Amelia Westlake Was Never Here

by Erin Gough

  “I know we do,” I say. “But there is too much risk. And I’m not just talking about Principal Croon. This is the second time you’ve seriously hurt yourself because of Amelia Westlake.”

  Will looks pained. “Maybe if I’m more careful…” She peters out.

  “You know as well as I do that there isn’t going to be a next time, Will,” I say gently.

  We sit in silence, or in as much silence as exists amid the beeping machines, moans of discomfort, and panicked shouts of medical staff.

  “Maybe it’s for the best,” I suggest finally. “It’s probably time we focused on other things anyway. We’ve got midterms soon, and I’ve got Tawney.…”

  Will looks at me. “So our one attempt at helping the wider community comes to nothing. And the money that could have gone to women and children in need instead gets sunk into a superfluous swimming pool at Rosemead.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Well, that sucks balls,” Will says. She claws at her bandage.

  I look at her face and see her despondency. I feel it myself. No more brainstorming. No more sneaking around. No more secret meetings in the storeroom. Amelia Westlake was changing things, but now it’s over. That knowledge makes me ache.

  “Nat will need to know, of course,” says Will.

  “I’ll talk to her,” I offer.

  Will sits up suddenly. “We’ve still got to find a way to get in touch with that girl,” she says.

  “What girl?” I ask.

  “The one who wrote to Amelia via Instagram about Hadley. We have to convince her to make a complaint.”

  Why is Will bringing this up? I don’t want to get into it again. Not now. It has been an incredibly overwhelming day already. “But how can we reach her if she’s not answering our Instagram messages and we don’t know who she is?”

  My phone buzzes again.

  Still waiting to hear from u about Arthur’s keyboard player. Formal’s really soon!!! B xx

  When I look up from the phone, Will has me in her gaze. “Can you tell me exactly what’s stopping you from making that complaint?”

  I take my time putting my phone in my bag. I think about the Sports Committee meeting earlier, and Coach’s innuendo about the new change room. I grimace. “I’ve already told you. So many things,” I say to Will.

  “Like?”

  I cross my legs and uncross them again. I straighten the sheet on her bed. “Mostly it just seems petty,” I say. “It was such a minor thing. I’d feel so… vexatious. He’s said plenty of worse things to other girls, and no one else has complained. And besides, what’s the point when I know the school won’t do anything about it anyway? Except for making my life difficult. It’s like what you said about our charity bake sales. It’s not worth the bother.”

  “I can’t remember saying that about your bake sales,” says Will. “But if I said that, I was wrong. And I think you’re wrong now.” She readjusts her hand on the pile of pillows. “To begin with, just because it seems like a minor thing in comparison to more horrible things, that doesn’t make it right. That’s like saying breaking and entering is okay because murder exists. Secondly? It matters that you speak out because if you don’t, this kind of thing will keep happening. Not to you, maybe, but to other students. Possibly worse things. You realize that, don’t you?”

  “Of course,” I say softly.

  “It might not always feel like it, but you’ve got power when others don’t,” she says. “Which means that even if what Hadley said to you wasn’t haunting you, which it clearly is, and even if there was no one else at risk, when there clearly is, you’re in a position to say something where others aren’t.”

  If only it were as simple as Will makes it sound. “I still don’t know,” I murmur.

  Will bounces her head against the pillows to the rhythm of the hospital monitor. Beep. Thud. Beep. Thud. Beep. “I’m sorry for getting so heavy on you,” she says. “I just hate it when things drag on without a resolution.”

  She is gazing at me again and there is heat in her voice. “I know it’s crazy.” Her words have thickened. “I don’t even know why I feel this way. You annoy the shit out of me most of the time.”

  A thudding starts beneath my rib cage. Everything I’ve been concertedly trying not to think about presses obstinately against my skull. “Will. Don’t,” I whisper.

  “It makes less sense than pretty much anything.” She laughs before a shadow of gloom sweeps across her face. “Oh, what’s the point? I wish you and Edie a very comfortable life.”

  My heartbeat quickens. Why have I put myself in this situation again? I should never have come to the hospital. Why did I rush over before thinking it through? “I should get going. My mother is expecting me home for dinner.” I pick up my school bag.

  “You never talk about her, you know,” Will says.

  I place the bag over one shoulder. “My mother?”

  “That’s not who I meant.”

  “If you mean Edie,” I say, not meeting her eye, “I talk about her all the time.”

  Will shakes her head. “I didn’t even know you had a girlfriend until I specifically asked you. And when you do talk about her, it’s all—logistical—like you’re in a business partnership or something. ‘I have to meet Edie at five.’ ‘Edie and I have training this afternoon.’ ‘I promised Edie I’d pick up muffins for her fund-raiser.’ That stuff doesn’t count.”

  “I don’t see why not.” My mouth feels dry.

  “If you told me you’d devised a cartoon so she wouldn’t be marked down in English—that would count. Or if you told me you cornered her at lunchtime every day outside a place you knew she hung out—that would count. Or if you told me you planned an entire ruse involving an American photorealist and domestic air travel to help cure her of a weird-ass phobia—”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “What do you think I’m trying to say?” Will’s words are fierce.

  “I—I do stuff for Edie as well.”

  Will pounds the starch from the sheets with her functioning fist. “Okay. You’re nice to everyone. I get it. But when Edie does this, how does it make you feel?” She grabs my hand and tugs me toward her, bringing her face so close to mine that our noses are practically touching. I feel her breath on my lips, and she looks at me with such strange softness that my heart crashes against its cage. And the most peculiar thought occurs to me.

  If I could only remain in this moment, if everything else could be cordoned off somehow, if all the other portions of my life could just drop away…

  But it is impossible. Will Everhart is impossible.

  My phone buzzes again. I pull back.

  chapter 29

  WILL

  My fingers will be fine. The doctors say there’s no serious or long-term damage. But while the breaks are healing I can’t grip a paintbrush without wanting to injure someone. My major work will have to wait.

  My hand is not the main problem, though. It’s Harriet.

  I know there’s no point hoping for anything between us. If I didn’t already know it, Harriet made it clear at the hospital the moment she pulled her face away from mine, the moment she took her hands back from where they’d fallen on my hips.

  And still, like the dumb mutt in a zombie flick who waits for food beside the newly rotting corpse of its owner, I hope.

  If only I had a distraction. Some kind of hobby. I wonder how long it takes to learn how to hot-wire a car.

  Of course, there are things I can do toward my major work other than paint. I spend three nights in a row watching plane crash videos in the expectation that it will inspire me to new artistic heights. All it does is make my nightmares worse. I soon ditch the videos and find myself back on Harriet’s Instagram account, scrolling through pictures of her having fun with other people.

  Urgh.

  When I’m not thinking about Harriet, I’m thinking about our botched plan. This time, we sailed too close to a particular wind called
Croon. She’s probably got me on twenty-four-hour surveillance already.

  It takes a while for the reality of Amelia Westlake’s demise to truly strike, and I’m brushing my teeth when it does. I stare at myself in the mirror, and a mournful loser with a toothpaste goatee stares back. With the end of Amelia Westlake, I feel like I’ve lost two important people at once.

  My next thought is to wonder how a Rosemead princess and an imaginary person became the most important people in my life. There is something seriously wrong with me.

  This is confirmed when midterms roll around and I’m stoked about it. A week of study leave and two weeks of writing papers is just what I need to take my mind off everything else. For the first time all year, I make schoolwork a priority. I learn more about the content of my subjects through self-directed study than I have all year in class. I manage to keep my mind off Harriet for hours at a stretch.

  Then something unexpected happens—the kind of “unexpected” you get in zombie flicks. Dawn of the Dead style, Amelia Westlake shows up.

  The first time I spy her is in my legal studies midterm. I’m figuring out the difference between a criminal and civil penalty when I notice something scrawled on the exam desk.

  Amelia Westlake wishes you good luck!

  I can’t help but grin. I wonder who’s written it. Not Harriet—graffitiing desks is against the school rules. And it’s a thousand times too neat for Nat.

  After the exam, I’m walking past the drama noticeboard in the Performing Arts Center foyer when I notice a pinned piece of notepaper waving in the breeze.

  COMMUNITY NOTICE

  If you are interested in trying out for this year’s school musical production of The Boyfriend, please note the following conditions:

  1. Lead role: Must be very pretty. The male lead will be cast from our brother school, and we wouldn’t want him to have to kiss someone who is less than an eight (MINIMUM). Neither acting nor singing skills required.

  2. Supporting role: Must be pretty, but not as pretty as the lead role. Must be funny, but not too funny. Acting and singing skills preferable, but not as important as other requirements.

  3. Chorus: Must be able to sing. Don’t worry about acting ability or how attractive you are. If this is an issue, we will make you wear a paper bag or something.

  Signed: Amelia “telling it like it is” Westlake

  Nothing about this notice indicates Harriet’s or Nat’s involvement. I sure as hell had nothing to do with it. But here’s the thing. The notice—and I don’t know how else to put it—is just the kind of joke Amelia Westlake would make.

  It occurs to me that I haven’t checked her Instagram feed for weeks. I go home and log on with the password Harriet gave me.

  Two hundred and fifteen more followers! And the comments section is going mental. There’s the usual speculation about Amelia’s identity. But @amelia.westlake has been tagged in a whole lot of other pics as well.

  Photographs of things Amelia has supposedly done. Things I don’t know about. Things I’m pretty sure Nat and Harriet don’t know about, either.

  For example, a picture of Amelia Westlake’s donation to Rosemead’s latest cupcake sale for Amnesty: a hundred chocolate cupcakes, with a note scrawled in one of the cake boxes. Great cause! Good luck, AW.

  A stencil someone has sprayed on a wall in the school courtyard: the iconic outline of Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara, but with AW on his cap instead of a star.

  An RSVP to Beth Tupman’s eighteenth birthday party:

  Dear Beth,

  Thank you so much for the invitation. I particularly appreciate it since I live in one of the “lesser” North Shore suburbs and my father isn’t a member of your father’s golf club. I will probably stick out like a sore thumb. But I would be delighted to attend!

  Amelia Westlake

  My resistance falters and dies. I text Harriet.

  Check out Amelia’s Insta feed.

  She doesn’t text back.

  Our midterms finish on a Friday. I spend the weekend passed out on my bed with exhaustion, a state intermittently broken by thoughtful food deliveries from my mother and occasionally Graham, whose surprising adeptness at cooking pumpkin risotto initiates a low-level guilt trip about the whole hitting-him-with-a-frying-pan incident. I barely have the energy to check for texts from Harriet, although I still make the effort about thirty times every twenty-four hours. On Sunday night she finally makes contact.

  Hi Natasha and Will. I hope you are well. Any chance you could meet me in the newsroom before school on Monday? I have an idea. Best, Harriet.

  When I get to the newsroom I find Nat, who’s sporting some serious Arthur-inflicted gravel rash, on the moth-eaten couch. She’s in deep discussion with Harriet, who’s hovering above her.

  “We could book them online,” Harriet is saying when I walk in.

  “No way! It needs to be untraceable.”

  “What needs to be untraceable?” I ask.

  “Your intellect,” Nat says, looking up. “Oh, hang on, it already is.”

  Why is she being such a bitch to me? We haven’t even seen each other since exams started, so it’s not like I’ve had a recent opportunity to piss her off. Besides, Nat is more inclined to threaten me with water torture for a specific offense than get passive-aggressive on my butt.

  “Ha. Ha.” I make my you-think-you’re-so-hilarious-when-in-actual-fact face.

  “You’re just jealous Harriet and I have been hanging out at her house together,” Nat says, running a finger along her blistering chin. “We’re practically sisters-in-law now, aren’t we, Harriet?”

  Harriet looks alarmed.

  Nat switches her gaze to me. “We’re talking about Operation Formal, if you must know. This Friday is the night of nights.”

  “Hang on.” I look between them. “What the hell is Operation Formal? I thought we agreed we had to kill off Amelia Westlake.”

  I address this last part to Harriet, who looks away guiltily. “Well, yes,” she says. “But with all this Amelia Westlake activity that’s been happening—”

  “You checked out her Instagram feed, then?”

  She gives a businesslike nod. “It’s perfect. Amelia Westlake has basically gone viral. It gives us at least a dozen alibis. There’s no way we can be linked to all of what’s happened. Which means that if we do pull off another Amelia-related prank, it’s not necessarily going to be linked to us, either.”

  I take in what she’s saying. While I’ve been mourning Amelia’s death, Harriet’s been planning her revival, with one big difference. This time, I’m not invited to the party.

  I can’t believe it. I was the one who prompted her to check out the new activity on Instagram, and now she’s using it to sideline me. She knows I won’t be at the formal. She and Nat have probably been plotting this at leisure during study breaks on the Prices’ pristine cream couches.

  “I take it you remember I’m banned from going.”

  “Of course I remember,” Harriet says, glancing at Nat. Harriet looks nervous and excited at once. “That’s the beauty of this operation. This way, you can come.”

  What is she on about? I never said I wanted to come. Although, if it’s going to be the scene of another Amelia Westlake strike against Rosemead, I could be persuaded. But how could Harriet have possibly engineered a formal that Croon wouldn’t kick me out of as soon as I turned up? Our beloved principal will be there to make the bloody welcome speech. “I don’t get it.”

  “Sit down, Will,” Nat says.

  I sit and listen as they talk me through every aspect of the plan. Five minutes later, I know everything.

  I look at Harriet. “This was your idea?”

  She nods.

  “And you’ve asked Liz Newcomb to help?”

  “I know the charity prank ultimately failed, but it was good of her to trust Amelia Westlake with that key. Tremendous, really,” Harriet says airily.

  This is a turnup for the books.

&nb
sp; “And the best part,” Nat says, “is thanks to Harriet, everything is practically already in place.”

  By break on Tuesday there’s a tangible buzz in the school corridors. All the year twelves can talk about is Friday night: who’s taking who, what they’re wearing, how they’re getting their hair done, who by, what shoes they’re wearing, which preformal drinks they’ve been invited to, who’s having a manicure, and who’s using a professional makeup artist. In summary: yawn. This type of conversation escalates during the week so that by Thursday formal talk is all that’s going on in the corridors. It gets so bad that if one more person asks me a question about Friday night, I swear I’ll punch her in the face.

  Another type of chatter starts to escalate as well. Word has gotten out about the no-girlfriends rule.

  “I think it’s to be expected,” I hear Beth Tupman telling Palmer Crichton outside the science lab. “It’s a school formal, not Mardi Gras. Besides, it’s just one night. It’s not like Rosemead is saying people can’t have girlfriends.”

  I wonder if Beth has shared her views with her friend Harriet.

  “I think it’s bullshit,” says Palmer. “You should be able to take whoever you want.”

  Nakita Wallis nods. “The formal is such an important event. Symbolically, I mean. It’s end of school. It’s coming of age. It’s a single night that, for better or worse, comes to represent our entire high school experience. Excluding certain people from authentic participation is damaging.”

  “I don’t understand most of what you just said but I totally agree,” says Daphne Chee.

  I continue down the corridor with a smile, until I look up to find Fowler coming in the other direction.

  “Good afternoon, Will,” she greets me, slowing to a halt.

  “Hi, Miss Fowler.”

  “Where are you off to?”

  “Er, class?”

  “Which class?”