Amy Chelsea Stacie Dee (3 page)

MY DAD IS AN OLD MAN.
His hair has gone almost completely gray, and he's gained so much weight that his belly spills over his slacks. He used to be skinny. He used to pull his pants up and tighten his belt. He's six feet tall and now it seems like he's three feet wide. He walks slowly, with a hesitation I don't remember.

I stand when he comes through the door, and we stare at each other. We examine each other's changes. He's thinking that I used to be a little girl, a ten-year-old kid with long brown-mixed-with-blond hair, and now I have breasts and a teenage face and short brown hair that looks like I cut it myself with kitchen scissors. I'm five feet and five point five inches tall, and I'm thin but I'll never be as skinny as that little girl with no breasts. I'm more person all over than I used to be, but the way he looks at me like he doesn't know me, like he's not sure if I'm me at all, it's like I'm also less.

And I'm wondering what happened. Because the last thing I remember, Mom and Dad were happy together. Dad owned his own construction business and Mom worked part-time at the post office, and we were a perfect family.

Dad hugs me, and he cries, but not loudly like Mom cried. He doesn't say Amy's name. He just lets the tears roll down his cheeks. I wrap my arms around his back, and it's nothing like it was before. He's soft, and my arms don't connect, and he has come from outside our house with a suitcase.

But who am I to complain? I'm the one who left. Even though I didn't want to leave, I did. And I only tried to come home once. It comes rushing back, that day only six days after Kyle took us, and I suck in a breath, try to push it away. I was going to try again. If it had worked out, I wouldn't have come home alone. I should have tried harder. If I'd tried harder, Dad would never have left Mom and Jay.

“I guess we've both changed a lot,” he says.

I nod. I want to say how sorry I am, but that would only bring more questions.

“I don't do the hard work myself now. I guess you can see that.” He laughs, and the corners of his mouth turn up, and he shows his teeth, including the chipped one in front. I remember that, and I watch it. You couldn't fake that, if you were trying to fool me. So it's my dad, sitting here on the love seat next to me.

“Why Colorado?” I ask.

He can't look straight at me. “It was hard,” he says. He closes his mouth.

“It's all right,” I say. “You can say it. You broke up because I was gone.”

“When you love someone that much,” he says, “it's not the same without them.”

I think about Jay, who is still in his room and hasn't come out since yesterday. When Mom knocked on his door to tell him that Dad was here, he didn't answer. This is why he hates me. I destroyed everything. And I should have tried harder.

I rub my left arm over my T-shirt, where the scar is. That was just for saying
someone will find us
.

“We searched for months,” he says. “Everyone in town searched. And when the cops gave up, we kept searching. We never wanted to believe we wouldn't find you. We never meant to give up.” He bursts into tears now.

But I did. I meant to give up. I made the decision not to try again.

“I'm so sorry,” he says. “I'm so sorry.” He wipes his face with both hands.

“It's all right,” I say. My eyes are filling with tears, too. I don't remember ever seeing my dad cry, and it's my fault he's crying. Not Kyle's. Mine.

“I want to know what happened,” he says. “Your mom didn't want me to ask. She said you need to see the shrink but . . .”

“I can't tell you,” I say. This is the first time I've said anything in response to that question. There's something about my dad crying. It's like, moms are supposed to cry, but not dads. I owe my dad something.

“The police will help,” he says. “They'll find him. Whatever he threatened you with, it won't happen.”

I say nothing.

“Please.”

I put my hand over my face.

•   •   •

When I was Amy, my best friend was my cousin Dee. She was two years older than me, but she didn't act like it. Between her and her sister, Lee, who was my age, she was the most fun. Lee was already into makeup and fixing her hair, and she was afraid to get dirty, but even though Dee liked dressing up, too, she still liked to ride her bike around town and go hiking through the woods and wading in the creek looking for crawdads. That summer when I was ten and she was twelve, we spent almost every day together. We loved being outside, and we loved the water, so we spent a lot of time at the creek. There was one spot that we liked the best because it had a cool sandbar, and from there you could walk up and down the river, and it was like we were in our own little separate world.

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 will 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.