Pretty Amy (28 page)

“What a dick,” he said, blowing out smoke with the force of a steam whistle.

“Yeah,” I said. I guess that meant they had left together. Even on the run, Lila had a more romantic love life than I ever would.

“At least I still have you,” he said.

I looked at him. I guess he wasn’t breaking up with me. Maybe my love life
was
more romantic than I thought. Maybe I
did
want to hear what he had to say.

“I do, right?” he asked, turning to me. It was dark, but I could see his eyes. They were wide, pleading.

“Sure,” I said.

“I mean, I can count on you,” he said, taking a drag. The end of the cigarette flashed like an amber crosswalk light.

“Of course,” I said.

“I’ll wait for you,” he said quickly. “I mean, it will only be a year, maybe less.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Well, with Lila gone and now Brian, too,” he started. “I mean, I’m sure your lawyer has told you.”

I thought about Dick, about the paper he wanted me to sign, about what he’d said about the real owner of the evidence we were found with.

Aaron.

He
had
followed me from the courthouse. He had known who I was, had chosen me not because he liked me, but for this. My eyes started to burn.

“You’ll wait for me,” I repeated. I didn’t know what else to say.

“Yeah, sure, I mean, it’s the least I can do,” he said. He breathed out, started to smile. “It’s awesome of you to do this for me,” he said.

“So, that’s what this was,” I said, the words in my head coming out before I could stop them.

I looked at the car around me; the open, sparkling sky; him. Those times with Aaron had been just like riding on my swing set as a child: a fake freedom, an illusion of happiness.

“No,” he said. But I knew he was lying. It was easy to lie with one word. As easy as it was to lie with no words.

“You used me,” I said.

“No,” he said again.

“Stop lying.”

“We only kissed, Amy.”

“You know what I mean,” I said, my eyes tearing, making everything in front of me blurry, everything except the ability to see that he was one of the people up the line that Dick had been talking about. How could I have been so dumb?

“No,” he said. “I mean, you haven’t really even done anything yet.”

“But you want me to,” I said, “for you, and you’ll wait for me.” I repeated his words. All he wanted, like Lila, was a person he could train.

“Amy, stop,” he said, putting his hand on my knee.

“No,” I said, pulling away from him. “Just admit it.” I thought about the picture he’d drawn. He hadn’t seen me that way. He had seen me as someone he could exploit, could lie to, someone he could hurt.

He shook his head and lit another cigarette:
snap, sizzle, snap.

It was true. I really only had AJ. I got out of the car and ran. I heard Aaron calling after me, heard his car start, but I didn’t stop, wouldn’t stop.

Aaron’s Amy
. I was even more of an idiot than I thought.

I kept running through backyards and down side streets. I ran and ran until I got to Gas-N-Go. I could have kept running toward home, but there was nothing for me there. There was nothing for me anywhere.

The lights were off in the store; it must have been after eleven. I went around back and sat next to the green Dumpster, catching my breath. I leaned against the door and looked up at the stars; they hummed and throbbed. What I hated to think, but couldn’t deny, was that Lila and Cassie could live life without me. What did it mean that I found it so hard to live life without them? What did it mean that I couldn’t even see what was right in front of me, without them there to show me?

Aaron had never liked me. He was the mean boy. Maybe Cassie could have handled him, but he had fooled me. Cassie would have known Aaron was full of it. Lila would never have let herself have actual
feelings
for him.

I closed my eyes and saw Lila at a thruway rest stop. She was with a guy wearing light denim jeans, a black leather belt, and no shirt. I saw him lying on top of her on a grassy hill by the restrooms, her delicate head poking out from underneath his shoulder, her eyes looking up, her pupils filled with the same sky I saw.

I thought about how in movies when you are missing someone, you are supposed to think about how they see the same stars you see. This is supposed to make you realize that the world may be big, but you are both still a part of it. It is supposed to make you realize that they are not that far away. 

I fell asleep, thinking about what a crock that was.

Thirty

“Don’t worry about saying thank you,” Connor said as we got into his car the next morning.

I guess my parents had called him when I didn’t come home and he’d gone out looking for me—or, more likely, he had come to open the store and found me sleeping in a pile of trash behind it.

“Thank you,” I said, not wanting him to have anything to hold over me, “but I can walk home from here.”

“You’re not going home,” he said, starting the car.

I felt my stomach drop. “Where am I going?”

“You’ll stay with me for a while,” he said, like the words coming out of his mouth were normal instead of totally freaking bizarre.

“Why?” I asked. My face was getting hot. It’s not like I wanted to go home, but that was a very different thing from being unwanted there.

“Because your parents won’t take you,” he said, looking straight ahead as he started the car.

“But you will,” I said, still not quite believing what was happening.

“Sure,” he said. “I care about you.”

“Why? Why would you care about me?” I asked. I’d generally been civil with Connor, sure, but I’d never been
nice
to him. He had no reason to care about me.

“You’re a human being,” he said. “You need help.”

I stared out the window so I didn’t have to look at him. Why couldn’t everyone just leave me to rot in peace? If I had to deal with one more person saying they cared about me, I was going to scream. Especially because the one person who I’d thought actually did had been a complete illusion.

“I’m not going to be able to pay you rent or anything,” I said, wanting to say easy, direct things so I didn’t start to cry.

“Sure you will. I doubled your hours,” he said.

“This day just keeps getting better and better,” I said, feeling my eyes go watery.

“You smell,” he said.

We drove to Connor’s apartment with all the windows down. As part of our rental agreement that I had not been given the option to disagree with, I would be staying with him so he could make sure I went to work and, being sure I made it to work, he could be sure I would be able to pay him rent. It sounded more like I was an indentured servant than someone he “cared about.”

“What about AJ?” I asked, realizing I had forgotten him. Realizing I might just be as crappy as everyone thought I was.

“Who?”

“My bird,” I said, picturing him alone in his cage in the basement, probably hungry, lonely, and sad.

“Don’t worry, we can go get him later,” Connor said.

I guess I could have jumped out of the car and run down the street, away from him and all of this, but with my parents having given me up to a virtual stranger, Joe thinking I was an out-of-control druggie, and Aaron just wanting me as his puppet, it was clearer than ever. I had nowhere else to go.

…

Connor had more rules than my parents did and most of them were about the way I acted or what I said in front of his children. I wasn’t allowed to disrespect him, his wife, or his religion. I wasn’t allowed to drink, smoke, or cause any other “moral destruction” to my body while I was under his roof. Staying at Connor’s might just be worse than I had it in my parents’ basement.

Connor and I walked into his apartment and found his family sitting around a kitchen table with more breakfast food on it than was available at most hotel buffets: eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns, pancakes, doughnuts.

His wife looked much the same as I remembered her, but in her own surroundings she seemed happier, less nervous. The kitchen was decorated in sunflowers: sunflower napkins, sunflower clock, sunflower utensil holder, sunflower dishtowels, and most likely sunflower shelf paper.

“This is Christopher and Cayla,” Connor said, his arm moving like a weathervane pushed from a slight wind. “And you already know Tiffany.”

I realized it was the first time Connor had ever told me his wife’s name. I guess now I knew why.

“I’m hungry,” Christopher said, holding his knife and fork like a steering wheel and banging them against the table.

Both kids looked the same as they had in the Christmas photo Connor carried in his wallet, just in summer clothes instead of winter.

“You’re just like your father,” I said. I couldn’t help myself.

Connor held up one finger to indicate my first strike. “Why don’t you go take a shower?”

“I don’t want to impose,” I said, doing my best timid houseguest impression.

“It’s not an imposition,” he said, grabbing my shoulders and leading me out of the kitchen. “It’s an order.” He pointed at the bathroom.

“Daddy, what’s wrong with her?” I heard Christopher ask as I left the room.

“P.U.,” Cayla said, clapping and giggling.

“Eat your breakfast,” Connor said.

I wondered if things could get any worse. Not only had I been disowned, I was also being made fun of by kids.

Connor’s apartment wasn’t a home to write home about, but I had to admit the shower felt pretty good. Even though the only shampoo he had was Prell. I guess wayward teenagers couldn’t be choosers.

I got out, combed my hair as well as I could after the deep-conditioning treatment, and changed into a bathrobe that hung on the door. I twisted my hair up into a towel. My clothes were ripe and I was happy to find a laundry basket to throw them into, even if it did have a scallop shell on it that matched the bathrobe, the towel, and the pieces of pink soap that sat in a shell holder on the sink.

I opened the door, steam from the shower wafting out, and saw Cayla standing there.

“You work at my daddy’s office?” she asked, playing with the ruffles on her hot pink shorts.

“Is that what he told you?”

She nodded, her eyes wide, waiting.

“Yes, I work at your daddy’s office,” I said, holding up the towel turban on my head.

“Wow,” she said, “you’re lucky.”

I nodded. Smiling like you do with kids when they seem so happy that you don’t want to change it by saying anything. You nod, smile, and nod at their shiny, smiling faces. I was lucky to work at Gas-N-Go with Connor.

Whatever.

“What do you guys do there?”

“Hmmm,” I said, buying time. I didn’t want to destroy whatever image he had created for her of his work life. As I thought about what I was going to say, I realized that I hadn’t fully understood what she’d meant. She actually meant I was lucky I got to be at Gas-N-Go with her daddy; that I got to be with him, while she was here at home. I felt an odd pang in my chest. Like the string breaking on a guitar.

“He wishes he could be here,” I said. “With you,” I added. Saying what I would have wanted someone to say to me at her age, sounding lamer than I would ever let anyone above her age hear me sound.

“I know,” she said, twirling and dancing down the hallway.

She knew. She knew what I never had.

I went back into the bathroom, closed the door, and sat down on the floor on the other side of it. Apparently Cayla knew the secrets I had been begging everyone else for. I guess I didn’t have to tell her not to believe a mysterious boy’s kisses and lies.

I needed AJ. It felt like a cigarette craving, that same kind of anxious needle.

I walked out of the bathroom to see if getting AJ later could turn into getting AJ now, and found Connor standing on the other side of the door, his hand in the air pre-knock.

“You have an appointment with Daniel in twenty minutes,” he said.

“Are you kidding me?” There was a word I wanted to say before
kidding
, but that was a no-no in Connor’s house.

He held up a page copied from a calendar.

“Where did you get that?” I asked, grabbing for it, the towel on my head falling off from the force. Again, what I wanted to say before
did
was censored for Connor’s house.

“Your mother gave it to me.”

Of course she had. “I’m not going.” I walked past him and sat on the couch in the living room, pulling the robe tighter around me.

“You can go see Daniel, or you can live on the streets,” he said, following me.