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AMY CHELSEA STACIE DEE

MARY G. THOMPSON

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Text © Mary G. Thompson 2016 First published in the United States by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. First published in Great Britain in 2017 Chicken House 2 Palmer Street Frome, Somerset BA11 1DS United Kingdom www.chickenhousebooks.com Mary G. Thompson has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Cover and interior design by Helen Crawford-White Cover photograph © Emma Delves-Broughton/Trevillion Images Typeset by Dorchester Typesetting Group Ltd Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY The paper used in this Chicken House book is made from wood grown in sustainable forests. 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 British Library Cataloguing in Publication data available. PB ISBN 978-1-910655-81-8 eISBN 978-1-911077-31-2

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For Linda Heurgué

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1. I am the last one off the bus. It was only half-full to begin with, of shaggy-looking young men and older ladies and one mother with two rowdy kids. The mother is the last to go before me. She yells at the older boy in Spanish and then turns around and rolls her eyes at me. I smile back without even thinking about it, sharing a moment with this woman who I’ve never seen before, sharing something just because we’re women. Because she saw something kindred in me. My smile fades, and the kids race away from their mother towards the gas station/convenience store that serves as a bus stop in this tiny town. I watch the drizzling rain roll down my window. This is it. I’ve been on the bus for hours, and I haven’t had a chance to pee, and I’m starving. And if I don’t get off in the next 1

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ten minutes, the bus will start going again, and it will take me away from Grey Wood, Oregon, and on to the next town. And maybe that’s where I should go, anywhere but here. Anywhere but Amy’s home. ‘Isn’t this your stop?’ says the bus driver, a burly man with a gut spilling over his eighties jeans. He wears big plastic glasses and smells like cigarettes even from back where I am, in the middle. ‘Yeah,’ I say. He stands, raises his arms, and stretches, making a yowling sound like you make when you’ve just woken up. ‘Wish we’d finally get some sun,’ he says. ‘It’s frickin’ June, right?’ I don’t answer. I stand up and grab my cloth Safeway shopping bag, which contains everything I own in this world. Come on, Chelsea, I think. Move. If I stay on the bus, where will I end up? How will I live? I have no money and no identification, and I’m only sixteen years old. There’s no way I could pass for older, with my mismatched old clothes and the haircut I did myself. An old lady climbs back on the bus. The driver has to sit down in his seat to let her pass, and I know I can’t wait any longer. I walk straight, past the driver, and down the steps. ‘Good luck,’ he says from behind me. ‘Thanks,’ I say. I’m shivering, and not because I’m suddenly being pelted with good old-fashioned Oregon drizzle. I walk towards the convenience store. I remember this as a 7-Eleven, but now it’s something else, a ‘Publik Mart’. Amy used to come here to buy candy on the days 2

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when she went with her mom to work. As I look past the store, I can see the cross street where the post office was, where Mom worked. I wonder if she still works there, if she’s there right now. But today is Sunday, so no, she wouldn’t be there. She’d be at home. Assuming home is in the same place. ‘Getting back on?’ a voice says. I jump. It’s the lady with the two kids, who are already running up the bus stairs. ‘No,’ I say. ‘This is my stop.’ ‘Ah, happy landings, then.’ She smiles at me. ‘Safe travels.’ I try to smile back, but I’m not used to talking to people, and I’m afraid it looks more like a grimace. ‘Gracias.’ She gets on the bus. I take a few steps away, and I watch as the doors close and the bus turns on and exhaust spits out the back. The bus driver waves at me, and then the bus huffs and puffs and pulls out of the parking lot. I’m standing here, right where Amy used to stand, and there’s no going on or going back.

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2. The jacket that I’m wearing isn’t mine. It’s too big, and I’m drowning in it as I trudge down the sidewalkless side of River Road. It probably makes me look even younger than my homemade haircut. Also, it’s pink, because pink is Stacie’s colour. Purple is my colour, and that’s why I’m wearing a purple T-shirt, and my jeans have little purple patches on the pockets. My shoes are a dark red, because I guess Kyle couldn’t find any purple shoes at Walmart or wherever he went the last time he bought us clothes. That bothered me at first, but I’ve been wearing them a while now. Maybe red is kind of my colour, too. Is it OK to have more than one colour? Amy had lots of colours, I remember. Amy used to go down to the river, right there where I’m passing, and she used to wear khaki shorts, just like her 4

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dad’s shorts, and she loved blue. Blue shirt and khaki shorts and white sneakers. That’s what she was wearing that last day, when she and Dee went to wade in the river. Did I just happen to walk by here, or did I come here on purpose? This is the way home, so I must have known it was coming. There’s a little path from the street down to the creek, and there are people down there. I can see them through the trees, which are so thin. I don’t remember them being thin. I remember them being large and green and hiding us when we wanted to pretend we were in another world, a world with just us and the ducks and the crayfish. And aliens. I dreamt up aliens that landed on that rock in the middle of the water. Without letting myself think about it, I walk down the little path. I stand at the end of it, watching the man and the boy on the left who are trying to fish, even though my dad used to say this spot was terrible for fishing. There are also two girls feeding the ducks to the right. I stare at the rock, and my hand goes into my Safeway bag, and I pull out the doll. She has blonde hair, and she’s wearing a pink skirt and a pink shirt. She’s been beat up over the years, so there are scratches on her face, and her hair sticks out from her head at a weird angle. But she still has her blue eyes, larger than life, staring at me. I hold her against my chest, feel her hard plastic press into my breastbone. I remember Amy and Dee sitting on that rock together. It was a struggle to fit them both, but they did it. Whenever there was only room for one, whatever it was, they always 5

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made it work for two. One of the girls sees me. She holds out a piece of bread. ‘Want to feed the ducks?’ she asks. And as she looks straight at me, I see that she has big blue eyes. My chest seizes, and I shove the doll back into the bag and push it down beneath the clothes. ‘No. Thanks anyway,’ I say. I turn and push my way back down the path. I’m not looking where I’m going, and I get scraped by a big blackberry vine. As I make it back to the street, a car whizzes past, and I almost scream. I’m not used to nearly stepping into cars. Because nobody used to come where we lived. There didn’t used to be anyone but us. Always us, never me. I’m not supposed to be here without her, anywhere without her. But I can’t stay here on the edge of the street, so close to the river, with nothing but my Safeway bag. I can’t stay, so I keep moving. I run my hand through my hair, which is getting soggy with the drizzle, and adjust the bag on my shoulder. I keep as far to the left of the road as possible and walk in the mud of the shoulder, listening to the creek flow beside me. It’s weird walking down here, because we used to always ride our bikes. So it feels like it takes forever to get to the turn in the road, where it curves away from the creek and heads to the right, and then it seems to take even longer, like hours and hours, to walk two more blocks, to where River Road crosses with Oak Street. But once I turn the corner on to Oak, it takes no time at all. I’m in the driveway, and it has the same mailbox, the one shaped like a tiny house, and it’s tilted a little on its post just like it always was, and it has the 6

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name across the bottom in carved wooden letters: MacArthur. Amy drew little toenails on the A’s feet, and the outlines of them are still there. There’s a car in the driveway, but I don’t recognize it. It isn’t new, just different. It’s white like our old one, but it’s smaller. Like it wasn’t meant for a family of two parents and two kids. Maybe they’re not here, I think. But if they moved away, why would the mailbox still say MacArthur? I stand in the driveway, staring at the house. It’s painted light blue, a fading blue that hasn’t been redone in a while. I don’t remember it looking that shabby before, but I can’t be sure what I remember. It seems smaller to me now, too. I picture the insides, the living room, the hallway with all the bedrooms: first Jay’s, then Amy’s, then Mom and Dad’s. I picture the cream-coloured carpet that Mom just put in, that she was so excited about. That she saved up for. That she argued with Dad about over the cost. Only she didn’t just put it in, did she? She might have changed it again by now, and inside, the house might not be anything like I remember. The living room curtains flutter, and a face peers out. My heart leaps. Suddenly it’s beating fast, a million times a minute. Sweat soaks my T-shirt. Is it her? I can’t tell if it’s her from here. I have to move closer. I could still run away, I think. I could get on another bus. Except that I have six dollars left, and six dollars won’t buy me dinner. My stomach twists, and I’m glad I haven’t eaten all day, because I don’t know if I could hold it in. I walk forward, and the face leaves the window, and it’s as if the driveway is a magic 7

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portal, because suddenly I’m standing in front of the door, and I hold up my fist as if I’m going to knock, but I don’t. I stand there with my fist in the air and my stomach twisting into knots. The door opens, and she’s standing there. She’s cut her hair, too, and it’s part grey now. But it’s her. She has dark brown eyes, just like mine. ‘Yes?’ she says. I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. She stares at me. She folds her hand around the doorknob, as if she’s about to close it. ‘Mom,’ I choke out, ‘it’s me. It’s . . .’ Her name is on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t say it. It’s like the name has been erased from the world, like it’s gone. She stares at me, and her hand leaves the doorknob. Both her hands hang in the air. Her fingers twitch as if she’s grabbing on to something that isn’t there. ‘It’s . . .’ I choke on the name. It won’t come out. ‘Amy,’ Mom says. ‘Amy. Amy! Amy! Amy!’ She grabs me, pulls me into a hug, hangs on to my back. ‘Amy! Amy! Amy! Amy!’ She can’t stop saying it. She’s sobbing. She holds on to me. She’s squeezing me so hard that I can’t breathe, but there’s nothing I can do about it. My arms are around her back, too, but I don’t squeeze; I let them lie there. I can feel the bones of her back beneath my fingers. The bones of my mother’s back. ‘Amy, Amy, Amy,’ she sobs. ‘Mom,’ I say. Because that’s one name that’s easy. That’s one name that was never gone. 8