Reconstructing Amelia

by Kimberly McCreight

  AMELIA

  byee

  OCTOBER 5, 11:52 PM

  CARTER

  dude what was biology homework?

  AMELIA

  127-47; plus lab

  CARTER

  fuck; thx. You going to Chloe’s party Friday?

  AMELIA

  idk

  CARTER

  come; it’ll be cool

  AMELIA

  maybe c/u

  OCTOBER 6, 1:02 AM

  BLOCKED NUMBER

  ur mom’s lying to you. are you just going to let her do that?

  facebook

  OCTOBER 6

  Amelia Baron

  is ready to be amazed

  Carter Rose I’m @ 322 Garfield; come anytime

  Sylvia Golde yack, on both of you

  Amelia

  OCTOBER 6

  Sylvia and I were sitting at a random table in the Tea Lounge doing our homework. The tattooed baristas had some indie band blasting on the radio, and the place was packed—writers, college students, and moms talking to their friends while they ignored their noisy rug rats. The Tea Lounge was always packed and the mismatched, garage-sale furniture kind of beaten down, but it was still awesome. Whenever we could, Sylvia and I went there after school to do our homework. She would order an espresso she could barely choke down and me a chai latte, and we’d pretend we were in college.

  “ ‘What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil,’ ” Sylvia recited from the book she was reading.

  “Oh yeah?” I asked, only half listening. “Dope.”

  I had my eyes on my laptop. I was finishing up the To the Lighthouse paper. At first, I’d been kind of annoyed by the topics Liv had given us. It wasn’t like I was some crazy genius or whatever, but they were all way too easy. Like stupid easy. But she’d pulled me aside after class and said that I could write about anything I wanted to, and I’d finally come up with an idea that was totally interesting. I thought Liv would be impressed, too. I wanted her to be.

  I liked Liv, and not just because she was young and pretty and wore funky jewelry and had this mysterious tattoo that you could see a little bit of when she wore her hair in a ponytail. Liv was also the most into-it teacher I’d ever had. And she was a writer, too, like me. She’d even shown me a couple of the short stories she’d published in some small literary mags, and they were pretty good. I mean, not like New Yorker good, but not half bad.

  Liv was crazy supportive of my fiction writing, too. She kept trying to get me to do something with it, like submit some stories to a writing fellowship. But it was one thing to do that summer journalism program at Princeton. Articles about things weren’t the same thing as stories I’d made up. Those I wasn’t ready for the world to pick apart, not yet.

  “Who would have thought that good old Nietzsche was such a romantic?” Sylvia asked. I could feel her staring at me, waiting for me to be interested. I wasn’t. “You wouldn’t know this, Amelia. But when you’re in love, that’s what it’s like—beyond good and evil.” She was only half joking with all the Shakespearean high drama. Everything with boys was like that for Sylvia—all life and death and up and down and way too much sleeping potion. “I know I’ve liked other guys before”—Sylvia was dead serious now—“but with Ian, it’s the real deal. I liked him at the beginning just because he was cute and had that sweet little accent and everything—and also because I thought maybe I could someday end up a duchess—but now it’s like, I don’t know, he’s just such an amazing person. He’s really opened my eyes.”

  She was looking at me like I was supposed to have all these questions about this love of hers. I didn’t. It would have been easier to come up with something if Sylvia hadn’t said pretty much the exact same thing about three different guys. And the really crazy thing was, she wasn’t even lying. Sylvia believed what she was saying. But that was part of what made Sylvia so great, too. She had this ginormous, out-of-control heart that gobbled up everything in its path. It was nice to be near it, especially because sometimes I could barely feel my own heart beating beneath the weight of my hyperactive brain.

  Also, who knows, maybe this time with Ian was finally the real deal. Unlikely, but not totally impossible.

  “Oh crap,” I said, remembering the time. “I’m late. I’m babysitting for Kelsey this afternoon.”

  I had only ten minutes to get out of the Tea Lounge and to the Maggie meeting at Zadie’s house, which was way over on Eighth Street. And I couldn’t be late. Zadie supposedly had some big announcement for the three of us about the last thing we had to do before we became full-fledged Magpies. Which, by the way, I still wasn’t even sure I wanted. But I was sure I’d do whatever it took to stay friends with Dylan.

  “You’re not even listening to me, are you?” Sylvia asked, flipping absentmindedly through her Introduction to Philosophy textbook. Then she stopped and squinted at me suspiciously. “What is going on with you these days anyway? You’re never around, and when you are you act like a freak. And all the spacey, bad-poetry Facebook status updates? ‘Amelia Baron is ready to be amazed.’ You know that’s a pet peeve of mine—people trying to be all arty on Facebook. It’s like you’re in love with somebody or something.”

  My eyes snapped up from my homework. I couldn’t help it.

  “Holy shit, you are!” she shrieked, smacking her book down on the table so loud that the scraggly screenwriter behind us looked as if he were about to backhand her.

  “Shut up,” I hissed. “You’re going to get us kicked out of here.”

  “OMG, who is he?” Sylvia was grinning, her eyes aglow. “Amelia Baron, you finally fall in love with a boy and you don’t even bother to tell me? I’m your best friend. You have a moral obligation to tell me this stuff.” But she seemed more excited than mad. “I demand you start at the beginning and tell me absolutely everything. Then maybe I’ll forgive you. He’s older, isn’t he? OMG, he’s not bald, is he?”

  And this was why Sylvia was still my best friend. She seemed like she would have wanted nothing more than for me to be in love. She had her head up her own butt 90 percent of the time, but in that last 10 percent she was an awesome friend.

  “There you are, hon!” came an accented voice behind us before I had to say anything.

  Sylvia’s face lit up as she turned to see Ian Greene weaving his way in our direction through the tattered sea of Tea Lounge chairs. He was wearing tight jeans and a fitted black T-shirt, his sandy-blond hair pushed up into a deconstructed fauxhawk. He was wearing some weird European sneakers, too, which looked like bowling shoes. The whole look was very I-don’t-fucking-care English rock star, or total loser. It could go either way. On Ian, it cut a good way. I took in his obvious cuteness, waiting to feel my own twinge. Nothing. I could see that he was hot, anybody could. But I didn’t feel it.

  Ian and I had crossed paths at another coed party the weekend before. This one had been at one of the boys’ houses and had been a whole lot crazier—I hadn’t gotten home until close to two a.m. with, luckily, my mom sound asleep. There’d been a lot of much harder drugs, and people were practically having sex in the halls. Ian and I hadn’t talked at that party either. I’d seen him with Zadie at one point, but as far as I could tell, he’d been trying to get away from her. We didn’t talk about the party afterward either. Actually, we hadn’t spoken about our respective club affiliations at all. Instead, it was a secret we’d silently agreed to keep between us, and from Sylvia. And so there it sat, this weird ball of tension. And I hated knowing something about Sylvia’s boyfriend that she didn’t know. It probably worked in her favor that I was there to keep an eye on him, especially with Zadie buzzing around, but it still felt like a betrayal. One that I was pretty sure Sylvia would never have forgiven me for.

  Ian hooked an arm around Sylvia’s neck as he kissed her. Even his casual gestures like that seemed edgy. When they separated, Sylvia beamed at him so hard it was like she might burst into flames.

  “I’ve
been looking all over for you,” Ian said to Sylvia. He gave a manly nod to the grumpy screenwriter next to us, stole his free chair without asking, and sat on it backward. “I thought we were headed up to the park to take some snaps this afternoon.”

  Sylvia grinned at me. “He likes to take pictures of me,” she said with put-on modesty. “How adorable is that?” She turned back to Ian. “I thought you had crew practice until four? I was going to text you in a few minutes. Amelia has to leave anyway.”

  “Are you certain?” Ian asked, his voice lifting respectfully. “I was only teasing Sylvia here. I don’t want to bugger up your plans. She and I can arrange a meet-up later.”

  He was trying to stay on my good side. I hoped for Sylvia’s sake that wasn’t because he thought I already had something on him.

  “No, Sylvia’s right,” I said, looking at my watch. I stood and gathered my things, then motioned for Ian to take my seat. “I have to be somewhere at four o’clock.”

  Sylvia tilted her head coquettishly to the side as Ian sat down close to her. One of her crossed legs was swinging back and forth. The whole rest of her body looked rubbery. Ian couldn’t take his eyes off her either. Looking at them, I felt better about their whole thing. I’d never seen Ian look at Zadie or any other girl that way. Sylvia would be okay. Their affection was totally mutual.

  “Okay, see you later, then,” I said even though neither of them was listening.

  I waited a second more, then turned to go. I was almost at the door when Sylvia finally called after me.

  “Hey, BFF!” When I turned, she and Ian had their hands clasped together. “BTW, you are so not off the hook. I know you’re keeping secrets. You’re going to have to spill the four-one-one eventually.”

  When I left the Tea Lounge, I headed up Union toward Seventh Avenue. It had gotten kind of cold while we’d been in there, the sun covered now by a heavy layer of steel-colored clouds. The wind had picked up, too. It was the first week in October, and it finally really felt like fall. I zipped up my sweatshirt and pulled my hood over my head. But as I turned south onto Seventh Avenue, the wind was even stronger, cutting straight through, and I hunched up my shoulders and kept my face down, hoping the gummed-up Seventh Avenue seas would magically part.

  No dice. After school in Park Slope, the sidewalks were always jammed with tons of schoolkids and moms and all these other random, writer/artist types—not quite cool, not quite homeless—who were always bumming around the hood while all the real grown-ups were at work.

  I walked on past the Ace Supermarket, where the Grace Hall kids shoplifted candy bars, and La Bagel Delight, which served its bagels hot out of the oven. I walked past PS 321, that clown car of a school. Looking at its jammed playground, I could never figure out how that little building could ever fit all those kids.

  When I walked past Pino’s, there was a crowd of Grace Hall middle-school kids still hanging out inside, and a couple of blocks up, there were some more sitting on a bench in front of the Cocoa Bar, which was too nice, and quiet, a place inside for the after-school kids. Across the street from the Cocoa Bar was John Jay High School, but by that hour the cops had already herded most of those students toward home.

  For the rest of the dozen or so blocks, I kept my face down, out of the wind. That way I wouldn’t have to worry about running into someone like our neighbor Kelsey or Sylvia’s mom, Julia. I liked them both. They were always nice to me. But they’d have questions I didn’t want to answer.

  And I thought about Sylvia thinking I was in love. I wondered what it meant that it sort of felt like it was true.

  By the time I was finally at Eighth Street, I was shivering like crazy. I made a quick left toward Zadie’s house, hoping the wind might let up if I was walking in another direction. But it only got worse. I tucked my chin in and hugged my arms tight around myself.

  I’d taken only a couple of steps when I got knocked off-balance, hard. Then someone’s hand was on my arm. I looked down and saw it there, touching me. A man’s big hand. Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit, I’m getting mugged. Or raped. I had to move, run, get away. Yell.

  “Let go of me, you asshole!” I screamed as loud as I could, trying to twist my arm out of his hand. “Let go!”

  “Amelia, it’s me!” He knew my name. How the hell did he know my name? “Sorry, I’m so, so sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  I jerked my arm hard again, but his hand wasn’t even on me anymore. When I fell back a couple of feet and looked up, there was Mr. Woodhouse, in running pants, sneakers, and a windbreaker. He had on a black knit hat that made him look like he should have been riding a skateboard. And he looked totally freaked-out.

  “I am so sorry, Amelia.” He raised his hands, eyes wide as he looked around the sidewalk. He took another step back, probably in case anyone was thinking of calling the cops. “I called your name a couple of times. I guess you didn’t hear me with your hood up. I shouldn’t have touched you like that. I truly apologize.”

  My heart was beating so hard I could feel it in my fingertips.

  “Yeah, you shouldn’t have,” I said, trying to catch my breath. “I’m not real good with, like, random men grabbing me.”

  “God, I think I’ve been teaching too many years in upstate Connecticut,” he said. “You forget in a city, people are on guard.”

  “I probably wouldn’t go around grabbing girls, pretty much anywhere.”

  “Good point,” he said with a smile. Then he looked up and down the block, confused. “You don’t live around here, do you?”

  Woodhouse was starting to creep me out a little. Had he, like, memorized my file or something? Not to mention that I wasn’t psyched about his knowing even the general vicinity that I was heading in. I felt stressed enough that I’d taken the risk of programming Dylan’s name into my phone. Tipping off the headmaster about the location of a Maggie meeting would probably have gotten my finger chopped off.

  “I’m visiting my aunt. She lives over here.”

  Why hadn’t I said friend? I didn’t even have an aunt. Woodhouse probably knew that, too.

  “That must be nice to have her so nearby,” he said. I couldn’t tell if it was a jab at my lying or not.

  Then he was quiet for this long, awkward time. And he was nodding a little like he was working over in his head something he wanted to say. Finally, he squinted into the sinking sun.

  “It’ll be dark before long. Be careful on your way home. You never know when some fool is going to jump out and grab you.” He smiled, then pointed his chin in the direction I was headed. “And tell Zadie and the rest of the girls that they’d better behave themselves.”

  Zadie snapped open the big steel door before I’d even rung her bell. I was just praying she hadn’t seen me talking to Mr. Woodhouse.

  “You’re late,” she barked, looking over my head to the sidewalk like she was checking to see if I’d been followed. Then she yanked my sweatshirt, dragging me inside. “Jesus, don’t stand out there like a fucking asshole.”

  I’d thought Zadie had been letting me into her building, not her house. But it was one big open space inside with floor-to-ceiling windows on one side and exposed brick on the other. The floors looked like a sidewalk, except polished, and the little bit of furniture was superlow, cold, and modern. Except for a bookshelf full of photographs and a couple of expensive-looking vases, the place looked more like a furniture store than a house where people actually lived.

  “Christ, come on.” Zadie brushed past me toward a set of suspended steel stairs. “Everyone’s already downstairs.”

  I followed her down the steps into a finished basement. At the front was a small room with empty bookshelves and a set of reading chairs. Next to that was a hallway covered with a modern, patterned carpet—blues and reds and greens spiraling together down the length of the long hallway.

  Zadie had said everyone was already there, hadn’t she? It was so weirdly quiet down there, though. Silent actually. Wh
at if there wasn’t anyone else there? What if the whole meeting had been some kind of setup? Zadie really hated me. I might not have known why, but I knew that much for sure. And now there I was, trapped down in her quiet basement, locked away from the world where no one would ever hear me scream.

  “What are you waiting for?” Zadie asked, flapping a hand at me.

  “It’s so quiet down here,” I said. Like an idiot.

  “Um, that’s because it’s soundproofed, you freak,” Zadie said, like everyone had soundproofed rooms in their houses. She was glaring at me, too. “My stepdad’s media room is down here, and he likes it quiet. Now, do you want all the specs on the house before you get your ass moving?”

  “Why do you hate me so much?” I heard myself ask. Part of me was glad that I had. The other, smarter part of me wanted to throttle that first part. “Tell me what I’m doing and I’ll try to stop, I swear.”

  Zadie’s eyes thinned to blue gashes as she pushed her face into mine. I could smell cigarettes on her hair. I could see that white stripe up close, too. The hair was so completely colorless in that one perfectly geometric spot. Like she’d painted bleach on with a ruler.

  “Can you stop being you?” Zadie asked quietly. Her face was so close now. Close enough that we could have kissed. “I mean, if you can, that would be awesome. Otherwise, I guess we’ll have to stick with me hating you.”

  Dylan bounded into the room then from down the long hallway.

  “There you are!” She smiled. My heart skipped, thinking she was talking to me. But she turned to Zadie instead. “Everybody’s getting tired of waiting, Zad. A couple of the girls told their parents they’d be home.”

  “Okay,” Zadie said without taking her eyes off me. “I’m coming. But make sure Crazy Eyes sits far away from me. The stench of her perfection makes me sick.”

  Zadie spun around and pounded off down the hall. I kept my eyes on the ground as I moved to follow her. I was afraid if I looked at Dylan, I might start to cry. I couldn’t do this anymore. I couldn’t deal with Zadie hating me that much just so I could hang out with Dylan.