Amelia Westlake Was Never Here

by Erin Gough

  “Where did they get all that stuff?”

  I hear the sound of a drink being poured. “Boyd did the paintings—they were pretty terrible—and he used anonymous photos he’d found in junk shops for the family photos. He and Bowie asked famous people they were friends with to make up quotes about him, too.”

  “Which meant telling them about the hoax, I suppose?”

  “Exactly. It was their big mistake. They let a few too many people, including a journalist friend of theirs, in on the game. The journalist published a scoop about the truth behind Nat Tate just a week after the biography came out.” Ice clinks against the glass again. “Game over.” Dad’s lips make a smacking sound. “Shame, really. They could have kept the hoax going for a lot longer if they’d kept it to themselves.”

  “The moral of the story, then,” I say slowly, “is to never trust a fine-arts journalist. Got it.”

  “Ha, ha. So what do you say, kiddo?” says Dad. “You, me, the Swan River? I could book your flight right now.”

  “I’m busy that weekend.”

  “But we haven’t even talked dates yet!”

  “I’m busy every weekend this year. Mum’s just made dinner. Gotta go.”

  Walking into school on Monday, I discover, to my great misfortune, that Principal Croon is back from Japan. I’m tossing an apple core into the nearest trash can as she rounds a corner. Unfortunately, I miss.

  She stops in front of me.

  Here’s the thing about our principal: You know she’s the devil incarnate, but when you’re taking in her silk shirt and sheer stockings and breathing in her French perfume, you get sucked into an alternate universe where all you want to do is please her.

  “Wilhelmina Everhart.”

  “Oh! I didn’t see you there. How’s it going, Principal Croon?” I say, glancing between the apple core splattered on the floor and her impeccable teeth.

  She flashes me a blinding smile. “The trash cans are strategically placed to ensure we can find one when we need one,” she says, holding my gaze with the steel of a thousand girders. “We therefore have no excuse for tossing rubbish up and down the corridor, do we?”

  I blink. Like the synchronized proclamations of a Greek chorus, Croon’s words are always a kind of hypnosis.

  She taps her foot.

  “No, of course not.” I pick up the apple core.

  “I had a conversation with Miss Fowler about you recently.”

  “You did?”

  “We need to talk about your recent English marks. Say Wednesday? Come to my office at lunchtime.” She dazzles me with her smile again and moves away down the corridor.

  The second lot of crap descends just before the prelunch announcements finish. That’s when I become aware of a mad rush in the corridor outside our math class. I spot Duncan rushing past the door wearing a crazed expression. Judging by the number of girls running after him, could aggressive facial acne and extreme nearsightedness have been declared a lethal combination by GQ magazine? Has Duncan become the sexiest man alive?

  Nat sets me straight at lunch. “I organized a few strategic leaks late last week to inform the public we were publishing another Amelia Westlake cartoon today,” she murmurs as we walk out of the cafeteria. “People have been lining up in front of the newsstands all morning. As they should be. The new cartoon is fantastic.”

  “Really?” I say, careful to conceal my pleasure. “What’s it about?”

  “Fowler’s unfair marking practices. Seriously, Will, you should see it.” Nat’s eyes give an almost invisible twinkle, like someone’s dropped a teeny-tiny sequin onto her retina. Then the sequin slips out, the twinkle disappears, and her expression turns dark. “But you can’t.”

  “Why not?” I ask. “Didn’t you just say it’s in the latest Messenger?”

  “It was,” Nat sighs. “We had to pull it at the last minute. When Duncan distributed the paper before lunch and people found out the cartoon wasn’t in it, they went feral. Everyone’s been rioting, basically, since noon.”

  My heart speeds up. “Why did you pull it? Has Croon come to see you?”

  “Not yet,” Nat says grimly. “Come to the newsroom and I’ll show you why.”

  We have to push through a crowd to get to the door. Duncan stands on the other side of it, peering through the mottled glass. “Back off, everybody,” shouts Nat, causing the crowd to scatter instantly. She barges through the door, jamming Duncan between it and the bookshelf. “Give us a minute, will you, Duncan?”

  Duncan edges his way out. The door clicks shut.

  “Fancy that,” Nat says, one eyebrow raised. “You and me in a locked room. Whatever will we do with ourselves?”

  I grin and reach for her.

  “Mmm,” she murmurs as our lips meet. “Easter in Hanoi with the relatives was fun, but not as fun as this.”

  From the other side of the door I hear a shriek. I try to ignore it and focus on kissing Nat. She sucks at my neck. I grab a handful of her hair.

  There’s another shriek.

  “I think he’s getting mauled out there,” I murmur.

  Nat takes her mouth off my neck. “Should we let him in again?”

  I shrug. “Maybe we should.”

  “I mean, only if you’re sure,” she adds, looking at me carefully.

  An uncomfortable feeling has crept into my chest, just like the last time we kissed. “It is kind of hard to concentrate with all that racket,” I say uneasily.

  “Agreed,” Nat says quickly. She shoots me a grin and I relax.

  Nat grabs the door handle and tries to turn it. “Goddamn door’s jammed again. DUNCAN. YOU CAN COME INSIDE.”

  The door crashes open and Duncan reappears, his hair pointing in multiple directions. He closes it, steps forward, and trips over a pile of old editions.

  “You guys need to seriously consider going digital,” I say.

  Nat rattles the mouse beside her computer. The screen lights up. “Speaking of digital, this is what I wanted to show you, Will.”

  I peer over her shoulder. “What the fuck?” I cry.

  On the screen is an Instagram feed. The profile picture is a silhouette of a girl, the creepy kind they use in current affairs programs when they’re not allowed to show the person’s face for legal reasons.

  Amelia Westlake, says the name beneath the picture. Beneath that, Sydney schoolgirl.

  “Duncan found it last night.” Nat gives him an aggressive nudge. “It’s pretty suspect, wouldn’t you say? Just the one photo and that bio. She’s not following anyone. And she has no followers, either. What kind of actual living, breathing human doesn’t have a single follower? Doesn’t this Amelia Westlake have any friends? Or, barring friends, any random acquaintances who would follow her just to improve their own follow count? Even Duncan has some of those, don’t you, Duncan?”

  Duncan’s ears turn pink.

  “Seriously. The picture screams ‘fake person.’ But”—and here Nat does her fingers-on-chin-investigative-journalist impression—“this isn’t enough evidence on its own to prove Amelia Westlake isn’t real.”

  Nat strolls over to her whiteboard, which is not so much white as a kind of moody grey marbled with flecks of green from all the times she’s accidentally used permanent marker on it. She writes

  Possibility #1

  AW is a real person with an Instagram account but no friends.

  Possibility #2

  AW is a real person who has no Instagram account, and an entirely different person has created a fake account for AW for the sole purpose of screwing with my head.

  Possibility #3

  AW is a fake person who never existed and never had any friends and has created a fake account using a fake picture for her fake, fake self.

  “My money’s on number two,” I say.

  “That’s what I love about you, Will. Your sense of humor.”

  “I’m serious. What kind of a pseudonym is Amelia Westlake?”

  At the same time as t
hese words are coming out of my mouth, I’m trying to work out who has done this. Given the interest Amelia Westlake has attracted, it could be anyone. The most likely candidate, though, is Harriet. I understand why she’d be tempted—only this morning I thought it would be fun to scrawl some Amelia Westlake–themed graffiti in one of the toilet stalls. I also, on a whim, signed Amelia up for the year-twelve tetherball club and the Formal Committee. But creating a social media page for her? That’s like getting a billboard erected outside Nat’s bedroom window that says, AMELIA WESTLAKE IS A PSEUDONYM, and then adding neon lights to make the word “pseudonym” flash against her closed eyelids all night, and then coming into her room and writing the word “pseudonym” all over the walls and on the carpet and backward across her forehead so that when she looks in the mirror in the morning the first thing she sees is the word “pseudonym.”

  “I wish you were right, Will. No one wants her to be a real person more than me. I want to publish her cartoons in every edition until the end of time. But if Amelia Westlake isn’t real and Croon finds out that I knew she was a fake and kept publishing her, she’ll have the perfect excuse to dump me as editor. Which means no journalism job for me once school is finished. And the simple fact is that Amelia Westlake doesn’t exist.” Nat wrenches opens her bottom drawer and pulls out a manila folder. The cover is blank, but the way she slaps it on the desk and flips it open with the lightest of touches means it might as well be labeled KEY EVIDENCE TO BLOW OPEN THE CASE. “Duncan did a bit of digging on the staff intranet, didn’t you, Duncan?”

  Duncan nods. His face, apart from the tips of his pimples, changes from pink to dark crimson.

  “It took him a while to work out the password, but after trying RosemeadStaff1 and RosemeadStaff2, he cracked it with RosemeadStaff3. These pages”—she thumbs through them—“are the rolls for every single class in the school. There’s an Amelia al-Assad and an Amelia Prior. There’s even an Annabelle Eastman. But nowhere—and I’ve read each roll twice now—can I find an Amelia Westlake. Which means…”

  “The rolls are out of date?” I offer, thinking fast. “Or incomplete? Someone’s lied about their name to the school’s administration? Amelia Westlake is in a witness protection program? There’s been a spelling error? The system’s broken? We’ve got to fix the system?”

  “We’ve definitely got to fix the system,” says Nat. “And I’m going to fix the hell out of whoever’s behind these cartoons for trying to pull one over on me.” Her words are sharp with fury. “Believe me, Will, it’s way too risky for me to keep accepting these cartoons. Amelia Westlake’s publishing days are over.”

  chapter 10

  HARRIET

  As a general rule, I enjoy the bathrooms at Rosemead. The toilet paper is always well stocked, as are the supplies of perfumed soaps and hand creams at the sinks. A small wall-mounted machine emits pleasant scents into the air—mountain breeze, baking bread, or new car. The whole aesthetic is so agreeable that I sometimes forget I’m in a school toilet and not in one of our en suites at home.

  So you can imagine my surprise when on the very day our fourth cartoon is supposed to be published, I enter a bathroom cubicle and find Amelia Westlake woz here—or woz she??? scrawled on the back of the bathroom door in what looks suspiciously like black art pen.

  A sudden thrill goes down my spine, quickly overwhelmed by a firmer, more reliable sense of indignation. Who would be perverse enough to vandalize school property using that name?

  It is a rhetorical question; given the precise brand of humor on display, I already know it was Will.

  Taking out my nail-polish remover, I quickly scrub off the graffiti. I have five minutes until math, so I hurry to the year-twelve common room to check on the volunteer list for the Formal Committee. We already have a core membership, but a few extras wouldn’t hurt. Then we can get started with the preparations, which I am incredibly excited about.

  I was elected chair of the committee in February, but organizing our year-twelve formal, which takes place in September, is something I have basically been doing on a pro bono basis for years. Every time I see an innovative table setting in a magazine I cut it out to add to my collection. I have a list of top venues, which the committee recently narrowed down to one: a haute cuisine restaurant at Circular Quay, called Dish. I cannot wait to hit the dance floor with Edie—she has learned ballroom dancing and has some really terrific moves.

  On my way to the common room I hear the sound of familiar heels behind me in the corridor.

  “Hello, Harriet.” Principal Croon is beaming. “How lovely to run into you.”

  “Principal Croon!” What a pleasure it is to see her! Is that shirt made from kimono silk? The woman’s taste is flawless. “I didn’t realize you had returned! How was Japan?”

  “Simply wonderful,” she says gravely. “The cherry blossoms at this time of year…” She sighs luxuriantly. “And how is the Tawney training coming along?”

  Her mention of Tawney training makes me think of the Sports Department, which makes me think of Coach Hadley. I consider asking Principal Croon about his suspension, but decide not to. Now that she is back, she will announce it soon enough. “On track, I’m pleased to report,” I tell her.

  “Keep up the good work.” She briefly places a hand on my shoulder before continuing down the corridor.

  I am still basking in the warmth of this encounter when I reach the common room. Beth is at the kitchen counter, stirring chocolate powder into a full glass of milk. “Hey, lover,” she greets me, bending over to take a sip without moving the glass from the counter.

  “Hi, Beth.”

  She laughs and chokes on her drink and coughs, and a cloud of chocolate comes out of her mouth like a speech bubble.

  “What’s funny?”

  “Oh, nothing,” says Beth, wiping her lips. “I just realized I called you lover, that’s all.”

  “You call everyone lover. It’s your new thing.”

  “Ye-es,” says Beth, stirring her drink, looking at me with low-level amusement, the way she might look at someone with food in their teeth or a grossly deformed nose. Beth is so good at deadpan humor. “But with you it’s not as, you know, wacky.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’re a lesbian, stupid.” Beth picks up her glass. “Hey, I wanted to ask you something. You know James, that friend of your brother’s? The dreamy one with blue eyes who plays the keyboard in their band?”

  “Of course.”

  “He’s in year twelve at Edwin Street, isn’t he?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Does he have a girlfriend?”

  I frown. “Not that I’m aware of. But then I wouldn’t really know. Arthur and I don’t talk all that much about his friends’ romantic pursuits.”

  “Could you make some inquiries? I was thinking of inviting him to our formal.”

  “All right. I’ll talk to Arthur.” I walk past her to the noticeboard.

  There are only two new names on the Formal Committee volunteer list. Liz Newcomb is one. Amelia Westlake is the other.

  This isn’t good at all.

  I find Will Everhart midway through lunch exactly where I expect to find her: coming out of the Messenger newsroom. When she sees me, her face sort of spasms, as if it is spinning through a giant carnival wheel of emotions and doesn’t know where to land. Horror, doubt, anxiety, suspicion, and anger—all of them flicker past. Unless I’m mistaken, there is also briefly something in the neighborhood of pleased, but within seconds the carnival-wheel needle has caught on vitriolic outrage, and I find myself firmly attached to Will Everhart’s hand, being towed down the hallway at a threatening speed.

  “Are you out of your mind?”

  “I’m not the person abducting someone in broad daylight,” I say, breathless.

  “We need to talk.”

  “We certainly do. I’ve just been to the bathroom!”

  “You’re telling me this because?”

  �
��Because of what’s written there!” I am not going to let her pretend she doesn’t know. “Not to mention what’s written on the list of Formal Committee volunteers! And you’ll never guess who just signed up for tetherball.”

  I expect some remorse, a small shrug of acknowledgment at the very least, but instead Will Everhart’s outrage seems to balloon. “What a coincidence,” she says. “You’ll never guess whose Instagram profile Nat Nguyen was just showing me.”

  I get a constricted feeling in my chest and regret eating boiled eggs for lunch; they may be high in protein and amino acids but they always give me indigestion.

  Will’s grip on my hand tightens. Is that a fresh love bite on her neck? Has she somehow smuggled her groovy older boyfriend onto campus? I wouldn’t put it past her.

  “At least tell me where you’re taking me,” I gasp.

  “As far away from the newsroom as possible.”

  We are at the edge of the second oval, and in front of us the pathway forks. If we follow Cassowary Path to the left, we’ll end up at the gymnasium. Bronte Path, to the right, takes us to the Performing Arts Center.

  Will turns right.

  When we reach the PAC, instead of heading up the ramp to the front entrance, Will swerves to the side and follows a path I’ve never noticed before, which takes us down some steps and between the pillars at the base of the building. We go around the side until we come upon a door. Will presses the keypad beside it. I hear a click. She leans against the door and it opens.

  Inside is a narrow room, about the size of my walk-in wardrobe. One wall is lined with shelves. On the bottom shelf is a neatly folded pile of clothes—an embroidered cavalry jacket and vest, as well as pants and a shirt—presumably a costume left over from one of Rosemead’s annual musicals. Otherwise, the shelves are empty. At the far end, beneath a row of windows and streaked with sunlight, is a stack of padded chairs, like the ones populating the PAC foyer.