Pretty Amy (32 page)

“That’s not why I’m here,” he said.

“Then why?” I asked. I couldn’t believe that I still kind of wanted to make out with him.

“To see you,” he said.

“Well, you’ve seen me,” I said, holding my arms out at my sides, trying to act like I didn’t care. But I did. He was saying all the right things.

Too bad he was the wrong guy.

I looked at the door, trying to push him out of it with my mind—wanting
so
badly for that bell to
ding
.

“Okay,” he said. He stood there. He picked up his skateboard, moved it from one hand to the other and back, the mountain range on the deck of it moving from east to west, from west to east.

I looked down at my deflated bag of chips on the counter, still waiting for the
ding
. Waiting until he was gone so I could try and pretend nothing that had happened to me had happened—starting with the night I’d met Aaron and going all the way back to prom night.

“Can’t you at least think about it?” he pleaded.

I looked up. He was leaning toward me, his skateboard under his arm, his crooked tooth poking out over his bottom lip as he smiled. Aaron was as bad as my mother had thought Lila and Cassie were.

He was worse.

“Please, Amy,” he said so softly that the words almost disappeared.

I gripped the baseball bat that Mancini kept behind the counter, though I doubted this was the kind of emergency he’d had in mind when he put it there.

“Just go,” I said. The bat felt hot in my palm.

He touched the cigarette behind his ear—rolled it with two fingers like a tiny piece of Play-Doh. “I mean, you were my girlfriend and I asked you for a favor. That’s not wrong,” Aaron said, shaking his head.

Maybe it wasn’t, if that was what he’d really asked for, but what he’d asked for…even Lila and Cassie hadn’t asked for that.

“I wasn’t your girlfriend,” I said. I had wanted so badly to be. In spite of everything, the word made my stomach flutter.

“Then maybe you were the one who was using me,” he said, squinting. “Ever think about that?”

“You should leave now.” I showed him the baseball bat in my hand. I needed him to stop talking. I needed it all to stop.

“What are you going to do, hit me?” He laughed.

I shrugged. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I couldn’t feel anything except the smooth wood in my hand. I couldn’t see anything except his face—that I had kissed and trusted and daydreamed about.

“I should have fucked you while I had the chance,” he said as he smiled wickedly. “You would have done it, too,” he whispered, leaning toward me. “You would have done
everything
I wanted.”

I watched his lips. They opened and closed. Opened and closed—cruel words flowing out.

“You would have
liked
it,” he hissed.

Hearing his words, it was like I could feel everything that had happened to me: every loss of friendship and loss of freedom, every piece of me that had been chipped away by Daniel and Dick Simon, every bit of scar tissue that formed from the police and my parents.

I brought the bat up and swung angrily, smacking his arm hard enough to make him drop his skateboard. I hadn’t meant to actually hit him, but it felt stronger than anything I could say.

“You crazy bitch!” He picked up his skateboard from where it had fallen and cocked it behind him.

I swung again, harder. But the force caused me to slip and fall, my chin hitting the counter on my way down, like one of those crash test dummies hitting a windshield. I guess Connor was right about keeping the floor areas clean for safety reasons.

I heard the bell above the door
ding
as Aaron finally left. In reaction to seeing my body doubled over on the floor, he got the hell out of there.

I guess that was how much he
liked
me.

I tasted metal and when I put my hand to my mouth and then inspected the contents, I saw blood and white specks like broken china. I didn’t have to be a dentist’s daughter to know that they were parts of my teeth. Daniel was right. I chose the people and things that populated my life. They didn’t choose me. That was why I was here, on the floor of a convenience store all alone, with blood and teeth in my hand.

I know I’d always felt like I had to make the choices I made to survive, but the thing was—I made them. I could say the world forced me into it, but that would be a lie. It was me. It was all me.

I guess I started screaming because Connor came running out of the back room with yet another bat in his hand. Mr. Mancini must have had them hidden around the place like Easter eggs.

“What happened?” Connor yelled.

I opened my mouth to answer and was about to say something about having been robbed, because there was no way I was going to tell Connor what had really happened, but all that came out was a defeated moan and blood—lots of blood, like I had chewed on one of those red caplets that come in Dracula makeup kits.

“Mother of pearl,” he said, coming up behind me and taking me by the shoulders. I guess for Connor to use that kind of language, I must have looked pretty bad.

He put a washcloth to my face, which quickly turned from white and green checkered to pink and green checkered. I was in too much pain to even care where it came from.

I watched him dial the phone, talk for a minute, and hang it up. Then he taped a sign on the door that said B
ACK IN
F
IFTEEN
M
INUTES
. Connor was ever the optimist.

“Well,” he said as he led me out to the car, “at least your shirt’s already red.”

“Whe re ga?” I asked, which in just-smacked-your-own-face translated to: “Where are we going?”

“Don’t talk,” Connor said. “Close your eyes and relax.”

Seeing as my options were talk and possibly bleed to death in the process, or close my eyes and try to focus on anything but the gargantuan pain in my mouth, I decided to take Connor up on his suggestion.

I wasn’t sure how I’d gotten here—to Connor taking care of me in an emergency instead of my parents. But I guess this was my life now: working at Gas-N-Go, staying with Connor, dressing like I shopped at Goodwill, until my trial, when someone else would decide my fate unless I had the guts to decide for myself.

I couldn’t believe this was what I had been fighting so hard for.

I looked at Connor. He was so simple, so happy. He tried to make the best of things and his life was better because of it. He had a family to come home to, friends who cared about him, a job he actually liked. He had a life ahead of him that he could do anything with.

I closed my eyes and thought about what I had: my bloody pajama pants, my broken teeth, my broken relationships, and jail. That was all I had left now.

When I opened my eyes, we were sitting in the parking lot of my father’s office.

“No fe we,” I said. Which was just-bashed-your-own-mouth-in for, “No freaking way.” If my father didn’t want to see me, I didn’t want to see him, either.

I guess I must have looked pissed off, because Connor said, “Well, where am I supposed to take you? Do you have money to pay for the emergency room? Because I sure don’t.”

He came around to my side of the car and opened the door for me. I was about to tell him that I knew how to use my hands, but then decided to show him by giving him the finger.

“What did I do?”

I knew it wasn’t him I was really mad at, but I didn’t care. “Di cu ot,” which was make-him-feel-really-guilty for, “Didn’t come out.”

“I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

“Wha ew?” I said as I got out of the car, which was look-who-took-his-Einstein-pills-today for, “What’s new?”

…

We found my father waiting for us, playing Solitaire on his computer. So much for staring longingly at a picture of me.

My father’s office had the general dentist’s office feeling—white walls, chickpea-colored carpets, yellow and orange chairs, a little roulette wheel of small, tooth-sized drills, sinks like half-cantaloupes.

“Oh my God, what happened?” my father asked, running over and giving me a hug. I hugged back as best I could with my one free hand. “Are you okay, sweetie? Was there an accident?”

Connor was still standing in the doorway. Though I doubt he was intimidated by my father—a squirrel wouldn’t be intimidated by my father—he may have been intimidated by my father’s love for me. And if not intimidated, then definitely surprised.

“I think we got robbed,” Connor said, shaking his head like he was saying,
You win some, you lose some.

“Did you call the police?”

“Na pe,” I gurgled, which meant everyone-was-totally-clueless for, “No police.”

“What did she say?” my father asked, as if in the time I’d been away I had developed a new language that escaped him.

“I don’t know. I think she’s delirious; she’s been mumbling the whole way over here.”

“Did they steal her clothes?” my father asked, as if seeing what I was wearing for the first time.

“E wih,” I said, which was as-if-this-day-wasn’t-bad-enough-already for, “I wish.”

“Is she going to be okay?” Connor asked.

Though I couldn’t tell if he was asking because (a) I was under his supervision when this happened, (b) he was afraid my parents would sue him, or (c) he really did care about me like he’d always claimed.

But, of course, it turned out to be (d) none of the above.

“Because I should really get back to work,” he said. And when I turned to look at him, he continued. “They could come back and I don’t want to leave the store unattended.”

Right, like what would he do if “they” did come back? And then I remembered that “they” didn’t exist.

“They” was Aaron.

“You go do whatever you need to,” my father said in his calm dentist’s voice, leading me to the nearest patient chair.

“Call me when you’re ready, Amy,” Connor said, waving good-bye.

“Ank u,” I said, wondering why it was easier to say thank you when no one could understand me anyway.

My father sat me down, then reclined the chair and turned on his adjustable light. “Let’s take a look,” he said, which is what he said to every patient when he had one in this position. He probably didn’t even think about it before he said it anymore. He pulled the hand that held the washcloth away from my mouth. “Does it hurt?”

Another patient-script question and one I would suggest he alter once I could talk again. If there’s blood, it most likely hurts. In my case it really, really hurt. Describing it as just hurting did not do it justice at all.

“All right,” he said, opening my mouth and getting in close. “Not terrible,” he said, inspecting, “but not great. A little bleeding and swelling in the gums, two broken teeth. We’ll have you fixed up in a jiffy.”

Luckily, my father kept his office stocked at all times with a full set of veneers made just for my teeth; he was nothing if not pessimistic when it came to my mouth.

He pulled back and put his hand on my cheek, as if his touch would heal me. “You’re a good girl. Your life shouldn’t be this hard,” he said, shaking his head and riding his stool over to the sink to wash his hands.

I guess my teeth being knocked out solidified for him what was happening to me. Gave him something he could see and understand.

I felt myself start to cry, huge heavy sobs that caused my father to run to me.

“Are you okay?”

I couldn’t talk anyway, but I couldn’t answer. I was anything but. I guess I hadn’t been for a very long time.

“At least this I can fix,” he said, as much to himself, it seemed, as to me.

“I orry,” I said.

“I know you’re worried, but you’ll look fine. We can take care of that bicuspid while we’re at it, too.”

I didn’t think I needed to translate what I meant, but I guess my father’s not that sharp. Or maybe he had been waiting so long to hear that I really
was
sorry, that he couldn’t even believe I was saying it.

I wiped my eyes. Bad girls like me weren’t supposed to care about what happened to them. Bad girls like me were supposed to end up angry and broken and hurt. It was hard to admit that I was tired of being angry and broken and hurt. That maybe I wasn’t cut out to be a bad girl.

“It’s okay,” he said, “we can fix it. We can fix it.”

He gave me more of whatever he usually used to knock me out. I could tell because right before I closed my eyes, I saw four of him standing in front of me. One was more transparent than the next, as if someone had sliced thinner and thinner slices off of him, like deli meat.

I wondered if that was what was happening to me—if, as I grew up, as life got harder, there were pieces of myself that I placed in front of me to guard what was still me. I wondered if, after all this was over—if it was ever over—there would be anything left.