Amelia Anne Is Dead and Gone (19 page)

CHAPTER
24

I
t was you
.

He reached for me, his mouth open, his voice saying my name. I jerked away. I was still clutching the cigarette case and driver’s license—her driver’s license,
hers
,
stamped with the face that had stared out at me for months from bulletin boards, drive-through windows, the television screen as it played the evening news. As I fumbled with the catch on my seat belt, my panicked mind slowed just long enough to note that I finally knew the dead girl’s name.

Not the dead girl.

Amelia.

Amelia Anne Richardson, age twenty-two, from a town I’d never heard of in a state I’d never been to.

James was trying to hold me, his bony fingers grasping and gripping at my arms, my sleeves, my face, trying to keep me from running. I lashed out with the hand that held the cigarette case and caught him on the ear, felt the blow ringing down my forearm as his hands flew up in surprise. The seat belt gave way with a click, snapping back with the sing of nylon, and I grabbed frantically at the door handle, and then I was outside. Running. Feet pounding, falling over the uneven ground, falling once and then again while the wind howled and tried to push me back. I cried out in frustration, plunged my hands into the dirt, propelled myself forward. I ran as lightning flashed again overhead, ran as the thunder cracked so loudly that I felt like I was trapped inside a room full of noise, ran as I heard James coming, fast, behind me.

He was still calling my name.

My feet tangled in the whipping grass and I went down again, seeing the glare of the headlights behind me, feeling the tiny zing of small cuts on my bare shins. The rain-starved weeds had turned sharp. They sliced and hissed in the wind, bending angrily toward my face, my neck, the exposed skin on my chest and back.

When I looked up, he was there.

I had forgotten how quick he was, how fast those long, coltish legs could move. I had been a fool to think I could outrun him. In this place, where there was only nothingness for miles, fields and farmland and thick woods, I had nowhere to go. And there was nobody here to help me.

I looked desperately toward the road, hoping for headlights or the sound of a motor. Seeing only darkness, black and empty, the only movement coming from the frantic tossing of the trees.

James shouted again, his voice high and tense, raised angrily over the wind. I struggled to my feet again and he moved toward me.

“Becca, stop running!”

I took one tentative step, then turned back. I stared into his face. He was lit by the headlights, his face bathed in the harsh electric brightness of the high beams, with dark shadows pooling under his eyes and in the hollows of his cheeks.

He was skeletal.

Monstrous.

This was the boy I’d thought I loved, he was chasing me down, advancing on me now with his face contorted in rage and his fist closed tight and heavy with anger.

I looked into his face and screamed.

My voice was a banshee shriek, high and raw, a sound like shattering glass and squealing tires and fingernails being dragged over slate. Full of anguish and anger. I screamed into the night, while the world howled back around me.

“What did you do, James?”

He stopped moving, his hand still hanging heavily at his side. He stared at me and shook his head, barely, and the light glinted twice in the black pools of his eyes.

“What did you do?” I screamed again. A ragged sob escaped from my lips and I swallowed hard, fighting the urge to break down. There was nowhere to go. Nowhere to go. I was here, with him. Alone, and too slow to outrun him, and too stupid to see his silences and strange anger and absence for what they were, and he was coming closer now, the wind blowing his hair back and his eyes still fixed on my face.

“Becca,” he said, and his voice was like ice as the wind carried it toward me. “Becca, it’s not—”

“It’s her!” I yelled. “That’s her, James! She’s dead, she was fucking
murdered
, and you’ve been hiding her driver’s license in your car for . . .” I trailed off, realizing how close I’d been to learning the truth, remembering how he had slapped my hand away when I reached for the glove box so many weeks before.

He took another step toward me, and I backed away. “Stay away from me!”

“Becca, just—”

“What did you do? Answer me, goddammit!” I took another step back. He moved forward. I started to sob, no longer able to hold it back, no longer sure there was any reason to. “Oh God, James, what did you do? Did you hurt her? Did you?!”

He stopped, and his eyes narrowed. His hand tensed, his fist closing tighter, the muscles in his forearm jumping and ready to move.

“Tell me!” I screamed again. I took a deep breath, clenching my hands into fists, feeling my pulse pounding in my palms like something small and terrified.

“Did you kill her?”

He didn’t answer, only looked at me, working his jaw while the headlights glared against his cheekbones, his earlobes, the angular jut of his shoulders, and the long lines of his arms and legs. Inside the beam of light, small movements began to appear. A few at first, and then more, thin lines that passed through and fell to the ground with a tiny, soft sound. The field was full of it—the pattering of water, growing stronger, falling in sheets now on the leaves and brush and blades of grass. I felt cold needles on my skin, saw dark marks appearing on the fabric of my shirt as the rain came down.

Poured down.

My hair stuck in soaking tendrils to my face, and the earth below me began to soften, and still James only stood there. Silent. Unmoving. He stood there and stared, until I thought that I should run again—that I had to try—and I turned one foot to find purchase in the muddying ground, and then it came.

A whisper above the sound of the rain.

“Yes,” he said. “I killed her.”

AMELIA

H
er hand was still in the air. Still waving as he shifted uncertainly on his feet. She lowered it only when he had slammed the door, and then, for what seemed like ages, she simply stood there.

The breeze had begun to blow again, warm and pungent with the scent of growing things. It seemed to be caressing her body as he watched, lifting her hair from her shoulders, burnishing the alabaster smoothness of her skin, pressing her thin cotton dress against the curves of her hips and breasts.

Beside the car, Luke stared wordlessly back. She was beautiful.

She was gone.

Inside his head, a blank, white, cold wall of nothingness.

She was gone.

She stared defiantly into the glare of the headlights, unable to see more than the black outline of his body, but knowing he could see her. Wanting him to see. Her chin lifted higher and she stretched herself to her full height, feeling her spine lengthen, feeling life awakening inside and all around her. The stars looked warmer, somehow, glittering and burning madly in the blue-black expanse of the sky, and the singing of insects in the trees sounded like cheering.

She thought briefly of her bag, still in the trunk of the car, packed by a girl who had better things in store for her. She stifled a laugh as she thought of her things—the book she’d planned to read on the beach; her pajamas, her jeans, her underwear, and her sensible-not-sexy bikini; even her phone, still tucked in the pocket of her abandoned purse—arriving at the beach without their owner.

He could keep them.

A smile still playing on her lips, her head held high, she looked once more at what she was leaving behind.

The cricket song reached a crescendo, urging her on and away.

She turned and began to walk.

Beside the car, Luke gripped the door with white-knuckled intensity.

She was gone.

The cigarette case hit the ground behind her with a metallic thud. She turned, seeing its contents spill and scatter, shrugging and kneeling to gather them.

She didn’t see him coming.

It was over in seconds, in the flutter of an eyelid. The widening of her eyes as she felt his shadow on top of her, the tiny, too-late movement of her hands and hips and feet as her reflexes tried to propel her out of harm’s way.

And then he was upon her.

The guttural sounds of his rage, of sculpted metal against skin and bone, drowned out the indifferent song of the insects, covering the sickening crunch of her body as it crumpled and broke. Her head smacked hard against the ground, the sound ringing with horrible resonance in the empty night.

The tire iron punched against her flesh.

Brittle bones shattered.

She was crawling now, her eyes open wide in surprise, one leg dragging useless behind her. Slim arms and fingers scrabbled in the dirt. There was a flash of blond hair, a smear of red. She coughed, and one of her teeth skittered into the road. She collapsed against the asphalt.

Her hand clutched at the air, reached out toward the mountains that she could sense but not see, and then dropped.

Luke’s hand, with its heavy passenger, lay still against his side.

She was gone.

The crickets were still singing.

Breathing hard, he stared down at her. His mind felt empty, wiped clean. He looked back, seeing the road lit by the glow of the headlights, seeing nothing at all but the incredible expanse of black, the wonderful smoothness of the asphalt, the indifferent yellow lines that stretched back, back, into the dark. He listened for a sound—anything, a ragged breath, a cry for help.

There were only the crickets.

He stared at the hand in the road, willing himself not to blink, not allowing himself to think of what might happen if those still, silent fingers suddenly twitched. If the night were suddenly filled with the anguished sound of a woman, screaming in pain.

Neither came.

The hand lay still.

And then, there
was
a sound.

Not her, not from behind, but out there.

Out in the dark.

It was a light scuff, the snap of a branch out in the brush, and Luke snapped to attention and ran toward the light and purr of the waiting car. Terror ran through him, diving into his veins and freezing his hands as they scrabbled at the door.
Someone was out there.

Panicked and wild-eyed, he threw himself into the driver’s seat and peered into the night.

There was another snap, and then the rustling of brush, and with a howl he pressed his foot against the accelerator, and the motor roared. There was the squeal of tires, a smell of burned rubber, and the sedan sped like a bullet. Away. Over the next rise, and the next one.

It disappeared into the night.

She was gone.

He was gone.

Out in the dark, beyond the fading glow of the taillights, beyond the reach of Luke’s searching eyes, in the blackness punctured by thousands of stars, a pair of gray eyes opened and rolled blindly toward the swimming sky.

By the time James crashed out of the brush, skidding through the settling dirt and falling to his knees by the side of the road, Amelia Anne Richardson knew that she was going to die.

* * *

As graduation day faded and became yesterday, James bent over the body of the dead girl.

She wasn’t dead, not yet.

She was stirring as he reached her, as he dropped his heavy flashlight into the dirt and then felt his gorge rise when it rolled away, the beam finding and illuminating her face. Her neck. Her pale arms and legs. Her body was a broken tangle of limbs and torso, splayed at unnatural angles in the soft roadside dirt, still and unmoving except for the small fluttering of fingertips, eyelashes, the pulse that beat erratically in her hollow throat. There was blood in her mouth. One of her feet began to twitch lightly against the road, tapping as though keeping time. She was wearing sneakers; the rubber instep made a dry, matter-of-fact noise as it touched down once, twice, three, and four times. Beside her, lying flat and smooth on the asphalt, was the silver cigarette case. He reached for it; his fingers left oily marks on its filigreed surface, and he recoiled and released it into the dirt.

A low cry rose in his throat as he moved over her, looking for a place to put his hands, searching desperately for anything that wasn’t too broken to touch. His hand found the curve of her shoulder, pulled gently to free her arm from where it was pinned beneath her, and as he leaned over her, a small gasp rose up from the ground below.

His skin broke into gooseflesh, and he looked down.

Her eyes were open.

She was watching him.

He bent close to her ear.

“Can you hear me?” he said.

Her lips parted; her eyes blinked. One had become glassy, unseeing, with dark spots creeping into the white from the outside edge; the other focused on him. Her dilated pupil was an endless pool of black.

She made a sound, like the slow hiss of a lazy snake, like air escaping slowly from a balloon. The blood smeared and bubbled on her teeth. One drop found its way to the twitching corner of her mouth, slipped out soundlessly, began to roll like a tiny red tributary toward the confident curve of her chin.

He felt terror slipping like a mask over his face, his eyes growing wider, his breath coming faster. The girl’s eye, the one that could still see, widened in response. Her foot stopped tapping; her fingers curled themselves into loose fists. She seemed to struggle, and her lips began moving again. James panicked and pressed his hand against them. It came away smeared with crimson. He fumbled in his pocket for a kerchief, found it, dabbed it at the space between her lips.

“No, please, don’t—don’t try to talk. Wait—” He flung himself away from her, standing tall in the road and searching frantically in one direction, then the other, for moving headlights. For moving anything. For anyone.

“Shit!” he cried, looking back at her. The tapping foot had started its rhythmic timekeeping again. Counting down to dying, as though she meant to remind him that time was running out. “Shit, my phone, I don’t have—and my car is—
hello?
IS ANYONE OUT THERE?!”

The crickets and katydids sang back in response, mocking him with echoed repeats of his own words.

Anyone? Anyone. Anyone? Anyone.

He dropped to his knees beside her again, picking up her hand—Oh, God, it was cold, her hands weren’t supposed to be cold—and looked into her face. She was struggling, her lips moving, her eyes rolling wildly in her head as tears filled them and then spilled from the corners, her hands and feet fluttering like tiny birds that meant to free themselves and fly away into the night.
Let us go. We don’t want to die here
.

“Listen,” James said, gripping her hand tighter and staring hopelessly at a tiny muscle twitching near her hairline. She was running out of time. “I have to get my car, okay? I have to go and—” On the word,
go
, her fingers turned viselike. Her eyes rolled again and her mouth moved into a tight O shape.
No.
She dug her nails into his hand, breaking the skin, cutting tiny half-moon wounds into the roughly lined palm.

“It’ll be okay,” he cried, trying to pry her fingers away. “I just—I’ll come back and I’ll find some way to—”

The hand gripped tighter. Her good eye fixed brightly on him, opening wide and white like a beacon in the dark, and he realized with horror that the other side of her face had gone slack.

She made the hissing sound again.

And again.

Her lips pressed together and he saw her tongue moving behind them, barely moving, flicking upwards. The hissing came a third time.

He leaned closer, put his ear to her lips, heard the sound once more.

The familiar sound.

The memory enveloped him.

He was back in the sunny upstairs of the house, his house. Their house. Back in the bedroom with the yellow walls, sitting uncomfortably in a too-small chair, his fingers gently resting in the palm of a hand that looked like it was made of twigs and old leather. Her breathing was coming raggedly, now, ripping like sandpaper along the pretty, buttercup-colored paint and scraping with agonizing slowness against the floor. He hung his head and fought back tears, bit down hard on his lip to catch the strangled sound before it made its way out of his throat. He did not want to wake her.

When he looked up again, she was looking at him.

Her eyes were looking at him. She had become a series of parts, now—not his mother, not even a person, but parts. Liquid eyes and dry lips and jutting sternum that seemed ready to cut through the papery skin of her chest. The IV line snaked from her wrist to the polished silver of its stand, looming over her like a metal skeleton. The bottles of pills that lay on every surface of the room seemed like pieces of her.

He looked back at her.

Her mouth was moving.

He leaned forward, to hear—to make out whatever word was coming laboriously up through the wasted tangle of her vocal cords, pushing out through the dry cavern of her mouth.

And then he heard her voice.

He turned his face away. And let the tears fall.

“Mom, no.”

Please.

“I can’t.”

Please.

“
I
can’t,”
he sobbed, and began beating his balled-up fists against his knees in anguish. “Don’t ask me to do that! Don’t ask me again, Mom!
I can’t do that!
”

When he looked up again, her eyes had closed.

Three days later, as afternoon turned to evening, the sandpaper sound of her breath slowed. And stopped.

Now, in the dark on the side of the road, James looked down as the girl’s breath bubbled red inside her mouth, and her lips moved again.

Her eye had stopped rolling; it was fixed on him, on his face.

Please
.

He shook his head.

Please
.

And then, as the katydids sang in the trees and the stars glittered indifferently overhead, he squeezed her hand tight and bent his head to her chest.

And reached for the flashlight.

“Okay,” he whispered.

Her lips stopped moving.

She blinked once, deliberately. Slowly.

Yes
.

Haltingly, her head rolled to the side. She gasped in pain at the movement and then lay quiet again.

She let go of his hand.

She closed her eyes.

He looked down at her.

His hands raised, trembling, over his head.

He hesitated only a moment.

“Okay,” he whispered.

And the flashlight came down.