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 BACK IN FIFTEEN MINUTES. 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 fi
x 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.
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 whimpere
d, 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.
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