The Bitch Posse (32 page)

“Not much, just a spinout and a couple moments in the ambulance.”

“You’re lucky you didn’t hurt someone else.” He gives a flat smile, as in
what a fuck-up you are.
“You may be here for a couple of months.”

A headache washes over her, the Belvedere—oh, good God, the pain throbs in the front of her forehead. “Months?” A couple months in Oakland in a hospital? “Will I walk?”

“Your right hip was shattered. Your femur’s broken too, but the hip’s what’ll take the most time. We had to replace it. Those burns on your arm are from the air bag.”

She hates it when people don’t answer straight out. “Will I walk?”

He whistles out a sigh. “You’ll be doing some physical therapy. Yeah, you should walk. I wouldn’t suggest you run a marathon, but if everything goes according to plan, you’ll walk.”

The Belvedere, the Belvedere, oh shit, what a fucking idiot! “Were the cops there?”

“Paramedics, and police, sure, they filed an accident report. They used the Jaws of Life to cut you out of the wreck.” He flips through the pages on his clipboard and stands up. “You were lucky. I’ll be in tomorrow.”

With that he’s gone.

Gone?

God, I need a drink.

At that moment she realizes that they surely took a blood sample and found out she’d been drinking, which means she’ll be getting a nice horrible drunk driving citation when this is all over.

The pretty, older Chinese woman in the next bed’s in traction too, but she’s sleeping, her hair curled about her pillow, framing her face.

God, she wishes she could sleep. Her suitcase is gone, no books, no clothes, no laptop.

And now the Bitch Goddess Notebook is gone forever too.

Scotty.

Has anyone called Scotty?

Does it matter?

He must be listed as next of kin on her hospital record. Her Soo address was on the driver’s license. They figured it out.

Of course, up till now, she hasn’t been in shape to deal with any of that hospital stuff, and she guesses that the next time a nurse comes in she’ll be filling it out, giving insurance information, all that crap.

Did I almost die?

Holy shit.

I don’t even know anyone around here. Except
. . .

Would Rennie Taylor really want to see her? It was so long ago. And the memories, the last ones, are so, so bad. . . .

Assuming she could even find Rennie in the first place. Does she live in San Francisco? “No, no,” she says aloud. “It’s somewhere else.”

Her book. It has to be in the back of her book. Amy always knew Rennie’d make it big with her writing, and sure enough she won some literary award a while back. Amy picked up a copy of the thing, small-town-girl-goes-to-the-big-city, not demanding, just a fun, quick read. But in the midst of the move from the little Soo house to the big one, it somehow got lost. Amy’s sure it said on the back something like
Wren Taylor makes her home in
. . .

And of course, she can’t remember the “in.”

Crap.

Does it matter? Why dig up the past, scrape out old wounds? Because that’s the way they’ll heal?

She sure can’t hurt any worse than she does now, be fucked up any worse than she is here with a shattered hip and a broken femur and a barbecued arm. What the hell. She leans over to the telephone and dials for an outside line and information. She gets the Barnes & Noble
in Jack London Square in Oakland and asks for “that book by Wren Taylor. W-R-E-N.”

“Not in our computer,” says the young, perky girl. “Is it out of print maybe?”

Double crap. “I really need that book. I just need someone to read me the stuff on the author flap, that’s all.”

“It’s out of print. We don’t have it.” The girl sounds like she’s about to hang up.

“Listen,” Amy says. “I’m in traction in a hospital bed at Summit, and Wren Taylor’s an old friend of mine. Please, please tell me where she lives. Just the town.”

The girl’s voice softens. “I could take a minute to look it up on the Internet. Can I call you back?”

“Yes, yes, you’re wonderful!” Of course she has no idea what the phone number here is. The pain stabs into her face again.
Maybe I can get Rennie to bring me something to drink when she comes, she’ll come, oh, God, please let me find her so I’m not here all alone.
“Just look up Summit and ask for Amy Dionne’s room.”

The girl agrees, and now begins the long wait. With her right arm, Amy reaches for the TV changer and turns it on. Exactly three stations come in, Judge Judy, local news that means nothing to her, and Jenny Jones. Amy turns it off in disgust, then turns it on again because she can’t bear to be alone with her thoughts, and Judge Judy Justice will put the world in order again, problems solved!

A nurse walks in, a stunning black woman with an accent Amy can’t place. Her name tag reads Dalila, and she tells Amy she’s from Kenya.

“Kenya.” Amy pictures tigers, elephants, stretches of grassy savanna. “I hear that’s a beautiful country.”

She nods. “I hated to leave, but I had to.”

Being a fellow runner-awayer (
God, where did my words go? I can’t even think
), Amy can’t help asking, “Why?”

“They used to do terrible things to women in my country. In some places they still do.”

Now she wishes she hadn’t asked, because it must be female mutilation or something horrible like that. Now, there is nothing to say.

Dalila takes some blood samples and her vitals and swaps out her IV bag for a new one. Then she takes down the hospital information Amy’s finally coherent enough to give, Next of Kin:
Scott Dionne,
Religion:
Roman Catholic.
The answers feel like lies even though they’re as close to the truth as Amy gets, and Dalila writes them down and smiles. God, that smile was a gift.

Amy notices all the monitoring going on around her. Shit, she doesn’t even want to think about what a close one this really was. Just as Dalila’s leaving the phone rings, and Amy struggles to reach for the receiver across her body with her right hand.

Dalila picks it up and hands it to her.

“Thanks,” mouths Amy. Sure enough, it’s the bookstore woman, who’s not only looked up Rennie on the Internet but has found out she’s living in Mill Valley, just north of San Francisco. Not only that, but she’s gone ahead and called information. She reads Amy the phone number, which Amy takes down in sloppy writing on an old napkin that’s been left from the lunch she didn’t eat and didn’t know about and wouldn’t have eaten if she had known about it. “Thanks, you don’t know what this means. . . . ” Hanging up, Amy realizes she doesn’t know what it means, either. The last time she saw Rennie she was a skinny, tiny teenager. Has she changed?

Has Amy? Amy nods despite herself, of course she’s changed, she’s lost a child. . . .

Lucky, Lucky. Tears sting her eyes. The curl of brown hair, the swatch of rosy lips, the tiny twig fingers. She’ll never lose Lucky, Lucky will always be a part of her.

Amy’s not convinced that’s a good thing.

She pushes Lucky out of her mind and stares at the number for a while. Good-idea-bad-idea bounces around in her mind.

Her roommate mutters in her sleep, “Show me the way . . . ”

The way. Amy thought she knew the way when she was speeding down Highway 80. Obviously she was wrong, as usual. A pang gnaws through her for the Soo, but happiness isn’t about a place. Amy knows that. Or does she? She’s not sure of anything anymore. Impulses. That’s all she has left really.

She closes her eyes and waits for an impulse to come.

When it does, she picks up the phone and dials Rennie’s number.

May 1988
Holland High School

I’m sitting here in drama class letting Rob Fuckhead Schafer’s words float around me. They are empty noises, meaningless, and his lips work around them, vomiting them out. My eyes glaze over as I separate from the room, and my pen rests idle in my fingers when I’m normally scribbling down notes as fast as I can take them. I vaguely hear him mention “test,” but I could give a fuck. Sick of watching his yawning, gaping, dead face, I drop my eyes to my notebook.

Instead of taking notes on whatever the fuck play we’re supposed to be reading, I curl the pen into meaningless squiggles of ink, following it whatever direction it takes me and filling the page until it’s a maze of enormous proportions, endless twists and turns.

I wish there was some way to make him leave town in a sea of humiliation.
Hate hate hate hate hate.
Make him lose his job and never get
to teach anywhere again.
Hate hate hate hate hate.
Not that the fucking school would ever help us.
Hate, hate, and more hate.
My pen’s stabbing the paper so deep it’s making a hole.
Double hate, triple hate, quadruple hate.
In the center of my maze I draw a girl, a skinny little girl, cross-legged smoking a cigarette. If I was Amy the thing’d turn out decent, but the legs seem too short, so I cover them with a black blanket of ink. That’s better. I’m just going over the blanket making it darker when the bell shrieks. I blow on the page to make the ink dry and finally close the notebook and slide it into my backpack. Just as I’m leaving this dead gray hollow place, I feel a touch on my arm.

His touch.

I shake it away.

“Rennie?” He puts his hands on my shoulders and turns me to face him. Around me students are packing up, laughing, filing out.

“I have to go,” I say coldly. I blur his face in my vision and look beyond him at a fly buzzing around the makeup mirrors that the drama kids use.

“I’ve missed you at play practice lately.”

I’ve cut all week since he pulled his scene at the motel. Dawn’s pregnant. Who the fuck cares? “Yeah, well. I’ve been busy.” I lean against the table that faces the back wall, refusing to look at him.

Behind me, the door clicks shut as the last stragglers make it out of class. “Listen, Rennie,” he says under his breath. “I’m sorry. You know that.” He presses his fingertips to my shoulders. “Look at me.”

I push him away. “I have to go. I’ll be late.”

I start down the aisle, but he stands in front of me, blocking my way. “Don’t think I can’t see what this is doing to you. And don’t think it doesn’t make me feel like hell. This has been so hard for me, Rennie.”

Hard? For
you?

He reaches for my chin, cups it in his right hand, and strokes my skin from my ear to my lips, where he rests his fingers. “Goddamn, what I’d give to be able to kiss you right now.” Almost like I’ve
changed into another person, my lips fall open, my fingers slide up his arms, and I’m drunk with him, about to pull him down to kiss me when he says, “Stop it, Rennie. You have to stop it.”

Stop it?
I
should stop it? I push my palms against his shoulders and shove him away. “Listen, Mr. Schafer.” He winces. You
bet
I hope that stings. “After what happened last weekend, I’m just another senior. So treat me that way and let’s not get personal, ever again.”

He heaves a great, heavy sigh. “I’m so sorry.”

“Sorry?” Sorry is when you bump into someone in line by mistake. Sorry is not when you fuck up someone’s whole fucking life. “You’re sorry. Huh.”

“Sorry it had to end this way.”

I make the mistake of looking at his face. His eyes are so brown, so soft, so bright. My tongue slips over my dry lips. “I’m sorry it ended this way too.”

He seizes me under my arms, lifts me onto the table. Before I know it he’s kissing me hard, casting his spell. He wiggles my lips open with his tongue, and breathless, I kiss him back. My thighs are trembling, just a kiss, just a kiss, how can just a kiss get me so hot? And it’s just like it used to be only things have changed and evolved so much, I’ll never be as innocent as I was that first day on the stage.

I pull away, but he chases me with his lips and lands a few more kisses. “We could be together again if you want,” he whispers into my ear, his breath fluttering my hair. “No strings attached though. . . . ”

I reach up with my free hand and slap him across the face.

He blinks, touches the spot with his fingers.

Oh, the anger’s pounding through me now. I want to slash his throat. I hate him so, so much. “You’re a fucking lunatic,” I force out. My throat’s closing up. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Rennie . . . ” He lands a hand on my arm. “Calm down.”

“Me? What about you?” I’m blazing on now, not caring. “You’re the one who can’t keep it in his pants. You’re the one who lies and says
he wants it to be over, when what you want is things the way they used to be, with no commitment, nothing for you to be scared of. What you want is a cheap little fuck, a cheap little high school fuck who gets you hot because she’s so tiny and innocent and weak. Well, keep looking. I’m not it.” The tears are streaming down my cheeks now, but I’m not sad, just pissed, and although my voice is shaking and my hands are too, inside I’m so steady and I don’t care who hears me. “And another thing. I think Mr. Coldwell would be very, very interested to know what you do with students in your spare time.” Sure, going through the school bureaucracy’s a bullshit idea, Cherry convinced me of that. But he doesn’t know I think it’s bullshit, and his eyes mist over with fear.