Amy Chelsea Stacie Dee Read Free

“But he’s supposed to be back by six for dinner. I . . . I could call him, too.”
    â€œNo,” I say. “I’ll wait.”
    There’s a pounding on the door, and then the door bursts open, and Aunt Hannah runs into the room, and she looks at me, and just like Mom, she doesn’t recognize me at first, but then she does. She takes a step toward me as if she’s going to grab me and hug me like Mom did, but she’s looking behind me, to either side of me, around the room, as if she’s looking for someone, and she keeps looking, even though it’s obvious that there’s no one else here.
    â€œWhere is she?” she asks. She looks from me to Mom.
    Neither of us says anything. I look at the ground.
    â€œWhere is she?” she yells.
    Mom stands. “Hannah, she needs time.”
    â€œ
Where is she?
” my aunt cries. Tears stream down her face. “
Where is she?
”
    I cover my face with my hand. I can’t look at her, so desperate. I know how she feels, what she wants, what she’s lost.
    â€œ
Where is she?
” Her voice echoes in my head, and so does the answer. The words I can’t say, the images I can’t see, the truth I can’t even let myself think.
    And then the cops come.
    I’m in Amy’s old room, sitting in the desk chair.
    A woman in a black uniform asks me questions in a soft voice.
    What is your name?
    â€œAmy MacArthur.”
    How old are you?
    â€œSixteen.”
    Is Dee Springfield alive?
    . . .
    Amy, I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t need to know the whole story right now. I just need to know if Dee is alive. I need to know so that we can help her.
    . . .
    If you don’t want to say it, you can nod. You can nod yes or no. Can you do that?
    I keep myself still. I don’t move my head at all. I stare at the lady’s stomach. I watch her uniform shirt flutter as she breathes in and out.
    Just a yes or no, honey.
    . . .
    Where is the person who did this?
    Was it a man?
    Was it more than one person?
    Amy, I want to help you. I want to make sure you’re safe.
    â€œI’m safe,” I say.
    Is he dead? Is that why you’re safe?
    Did he promise not to find you?
    Did he make you promise not to tell?
    I stare at her stomach until she takes her stomach away, and then I’m staring at the wall. There’s a framed picture of Amy and Jay when Amy was ten, the studio kind of picture with a weird colored background, and their faces are frozen into awkward smiles. Amy has long hair, and it’s a lighter brown with tinges of blond still running through it. I remember when we took that picture. It was the last summer Amy was here.
    Mom comes into the room. She puts her arm around my shoulders and brushes the greasy hair out of my face. “The police want you to talk to someone,” she says. “This person can help you tell them what they need to know so they can find Dee.” She gets down on her knees and looks up at me, just like she used to do when I was little. “And if they can’t help her, then they need to know that, too. Aunt Hannah needs to know that. And Lee. They both need to know what happened to her.”
    I stay where I am, and another woman comes in. She’s wearing jeans and she looks a little frazzled, like someone who just got called somewhere on a Sunday and doesn’t know what she’s getting into. She sits on the floor, because there’s nowhere else in this room to sit. And then she tells me she’s apsychologist, and she works with victims of abuse and sexual assault and kidnapping and all kinds of things. And everything I’m feeling is normal.
    I stare over her head.
    She talks, and she asks. And she talks.
    â€œI’m tired,” I say. And it’s true, but it’s also a lie, because my heart is still pounding. Sweat pours from my skin, and sitting still is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.