Amelia Westlake Was Never Here

by Erin Gough

  “She did?” I feel a flutter of excitement. I have played Beth like a fiddle, which is somewhat disloyal, but it appears to have reaped worthwhile rewards.

  Our conversation is interrupted by the start of assembly, which always begins with a guest speaker. This week it is Tania Janice, an alumna of the school. She used to be a Covergirl model before marrying a Hollywood director whom she met at a bar. Tania is widely considered one of Rosemead’s most successful graduates.

  “So what’s going to happen to Miss Fowler?” I ask Beth in a whisper when Tania has finished recounting her regular celebrity dinner guests.

  “They’re making her review her marking practices,” Beth whispers back. “And she has to apologize to the class.”

  Success at last!

  My feeling of well-being is cut short when I look up. Coach Hadley has come onstage. An image flashes on the screen above his head—the Olympic rings.

  Beth groans. “Not this again.”

  “Has it been a year already?” Millie whispers.

  Every year on Coach’s birthday, the whole school watches a recording of his silver medal win. Principal Croon considers it motivational. Afterward, one of the teachers always gives a speech about the value of “hard work,” “determination,” and “putting your all” into things.

  It is as though Will and I never published that cartoon. I wonder why Principal Croon’s investigation is taking so long.

  If, indeed, there is one.

  What am I thinking? There must be. I suppose it takes a while to do a thorough job. Which is no doubt the reason we haven’t yet heard anything.

  After Miss Fowler gives the motivational part of the presentation, everyone immediately starts talking until we are interrupted by the sound of Deputy Davids coughing into the microphone. “Your attention again, girls, please.” She clasps her hands across her chest. “Mouths closed and eyes to the front.”

  Slowly the room settles down.

  “First, I have some wonderful, wonderful news,” Deputy Davids says. She clears her throat loudly. “This morning, our senior science girls won the highly competitive National Schools Robotics Competition. A truly tremendous achievement. Mr. Buddy, the robot they built, will be on display in the library foyer this afternoon.” Deputy Davids starts clapping vigorously into the microphone. A handful of students momentarily join in. “My second news item is far less positive, I’m afraid.” Deputy Davids lowers her head. “It has been brought to my attention that there have been certain, shall we say, goings-on recently that have sought to undermine the authority of the staff.” She gazes down from the stage, squinting. “Certain, shall we say, presumptuous, shall we say, activities, that have wreaked no small measure of chaos on the learning operations of our classrooms.”

  A murmur starts up across the hall. A throbbing begins to resonate behind my right eyeball.

  Deputy Davids hacks into her sleeve. “To the person responsible for these goings-on, I have two things to say. One. If you have an issue with a teacher”—here she glances across at Coach Hadley and Miss Fowler, who are sitting together to the far right of the stage—“the proper thing is to raise it with that teacher or with the school directly. Two. Principal Croon and I have discussed this matter, and we will be watching the student body very closely for further inappropriate behavior. Very closely. You stand warned.”

  My eyeball feels like a balloon that’s being squeezed.

  “What was that all about, do you think?” Beth asks as we file out of assembly. Or at least I think it is Beth—it is difficult to tell because I have my hand across my pounding eye and am concentrating very hard on keeping my lunch down.

  “Amelia Westlake, of course,” Liz Newcomb says.

  “The Dep was just making the point that it’s better to raise things directly with the school. Like you did, Beth, through your father,” says Millie.

  “How good am I?” says Beth.

  “The best,” Millie tells her.

  That evening Edie has to cancel our planned date for the second week in a row, which is absolutely fine. I want to see her, of course. It seems like ages since I’ve spent quality time with my Number One Gal. But Edie has an essay due the following day, and I couldn’t bear to be the reason for her underperformance. At any rate, I could use the time. Deputy Davids’s speech has left me with a growing knot of panic in my gut.

  I go home and get changed, unpinning my badges from the lapel of my blazer. I take out a cloth and the bottle of tarnish remover I keep in my bottom desk drawer. Carefully, I polish each one. When I have finished, I line up the badges on the desk and reattach them to my uniform.

  There is something soothing about this ritual—feeling the weight of them, seeing the polished shine, pinning them back on the fabric so that they sit just right. I think of Bianca Stein from St. Margaret’s beating Edie and me at Tawney. I thread my Tawney badge through my lapel, and it is like I’ve put a skewer through the thought. I pin on my house badge, thinking of Coach Hadley. Its symmetry and shine keep him at bay. I imagine Principal Croon discovering that Will and I are behind Amelia Westlake and press my school badge into my palm until it leaves an outline.

  It is clear that if we are going to keep Amelia Westlake safe from discovery, we need to be especially careful about covering our tracks.

  It begs the question, How does one cover one’s tracks? Given I am basically a very honest, open person who has never had to conceal anything from anyone, I have no idea. I conduct an online search for clues and up pops an article about how to evade tracking dogs, which I initially dismiss as being off the point. But when I read on, I am fascinated to learn that dogs track humans by following the scent of the dead body cells that continuously fall from our skin. The only way to truly evade them is to enclose one’s entire person in a hermetically sealed suit.

  I sit back from the computer. After everything Will and I have done with Amelia, it is definitely too late for a hermetically sealed suit. With the cartoons, the online profile, the graffiti, the sign-up lists, and the initialed essay cover sheets, we’ve left our trace everywhere.

  But what if there is another way?

  Of course, I have promised Will I won’t do anything Amelia-related without her agreement.

  Then again, after that speech from Deputy Davids, we need to act fast. And I can hardly check with Will before taking action when she has forbidden any contact. She has left me no choice but to continue without her okay.

  This is why, in lieu of catching up with Edie over a Moroccan tagine and Persian love cake, I spend our date night littering Amelia Westlake’s tracks with the dead body cells of as many other people as I can think of.

  From: Ameli3.Westlake@gmail.com

  To: Deedee.Chee@gmail.com

  Dear Daphne,

  Thank you for your kind invitation to your eighteenth birthday party at Catalina’s. I accept with delight.

  Love, Amelia

  (To the untrained eye this is a perfectly innocuous response. Therein lies its subtle beauty. Millie is renowned at Rosemead for “accepting with delight.” I know therefore that Daphne will instantly suspect the email came from her.)

  From: Ameli3.Westlake@gmail.com

  To: Liz.Newcomb.0968@gmail.com

  Hi Liz,

  Today I saw your looking for sugestions about a theme for this years Junior School spelling bee. I really think it should be Outer Space, with an emphasis on human colinization.

  Cheers, Amelia

  (This one suggests authorship by Janine Richter, known for recently entering the international lottery to be a part of the first human colony on Mars, and for being the worst speller on planet Earth.)

  From: Ameli3.Westlake@gmail.com

  To: Eileen.Sarmiento@optusnet.com

  Dear Eileen,

  Thanks for helping me stand up to Miss Fowler. I hope we can work together again, and be friends. My friends are my estate. Forgive me then the avarice to hoard them.

  AW

  (The quote
from Emily Dickinson embedded in this email points the finger at Rosemead’s star English student, Nakita Wallis, a well-known Dickinson diehard.)

  When I have sent off the emails, I text Edie to say I hope she’s done well with her essay. Edie sends me a text back saying I am her lucky charm, and I respond with her favorite Shakespearean love sonnet. I wait ten minutes for a reply before texting her second-favorite Shakespearean love sonnet. After waiting another hour for a response I realize Edie is probably exhausted from all that hard thinking and has gone to bed, so I go to bed myself.

  At school the next day, I am shocked to hear from Beth that she saw Edie at Cafe Belladonna last night.

  “Are you sure it was her?”

  “I swear on Binkie’s grave,” Beth says, spooning the chunky bits of a Cup-a-Soup into her mouth. “No one else I’ve ever seen wears her ponytail that high. Plus, she was in tennis gear. Plus, the girl she was with was in tennis gear. According to Millie, it was that new girl from St. Mag’s, Bianca Rind.”

  My heart goes cold. “You mean Bianca Stein?”

  “That’s her.”

  “You and Millie went to Belladonna without me?”

  She shrugs. “We thought Tuesday was your date night with Edie.”

  I suppose she is right. I try very hard not to take their oversight personally.

  My next class is history, and during the lesson I do something entirely in breach of school rules: I use my iPad to get online for a non-class-related purpose. An image search for St. Margaret’s star player brings up a disturbing number of pictures of a girl in a tennis skirt wearing medals, holding silver plates, and wielding heavy-looking trophies.

  I ring my girlfriend at lunch.

  “Beth says she saw you at Belladonna last night.”

  “Keep your voice down, Bubble. There’s no need to shout.”

  “And that you were with Bianca Stein. At the very time I was texting you to wish you luck with your essay.”

  “Sheesh, Harriet. I’m not deaf. You can say these things at an ordinary decibel level, and I will hear them just as clearly.”

  “Well, were you?”

  “Of course I was, what do you think?” she says harshly.

  “I—I don’t know what to think! Which is why I’m calling!”

  “I was getting the lowdown,” she murmurs. “On whether she’s playing the doubles at Tawney.”

  “Oh,” I say, giddy with relief. “And is she?”

  There is a pause. “She’s considering it. She wanted to know if I could recommend any players who weren’t partnered up yet. So I gave her a couple of bum steers. Nell Kee from Riverston, for example.”

  “Oh, Edie, you didn’t.” Nell Kee is a previous Tawney Shield winner whose game dropped considerably after an ankle injury two years ago. “But why didn’t you tell me what you were doing?”

  Edie lowers her voice. “Because it’s a dirty game I’m playing, Bubble,” she says darkly. “And I knew you wouldn’t approve. Besides, I don’t want you implicated. Ignorance is the best defense in these situations, okay?”

  I am touched by her concern, though still not entirely happy. She is right. I don’t approve. But if she is so keen to play this so-called dirty game, she shouldn’t be taking on all the risk herself.

  “Bubble? Are you still there?”

  “Promise me, Edie, that if you decide to do this again, you’ll tell me first.”

  “Of course.”

  “I don’t like it when you lie to me.”

  “You know you’re my lucky charm, don’t you?” she says, soft and sweet, and I think about lying in her arms in the tall grass beside the tennis courts at Tawney last year: my head in her lap, her hand stroking my hair, our fingers entwined.

  “Don’t you forget it,” I say, smiling. “I’ll call you after school.”

  We have resolved things, we love each other, Edie and I are rock solid. But after I get off the phone I feel strangely hollow. Then I remember: I haven’t had lunch yet! Dear me—what a crazy cat I am.

  I am on my way to the cafeteria when I decide, on a whim, to take a left turn toward the newsroom. I promised Will I would steer clear, but I have a sudden urge to tell her about the emails I sent. I am feeling guilty about not clearing them with her first. When I reach the newsroom door, though, I notice something bizarre going on behind the mottled glass. There is a lot of thumping, like someone is playing dodgeball, only the balls are heads, and there are two of them, and they seem to be doing the opposite of dodging each other.

  The door opens and out bursts Will. Her face is flushed. She adjusts her dress and, just before she pulls the door shut, I see a glimpse of Natasha Nguyen behind her, adjusting hers, too.

  Surely not.

  Will looks up. “Holy shit! What are you doing here?”

  I put a hand on the wall to steady myself.

  Her eyes widen. “Hey, are you all right? You’re as pale as a ghost.”

  “Perfectly fine,” I say, inhaling deeply. “Just a bit of a head throb, that’s all. It happens when I haven’t eaten for a while.”

  “I need to talk to you, actually,” Will murmurs. “Buy some food and I’ll meet you in the storeroom in five.”

  I nod.

  Will casts her gaze up and down the corridor. “You are such a weirdo, Harriet Price,” she says in a loud voice, before abruptly walking away.

  I walk to the storeroom via the cafeteria deliberately slowly, processing what I have just witnessed. Will and Natasha? It doesn’t make sense. I wonder if Will’s boyfriend knows what is going on between them.

  When I finally reach the storeroom, Will is lounging in her padded chair with her feet on the armrest reading American Portraiture in the Twenty-First Century. “Feeling better?” she asks. Closing the book, she places it on a meter-high stack of art books beside her chair.

  “Whose are those?”

  Will threads her fingers together. “They’re art books, and I’m reading them, and they don’t belong to you, so…”

  “Don’t you have room for them at home?”

  “I brought them from home. So I could read them here. What’s got up your nose?”

  I squeeze some of my hand sanitizer on a tissue and wipe the other chair with it without looking at her. “Thanks for calling me a weirdo.” I sit down.

  She shifts in her chair. “You know I didn’t mean it. It was a cover. I had to do it because you broke our deal. No loitering around the newsroom, remember?”

  “It was hurtful.”

  “I’m sorry,” she says, her voice softer than before.

  I peel the plastic off my turkey-and-Camembert wrap in pointed silence.

  “Come on,” Will coaxes. “I’m really glad you came and found me. And hey, I’m not even mad about the emails you’ve been sending without telling me. I actually wanted to say, nice work. After that assembly speech by Davids yesterday, I got nervous. You’re right. We’ve got to throw people off the scent. Speculation about your emails was rife in the common room at break.”

  This cheers me somewhat. “People are already talking about them?”

  “Yep. At first everyone was like, ‘It’s Millie! Millie Levine’s Amelia Westlake!’” Will waves her hands around hysterically. “Then they’re like, ‘No, it’s Janine Richter!’” She leans back in her chair and waves her feet around. It looks like she is trying to pedal a bike, but not particularly effectively, which is no surprise given Will Everhart is not exactly fitness oriented. “Then they’re all, ‘It’s Nakita! It’s Nakita!’” She has a strange full-body roll thing going now. “So I think we’re in the clear. For now, at least,” Will says, “which is great. Because I have another idea, which is what I wanted to talk to you about. You know the wall behind the science building? I want to paint a mural on it. I want Amelia to. I’ll come up with the drawings again, and you can help with the concepts, just like we’ve done before. If they won’t let us publish cartoons in the school paper, this is what we can do instead. It’ll be like a ca
rtoon on steroids. What do you think?” She looks at me expectantly.

  “I don’t understand. Why a mural? What would it be for?”

  “To expose Hadley, of course. It’ll be the same theme as our first cartoon. I’m working on a two-by-two-meter stencil of his face.”

  At the very thought of a giant Coach Hadley peering down from a wall, my stomach drops like a stone.

  “We need to keep pressing this Hadley issue since the school isn’t doing anything about it,” Will says. “We wouldn’t even have to buy the paint. Nat’s uncle owns a paint shop, and she keeps spare tins for me in the newsroom in case I need them for an art project.…”

  “Oh, great idea,” I say, my heart beginning to pound. What an idiot I’ve been. If I’d known the situation between Will and Natasha, I would never have embarked upon Amelia Westlake in the first place. “And while you’re borrowing her paint, why don’t you just tell her that you and I are Amelia Westlake? Or have you done that already?” I ask.

  “I would never tell Nat without checking with you first,” Will says emphatically. “Yes, we’re friends, but that doesn’t mean—”

  “Friends, are you?” I meet her gaze. “I know you don’t think much of me, but I’m not entirely stupid. I just wish you’d told me. I spent an entire evening sending emails to cover our tracks when the biggest potential leak is you.”

  Will looks confused, before comprehension breaks across her face. “You thought you saw something through the newsroom window today.”

  “Didn’t I?” I cry.

  She bursts out laughing. “Yes. You saw Nat and me moving a filing cabinet.”

  “Oh! I thought you were…” Relief sweeps through me like a cool breeze through a hot room.

  “No.” Will looks uncomfortable. She clears her throat. “I mean, not that we haven’t… you know… before… or aren’t…” She sighs. “To be honest, things between us are a little complicated right now. All I’m saying is that today we were moving a filing cabinet.”