Amelia Westlake Was Never Here

by Erin Gough

  But I’m not letting this go. “You really need to talk to somebody.”

  “Will, I’ve made up my mind. I’m not doing it,” she says firmly.

  I can’t believe this. “But don’t you see, Harriet? This is the problem with this school. It’s conditioned us so completely that nobody even considers questioning what goes on here anymore.”

  “I don’t think that’s true.”

  I remember my recent meeting with Croon and how she shut down everything I implied about Hadley. “This is why we have to keep doing what we’re doing,” I say. “This is what Amelia Westlake is all about. Changing how this place operates. It’s not about protecting Rosemead’s values, like you pretend it is. Rosemead’s true values are rotten to the core. And things are only going to change if people learn to stand up for themselves. Right now, we’re all being crushed.”

  Harriet looks incredulous.

  “You know it’s true,” I say. “Otherwise Hadley would be out on his arse by now.”

  “I’m sure Principal Croon is investigating. These things can take time.…” She peters out.

  I search for her gaze until she meets mine.

  “If anyone can show them how to stand up to the school and its warped values, it’s Amelia Westlake,” I say quietly.

  Harriet watches me, her teeth clenched. She firms her mouth. “Then what’s our next move?”

  chapter 16

  HARRIET

  Will’s idea is a series of pranks in quick succession. Major enough for people to take notice and regular enough to make it difficult for Rosemead to respond before another begins. I suggest a code name for our new accelerated phase and Will agrees.

  So begins Operation Volley.

  VOLLEY STAGE ONE

  LOCATION: DUMPSTER BEHIND COMPUTER LABS

  Will spies the dumpster one lunchtime while taking a prohibited shortcut from the main building to our storeroom. In it are about fifty desktop computers, destined for landfill.

  “No more than a couple of years old. In perfect working condition,” says Will. “I was using one of them in the lab just a few weeks ago! Rosemead decides to upgrade its equipment and can’t think of anything better to do with the old stuff than throw it out? It’s outrageous.”

  By the time my free period (and the class Will is truant from) has ended, we have a plan.

  I buy fifty sheets of neon-pink card stock that afternoon. We divide them up the next day. The day after that, we meet at the storeroom before dawn. By the time the sun has crept above the Performing Arts Center roof, a trail of neon-pink arrows tacked to the pathways leads from the front staircase of the main building through campus and up the lane to the dumpster. Glued to the side of the dumpster, a neon-pink notice glimmers in the early light.

  Dear Rosemead,

  You could TRASH the environment

  and TRASH the dreams of the less

  fortunate while you’re at it,

  OR

  you could DONATE this “waste”

  to kids in need.

  Love, AW

  At break, the lane is so choked with students who have followed our trail of arrows that the gardeners trying to get through to the rose garden have to back up their utility truck and take a roundabout route.

  At assembly on Tuesday, Mr. Reynolds, the computer teacher, announces that the school has decided to donate ten desktop computers to a western Sydney community center and forty to a municipal library. The news is greeted with considerable applause.

  VOLLEY STAGE TWO

  LOCATION: PERFORMING ARTS CENTER’S LOWER HALL

  One thing I have noticed since Will and I started frequenting the storeroom is the underutilization of the PAC’s Lower Hall. It’s smaller than the Upper Hall, and on the shadier side of the building, so teachers tend not to book it for activities, meaning it is only occupied a few hours a week. This is despite its being an acoustically designed facility with an orchestra pit, sound-and-lighting box, and a seating capacity of five hundred.

  Will and I compose a template letter and print out five variations on Rosemead letterhead that Will has “obtained” from the school office.

  Dear Principal [insert surname],

  I am writing to you and the other local school principals to let you know about our Lower Hall facility. The Lower Hall, located at the back of our recently renovated Performing Arts Center, is a state-of-the-art facility with an impressive audience capacity.

  I would be more than happy for you and your students to make use of the Lower Hall, at no cost, if and when you require it. Please let me know if you are interested, and I will arrange a booking.

  Sincerely,

  Principal Croon

  Rosemead Preparatory School

  We send off five letters to nearby primary schools. Within a fortnight, a notable number of local schoolchildren are regularly filing back and forth from the Lower Hall to the main car park.

  It does not take long for the other students to notice.

  “What’s with all the mini freeloaders?” Beth asks in the common room one break. “Have we ceded the Lower Hall to the state government or something? Is this a form of tax avoidance?”

  “There was a sign on the Lower Hall entrance—” says Ruby Lasko.

  “Really, though,” Beth interrupts. “What’s the point of going to this school if we still have to mix with the poors?”

  “What did the sign say, Ruby?” asks Liz Newcomb. She opens the common room fridge, takes out an opened tin of condensed milk that has white fur growing on it, and throws it across the room into the trash. It is an impressive display of hand-eye coordination, but if Little Miss Tawney Shield Captain wants applause, she is not going to get it from me.

  Ruby squints into the middle distance. “I’m trying to remember the exact words. Dear local school student, Amelia Westlake welcomes you to Rosemead. Please enjoy the facilities. Something along those lines.”

  “Genius,” say Liz.

  With the hours I am spending adhering neon-pink arrows to brickwork, mailing envelopes, and placing notices in the Lower Hall, it is no wonder my teachers begin querying my commitment to schoolwork.

  Ms. Bracken: “Harriet, is everything okay at home? I ask because I haven’t seen your Medici essay yet, and the only other time you’ve been late with an essay was when your brother required emergency surgery after slicing his finger on a guitar string.”

  Mr. Porter: “Look, I hate to bring this up with you, Harriet, because it’s never been a problem before, but I noticed you were distracted during the class quiz. The answer to question three is eight hundred forty-six. Instead, your workings suggest you were trying to multiply fifty by ‘however much A4 sheets of card stock cost.’”

  Mr. Van: “What have you got there, Harriet? We’re discussing reptiles. A Rosemead letterhead is not a reptile.”

  VOLLEY STAGE THREE

  LOCATION: LIBRARY

  One Thursday afternoon a camera crew is expected on campus. They’re shooting a live segment for the early news about Rosemead’s recent success at the National Schools Robotics Competition.

  The robotics team consists of seven year-twelve physics and math students, and Deputy Davids is the team’s coordinating teacher. She has invited a spokesperson from the team’s company sponsor, SNARC Electronics, which funded the robot build, to be part of the live broadcast.

  What the student team doesn’t know until midafternoon is that despite being the ones who won the competition, they won’t be on television.

  Will hears Zara Long complaining about it at her locker during lunch. “We won the comp, not SNARC,” Zara mutters. “We should be the ones in front of the camera. SNARC just wants to use the airtime to push their brand.”

  “It’s completely unfair,” agrees Palmer Crichton. “We should at least get to demonstrate how to operate Mr. Buddy. We’re the ones who invented him!”

  After a quick reconnaissance trip by Will to the library between classes, we devise a plan for her to ca
rry out. At five o’clock, when the TV segment is scheduled to take place, I retreat to the storeroom to live stream the early news on my phone.

  The segment begins with a beaming Deputy Davids. She is standing next to the SNARC spokesperson. The journalist asks them questions about the competition. The SNARC spokesperson talks a lot about SNARC. The two of them then move to the side of the shot to reveal Mr. Buddy.

  “So, what can this little fella do?” asks the journalist.

  “Oh, lots of things,” says Deputy Davids, keeping her smile wide for the camera. “He can travel in all directions, throw boulders, go under tunnels, go over bridges.”

  “Fabulous. Let’s see some of his moves.”

  Deputy Davids hands a remote control to the SNARC spokesperson. “Why don’t you do the honors?”

  He smiles. “It would be a pleasure.” He points the remote at Mr. Buddy.

  Nothing happens. Nothing continues to happen for one and a half minutes. Nothing at all. Unless you count the SNARC spokesperson’s fingers whitening from pressing hard on the buttons, and the color on Deputy Davids’s face deepening, and the journalist laughing uncomfortably before announcing a commercial break. Just before the live scene ends, the camera catches the spokesperson flipping the remote in his sweaty palm. On the back in white marker are two large letters: AW.

  A fast-food jingle starts. I hear the click of the storeroom door. Will comes in, panting.

  “You were right,” she says. “The remote was just sitting there on a shelf. I went in through the other door and slipped it out while they were schmoozing with the news team in the corridor. All it took was a coin to get the back open. Done in seconds.”

  She opens her palm. On it sit two button-cell batteries, shiny as jewels.

  VOLLEY STAGE FOUR

  LOCATION: VARIOUS

  One morning I am staring unseeing at one of the Rosemead banners hanging at the top of the main stairs when my eye catches on our school motto: Qui cherche trouve. For those not au fait with French, it translates as “Whoever seeks, finds.” It occurs to me that a game of hide-and-seek is exactly what is called for.

  Over the course of a week, when the coast is clear, Will and I remove every Rosemead banner on campus. There are eight in total: the one above the main stairs, the three hanging in the PAC, the two in the Assembly Hall, the one in the gym foyer, and the one in the staff building foyer. Each banner has the motto embroidered in cursive writing along the bottom.

  I deliver the banners to a company that can destitch—and restitch—embroidery. They complete the job within a week. It takes another week, and a couple of near disasters (who knew Ms. Bracken smoked cigarettes in the staff foyer after hours?) to return the banners to their rightful homes.

  The stitching has been matched so well that you can hardly tell the difference. But the difference is significant. Instead of the French motto sits another phrase in English, hiding in plain view.

  And so the waiting game begins.

  “Okay,” Will says, when Operation Volley has been going for five weeks. “These pranks have been great. We’re shedding some serious light on the elitist crap that goes on around here. But it’s time we ramped things up. I say we draw the op to a close and shift focus.” She places a flyer on the storeroom table.

  It is less of a table than a slab of wood on a milk crate. I have no idea where it came from. Why is it that every time we meet here something else has materialized? Along with the chairs we started with and the pile of art books, there are now a pair of molting velveteen cushions, a blanket that reeks of campfire smoke, a plastic kettle plugged into the baseboard power outlet, a coffee press, a vacuum pack of coffee, a box of stinky tea bags, and half a dozen mugs with bad slogans on them. Is Will living here part-time? Has she moved in? I don’t want to know, but I am fearful her paraphernalia is turning the storeroom into a firetrap. I make a mental note to buy a fire extinguisher.

  I notice she has tacked copies of our Messenger cartoons to the wall. Then there is the flotsam from Operation Volley—leftover neon-pink card stock and a pile of stationery bearing the Rosemead letterhead. We really need to clean things up around here.

  I pick up the flyer.

  “You’ve seen it?” Will sips coffee from a mug that reads Friday is my second-favorite F word.

  “I’m secretary of the Sports Committee. Of course I’ve seen it.”

  The flyer is an advertisement for Rosemead’s Buy a Tile project. It is an invitation for parents to donate to the school’s latest major building work. This year, at Coach Hadley’s suggestion, we are raising money to build a twenty-five-meter outdoor swimming pool. We already have the Olympic-size indoor one, of course, but other top-tier schools like Edie’s have a second pool where the B-grade teams can train. I have lost count of the number of times Coach Hadley has bemoaned the absence of a second pool. Rosemead might have a top-tier coach, he argues, but we can never be a top-tier swimming school without a second pool.

  Parents who donate enough money will be rewarded by having their child’s name inscribed on one of the wall tiles of the new pool complex.

  “So how much time and money goes into a fund-raiser like this, do you think?” Will asks, her expression suspiciously serene.

  “As a matter of fact, I’ve seen the budget,” I say. “The promotional costs alone are quite a lot. Then there is the parents’ cabaret dinner they’re putting on, with silent auction prizes to raise more money, although parents donate most of those. A luxury weekend away at Parnell’s Heritage Resort is one of this year’s big-ticket items.” Graham Parnell’s daughter, Lucy, is a year-nine student whom I tutored in math for two years. “We’re expecting at least two hundred parents to come. It’s just as well, because the school is hoping to raise about thirty thousand dollars. And of course, we can’t forget the fund-raising envelopes they print to go out with every monthly newsletter to the entire school community. They get a lot of contributions that way. The mailing list has over two thousand recipients.”

  Will puts her mug down. She has a mischievous sparkle in her eye that would be very appealing if I didn’t know better than to trust it. “These charity cupcake sales you run from time to time. Who are you raising money for?” she asks.

  “Lots of different charities. This year we’ve donated to cancer research, Amnesty International, and St. Vincent de Paul.”

  “And how much money goes into organizing a cupcake sale?”

  “Each student who volunteers buys her own ingredients and bakes her own cupcakes. That’s basically it.”

  “The school never puts in anything?”

  “No.”

  “And how much money do you usually raise?”

  “On a good day? About three hundred dollars.” I frown. “Where are you going with all this?”

  “Oh, I was just thinking,” Will says casually. “Wouldn’t it be great if the school put as much time and energy into raising money for charity as it does into building a second swimming pool for itself?”

  I pause. “I’ve never thought about it like that before.”

  “You’ve never thought about the fact that if Rosemead made the same kind of commitment to charity events as it did to fund-raising for its own coffers, you’d be handing over five-thousand-dollar checks to Amnesty instead of three-hundred-dollar ones?” Will gives me the look of hers that I am getting to know well—the one that implies I am more or less an idiot.

  I swallow. “When you put it like that, it’s quite a disparity, isn’t it?”

  “I’ll say it is. And I reckon there’s a way to make that point and, at the same time, hit Hadley where it hurts.”

  “Really?” I feel suddenly nervous.

  “There’s an easier way to get to Hadley, of course,” Will says after a moment. “Have you thought any more about telling the school what he said to you?”

  “No,” I say quickly.

  She reaches into her pocket for her phone. “Then I take it you haven’t seen the message Amelia Wes
tlake received via Instagram last night?” Will taps her screen a few times and hands me her phone.

  Someone from an account named @RosemeadStudent has tagged Amelia Westlake in a stock photo of a swimming pool. I read the words beneath the photo.

  Just wanted to say thank you @amelia.westlake for the cartoon about Coach Hadley. People need to know what he’s really like. I’ve known for about a year now and wish I didn’t. I really wish I could stop thinking about it. Maybe you know how that feels. Anyway, thanks.

  I feel a lump in my throat. “Who wrote this?”

  “A Rosemead student,” Will says. “That’s all it says on the account. There’s no other information. Not even a photo. The profile was probably set up just to write the note.”

  I take a deep breath. “For someone to have written this, it makes me think Coach Hadley has really…”

  We look at each other, neither of us willing to form the words. Will nods.

  “What should we do?”

  Will takes another sip of coffee. “We write back to her. Perhaps we can encourage her to make an official complaint. If Coach Hadley’s…”

  I rest my forehead on my palms. “I don’t even want to think about it.”

  “I know.” Will leans forward. She sighs, and her coffee-scented breath warms my neck. “I know it’s a confronting thing to consider, but if you were to make your own official complaint to the school about what he said to you…”

  I shake my head. “It is not worth reporting. Anyway, I already told you I don’t want to.”

  “But, Harriet, don’t you see?” She puts a hand on my arm. “If you did, it might convince other people he’s harassed or… who knows what… to come forward.”

  “If only we knew who wrote this…”

  “But we don’t. We may never know.”