Reconstructing Amelia

by Kimberly McCreight

  I shook my head and stared at the door. Sylvia was taking a really long time out there. Whatever it was must be really bad. So bad she didn’t even want to come back in and tell me. I could have looked for myself. My phone was in my bag. Surely I’d gotten the text, too. But I needed Sylvia to give me the edited version. I sat there, staring at the door, waiting.

  When the door finally opened, Sylvia shuffled back in slowly. She wouldn’t even look at me.

  “What does it say?” I asked.

  “If you’re feeling better,” Nurse Appleman said, turning snarky all of a sudden, “you two can have this conversation out in the hallway. This room is reserved for students who are actually ill.”

  Sylvia and I both ignored her, our eyes locked instead on each other until Sylvia turned and dropped down next to me on the hard bed. She took a deep breath, then rested her forearms against her knees as she stared at the floor.

  “Your e-mail to Dylan—somebody sent it around,” she said quietly. “The whole thing.”

  After Nurse Appleman had finally booted us, Sylvia’s nervous eyes swiveled the empty hall, assessing the perimeter. “Fuck all of them,” she said. “Anyway, you know, everybody will forget about it by the time another gRaCeFULLY comes out.”

  I stared at Sylvia as she kept on looking up and down the hall. She looked more nervous than I’d ever seen her. She knew as well as I did that people wouldn’t forget a note like that anytime soon.

  It would have been embarrassing if my e-mail had been about a guy, or if everyone had already known I was gay. But to get outed by my own needy e-mail? The kids at Grace Hall would be able to feed off that for years. I wanted to die. I wanted my heart to stop beating. I closed my eyes and willed it to happen.

  “I’ll be okay,” I said to Sylvia after a minute. It was a lie, of course. But I wanted her to go. I needed to be alone. “You should get to class. You’ll get suspended if you’re late again.”

  “Hey! What do you think this is, Club Med?” Will yelled down the hall to us. “Get your butts to class or get to Mrs. Pearl’s office. Your choice.”

  The next thing I knew, I was sitting in Liv’s class and she was talking about The Sound and the Fury. I didn’t remember ever leaving the hall. But there I was, and there was Liv, talking about the next book we were going to read. She was saying something about narrative structure. The weird thing was how she was talking about it like it was a thing that actually mattered, instead of its just being another stupid book.

  Heather and Bethany were both in Liv’s class, too; they sat across the room from me, near the windows. I could feel them staring at me the whole time Liv talked. The whole time I was praying I’d disappear.

  I’d written that I loved Dylan. That I wanted her to love me back. She didn’t; that was obvious. And now, the whole world knew it.

  I needed to get out of Grace Hall. I needed to run away and never come back.

  Ben. Maybe he’d help. Do what, I didn’t even know. But he was supposed to be coming. He’d promised to try at least. If I could convince him to come now, he’d help me forget about everybody at Grace Hall. Ben had this way of making everything seem not so bad. Sad still—but funny sad, not tragic sad.

  I noticed then that people were getting up to leave. Class must have been over. I hadn’t even noticed that Liv had stopped talking. I stayed in my seat to write Ben a quick text back, to see if he could come down to Brooklyn soon.

  When I looked up, Heather and Bethany were passing by my desk. They strolled by arm in arm, mouthing the word dyke at me as they sashayed toward the door. All I could do was sit there and stare.

  I felt like I’d slipped out of my body. As though I was standing there next to myself, shaking my head. How had I become this person? This person in the center of some stupid gossip shit storm? Because there’d been this other person, a person who would have never joined a club or chased a girl who didn’t want to get caught. Who never would have let herself get made a fool of.

  ARE YOU IN NYC? I typed to Ben.

  I sat there breathless, waiting for him, my exit strategy, to write back. It took forever for him to respond.

  BEN

  I’m in Times Square!! It’s so f-ing rad!! I LVE NYC!!!

  AMELIA

  When can you get to Bklyn?

  BEN

  Don’t know. Chances are I won’t be able to. U know I want to, but . . .

  AMELIA

  PLEASE. U Have to.

  I typed out the address for Grace Hall. I added that I would understand if he couldn’t come. As much as I wanted him there, I didn’t want him to feel bad for having a good time with his dad. None of this was his fault or his problem. It wasn’t Sylvia’s either, as much as I’d been hoping she could maybe save me, too.

  I was the one who’d been stupid enough to join the Maggies. I was the one who’d put all that other stuff into the e-mail, even after Sylvia told me it was a bad, bad idea. Even when, deep down, I’d known she was right. And yet, deep down there in that very same spot, I was still praying there was some kind of magic explanation that made the e-mail getting out not Dylan’s fault.

  “Amelia?” Liv asked.

  I shook my head and looked up. I was so out of it that I was sitting there in the middle of class with my phone totally out in the open. It was one thing for Liv to ignore my sending one quick text, but I should’ve put my phone away. I didn’t want her to think I was taking advantage of her because we were, like, friends or whatever.

  “Sorry,” I said, shoving my phone back into my bag. “It was just a message from my mom. She asked me to text her right back.”

  Liv shook her head.

  “It’s not about your phone.” She looked kind of sick as she sat down on the chair in front of me. For a second, I wanted so bad to tell her everything. “I’m afraid it’s about your Lighthouse paper.”

  “I know what I wrote about wasn’t exactly what we talked about,” I said. I felt a little better talking about the paper. It made Dylan, the text—all of it—feel like this weird messed-up dream. “But I thought it would be okay as long as I did it, you know, well.”

  Liv’s forehead wrinkled. “The subject of your paper isn’t the problem.”

  “It wasn’t good?” There was no way she could say that.

  “It was fine, Amelia. That’s not the issue either.” She took a deep, shaky breath. “It wasn’t your paper. That’s the problem.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I ran your paper through a program designed to catch duplication from published works. All the teachers at Grace Hall do. It’s mandatory, starting this year. In any case, your paper was flagged in numerous spots. The paper you handed in, Amelia, was plagiarized.”

  “No, it wasn’t!” My heart was thumping. “I wrote that paper!”

  Liv frowned, looked sad. For me.

  “This isn’t like you, Amelia. I know it’s not,” she said, looking at me like she was willing me to confess. “If you tell me what happened, I’m sure we can work it out. But you have to start by telling me something.”

  For a second, I thought maybe I was going crazy. That maybe I had lifted parts of somebody else’s paper and just didn’t remember doing it. Then it came to me: the Maggies. Of course, it was the Maggies. Bethany was Liv’s assistant. She must have switched my paper somehow.

  But how could I tell Liv that? They’d—Zadie—had said they’d torture Sylvia, ruin her life if I did. I knew, firsthand, how bad the Maggie torturing could be. Sylvia would never survive it. And after everything she’d done—especially how much she’d been there for me, despite what a shitty friend I’d been—I couldn’t throw Sylvia under the bus. I’d just have to take it. Let the world think I was a cheater.

  “I want to see it,” I said. “The parts where I copied.”

  “Okay, Amelia,” Liv said gently, getting up to retrieve the paper.

  She came back with a stapled set of pages. My name was on it, but otherwise, it wasn’t my paper.
Not even the title. I flipped through the pages, staring down at them. Sections were highlighted, shaded as if by a computer program, their real source typed in the margins.

  Texting my private love letters to the whole school hadn’t been enough? Zadie had needed to do this, too? It felt like somebody had carved a hole clean through the center of my body. Like there was nothing in the middle of me now but empty space. And yet, somehow, I was still upright.

  “Amelia, please tell me what’s going on,” Liv said. “If you can’t give me an explanation, I’ll have to report this to Mr. Woodhouse, as a violation of the code of conduct. I don’t want to do that, believe me. But I’ll lose my job if I don’t. If you explain, maybe I can find a way out of this, for both of us. This isn’t you, Amelia. I know it isn’t. Amelia, look at me.”

  I just shook my head and kept staring down. This was it. The Maggies had finally won. Zadie had wanted to ruin my life, and so she had. Now all that was left was to accept defeat. To lie down on the classroom floor and wait for them to carry my lifeless body away.

  Amelia

  OCTOBER 24, 12:02 PM

  AMELIA

  please tell me you are on ur way

  BEN

  not looking good, but still trying.

  AMELIA

  please, please, I need you.

  BEN

  I’m trying . . .

  AMELIA

  that’s it? trying? I say I need you here and that’s it? WTF? now you’re lying, too?

  BEN

  whoa, lying? I said I would try; that’s all I said. I can’t tell my dad to fuck off

  AMELIA

  sorry, u r right; bad shit going down

  BEN

  what?

  AMELIA

  maggies messed with my English paper; they’re saying I cheated

  BEN

  how did they mess with it?

  AMELIA

  IDK

  BEN

  screw those bitches; I wish I could be there to help

  AMELIA

  I don’t want you to get in trouble with ur dad.

  BEN

  you’re more important than my dad getting a little pissed; you’re more important than most things

  AMELIA

  Thanks :). I needed that.

  facebook

  OCTOBER 24

  Amelia Baron

  “Alone, condemned, deserted, as those who are about to die are alone, there was a luxury in it, an isolation full of sublimity; a freedom which the attached can never know.” Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

  George McDonnell can you say, Lexapro?

  Kate

  OCTOBER 19, 1997, 3:56 AM

  To: Kate Baron

  From: rowan627@aol.com

  Subject: One Last Try . . .

  Hi Katie,

  Thought I’d throw one last shout out before I head to the hinterlands . . . Hope you’re okay. And don’t worry, I’m not going to go all stalkerish and weird if you don’t write back. I get it, totally. Just hang easy and be safe. And if you ever find yourself over on this side of the world, look me up.

  I’ll be keeping an eye out, and the light on.

  peace,

  Rowan

  OCTOBER 20, 1997, 9:15 AM

  To: rowan627@aol.com

  From: Kate Baron

  Re: One Last Try . . .

  Rowan,

  I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch. But thank you for writing. I’ve loved talking to you and meeting you. But something’s happened in my life. Something unexpected. Anyway, it’s changed things for me. I need to take some time out, and just focus on me for a while.

  I wish you the best of everything. You’re a great spirit. And I feel lucky that I had the chance to know you.

  Xo,

  Katie

  Kate

  NOVEMBER 29

  Kate sat down on a damp park bench across the street from 968 Fifth Avenue. It was dark, past eight p.m. Maybe it wasn’t the safest place to sit alone, there along the edge of the park at night, but it was out of sight and had a good view of the building’s entrance. Kate still wasn’t sure what she planned to do. Though she had known when Lew left with instructions for her to stay home that she would almost certainly be disappointing him again.

  A few minutes later, Kate was crossing the street, and a tall, elegant doorman was waving her inside the lobby, making her think for a second that maybe she’d be able to head straight upstairs without having to explain herself to anybody. It was short-lived.

  “What apartment?” the doorman asked, effortlessly circling Kate to a stop as he headed toward the phone.

  “Oh.” Kate felt herself looking guilty. “Six C?”

  The doorman squinted at her as he picked up the phone and punched some numbers. “Name?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Your name.” The doorman drew the word out. He looked as if he were already considering tossing her back out onto the street.

  Maybe that would have been for the best. Because what was Kate’s plan exactly once she got upstairs? To demand to see this Ben kid? What would she do when they said there was no Ben who lived there? Not that it mattered. The second the doorman reached whoever lived in 6C and learned that they had no idea who she was, she wasn’t going to be going anywhere but home.

  “Kate Baron.” She smiled hard. “That’s my name, Kate Baron.”

  The doorman didn’t seem persuaded by her newfound confidence. His eyes stayed on Kate as he announced her to whoever had picked up on the other end.

  “Okay,” he said, looking down. “Yes, yes, I understand.”

  Kate held her breath waiting to endure the humiliation of being turned away. But it would be a relief, too, in a way. Fate intervening to save her from herself. Instead, the doorman pointed toward the back of the lobby.

  “Take the last elevator.”

  Kate’s heart was pounding as the gilded elevator doors opened onto a luxurious hallway. When she stepped off, there was a polished sideboard with a huge gold-leaf mirror above it. Kate caught sight of her reflection. Her face was gray and drawn, the color washed out from her hair. How long had she been in such an obvious state of decay? Since Amelia’s death? Longer?

  Maybe her grief had eaten through her brain, too, because this was wrong—what she was doing—showing up at this Ben’s address. She had once been a rational person. Deep down, she still was. She knew that the apartment being exceptionally nice did not preclude the possibility that it housed a psychopath. Kate needed Lew. She had no business there. None. It was disruptive and pointless.

  Kate turned around and pressed the Down button. Luckily, the elevator doors sprang right back open. She was about to step on when she heard the apartment door.

  “Kate?” a woman’s voice called down the hall. “Where are you going?”

  When Kate turned, there was Vera standing at the end of the long hall, looking fit and muscular in a tank top and yoga pants, her long black hair pulled back in a low ponytail. She padded in bare feet down the hallway toward Kate. Her strong, beautiful jaw was tilted to the side, her huge brown eyes narrowed in concern.

  Vera. Jeremy. Their new apartment. The one that Kate had never been to.

  The texts had come from one of Jeremy’s sons. Amelia could have easily met one of them somewhere. The world of Manhattan and Brooklyn private schools wasn’t that large. They could have even crossed paths at the firm picnic the year before. But why would one of Jeremy’s sons have lied about who he was?

  “Are you okay, honey?” Vera asked gently. She was right in front of Kate now, her hand on Kate’s forearm.

  Kate nodded too hard and for too long. Kate couldn’t recall Jeremy ever mentioning that any of his sons was gay, but maybe he wouldn’t have. Or, like Kate, he didn’t know.

  “I’ve got to be honest, you don’t look so great,” Vera said, ushering Kate toward their apartment. “Come inside and sit down. I’ll get you a glass of water.”

  Vera pushed open
the door, and they stepped into the vast living room. A huge wall of windows overlooked the darkness of the park and, in the distance beyond, the lights of the Upper West Side. There was a fireplace to one end separating off a huge dining room and a grand piano at the other. In between, there was enough space to play basketball and about half the amount of furniture to adequately fill it.

  “Come, let’s sit in the kitchen,” Vera said. “It’s cozier in there. Out here is still a work in progress.”

  “I’d forgotten that you’d moved,” Kate said, as she sat down on one of the stools alongside the huge granite island in the suburban-size kitchen.

  She didn’t know if she could do this, talk to Vera. She didn’t know whether Vera had read insidethelaw or, if she had, whether she’d connected it with Kate.

  “You know, sometimes I wish I could forget we moved, too,” Vera said. “I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but sometimes big is just too big. Jeremy!” She lifted her chin to yell, then smiled back down at Kate. “He went to go change. He’ll be right back.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry to have disturbed you,” Kate said. Her voice was not much louder than a whisper. It was hard to speak with her throat clenched so tight. “I know it’s getting late.”

  “Please,” Vera said, waving a hand. “Considering how late Jeremy makes all of you work, it’s good for him to get disturbed once in a while.”

  “Thank you for the water,” Kate said, hoping to move the conversation away from Jeremy. She wanted to leave the apartment immediately, but she couldn’t begin to formulate an excuse for why she was there, much less for why she suddenly had to leave. “I was feeling a little light-headed.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Vera said. “When Jeremy told me you were back at work already—” She made a motion of zipping her lips. “Wait, sorry, no, I should mind my own business. The boys are always telling me that I’m the mother hen who pecks people to death. So I’m going to try to keep my mouth shut. Just make sure you don’t overdue it. And that’s coming from a woman who ran a half marathon six-weeks postpartum and then argued a motion in the Second Circuit the next day. Distraction is the best medicine. I get that approach.” She paused, looked sad. “But some things you can’t outrun, no matter how fast you move your legs.”