“You could do something like that. Absolutely.”

I smile, thinking of all the good hooey I can do for others with the money.

CHAPTER 58

When the junior prom rolls around, Donna rents Ricky and me a stretch limo. I wear my silver dress. Ricky wears his tuxedo. Donna has flowers for both of us. We take a crapload of pictures in the backyard, and then we go to Ty’s house and pick him up. He’s still got the beard, but he looks dashing in a navy blue tuxedo. Mr. and Mrs. Hendrix take pictures of Ricky, Ty, and me for—like—an hour, and then we jump into the limo and tell the driver to take us to Jared’s and Chad’s house, where they are waiting with their dates—Carla Winslow and Sally Craig—from the cheerleading squad. These girls are bimbo airheads, but for my boys, I’m super nice to both of them. Mr. and Mrs. Fox take pictures of all of us in various poses for another hour, and then we are in the limo again—off to the local Hilton reception room where our junior prom is held, with Mr. Fox following us in the Fox van, which transports Das Boot for Chad.

When we arrive, we get Chad into Das Boot, and then we make our entrance.

Franks is a greeter, which means he has to check our breath for alcohol.

So we walk in all staggering, pretending to be hammered.

“Want some vodka?” I ask Franks.

“I’ll probably need some by the end of the night,” Franks says to me, and we all laugh.

“How do I look, Franks?”

“All of you look great,” Franks says, and Carla and Sally giggle at that one.

At the prom we eat good food, we dance to the music the DJ plays, we mix in with Lex Pinkston and all of the football players and their cheerleader dates. I split the slow dances equally between Ricky and Ty. And when they play “Always And Forever” at the end, all members of The Five and Sally and Carla dance in a big circle with our arms linked—and our teachers watching and waiting to go home. It’s all pretty silly, really.

When the prom is over, we put Das Boot into the Fox van, hop into our limo, and drive to Ty’s parents’ beach house in Long Beach Island, or LBI. Mr. Fox follows us down with Das Boot, because he is a good dad.

Ty’s parents’ house is actually right on the beach, so after we get Das Boot into the house and Mr. Fox leaves, we put Chad in a backpack and hit the sand to do some stargazing.

Barefoot, but still in our tuxedos and dresses, we run along the edge of the ocean, the water licking our ankles—laughing and singing like the kids we are.

Somehow we decide to spend the entire night on the beach so we can see the sunrise.

We pick out a spot in front of Ty’s parents’ house.

We lie down on the sand making this big pile of teenagers.

We look up into the universe, and we get pretty quiet as we marvel.

Everyone falls asleep except me.

I think about my mom.

I get up and cry a little down by the ocean, so that the others won’t hear.

After a few minutes, Ty appears and puts his arm around me—in a brotherly sorta way.

When I turn around surprised, he holds me, I sob into his overly starched tuxedo shirt, and his friendship beard scratches my forehead.

Hours later, the sun comes up.

Ty and I are simply sitting together on a sand dune.

When The Five finds us, I snap out of my sadness and yell, “I’m making breakfast!”

And then in Ty’s parents’ beach house, I make killer omelets for everyone.

CHAPTER 59

By doing some Internet research, I learn that you have to fill out a visitor’s application and get it approved before you will be allowed to visit any prisoner in a maximum-security facility. There are these rules you have to read and agree to follow with a signature. If you are not eighteen you need to have a guardian sign the forms as well, and since I don’t want Donna or anyone else to know that I am going to visit my mother’s killer, I wait until my eighteenth birthday to fill out the form and send it in—which I do after the barbeque party Donna throws for me in the backyard.

My eighteenth b-day party is sorta a big thing, as Old Man Linder, Old Man Thompson, and some old people from the home come, The KDFCs bring their families along with FC, the Franks family shows, The Five are, of course, there along with many of my fellow CPHS classmates, Prince Tony, and Mrs. Baxter—and even PJ and Ms. Jenny show up, which is sorta cool, because in a sexy summer dress, Donna flirts with PJ and he doesn’t leave early. Sister Lucy and The Hard-Working Brothers do an encore outdoor performance with The Korean Divas for Christ, which rocks hard-core, and brings the neighbors out of their houses and into our backyard. I am embarrassed by the many super-cool presents. And later that night, after everyone has left, I fill out the visiting-prison form and drop it in the mail—which is my birthday present to myself.

My mother’s killer has to agree to see me as well, and I worry that he’ll refuse.

I also worry about Donna getting the reply letter, so every day I sneak away from my summer job at Rita’s water ice when the mail is delivered at two, just so Donna won’t intercept the letter from the prison.

After a few weeks of waiting, I get a very official response.

The letter states a date and time.

I am granted a fifteen-minute non-contact visit—meaning we will be separated by Plexiglas, which is just fine with me.

I’ll only need five minutes with my mother’s killer, so I’m cool.

The day before the non-contact visit, I call Ty and ask him if he will ditch work at one of his dad’s bank branches—where he does his summer nine-to-five as a drive-thru bank teller. I ask if he’ll take me somewhere secret, and promise never to tell anyone about it for as long as he lives, and in exchange, I’ll finally go to Friendly’s with him just like old times, so he can finally shave off his friendship beard. We still haven’t been to Friendly’s since my mom died.

“What time do I pick you up?”

“Eight AM. And make sure you have a full tank of gas.”

“Cool.”

The next morning I call my boss at Rita’s and tell him I am having woman problems so he won’t ask any questions, and he doesn’t.

Bearded Ty shows up right on time, I jump into his Volvo station wagon, and he says, “Where we headed?”

“Get on the turnpike and go north.”

“Cool,” Ty says, and then we are off.

I give him directions for almost two hours, and when we pull into the parking lot of the maximum-security prison, he says, “Um, Amber. What the hell are we doing here?”

“I have a non-contact visit scheduled with my mom’s killer.”

“What? Why?”

“Because I need to face him and then move on.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

“Trust me.”

“Amber, um—”

“Just wait here, okay? I’ll be back in less than an hour.”

“I don’t like this,” Ty says, and I notice that his friendship beard is almost six inches long now. It has to go—and soon.

“Get ready to lose that beard,” I say, and then walk across the parking lot.

Ty yells my name from his car a few times, but he doesn’t follow me into the prison.

Inside I have to walk through a metal detector, show my driver’s license, my CPHS school ID, and my visitation permission letter—and then I am frisked and searched by a large woman in a guard uniform. She’s packing heat too.

When she concludes that I have no weapons on me—that I am only a harmless girl—she leads me down a hallway and through two sets of guarded and locked doors, where she has to yell, “Visitor coming through—searched and clean!”

At the end of the fourth hallway, she opens a door and says, “This is it. I’ll wait for you here.”

Right before I step into the room, I get really nervous, and for some reason I just can’t make my legs carry me into the visitation room, so—in my mind—I conjure up my all-time Amber-and-her-mom number-one moment to give me courage.

I wasn’t going to tell you this, but my mom’s last boyfriend—A-hole Oliver—well, he didn’t exactly throw us out of his apartment.

The whole deal went down something like this:

Mom, BBB, and I were watching the debut episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer from the season one DVDs, which I had borrowed from Jared and Chad. Buffy was just about to save her new friend Willow from the vamps when A-hole Oliver came home and told us that he wanted to watch the Sixers game, so I immediately turned off Buffy—right at the good part—and handed AO the remote, because it was his apartment and his DVD player and I really didn’t feel like arguing with A-hole Oliver, because he was pretty stubborn and would cut you down in a heartbeat with one of his mean, straight-for-the-jugular insults.

He put on the Sixers, which didn’t really bother me all that much because AO pretty much controlled the TV whenever he was home, so I wouldn’t have expected anything different. But Mom, she was sorta into Buffy after watching season six—which Chad and Jared gave me for my birthday the year before, saying that season six was the best because that one has the musical episode, Once More, With Feeling—and it was actually Mom’s idea to borrow season one from my boys so we could watch the whole series in order, together, mother-and-daughter style.

I think that maybe Mom dug the show because Buffy kicks so much apple bottom for a regular chick, even if she is a slayer. She’s really like a role model for women. But Buffy keeps it real too. She may be a superchick, but she still hangs out with her dorky friends Xander and Willow, who are totally like real people even if one falls in love with a demon and the other becomes a powerful witch, so you sorta believe in Buffy—like she’s real—even though she kills vampires and monsters and lives on a hellmouth. The show gives regular chicks like Mom and me hope. True? True.

We watched the Sixers for a while, nobody saying anything, and then A-hole Oliver went into the kitchen and didn’t come back for a few minutes.

“Why did you make us turn off Buffy if you aren’t even going to watch basketball?” Mom yelled to her man.

“I’m listening to it,” AO said from the kitchen, making himself a sandwich.

I was shocked when Mom got up from the couch, took back the remote, and put the Buffy DVD back on.

AO returned to the living room, sandwich in hand, and said, “I’m watching the Sixers!”

“We were watching Buffy,” Mom said, which surprised me because my mom never stuck up for herself at all.

“When you start kicking in some more bucks for rent, you can control the TV,” AO said. “You’re responsible for two of the three people living here and you don’t even cover your half of the bills. So as long as I’m picking up the entire cable bill, we watch the Sixers whenever they’re on.”

Oliver sorta pushed Mom aside, ejected the Buffy DVD, and threw it at me like a Frisbee, but too hard. The disk rose up, hit the wall over my head, and then fell behind the couch. BBB began to bark.

“Hey, what the hell?” I said. “That’s not mine. You’re paying for it if it’s scratched.”