Reconstructing Amelia

by Kimberly McCreight

  Don’t Be a Statistic

  * * *

  We finally have proof that Dylan Crosby isn’t a secret Jesus freak! And we heard it straight from the man himself, who says they went full-on Animal Kingdom in Prospect Park. Her idea. He—okay, George McDonnell—asked me to keep his name out of it, but a fella ought to get credit. Anyway, doesn’t sound real virginal to me. Wherever Dylan has been getting around, it might not have been in these parts, but it sure as hell sounds like it was somewhere.

  Okay, anybody out there able to tell me why one of the clubs is picking on one poor little honor roll sophomore? And this is like old-school, fire-and-brimstone crap. What gives? Come on, ladies, the kid can’t be that bad.

  And to that poor little sophomore who just WON’T see the writing on the wall: just because he has a nice accent doesn’t make the lies coming out of his mouth any more true. Come on now, a little self-respect, please. This is getting hard to watch.

  And speaking of self-respect—or lack thereof—looks like Bethany Kane is making good on her promise to have sex with the whole soccer team. She’s only got three guys left, and two of them boys might be gay. Be gentle with them, Beth.

  Later, peeps.

  Kate

  SLONE, THAYER

  AUGUST 22, 1997

  Daniel: Tonight? It’s our last night as summer associates . . .

  Kate: Can’t

  Daniel: Why?

  Kate: Not in the mood

  Daniel: I find that hard to believe

  Kate: Fuck you

  Daniel: Testy, testy

  AUGUST 28, 1997, 10:25 PM

  To: rowan627@aol.com

  From: Kate Baron

  Re: Sorry!

  Did I miss my window? Have you gone off into the wilds of no Internet access yet? Hope things are still going well for you. I just wanted to say that you didn’t imagine it. I felt it, too. Maybe it’s easy to make more out of things once they’re already over. Or maybe not.

  Anyway, I like the idea of a beacon. I could really use some light right now.

  Xo,

  Katie

  SEPTEMBER 2, 1997, 2:19 AM

  To: Kate Baron

  From: rowan627@aol.com

  Re: Sorry!

  Totally did not miss me! Awesome to hear from you. Can’t write tonight, there’s Kobine on—it’s a big local festival . . . I’ll write more in the a.m.

  peace,

  Rowan

  Amelia

  OCTOBER 23, 6:32 PM

  AMELIA

  you’re still coming tmrw right?

  BEN

  I think so.

  AMELIA

  I HAVE to c u. things have been so bad; cld use a good friend.

  BEN

  things are still bad?

  AMELIA

  yeah, but going 2 get bettr; Sylvia’s helping me write to Dylan

  BEN

  write what?

  AMELIA

  e-mail asking ?’s

  BEN

  like why she’s a bitch?

  AMELIA

  come on, don’t b mean

  BEN

  mean? she’s the 1 treating u like crap. there’s a fine line between devoted and doormat

  AMELIA

  okay, okay, big brother. where are we going to meet tomorrow?

  BEN

  totally up to u; but like I said I’ll have to confirm tmrw

  AMELIA

  will u come to Grace Hall? maybe I can show u some of these people after school lets out. promise me you’ll come; don’t bail on me like absolutely everyone else.

  BEN

  I’ll do the best I can.

  OCTOBER 23, 6:42 PM

  SYLVIA

  sorry, late. on way to write lesbian love letter

  AMELIA

  u just like saying lesbian

  SYLVIA

  I do; L is so good for sexy alliteration; lusty, loose, lips

  AMELIA

  u are grossing me out.

  SYLVIA

  then my work here is done; b there soon

  Kate

  NOVEMBER 29

  It was still dark, barely past five, when Kate went downstairs to find her phone. There was a new text, this one from Duncan overnight:

  Finally traced Gracefully; almost stumped me; can c why school cldn’t; address is 891 Hoyt in Bklyn. Home of a chick named Liv Britton. If you end up talking to her, tell her there’s a computer dude in Manhattan sending her mad respect. And if she’s cute, do me a favor and throw her my digits.

  Liv? The devoted teacher who had supposedly cared so much about Amelia, who had supported her writing and had thought it inconceivable that she would have killed herself, had written all those awful things about all those students, those children. She’d written things about Amelia, too. What was wrong with her? She was supposed to be one of the people they could trust.

  But she was a liar. A liar who’d accused Amelia of cheating.

  Kate was going to see to it that Liv got fired, maybe even sued—defamation, abuse of authority. It didn’t matter. One way or another, everyone was going to know what she’d done. Kate was going to see to it.

  Lew was scheduled to pick up Kate shortly before eight a.m., but if she had to wait any longer to finally confront Woodhouse and Liv, she was going to wear a hole in her living room floor. Kate’s heart leaped when there was a knock at her door a little before seven thirty. She was praying it was Lew arriving early.

  “Hi,” Kelsey said when Kate swung open the door. She looked tired and unkempt in her baggy sweatpants. Her short blond hair was sprouting up at the back like she’d just rolled out of bed. She held up the meet book that Kate had given her. “I found him.”

  “You did?” Kate had asked Kelsey to look for the boy she’d seen going into the house with Amelia, but she’d written off the possibility of actually finding him.

  “Sorry it took me so long,” Kelsey said, flipping open the book to the page her finger was stuck in. “But he’s not in the yearbook, and I missed the pages of new students at the back of the meet book. I was paging through it again this morning when I noticed them for the first time.”

  Kelsey pointed to one of the photos. Kate looked at the name beneath the picture.

  “Ian Greene,” she said quietly. She recognized the name from some of Amelia’s texts. He was Sylvia’s on-again, off-again boyfriend.

  “That’s him,” Kelsey said. “It’s definitely him.”

  OKAY, BUT DO NOT TALK TO ANYONE UNTIL I GET THERE, Lew had written in response to Kate’s text that she couldn’t wait at home anymore and planned to head over to Grace Hall and meet him there. Kate didn’t respond to Lew’s warning. She wasn’t going to make any promises she couldn’t keep.

  She figured making her way to the school slowly was a decent compromise. When she was finally on Prospect Park West, there was already a steady flow of arriving students. They were shouting and swearing and jostling and laughing. The crush of bodies was awful—claustrophobic and almost frightening. Kate couldn’t believe Amelia had never complained. As she marched along inside the mass, she felt the whole time like a bloody riot might break out. Kate couldn’t catch a real breath until she jumped to the side of the rush up near the school’s front steps.

  Standing on the edge of the sidewalk, sucking in fresh air, Kate caught sight of him: Ian Greene. She recognized him instantly from his photo in the meet book. Handsome and sure of himself, he was sauntering toward school with his arm looped over the shoulders of a pretty blond girl. Kate watched his easy smile and confidant stride, walking as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

  The sight of him filled Kate with such sudden rage—uncontrollable, devouring, blind. Someone should pay for what had happened to Amelia—Liv, Woodhouse, Dylan, the Magpies. Ian Greene.

  Kate lurched forward and back into the crowd. Amelia was gay, and Ian Greene had been involved with her best friend. What possible reason would they have had to be together in an empty house in the m
iddle of the day? Unless he hadn’t known that she was gay. Maybe when Ian Green had found out, he’d gotten angry at Amelia. Maybe the next time he hadn’t wanted to take no for an answer.

  Maybe, maybe, Kate thought as she threaded her way through the pack of students until she was walking right behind Ian. Kate could feel kids staring at her. She heard them wondering aloud what she was doing cutting in front of them, walking in their midst. Who was the creepy lady all by herself? they wanted to know. Before someone official could ask that same question, Kate reached forward and tapped Ian’s shoulder.

  “Excuse me,” she said. “Are you Ian Greene?”

  He turned around with such a casual, unbothered expression on his face, like a famous person accustomed to being approached by strangers.

  “Yes, I’m Ian,” he said, with a proper English accent. Then he narrowed his eyes like he was trying to place Kate. “Sorry, but do I know you?”

  “I’m Amelia Baron’s mother,” she said, hoping he’d flinch. He didn’t. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  “Oh,” Ian said, finally looking a little nervous, though not nearly enough, as far as Kate was concerned. “Afraid I can’t be late for school.”

  “Yeah, and we have a chemistry test,” the girl chimed in, moving her finger in a rude circle in front of Kate’s face. “So, you know, maybe another time.”

  Kate clenched her jaw to keep from grabbing the girl’s finger. “Please, Ian,” she said more gently, shifting tactics and hoping to win him over instead on sympathy grounds. “It will only take a minute, I promise.”

  “Yeah, except a minute’s too long, and—” The girl fell silent when Ian turned to blink at her, seeming appalled by her rudeness. “Sorry,” she said obediently.

  “I’ll meet you in class, Susan,” he said, dismissing her. “Tell Mr. Hale I got boxed up for a moment.”

  “What is it I can do for you, Mrs. Baron?” Ian asked when Susan was gone. He pushed his hands deep into his front pockets.

  It was a boyish gesture, one at odds with how mature he otherwise seemed. Like maybe he was trying on purpose to make himself seem more vulnerable.

  “What were you and Amelia doing at our house in the middle of the school day?”

  “Middle of the school day?” Ian asked. He was doing his best to play dumb. It was not the least bit convincing. “At Amelia’s house?”

  “My neighbor saw you,” Kate said. “I just want to know what happened. Why the two of you were together.”

  “What happened?” Ian’s eyes were wide now. “You don’t mean, like—”

  “I don’t think you two were having sex. But I don’t understand what you were doing together at our house in the middle of the day,” Kate said. Drugs had, of course, crossed her mind. Almost anything seemed possible now. And Ian certainly looked like the sophisticated type who could be into God only knows what. “Whatever it is, I won’t tell anyone. I just want to . . . I need to know what happened to my daughter. I need to know what she was doing.”

  Ian closed his eyes for a second, then looked off over Kate’s shoulder, debating. Finally, he looked down and kicked at the ground with one shoe.

  “I was on the hook for it to my club, and Amelia was on the hook to it for hers. To be quite honest, I didn’t want to do it. She insisted.”

  “Didn’t want to do what?” Kate asked. Her heart was pounding.

  “Take the photographs,” he said, more casually now.

  “The ones posted on that blog?” Kate asked. She tried to stop herself, but all she could picture was her sweet little girl taking off her clothes and lifting her ass in the air for this smug, shaggy-haired, high-school heartthrob. What possible difference could it make that her daughter was gay, if he wasn’t? “You took those pictures of Amelia?”

  Looking at Ian Greene and the cocky, slouched way he was standing there, Kate thought about every boy who’d ever treated her as if she was worth what they’d decided. Every man she’d let believe that was true. All she could think about was how much better she’d wanted for Amelia.

  “But like I said, it wasn’t anything seedy.” Ian smiled, oblivious to the fury that must have overtaken Kate’s face. Because she could feel it now, coming out of her pores. “I actually think the shots are quite lovely. How could they not be, I suppose. Amelia was such a fit girl. You certainly didn’t have to be another girl to appreciate that.”

  It took Kate a minute to realize that she’d slapped him. Hard and more than once. There was the stunned look on Ian Greene’s face, the bright red mark on his cheek and her own throbbing hand. But as soon as she’d pieced it together, all she wanted to do was hit him again. She wanted to keep on hitting him until some part of her felt better. She might have, too, if the big, round security guard hadn’t come rushing over and grabbed her arm.

  “Whoa, lady!” he shouted, looking stunned. “What the hell you think you’re doing?”

  “She slapped a student,” Mrs. Pearl said to Lew. “Unprovoked and in full view of dozens of witnesses.”

  They were seated in the headmaster’s office. Mrs. Pearl behind the enormous mahogany desk, peering down on Lew and Kate in the guest chairs on the other side. Kate was slumped back in hers, feeling like a surly high-school student, with Lew playing the role of disappointed but protective dad. His elbows were on his knees, and he was crouched forward in a thoughtful listening pose.

  “Yes, I understand that,” he said gently. “And it certainly would be better if that hadn’t happened. But I’m sure that Kate would be more than willing to apologize to Ian, and—”

  “Apologize?” Mrs. Pearl hissed. “You are joking, Lieutenant. She assaulted Ian Greene. A minor, I might add. If I’m not mistaken, that is a crime, and you are a police officer. I’m wondering why you haven’t arrested her yet.”

  Lew nodded for a long minute, staring down at the floor.

  “Fair enough,” he said finally, as if he wouldn’t mind doing just that. “Of course, that would mean a trial. And at a trial, Ms. Baron would naturally put forth the affirmative defense of diminished mental capacity.” He shook his head like he was working through the implications. “And you know what that would mean.”

  Mrs. Pearl rolled her eyes. “No, Lieutenant Thompson, I do not.” She tapped her pencil against her desk three times. “Please, by all means, enlighten me.”

  “Ms. Baron here would have to lay out everything she knows about those secret clubs, including those half-naked pictures.” He paused, then twirled his fingers forward like wheels turning. “And then her lawyer would have to get into how Amelia and Mr. Green cut school for their own little photo shoot. I can’t imagine that boy’s parents wanting any of that made public. They might even think their kid deserved to get slapped. What I am one hundred percent sure of is that Grace Hall’s parents don’t want the school they’ve paid all this money to going from being a golden ticket to the Ivy League to being known as Porn U.” Lew paused, then looked Mrs. Pearl dead in the eye. “Oh, and then there’d be the reporters. School like this, a sexy scandal like that? The Post will go nuts.”

  Kate would have grabbed Lew and hugged him if he hadn’t been so palpably disappointed in her.

  “Fine.” Mrs. Pearl tapped the desk three more times before standing. “But she needs to leave campus immediately. Before she does any more damage. And she needs not to return, ever.”

  “I need to see Mr. Woodhouse first,” Kate said, panicking. She was pushing her luck, she knew. But she couldn’t possibly leave Grace Hall without meeting with him. She needed to look in his eyes to know whether he was telling the truth. And she needed answers from Liv, now. “When I spoke with him by phone, he said that I could come by anytime. There’s something else I need to speak with Liv about, too.”

  Mrs. Pearl let out a disgusted laugh. “You are joking, right?”

  “No, I’m not,” Kate said quietly. “I understand what I did was wrong, but it doesn’t make all the questions I have about Amelia go away.”

&
nbsp; “Perhaps, it should make you go away, though, Ms. Baron,” Mrs. Pearl said. “I’m willing to assume your outrageous conduct is a result of what you’ve been through, but you have exceeded the bounds of my goodwill.”

  Kate looked around. “Is Mr. Woodhouse even here?” Presumably, he’d be there in his office if he were. “He’s not, is he? Is he ever here?”

  Mrs. Pearl looked at Lew. “Lieutenant Thompson, I’m going to say this one last time: she needs to leave school property, immediately.”

  Lew put his hand on Kate’s elbow and tugged her up from her chair. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get you some air.”

  “No!” Kate shouted, jerking her arm away. “I’m not leaving until I get answers!”

  “Look at me,” Lew said, leaning over and staring her dead in the eye. His voice was an unexpectedly scary growl. “Get up, and get out that door. Now.”

  Kate stormed down the front steps in front of Lew and charged halfway down the block before she whipped around.

  “So that’s it!” she shouted. “You’re letting them off the hook! Just like that!”

  Lew came to a stop in front of Kate and took a deep, tired breath. He crossed his arms, his expression somewhere between aggravation and pity.

  “I didn’t even have a chance to tell you that Liv writes that gRaCeFULLY blog,” Kate went on. “Duncan finally traced it. A teacher wrote all those awful things about the children she teaches. She wrote things about Amelia. She’s a liar. She lied right to our faces. Maybe she lied about Amelia’s paper, too.”

  “That’s certainly a thing she’ll need to answer for.”

  “Good, then can we go back and talk to her?” Kate stepped toward the school.

  Lew put a hand on her arm. “No, not you,” he said. “You’ve done enough damage. If we’re lucky, that boy’s parents won’t end up calling the police. If they do, I won’t be able to keep them from arresting you.”

  “But—”

  “No,” Lew said firmly. “I’ll go back to talk to the teacher. I’ll press her on the blog and Amelia’s paper. But you are going home. Get some rest. Try to get your head right. I’ll come by to let you know what I’ve found once I’m done.” He moved toward the school, then paused. He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to Kate. “Almost forgot. We’re going to have to wait for a response from the phone company subpoena on the anonymous texts to you and Amelia, but the IT guys tracked down an address for Ben. He doesn’t live in Albany.”