In my dream, Amy was crawling on the floor through a pool of her own blood, calling to me for help, “Nick! Nick! Nick!”
And then Go woke me up, saying, “Nick! Nick! Nick!”
“Awwwwww, why did you wake me?” I said. “I was having the best dream!”
I shouldn’t have stayed up so late hooking up with Go. I was exhausted. But I had to get going because I had a press conference at the police station in an hour.
Go drove me to my house so I could grab some decent clothes for the press conference. Several police canoes were circling around the house. My neighbors Jan and Noelle were out watching the scene, and as I passed by them they told me how sorry they were and that they were praying for Amy’s return. Then as I was getting into my canoe, Jan’s and Noelle’s husbands approached and told me how happy they were for me and that they were praying for Amy not to return.
When I entered my house, I was surprised to see the cops going through all my stuff and packing a bunch of it into boxes marked Evidence. I noticed that one of the cops was wearing my watch. “What the hell? Give that back,” I said, reaching for it. But he pulled his hand away.
“I can’t let you touch that, sir,” he said. “It’s evidence.”
Then I saw one of the cops in the kitchen making himself a sandwich out of some cold cuts he’d found in the fridge. I went over to take the sandwich away from him, but another cop tackled me. “We can’t let you touch this, sir,” the cop with the sandwich said. “It’s evidence.” And then he started eating it.
I went to my bedroom to grab some clothes, but all the nice stuff had been taken as “evidence,” so the only clean outfit I had left to wear to the press conference was an ‘N Sync T-shirt a friend had given me as a joke gift a couple birthdays ago, along with jean shorts and basketball sneakers.
I headed to the police station, and when I walked in I saw that Amy’s parents Rand and Marybeth had arrived after taking the red eye from New York. They were standing with their arms around each other, which was no surprise because they were always touching each other in some fashion: hands patting, chins nuzzling, shoulders rubbing. Obviously they were only doing this because they were both gay. It’s sad that they grew up in an era where you couldn’t be openly homosexual, and they felt they had to keep their gayness secret by conspicuously touching each other all the time.
Rand and Marybeth spotted me and came over. “This is a nightmare,” said Marybeth. “A true nightmare for fans of Idiotic Amy books everywhere.”
“Don’t give up hope, Nick,” said Rand. “We will find her, and she will return with a tale of doing something so idiotic it will make for the best Idiotic Amy book yet.”
Boney and Gilpin said the press conference was about to start and led us to the media room where it would take place. Next to the podium there was a big poster of Amy. She looked hot in the poster photo, which was good because that would get other hot girls interested in me. Hot girls assumed that if a hot girl was dating a guy he must be awesome. Note to self: keep directing attention to the poster!
An official-looking woman in a suit came up to me and said, “Remember Nick, the main point of this press conference is to mobilize the community and get people looking for Amy.” Then before I knew it the press conference had begun and it was time for me to speak.
“Hello. I’m Nick Dunne, and my wife Amy is missing,” I said. “If you really want to help, you can, but if you’re busy, no worries. It’ll probably be pretty boring searching anyway. Think about it: out there baking in the hot sun…walking through poison ivy and stepping in dog poo…and you’ll probably be looking in completely the wrong place anyway. On second thought, you know what? Just don’t even bother searching. Stay at home, relax. You deserve a little me-time.”
The woman in the suit rushed forward and grabbed the microphone away from me, and handed it to Rand.
“Hi, I’m Rand Elliott, Amy’s father,” he said. “And I just want to say: we want her back. We, her family. The family of Idiotic Amy readers.”
The woman in the suit tapped Rand on the shoulder and pointed to me. She was clearly telling Rand to give me a chance to redeem myself. Rand nodded.
“I’m sure Nick wants her back, too,” he said. “Right Nick?”
The entire room turned to look toward me…and they saw me snoring, because I’d fallen asleep.
