Amelia Unabridged

by Ashley Schumacher

  “Butts are for sitting and cigarettes,” Valerie cuts him off. “Apologize.”

  Alex rolls his eyes before turning to me. “Look, I’m sorry. But if you’re still here about the book thing, I’ve already told you: it didn’t come from here.”

  “And which ‘book thing’ would this be, Alexander?” She rolls out his name like a song: Al-ex-an-der.

  This conversation is a spinning top that is going to topple over at any moment, but my sluggish brain is slowly putting context clues together. Alex definitely knows something about the 101st copy that he’s not telling me, and he doesn’t want his mom to know about it.

  “It’s nothing,” he tells Valerie, and then turns to me. “I’m really sorry about Wally earlier … and that we didn’t send the book.”

  Exhausted from traveling and afraid to ask him more in front of Valerie, I shake my head to stop the brain fog from settling in.

  “Okay, I get it. You don’t know where the book came from. Sorry I asked.” I say this with a pointed tone I hope Alex interprets as You’re hiding something, but I’ll play nice and not bring it up in front of your mom. “But can you point me in the direction of a hotel? I’ll be here for a few days.”

  Alex says, “The ones in town will be booked up with summer travelers,” right as Valerie says, “Nonsense. You can stay here. My personal apartments are on the third floor. It’s the least I can do, after your trouble with Wally and”—she shoots a look at Alex that could melt flesh from bone—“my son.”

  “But Mom—”

  “No more buts, Alexander, I mean it. And where is that boy? I know he didn’t feed Walter, but did he ever go retrieve that package I sent him to the post office for?”

  Alex grows very still. I watch, feeling out of place and forgotten in this conversational detour, as he slowly shuts his eyes and lets out a lot of air from his pursed lips before answering, “No. I did.”

  Alex shoots me a look of dread as Valerie’s perfect posture grows rigid.

  “So, he refused to go to the post office, did he?” Valerie’s voice has gone from benevolent queen to warlord in an instant. “And you just closed up the café to run and do his part for him?”

  “I was only gone a minute. Nobody noticed—” Alex starts, but he is quickly cut off.

  “It isn’t about the package, Alex. That boy needs to learn he can hide from the world and his books and his problems but he can’t hide from Valerie Stroudsburg.”

  She already has one hand resting on the bannister to the stairs when Alex, exasperated, moans, “Your knees, Mom. Remember what Dr. Krown said about taking the elevator.”

  She turns around and glares in such a way that even I want to cower, but Alex only throws up his hands in a surprisingly dramatic gesture and says, “Fine. But remember that I’m the one who has to live with him, not you.”

  When she’s halfway up the stairs, Alex turns to me and sighs, a look of resignation on his face.

  “It’s my roommate. He and I share a house down the street. He’s not very good with people. My mom is … well, she’s trying to change that.”

  “Does he work in the bookstore, too?”

  Alex looks at me hard, like he would shove me out of the store if he could, but since he can’t, he’s going to level with me against his will. “No. He’s a writer.”

  “Why are you saying it like that? Does he write embarrassing advice columns for the paper or something?”

  “No,” Alex says carefully. “You’ll know him on sight. And, no offense, but I don’t know you, so I’m going to have to beg that you don’t write about him on social media or Twit or whatever it is everyone is using. He’s—”

  Stomping feet and shouting voices come from above us, and Alex and I both look toward the second floor.

  “Endsley,” Alex says to me under his breath, as the voices draw nearer. “N. E. Endsley. Nolan. Don’t ask him about that limited copy, either. Please. He’s got enough going on.”

  I don’t need the magical wind to blow or Wally to knock me over to feel like I’m being shoved to my knees.

  Of course.

  “N. E. Endsley,” I say, disbelieving. “Upstairs? Here? I thought he lived in New York!”

  “He did,” Alex says, but that’s all he can tell me before our subject comes clomping down the stairs. Where was he? How did I not see him in my second-floor wanderings? Valerie and Wally are close on his heels.

  “And another thing,” Valerie is saying. “Your imbecile of a dog managed to wreak havoc on a poor girl visiting the store.”

  Endsley seems to be ignoring her, to the point that I wonder if he is deaf. I’m not even the one being yelled at and I am fighting the impulse to duck behind Alex, who is looking agitatedly from me to Endsley, gauging my reaction.

  Valerie is significantly shorter than Endsley, but when they reach the bottom of the stairs and she comes to stand toe to toe with him, she somehow looms larger. Endsley’s head is bent, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his sweatshirt, and the only word for his attitude is pouty.

  Somewhere the clever wind is chortling—no—screaming with laughter. The pages of Jenna’s manual have dumped me right where I wanted to be only a few chapters ago, standing feet away from the creator of the Orman Chronicles. Here is the N. E. Endsley, not in New York but in a tiny Michigan town off the beaten path to nowhere, which I wouldn’t have known existed except for the package that I know is from my dead best friend.

  “No appreciation for responsibility,” Valerie is saying, when I tune back in. “No consideration for others. I’ve had it up to here with you, Nolan Endsley. Up. To. Here.”

  With each word, she raises her hand higher until it is level with Endsley’s head, taking his worn red baseball cap from his midnight hair and hitting him across the shoulder with it. Wally is barking and running circles around them, and it seems more chaotic now with only the five of us than it did when the store was crawling with people. Alex sighs beside me and moves to step into the fray while I try to blend in with the counter.

  “As much as I am enjoying this,” Alex says, “I have a hundred things to do in the morning to get ready for the bazaar. Can I take him home, Mom?”

  Valerie and Alex share a meaningful look, and he darts his eyes toward me. Not in front of her, the look says.

  She considers, after directing another glare at Endsley, who is looking at his feet, and gives a nod of acquiescence.

  “Fine. But first, any progress today, Nolan?”

  N. E. Endsley is braver than I. He pulls a few folded pieces of paper from his pocket, shoving them into Valerie’s outstretched palm without looking at her. She chooses to ignore the attitude.

  “I expect more from you tomorrow” is all she says.

  It’s a dismissal. Endsley turns sharply on his heel and stalks past me and Alex, toward the large wooden door, unlocking it and wrenching it open so hard I’m worried it will come unhinged. Without turning he says, “Alex. Walter.”

  The New York Times described him as “enigmatic.” The Washington Post called him “complex.” And this was before he stopped giving interviews and making public appearances, which happened fairly soon after the publication of his first book.

  If my mind were focused only on the wonder of meeting the famously reclusive N. E. Endsley, I might describe him as petulant at best and standoffish at worst. I probably would have spoken up, explained that Jenna was my friend and that we had bonded over his books, his words.

  Except, no matter how far I drive, or whom I meet, everything will always come back to Jenna.

  Jenna is not here.

  Wally is the only one who has moved to carry out the command, happily sitting on his haunches and panting beside Endsley’s clearly expensive jeans in the doorway. Alex looks split between following Endsley and staying to reason with the incensed Valerie.

  “Come on, Alex.” Endsley’s tone is expectant. He finally turns, frustrated. His eyes meet mine, noticing me for the first time. I force myself t
o hold his gaze, blue on blue, and his eyes widen slightly.

  He’s not pretty like Alex; nobody would mistake them for brothers, though their hair is almost identical in color. Endsley’s is a bit curlier, twisting around his ears and toward the collar of his T-shirt, but everything else about him is fair—his skin, his eyes, his lips. I’ve seen this face in so many stylized portraits, namely the small author photo on the back flap of his books, but the reality is sobering.

  His nose is slightly crooked; it leans a little to the right side of his face. His cheekbones—sharp and shadowy in his professional photos—don’t look like they might cut through glass without the aid of professional lighting. His shoulders are not at all proud and stalwart, as they appear at the end of the Orman Chronicles. Instead, they are slightly hunched and deign to make the great N. E. Endsley a mere mortal.

  He is staring, and it’s the most eye contact I’ve managed in weeks. My cheeks warm as something inside me both fortifies and breaks. The anger I felt after the festival floods away and leaves me with one simple need: to know if he remembers Jenna, too.

  “She met you,” I blurt out, taking a shaky step forward. When I realize this won’t make sense to anybody but me, I add, “Jenna. My friend. She met you at CCBF. She said you were…” I pause, looking for a tactful word. “Troubled.”

  N. E. Endsley still doesn’t break our weirdly charged standoff. It feels like mutual recognition, which is impossible, since he’s never laid eyes on me.

  He opens his mouth and takes a minuscule half step forward and I think he’s going to say something. Instead, he stares for another stretch of uncomfortable time, his mouth partially open, before turning to Alex and saying, “I’ll wait by the car.” And he disappears into the inky darkness.

  When I meet people, I always imagine what world hides inside them. Most people are the same: rows and rows of busy cubicles with pictures of their kids tacked to the walls and piles of paperwork waiting to go somewhere. I prefer the different ones. Those are the people I love to photograph, the reason I try so hard to shrink entire worlds down into a single shot.

  Behind Jenna’s eyes was a shopping mall that ran like a well-oiled machine. There was never trash on the food court floor, no crying toddlers wailing from strollers. People walked with purpose from store to store, with a task to be accomplished, but sometimes one of those mall playgrounds would suddenly form and everyone, no matter their age, would scramble to play.

  Adults would abandon bags of protein bars and vitamins and compete on the swings. Little kids would throw down their new school clothes and clamor onto monkey bars and scooch down slides. Old women would chuck aside their canes and take turns spinning each other on the merry-go-rounds. And just as quickly as the playground appeared, it would disappear, and the shoppers would return to their tasks.

  That was Jenna.

  Endsley is different, too. I had caught a glimpse, like a flickering photo that won’t come into focus, but it’s enough. I see dark forests that neither threaten nor welcome. Hot, humid nights trapped among trees and branches, wolves that may or may not be friendly, and streams of black water promising nothing. It looks like the perfect, most frightening hiding place one could create.

  This is how I finally meet N. E. Endsley—the best seller, the recluse, the enigma. Not at the festival, but here. Wherever here is.

  Clever wind.

  chapter seven

  After Alex apologizes to his mom at least three times for Endsley’s behavior—“I’ll talk to him. I’ll talk to him,” he tells Valerie—and an imploring glance at me, he and Wally follow Endsley down the gravel path into darkness.

  Valerie again insists that I stay the night in her guest room. I am too terrified of displeasing her and too tired to argue, even though I’ve only just met her and she could be the bookshop equivalent of the old witch in the candy house, luring innocent bookworms in with her promise of endless stories and tea before cooking them in her oven.

  I comfort myself with the knowledge that I will most definitely not fit in a standard-size oven.

  She relocks the large wooden door at the front of the store, mumbles about Alex not shutting down the computer system—“I’m not a technical wizard, for heaven’s sake”—and presses a few buttons on the wall, which dim all of the visible lights in the store to a dull glow.

  What would Jenna do? I wonder. I dig through my memories for an answer, which, after the lack of air in the travel room, feels like running barefoot on gravel. When I find nothing remotely similar to spending the night in a stranger’s bookstore to guide me, I turn to my imagination, trying with all my might to turn the black hole beside me into a Jenna-shaped thing. That doesn’t work, either, so I let my mind slacken and instead count whales floating in and around the kelp of the darkened bookshelves while Valerie closes the store.

  “Well,” she says, coming from behind the counter, sending the whales swimming from view. “I suppose this is as good a time as any for a proper introduction. I am Valerie Stroudsburg. I run the store, I teach piano, and I do not suffer idiocy, my dear, so try to keep that to a minimum. You aren’t predisposed to idiocy, are you?”

  Here, a wry smile and an arched eyebrow from Valerie. From me, a thin upward turn of the lips and a shake of my head as I fight every impulse to ask a string of questions about N. E. Endsley, the book, and Alex.

  “Good,” Valerie says. “This is the part where you offer a name and intention, dear.”

  One of the things I love—loved—about books is that no matter how dreadful the characters’ plights or how insurmountable the conflicts, everything turns out for the best in the end. Not necessarily happily ever after, and maybe not happy at all, but necessary and true. If there was pain, it was to be for personal growth. If there was loss, it was so something better or more essential could be introduced.

  Standing here on the ground floor of a bookstore that is drifting into sleep for the night, with a woman who looks like she fell out of a picture book with her gauzy dress and bejeweled everything—not to mention the proximity of the creator of the Orman Chronicles—I can feel the hint of a story peeping its way from the ashes of the last couple of weeks and I wonder if maybe there really is such a thing as a benevolent wind. But when I wonder why the wind wasn’t there to save Jenna, I feel the magic ebb.

  “Amelia,” I say. “My name is Amelia Griffin.”

  “Pretty name, that,” Valerie says. “And what brings you to Lochbrook, Amelia?”

  This is all said with her same regality, which coming from anyone else would seem fake but from Valerie seems natural and appropriate.

  “A quick getaway,” I finally say. “To clear my thoughts.”

  “You must have a great deal of thoughts if they brought you all this way from … Texas, was it? Well, no matter. You will find Lochbrook a charming town, though I will be the first to admit, your welcome committee was found lacking this evening. Do you want to take something up to read?”

  My eyes have wandered to the second floor and the distant room I did not get to explore. When my gaze darts back to her face, Valerie is smiling.

  “You’ve got that hungry look about you,” she says.

  “I used to,” I say. “Read, I mean. I … I don’t do it much anymore.”

  It’s not a lie, but it’s not the whole truth.

  Valerie gives me a long, slow look that is not altogether different from the one my mother used to give me, back when there was little wrong in our world, well before the divorce. Mom used to be able to look into my eyes and know what was wrong in a matter of seconds.

  Now there’s nothing behind my mother’s eyes except TV static.

  I fear Valerie has the same power, that she’s going to lay my confusion about Jenna, the mystery book, and my future bare at my feet and I’m going to have to examine it too closely, but instead she says, “Suit yourself. It’s bedtime, I think.”

  A little piece of me decides to love Valerie for the rest of my days for this one small m
ercy.

  Valerie asks if I need to grab my bags, but I tell her I’m too tired to go to my car tonight. I’m exhausted enough to dread walking up the grand staircase, but Valerie walks past it to the far left corner of the store. There’s an elevator I only half noticed earlier. It doesn’t smell like elevators usually smell. This one smells like flowers and has piano music pouring from nonscratchy hidden speakers. There is a label next to the third-floor button that says, “Private Residence,” and a handwritten sticky note next to it that says, “Enter at your own risk. Dementors on duty.”

  The ride to the third floor is short, but I have time to examine the numerous flyers stuck to the walls. Author events, cookbook signings, a dueling piano competition, and a summer bazaar benefiting the library of an elementary school. All are advertised on various colors of luminescent copy paper, all claiming to be held at a place called A Measure of Prose, with the exception of the bazaar, which simply states “Valerie’s.”

  “A Measure of Prose?” I ask.

  Valerie, who is cleaning her glasses on a lacy handkerchief I didn’t see her extract, nods absently.

  “The official name of the shop, dear. Though everyone calls it Val’s for short.”

  Another bit of gravel sticks in the sole of my foot. Jenna loved places with quirky monikers or multiple names. It was one of the few times our roles were reversed; I found it inefficient, but she found it charming. Is this yet another reason she sent me here, to a bookstore that uses its unofficial name for its official postage stickers?

  The elevator dings a greeting and opens to a small entryway that holds a fake spiral-shaped plant in a blue pot, a welcome mat with chickens pecking on the words “Home Sweet Home,” and a tiny framed picture of a wheelbarrow on the wall. Valerie pulls a long chain from inside her shirt and uses the key at its end to unlock the door.

  We are deposited directly into a small sitting area with matching furniture and a coffee table, which looks far less cozy than the inviting living room of the store. It looks more like hotel decor, except the ceiling is slanted to a point, and I’ve never seen a hotel room with a private elevator.