All the Ugly and Wonderful Things(72)

Aunt Brenda dragged me into a room with a black table covered in paper.

“Why don’t I take the other girls down to the visitor’s lobby? The candy stripers have magazines and stuff,” another nurse said.

Leslie and Amy looked scared, and their eyes were red from crying. Dead Aunt Val for always, too.

Then Aunt Brenda and the nurse and I were alone in the little room.

“Sweetie, why don’t you let your aunt help you change into this gown, okay?”

It was one of those blue hospital things with strings and no back. Aunt Brenda pulled on my T-shirt, trying to take it off, but I twisted her wrist until she let go.

“Ma’am, does she understand? Have you told her anything?” the nurse said.

“I didn’t know what to tell her. Is it like a pelvic exam?”

“Yeah, like when you have your pap smear. Has she had one before?”

“I don’t think so. She’s only thirteen.”

“Oh, sweetie. Oh, I’m so sorry,” the nurse said.

I hated hearing them talk about me like I was broken. Mama was dead, but I was fine. I knew what “rape” meant and that wasn’t what Kellen had done.

“You know, ma’am, we might give her a sedative. To calm her down.”

“That’s a good idea. She’s pretty nervous about people touching her,” Aunt Brenda said.

I wasn’t going to take any sedative. No pills. No needles. They weren’t going to put anything into me.

“I’ll go get that and maybe while I’m gone you can help her change into the gown.”

The nurse opened the door, and that was all I needed. I dodged around Aunt Brenda, ducked past the nurse, and into the hallway. I was free.

Where to go was the hard part. Not to the shop or Kellen’s house, where the cops might catch me. At the Lutheran Church, a carnival had been set up in the parking lot, which was crowded with people. The air smelled like funnel cakes, heavy and greasy.

No one even noticed me when I sat down in one of the tents, where people were playing bingo. I stayed there all afternoon and into the evening, going from tent to tent. When it started to get dark, a woman came up to me and said, “Are your parents here? Do you need a ride home?”

I shook my head and forced myself to smile and wave as I walked away. The police were still at the shop, but at Kellen’s house, they had gone. The front door and the back door were closed with yellow tape, but the window to the laundry room was open. Balancing on a trash can, I popped out the screen, and crawled inside. The cops had made a mess, dumping things out of drawers.

After I put everything away, I took a shower. All day in the heat had made me sweaty, and I felt sticky between my legs. Wrapping up in a towel, I took my dirty clothes into the laundry room and put them in the hamper. In the dryer were clean clothes, mine and Kellen’s mixed together. I put on a pair of my panties and one of his T-shirts that I liked to sleep in.

When I opened the freezer, I was hoping for ice cream sandwiches, but I found something better. Thirty-one little foam cups of ice cream. On top of each plastic lid, Kellen had written a letter in black marker. Setting them out on the table, I moved them around until I solved the puzzle: HAPPY BIRTHDAY WAVY! I LOVE YOU!

He’d drawn lopsided hearts on the other four cups.

I opened the first one and took a bite. Chocolate with cherries in it.





5

AMY

After Wavy ran away from the hospital, we walked to the police station. Mom asked one of the deputies about our car, but he shook his head.

“I don’t know anything about that, but I expect the DEA will impound everything on the property.”

“The DEA?” Mom said.

“It’s crazy up there. I went out to help with roadblocks and it’s knee-deep in feds.”

“Because of the murders?”

“What? No. Mrs. Newling—there’s—your brother-in-law has a meth lab up there about the size of a—it’s big.”

Mom made all the right noises of shock, but I don’t think it surprised her. After all, she knew what he’d done in the past. Did she really think he was ranching?

Whatever she thought, she was too tired to argue. Leslie was too tired to even whine. The three of us sat in the police station, our backsides going numb on hard plastic chairs, until the sheriff’s wife took us to a motel.

She was a tiny, wiry woman, what I imagined Wavy growing into. Physically, anyway, because the sheriff’s wife filled up dead air with talking. Probably she had to. Mom, Leslie, and I were like zombies, trudging into the motel room.

“Don’t you worry, Mrs. Newling. We’ll find your niece and nephew.”

The sheriff’s wife put her hand on Mom’s shoulder, and that’s when she fell apart. The night we found out about Grandma’s cancer was the first time I saw Mom cry, but the night of Wavy’s fourteenth birthday was worse. Mom let the sheriff’s wife hold her, and she cried so hard it shook the bed they were sitting on. Leslie and I just watched. We were cried out. More than anything, I wanted to go home, so I was relieved when the sheriff’s wife said, “Now, have you had a chance to call your husband?”

When Dad answered the phone, Mom went stiff and she didn’t even say hello. She said, “Bill, I need you to come pick up the girls. Something happened with Val.”