Amelia Westlake Was Never Here
Page 26
Did I mention the kissing? Kissing is another thing we’re doing a lot of lately: in bedrooms, on couches, and at inappropriate places like airport boarding gates.
Her lips taste like peppermint, as always. I pull her closer.
“You really have to stop now, Will,” says Harriet at last, pulling away.
“Hey! You were kissing me just as much as I was kissing you.”
Kissing, and arguing about kissing.
“That kiss went for at least three minutes,” I continue, “and it’s not like your mouth was just sitting there that whole time waiting for a bus.”
“Don’t bring public transport into this. You know how I feel about public transport.”
“As for your tongue, it was arguably behind the bloody wheel.”
“They’re about to close the gate.…”
“And when it comes to kissing, the question of who kicked things off becomes irrelevant at the three-second mark.”
Harriet smiles. She picks up her carry-on bag. “I’ll call you from Brisbane.” She takes my hand.
I run my thumb across her palm. “Your grandma’s going to be so happy you came.”
Harriet’s smile wavers. “I don’t know. Now she knows from Mum about you and me. And how I sacrificed Tawney…”
I squeeze her hand. “She loves you. She’ll be okay. Say happy birthday from me.”
“If you were coming with me, you could say it yourself.”
“Don’t start with all that again.”
She grins. “I’m going to miss you, that’s all.”
“Me too.”
After a final kiss, and a prolonged few seconds where I refuse to let go of her hand, I watch her walk away from me and disappear through the gate.
I’m alone again. I breathe in the aroma of the coffee I bought. I pick up one of the cups and remove the lid. I take a sip.
It’s disgusting.
See? My life is not without its sucky bits.
Then again, I can buy another coffee when I’ve returned to civilization. And Harriet will be home in a week.
I walk toward the exit, looking for a trash can to dump the coffee in. Mum and Graham are picking me up to take me to Dad’s hotel. He’s in Sydney for the week on magazine business and has invited me to stay with him in the plush hotel room that a well-known philanthropist is paying for. After googling the philanthropist to double-check he didn’t make his fortune from coal mining, tuna trawling, or sweatshops, I agreed.
Between you and me? I’m looking forward to it. I have a protest art idea I want to run by him. Something that will have an impact on the wider community. Harriet is helping me develop an engagement plan. We’re hoping to get a whole group of people to work on it. With any luck Nat will be one of them.
Will Everhart doing a group assignment—who would have thought? It’s a sign I’m feeling semipositive about the world, which is some sort of personal record. And why not? School’s finally finished. I’m seeing Dad for the first time in ten months. But mostly, I’ve got Harriet to thank.
And Amelia Westlake, bless her regulation Rosemead cotton socks.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book is a work of the imagination. Every person, event, and institution is fictitious—except for Amelia Westlake, who is real.
Amelia Westlake was the name of a hoax I created with two friends in our final year of high school, although with different pranks and outcomes from those described in these pages.
I therefore want to start by thanking my original coconspirators, Stephanie Kyme and Katrina Sanders, for their wicked genius; Pip Hill and Cynthia Wallis for inspiring us; Ingrid Stewart and Eleanor Swanepoel for inspiring the essay-swap prank; and our entire high school graduating class for embracing Amelia and for keeping a name tag for her at reunions to this day.
Thank you to my early readers: Elizabeth Allen, Rachael Cann, Natalie Conyer, Yvonne Edgren, Cathy Hunt, Isabelle Li, Justine Mill, Mark Riboldi, Katrina Sanders, Ashleigh Synnott, Conrad Walters, and Rani Young. Each of you has made this a better book.
Thank you to Elizabeth Allen and Fiona McFarlane for spreading Amelia’s mischievous influence and to Christine Ratnasingham and Pia van de Zandt for helping me research some delicate plot points.
Thank you to Maumau artists’ residency in Istanbul, where I wrote the initial chapters, and to my fellow residents who inspired me through their artistic practices: Pau Cata, Naz Cuguo lu, Emily Robbins, Tazneem Mononoke Wentzel, and Bahar Yurukoglu.
Thank you to Patrick Cannon, Penny White, Hilary Rogers, Luna Soo, Marisa Pintado, and the rest of the Hardie Grant Egmont team who helped make this book a reality, and to copyeditor Sherri Schmidt, editors Hallie Tibbetts and Deirdre Jones, designer Karina Granda, and the rest of the wonderful team at Little, Brown who helped bring Amelia to US readers. I am very lucky to work with such dedicated and talented people.
Thank you to the booksellers, the librarians, the festival organizers, the broader #LoveOzYA community, and especially the passionate readers who have embraced my stories. You make the entire process—even the hard bits—worthwhile.
Thank you finally to Emma Kersey, who made writing this book possible and who brings joy to every day.
Sally Flegg
ERIN GOUGH is a Sydney-based writer whose first novel for young adults, The Flywheel, won the Ampersand Prize. The Flywheel was published in the United States as Get It Together, Delilah!, and in Germany, and was shortlisted for the Children’s Book Council of Australia’s Book of the Year for Older Readers and the Centre for Youth Literature’s Gold Inky. Erin’s award-winning short stories have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, including Best Australian Stories, The Age, Overland, Southerly, and Going Down Swinging. Amelia Westlake Was Never Here is her second novel.