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 cla.s.smates, Prince Tony, and Mrs. Baxter-and even PJ and Ms. Jenny show up, which is sorta cool, because in a s.e.xy 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 embarra.s.sed 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 h.e.l.l 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 h.e.l.lmouth. The show gives regular chicks like Mom and me hope. True? True.

We watched the Sixers for a while, n.o.body 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 h.e.l.l?" I said. "That's not mine. You're paying for it if it's scratched."

AO pointed to the DVD player and said, "That machine's not yours either. Nothing in this apartment is yours. You don't own anything besides that found mutt. And if it weren't for me, you'd be out on the streets-and don't you forget it."

"I work," I say.

"And do I take any of your water ice money?" AO asked me as if he was a hero or something.

"No."

"Well then," AO said, and then sat back down.

I looked at Mom and could tell that she'd had enough of Oliver, but I wasn't ready for what she said next.

"Amber, go into your room and put all of your clothes into trash bags. Pack up all your belongings. Don't forget your comforter."

"Why?" I said.

"Because we're moving out," Mom said with this real determined look on her face.

"Where are you going to live?" AO said with a laugh, flashing a mouthful of half-chewed lunch meat-laughing at us. "On your school bus?"

Mom went into the kitchen; I followed her. When she grabbed the trash bags from under the sink, went to her room, and started stuffing all of her clothes into the bags, BBB and I went to my room and did the same thing. We didn't have that much stuff, so we only filled six bags.

With coats on, bags in hands, we walked past A-hole Oliver, and he said, "You'll be back. See you in a few hours."

We walked out of AO's apartment complex, and then my mother kissed me on both cheeks, held my head in her hands, and said, "Oliver was an a.s.shole. I'm sorry I made you live with him for so long. We're never going back to his apartment. I promise."

I smiled at her, and for some reason we both began to cry right there on the sidewalk, hugging each other, as BBB watched.

"It might take me some time, Amber," my mother whispered into my ear, "but I'll get us into our very own apartment. We can make it without Oliver. I'll get a better job or maybe find a better man. Something will come along for us."

"I know," I told my mom, but the truth is that I was very scared, because Mom had a lot of alcohol on her breath and I sorta understood without Mom saying it that right then and there, we were officially homeless. But we were also free, and Mom's standing up to Oliver and taking a chance, well that was something I could respect. It kicked a little apple bottom-Buffy-style. Or at least that's what I thought at the time, three weeks before Mom asked A-hole Oliver to let us back into his apartment and he refused, even after Mom brought me to him and begged him to let us back in if only for her daughter's sake.

"Promise me something right now," Mom said while looking me in the eyes, still holding my cheeks with her hands, five minutes after we had first left AO's apartment. "You'll never ever let a man treat you the way Oliver treated me."

"I won't."

"Tell me that you won't live your life afraid, but will grow up and live a better life than your mother could ever imagine."

"I will," I said.

We were both crying in public, with our six trash bags of belongings circling our feet, and for some reason, right then and there, I felt like I was saying goodbye to my mother, that she was going to descend into a place that doesn't allow you to return-that this was the beginning of the end or something for her. It was like she had snapped-as if her mind had begun to turn on her and she knew it. It was like she was on her deathbed in some stupid movie and I was vowing to fulfill her last wishes. But it was also sorta like a beginning for me, because what I promised my mother-I didn't take that vow lightly then, and I sure as h.e.l.l don't take it lightly now.

So standing there in the doorway of the prison visitation room, just before I face my mother's killer, I take a deep breath-remembering all that has happened, all that I have survived, how strong I've become-and once more I say, "I won't. I will."

When I walk into the room, another security guard-a young skinny man-shows me to a little booth that is sorta like a desk with dividing walls to separate me from the other visitors, even though there are no other visitors in the room right now.

My mother's killer-he's seated on the other side of thick Plexiglas and is staring at me.

On the desk are headphones I am supposed to put on that have a little microphone stick that hangs out over your mouth-sorta like what a helicopter pilot might wear.

My mother's killer already has his headset on.

He's staring at me-blankly.

Huge brown gla.s.ses.

Crazy hair.

Orange jumpsuit.

His wrists are handcuffed to the belt that circles his belly.

I try not to think about what he did to my mother, but I can't help it-a wave of anger rushes through my limbs.

I take a few deep breaths.

He nods toward the headset and mouths the words: PUT IT ON.

I look into his eyes and shiver.

There is nothing there.

He is not human.

He is a thing.

There is nothing left in his eyes.

Nothing.

He is a monster.

Seeing the daughter of his last victim-no emotion registers on his face.

Nothing.

So I do not put on the headset.