Chapter 21: Breakdown

"Wow. Look at this place," Amy said, as we pulled into the driveway. "It's a mansion!"

"That's what I said," I replied.

We got out of the car and I got Amy's suitcase from the trunk. Charlotte took her smaller bag, and we walked up the walk toward the front door.

"I hope you don't mind," Charlotte said. "I have some friends over."

"Oh?" Amy said. "Cool."

"Yeah. We're celebrating."

"Celebrating?" Amy said. "Celebrating what?"

Charlotte opened the door. There was a big banner hanging from the railing of the upstairs walkway that overlooked the main entrance: WELCOME AMY. Balloons and streamers were everywhere. Steve, Mick, and Janine had apparently seen us pull up and were waiting with a big cheer.

Amy stopped in the doorway, looking around, half a smile on her face. The rest of her face was tangled with unreadable emotion. She turned and hugged Charlotte. They hugged for a long time as though they were meeting for the first time all over again.

Janine was the first to approach. She gave Amy a great big hug as well and introduced herself.

"Sorry if I look kinda dumpy. I've been having sex with my new boyfriend all day."

Amy's eyes widened. Her face changed to surprise. Her smile turned to disbelief.

"Well, not all day," Janine said. "Only a couple times. Here he is. Isn't he gorgeous?"

Amy shook his hand.

"Nice to meet you..." she began.

"Mick," he said.

"Mick! Hi, Mick. As in Mick E. Mouse?" She laughed nervously.

"No. As in Damika, my grandmother."

"Well, at least they didn't name you Dam."

"This is Steve," Janine said. "And you already met Anthony."

"Yes," Amy said, smiling at me.

"Come on in, sis!" Charlotte said, with her half-giggle. She was still getting used to the idea. We all were. "There's food over here, if you're hungry. Drinks in the fridge. Giant screen TV. There's a pool out back. Whatever you wanna do, just name it."

"Can I take my stuff to my room first?" she said, smiling politely.

"Oh! Of course! Yes! Go upstairs. There's a guest room at the end of the hall on the right, across from the bathroom."

I'd seen that door dozens of times, and I never knew what was in there.

"Wow!" Amy said. "Look at this place!"

I looked around, seeing it again for the first time myself, through Amy's eyes. It must have been overwhelming.

"I'm gonna go change," Charlotte said. "I'll be right back."

"I'll help Amy get her bag up to her room," I added.

Amy left, following Charlotte up the stairs.

"Where's Sheila?" I asked them.

"She's locked up down in the studio with a plate of food. I don't think that girl plans on even sleeping this weekend, never mind coming up here to mingle."

"She should at least come and meet Amy!" I said.

"Yeah. I told her that. But she wouldn't listen. She won't show me what she's done so far either."

I picked up the suitcases and headed up the stairs.

"I'll go talk to her later," I said.

Charlotte and Amy were in Charlotte's bedroom, and Amy was staring around like a tourist in a palace. The ceilings were high, the bed was wide, the carpet was thick. She stepped on it like her feet would dirty it or something.

"Oh, come on! Don't be like that!" Charlotte said, dragging her into the room. "Your daddy's rich, girl! Get used to it!"

I took Amy's bags to the room down the hall and placed them by the bed. This room was equally posh, but more furnished for an adult than a teen girl. The ceiling was just as high, but it was sloped downward toward the windows on the left. Everything was chocolate and tan in the room. It looked luxurious, like an over-priced hotel room. There was even a chandelier hanging from the ceiling. Up above the sloped ceiling were more windows, letting in light way up there. It was dark now of course, but it was probably a nice sight to wake up to. There was a little breakfast table over by the window and a shelf full of books on each wall.

"What's with the handcuffs?" Amy said.

"What?" I hadn't even noticed her sneak up behind me, never mind any handcuffs.

"There, on the bed."

On the wall at the head of the bed were two marble pillars, extending all the way to the ceiling. There was a length of chain hanging from each one with a handcuff at the end.

"Wow," I said. "Kinky. Never noticed that. Well, you don't have to use them if you don't want. It's your room after all."

"Maybe I will. Wouldn't wanna fall out of bed or anything."

I approached the foot of the bed to place her bags down. Amy lifted an ankle cuff from the stone pillar that made up the foot of the bed. She let it tangle from its chain between her fingertips and then dropped it again.

"Scary..." she said.

"The Lawsens are, like ... Well, I'll let Charlotte explain it."

"Do I want to know?"

"It does take some getting used to. I'm still trying to get my head around it after a few weeks of knowing them. They are great people though."

"I'm sure they are. Charlotte seems really nice."

Amy was talking to me like she'd come here to see me, and meeting Charlotte was a secondary thing. She was still nervous I suppose, and I was the first person in the city she'd met. It was like we were already friends.

Charlotte came bouncing in and sat on the bed.

"Look at these! Aren't they fun!?" she said.

Amy stared blankly. Charlotte realized once again, that Amy was still getting used to all this, and she flushed, suddenly embarrassed.

I also noticed she'd changed out of her slutty skirt, into a T-shirt and jeans. She still looked hot, but less slutty, less "open for business" as Amy had put it. I'd never seen her so self-conscious.

There was an awkward silence.

"Look up there!" Charlotte said. "The curtains are motorized."

She pressed a switch by the bed and the curtains closed themselves with a quiet electric hum.

"Cool, huh?"

"Yeah."

"You have your own private patio too!"

"Where?" I asked.

Charlotte bounced off the bed, and opened a window, which actually was a door it turned out, and stepped out onto the balcony. We followed her.

"Wow," I said.

"Yeah," Amy nodded.

"See back there?" Charlotte continued. "That's the pool. This is the garden. There's another patio down there. It smells like flowers over here in the summer time. Gorgeous! I like tanning up here in the summer. You get great sun, and it's semi-private, if you wanna, you know..."

She made a masturbation motion with her fingertips.

Amy glanced sideways at me and flushed a bit. She swallowed nervously again and said nothing.

"Come on! You can't be serious!" Charlotte said. "We're sisters! We're gonna talk about everything! And don't worry about Anthony! He's cool. He knows all my secrets anyway."

"Well, not all of them," I said.

"Well, not yet I guess. But eventually you will."

Amy went to the railing and looked out back toward the pool. Charlotte nibbled on her knuckle a bit, staring back and forth from me to Amy with a look of desperation in her eyes. I could tell she felt like she was blowing her first impression with Amy big time. I wanted to talk to her, let her know that she was doing just fine, that Amy was just overwhelmed by everything. It was all new to her. But I just smiled a half-smile at her and gave her a half-hug.

"I'll leave you two alone. I wanna grab a bite," I said.

What I really wanted to was to talk to Sheila.

When I got downstairs, Janine and Mick were making out on the couch, hot and heavy, mouths locked, tongues dancing. His hand was up her shirt, and she had hers on the bulge in his pants, massaging him sensuously, like she couldn't wait to get him into the next bed they could find.

"Guys," I said. "Easy on the public displays. Amy's still trying to get use to all this. Let's not weird her out."

"Hey," Janine said, with a naughty little giggle. "She's in our world now. She has to get used to us, not the other way around."

"Sure. I agree," I said. "But let's at least ease her into it, okay? She's also trying to deal with the shit with her mom. And she apparently broke up with her boyfriend last night."

Janine jumped off of Mick like he was on fire. Suddenly she was sitting beside him, holding his hand like two kids at a church picnic.

"Oh my god! Really?" she said.

"Yeah. It can't be easy for her."

"Is she all emotional and shit? Oh my god! That's so sad!"

"Actually, she hasn't even mentioned her mom yet. She seems like she's more overwhelmed by this whole new-family thing."

"Yeah."

"Well, be affectionate. Just don't be halfway down each other's pants. That's all."

"Gotcha," Janine said, and she went back to kissing him.

I gave them a thumbs up and headed downstairs.

Sheila was indeed shut up in the control room, sitting there, with one hand on the mouse, and the other on her chin. Her brow was furrowed. She looked frustrated. She looked thoughtful She was dragging and dropping little pictures of me and Charlotte around on a timeline window. Then she hit the spacebar and the scene spun into motion. We were covered in sweat and looked like we were exhausted. The shot changed and suddenly I saw a close-up of Charlotte's panting mouth. Then she stopped it again, and rearranged the shots on the timeline a bit. Damn it was hot! I got hard just from the ten seconds or so I'd seen.

"Great work," I said.

She suddenly looked up at me as though she hadn't even noticed me enter. She clicked off the monitor and turned to face me.

"What, Anthony? What's up?"

Cold and curt, like I was an interruption to her work — a nuisance.

"Aren't you gonna come and meet Amy?"

"I'll be up in a bit. This scene is pissing me off. I wanna get it done before I move on to anything else."

"It looks incredible to me, like a real movie."

"Gee thanks. Why don't you pat me on the head while you're at it?"

"I'm serious, Sheila. I'm honestly blown away. You're kicking ass at this."

"I try."

"Anyway, Amy's here now. She's upstairs. There's food too, if you want. We're gonna hang out."

"How's Charlotte dealing with all this?" Sheila asked.

"She seems very self-conscious. It's very cute. I've never seen her like that before."

"Really? That's weird."

"Yeah. Poor Amy was waiting at the airport for us since like 6:00. It was brutal. Charlotte's been a mess ever since. And some guy was all over her at the airport."

"Some guy?" Sheila said, flipping her monitor on again and reaching for the mouse.

"Yeah, some ex of hers apparently, or some fling she had. Something like that. Anyway, we almost got in a fight over it too. Amy had to step in and go to bat for me."

"Really?" Sheila said, dragging shots around on the time line again.

"Yeah. She was being all cold and bitchy on the way over, and I was trying my best to cheer her up, but she told me I babble too much, and then just took off on me. Next thing you know she's hanging all over this guy at the airport. It was really shitty. I felt like garbage."

"You did?"

"Yeah. I mean, am I her boyfriend or aren't I? Even Amy saw it. She was totally dissing me."

"Wow, you must have felt crappy," Sheila said, deleting a clip from the timeline, and then hitting undo.

"Totally crappy! I didn't feel respected at all."

"But did you feel more crappy than a girl who's looking at losing her mother, who's uprooted from her home and all her friends and left waiting in the airport for three hours to meet people she doesn't even know, who she's probably gonna end up living with, leaving her entire life behind? Did you feel more crappy than a girl who suddenly realizes that she's had a sister all this time, and that her daddy, the center of her universe her entire life, is suddenly no longer hers and hers alone anymore, and who suddenly has to get used to the idea, and make the best of it, like it or not, and then makes a bad first impression and is now agonizing over whether her new sister really even likes her? Wow, Anthony, you must feel pretty crappy, if you feel worse than that."

I didn't answer. She'd torn a strip off of me without even raising her voice, without even stopping her work on the computer. She'd put everything into perspective for me in one swift stroke. Suddenly all my complaints were small and petty. I realized I was being a selfish little infant, exactly as Charlotte had told me.

"When you're done pouting over the little tragedies of the dream world that is your life, be a friend and take care of someone else for a change. It's not always about you."