Dee was really bubbly and friendly most of the time. If someone else was down at the river, she would always talk to them. She talked so much that some people thought she was annoying, which was probably why I was her best friend—the girls at school kind of shunned her. It made her sad, and she’d cry about it, but then five minutes later, she’d be her old bubbly self. That was how Dee was. She never held a grudge, never remembered why she was mad.
So that day in June, I knew something was wrong. She was quiet the whole ride to the river. Usually she’d be yelling at me over the wind, chattering away about anything and everything, but that day we just rode, and it wasn’t until we were down on the sandbar, trailing our bare feet in the water, that she burst into tears.
“Dee! What’s wrong?”
“I . . . oh my god, Amy, it’s so gross.”
I couldn’t imagine what she was talking about. But I knew Dee just needed to talk it out, and then she’d be herself again. “What?” I asked.
“I got . . .”
I stared at her and waited.
“You know . . .” She made a face and wriggled her shoulders. And then I got it.
“You got your period!” I screeched. I thought this was a good thing. In my grade, everyone wanted to get theirs. A couple girls had already, and everyone was jealous. It was this weird, special, mysterious thing. And Dee already had boobs. They weren’t big boobs, but they were something. I had absolutely nothing.
“Shut up!” She waved her arms and looked around, but there was nobody else there.
“Isn’t that good?” I asked.
“It’s disgusting, Amy. I’m bleeding all over the place. I have to wear pads, and they stink, and it’s going to happen every single month. It’s not fair!” She burst into tears again.
I was confused. I wouldn’t have been crying. I would have been happy. “It’s just a few days, right?”
“I guess.” She kicked her feet in the water. “You’re lucky you’re only ten.”
And all of a sudden, there was this big space between us, even though we were sitting so close that we were almost touching. She was twelve, and I was ten. She was a woman, and I was a kid.
MOM BARS AUNT HANNAH from the house, but two days after my dad comes home, Lee visits. I stand in my room with my ears pressed against the crack in the door, listening to her try to talk my mom into letting her see me.
“I’m not gonna lose it, Aunt Patty,” Lee says. I don’t recognize her voice, but I heard my mom greet her, and who else would call my mom Aunt Patty? “I won’t ask her anything, I swear,” she says. “I just want to give her a big hug.”
“She’s hurting, Lee,” my mom says. “She isn’t the same person. You have to understand that.”
My heart leaps. I knew that my mom had noticed, but I hadn’t heard her say it yet. When she’s talking to me, she acts like I’m Amy. Amy who only wears purple and likes to put her hand over her face.
“I know,” Lee says. “But she’s back, right? She’s not going to live in that bedroom alone.”
I’m not? I take a step back from the door, then two steps. I don’t know if I’m ready to see Lee, whoever she is now. I picture her at ten, her blond hair perfectly set, wearing little kiddie high-heeled shoes. She was always nice to me, even though we were different. She was one of my best friends. But Aunt Hannah hates me for not talking. What if Lee hates me, too?
Mom peeks her head in. “Lee’s here,” she says. “Do you want to see her?”
“Okay,” I say. Because I do want to see her. I missed her, too, and I thought about her and wondered what her life was like. I remembered her the same way I remembered Jay. I just hope she doesn’t hate me.
Mom moves away from the door, and a girl appears. She still has blond hair, and it still looks perfect. It flows down her back in soft curls. She’s wearing jean shorts and a white tank top with a brown leather jacket over it, and she’s flawlessly tanned. But what strikes me the most, what tears the breath out of my chest, is that she looks a lot like Stacie. She has the same nose, the same forehead, the same eyes. I stare at her, frozen.
She smiles big. “Oh my god, Amy!” She rushes toward me and throws her arms around me. She squeezes and then pulls back to look at me. But she’s not crying like my parents did. She’s still smiling, the smile Stacie rarely showed. “Amy, I can’t believe it! I’m so glad you’re back.” Like I was never kidnapped, like her sister isn’t gone. Like I’m her friend.
“Thanks,” I say.
“Wow, you turned out pretty.” She tilts her head like a bird, examining me. Her face is like Stacie’s, but it isn’t. Lee’s face is thinner. Her features are more refined, more perfect. “You might need to get your hair trimmed,” she continues, “but that’s easy.”
I just shake my head. I don’t know what to say to that.
“Don’t you think so? Look.” She grabs my shoulders and turns me toward the full-length mirror that hangs over the closet door. “You have a perfect complexion. I don’t think you have a single zit.”
I see my face, my dark brown eyes and my eyebrows and my cheeks. It’s just a face. It isn’t pretty or ugly or anything. But she’s right—I’ve never had zits. Stacie always used to say I was lucky because of that. Also, because I didn’t get my period until I was thirteen.
“You look pretty, too,” I say. The appropriate response. I think it must be true. People always said so, before. They said it about both her and . . . Dee. The name spills through my brain, threatening to pour out of my mouth.
“Thanks. I have to work at it!” She smiles and continues examining me in the mirror. “I bet you need some new clothes. Want to go shopping? I already asked your mom, and she said she’d give you the money if you’re up for it. We can drive to Portland and go to the mall.”
I try to think of something to say, to decide whether I want to do that, but she keeps talking.
“Aunt Patty told me that you like purple, and that’s great. We can find you lots of purple stuff. She doesn’t know if you should leave the house, but you can’t spend all your time in a psychiatrist’s office or something. You didn’t come back to be locked up somewhere, right? You’re free to do whatever you want.”
“I’m . . .” Dee Dee Dee Dee. The name bounces around between my ears. Not Stacie, Dee. And her face fills my head, too. Her blue eyes, her blond hair.
“And I won’t ask you any questions, I promise. You don’t have to tell me anything. I don’t even want to know. If you told me, then I’d have to tell my mom, and she can’t handle it. She’s better off not knowing.” Lee’s eyes well up and she stops talking. We’re both staring into the mirror. I’m staring at her face and she looks at mine. And both of us, in our own ways, are seeing Dee.
Tears spring from Lee’s eyes, but she stands perfectly still, and long seconds go by. “I want to think of Dee like she was,” she says. “Like, she’s alive in my memory. And she could be alive. So don’t tell me, okay?”
I’m still frozen. There’s nothing I can say to that. How can I even move without giving something away?
“So what do you say?” she asks, wiping the tears away. “Shopping trip?”
It seems like Lee’s really trying, like she wants to help me, and I didn’t expect that, not after how Aunt Hannah acted. And I feel terrible for thinking Lee might act the same way, because I remember how she used to be. How she was always offering to share her Barbies, showing me their house and their car and their clothes, handing me the ones she liked best. She’d even offer to let me wear those ridiculous high-heeled shoes. Lee didn’t understand why I liked to read books sometimes instead of hanging out, or liked to roller-skate or ride bikes with Dee instead of playing dress-up. But she was always my friend, whether we understood each other or not.
I have to learn to be normal again, to be Amy. I can’t do that if I never leave this house, and who else wi
ll help me? What other friends do I have? I can’t believe she is my friend, still, but she’s here. Promising not to be like Aunt Hannah, not to ask.
“Okay,” I say. My pulse races, and I’m about to take it back again. I never got to go anywhere, not for six years, and God knows I wanted to. But the mall seems impossibly far away, in a world that I can’t believe even exists.
“Great!” She smiles big again, and I think she’s going to leave, but she doesn’t. She sits down at the end of my bed, which is now a real twin bed that my dad bought for me. He’s been sleeping in Jay’s room on the air bed for the last two nights, even though Jay will barely speak to him. “So . . . how does it feel to be back?” She’s ignoring the fact that she was just crying, that she believes that Dee is dead. She’s trying to pretend that things are normal, and I need it. I need to pretend and pretend and pretend.
“Um . . . it’s good to see my mom,” I say. “And my dad and Jay.” I sit down on the other end of the bed. We’re silent for a second. “What’s been going on with you?”
She latches on to my question and begins to talk. She tells me about her boyfriend, Marco, and how he plays basketball and he’s trying to make varsity next year and how she tried out for cheerleading but twisted her ankle during tryouts, so she didn’t make it, and her best friend is Kara and her other best friend is Christina and Kara and Christina are in a fight, and when she’s done talking about her friends, she starts talking about school and how her math teacher was really easy but her Spanish teacher was really hard, and how she got a C and her mom was mad and grounded her for a week and now she might not get to go with Kara’s family on vacation, and I wonder if she’s going to stop talking, but she doesn’t. She tells me about how she and her mom yell at each other and then make up and where people our age hang out when they go to Portland and what music she likes and how she’ll show me what’s cool. “Do you have any music?” she asks.
I look around the room. Amy used to have some, but I don’t see it. I barely remember what music sounds like.
“Well, I’ve got tons of new stuff for you! There’s a lot we need to catch you up on!” She stands. “So, tomorrow? I’ll pick you up at ten?”
“I have to see the psychologist then,” I say.
“So noon? How about one? That will give you time for lunch.”
“Okay,” I say.
“Great!” She reaches down and hugs me again. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” And then she leaves. I hear her saying goodbye to my mom and telling her it went fine and that we’re going to the mall tomorrow.
“I don’t know,” my mom says. “If you don’t leave until one, then—”
“It’ll be fine,” Lee says. “Plus, you already agreed. You’d better give her a lot of money. She needs a whole new wardrobe!” And then I hear the door close behind her.
So I guess I’m going shopping. I know I’m not ready, but I also know I need this. I need to see something outside these walls so I can figure out what the world is like now. If I can act normal, then maybe they’ll stop asking questions. Maybe they’ll realize that I’m not crazy, that I know what’s best for me, for all of us. A picture jumps into my head, of the cabin, of them, and I have to sit down, have to force the picture from my brain. But I need to be able to stand up. I need to be able to act like none of the last six years ever happened.
When we were kids, Lee was the cool one, the one who always knew how to act. She’s the one person who could help me figure out how to be the Amy I was supposed to be. I try to picture that Amy, but what I see is a blur. I have no idea who I would have become. Lee can’t really change me into the Amy who was never kidnapped, but she can help me pretend. She is throwing me a rope, and I’m going to take it. I’m going to learn how to be Amy, and I am going to be strong.
AFTER DEE TOLD ME about getting her period, she brightened up again. It was only a couple minutes before she was in the water.
“Let’s make it all the way to the big bend this time,” she said. The big bend was this place where the creek made a turn, right before it merged with another branch and became a full-on river. Our parents had forbidden us to ever wade as far as the river because they were afraid we’d get swept away, so the big bend was the farthest we were allowed to go.
I didn’t feel like wading anymore. I was still thinking about how I wanted to have my period, too, and how I wanted to have breasts, and how Dee would probably forget about me soon to be with her middle school friends.
“Come on!” She started moving.
I slid into the water, which was up to the middle of my legs. It was cold, the kind of cold that feels good at first on a hot day but then chills you from the inside out. I followed Dee as she waded slowly, taking care not to slip on the wet rocks or gouge her feet on the snails and sticks and occasional beer bottles on the creek bed. There were days when the creek was full of people, and since it was Sunday, I expected people to show up any minute, but they didn’t. I could hear the cars going by on the street above us, and the sound of a dog barking somewhere, but in the creek, it was just Dee and me. Her wispy blond hair bounced as she walked, flying everywhere in the breeze.
“. . . so I said she could have the shoes if I could have her red bag with the feather, and Lee said it wasn’t fair because they don’t even fit me anymore, but why should I just give her something? I mean, I could sell them. Or I could give them to charity. Or I could just sit there and look at them if I want to because they’re mine, right? But then Mom came in and she said I had to give them to Lee because they don’t fit me. And because Lee is my sister and we’re a family and families share. But they’re my shoes. And she never gave me anything for them!”
“Uh-huh,” I said. Sometimes Dee’s stories about the fights she had with Lee baffled me. Having a little brother, I didn’t have to worry about sharing my clothes, and I didn’t imagine that if I had to share them, I would care.
“And this morning she was wearing them, dancing around, rubbing it in my face!”
“That’s mean,” I said.
“I know!” Dee splashed the water with her hands as she walked. “Oh look, a trout!” She pointed at the fish that darted away from us, its silvery skin flickering under the water. “And I know she’s still going to be wearing them when I get home. She’ll wear them out just to make me mad, and I should just ignore her and, like, turn the other cheek, but I can’t! She’s doing it on purpose!” Dee kept talking about it as the water got deeper, and I tried to listen, but my mind was going in different directions. Why did Dee have to change? With all this talk about shoes and clothes, it was like she was becoming more like Lee every day, but I wasn’t changing. I wanted to change, but I also didn’t want to. I wanted all of us to stay the same.
We weren’t anywhere near the big bend yet, but I was cold to the bone. Today I couldn’t ignore it the way I usually did. I wanted to sit in the sun and dry out, and maybe go home early.
“I’m cold,” I said. “I don’t know if I can go all the way.”
“Oh,” she said. She looked down the river like she really wanted to keep going, but then she shrugged. “Okay.” Before I’d even started moving, she was splashing her way to the bank. We’d stopped at a place where there wasn’t much of a beach, just a row of rocks and pebbles that led to a steep bank. There was a super-skinny path, though, just a strip of dirt through the brush. Dee stopped at the rocks and turned back. “Should we head a little farther?” She pointed upstream to where the rocks turned into dirt that was easier to walk on. But there wasn’t a path there, and I had decided I wanted to go back to the street.
“No, this is fine,” I said. I brushed past her, sat down on the little strip of rocks, and started putting my shoes on.
She sat down next to me. “Are you mad at me?”
“No, I just don’t feel good.” My feet were soggy inside my now-wet socks and shoes, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to get b
ack to my bike. I honestly was starting to feel a little sick. I was wet and freezing, and the sun was starting to cloud over, and there was something going on with my stomach. If we had gone back on the bank it would have been slow going, and it would have taken us longer to get to our bikes. So when Dee started hiking up the little path, it seemed right.
“I’m sorry,” I said as I followed her.
“It’s okay,” she said. “Maybe we can just hang out at your house.”
I kind of wanted to be alone, but I couldn’t say that. Dee couldn’t stand being alone. She had to have someone to talk to all the time, but when she was at home with Lee, who also loved to talk, she never felt like anyone heard her. It wasn’t her fault she got her period, I thought. I told myself I was being stupid. She didn’t even want it. She wanted to hang out with me and go wading in the river, so why couldn’t I just do that?
“We can go back if you want to,” I said. “I’m feeling better.” Even though I really wasn’t. But then again, I never really felt that sick.
“No, it’s okay,” she said. She pushed her way through some shrubs and ended up on the gravel shoulder of River Road. There was a car parked there, a four-door Subaru that had seen better days. The rear window facing us was broken and covered in duct tape.
• • •
The first thing Amy noticed about Kyle was his head. It was really small. He was a big man. To her he was huge. He must have been at least six feet four, and he had broad shoulders and a thick neck, the kind you expect to see on athletes. But his head was made for someone like Amy’s dad, someone tall but thin. It was narrow, and the way his shaggy hair fell over his face made it seem even smaller. But he had a big smile, bigger than the face should have allowed. It was kind of like a clown’s smile, and the way he walked was kind of clowny, too, kind of buffoonish. The way he smiled, the way he walked, he didn’t seem like that big of a man. He seemed more like a child.
Amy Chelsea Stacie Dee Page 3
