Amy Chelsea Stacie Dee (21 page)

I realize that my story is a little different now than what I told the girls. In the car, I didn't think of the fact that someone may actually look at her body, that there's a way to tell whether she really drowned. So she was at the river, a place that even as Stacie she sometimes liked. Sometimes she got a chance to wade in it and feel the cold water on her feet, and if she was like me, she thought about our river, and Grey Wood, and maybe she remembered all the people who loved her. And she slipped while she was wading and hit her head.

“She was wading in the river,” I say, “like we used to do all the time, and she slipped and fell. She hit her head on a rock, and then she went under the water. We pulled her out, but it was too late.” I imagine this. She is falling, and I am screaming, and Kyle is running down the bank. He jumps in to save her. He swims to the middle of the river, and the water is rushing all around him, and he pulls her out and carries her back to shore. He gives her mouth-to-mouth, he compresses her chest, he does everything, but nothing works. Dee lies there, her hair matted to her face, her blue eyes open to the sky.

In this version, Dee never did anything wrong. In this version, she never would have hurt her precious girls. The second before she fell, maybe she was even happy.

“You're not telling me everything,” Aunt Hannah says.

“It was an accident,” I say. “Nobody killed her. It just happened.” There are so many problems with this story. I didn't think of them until it was too late. If she died in the river, then
why did I leave? I'm sure Aunt Hannah is going to call me on it, but she doesn't. Instead, she gets up from the table and grabs her papers. I'm afraid she's going to take back her offer. She's going to tell me that she's taking the girls and I can't see them.

But she wraps her arms around my shoulders. “It's all right, Amy,” she says. “I can wait. I have two beautiful girls to focus on now. That's what Dee would want from us.” She leaves the house, and for a few minutes, I'm alone. I'm alone, and I am home. Kyle is in jail, and the girls are safe.

I don't know what to do with myself. I don't know what's right and what's wrong or who I am or what will happen. All I know is that it's over. I feel like bursting into tears, and I do, but also, I smile. It is actually, for real, finally over.

IT'S A CLEAR,
warm night in June, warmer than average. I'm standing on the porch in the back of Ben's house, leaning on the cracked wooden railing. Empty and half-empty beer bottles litter the cheap outdoor furniture. I'm staring out at the overgrown backyard and up at the clusters of yellow stars. I'm remembering how I used to look up at those stars with Lola and Barbie, and how we made up our own names for the constellations. I see one we called the silly snake, one we called the donkey's ear. Even now, I don't know their real names. I don't need to know them because our names are just fine.

I take a long swig of my beer. It's a little warm, but it still tastes good. It tastes like freedom.

“Wooooooooooo!” Kara slaps me on the back. One of her giant
pumpkins
knocks into me, too, pressing me against the railing. She's completely wasted.

“Graduates!” Christina is even worse. She wraps one arm around me. “We're gradutates!” She bursts out laughing.

“We thought it would never happen,” Kara says. She lifts her beer. “To miracles!”

“To miracles!” Christina and I say together. We raise our beers, and then we drink.

There's a crash behind us, and laughter. Marco is coming through the sliding glass door, carrying Lee in his arms. One of the plastic end tables has overturned, sending beer bottles every which way. Marco spins Lee around.

“Stop!” she squeals.

He puts her down clumsily, and she falls into his arms. Her hair is flying around her face, which is flush with the activity and probably with the beer, and with love, too. In the last two years, she and Marco have broken up and gotten back together about ten million times. But this year, they got back together just in time for senior prom, and they've been together ever since. This time, it seems like it just might last. Behind them, more kids from our school are hanging around in Ben's living room. They're listening to the music, or dancing, or lying on the couches. Ben disappeared a while ago with some sophomore girl. It's basically just another party. But this one is special because we're celebrating the end of an era. In a couple months, we'll all be going off to college. We'll be moving on from Grey Wood and the Fighting Turkeys and each other.

Even me. I'm only going to Portland, but still. For the first time, I'll be living on my own. I'll be coming back every weekend to see the girls, but Monday through Friday, I'll be living like a regular eighteen-year-old college freshman. A
college freshman who only went to two years of high school and still hasn't caught up to ninth grade math, but still . . . I'll be out there, past the edge of our little town. I don't know how I feel about it yet. I know that if Dee were here, she would be ready to jump into life. If she had had the life she deserved, she would be ready now to break away from her parents, to stay up late, to go to parties, to meet boys. In another life, she's already out there doing that. But I have a feeling the other me, the one who never was kidnapped, would still be a little different. I think she would miss our little town the way I will.

Kara climbs up on the railing and sits there, swinging her legs. Christina climbs up next to her. The whole thing creaks like it's ready to come down.

“Bail!” Christina yells, and they jump, rolling on the grass together. Whatever they were fighting about when I first got back, they got over it a long time ago.

I take one more drink of my beer, and that's the last of it, so I set the bottle down on the plastic end table that's still standing. I turn and brush past Lee and Marco, who are now making out on a lawn chair. Inside, I look for Vinnie and find him sitting on the floor, leaning up against his boyfriend's legs. Connor is passed out in a full upright sitting position, his head lolling back over the top of the headrest. Vinnie is playing a game on his phone.

“Hey,” he says. “You ready to go?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I've got a long day tomorrow. Need to get a good night's sleep.”

Vinnie gets up and hits Connor on the arm. “Connor. Hey! Wake up, dude.”

Connor opens his eyes.

“Time to go.” Vinnie helps Connor off the couch, but pretty soon it's clear he wasn't really passed out, just asleep. He lopes along next to us as we head for Vinnie's car. My dad bought it for him after I stole and wrecked his old one. He says I did him a favor, because the Kia my dad got him is actually big enough for him to fit into, but I'm pretty sure he's just being nice. He's never gotten angry at me in all this time. Not once.

I get in the backseat, and as we head toward my house, the silence stretches.

“So you're really going to do this?” Vinnie finally asks.

“Yep,” I say.

“Dr. Kayla—”

“I know what Dr. Kayla said.” I keep my voice calm. I will not let anyone sway me from my goal, and I will not give anyone an excuse to call me crazy. I'm doing this because I know it's what I need, for me. Not for Dr. Kayla or for Vinnie or Lee or Mom or Dad or Aunt Hannah or Barbie or Lola or anyone else. They don't have to understand.

Vinnie brings the car to a screeching stop in front of my house. I get out of the car and hover next to his window. Maybe I do need him to understand, a little.

“You sure you don't want me to drive you?” he asks.

“She wants to visit a man in prison, not risk death, Vins,” Connor says.

“Ha ha,” Vinnie says.

“Good point, Connor,” I say. I lean on the window frame. “This is something I have to do myself. Every thing that I do by myself, every choice I make, that's freedom. I don't want to be free just because they locked him up. I want to be free because I can face him, and then I can walk away again. I could have walked away all those years, but I didn't know it. I know it now. I'm going to go, and then I'm going to come back.” I slap my hands on the window frame.

“Amy, he'll say things,” Vinnie says. “Whatever he said to you before, stuff you haven't even told us. All that shit he made up about you killing Dee. He'll do anything to hurt you.”

“But he can't hurt me,” I say. “I know it's true, but I need to prove it to myself. By myself.”

“We're all here for you,” he says. “Me, Connor, Lee, Kara, Christina, your family.”

“I know,” I say. “That's why I know I can do it alone.”

Vinnie sighs. “Not gonna change the lady's mind.” He turns to Connor. “She rejected all this. Mistake after mistake.”

“Total idiot,” Connor whispers, and then he gives Vinnie a big, sloppy wet kiss.

“See you later!” I call, stepping away from the car.

“Good luck!” Vinnie yells after me.

I wave back at him as I head for the front door. I meant it when I said that my friends and family are the reason I know I can handle this. They have been with me every step of the way for the last two years. There were so many times when things were hard. I had so many breakdowns and so many issues and
so much to learn. My dad went back to Colorado, but we talk almost every day now, and we visit each other. I even brought the girls to Colorado to meet Beth and Liam and Beatrice, and it was so much better than I hoped. The kids had a great time together, and that sealed us as one family. Mom is always over at Aunt Hannah's and we're always at Mom's. Things are even good with Jay. He's still frosty with Dad and refuses to even meet Beth, but with me, he's the brother I hoped and prayed I'd have again.

Aunt Hannah has been best of all, though. The change that came over her when she first met the girls stuck. There was a hole in her heart after Dee disappeared, and Lola and Barbie have mostly filled it. I say mostly because I know that one child can never replace another. But now she has two little girls to focus on, girls who aren't about to be grown up and out of the house like Lee.

“Hey,” she says as I walk in the door. She's sitting in the recliner next to the fireplace under a tall lamp, holding a book but not reading it. Her blond hair is even longer, and you can still barely see the gray.

“Vinnie drove,” I say. “He wasn't drinking.”

“It's all right,” she says. “It's graduation. Time to let loose a little.”

“But you had to wait up,” I say. I haven't told her what I plan to do tomorrow. I wonder if Lee let it slip, or maybe she overheard us arguing about it last night. Lee feels the same way as Vinnie. She thinks I should listen to my therapist and
all my friends who say it's a bad idea. Like
she
would do what everyone else said.

“I just have a bad feeling, Amy,” Aunt Hannah says. She stays in her chair, and I walk over. “We've gotten our lives together over the past two years, and now things are going to change. I'm not good with change anymore.” She wipes a tear off her face. I can see that she's been crying for a while now.

“Hey.” I walk behind her and wrap my arms around her neck. “Nothing's really changing. We have the whole summer. And then I'll be back every weekend.” I turn my face away while I talk, making a futile attempt to hide the beer breath. But she doesn't notice.

“I know,” she says. “Look at me. I'm being crazy again.”

“No C-word in this house,” I say.

“Lee will be all right, won't she?” Aunt Hannah asks. “I know you will. You've made it through so much, Amy. But Lee. She's been the rock for me for so long, for all of us these past two years. I worry that when she doesn't have us leaning on her, she'll crack.”

“Lee won't crack,” I say.
She's not like Dee,
I think.
They look alike, and sometimes they talk alike, but they aren't.
“Lee's strong and she'll always be that way. Trust me.” I kiss Aunt Hannah on the cheek. “I need to get some sleep. Wake me for breakfast?”

“Okay,” she says. “Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

I lie in bed awake, thinking about what Aunt Hannah said about Lee. I realize that's what happened to me. When I was
with Kyle, I had to be the strong one. I had to be the mom, to take care of the girls and Dee and even Kyle. But once I got home and I was safe, I cracked. I started falling back into my memories, losing time, hiding from life. Back in the cabin, I could never afford to do those things, but when I got away, the dam of crazy just let loose.
No C-word in this house.
But I can't take my own advice. I was crazy. And now I'm finally living in the real world. I hardly ever go back there. It's been half a year since I lost any time. When I see Kyle, will I still be the person I am today, or will I go back to being crazy Amy, or will I go back to being Chelsea? Chelsea was strong, I think. It wasn't so bad to be Chelsea, in the scheme of things. Not when the alternative was being Stacie and cracking with the first blow.

I threw the Stacie doll away. It took a few months to get up the courage, but I did it. One night I went out to the corner where the trash can was waiting for pickup, and I stuffed her in. Not her, it. The doll that Dee had nothing to do with.

These thoughts used to send me back, make me fall into a memory and not come out until the sunrise. But instead, I stare up at the ceiling in my bedroom in Aunt Hannah's house. I don't need to see Kyle to be okay. I know he's behind bars. He pleaded guilty to kidnapping us and raping Dee. I guess it was hard for him to deny when we had two samples of their DNA. He even pleaded guilty to murder, because since Dee died while he was holding her prisoner, it legally doesn't matter how it happened. At first Aunt Hannah wanted a trial so he would get the death penalty, but finally she agreed not to
object to letting him plead. Otherwise he would have claimed he was insane, and I would have had to testify. Maybe even the girls would have had to come to court. I roll over on my side. He still got thirty years to life in prison. If he ever gets out, we'll both be old.

He told everyone who would listen that I murdered her. He said that I picked up that lamp and hit her over the head with it in cold blood, all because I was jealous that he was going to marry her and not me. He even talked to a TV reporter, and it was all over the national news. But nobody who mattered believed him. The autopsy proved she died from hitting her head on something, but they couldn't tell what. Officially, it was a rock in the river, and she died instantly.

I don't need to give him a chance to throw the truth back in my face. But at the same time, the truth is all I have to cling to. Dr. Kayla says I have to face it, even if it's only between her and me. Facing the truth is one of the ways I stay here and now. I know that I killed Dee, but I also know that I was protecting myself and the girls, and I never meant to kill her. Dr. Kayla says that what you mean matters.

I am strong enough to do this. I have to face him if I want to be truly free.

•   •   •

There are a few other people in the room, sitting at the tables. The tables are gray, the chairs plastic. I expected shouting and crying, but the people mostly talk quietly. This is a medium-security prison. I guess they don't think Kyle is much of a threat to anyone else. He's no criminal mastermind who might plan a
daring escape. The people he hurt were only little girls. These bars, these walls are enough to contain him.