The Prized Girl - Amy K. Green

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a gruesome pileup of beady-eyed carcasses. She flopped down on the bed and gazed up at the sheer princess canopy above her. That would have to go too, but she couldn’t bring herself to get back up. She would rip it down later.

      So much had changed in the past few months, and she didn’t know who to blame. Maybe her dysfunctional family, maybe herself? She couldn’t blame Benjy. It wasn’t his fault.

       Virginia

      I PARKED ON THE STREET in front of the police station at half past one. I made sure to schedule any appointments in the middle of the day so as to feel the most productive. I usually slept until ten, and if I could manage to stay out until at least three, that was only four hours until it was dark and I could go to bed again.

      I found myself recently unemployed due to having quit my job. I was a temporary person. It was the only way I could get out of bed in the morning, knowing it wouldn’t be like this forever. It was hope, I guess—really mutilated, beyond recognition, hope. It was something I definitely didn’t inherit from my mother. She had no hope.

      My father married my mother when they were both nineteen. They were high school sweethearts out of convenience. The town didn’t produce many attractive people, so the ones who existed tended to couple up. They had me one year later and at least four years earlier than my dad planned on procreating.

      He was in college studying some business bullshit. He became a big-time finance asshole, but back then he was a kid from a small town with a lot of ambition and a hot wife. They were two kids who got out of Wrenton. They were living in New York City, but when I was born, my mom brought me back with her to be near her sister. My dad took the train home from the city every weekend. He still did.

      My mom became extremely paranoid that my dad was cheating. I doubted it. He was not a passionate man. She turned into a belligerent screamer and a drunk. She was small-town, very small-town, and resented her big-city husband. It got ugly. Monday through Friday she would go to the bowling alley with me in tow and drink until the owner put us both in the county’s only cab. He would give me a lollipop. I do vaguely remember the candy.

      My father would get home sometime after I went to bed on Friday, and by Sunday, they weren’t speaking. That included speaking to me. It sounds like a horrible childhood, but it wasn’t that bad. Some of my friends at school had these overbearing mothers who would show up all the time and bring them sweaters and kiss them in front of everyone. Ten is the very important age when you start to realize that parents aren’t cool and if you have any chance of being cool, they need to back the fuck off. By eleven, I was one of the most popular kids in my class. That lasted for about six months until my mom killed herself.

      I lived with my aunt for two years before my father met Linda, got her pregnant, and tried this whole family thing again. Everyone would have been happy for me to stay with my aunt, but when she got sick, I had to go home—a new home with Linda and baby Jenny at the base of Sanford Hill. Everyone really enjoyed the constant reminder I provided of all the terrible shit they were trying to forget. At least I didn’t have to change schools; it would have been a real shame if I had to start high school without all that carefully cultivated baggage.

      It was the same high school Jenny attended, fully equipped with her own baggage. She had only dipped her toe into those waters when she met her demise. If I could switch places with her, I would. Not for her to be alive now and for me to be dead like some selfless act of love. It’s just, if I had died a few weeks before my fourteenth birthday, it would have prevented everything.

      I FIRST SPOKE to the police on the day they found Jenny’s body. Chief Garrety was geriatric, with a physique that couldn’t catch a paraplegic criminal. He was sweating profusely that afternoon, and part of me worried we might have a second dead body on our hands. I guess that’s why they brought in the big guns. A detective from Hartsfield would be taking over. Hartsfield wasn’t much of a city, but they had detectives, so they were bigger than us.

      I entered the station to an unmanned reception counter. Being alone made it somehow better and then somehow worse. I didn’t want to make small talk, but at least it would be a distraction. Instead, I stood in front of the empty bull pen that seemed to shrink when I felt claustrophobic and expand when I felt small. I could hear some gruff man talk coming from the back, so I rang the bell on the desk like I was picking up dry cleaning. Then I rang it a few more times before Chief Garrety finally poked his head out from the kitchen.

      “Oh, Ms. Kennedy, hello.” He brushed some crumbs off his shirt and came to meet me. “How are you doing today?”

      “You know …” I trailed off. I didn’t know how long I would have to wait before I could answer “Good” to that question. Death is a funny thing. Murder is worse.

      “Yeah.” He nodded, then leaned in and hushed his voice. “Look, this guy thinks he’s a real hotshot. Solved some big case once. Don’t let him push you around, ya know? Just answer his questions and smile a lot. You’re a pretty girl.”

      That wasn’t comforting at all and possibly insulting. I couldn’t tell. “I’ll do my best.”

      Chief Garrety was convinced. “Follow me.”

      The chief showed me into the interrogation room and it put me on edge—steel table, two matching chairs, a mirror spanning the wall, dim lighting.

      “I’ll grab the detective,” he said. “And remember …” He guided the corners of his mouth up with his fingers into a creepy grin. If I smiled like that, I’d be suspect number one in all murders ever.

      I took a seat on the chair facing the door and settled in. The wait was rubbing me the wrong way. I came in on my time. This is your job. Get it together. I decided to believe this hotshot detective was taking a shit, a nervous shit because this was the biggest case of his life. I didn’t want to be all annoyed when he finally came in. This made him more sympathetic.

      I had bitten off three of my fingernails by the time he came in. He sat at the table with a file folder in his hands, staring down, fixated on its contents just like on television. He glanced up and reacted like he hadn’t known I would be there. This guy was a trip.

      “Hello, Ms. Kennedy. Thank you for coming in. I’m Detective Colsen.” He extended his hand and we shook. So formal. He was attractive enough. No traits in particular were anything to fawn over—thirties, twenty-dollar classic haircut, acceptable face shape, average height. Still, he was a stranger, and there was something inexplicable about him that made me nervous.

      He helped himself to the other cold, hard chair and fanned his sacred file out on the table. Right away a picture of Jenny’s dead body appeared. I hadn’t seen it before; I’d only heard what happened. She was covered in leaves and dirt, cemented to her by the early morning rainstorm. There were splotches of blood on her nightgown where the knife had entered. Cuts and bruises were everywhere. Her blonde hair was chopped to pieces, eyes closed, face devoid of color. Her hands were placed so peacefully together over her stomach, I imagined that’s how they were now, inside the coffin. I couldn’t stop staring. A dead body. A kid. My sister.

      Images flashed in my head. Memories of Jenny as a clumsy toddler. My brain’s defense mechanism showing her to me at her most innocent, back when I lived in the house and saw her regularly, often letting her sleep on my chest because she couldn’t string enough words together to bother me. Back when she was a blob—before she was a person, before she was a performer, before she was my replacement.

      The detective caught me staring. “Oh, I’m sorry.” He quickly covered the picture with his notes. It wasn’t convincing. I knew he wanted to see my reaction.

      “Am I a suspect?” I asked.

      “Right now, everyone’s a suspect, but I wasn’t particularly thinking it. Should I be?”

      I

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