Free Pretty Amy by Lisa Burstein Page A

cigarette.
    “Have you talked to Cassie?” I asked, mostly out of selfishness. I didn’t want them to become inseparable in my absence.
    “Forget Cassie.” She took a drag. “Have you?”
    “No,” I said.
    “Good,” she said.
    At least one nice thing was coming out of this—I was the favorite now.
    I heard her dog, Barnaby, bark as he settled down in his customary position next to her. She adored him, even though he was the most disgusting thing I had ever seen. He was sheared, with a terrier’s head and long spindly legs like a goat. Sometimes I felt like the human version of Barnaby.
    I listened to the air on the line. I could hear cars going by and the smoke exhaling out of her lungs like a sigh.
    I wanted to say I missed her, that I didn’t blame her. But I was too scared, because I knew if I did she would have to reciprocate. “Are you okay?” I asked.
    “I’m bored,” she said. “And horrible.” She laughed.
    “I know,” I said.
    “My fingers are still black from that ink,” she said.
    I looked at my hands, still painted with that light blue polish. They were chipping.
    “Mine are okay,” I said. What were we even talking about?
    “This sucks,” she said.
    “I know,” I said.
    We sat there, quiet, listening to each other breathe, until she said she heard her mom coming and had to go. As much as I hated to realize it, we had nothing else to say anyway. This was my life now. Without Cassie and Lila it was like I was on a seesaw minus one kid, lonely and powerless.
    After I hung up I went to the bathroom. I poured nail-polish remover onto a cotton ball and breathed in, filling my nostrils with the horrible smell. I scrubbed my nails clean, until they were pink and raw. Then I took the bottle of polish off my nightstand and threw it in the trash.

Ten
    The next morning I woke up facedown and open-mouthed on the basement floor. I looked with bleary eyes around my new home.
    I was surrounded by boxes filled with old winter clothes, shoes that had lost their mates, and clothes I had grown out of—hand-me-downs waiting to be handed down to someone who never came. They were filled with my parents’ old notebooks from college, photo albums from before they knew me, and wedding presents they’d never used. Things my parents no longer wanted to look at but couldn’t bear to part with.
    There were shelves stacked with the books I’d loved as a child. All the girls I’d wanted to be like. A pile of yellow hardback Nancy Drew books, shiny paperback Ramona books, a pale purple copy of Margaret. Ramona didn’t care; she told the world to piss off with her short hair and freckles. Margaret, with her hair like spun gold, cared too much. Nancy, the fiery redhead, was too smart to worry about anything.
    When I was young, I’d wished for their strength and wit and intelligence and compassion. Their words were my words, but then one day they were gone.
    As I got older, I had to live in images. Started living with an outlined face and body layered upon me by a huge overhead projector lit by the sun. Staying with me constantly, reminding me and everyone else of what I was not.
    I went upstairs and found my father sitting at the kitchen table, eating his morning bagel and staring. I grabbed some coffee and settled into the seat I always sat in. My mother and father had a seat they always fought over, the one at the head of the table, and my father sat in it that morning, as he would when my mother wasn’t around. Even before the arrest, I lived a life of fascination and intrigue.
    “How’s life down under?” my father asked, waking from his trance to look at me.
    I shrugged. I knew he had asked in an attempt to make me laugh, had probably been working on that line since my mother had told him about my decision, but I wasn’t in the mood.
    “Have you seen this yet?” He held up the Collinsville News and shook it for emphasis.
    “What now?” I asked.
    He tossed it over to me. It was open to the Police