Reconstructing Amelia

by Kimberly McCreight

  facebook

  SEPTEMBER 30

  Amelia Baron

  is hoping she doesn’t get caught

  Chloe Frankel and 2 others like this

  Sylvia Golde doing what? Sucking up too much?

  Amelia

  SEPTEMBER 30, 10:12 PM

  DYLAN

  hiya

  AMELIA

  what’s up

  DYLAN

  did you scope out Zaritski?

  AMELIA

  yeah, I think it will be ok

  DYLAN

  u sound so cool about it

  AMELIA

  really?

  DYLAN

  usually people are freaked

  AMELIA

  maybe I should be

  DYLAN

  nah I like you cool; c u ltr

  AMELIA

  gnite

  SEPTEMBER 30, 10:14 PM

  AMELIA

  you awake?

  BEN

  yep

  AMELIA

  Dylan just texted me

  BEN

  really??? What she say?

  AMELIA

  nothing really

  BEN

  sounds awesome

  AMELIA

  ugh, never mind then

  BEN

  come on, she must have said something

  AMELIA

  just hi or whatever

  BEN

  more games?

  AMELIA

  what’s with the third degree?

  BEN

  don’t want to c u get stung by the queen B

  AMELIA

  come on

  BEN

  seriously, do u just want to b her friend because you don’t know if she wants to b yours?

  AMELIA

  don’t psychoanalyze me tonite. I’m stressed.

  BEN

  oh yeah project lock-up 2morrow?

  AMELIA

  yeah

  BEN

  don’t get caught, my good girl gone bad

  AMELIA

  gee thanks. I’ve g2g

  OCTOBER 1, 7:18 AM

  BEN

  sorry, didn’t mean to ride u last nite about being friends with Dylan

  AMELIA

  its okay

  BEN

  don‘t want to c you get hurt. I worry about that girl

  AMELIA

  me too

  BEN

  that makes me feel better; b sure to b careful

  OCTOBER 1, 7:37 AM

  BLOCKED NUMBER

  where, oh where, has your little daddy gone?

  Amelia

  OCTOBER 1

  Mr. Woodhouse was still staring down at the note from Mr. Zaritski. He’d made me bring it with me to the headmaster’s office like some kind of disclaimer on an unwanted package. Or maybe that was just standard practice. What did I know? I’d never been sent down to the headmaster’s office before. And I was kind of nervous being there, but kind of relieved, too. Never doing anything wrong was a crapload of pressure sometimes.

  Woodhouse had his cheek resting against one hand, his eyelids low as he read. Old wasn’t my thing, but he was cute. Cuter than average even, with his arty black glasses and his grayish-black hair that was just shaggy enough to be kind of downtown. He had a thing about him, too, like that brooding, intense kind of thing. I should have liked that thing in guys. I liked it in books. And in poetry and photographs. I even liked the idea of it in boys. But in real life: nothing.

  I was pretty much alone in that. Most of the girls at Grace Hall had a crush on Mr. Woodhouse. There were even bets about who he’d sleep with first. Not if, but when. Dylan was on the list. No one could figure out who she was sleeping with, so why not Woodhouse? Zadie was a candidate, too, and if anyone had the balls to close the deal with Woodhouse, it would probably be her. I’d even heard Sylvia’s name thrown around, which made me feel kind of bad for her because it was only on account of how many other people she’d slept with. I felt a little bad for Woodhouse, too. He was a disaster waiting to happen.

  “Is this right, what it says here?” Mr. Woodhouse asked, looking up from the paper finally. His face was still resting on his hand.

  “I don’t know?” I said. “The note was addressed to you. I didn’t violate your privacy by reading it or anything.”

  It had come out way more smart-ass than I’d planned. I was supposed to be sticking with the facts and saying as little as possible. That was Phase I of the Magpie avoid-getting-punished-if-you-get-caught strategy. For sure what the Maggies really cared about was us fledglings not saying anything about them if we got nabbed. I knew that. I wasn’t stupid. The main thing they cared about was no one finding out who they were. We weren’t even allowed to program their names and numbers into our phones in case someone tried to identify them from their texts. And they used Maggie #1 (Zadie), Maggie #2 (Dylan), and so on instead of their names to refer to one another. It all seemed a little paranoid, but it did work. So far, no one seemed to know who they were. Of course, I’d already broken the rules a little by putting Dylan’s name in my contact list. I wasn’t even sure why. I also didn’t make Ben use the Maggie numbers to talk about anybody. He would have made fun of me if I had.

  “It says that you zip-tied Mr. Zaritski’s bag to his desk,” Mr. Woodhouse said. “Did you, Amelia?”

  “Did I what?” Answer all questions with a question.

  Woodhouse stared at me for a long time, then took a deep, tired breath.

  “Listen, Amelia, I know we don’t know each other very well, and there’s a reason for that. I looked through your file before you got down here, and it’s basically flawless—outstanding grades, two varsity letters, head of the French club, four honors classes. You’ve never even been marked late. And now this? Why?”

  I thought for a second about the morning a couple of weeks earlier when Sylvia had been telling me about Ian Greene and I’d gotten that first invitation from the Maggies. I’d definitely been late that day. Will had taken my name down and everything. But somebody in the office must have decided not to write it in my file. Sylvia had been right. When you were a smart kid, a good kid, Grace Hall cleaned up after you.

  “Does that mean I get first-offense leniency?” I asked. I made myself smile, but I could tell I wasn’t really pulling it off. Pretending wouldn’t turn me into a kid who did bad stuff, got caught, then made jokes. “Also, I have a calculus quiz in ten minutes that I don’t want to miss. Can I go?”

  “No,” Mr. Woodhouse said. “You can’t go, Amelia. This isn’t just going away. Not until you explain to me what’s going on. Mr. Zaritski’s note says that he threw his back out tugging on his bag. Apparently, he already has three bulging discs.”

  “Of course he does,” I said, rolling my eyes.

  Who was this person I kept on sounding like? Zadie maybe? Her whole f-you thing was kind of contagious, and there was a little part of me that wanted to be like her, or at least to be treated the way she was. Teachers, the administration, everyone gave Zadie a wide berth, overlooked little lapses, and not because they thought she couldn’t possibly do anything wrong. They were afraid of her. No one was ever afraid of me.

  “Amelia, Mr. Zaritski may not be the easiest person,” Mr. Woodhouse said. He didn’t like Mr. Zaritski. He was trying to hide it, but I could tell. “But he is still a person, and you zip-tied his bag to the leg of his desk. Why now and why him? You’ve had only one evaluation in his class so far, and it was excellent.”

  I shrugged. The zip ties had been the Maggies’ idea, not mine. It was the first of the three hazing pranks I had to do before I officially became a Magpie. I’d pulled my assignments out of a hat at the last meeting. The meetings were twice a week and once on weekends, always at a different time and a different place. It wasn’t easy making up that many excuses about where I had to be for Sylvia and my mom, but it was also kind of fun having a secret. And the meetings weren’t bad either; they weren’t quite like part
ies, but almost. Someone usually brought a bottle of wine, and people were constantly headed outside to smoke cigarettes. Occasionally, there was a joint that got passed around, which I still hadn’t taken when it came my way. But I’d come close. I was still on the fence about becoming a full-fledged Maggie, but so far I kept on finding myself going to the meetings and doing what I was told. Partly, I was worried about what Zadie would do if I stopped. Partly, I liked getting to spend more time with Dylan.

  Dylan and I were actually becoming pretty close. And I liked having a new friend who was separate from Sylvia. She would have thought it was ridiculous, my liking Dylan, but it wasn’t because Dylan was beautiful or popular. Or at least that wasn’t the whole reason. Maybe it was a tiny part of it—a part I wasn’t proud of—but I also just really liked being around her. Dylan had this mysterious energy. Maybe it was because she was an actress or something, but one minute you’d be talking to her, and then it was like she’d just disappear into some private world. She’d always reappear just when you thought maybe you’d lost her for good. It made the time you had with her feel, I don’t know, precious or something.

  Plus, Dylan and I had things in common, not in what we liked so much as the way we liked it. I was obsessed with books and writing. For Dylan it was numbers. It was definitely not what you’d expect, given how pretty she was, but Dylan was insanely good at math. She loved it, too. Anytime I would have stuck my head in a novel, she’d be doing these little books of math puzzles and expert sudoku. We were kindred geek spirits, Dylan and I. She was just a lot more stealth about her geekiness than me. I’d never known someone like me in that way before. And I wanted to keep on knowing her, something I was pretty sure wouldn’t happen if I got booted from the Maggies for not following orders.

  And zip-tying a teacher’s bag wasn’t a major deal anyway, definitely not when it was my biology teacher, Mr. Zaritski. He was supposedly some genius, and so parents loved him, but as far as the other kids and I were concerned he was just a big mass of unsmiling meanness. Zaritski pretty much seemed like he hated kids, and he was an annoying complainer, too—the weather, the pollen, his sinuses, his knees, the bad parking spot it took him forty-five minutes to find. He never shut up about all the bad crap in his life. Like anybody was going to care about the feelings of a guy who spent his weekends taking down signs advertising stoop sales and trying to get double strollers banned from sidewalks. I’d picked Mr. Zaritski to get his bag zip-tied because he deserved to get picked on.

  The next prank—Vaseline on a doorknob—was supposed to be on an administrator. I already had a plan for the who and the when on that. And Mrs. Pearl deserved to get her hand gummed up as much as Zaritski deserved to get his bag zip-tied.

  But the third and last trial . . . I wasn’t sure I’d be able to go through with it. I was supposed to find some real dorky kid—the kind who was all pale because he spent so much time in his apartment alone playing Xbox—and pretend online that I was a girl who liked him. It was a whole drawn-out thing, which was supposed to end with my getting him to text me naked pictures of himself. I didn’t know how I was going to get out of it without Zadie beating me up, but I felt like I had way too much in common with those pasty boys to do a thing like that.

  Then again, I’d have sworn I’d never do something like I’d already done to Zaritski. It had been pretty easy, too, both consciencewise and executionwise. I’d seen him going into the bathroom with his crossword puzzle. His morning constitutional, everybody joked, always at the exact same time every day and always for at least ten minutes. It had been the second lunch period, so the hallways had been empty. But someone, somewhere must have seen me. It hadn’t taken Zaritski long to pin the whole thing on me.

  Woodhouse was still staring at me, waiting for me to say something. According to the Magpies, I was supposed to move on to Phase II of Project Avoid Getting Punished If You Get Caught—crying hysterically—only if keeping my mouth shut totally bombed. From the way Mr. Woodhouse’s eyebrows were up by his hairline, it didn’t look like Phase I was exactly a big win. But I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to pull off the hysterics. I just didn’t feel upset. Even though a couple of weeks earlier I’d have sworn I’d have been bawling sitting there in the headmaster’s office.

  “What proof is there anyway that I even did it?” I asked, channeling my mom. “Don’t you need evidence or something?”

  “Let me ask you something, Amelia,” Woodhouse said, eyeing my messenger bag. “If I look in there, am I going to find zip ties?”

  Why hadn’t I thrown them out? I kept thinking I might need them for something else. I was such a total idiot. Now my life of crime was going to be finished before it ever got started.

  “No,” I said, gripping my bag tighter, trying to figure out what the hell I’d do when he tried to grab it to take a look.

  “Listen, Amelia, regardless of what I think is fair under the circumstances, Mr. Zaritski isn’t just going to let this drop.” Woodhouse shifted his chin to the opposite hand. He looked sure that I was going to tell him everything he wanted to know. That it was only a matter of time. “We’re going to have to figure out a way for you to make it up to him. And it’s going to have to start with your coming clean.”

  Phase III: fall on your sword, take full responsibility, and accept punishment. And never, ever mention the Magpies. Doing so, we’d learned, would be grounds for expulsion from the club, which seemed to mean something a lot worse than just not being in the club anymore.

  “Then fine, I’ll tell Zaritski I’m sorry or whatever,” I said.

  “That’s a start,” Mr. Woodhouse said, like he hadn’t even heard the part about my taking the blame. “But, Amelia, this isn’t you. You didn’t come up with this on your own. I know you didn’t.”

  I did not like where this conversation was headed.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah,” Woodhouse said. “And I’m not asking you to betray any confidences. I understand how hard that could be. But I want you to think about whether the girls who put you up to this are actually your friends. Whether they really have your best interests at heart.”

  “Sure,” I said, keeping it short. I didn’t want to confirm the existence of the Maggies by accident. “Okay.”

  Woodhouse was looking at me like he was a therapist all of a sudden. Like I was some kid on the brink. That’s life as a good kid. First they don’t believe you’d ever do something wrong; then when they figure out you did, they think you’re having a nervous breakdown.

  “Listen, I understand that you spend a lot of time on your own, that your mom has to work a lot, and that it’s just the two of you,” Woodhouse said. “These groups, they pick on people who are looking for something, knowing they’ll be easier to manipulate.”

  “I’m not looking for anything,” I said. And that was true, except, for some reason, it felt like a total lie.

  Woodhouse frowned, nodding as he looked down. “Okay, Amelia,” he said finally. He almost looked kind of sad. “But I’ve taught in a lot of schools, in a lot of different places, and it’s always the same. The odds are stacked against a good kid like you staying good. That’s true, even at a place like Grace Hall.”

  Now I was getting annoyed. I didn’t need Woodhouse trying to get all inside my head. I wanted to tell him to back off, but agreeing was the fastest way to wrap it up and get out of that office.

  “Sure, whatever, I guess.” I shrugged.

  “Anyway, I just wanted to say that the Magpies are not the answer. Some of those girls—” Woodhouse hesitated. He lifted his hands like he was surrendering, then his face softened. “They are all nice girls individually. Most of them are, at least. But collectively, their judgment is”—he paused like he was trying to find the right word—“clouded. I want to be sure you see that before it’s too late.”

  Woodhouse had been playing dumb. Turned out, he knew all about the Magpies. It even sounded like he knew who was in the group. It felt like a trap.


  “I’ve really got to be getting back to class for real now. I mean, don’t I? I can apologize to Mr. Zaritski—I’ll do the time or the punishment or whatever—but I don’t know what else there is I can do.”

  “Okay, Amelia, you can go,” Woodhouse said, looking beaten down. It was my window. I had to get out of there before he changed his mind. I jumped to my feet. “I’ll talk to Zaritski. An apology might not go all the way, but it will certainly be a good start. And we’ll keep it off the record this time. Next time, Amelia, it will be a different story.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Woodhouse,” I said, rushing to the door before he changed his mind.

  “And, Amelia,” he called after me. “I’m serious about being careful. Sometimes it’s hard to tell how fast the current’s moving until you’re headed over a waterfall.”

  After school, I was sitting in a sticky booth in the mostly empty Roma Pizza, waiting for Sylvia to come back with our slices. I was still feeling a little amped from the thing with Zaritski, especially after sailing out of Woodhouse’s office, all mission accomplished and whatnot. All those years of keeping my nose jammed down into books really had given me some kind of Grace Hall–ified force field.

  My phone vibrated with a text as Sylvia was on her way back to the booth with our two slices. I jerked it out of my bag, trying to read it before she got there. It was from a blocked number, which meant one of the Maggies.

  Party, @ Maggie 2. Put pizza down, dump harlot. We’re about to pop your cherry.

  It was from Zadie, I could tell even though the number was blocked. She’d called Sylvia a harlot before. Holy crap, how did Zadie know I was a virgin? But no, wait, she couldn’t. She didn’t. She probably meant my first coed party. I needed to calm down. She’d told us we’d get to go to a Magpie–Wolf’s Gate party after all of us newbies had pulled off our first deed. And Maggie 2 was Dylan. A party at Dylan’s house was not something I wanted to miss. I shoved my phone back in my bag.

  “Why do they always have to make it so hot?” Sylvia said, tossing the two greasy paper plates onto the table and shaking out her hands. “It’s totally the best pizza in the hood, but you say ‘not-so-hot’ and they, like, make it extra hot.”