She's Not There Read Online Free PDF Page A

Amelia. “I need your right thumbprint here,” she said, pointing to the form.
    Amelia hesitated and pressed her thumb onto the pad, then onto the form.
    “Sign here.”
    She took the pen and signed the form. The bald man returned, a big stack of bills in his hand. He slapped the money on the counter with a glare, and then disappeared again into the back room.
    The redhead watched him go and turned back to face Amelia. “You got something to put this in?” she asked.
    “This is all I have.”
    The redhead eyed the plastic hospital bag and then turned to the shelves behind her. She pulled a brown leather duffel down and brought it back to the counter. “Here, take this.”
    As Amelia stared at the bag, something clicked in her head—a sudden vision of Louis Vuitton luggage stacked on an airport cart. And the trill of a foreign language. Italian?
    “I don’t need something this expensive. Do you have something else?” she asked.
    “Take it. It’s a fake, so it’s no good to me,” the redhead said.
    Amelia unzipped the duffel and put the plastic hospital bag and the money inside. When she looked up, the redheaded woman was slumped back against the shelves, arms folded, staring at her again.
    “Thank you,” Amelia said softly.
    The redheaded woman nodded. “Can I give you some advice?”
    Amelia waited.
    “Don’t let no man ever knock you around again.”
    Amelia nodded slowly, picked up the duffel, and started toward the door.
    “Hey, wait a sec.”
    She stopped and looked back.
    The redheaded woman was holding out a pair of scissors. “You’d better get rid of that,” she said, nodding toward Amelia’s wrist.
    She looked down at the white hospital band and went back to the counter. The redheaded woman cut off the band and stared at the name “Jane Doe” on it. When she looked up, her mouth was set in a hard line but her eyes were soft.
    “Good luck, Amelia Brody,” she said.

CHAPTER FOUR
    The smell was pungent—mothballs, dust, dime-store perfume, and a faint trace of body odor—and it was so familiar that Amelia was certain she had surely been inside a thrift store before. But she couldn’t remember, and she was a woman who wore Chanel dresses, wasn’t she?
    She ignored the stare of the woman behind the counter and headed straight for the racks of women’s clothing.
    Jeans . . . she needed some jeans. What size did she wear? She didn’t know. So she pulled out different pairs of blue jeans and held them up against her hips. Every pair she tried was too short until she decided to try the men’s racks where she found a pair of Levi’s. As she headed to the dressing room, she grabbed a faded blue oxford shirt and a floppy canvas hat.
    In the hot cramped dressing room, she peeled off the black dress. When she turned to the mirror, she froze.
    Back in the pawnshop she had seen only a soft-focus image of her face. But now, standing close to the full-length mirror, she saw herself clearly for the first time.
    Naked. All angles and sharpness. Thin. Long legs, narrow hips. Small high breasts below a sharp shelf of collarbone. There were long, raw scrapes on both her arms and ugly purple bruises crossing her chest.
    Dr. Haskins’s words came back to her. You’re a little on the thin side.
    And then other words, but she didn’t have the faintest idea who had said them to her— I need to see your bones— words that had made her cry.
    She leaned closer and stared at her face.
    It was a mosaic of yellow and blue bruises framed by long hanks of oily blonde hair. A large piece of gauze was taped to her chin. She reached up to touch her swollen lip.
    An image came suddenly into her head. A painting hanging on a white wall— was it Picasso?— a woman’s face chopped into shards of color.
    “Hello?”
    She jumped at the sound of the voice outside the dressing room curtain.
    “Are you almost done in there? We’re getting ready to close now.”
    “Yes . . . yes! I’ll be out in a minute,” she