But now I’d seen them. Seen the Magpies. They weren’t just going to let me go. There’d be a price to pay. How high, I could only guess. But it wasn’t one I wanted to pay, that I was sure of.
Dylan came forward then. “Why don’t you guys come over, have a seat,” she said. Her voice was nice and her smile friendly. “I know all the secrecy stuff is a little weird. But it ends up being part of the fun, I promise.” She smiled wide and waved us forward. With her face lit in the sun, her eyes warm and twinkling, she was even prettier than I’d realized. When she smiled a second time, it was right at me. “Come on.”
I felt myself moving before I’d fully decided to. I headed toward the tangle of low, heavy trees where the rest of the girls were propped against limbs, sitting on book bags, and sprawled out on blankets. I knew most of their names. I’d been going to Grace Hall with them for practically my whole life. Except for one or two surprises, they were exactly the girls I’d have expected to be in the Magpies—pretty, popular, well dressed, and well connected. They all made sense—even Tempest and Charlie, in their own, offbeat ways. Everybody except for me. But my not fitting in wasn’t nearly as weird as how much I wanted to all of a sudden. Really wanted to. I knew I should leave. I was doing wrong by Sylvia still being there. I was doing wrong by myself. But I didn’t want to go. I couldn’t. Not yet.
Zadie and Dylan were still standing out in the sun, whispering to each other. Zadie looked pissed. Dylan looked a little spacey and kind of sad all of a sudden. People talked about the two of them, Dylan and Zadie, the way Zadie was always circling around Dylan like a bulldog. People thought it was creepy. And it was. It was weird.
“I’m serious,” was the last thing Zadie said, pointing hard at Dylan. “Don’t.”
Dylan drifted away then, smiling and blinking fast as she took a seat under the trees on a low boulder. She was trying to look happy but didn’t. Zadie stayed on the path in the sun for a minute longer, then crossed her arms and frowned. She looked right, then left down the long sidewalks that wove through the park, like maybe she was considering taking off down one of them. But instead, she finally stepped forward and took her rightful place at the front of the group under the trees. Heather, Rachel, and Bethany flanked her on either side.
When Zadie finally turned to look at the three of us, it was in a not-so-nice way. Actually, she seemed kind of disgusted. All I could think about was the story I’d once heard about her making a girl at some party swallow a bottle cap. Which made me wonder what exactly they were doing to keep everybody in the club so quiet. Because with that many girls you’d have thought that somebody would have talked. Unless they had a really good reason to keep their mouths shut.
“So we’re the Magpies, the oldest and most fucking cool club at this lame-ass school,” Zadie began, sounding kind of annoyed. “Founded way the fuck back in nineteen-twenty-something, the motto was ‘support, sisterhood, spirit.’ Now that we’ve brought it back from the dead, I’ve added, ‘or suck it.’ You’ve heard of the club, right?”
She glared at us. One of the three of us started nodding—I don’t know who—then we all joined in.
“Good,” Zadie said. “Because otherwise, I’d have to kick your asses to the fucking curb straight out of the box.”
I saw Tempest’s body coil up like she was going to tell Zadie to go to hell, but she stayed quiet, even shrinking up some when Zadie’s eyes flashed in her direction.
“But why us?” Charlie asked quietly. “I mean, the three of us are totally different.”
And if they were assigning categories, I was definitely the nerd of the group.
“Come on, Charlie, you know this is just some kind of fucked-up joke,” Tempest said, finding her backbone again. She pushed herself off the tree she’d been leaning against. “They get us to say we want to join and then they make us eat, like, ten gallons of vodka and Jell-O and take pictures of us throwing up or something. And then we get to be in the club and they get to keep on doing even more messed-up stuff to us.”
Zadie smiled viciously. “Basically.”
Dylan moved forward, putting a hand on Zadie’s shoulder.
“No,” Dylan said, “that’s not what we’re doing. I promise. This club is supposed to be fun. It is fun.”
“Hold up. I don’t know why you’re kissing their asses. It’s not like they’re even fucking in yet.” Zadie glared at Dylan, then turned back to us. “You three have got shit ass-backwards too, if you think we’re going to fucking sell you on joining. You don’t want to be here, turn the fuck around and take off. We’ll see you around.”
She didn’t make it sound like anything bad would happen if we left, which meant I should go, now. Take her up on her offer. I waited for my body to lurch for the sidewalk. But it didn’t. Something in me still wasn’t ready to go.
“Listen, I know this probably seems kind of weird,” Dylan said, stepping in front of Zadie. “We know there are other sophomore girls who are, like, more popular or whatever. But we think all those girls are boring. We think you guys have, I don’t know, personality. You’re not trying too hard or pretending to be something you’re not. You’re not all obsessed with being cool, which is so not cool.”
I felt the air get sucked out of me when Zadie suddenly swiveled her black-lined eyes in my direction.
“But I’ll say it again. If you don’t want to be here,” she hissed in my direction, “leave right now. Get the fuck out. No hard feelings.” Zadie walked closer to us, pulled out a cigarette, lit it, and inhaled heavily. She exhaled in a long steady stream, directly in our faces. “Because if you do stay and we decide to let you pledge in, there won’t be any leaving after that. At least, not any easy way.”
My heart was beating so fast I worried that Zadie would be able to see it. That she’d pounce if she did. I could leave right then. She’d said I could and it would be like nothing happened. Like I’d never betrayed Sylvia or let myself down. Leaving was what I should do. I knew it. No doubt about it. Except just thinking about taking off made me feel so let down.
So I stood there instead. I watched Dylan go back and sit on her low gray boulder. Relaxed, carefree, at ease, she stretched her legs out in front of her and crossed them at the ankles. Dylan looked up at me then like she’d heard me thinking about her. She smiled once, her cheeks lifting into warm red apples.
“It’s okay,” she mouthed. Then she smiled again, and nodded once. “Stay.”
“So, what’s it going to be, ladies?” Zadie asked, sticking her cigarette between her lips and clapping her hands together, hard. “Speak now, or forever hold your fucking peace.”
Amelia
SEPTEMBER 14, 7:36 PM
BEN
sounds all Skull & Bones
AMELIA
kind of, I guess; can’t even use their names in texts; have to call them Maggie #1 & #2, etc, kind of crazy
BEN
yeah, crazy. We have a computer club at my school
AMELIA
ha, ha
BEN
french club too. that’s kind of cool right?
AMELIA
sort of, yeah
BEN
for albany
AMELIA
i guess
BEN
is there a secret handshake?
AMELIA
no
BEN
do you like wear masks and do weird creepy stuff
AMELIA
not yet
BEN
that was a joke; u r not laughing; tough crowd today . . .
AMELIA
u r making me feel even more stupid
BEN
sorry
AMELIA
no u r not
BEN
i am, seriously. it sounds cool. I’m just jealous.
AMELIA
cool?
BEN
come on, you know it is. u live in New York City. everything there is cool.
AMELIA
&nb
sp; brooklyn
BEN
same difference to us up here in the sticks
SEPTEMBER 14, 7:41 PM
SYLVIA
hello??? where the hell were you after school?
AMELIA
sorry! Xtra field hockey practice
SYLVIA
Jesus will that woman ever chill out?
AMELIA
state is coming up
SYLVIA
state? U sound like such a jock; ew
AMELIA
yeah, that’s me; see you tomorrow a.m. usual time?
SYLVIA
yeah; maybe THEN I can give you an Ian update, finally
SEPTEMBER 14, 8:03 PM
BLOCKED NUMBER
no underwear or bra tomorrow fledgling; we’ll be checking. And wear a skirt. Meet same time, same place
SEPTEMBER 14, 8:07 PM
BLOCKED NUMBER
don’t worry about Maggie #1; she’s all bark and no bite. Xoxo Maggie #2
AMELIA
thx I needed that
BLOCKED NUMBER
anytime; and I went commando too. Key is a loooong skirt.
SEPTEMBER 14, 8:11 PM
BLOCKED NUMBER
who’s your daddy?
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SEPTEMBER 15
Amelia Baron
is cautiously optimistic
Ainsley Brown and 4 others like this
Kate
NOVEMBER 26
When Kate got home, she headed straight upstairs to Amelia’s room. She was hoping that the rapid forward momentum might help her outsmart herself. She’d been unable to get herself to go inside Amelia’s room since she’d died. Seth had picked out Amelia’s clothes for the funeral. He’d even straightened up a little—threw out a half-eaten apple, collected the dirty clothes, and made the bed—so Kate wouldn’t have to go in until she was ready. Since then, the door to her dead daughter’s room had stayed closed. Kate wasn’t any more ready to open it now. And so there she stood, hand on the doorknob, her stomach twisting into a knot.
All she’d been able to think about since getting the text that said Amelia hadn’t jumped was how she should have been more involved in the investigation in the first place. How could she have trusted all of it to some detective who she suspected might care more about closing cases than finding out the truth? She should have looked through Amelia’s things herself. She should have thought more about the right questions to ask and had the courage to ask them, no matter how much people had wanted her to be good and stay quiet. No matter how guilty she had felt. Instead, Kate had folded in on herself and around her grief, accepting an explanation for her daughter’s death that she never fully believed. Because blocking it out had been easier than fighting. It had been the only possible way to survive.
But Kate could do this now. She was stronger than she’d been right after Amelia died. Not much, but a little. And she would need to be. Because as horrible as it had been trying to get herself to accept that Amelia had killed herself, Kate knew that there could be even worse things to come.
She took a deep breath and went to turn the knob. But before the door opened, the house phone rang. Kate exhaled in a relieved gasp, then looked around for the upstairs extension, which wasn’t on its cradle. When the phone rang again, Kate realized the sound was coming from downstairs, where she must have left it. She raced down the steps, glad to be headed far away from her daughter’s room. When she finally laid her hands on the phone in the kitchen, it took her a minute to believe that she was seeing NYPD on the caller ID. It had been so long since anyone had called her. And on that day, of all days? It couldn’t be a coincidence. Maybe the police had gotten some kind of message, too.
“Hello?”
“Ms. Baron? Detective Molina here.”
“Hi, yeah, it’s me, Kate.” She was already bracing herself. As much as she was hoping Molina was calling with news about Amelia, she was afraid of what that news might be. “Is there . . . do you have some . . . How are you?”
“Been better, to be honest,” he said. “At the moment, I’m wondering why, out of nowhere, I’m hearing complaints about my work on your daughter’s case. If you had concerns, you’ve got my number.”
Jeremy had already called the police commissioner? Kate didn’t know why she was surprised. Jeremy didn’t generally make empty promises. Still, she hadn’t expected anything to come of it, certainly not within hours.
“Oh, um, sorry,” Kate said. “I think that was my boss. He was trying to be helpful.”
“Helpful to who?” Molina muttered, as if he was talking half to Kate, half to himself. “What would have been worth your doing was asking me a question that I could have just answered. Because, not for nothing, this wasn’t exactly how I wanted to get on the commissioner’s radar.”
Molina was worried about his career prospects? This conversation was bringing back everything Kate hadn’t liked about him. The aggressive way that Molina had hammered Kate with questions in those early days. Like gunfire. So that Kate had ended up constantly on the defensive, focused less on the answers she’d wanted and more on ducking for cover. Kate had waited and waited for Molina’s bad-boy harshness to break open and reveal a heart of gold. It never had.
“I’m sorry that you’ve been inconvenienced.” Kate hadn’t realized the depth of her anger until she heard it in her own voice. “But I got a message today saying my daughter didn’t jump. As you can imagine, it raises questions that I’d frankly like answers to. Now.”
“Oh yeah?” Molina asked. “A message from who?”
“I don’t know. It was an anonymous text.”
Duncan had returned Kate’s phone to her, able to tell her only that the message had been sent using a telephone company website, making it effectively untraceable.
“Ah, anonymous, huh?” His sarcasm was palpable.
“Yeah, anonymous. That doesn’t mean it’s not true,” Kate said, wishing she sounded more firm and less defensive. But she wasn’t going to let herself get bullied by Molina. Not this time. “I want the text looked into. And I want someone to do a handwriting analysis on the one word that was written on that wall. I assume you have a photograph? Because that wasn’t any suicide note, and Amelia didn’t write it. I’ve known that from the start. She didn’t kill herself either. I’ve known that all along, too.”
Kate didn’t realize how true that was, until now. Amelia hadn’t killed herself. Amelia hadn’t jumped. There was no question about it anymore.
“So I take it, then, that it doesn’t matter to you anymore that the ME’s official findings were to the contrary?” Molina asked.
“I knew my daughter. I know she didn’t kill herself,” Kate said, struggling to keep her voice steady, but the floodgates were open now, and all the doubt she’d kept so tightly bottled up was rushing out. “I’m going to find out who or what did kill her, Detective. You can help me, or you can get out of the way. But I promise you that I am not going to stay quiet because you want me to. Not anymore.”
“That so?” Molina sounded as if he was smiling. “Then why don’t you—”
Kate hung up, then threw the phone down too hard onto the long farmhouse table. It shot across the top and crashed onto the floor, where she heard it crack into pieces.
“Shit,” Kate said, welling up as she dropped herself down hard onto one of benches that ran the length of the table. She buried her face in her hands. “Goddamnit.”
What was she doing? Her new no-more-Mr.-Nice-Guy routine should have skipped Molina. She needed him. He was the one with Amelia’s case file. Only he knew what he had and hadn’t found. And now there was no way he was going to help her.
Kate rested her head down on the rough-hewn tabletop, then turned to look around the brick-walled kitchen, with its European cabinetry, polished stone, and stainless fixtures. Kate never cooked, and yet the huge appliances would not have been out of place in a small restaurant. She’d bought all of that for Amelia. Amelia, wh
o didn’t have a dad and hadn’t had enough of a mother. Kate had figured she could at least have the very best of everything else. So stupid. What had Amelia needed with a four-thousand-dollar stove? And now Kate would have to stare at it as she ate takeout alone in that kitchen for the rest of her life. Right on cue, she felt that acid in her throat.
Kate swallowed hard as she pushed herself up and headed back for the stairs and Amelia’s room. She had a job to finish, and she was going to do it. She owed that much to her daughter.
Upstairs, Kate took a deep breath as she pushed open Amelia’s bedroom door. When she stepped inside and flipped on the light, the air smelled stale. Like death. Like Amelia had died right there, in that room, and her body had been left there to rot.
This time Kate felt sure she was going to vomit. She rushed across the room and shoved open a window, sticking her head out and gasping for fresh air.
She was imagining the smell. The rational part of Kate realized this, but knowing it didn’t help. It still took about a dozen deep breaths of fresh air for the nausea to ebb. When it finally did, Kate turned and lowered herself onto the windowsill, the sharp November air rushing in on either side, slicing at her arms.
It was even worse being in Amelia’s room than Kate had imagined. Sitting there, she missed her daughter so much it made everything ache—her legs, her hands, her eyelids. Her flesh felt covered in bruises as her eyes moved over the crammed bookcases lining almost every wall in Amelia’s room.
Amelia had learned to read when she was four, and after that a book was forever in her hands. She read in the bath, while walking down the sidewalk, in the dark at night with a flashlight. Even those many shelves had not been enough for Amelia’s library, and the overflow sat in tall stacks along each wall. Kate had sometimes worried that Amelia’s obsession with books was a sign of loneliness. That if she’d had a sibling or even a dad—if Kate hadn’t been working all the time—that Amelia might have been more fixated on real people instead of made-up ones.
Reconstructing Amelia Page 7
