They’d filled their hearts up with each other and didn’t need anything else. They didn’t need anyone else.
And when I stopped trying to please them by being as perfect as I could be, when I stopped getting all As and stopped participating in all the worthless after school activities I was in, they said they understood. They said sure, I could move into the attic when I asked. They said bye, have a nice time when I’d yell that you and I were going out. They said hey, it’s okay, not everyone is cut out for advanced classes when my grades dropped to average or just below. They said they knew being a teenager was rough.
They never asked how I was.
134
T W E L V E
I TAKE BACK EVERYTHING I told Julia about my parents before. I was lucky then, back when they left me alone. When Julia was around.
Mom and Dad came upstairs after dinner—which I refused to go down for, not just because I didn’t want to deal with them, but because I also wanted to think about the hanging-out-with-Caro thing—and sat on my bed.
They said (predictably, at the same time), “We’d like to talk to you about Julia.”
I ignored them and stared at my bedspread.
“We’re not leaving,” Dad said, and the way he said it should have told me what was coming. “Your mother and I feel that your behavior today—and not just that, but all of your behavior lately—has been about what 135
happened to Julia, and we want you to tell us about the night she—”
“You were at the hospital, remember? You saw me come in. You probably saw them bring her . . . her body in, and I don’t know what more there is to say.”
“We’d like you to talk to us,” Mom said. “Tell us exactly what happened. How it made you feel. We . . .
honey, we want you to know you can always talk to us.”
“I can talk to you,” I said, echoing them, and they both nodded.
Now I could talk and they would listen. Now they wanted to. Now. It made something twist hard inside me because I always wanted them to really talk to me, really listen to me, but if I’d known what would make it happen—God, if I’d only known . . .
“Please, Amy,” Dad said. “Your mother and I think this would be helpful for all of us. We haven’t pressed you, but we think you need to talk about it. It would help us help you.”
Something bitter rolled through me then. They wanted to help me now, when it was too late, when nothing could be done. I looked at their faces, so eager to be “the parents” when before they just wanted to be “Colin and Grace, who happen to have a daughter.”
136
“I killed her.”
Silence. Not comfortable silence. Shocked silence.
There’s a difference. Shocked silence hangs heavy, presses down on you.
“But you weren’t—you weren’t driving the car,” Mom said, leaning in and putting a hand on my knee. “Julia was driving.”
I moved away. “I told her we should leave, I walked her to the car, I told her to get in. I told her to put on her seat belt. I told her to drive.”
“Amy,” Dad said. “That doesn’t mean—”
“It does,” I said. “It does because I made sure she wanted to leave. I wanted—I wanted us to, and we did, and then she . . .”
And then I killed Julia.
I told them how I did it. I told them because I could see they didn’t believe me.
I knew, once I told them, that they would.
“We went to a party,” I said. “Julia’s boyfriend, Kevin, was supposed to be there. I went in first, because Julia wanted me to make sure he was there, and I saw him leading some freshman girl upstairs.”
I’d known it was coming, I knew how Kevin was.
I knew Julia loved him, but he . . . he kept messing 137
around with other girls, and she’d get mad and yell and say she’d never see him again.
But she always did. Why? I still don’t get that. She said she loved him, but, really, what good is love?
What does it do? Julia loved Kevin, and he hurt her, and I wanted her to see that. I wanted her to understand that she could do better.
Mom and Dad were looking at me. Not confused, exactly, more like . . . more like they thought they were safe.
They were wrong.
“I made sure Kevin had time to do what I knew he would,” I said, making sure I spoke slowly even as the words stung my mouth, curdled my heart. “I went and found Julia. I told her he wasn’t there, but that I’d heard he would be. So we waited.”
