Page 240 of My Sweet Dollie, You Have to Love Me
CHAPTER 56
Ambrose—age nine
It feels like I haven’t slept for days. It’s been a week of psychologist appointments, pills, and police questions that I can’t answer.
They haven’t found Colin Bannadosi.
There isn’t much to go on, I heard the captain of the department say that to her colleague.
Of course, there isn’t.
The only information I’d given them was that we’d been staying in a white house, with a flooded basement and ugly carpets upstairs. That was all I’d managed before something called separation anxiety kicked in, and I dropped my pen, refusing to write more until I saw my sister.
The police were sensitive to my feelings. To Dad, who brought in Dollie for a minute before I left.
We were pried apart shortly after in the doorway, and that resulted in a breakdown to get away from Mom’s touch. Bumping into the doorframe was rough on my burns, and I have more bruises on my back because of it.
Dollie had been too scared to say anything in that room, only that the man who held us wore clown makeup daily. She never saw what I did, the ugly features underneath.
The police tried their luck with the teens who’d picked us up, too. They’d given the road location and the direction we’d traveled from, but there were so many white houses in that area that the police made no progress with the investigation.
I could write everything down in detail, but shame prevents that. Shame, and the fear that if Mom and Dad get put in prison for being a part of this nightmare, Dollie and I will be separated.
That can’t happen.
I need to be close to her until the day I stop breathing because it feels so much harder to breathe when she’s not with me. Because of that, Dad guides me into my new bedroom, respecting my wishes of not touching my skin. The dark walls are something I appreciate as I step inside. The nightlight he turns on isn’t.
Today is moving day for me. It’s taken until darkness filled the sky for Mom to get the room perfect—her words. I didn’t care what the room looked like. I only cared that it was closer to Dollie, whose room I’d spent the day in while our parents moved all my stuff from my old room to the space behind the door opposite hers.
There are new things here, too, filling this bigger square.
Horror movie posters still line the walls, the glossy paper shining in the light. My bed is bigger. Like the one Mom and Dad sleep in, it has a huge headboard.
This is exactly the kind of room I’d have loved before that basement. A dark space where I could bask in my solitude.
But now, I can’t be alone without my blood itching.
I don’t even want my own room. I want to be in Dollie’s again tonight. I’ve been there all week, needing her tiny handstouching me because that’s the only thing that takes away the memory of Colin’s much bigger ones all over my body.
Those memories still make me want to die.
I take another step away from the door—away from Dollie’s door.
Already, that itch is present, and we’ve only been apart for less than an hour while I bathed in a concoction of gels, never feeling clean enough. My nails claw at the skin on my arm until it turns red, and my scars burn.
“What is it?” Dad asks, standing just inside the doorway that Mom appears in with a smile. She passes him, bending to me in the center of the room.
It’s weird to see her look anything but perfect, but here she is in a robe with her hair in a messy bun and paint on her hands. “Do you like your new room?
Where’s Dollie?I mouth.
“Your sister is in bed. She wanted to come and see your room, but I told her to let you get settled. You can show her it tomorrow. What do you say?”
I say nothing.
Mom and Dad share a glance before her eyes zone back in on me. First, my throat and the gash, then my face. I see them dance over every scar before she holds out her hands to me. Hope flashes across her face that I’ll take them, but it fades quickly.
I stare at her skinny fingers and the stains from decorating this room that have ruined her perfect manicure.
