Amelia Anne Is Dead and Gone (8 page)

“Not really. We were talking about the news,” Jenna said. “You know, the dead girl.”

“Yeah?”

Jenna’s voice was cold. “Not much to report, apparently.”

Lindsay shuddered.

“I don’t like thinking about that. I mean, geez, she got killed, like, right there.” She pointed in the direction of the woods, where the thick-growing trees gave way to a steep hillside, and below it, the curve of Route 128. As if on cue, the muted
whoosh
of a passing car drifted through the night air. Gooseflesh broke out on my arms and legs as I realized that if the girl had screamed, had called out, had made any sound at all, it would be heard up here. Craig, dozing drunk on the sagging couch, celebrating his bare scrape through high school with a D+ average, would have opened his eyes to the sound of death creeping softly through the trees.

Jenna had realized it, too.

“Craig,” she said.

He looked at her.

She leaned toward him. “You were here that night, weren’t you?”

He met her eyes for a moment, then shrugged and stared into the distance.

“Dunno,” he said.

Jenna looked exasperated. “You don’t know? Are you kidding?”

“Hey, lay off,” he snapped. “What do you care, huh? Why should I tell you where I was?”

She sat back and glared icily at him.

“Because,” she said, “that girl practically died in your backyard. So if you were here, you would have heard something. And if you weren’t here, then I wonder where you
did
go—” She looked at Lindsay now, who was beginning to look upset—“and with who.”

Jenna swayed on her feet, just a little, and with a rush of understanding I realized that she was drunk. Her irritation was irrational, paranoid, illogical but growing anyway as Craig refused to give her what she wanted. Craig glowered back. Three more mosquitoes floated eerily toward the blue light of the bug zapper and incinerated themselves against the electric glow.

And then, meeting her eyes, Craig smiled.

“It’s none of your business. And even if I was here,” he said, and Lindsay’s mouth opened slightly as though she was going to speak, but he stood up and pushed a meaty finger into Jenna’s face. “Even if I
was
, it wouldn’t matter, because I wouldn’t give a shit about that dead bitch if she’d crawled into my yard and died on the doorstep.”

The patio had cleared, then—Jenna making a disgusted sound and exiting with an, “I’m gone,” Lindsay demanding to know why Craig had to be such an asshole all the time before following. Jeff, who had been standing at the fringes of the group and watching the exchange with wide eyes, muttered something about being their designated driver and shuffled after them.

With the sound of Jeff’s car fading in the distance, Craig sat down on the couch with a fresh beer in hand. His fat face was swollen with proud ignorance, smug self-satisfaction. James could say what he wanted, but it couldn’t be clearer: Craig was intentionally getting in the way of the investigation. He liked the idea of the dead girl—“that dead bitch”—remaining a no-name corpse, unclaimed and unsolved.

“You should have let the police do their job.”

Craig looked at James. James jerked his head in my direction and said, “Word’s going around.”

Craig shrugged, a strange little smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “Hey, I don’t make the laws. Law says they need a warrant, they need a warrant.”

“Or you can give permission, you dickhead,” I snapped. “Instead of making things difficult.” I looked at James for help. He shook his head and mouthed,
Stop
. I stared at him.

“What?” he asked, staring back.

“Aren’t you going to say anything? I’m sorry, but what if her killer
was
out there? What if he dropped something, evidence or something, that could’ve helped them, but they didn’t find it because Craig is an asshole?”

Craig was watching the exchange with that same, weird smile.

“Well, they’re definitely not gonna find it now,” he said. “Even when they do get a judge’s say-so.”

The words hung in the air as James turned to look at him.

“What are you talking about?”

Craig shrugged. “Let’s just say that I did a little cleanup in the yard today. Let’s just say that if there was something to find, it’s gone now.”

I gaped. Even someone like Craig, someone who’d always taken a little too much pleasure in other people’s suffering, wouldn’t take evidence from a crime scene. Would he? It had to be a joke.

“Bullshit.”

“Try again.”

James’s voice floated out of the darkness; he’d moved away from us without my seeing.

“Did you really find something?” he asked.

“I found lots of things,” Craig grinned. “And if one of them was important, well, I guess that’ll just be too bad.”

“Are you kidding? If you found something”—I was sputtering, my voice rising in pitch—“you have to give it to the police!”

Craig’s smile kept stretching. “Fat chance. What do I care about some dead, beat-up bitch? And why should I help your incompetent redneck police do their job?”

There was a long silence.

“I’m going to tell them about this,” I said, realizing as the words came out how pathetic I sounded, hating the plaintive whine in my voice.

“Like hell you will.”

“Becca,” said James. He had reappeared behind me without my noticing. He put a hand on my shoulder. “He’s just kidding. Just trying to give you a hard time. Right?”

Craig didn’t answer, but shrugged.

“CRAIG. Come on, man. Give it up.”

The big hands went up in mock surrender.

“Yeah, yeah, okay? Sure. Just having some fun.”

“Oh, so now it’s all a big joke?” I snapped. “Is this funny to you? Maybe Craig doesn’t care about catching a murderer, but—”

“Hey,
Rebecca
,” Craig said, sneering my name like it was a dirty word, “if you care so much, why don’t you go wait out by the side of the road for a while? Maybe he’ll come back.”

I stood up, ready to fight.

James stepped between us, his voice cutting through the tension. “Stop it. Both of you.”

I looked at his face and realized how unsteady I felt on my feet. My head was heavy, clouded by the beer. I was tired of arguing.

“Fine,” I said. I sat heavily on the couch. “Fine.”

For a minute, no one spoke; there was only the incessant noise of the crickets, the hum of the bug zapper, the shorted-fuse sound the mosquitoes made as they incinerated themselves. My hair clung to my neck. It was so still, so hot.

James moved to sit beside me, stroking my arm.

“Let it go, all right?” he whispered. The hairs rose on the back of my neck as his breath touched them.

“All right,” I sighed.

“We can go now. Do you want to go?”

“Yes.”

Craig walked us back through the house (“Watch out for worms,” said James.) and stood under the porch light as we picked our way through the yard. His features, lit from above, stood out in harsh relief.

The motor coughed and rattled as I slammed my door. The car began to roll. As we reached the end of the drive, I rolled my window open and peered over my shoulder to where Craig still stood on the porch. He wasn’t watching us go; his eyes were aimed, unfocused, into the dark woods—and at the road beyond, where drifting, red-tinted dust still marked the place where a life had ended too soon. I shuddered as I watched him, then felt the tension rush out of my body as we turned the corner and started down the road.

But when I closed my eyes, I could still see him—standing there, staring into the dark.

Looking out at the place where the girl had died, and smiling.

AMELIA

“T
hat was amazing.”

Luke was looking down at her, propped up on one elbow and covered with a sheen of slick sweat, still breathing heavily. “Amazing,” he said again.

Amelia pulled the sheet over her naked body, looked up at him and smiled, trying not to roll her eyes. Luke’s so-called “ravaging” had started out promising—they had crashed through his bedroom door in a panting tangle, all grappling arms and flying clothing—but then, like always, it had wound up as ten uninspired minutes of banging in the missionary position. The headboard had tapped the wall so rhythmically that she could have set a watch by it. She had tried to make it interesting, whispering in his ear and clawing at his back, telling him what she wanted him to do to her. But Luke, who had been almost unrecognizable when he threw her onto the bed with exhilarating, animal intensity, had looked shocked, then shushed her and settled into the usual routine. He was back in his comfort zone. As she looked at him, she realized that he was still wearing his glasses . . . and his socks.

Ugh,
she thought.

He was staring down at her, expecting a reply.

“Mmm,” she said.

“Are you upset with me?”

She looked away. “Not exactly.”

“Look, I’m sorry. I just get nervous when you . . . talk. It’s weird. It’s harsh; it sounds dirty.”

“Sex is dirty,” she said. “That’s part of the fun, you know.”

“Not when you’re in love.” He rolled out of the bed, pulled on his boxers, walked a few agitated paces across the floor. She watched him. He padded over to the dresser, opened a drawer, and began pulling out shirts, tossing them onto the foot of the bed.

“Do the two have to be mutually exclusive?” she said. The patient feeling had come back. “Sweet sex is nice, but it doesn’t have to be like that every time. And it doesn’t mean that I love you less.”

He didn’t answer, but closed the drawer—hard—and moved on to the one below it. A few pairs of socks and underwear joined the pile at the foot of the bed. He looked at her again, quickly, almost furtively. She sat up, letting the sheet fall into her lap, breasts exposed. Even though he’d seen them hundreds of times before, his face reddened and he turned away.

“Hey,” she said. He pulled open the next drawer.

“I don’t want to fight about this,” he muttered.

“We’re not fighting,” she said. “We’re just talking. I’m talking to you. Don’t you ever want to fuck? Not make love, just, fuck?”

“I don’t know.”

Her voice was breathier. “No? Haven’t you ever thought about grabbing me from behind and throwing me against the wall? Just taking what you wanted?” She stepped out of bed, crossed the room in three steps, the blond wood cold against her bare feet, and pushed her body against his. He whirled to face her and gripped her shoulders. His eyes narrowed. She slid her knee between his legs.

“Come on,” she said, curling her fingers into the knots of hard muscle at his waist. “Come on.”

She lifted her chin, defiant, raising her mouth closer to his. They stared at each other. And then, suddenly so that she barely had time to take a breath, he kissed her so hard that her ears popped.

CHAPTER
10

I
t was hard to understand Stan Murray with his mouth full, but the subject matter was unmistakable.

“Crime of passion,” he grunted, though the words came out sounding more like
Kind of puffin.
“Definitely. And not no stranger, either. She had a big fat handprint on her face, like someone got right up close and walloped her before she even saw it coming.”

Lindsay sailed past me with a piece of cheesecake, casting a glance toward Stan’s openmouthed gesturing and rolling her eyes. Her presence jolted me back to reality; I’d been lurking near the bar, eavesdropping and mind racing, listening for any hint that they might be closer to understanding how and why the beautiful, battered body of a stranger had come to rest just outside the town line.

“There’s nothing grosser than that jackass trying to talk around a burger,” she said, oblivious to my focus, then disappeared into the dining room.

I was glad to have her there. Lindsay had started working just after the Fourth of July, her presence adding another beat to the busy rhythm of the place; the buzz of conversation and clinking of glassware undulated in time with the shuffling of summer people in and out of the wood-paneled dining room, until, like the tremulous high note of a showstopping aria, Lindsay’s high-pitched voice would drift out of the kitchen and over to the bar.

She had a way with words.

“Fuck you, Kevin Kelly!” she screeched a moment later, barreling back toward the kitchen as the prissy man who ran the front of the house fled and the short-order cooks cackled behind their cupped hands. “Why don’t you pour yourself another fucking martini, you alkie asshole!”

Kevin charged past me, blowing furious air from his too-large nostrils and muttering unintelligibly under his breath. He was an out-of-work actor with a receding hairline, an ego that seemed to leak from his ears, sweat-stained shirts that were too loose in the shoulders but strained across the stout paunch of his gut. He also had a drinking problem. At four thirty, the first person to arrive for the dinner shift would invariably find him perched at the end of the bar, guiltily sucking at the rim of a pint glass that was full of something we all called “water” and which we all knew was nothing of the sort.

I watched as he pounded his way into the staircase alcove where the waitstaff did sidework, ricocheted awkwardly off one wall, rattled the dishes stacked neatly in the tall built-in cupboard, and finally grabbed a baseball-size piece of bread from the ready basket and hurled it down the hallway.

* * *

In the kitchen, Lindsay was mock-curtsying while Tom chortled and applauded.

“What did you say?” I said, casting a cursory glance over my shoulder. Kevin had disappeared in the direction of the bar. “Kevin Kelly just got violent with a dinner roll.”

“Pffft,”
said Lindsay, and started giggling again.

“Hey, what the hell!” a voice said. We both looked sharply toward the oven, where Tom was standing with one indignant hand on his hip and twin beads of sweat inching slowly down his temples. “I baked those, goddamnit.”

I struggled to think of something witty to say, but my mind only churned sluggishly in one place, dredging up bits of overheard conversation.

Beaten
.
Broken. Someone she knew.

Lindsay looked sidelong at me, tossed her hair, and giggled at Tom. “So what?”

“It’s just not right, that’s all,” he said, then turned back to the oven.

“Yeah, okay, Tommy.” Lindsay rolled her eyes, then grabbed my arm and dragged me through the kitchen to the small back door that opened onto the street.

Tom was still muttering as we slipped outside.

“It takes some nerve, is all. You oughta not mess with another man’s rolls.”

Lindsay clasped my hand and pulled me around the side of the building, into the garbage alley that ran the length of its rear. Back here, the only light was a high-mounted outdoor fixture that cast an orangey glow over the crumbling brick of the wall we stood beside, draping weak light over her shoulders like a sick sun. A nearby Dumpster was a shapeless mass of heavy black.

I was grateful for the dark. I had begun to hate the sight of people in the daytime: the way their eye sockets turned to brownish caves in the harsh, high sun; the way the shadows settled grotesquely in the furrows of their faces; the dimpled and gravelly fat that revealed itself in pockets on their thighs and triceps.

I hated the way their eyes seemed to pierce me, hated their endless questions about my plans, my plans.

I had tried again and again to see myself gone. I closed my eyes and turned my mind toward September—walking the long, paved paths that lined the quad; lounging in the hallways of a well-worn dormitory; laughing alongside dozens of fresh-faced kids, the new friends I hadn’t yet met. I struggled to hear it: the clicking keys of students at work; the cacophony of a cafeteria with no shushing chaperones or watchful adults; the crunch of future feet over fallen leaves shot through with orange and ochre.

I couldn’t hold it. It was the ghost of what would have been; it turned transparent and disintegrated as I watched. It turned to dust—sunbaked and tinged with blood, swirling so thick and hot that it blocked out tomorrow.

And when I was alone, a small, sneering voice inside my head would whisper, “Serves you right.”

Because this was what happened to girls who make plans. The overconfident, the forward-looking, the ones who mapped their futures and filed them away, so sure that the world would embrace them. I had had mine forever—a five-year blueprint, a series of boxes to be checked, a recipe for escape that I drew up and then set aside, believing that it would simply stay just as I’d left it. That it was meant to happen just so. That the summer would slip blissfully by, and nothing would change, not until the very last moment, bittersweet but must-do, when I packed my life into the trunk of a car and left behind my high school sweetheart. Just as we’d always known I would. I knew just how it would go; I’d planned it out in theatrical detail, framing the scene with cinematic nuance. The words we would both say; the wistful smile that would play on James’s lips; the tears that would fill my eyes and crack my voice, but never fall. The last rays of sun would light the space between us, glowing gold between our tilted faces while we kissed each other good-bye.

I knew just how he would look, growing smaller in my rearview, standing still and tall like a slender reed in the dying light.

That’s how it was meant to end; we would kiss, and cry, and play our roles to perfection.

He was not supposed to pull my plans out from under me. My beautiful, brilliant blueprints were not supposed to be torn in two and cast aside. The summer was not supposed to start with something so brutally broken.

There was not supposed to be blood on the road.

That girl, dead and gone, her spirit trapped forever just inside town limits—she’d come from someplace, was going somewhere. Until destiny had stepped into the road in front of her, stopped her forward motion, drawn a killing claw across the white, fluttering swell of her future. Whispering, “Oh no, you don’t.”

When you made plans, the saboteurs came out to play.

* * *

A long, thin cigarette emerged from behind Lindsay’s ear; she put a flame to the end. I watched her lips part and then come together again, wrapping wetly around the filter. She did this at parties, sucking with self-conscious gusto at the tip, allowing her cheeks to hollow with the effort and enjoying the captivated looks on the faces of nearby boys.

I was staring.

“What?” she said.

I blinked, then shook my head, leaning back against the cool brick and forcing a laugh. “Are you trying to seduce me?”

She laughed—genuine, unlike mine, unself-conscious and easy. She exhaled lazily, tilting her head back and watching as the smoke lifted in languid curls toward the rooftop. “Force of habit,” she said, then shook her head and grinned again.

I rolled my head against the wall. The brick barely touched the side of my cheek. It was like cold sandpaper, a rough caress. I thought of James, and my breath caught in my throat.

“You okay?” Lindsay asked.

“Yeah. Fine.”

“You looked pretty out of it back there,” she said, gesturing back toward the restaurant. “That stuff bothers you, huh? It’s pretty gross, right? I don’t think Stan’s even supposed to be talking about it.”

“It doesn’t bother me, really,” I said. “I just was hoping . . . I don’t know.” I trailed off, then felt my body stiffen as Lindsay suddenly shifted her weight next to me. She had moved next to me, leaning against the wall, when she suddenly laid her head on my shoulder.

“Rebecca Williams,” she cooed at me. “Are you actually getting
interested
in the local goings-on?”

I struggled to laugh; it was meant to be a joke. She had no way of knowing that all summer long, late at night, I’d lain awake and felt myself dragged down by questions—echoes of townie chatter that circled the dusty roadside and pelted the corpse who lay still in a cold, stainless-steel drawer and kept her bloodless blue-gray lips closed tight against the onslaught.

Who are you?

Who killed you?

Where is he now?

There were no answers, and the investigation was slowing. Information trickled out now in dribs and drabs, yielding nothing significant, but it didn’t matter. We hungered for it.

I hungered for it.

* * *

The last-year-me wouldn’t have. That girl, forward-looking and future-focused, wasn’t interested in what happened here. It was
there
that I wanted, out there somewhere, when I sat elbow-to-elbow with my giggling friends and let my thoughts swirl up and away from the three-mile radius of our small lives. In my head, I careened out of town and across state lines, until the landscape became strange and unfamiliar. I wanted to see all of it. Everything. The vast expanses of the flat Midwest, miles of horizontal earth with the curving horizon at its end. Strange, stunted trees and driftwood skeletons on the lonely windswept beaches of the farthest coasts. Towering oaks hung thick with the gray lace of Spanish moss, looming like hovering parents over shaded southern dirt. The California sun, dipping and disappearing into the ocean, tipping the waves with orange light.

The yearning for elsewhere had always left me only half engaged with the day-to-day of here. I was aloof, strange, disinterested in the little whirlings of our high school world. Some people thought it made me suspicious, untrustworthy. Even Craig, who knew firsthand the existence of Somewhere Else, thought I was dreaming beyond my rights.

“For small-town trash,” he’d said to me a few days after our first meeting, “you think awfully highly of yourself.”

Lindsay was still peering at me, curious.

“Me, interested. Yeah, that would be weird, right?” I joked, and reached a hand up to pat Lindsay’s cheek. She giggled back, in character, always ready to play the flirt. I wondered how it was that this impersonal warmth, the maneuvering sweetness of a girl I’d grown up alongside without ever really knowing, could make me feel better. Lighter. My fingers uncurled and lay slack and comfortable at my side; I hadn’t known I was clenching them.

“Out of character, more like it,” she laughed. “But you know, I totally understand.” She lifted her head and looked at me, her eyes like black pools in the opaque orange light.

“Oh, yeah?” I said, and instantly felt sorry for it. The words had come out fast and too bitter.

“I just mean, I think I get how you feel,” she said. She held her hands up, palms facing forward, a living illustration of
Hey, man, didn’t mean nothing.
“You’re gone at the end of the summer, right? If I were going away to school, I wouldn’t care about any of this small-town bullshit either.”

“You’re not going to school?” I feigned the surprise I wished I felt. It happened every year—kids who graduated like all the rest, but seemed to cast roots into the ground the moment they left the stage and the final strains of “Pomp and Circumstance” had faded. They retreated toward the center of town, wrapped themselves in the familiar fabric of life in Bridgeton, gossiped and grew fat on a steady diet of sameness. Eventually, they would marry another lingerer and give birth to children who, more likely than not, would also grow up to stay put.

“Community college, maybe?” she said. “It’s just . . . you know, it’s expensive. And I don’t even know what I’d get out of it.”

“It’s different for everyone, I guess,” I said quietly. Inside, I stretched my imagination again, trying to see myself in a new life at State and encountering nothing but thick, featureless fog.

“So I’m going to hang out here,” she continued. “Wait tables, save some money, decide what to do. Maybe I’ll go away one day, go to school, or travel, or get a job-job. But I’m not above just being here a while.”

“Hey, I’m not—”

Her eyes widened and she rushed in, “Oh no, I didn’t mean it that way! I know you’re not. It’s not like I think you’re some high-and-mighty bitch or anything. I mean, you’ve got this whole life planned out, you know? Me, I don’t know what I want to be, or do, or anything.”