The Girls I've Been(50)

— 42 —


    Ashley (Age 12): How It Ends (In Three Acts)


Five and a Half Years Ago


Act 1: Help

I’m in a hotel suite. My sister brought me here, through the back entrance and service elevator. The second the door shuts behind us, she shoves me into the shower, closing us into this artificial bubble of clean linens and expensive hotel smell.

“Rinse all of it off,” she orders. “Wash your hair twice. Scrub yourself down three times. Use this under your nails.” She gives me a toothbrush still in its plastic. “Put your clothes in here.” She holds out a bag, and I’m numb enough to obey her.

But I’m not numb enough to not wait quietly until she’s left the room so I can undress. I slip the thumb drive from the pocket of my sandy jeans, tucking it behind the stack of toilet paper where she won’t look for it. Then the clothes go in the bag like she asked.

When I get out of the shower and into my robe, she’s gone. So is the bag of my clothes. For a minute, I wonder if she’s left me here. If she’s finally decided it was better to just save herself, instead of both of us.

Can I blame her? I had the same thought on the beach.

But then the hotel room door swings open, and there she is again. The relief has my knees turning watery, and I want to cling to her like I’ve never clung to anyone in my life, but I can’t.

“It’s okay. You don’t have to apologize,” she says, and I realize that’s what’s spilling from my mouth. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.

“I screwed it all up. Our whole plan—”

“You got what we needed. It’s okay that things got messy.”

The sound I let out is hysterical, because she sounds so much like Mom right then.

“There are some new clothes in the bedroom. Go sleep. I’ll take care of everything else.”

“But—”

“The only way this works is if you let me be the adult,” she says, in that matter-of-fact, no-bullshit way of hers, but still, it has me reeling.

“I’m not a kid,” I say softly, and the truth of it is this cankerous weight between us.

“Now you get to be one. And that means that I’m in charge, not you.”

“You sound like Mom,” I say, because I’m hurt and raw, and I want her to sprout the same kind of wound.

“I’m not her,” she says, so calmly that I know my barb failed to pierce. Then she says my name. My real one. Softly, like she wants it to be a comfort.

It’s not.

“Please don’t call me that.”

There’s an understanding in her face that I want to run from. “What should I call you?”

I have no idea. I’m not her. I’m not Ashley, either. I’m no one. I’m everyone. All of them, mixed together like liquor in a cocktail shaker. I just jerk my head, hopeless, and then I say, “I’ll go to bed.”

She leaves the door open half a foot, like she needs to keep an eye on me, and I lie down on the bed.

Blood had swirled over my (Ashley’s?) glitter-painted toes in the shower. Pink sudsy water, and God, I don’t think I’ll ever look at pink and think happy again. It’d taken the three scrubs she had demanded to get the water to run clear.

Is he dead by now? Did he bleed to death out there in the sand? Am I a murderer?

I turn over in the bed, away from the door, so I can stare at the wall.

Why did she come back? She could’ve run. She didn’t sign up for this. She was just trying to get her kid sister free.

But I’m not a kid, I’ve never been a kid, and I never will be, will I? Not now.

It’s all different. The risks . . . They’re the kind even Mom wouldn’t want to take on.


Act 2: Safety

There’s a sharp rap on the door, and when she gets up to answer it, I take advantage of her distraction. I slip out of bed and sit in the armchair in my room instead, because it has a better view of the other room. Water drips down my back, trickling cold against skin that’s still half numb. I’m done being quiet and talked about but never included. I found a way tonight, when none of them could. Didn’t that earn me a place at the table?

“Yvonne, thank you for coming,” she says.

“Amelia, this is not what we talked about.”

I jerk a little at the sound of this stranger using my sister’s real name, because it’s against the rules. And that’s when it hits me: There aren’t any more rules.

I didn’t just break them. I broke free of them. I want to hold the realization in my hands, squeeze it until I crush it, until it’s embedded in the raw skin on my fingers and becomes a part of me that can’t be cut out.

“I’m sorry,” she says, and her voice cracks.

“Oh, Amelia.” The woman reaches out and squeezes Amelia’s shoulder before moving briskly into the hotel room. Her razor-sharp bob swings with each step and her suit is impeccable, even though she probably got the call long past midnight. But a good lawyer is ready at all times, and that’s who this woman has to be. Amelia would’ve covered all the bases when engaging the FBI. She would’ve found the best. A shark to fight for us.

“I can make this work. Unless you’ve changed your mind, considering . . .” She trails off. Amelia looks down at her feet before shaking her head tightly.