I hated that this was her home.
“Just tell me right now,” I said as I stopped and made her stop. “Did… did something happen here?”
I pointed to her house.
Her face was my answer.
So, it wasn’t a boy that hurt her.
It was her father.
“Did he… hit you?” I whispered.
Amelia shook her head.
But the fear on her face…
“He wanted to,” I said. “He came after you. So you ran.”
“I just want to go to sleep, Josh,” she said.
“In there?” I asked.
“It’ll be okay now. It doesn’t last long. Please… just understand.”
I swallowed down all the anger inside me. “Okay.”
I walked Amelia to the back door.
“Come inside,” she said.
“No. That’s not a good idea.”
“Please. I just want some sleep.”
I gritted my teeth. “Okay.”
We went inside. The kitchen counter was full of empty beer bottles.
The kitchen smelled like burned chicken.
The sink was overflowing with dishes.
The kitchen table was cluttered with papers, mail, magazines, and what looked like old, greasy car parts.
The house smelled like dust and mold.
Each breath I took made me more and more angry.
I kept my mouth shut as Amelia led the way through the house toward the stairs.
At the bottom of them, I pulled at her hand. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“I meant what I said before. About fighting someone for you. I don’t care how old the person is…”
“I know,” she said.
We went up the stairs and snuck down the hallway. She opened a bedroom door and I was then inside her room. A bed. A nightstand. A dresser missing the second drawer down. The walls empty but with plenty of tiny holes from nails. The corner next to the closet had a small stack of stuffed animals.
“I really just want to sleep,” she said.
“You’re safe now,” I said to her.
“Can you just sit on the edge of the bed and wait?”
“Of course.”
Amelia shut the small light off next to her bed and we were in darkness. There was a tiny bit of light coming in from the moon outside. That was it.
“Thank you, Josh,” she whispered as she took her hand from mine.
I heard the sound of the bed squeaking as she climbed into it.
When she stopped moving, I sat down on the edge.
A few silent seconds went by and I felt her touch my back.
“I’m here,” I whispered.
“Okay.”
“Tell me about those stuffed animals,” I said.
“What?”
“In the corner. I saw them.”
“Oh, jeez. I feel stupid. I’m too old…”
“Nah. You’re not too old. They mean something to you.”
“All I have left are Mr. Monkey, Mary, and Jeffrey. There are a few others, but they’re not important.”
I smiled. “I get it. I used to have that stuff too.”
“Used to? You got rid of them?”
“No. I gave them away.”
“Because you got too old?”
“No,” I said. “Gave them to someone else who needed them more.”
“I hope whoever got them is happy,” Amelia said.
I didn’t respond.
The ‘whoever’ that got them… was dead.
Amelia fell asleep.
I stood and pulled the covers up to her shoulder.
I quietly shut the door and stood in the hallway.
It was crazy.
I was in Amelia’s house.
I looked to my right and saw a door down the hallway was open.
My lip curled.
That’s where he was sleeping.
Amelia’s father.
I knew exactly what Amelia was going through and what she must have felt.
Before I could finish my thought, I was already walking down the hallway.
As I crept through the open door, I had no idea what I planned on doing. Drag her father out of the bed and beat him up?
When I looked at the bed, there was only one person in it.
Sleeping.
It looked like a woman.
It was Amelia’s mother.
My high had all but been washed away. Reality struck me hard and I knew I had to get out of the house.
I moved through the house with speed and went out the door I came through.
Halfway across Amelia’s yard, I stopped and looked down at my hand. I had been holding her hand. It had been nice. I looked over my shoulder and nodded at the house.
I wasn’t sure if she was going to sleep well or not.
I knew I wasn’t going to sleep at all.
I called Murph so I could catch another high and try to forget about Amelia.
Chapter 14
Fancy to Filthy
NOW
(Amelia)
There was a box tucked away under my bed that contained the only remaining evidence that I had once been a kid. I never opened the box. I didn’t even want the box. But anytime I thought about getting rid of it, it just felt wrong. The emotions that came with that box were just too much to handle. Which was why a year ago I took all those dumb stories I used to write out of it. I had the chance of a lifetime, when I wrote a book on a whim and ended up getting agent representation for it. That agent fought hard to get a deal. And the deal that ended up on the table was washed away in the blink of an eye.
Same for that agent. Here, then gone.
In my mind, I thought this is it. Opening that box of memories was worth it at the time. To get those old stories out. The stories my mother would read and laugh at. The stories where she would say aww at the sad parts. The stories where she’d always gently put the story down, tilt her head to the side, and smile. She’d tell me how amazing the story was and then somehow, in the span of ten seconds, she would have every character memorized. And she’d talk to me about the story and the characters as though she had authored them.
I missed her. I missed her a lot.
But I didn’t miss the life that came with her.
Which made everything else - including that box under my bed - really complicated.
It didn’t help matters that I had met up with Josh again. He wasn’t in that box under the bed. Nobody
