Bedtime, bedtime, it’s time for bed
Say goodnight to the little thoughts in your head
Let’s pull up the blankets and turn out the light
It’s time for Sarah to say goodnight.
At the end of the song Scarf-Hat bows, and I bring him up to Sarah for a big teddy bear kiss.
I remembered that night, Sarah’s mother Laura coming home drunk and crying from another disastrous hook-up with her latest local loser. Amy and I were ready to leave when Laura threw up in the kitchen right in front of Sarah, hurling a gross mélange of tacos and vodka straight into the sink; five minutes later she was passed out on the couch and Sarah was crying. That night Amy and I slept over in Sarah’s room, my little song-and-dance with Scarf-Hat an impromptu distraction from her mother’s dissolution. Somehow back then it had seemed possible to keep Sarah safe. I watched Amy on the screen, sloe-eyed and beautiful, hugging Sarah as they both drifted toward sleep. On screen I disappear from the frame, the last thing visible before the camera goes dark: my thumb crossing in front of the lens.
Toward the end of the DVD we watch a short film I had made with a few friends from the theater department—a ten-minute absurdist detective story about Sherlock Holmes’ pot-smoking younger sister, Amy in the lead role, and wasn’t that Ricky B. from the Film Shack playing the dead body? It was both stupider and funnier than it should have been, and the girls got the mad giggles from watching Amy act.
Eventually Maddie fell asleep in the corner rocking chair and Jill went upstairs to finish some homework, leaving Amy and I to savor the final moments of the video: the boardwalk at sunset, Amy and Sarah walking slowly away from the camera, waving goodbye.
. . . . .
Later, we sat in the kitchen sipping green tea, a single white candle burning between us. On the counter the laptop showed the camera-eye perimeter of the house, Clyde’s security system keeping watch.
“It started junior year,” Amy said. “We were at his house on a Saturday afternoon. You wanted to show him a scene you had written the night before, and I came along because that’s what we did back then, right? Duck and Amy, the Siamese twins.”
She dropped a second sugar pack into the tea.
“At first it was like any other visit. I sat there flipping through the TV Guide while Ronan read your pages, and then all of a sudden you were asleep on the floor. We just sat there for a minute, watching you sleep, and then he asked me to go into the kitchen to get a Dr. Pepper for when you woke up. I did, and when I came back, he was holding a baggie with three joints in it. They were sticking out of my purse, he said, but that was bullshit. The second I left he must have gone through my bag, hoping to find something, and I was dumb enough to let it happen. And that’s how it started. I should have let him call the cops or tell my parents or whatever. Christ, it was only pot. But I’d already been busted once, and I was scared. He said he’d forget all about it if he could see me in my underwear.”
My heart tensed, pounding hard.
“At first it was total creep city, and I kept praying you’d wake up, but I knew you wouldn’t, at least not anytime soon, and I figured, well, what’s the difference between underwear and a bathing suit? And it was flattering, too, in some sick way, and maybe a little exciting, like a game, like I was a Beat chick in some older guy’s apartment breaking my parents’ rules. I knew at least ten girls at school who had a major crush on him, and there he was, wanting to look at me. It happened so fast …there was a lot going on in my head. You need to understand that, Duck. It was complicated. He let me smoke one of the joints, and so what the hell … I did it. I took off my jeans and pulled off my T-shirt. I didn’t see the camera until he’d already taken the picture.”
She stirred the tea, clanging the spoon against the rim.
“That I didn’t like. I didn’t want any photographs. But he was very polite that first time, and though I knew it was ‘wrong’, it didn’t seem like a big deal. I was already dressed when you finally woke up; by then I was stoned out of my mind. And that’s how it started.”
The ceiling fan circled above us as Amy sipped her tea. I didn’t say a word—she’d asked me not to interrupt so I sat like a mute while she sipped from her mug, the candle flame painting the ceiling with its flickering shadows, each jagged silhouette slashed by the fan blades spinning on High.
“A few days later he called me down to his class during homeroom. He’d made about fifty copies of that photograph and said he’d leave them in the cafeteria one day before first period if I didn’t stop by his house that night. He said it like a joke, but I knew he meant it. He said he just wanted to see me in my underwear again; he swore he wouldn’t touch me, and he didn’t—but he sure as hell touched himself. That’s when it got scary. The fucker—sitting in a rocking chair with his pants around his knees jerking off while I stood there smoking another joint in my bra and panties. I told myself that I should just
