Just Try to Stop Me. Gregg Olsen
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to hang out today?” he asked.
Amber continued with her hair, first with her fingertips as she parted safe passage sections for the comb. She loved her hair. It made her stand out in a crowd. She’d only colored it once, a dreadful burgundy that she regretted when it made her hair look the color of a strawberry popsicle.
“So not a good color for you,” her friend Kelly had said in what was surely the understatement of the year. She thanked God it was only a temporary color and that after three weeks of washing her hair nightly it had returned to the beautiful and natural ginger tones that made the green of her eyes all the more lovely.
“I guess so,” she said to Elan. “I have cheer at two, and that’ll last two hours.”
“I could come and hang out at the track while you practice.”
She smiled. “Sounds good to me,” she said.
“Bye, Amber.”
“Later, Elan.”
Kelly had texted while she was talking to Elan.
Kelly: You want to do something after cheer?
Amber: Elan and I are going to do something.
Kelly: OMG! Elan and you. What’s going on?
Amber: Nothing. Not really. I guess I like him. He’s cute.
Kelly: Yeah. Quiet. But cute.
Amber: Not so quiet but definitely cute.
Kelly: See you at school.
Amber: K.
Amber slid to the edge of her bed and looked around, her hair ready for the dryer. Her room needed a makeover. Her mom still treated her like a little kid, with white wicker furniture and white eyelet edged curtains. She’d asked a million times if she could do something to change things, up. Even paint. But her mom always deflected her requests by passing them off to her stepfather, Karl. He couldn’t care less about Amber. Everything was about Bryn, the new baby. Bryn this. Bryn that. Whatever they said, Amber had an answer. Never aloud, though. Always just inside her head, where remarks went unchallenged and, most important, unpunished.
“We need to save up for private school for Bryn.”
I didn’t get to go to private school.
“Thank God Bryn got some melanin in her skin. She won’t burn like her big sister.”
I don’t feel like a big sister. I wear sunblock, and it isn’t like being a ginger is a skin disorder.
“We might need to move you downstairs so Bryn can be closer to us.”
I’m not moving.
“Bryn is the cutest baby ever.”
She is cute. Maybe not the cutest ever.
Amber finished getting dressed, grabbed her pom-poms and made a beeline for the door. Her mom, Sue, called over to her from the kitchen where Princess Bryn was being served something that smelled pretty good. Sue had been making homemade baby food, which she had never done for her eldest daughter.
“Hey! You need to eat, Amber!”
Amber looked over at her mom. Bryn had a big smile on her face, and Amber couldn’t help but return a smile of her own. She hated that she did. As much as things had changed since Bryn’s arrival, she couldn’t blame it all on the baby. Her mom was in her early forties and, as far as Amber could see, had no business getting pregnant again. Seventeen years apart didn’t make for great sibling relationships. In fact, it made for exactly what had transpired.
A house divided.
“I’m on cheer, Mom,” she said, on the move again. “We don’t eat. We all have eating disorders. Bye!”
Sue made a face, a kind of exasperated expression that was the counterpart of an eye roll, without rolling the eyes, that is.
“Not funny!” she said.
The door shut, and Amber got into her car.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The image was dark. So dark that it would be doubtful just how much enhancement any decent tech lab could manage. The woman’s voice sputtered a few times, dipping in and out of what could be heard and what someone might imagine.
“It’s me. Janie Thomas. I’m the superintendent of the Washington Corrections Center for Women, in Gig Harbor, Washington. I know that what I’m about to say will find little sympathy among some—if anyone sees or hears my message. I made a terrible mistake. Don’t even know how things went so wrong. Brenda Nevins has me. She’s made me do some terrible things. Really the worst things that a human can do to another, I did it. I’m so very, very sorry. I thought she loved me. I still think she might. But I also know there’s something tremendously wrong with her. She’s not normal. She’s not like other people. She has an on-and-off switch that she alone controls. I really thought that I could help her and by the same token, she could help me. I was wrong. I have blood on my hands. I’ve done things that I would never have thought possible, things for which I will need to atone for the rest of my life. I’m sorry, Erwin. I’m sorry, Joe. God knows that what I’ve done has hurt you both. Forgive me. Erwin, I forgive you for the affair with Sandy. I wasn’t there. I know that now.”
Again, some movement of the device and another short pause.
“She’s in the shower. She’ll be out in a minute. I don’t know where we are. She drugged me. I swear she did. Wherever we are, we have no cell service. Not at all. I’m recording this with the hope that I’ll find a way to upload when we move locations again. Tonight, I think. She’s coming now. She’s crazy. She’s dangerous. I love her.”
In the background, Brenda’s voice is heard.
“What in the hell are you doing now, Janie? God, I can’t leave you alone for a second, can I?”
“I wasn’t doing anything, Brenda.”
“Give me that.”
“What?”
“Give it to me!”
“Brenda, I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“You ungrateful bitch, you’ve been calling someone, haven’t you? Give me the phone.”
“You’re hurting me.”
“Ask if I care, you idiot.”
“I love you, Brenda.”
“You don’t know what love is, you stupid bitch. You make me sick. You’ve betrayed me, and I want to know who you’ve called.”
“I didn’t call anyone!”
Brenda’s face appeared on the black screen of the video, filling it with her beautiful, but menacing eyes. She blinked. She looked away, presumably in the direction of Janie Thomas.
“Made a video, huh? Aren’t you the clever one, Janie? I never knew you had any aptitude for multimedia. I think I’ll watch your little video to see what you’ve said.”
“I was just playing around, Brenda, honest,” Janie said. “Don’t bother.”
A long pause.
Brenda pointed the camera over to Janie, who appeared to be cowering on the bed. The bedspread was a solid blue without the benefit of a pattern to provide any clues as to where the taping had taken place. The framing of the shot was so tight that even the headboard had been cropped out.
“I’ll decide just what you were doing,” Brenda said, “and I’ll also decide what I’m going to do about it.”
The video went black.
CHAPTER EIGHT