Free Amelia Anne Is Dead and Gone by Kat Rosenfield

looked out the window.
    “Rebecca,” said James. “Hey, Becca, come on.”
    I clenched my teeth together so hard that they squeaked. James made an exasperated sound.
    “All right, yes. Okay? If it makes you feel better to say it that way, they’re investigating Craig.”
    “Wonderful.”
    “But anyway,” he continued, “it’s just a technicality. If there was something important back there, something that might help, then it wouldn’t have taken them two weeks to get around to searching.”
    “In another town, I’d agree with you in a heartbeat.”
    “Oh, no faith in the hard-working men of the Bridgeton Police Department?”
    “I’m sure they’re doing the best they can, but how on the ball do you think they are? It’s not like they have practice.”
    “They’re getting help,” he said. “And they’ve had murders before.”
    “Not like this.”
    James waved a dismissive hand and fell silent, chewing his lip. Outside, fields full of high-growing, starved yellow grass blurred by as the truck rumbled past. The brittle stalks waved and snapped, thirsty, straining toward the sky in search of rain that hadn’t come for weeks.
    I was quiet for a minute, thinking about Craig—smug, superior Craig. So convinced that in our drab little town, his seasonal residency and California birth certificate gave him the inalienable right to say, do,
take
whatever he wanted.
    “I just don’t think your asshole friend should be doing things that make their lives harder.”
    James sighed, exasperated.
    “I’m tired of talking about this. You need to let it go,” he said.
    “Why?” I snapped. “If he has nothing to hide—”
    “Becca,” he said, so sharply that the rest of the sentence died instantly before reaching my lips. “Enough.”
    We drove in silence, until the sun was nearly gone. The last light in the sky was dusky, purple. James turned the truck onto County Road 128 and headed toward the mountains.
    “Becca, I just don’t want to talk about it. The dead girl, the investigation, any of it. I just want to focus on this summer, I want us to start fresh, and that means focusing on us. Just us.”
    The exhaustion in his voice was palpable, and I felt suddenly ashamed. He was doing everything he could to make things right, and I was doing everything I could to hold us back.
    “I’m sorry,” I said, finally. “I understand.”
    “Okay. Will you give me that rag, now?”
    I was still clutching it, creasing it with the heat from my clenched fist.
    “Why?” I asked uneasily, but handing it over.
    James tucked the bandanna into his pocket and rolled his eyes.
    “Because I want to hold your hand.”

AMELIA
     
    H e drove them north, up the turnpike and then through the Holland Tunnel, until they were deep in the crawling traffic of Chinatown. Outside the window, the scenery shifted—from far-off oil refineries whose insectlike steel structures towered over the landscape, to the immediate grit and dirt and noise of the city. She looked at Luke’s pinched expression, more squinty with each passing minute, and tried not to laugh.
    As they sat in the crowded thoroughfare of Canal Street, the light turned red and the cars ceased moving.
    “You okay over there?” he asked.
    “Yes,” she said.
    “You’re being pretty quiet.”
    “I’m enjoying the ride.”
    Outside the car, pedestrians swarmed and tumbled through the street. They jostled for position on curbs, endlessly moving in and out of stores whose high walls were covered with cheap T-shirts, gold jewelry, knockoff handbags, mugs and postcards and shot glasses with renderings of the Empire State Building or Statue of Liberty.
    “You haven’t asked what we’re doing here,” Luke said.
    “Didn’t I?”
    “No.”
    “Oh.” She paused. “I wasn’t thinking about it, I guess.”
    Luke made an exasperated snort.
    “What?”
    “It’s nothing,” he said. “Just that you’ve been off in la-la land ever since graduation. I mean, I take a