738 Days: A Novel (5 page)

I swallow hard, bolster my fake smile, then move confidently toward the automatic doors.

I can do this. Nothing has changed, not really. She’ll still be excited, probably. The media will still be happy to jump on it, maybe even happier with her noble but obviously suffering visage front and center.

And I’ve done worse.

Inside, the fluorescent lights flicker overhead, eliminating every shadow and any place to hide. Amanda’s register is three down from the door. The twenty feet between us seems an impossible distance to cross and also not nearly enough.

Nobody pays me any attention. I’m just a guy if you don’t recognize me, and the older couples and families in the checkout lanes at Logan’s Grocery are not, as Elise would put it, my primary demographic. But a cluster of five or six guys, aiming cameras through the door and the windows, and shouting my name, causes a stir.

The customers stare and point at the photogs, but confusion is the primary emotion for the moment, rather than anger or defensiveness. Thankfully.

I put my head down and move toward Amanda’s register.

I’m only one lane away from Amanda when one of the assholes outside decides to change things up.

“Amanda! Hey, Amanda! Over here,” he calls through the open door.

She turns and her gaze catches the paparazzi first. The spark of irritation that flashes across her face adds new life to her expression, which gives me hope that this isn’t going to be a total disaster. But she looks about inches away from flipping them off or calling the cops, neither of which would be good. I’m not entirely sure of the legality of them being quite this close to the store, although still not in it.

“Amanda, hey,” I say quickly, stuffing my hands in my pockets because I don’t know what else to do with them. My heart is beating too fast, and I can feel my nervousness written all over my face. Elise’s plan is dependent on Amanda’s enthusiasm bubbling up and smoothing over any weirdness, but this all just feels awkward and
wrong.

Amanda glances at me for a split second and then back to the photographers, almost in dismissal.

Then I see it click. Her whole body stiffens.

You hear about people freezing in place, but I’ve never really seen it happen until now. It’s like every muscle in her body decided to seize up all at once. Her hand on the register drawer contracts in a painful-looking claw, and then she’s staring at me, her dark eyes huge in her whiter-than-white face.

It would be almost comical except for the sheer terror in her expression. Her mouth works as if she wants to scream, but no sound is coming out.

I feel the urge to look behind me for whatever is causing this reaction, but I already know.

Oh, no, no, no.
I take another step toward her. “Amanda, I—” I try again, and my voice breaks with the strain to sound normal, unthreatening.

But she throws her hands up in defense, catching the open register drawer in the process. Coins spray out everywhere as she drops to the ground, crouching behind the wall of her register cubicle, and it’s my turn to freeze.

I don’t care how much research Elise (or Nadia) did on Amanda Grace, the Miracle Girl. Whatever I am, or more accurately, whatever Chase Henry is, to this girl, “hero” is definitely not it. Not even fucking close.

3

Amanda

Weird things sometimes trigger flashbacks.

Most of the time, the causes are obvious, expected even. The distinctive reek of stale cigarette smoke on someone’s clothing; the bitter, metallic taste of blood in my mouth when I accidentally bite my cheek; a raspy male voice that sounds like Jakes’s; ragged fingernails with dirt caked beneath them.

But other times, it’s bizarre the connections my brain chooses to make. The first time Liza made bacon after I came home, I ended up on the bathroom floor in a cold sweat. I couldn’t figure it out until I talked it through with my therapist at the time. Apparently, the bacon smelled too much like hot dogs, which I’d eaten daily in my basement cell. Sometimes warmed up, sometimes not. By the end, I could barely choke them down in either state. And evidently, cooking bacon had a similar enough scent to set off the memories.

I will live happily for the rest of my life never, ever laying eyes on another hot dog, but I miss bacon, damnit. One more thing taken from me.

So, in theory, there is nothing about arguing with Mrs. Cahill about the condition of her lettuce to trip a flashback. She wants half price because it’s “too wilted,” which is what she always says. It might help if she didn’t put it in her cart first thing and then proceed to pile everything on top of it. Also, half price on a buck twenty-nine? Please.

I am vaguely aware of the commotion behind me, near the doors, but three hours into my shift, I’m basically numb, overwhelmed by the constant state of alertness. I hate Sample Sundays.

Then someone calls my name.

I turn to see photographers, paparazzi, leaning in through the doors and taking pictures through the windows.

Someone must be doing some kind of retrospective on my story for the anniversary, even though I’d said no to all the interview requests. Miracle Girl rises again. Great.

Just as I’m about to ask Andy, the nearest bag boy, to run and tell Mr. Logan, the owner, to call the cops on them, someone else says my name. Much closer. And the voice sounds so familiar.

I see the guy standing at the end of my lane, just a few feet away, his hands stuffed in his pockets. He’s absurdly and out-of-place handsome, tall and blond with dark blue eyes, and watching me with a familiar look of concern.

The world tips sideways, and I can’t breathe.

Chase Henry. Chase Henry is here.

The store windows behind him flicker out of existence, replaced by boarded-up windows and peeling green paint on concrete walls. I’m not in Logan’s anymore—was I ever? Sometimes it’s so hard to tell what’s real and what my brain has created to help me survive—I’m back in the basement at Jonathon Jakes’s house.

The air feels too thick, choking me every time I try to inhale. The band around my wrist is warm from the heat of my skin and blood as the metal bites into my flesh. My body aches again, that bone-deep pain, with bruises and abuse. I want to scream, but my voice is trapped in my throat, like a bubble I can’t force out. How did I get back here? I was out, wasn’t I?

Chase looks alarmed, staring at me. Oh God, that can’t be good. He’s always the calm one.

He takes a step toward me. “Amanda, I—”

Overhead, the distinctive shuffle/thump of Jakes walking on the floor above makes bits of dirt and insulation rain down on my head.

The sound of Jakes, obviously alive and, if not well, certainly not dead, is like a punch to the gut.

No. No, no, no! He’s supposed to be shot, in the ground. Gone.

You didn’t
really
believe that, did you?
The evil voice in my head is back, the one that keeps me awake at night by bringing up awful memories and all the things I should have done.

I drop to the floor, whimpering, my hands up in defense. I can’t do this. Not again.

Then a flash of red moves through my vision. I blink, and Mia is suddenly in front of me, blocking most of my view of Chase. She’s pushing at his shoulders, moving him away.

For a second, just a half moment, I’m confused. Mia was never in Jakes’s basement; as often as he threatened it, it never happened. I
know
that.

And that’s all it takes for reality to snap back into place.

The basement vanishes, and I’m on the floor in Logan’s, in my register cubicle. My hands and feet are numb. Coins in all denominations lay scattered around me.

Slowly, sound trickles back in. I can hear the buzz of agitated voices, the beeping of a distant register, and my sister shouting at someone.

No more basement, no more Jakes. It’s like living in
The Matrix
.

But one thing from that flashback is very real. Chase Henry. I can see him over the wall. He’s still here, walking backward, his hands up in defense against Mia, who’s after him like a girl possessed.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” she screams, taking another swipe at him. “You just show up here? Don’t you know? Get out!”

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t—”

His eyes lock with mine, and then he turns abruptly without another word and walks out. I feel the strangest twinge of something. Regret? It’s fleeting, gone before I can identify it.

Andy kneels next to me at the entrance to my register cubicle, his eyes wide above his acne-scarred cheeks. “Are you okay?” He’s careful to keep distance between us.

But it’s not enough and too much at the same time.
I’m not safe. It’s not safe here.
The words beat as a refrain in my head, keeping time with my racing heartbeat.

“I have to go. I have to … I just have to go.” I push myself up to stand on shaking legs. I have to get out of here. Now. Everyone’s staring at me, and that’s not good, but it isn’t enough to stop me.

I can feel the pressure hanging overhead, the sensation that something bad is going to break open and pour down over all of us. I don’t even know what that bad thing is, but I can sense it, the same way you can feel a heavy July thunderstorm rolling in. And I can’t fight it, not this time.

Logical, rational thought would indicate that this is just an anxiety attack. A natural reaction to my body offloading a crap-ton of adrenaline into my system, a system now customized and shaped after years of trauma to leap immediately to the flight-or-fight instinct at the first sign of trouble, imagined or not.

Knowing that should be enough. And maybe on another day, if I’d caught the anxiety train on the tracks at the top of the hill instead of the bottom, it might have been.

But true clinical anxiety gives zero fucks about logic and rational thought, and when I’m in the throes of it, neither do I.

I push past Andy and run.

“Amanda, wait!” Mia shouts after me, but I ignore her and the photographers and everyone and head to the back of the store. There’s a delivery entrance through the storeroom. It opens up to a small employee parking lot. From there, if I cut around the side of the building, I can avoid the cameras and I’ll be heading the right direction for home, which is only three blocks away.

Five minutes. Maybe less. Just keep it together. A few more minutes. You’re okay.

But it’s hard to accept that when the sky feels like a gaping maw preparing to spit some unknown form of disaster on your head.

Mia catches up with me as I reach the parking lot. “Amanda, stop! It’s okay, please!”

But it’s like I’m controlled by someone or something other than myself. I don’t care what she says. My instinct is screaming “danger,” and that’s all that matters.

I shake my head at her, the most I can do, and keep moving.

She stays with me doggedly, a step behind, as I race home, and she’s crying. But her ragged sobs are interspersed with strings of creative and furious epithets that only Mia would come up with (“son of a llama-licker motherfucker” might have been one insult or two—it was impossible to tell), which would have made me laugh under different circumstances.

When our house comes into sight, I put on an extra burst of speed up the path, onto the porch, and through the front door, which is standing open. I just need to be safe. I feel like a beating heart exposed without the protection of skin and bone.

“No, thank you, she’s here now,” my mom says into the phone, watching me from the doorway to the kitchen as I throw myself into the foyer like a marathon runner stretching for the finish line.

She hangs up on whoever called without even saying good-bye, her forehead pinched deeply with worry. “Amanda, are you okay?” She approaches me with her hands out, as if she means to hug me or hold me still, but then she hesitates. “What happened? Where’s Mia?”

The panic roaring in my head dies down a little, as I attempt to catch my breath. It’s better here, in familiar surroundings, but it’s not enough. My legs are jelly from running and shaking with the desire to keep going. I can feel that jittery push inside me, the need to stay one step ahead of whatever is coming.

Standing there on the worn blue and white rug that used to serve as the ocean for our Barbies when Liza and I played years ago, I try to talk myself out of it.
I’m safe. Nothing is going to happen here. Mom is right here.

But that itch, that undeniable sensation sending up the alarm,
Danger, danger, danger!
just won’t let up.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper to my mom, tears burning my eyes. I’m not sure if I’m crying for her or me or both of us. She wants so badly for me to finally get my life back. So do I.

“What?” She looks baffled. “Amanda, talk to me. Tell me—”

Behind me, Mia rips open the screen door and crashes into the foyer. Snatches of her breathless explanation drift upward as I pound up the stairs.

“Chase Henry … at the store … Amanda freaked out … hauled ass out of there … so going to be fired!” From Mia’s plaintive wail on that last part, I’m pretty sure she’s talking about her employment status, not mine.

I cross the threshold into my bedroom, my sanctuary, and close the door behind me. It’s pretty much unchanged from when I was “gone.” Dusty stuffed animals hold court on a shelf above my dresser with Mrs. Stuffykins as Queen. Old calendar pages featuring baby rabbits are plastered on the side of my desk. Photos torn out of
BOP
and
Seventeen
and campus pictures secretly cut from Liza’s discarded college recruitment brochures (“Just because I don’t want them anymore, Amanda, doesn’t mean they’re yours. God!”) randomly decorate the walls, all at about the height of five feet. Eye level for me then and now. A rumpled pink flyer on my bulletin board advertises show choir tryouts my sophomore year. They took place two days after I vanished.

My mom offered to have it all cleaned up and repainted, to replace the curtains, the comforter, everything. But that triggered a colossal fight between my parents. Apparently, my dad read an article or talked to one of my many therapists (probably Dr. Leary, his favorite) and “drastic changes to the environment” were verboten for people like me. Whatever.