Amandine

by Adele Griffin

  Alone in my room, and again my anger had nowhere to go. I pushed back the covers and got out of bed, and tied myself firm into my robe. I made my feet heavy on the stairs, so that they knew I was coming.

  My parents were tucked into shadows. Their faces reminded me of the pale, scared woodcut animals from Amandine’s father’s picket fence sculpture.

  “If you want my opinion, I think we should leave Alford,” I said. “I think we should go somewhere else. There’s nothing for us here. There never was.”

  Then I turned around and marched upstairs. “If you want my opinion,” I called down to them, “which I think you should want, by the way.”

  Summer had arrived. Green, soft, smelling of tanning oil and grilled hot dogs. Lunchtime breezes rolled potato chip and straw wrappers like tumbleweeds across the lawn. I hadn’t noticed spring, and that first perfect day took me by surprise. It was as if time had stopped for me somewhere in the middle of March, weeks frozen in chunks of gray ice. Now time had dissolved into a puddle behind me, and I was standing alone in the shadowless June sun.

  I hardly saw Amandine. She had begun to hang out with a guy, Wyatt Roberts, a skinny sophomore who I thought I’d heard was in a band or had a brother in a band. Anyway, he was always wearing headphones and T-shirts of music groups, and soon enough Amandine had absorbed something of him into herself, and she began arriving at school wearing her own set of labeled shirts and rebel attitude.

  Mary and I were friendly but not friends. Friends were a luxury, I realized, and perhaps meant only for certain times in life. The job at Sunrise Assisted seemed to fit me best for now. In its own way, it gave me companionship, as well as a purpose and an identity. I was popular there, both with the residents and the staff. Popular for the first time in my life. One step at a time, Delilah Blaine was helping me come closer to the Delia Blaine I wanted to be, and I was learning how to be friends with myself.

  I had Mrs. Gogglio, too. Not only did she keep driving me to and from school, but our Sundays had evolved into a routine loop of work and lunch and maybe a little bit of shopping, afterward. When Odie MacKnight died, Mrs. Gogglio and I drove to his funeral, then went to a tag sale. I bought a letter opener for a dollar. The letter opener looked like something I might once have taken from someone else. These days, though, I didn’t feel so much need to pull from what other people had. It was hard enough work to concentrate on myself.

  Final exams came and went and then ninth grade was over, that journey finished forever. By then, my parents had put the house on the market and had a buyer.

  “I hope you’ll pick up the phone every now and again,” said Mrs. Gogglio. We were sitting in patio chairs on her front porch, listening to the chimes clinking in the afternoon breeze. “Remember yourself to an old lady.”

  “You know I will. When I get my driver’s license, I’ll even come visit,” I told her. “And I’ll drive you around for a change. Only on account of coincidence, though.”

  She laughed. “I’ll miss you, Delilah.” “Me too. But besides you, it wasn’t that great here,” I confessed. “To tell you the truth, I wasn’t all that happy.”

  She flicked her hand through the air. “Ah, nobody learns anything from being happy,” she said.

  I waited until the last week of school, when everything was passed in and packed up and over before I spoke again to Amandine. By then, I had assembled the things I most wanted to say.

  She was sitting outside on one of the redwood picnic benches that had been dragged out recently in honor of the weather and of the newly lazy senior class. She was wearing thick black sunglasses and a white dress thin as paper. Her body was too visible beneath it; I could even see the flower pattern on her underwear.

  “Heard you’re moving,” she said brightly when she saw me approach. “Us, too. I’m so psyched. you know, this place is total backwater.” She had a new voice; sleepy with a Californian slur on her o and u. She sounded like Wyatt. Of course.

  “I wanted to come by to tell you something,” I said.

  “Shoot.”

  I folded my arms over my chest and took a deep breath. “I wanted to tell you that I feel sorry for you, Amandine.”

  She bristled visibly, and made a show of looking me up and down. “That’s a good one. I feel sorry for you, more like. You’re, like, one of the total most boring people I ever met, you’re not even smart at any—”

  “Because, the thing is, you’ve got so much talent, you’ve got everything. You’re an artist and an actress and a ballet dancer. You really are all those things. Those aren’t lies.” She shifted, listening. “But you never decided to use any of what’s so great about you. And I was wondering why.”

  “Use. What do you mean, use?” she asked. Genuinely curious. She lifted her sunglasses and perched them on her head. Her eyebrows, usually penciled or feathered in the lines of this or that movie star, were plucked and bare. Her face looked bald, and I felt as if I were catching her backstage, the actress between acts.

  “Like, why didn’t you audition for the school play?” I asked. “Or do design for the school yearbook? Lots of times, you didn’t even show up for art class. But you could have had your own exhibit or performed your own dance assembly. You’re not shy. You’d have been amazing doing any of that stuff. “You could have done anything.”

  She stared at me. Flat gray eyes that absorbed everything and leaked nothing,

  “And what would be the point of that?” she asked.

  “Well, so other people could see.”

  “But they do see,” she corrected. “Other people are always watching me, Delia. I’ve always got an audience, no matter what I do.” She had given me an answer, sort of. It was the last thing Amandine ever said to me, and the only thing she ever said to me that might have been true.

  In July, we moved to Boston.

  We might even have gone back to the City, except that the Elroy-Bells had claimed it, although I heard that Amandine’s parents had parted, officially, and had moved into different apartments in separate directions.

  My parents are happy in Boston, and things are easier for all of us here, I think, because cities are good for groups. We are less a family than we are a threesome, venturing out to museums and dinners and plays. The city’s impersonality and distractions create the right atmosphere for us to get along better, though. I think it has the right aesthetic.

  I guess that has been some unexpected luck. Or at least, it’s a start.

  Amandine’s apology arrived sometime in early September, before the beginning of the new school year. Handwritten for extra sincerity. It was a nice enough letter, but you could feel the other pairs of eyes—Roxanne’s, and probably some concerned psychiatrist’s—staring at the paper as Amandine copied the words neatly from her draft.

  She had acted without thinking. She was ashamed. She was regretful. She was very, very sorry.

  Well, that was what she wrote.

  It did not sound like Amandine, this letter. It sounded like a character that she was playing. Even the handwriting was different, with little garnishes upward so that all her words seemed to be carried over choppy waves. I read it and reread it and discarded it. It made my parents feel better, though.

  Even now when I think back on her, it is hard for me to put together a final judgment. I go back and forth. I pick up blame and put it down again. Perhaps none of it would have happened if I had not been as shy, or as eager, or as ready to believe in Amandine. Or if there really had been an Ethan, leading me in the right direction, soaking up some of the attention, releasing the pressure.

  Then I wonder how much choice I’d ever really had, once Amandine turned her flat gray eyes on me, once she had me all picked out. And then I think that maybe I had no choice at all. Because if someone offers you a glimpse of their Ugliest Thing, what are the chances that you aren’t going to look?

  A Personal History by Adele Griffin

  I was born in 1970 in my mother’s hometown of Philadelphia, Pennsy
lvania. I was the oldest of three children, and spent my early childhood as a “military brat,” moving between bases in North Carolina, California, Panama, and Rhode Island. I returned to Pennsylvania for high school, and then attended college at the University of Pennsylvania. After earning a bachelor of arts and sciences degree in 1993, I eagerly answered a “help wanted” ad in the New York Times and an “apartment rentals” ad in the Village Voice. That same week, I secured both my first job and my first apartment. I began working for Macmillan Children’s Books as an editorial assistant; living two blocks away from the office ensured that I didn’t get lost on my commute.

  While balancing days working in the editorial department with nights writing fiction, I discovered my abiding love of New York City, and knew that I would want to live there for the long haul. At Macmillan, and later Hyperion Books for Children, I read old favorites and new favorite fiction for younger readers, and in doing so rediscovered classic stories that had been so riveting in my youth. I was particularly enthralled to connect with Robert Cormier, an author whose work I idolized when I was a child—years later, I got to spend a day with him at Simmons College. It wasn’t long before I completed my first novel, Rainy Season (1996), which was accepted by Houghton Mifflin & Co. A semi-autobiographical account of family life on an army base in Panama, the book was recommended by Publishers Weekly as a “Flying Start” notable debut. My second book, Split Just Right (1997), told the story of a bohemian single mother raising her daughter. My third book, Sons of Liberty, a drama set in New England that addressed child abuse, was nominated for the National Book Award in 1997. I followed this novel with a contemporary supernatural story, The Other Shepards (1998), and then Dive (1999), a novel that grappled with the real-life unexpected death of my stepbrother, Jason.

  Turning to more lighthearted fare, I created a middle-grade series, Witch Twins, about identical twins living in Philadelphia (based on my nieces) who work to become “five-star” witches—with some help from their eccentric, spell-casting grandmother. The four-book series includes Witch Twins, Witch Twins at Camp Bliss, Witch Twins and Melody Malady, and Witch Twins and the Ghost of Glenn Bly. I also completed Amandine (2001), a novel loosely based on Lillian Hellman’s chilling play The Children’s Hour. Themes of friendship, deceit, and betrayal surfaced again in my next book, Overnight (2003), about a sleepover that goes horribly wrong.

  In Hannah, Divided (2002), I tried my hand at historical fiction, crafting a story of a young math prodigy living in 1930s rural Pennsylvania, who then wins a scholarship to study in Philadelphia. In 2010, I returned to the genre with Picture the Dead, collaborating with my friend Lisa Brown, an author and illustrator, on an illustrated novel about Spiritualist photographers in the Civil War era.

  In 2005, I received another National Book Award nomination for Where I Want to Be, a family-centered psychological drama with paranormal elements. The following year, I published a light, young adult romance titled My Almost Epic Summer. I also launched another middle grade series; this one, Vampire Island Stories, is about a family of vegan vampires living in New York City.

  Family plays an important role in my fiction, and while I don’t consider myself a fantasy writer, I do enjoy adding a measure of the supernatural to otherwise realistic fiction. This blend runs through a number of my books, namely The Other Shepards, Where I Want to Be, Picture the Dead, and Tighter. I write stories that emphasize our lasting connections to those we have lost, and how our families—past and present—inform our everyday life in ways that can be both startling and steadfast.

  In 2007, my husband, Erich, and I traded Manhattan for Brooklyn, where we live very happily with our two young children—a daughter, Priscilla, and a son, Hastings—as well as a ten-pound shih tzu named Edith. Parenthood has inspired me to write for a younger audience, and to that end, I teamed up with the author Courtney Sheinmel to create an early-reader series called Agnes and Clarabelle, forthcoming from Bloomsbury Press, about a pair of two differently anxious friends.

  My husband and I both avidly support nonprofit organizations such as the MacDowell Colony, Prep for Prep, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, buildOn, and 826NYC, an after-school tutoring and creative writing center for high school youth, where I sit on the board of directors. I am also a member of the PEN American Center and the Writers Guild of America. Visit me at www.adelegriffin.com and on Twitter at @adelegriffin.

  My brother Robert and me in Maine in 1976, when I was six years old. Our mother was born in Maine and our grandparents returned there, to the Rangeley Lakes, most summers.

  Me in Rhode Island with my brother Geoff in 1981. I was eleven years old and in my Agatha Christie phase. I would read Christie or nothing.

  My contribution to my high school arts magazine. I loved to make collages, considering them the highest form of art. I also emulated Victorian gothic romance, and loved historical costumes. Many of my illustrations were wacky, inadvertent mash-ups of period clothing spanning multiple centuries.

  My two best friends and me at our high school graduation in 1989. From left to right: Holly, Stephanie, and me.

  Even as an adult, I was interested in princess costumes. I made crowns to celebrate Princess Diana’s televised BBC interview in 1995, which my family watched after taking this photo. From left to right: me, my grandmother, my aunt Elena, my niece Kate, my mother, and my aunt Barbara.

  A photograph of me with my soon-to-be husband, Erich, on the morning of our wedding, August 16, 1997.

  Me with Robert Cormier in 1998. Cormier was my childhood idol, and his novel I Am the Cheese is one of my favorite books of all time.

  My first author visit, for Rainy Season, in 1996 at my alma mater, the Agnes Irwin School in Rosemont, Pennsylvania.

  Me with my daughter, Priscilla, wearing our glasses at my parents’ home in Pennsylvania.

  Me with my husband and our children, Priscilla and Hastings, on the ferry to Fire Island, where we go every summer. This photo was taken in summer 2012, when Hastings was just one month old.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2001 by Adele Griffin

  cover design by Connie Gabbert

  978-1-4532-9733-9

  This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media

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