too bad you didn’t get to see me go to trial,” Dick said. “It’s the only thing I’m better at than telling a joke.”

My parents just smiled. They had been smiling themselves silly since I signed that stupid paper. I was surprised that their cheeks weren’t bleeding.

“Doing okay, Amy?” Dick asked.

“She’s super,” my mother said, smiling more, if that were possible. Basically it meant that I was doing everything they told me to. Everything could go back to the way it used to be. Well, everything that didn’t involve Lila and Cassie.

I felt like I was going to be sick.

“You’re not nervous, are you?” Dick asked.

I shook my head. I wasn’t nervous. I wasn’t sure what I was.

“How much longer?” I asked, looking at my phone. Joe still hadn’t texted me back from the night before. Even though I’d apologized, maybe I was too late. Maybe a text wasn’t enough.

“Ten minutes or so. Let’s go inside and sit down,” Dick said.