Amelia Anne Is Dead and Gone (18 page)

CHAPTER
23

F
or a long time, we didn’t speak. I watched the clock, counting seconds, waiting for the numbers to change. Once. Twice. Outside, the wind was growing stronger, the treetops tossing wildly as their delicate spines bent this way, then that. The spitting rain smacked the windshield. One heavy drop. A long silence, and then another, then three more in rapid fire.

I twisted my hands in my lap and spoke without looking at him.

“Craig . . .” I began, then faltered before finding the end of the sentence. “He’s an asshole,” I finished lamely.

“Yes,” James replied. “He can be. But that’s how it is, isn’t it? People can do things, they can do terrible things, but that doesn’t mean they’re evil.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Don’t you?” he asked.

The air in the car seemed suddenly thick, and too hot. I cracked my window before meeting his eyes.

“If you’re talking about yourself, it’s not the same thing,” I said, quietly.

“But not exactly different, either.”

It was James’s turn to watch the clock, one hand still gripping the steering wheel, the other rubbing against the hard angles of his face. I watched him pinch the bridge of his nose, push his fingertips over the high curve of his forehead and into the mussed tangle of his hair.

“I knew exactly what I was doing,” he said, finally. “I saw a way to hurt you first, on purpose, and I took it.”

I snapped my head up so quickly that the tendons in my neck clenched painfully, pulling stiff and tight in the spot just below my ear. He watched me carefully, as though weighing what to say next, then began talking again, faster now.

“You’ve been thinking this was your fault, too. I know you have. No”—he held up a hand as I began to speak—“don’t. I need to say this. This is the part where I talk.”

I sat back and stared.

“I knew I was wrecking everything,” he said. “But I was angry, and I was scared, and so I hurt you on purpose.”

It was quiet again. Even the spitting of the rain had stopped, there was no hard smack of droplets against the windshield. In a faraway corner of my mind, I thought what a shame it would be if the storm had passed us by. If we were left the same as we’d been, in the grip of dust and drought, no better off for all we’d been through.

James cleared his throat, and this time, he took my hand.

“And I’m sorry. You already know that I’m sorry, but I just wanted you to know, also—I wanted you to know, I know better than that. I knew better. My mom . . . she raised me better than that.”

My face flushed, and I bit back tears, bit down against the urge to fall into his arms the way I would have done only a few short weeks before. I wanted nothing more than to collapse there, to bury my face in his shirt and close my eyes and allow sleep to overtake me while I breathed in the scents of detergent and sweat and old smoke.

Instead, I forced myself to let go of his hand.

“James, we can talk about this another time. Because if Craig didn’t do this . . . we have to go to the police.”

He gave me a long look, opened his mouth, hesitated and then said, “There’s something—”

His voice was drowned in noise as the sky suddenly lit overhead. A jagged scar of electric white opened across the sky, accompanied at the same time by a terrifying, earsplitting crack of thunder.

Rain or not, the storm had arrived. Around the perimeter of the field, silhouetted against the low sky, the trees waved as though trying to uproot themselves from the ground and shed their leaves into the whirling, screaming wind.

I yelped at the loudness of the sound and looked wide-eyed out the window. “Jesus? Are we okay in here?”

James was still staring at me, motionless and pale in the weak green light from the dashboard.

“James!” I said.

He snapped to attention and peered out into the dark. There was another flash of lightning.

“You’re right, we should find a better place,” he said. His movements were frantic as he turned the key in the ignition, listened as the engine coughed and then purred, looked once over his shoulder and then threw the truck into gear. I reached for my seat belt as he hit the accelerator.

The truck lurched but didn’t move.

“Shit,” he said, his voice too loud after so much confessional soft talk. “Shit!”

“Try it again,” I said, peering out into the dark. There was another crack and flash, this one even closer. “That looked like it hit somewhere in town.”

James pressed the pedal again. We both listened as the wheels spun and did not grip.

“I must have landed in a rut,” he growled, unbuckling his seat belt and reaching behind him. When he turned back to me, he had a flashlight in his hand.

“Where are you going?”

“There might be a rock or something I can use for leverage,” he said. He jumped down, stepping into the wind. His hair began to toss furiously around his head.

I started to unbuckle my own seat belt. “I’ll help you!”

“No,” he shouted over the wind. “Stay there! I’ll just be a minute!”

The door slammed, and he disappeared. I felt the truck shift, slightly, as he leaned against it, testing to see how stuck we really were. In the dim, ghostly beams of the headlights, I could see the deep, dry furrows that ran haphazardly across the field. A summer without rain had turned this place into a mess of holes. It was amazing that we’d made it this far.

There was a tap at the window—I looked up to see James pointing behind the car, back the way we had come. He held up his index finger—one more second—then disappeared again into the dark.

A minute passed, and then another. I peered at the rearview mirror, catching a brief glimpse of the flashlight as it played over the close line of the forest, watching it sweep and then bob away between the trees. Alone, I couldn’t stop my thoughts from running crazily in circles, tracing back from James’s confession to the terrible sight of Craig’s broken body as they hoisted him into the ambulance.

All for nothing. And the dead girl . . .

I put my head in my hands and moaned. I had been so stupid, so fucking stupid.

I needed a cigarette.

Peering again into the dark—I thought I saw the flashlight briefly, bobbing between the trees—I reached for the catch on the glove compartment. James had always kept cigarettes here, had grinned at me as he opened the glove box and pointed to them, sitting alongside the insurance and registration. “Necessities!” he had said, and I had laughed, and so had he.

I smiled weakly at the memory as I pulled the pack toward me, only to fumble and drop it to the floor when another, enormous thunderclap sounded overhead. Reaching down, feeling in the area near my feet, my fingers finally brushed its slick cardboard face. I grasped it, at the same time looking hopefully into the glove box for matches. Or a lighter. There was something there, I thought, the glint of polished silver just underneath the registration papers.

I closed my hand around the object.

Pulled it from the glove compartment.

Smiled briefly as I realized what it was—
James, this is awfully fancy—
and opened the worn catch to look inside.

I hadn’t moved, had frozen in place with my hands clamped tightly in my lap, when James climbed back into the car. A rush of damp wind came behind him, lifting my hair and caressing my neck with soft fingers. He was breathing hard as he slammed the door.

“All right, I think we’re good,” he said, dropping the flashlight behind his seat. “I found a rock that’s big enough and if we just—Becca? Are you okay?”

I shook my head, just barely. The blood that rushed in my ears, the wind howling outside, all seemed to say,
Shhh.

Shhh,
don’t tell.

Shhh,
keep quiet.

Shhh.

I swallowed hard.

Struggled.

My head had never felt so heavy, my eyes never so unwilling to look into his face.

A face I knew.

A face I loved.

A face I had traced the lines of with my fingers so many times, I knew it as well as my own.

James was staring at me. His eyes traveled down the length of my neck, across my heaving chest, over my tightly clasped hands and down, down to the floor, where cellophane and smooth cardboard shone whitely between my feet.

“Becca,” he said, again. The sound of his voice made my hair stand on end.

I forced myself to look up, to look at him, to look into the face of the boy I had loved and trusted and
believed
. All summer long. In my lap, my hands fell open as though of their own accord.

Staring up, immediately recognizable in the dark, was a face.

The wide gray eyes and frozen smile of Amelia Anne Richardson.

I took a deep breath, and everything inside of me fell through the floor.

“It was you.”

AMELIA

B
eyond the glow of the headlights, the night turned terrifyingly dark. There was no moon, no convenient streetlight, no soft electric glow from a nearby house to guide her. She felt the breeze on her face and wondered, as her heart slowed and the blood stopped rushing like an ocean of anger in her head, which way she could go that would lead her to safety. The sky yawned above, cavernous, full of glittering stars that were so, so far away.

Some of them are already dead,
she thought, and the idea made her giddy with terror and amazement.

Behind her, Luke was shouting her name. Begging her to come back.

She thought she heard the word
sorry
more than once.

She took another step and tried to imagine a world in which “sorry” could possibly fix this. One where she would forgive him—in which she could go back, accept his apology, forget all the ugly, ugly things he had said. Tried to imagine something, anything, that he could say to undo the damage and make that shred of love come crawling back out of the darkness. If he shouted after her that he was dying. That he had a brain tumor. That he had split personality disorder, that it hadn’t been him who said those terrible things, that his evil alter ego who had a ridiculous name like Chaz and also liked to eat mayonnaise straight out of the jar was responsible for everything that had just happened, so wouldn’t she please come back.

She took another step. And another. And then, out of nowhere, she felt laughter bubble up inside of her.

Not even then, she thought. Not even then. She was
done
.

There was too much out there, too many beautiful things to see, and she could only be glad that she had found out now—before Boston, before she’d suggested a long-distance relationship or, even crazier, that he come to live with her there. Now, she knew.

Every step away from him felt like a triumph.

Slowing her pace, she stared into the dark, willing her eyes to adjust, praying that a beacon would appear somewhere—a porch light, a television. Another car, piloted by people who would take pity, take her in, take her to a phone where she could call . . . someone.

Luke was still yelling.

She took another step.

She wasn’t alone. There were a hundred sounds and smells out there in the dark, she realized, raising her face to the gentle breeze that blew down the road and sniffing at the air. There was soil, and the sweet scent of crushed grass, and the light, festering smell of something decaying—a deer, maybe, down the road and dead in the dirt, its back snapped in two and its eyes eaten away by marauding crows. There was a harsh, gritty sound in the trees, a three- and four-note call and response that sounded like insects, scolding each other. There was singing, too, the sound of crickets in the brush.

And then, she saw it. Off to the right, through the trees—

But no, it was gone. It had been there only a moment, she was no longer sure it had been anything at all. She peered into the dark and shook her head. There was no road. No road, and therefore, no headlights. She had thought—

“Amelia!”

Luke’s scream cut through her thoughts. Sighing, she turned around, looking back the way she had come. She had stepped just beyond the reach of the car’s high beams, but she could see him; he was standing by the driver’s-side door, shifting uncertainly from one foot to the other and looking in all directions with narrowed eyes.

She stepped back into the light.

She would not speak; she folded her arms, letting her chin lift slightly, staring back at him.

“Come on,” he called to her. “Let’s talk about this!”

Ever so slightly, almost imperceptibly, she shook her head. Only once.

He stared back at her.

“FINE!” he roared, suddenly, and retreated to the back of the car. She could see him rummaging in the trunk—was he going to go for broke, strew her belongings into the road?

Let him. She didn’t care.

Standing beside the car, he saw that she hadn’t moved—was simply standing there, appraising him,
looking down on him
as she refused to come back and just talk, for crying out loud. He’d said he was sorry, hadn’t he? And she was going to—what? Walk away into the dark? Walk away without her bags, her purse, walk away from
him
without so much as a conversation?

His head filled with the image of her, stumbling around in the night, lost and alone and wishing that he would come back. The night was so dark, out here—she didn’t know where she was, or where she was going. She’d be frightened. Helpless.

Another minute, he thought, and she would hear the night sounds around her, hear the ominous rustling of something big in the roadside brush, and then she would come back.

He watched her.

He waited.

She hadn’t moved.

He peered over the door, looked at the dashboard clock. Two minutes, tops. His eyes drifted over the interior of the car, the comfortable seats, the climate controls, the plush accoutrements of wealth. He willed himself not to stare out at her, to let her think he was going to leave, let her sweat out there in the dark and think about how stupid she’d been. His gaze settled on the passenger seat, and he started to laugh.

She had left the cigarette case. All her cash, her cards, her driver’s license—they were all inside, and she wouldn’t get far without them. Chuckling, he grabbed it and stepped back out of the car, brandishing it overhead and shouting at her.

“Looks like you forgot something! C’mon, Ame, come back, all right? Just—”

He stopped. She was walking back toward him, coming back, getting closer. But in the beam of the headlights, he could see that something was happening to her face. Her mouth seemed to be stretching, and then her hand was in the air, and she was smiling, and her slender wrist turned in slow motion and he stopped laughing.

She was giving him the finger.

She lowered her hand, the same queer smile still playing on her lips. He felt his ears burning, his heart pounding, his stomach beginning to churn with the realization that she wasn’t coming back. She looked at him again, that same, appraising look. In the yawning dark, there seemed to be nothing but her, and the light from the car, and the car itself, and him. They were alone on a plateau of black. There was nothing but this one, bleakly lit stretch of road—but she was ready to walk out into the dark.

She was going to leave him behind. And then, for the last time, she looked back at him.

And waved good-bye.