Miss Jones had insisted, too, that although Ravenswood was not a parochial school, it was her personal duty to remind the students that hell was a real place, and she would be awfully sad to see any of them end up there. Which of course prompted a lot of after-class laughter about how, exactly, Miss Jones might know who went to hell, and the viewing, later that week at Robert Sorensen’s house, of a very grainy, very dark online video of the classic porn film The Devil in Miss Jones.
What was it, Amelia wondered, that made adults so conservative about sexuality? Everyone who was presently an adult had been a teenager before, so surely they had the same curiosity, the same preoccupations, the same pressures that Amelia and her peers did. A person had only to read Jane Austen or the Brontës or Shakespeare to know that feelings of love and desire and passion were as prevalent among teenagers in those authors’ times as they were today, and would have been when Miss Jones was young—which, based on the way she talked, may well have happened during Queen Victoria’s reign, or, more fittingly, at the time the Puritans were settling New England, and she simply looked young for her age.
Love was not a force that could be legislated and prevented until after a person turned eighteen or twenty-one. Amelia, at fifteen, believed this quite firmly even though she had not yet experienced it for herself. She’d believed it even as she was sure nothing so amazing and wonderful would happen to her—at fifteen or any -teen, and possibly not for a very long time after that. Possibly not ever. For all of her advantages, and for all that she’d been petted and admired for—her pleasing looks, her quiet, polite demeanor, her well-written essays and high test scores—she’d felt she wasn’t worthy. For some reason that no one had ever been able to pin down, something inside her brain had, at age five, gone wrong, causing her to stutter, making it so that she’d spent eight years of her life seeing psychologists and speech therapists, and hiding her defect from everyone. The boys seemed to sense that she was glitchy; they kept their distance, and why wouldn’t they, when there were so many other smart, pretty, talented girls to choose from?
At fifteen, she believed in love but knew better than to look for it. Instead, she sang about it, read about it, lived it vicariously through movies, and waited to be considered old enough to act it out onstage.
“Watch me,” she told her mother, chopsticks in hand. “I’ll show you how to use them.” Amelia used her chopsticks to lift the silverware, her napkin, the wrappers, and then helped her mother try to do the same, to comical effect. “Okay, okay, one thing at a time,” her mother laughed, laying down the chopsticks. “It’ll be enough of a challenge for me to eat sushi at all.”
They studied their menus. Her mother asked, “Which kind are you having?”
“I like the tuna. Maki, which is the roll.” Amelia set down her menu. “Did you know Juliet is only thirteen?”
“Juliet who?” her mother said. “Maybe I’ll try this one, with the cucumber and crab. Did I tell you how we used to go crabbing, my brothers and me, when I was little?”
Amelia tilted her head, intrigued. Her mother rarely spoke of her life before this incarnation, mother of Amelia, wife of Harlan. “No, I don’t think so,” Amelia said. She waited for more, and when it didn’t come, she said, “Juliet Capulet, from Romeo and Juliet.”
“Was thirteen? My, it’s hard to think that’s right.”
The waitress came to take their orders. When she’d gone, Amelia said, “You didn’t meet Daddy until you were thirty, right?”
“Yes. He hired me to decorate his first house.”
“And you fell in love with him right off.”
“No, not right away,” her mother said. “He was a client, and I took my job very seriously. But yes, after a time, we decided it might be nice to see each other.”
“What about before Daddy?” Amelia asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Did you have a high-school boyfriend? And what about later, when you were in design school, and afterward?”
“Of course I dated some, but I’m sure your daddy wouldn’t appreciate me talking about that.” She waved her hand dismissively.
Grinning, Amelia leaned forward and whispered, “Was there someone special? It’s okay, I won’t tell him you told.”
“I’ll suppose this one is soy sauce,” her mother said, shifting her gaze and reaching for the condiments caddy. She touched the lid of one bottle. “Same as at Chinese places, right? But what are the other sauces?”
“Momma, come on, tell. Was he from High Point, too, or was it after you moved to Raleigh?”
“I said I’d rather not discuss that. Drop it,” she said sharply.
Amelia sat back, stung. “Why? It was a long time ago. What’s the big deal?”
Her mother pushed the sauces back to their spot near the wall. “Come to think of it, the burgundy skirt and gray top is probably the better choice for tomorrow, what with the rain. Black will seem gloomy, don’t you think so?”
Amelia fought back confused tears. “Whichever you want,” she said. “I just want to sing.”
7
P ENGLISH WAS ORDINARILY ANTHONY’S FAVORITE CLASS. Yes, because Amelia was in it with him, but also because this was the one class he had where discussion got them into the meat of things. Mr. Edmunds, his teacher, was that right combination of cool and youthful, intellectual without being a geek; he regarded literature as relevant, and insisted his students do the same.
Today’s discussion centered on The Perks of Being a Wallflower, a book Anthony thought got at the heart of being a teen, a book that, true enough to its billing, got into the issue of “passivity vs. passion.” This interested him because he saw in himself elements of both—more passion than passivity, whereas with Amelia it was the other way around, and maybe that was what made them fit so well. He’d been eager to talk about the book. Now, though, he sat with his phone in hand, waiting—and waiting, and waiting—for Amelia to text her explanation for going missing. When he wasn’t glancing at his phone, he was watching the door.
At the bell, he bolted from his seat. Mr. Edmunds snagged his arm as he passed. “Hold on.”
“What’s up?” Anthony asked, moving aside as his classmates streamed past, some of them wearing the same expression of curiosity that Mr. Edmunds showed.
“My question exactly. You were pretty tuned out today.” The teacher’s thick eyebrows were raised behind his black-framed glasses, but the unsaid question—was Amelia’s absence part of this?—was not one that Anthony would answer. Maybe Edmunds knew, or thought he knew, about their relationship, but either way, Anthony wasn’t going to confirm it with a careless display of concern.
“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry. Distracted.” He edged toward the door.
“Can I help?”
Anthony shook his head, already on the move. “Thanks.”
Outside the classroom, he dialed Amelia as he walked, and ducked into the bathroom, where he’d be able to talk unseen by faculty. Again, he got her voice mail.
Next period and sixth, too, were a repeat of fourth, only with teachers who seemed unaware that he had little to contribute today. Nothing improved even after final bell; it wasn’t as if he could go running to Amelia’s house, looking for her.
He found his mother in the classroom where she taught sixth-period French. She was cleaning the whiteboard and singing along to an Édith Piaf CD that was playing on the portable stereo she toted with her from classroom to classroom.
“Non! Je ne regrette rien.…”
Anthony said, “Ça va, Maman?” and she turned to him and waved. He closed the door and leaned against it. “Was Amelia in class just now?”
“No—I figured on asking you why she wasn’t here. Thought you had the inside track—or maybe something to do with it?”
“Non, je ne sais pas où elle est,” he said, trying to shake off his anxiety by indulging in this practice they had, of his working to become fluent. In his pre-Amelia days, he and his mother had made plans
to spend his graduation summer in France. Lately, he’d been trying to talk her into including Amelia, whose French was far better than his. “Did I get that right?”
“You don’t know where she is,” his mother said, nodding.
“I haven’t heard from her since she went home to get her computer.”
“Maybe she had an appointment and forgot to tell you.”
“Peut-être,” he said, though he knew better.
“Do you work tonight?”
“Yeah—but not till five.”
“I have yoga, so I guess I’ll see you later. Oh—there’s leftover tuna salad, if you want to take it with you for dinner.”
“Maybe,” he said again, this time in English. “So, okay, see you.” At the doorway, he turned and added, “If you hear anything—you know, about Amelia—let me know.”
“I’m sure there’s a simple explanation, and you’ll laugh about it later. I can’t tell you how many times that’s been true for me worrying about you.”
He nodded, recalling some of those times—most of them when he’d been out riding dirt bikes or bridge-jumping into Falls Lake with friends a couple years older than himself, friends whose mothers were, then, at the stage his mother was now. Acceptance, or maybe resignation. Bad things rarely happened, and Anthony and his friends were old enough to manage them when they did.
“Yeah, I’m sure you’re right.” He waved. “See you.”
“Je t’aime.”
“Love you, too.”
As he approached his old Mini sitting in the emptied student lot, he dialed Cameron, hoping she’d have heard something. She hadn’t, and was worried, too. He dialed three more friends, and none knew anything. He tried Amelia’s phone yet again, and this time the line didn’t ring, it went straight to voice mail.
Anthony pounded the car’s roof once, then got in and headed home. He drove with little conscious awareness of the drive itself; his mind kept turning over the ways he might go to Amelia’s house before work, go see her, or see about her, without risking discovery. He could do as he usually did: park some distance away and then walk or jog through the woods, but the odds of him being seen by one of the neighbors whose property he’d be crossing were much higher in daylight, and he didn’t want some freaked-out old lady calling the police about a prowler. Or … maybe he’d try driving directly to Amelia’s house, telling the guard at the neighborhood’s entrance that he was dropping off homework. That should work as a onetime deal. Good, okay, he thought. He’d do that. That would at least get him there … and he could pull the same act with her mom, if she happened to be home.
What he hoped was that for some yet-to-be-revealed good reason, Amelia had neglected to tell him she was going to stay home and take a nap. He hoped he’d ring the doorbell and after a minute she’d pad to the front door and greet him with a sleepy smile. He’d seen that smile once, when she’d slept over at Cameron’s house and he’d come by first thing in the morning, to join them for breakfast. He wanted more than anything to see that smile every morning, and he mentally marked, again, that he would be able to beginning about two hundred and ten days from now.
On his street, he was nearly at his house before he noticed the Raleigh Police car stationed a hundred feet or so away. He pulled up to the curb and parked, thinking this was another case of a concerned neighbor requesting them to do some speed-limit enforcement. People tended to drive too fast on through-streets like theirs, endangering the kids who played outside on bikes and skateboards and scooters. He went inside and took the stairs two at a time, swung into his room, and booted up his computer to check his email. If for some reason Amelia’s phone had stopped working, she might have contacted him this way. He pulled off his navy V-neck sweater and sat at the table that served as a desk, waiting, tapping a pen against his palm. “Where are you?” He knew that only some crazy sequence of truths would lead to her being away from any kind of phone but at the same time near a computer, hers or any, but at this point, even crazy sequences of truths were worth hoping for.
The hope didn’t last long. “Merde,” he said, when he saw that none of his new messages had come from her.
When the doorbell rang a minute later, Anthony still had not connected the police presence to his own life. Expecting his grandmother, who often dropped in unannounced, he went downstairs and pulled open the door to find two blue-shirted cops waiting there. “Anthony Winter?”
As implausible as it was, Anthony’s first thought was that they’d come to tell him Amelia had been hurt or killed. His breath caught and he choked out, “Yeah?”
“We’d like to ask you some questions. Can we come in?”
He stepped back and let them in. The three of them stood in the small foyer for a moment, and then one of the officers took out a notebook and said, “Would you confirm that you live at this address?”
Anthony nodded. “What’s going on? Is this about Amelia? Is she okay?”
The two exchanged a glance, then one cleared his throat and said, “We’ve had a complaint. What do you know about Amelia Wilkes being in possession of a number of photographs that feature you without … that is, in an unclothed state?”
Anthony blinked, and blinked again. “Sorry?” He had not seen this coming, not at all, not in any way. Christ. How could the cops possibly—?
Then the pieces tumbled into place. The forgotten computer. And … maybe Amelia’s mom hadn’t gotten delayed at all. Maybe she’d tricked Amelia into coming back home, where she could then confront her. And, apparently, sic the cops on him.
The officer said, “Miss Wilkes has photos, and she has given us an account of their origin, but we’d like to get your side of the story.”
Miss Wilkes has photos. His relief over knowing she wasn’t sick or hurt was quickly giving way, replaced by dread over what she must have endured in order for this pair, these boys in blue whose smug expressions told him they’d seen everything he had to offer a woman, to now be at his door. No way had she given up the info voluntarily.
He said, “Even if it was me, how would this be, you know, something involving the police?”
The dark-haired officer said, “Right now, it’s important that you answer the question. Do you know how Miss Wilkes came to have these photos?”
Though Anthony was wary of saying too much, he wanted to deflect any responsibility from Amelia, so he said, “I sent them to her just, you know, for fun. She didn’t have anything to do with it. Why?”
“So she didn’t invite you to take and send the photos?”
This made him pause. If she’d told them she asked him to send them, would it be better to back up her account, or contradict it? And either way, he didn’t see why the police were getting involved—maybe as a favor to Harlan Wilkes? Had Wilkes set this up in order to scare him?
Anthony said, “She’s seventeen, you know. Eighteen in February. The age of consent—not that that is what this is about, but, you know, where sexual stuff is concerned—is sixteen.”
The blond officer said, “We’re aware of the law—and it’s good to know that you are, too. All we need to know is whether what Miss Wilkes said is accurate. You’re not accused of anything related to sexual … er, relations.”
“Okay. Because, you know, not that I’m saying we’ve had ‘relations,’ but if we had, she’s old enough to decide to have them.” He wiped his clammy palms on his pants.
“The photos?” the dark-haired officer prompted.
Anthony weighed the matter as best he could with the two cops staring at him, and decided he should back up Amelia’s statement so she couldn’t be accused of lying. And maybe there was a way to lessen the trouble, make her look innocent just the same.
He said, “Well, now that I think about it, maybe she did ask me. Yeah, I think that’s how it went. I think she was intending to use them for an art project, something like that. Did she say?”
The officer made some notes. “Did you send the photos using email?”
Wha
t difference did that make? He thought of the various ways she’d gotten the photos. Her phone, his phone, his camera, hers, email, text message. Email seemed no better or worse than the others, so he said, “Um, yeah. I think so.”
“All right. Your account is pretty much what we heard from Miss Wilkes. As of now, we’re going to file our report, but we’ll need you to remain available this afternoon, in case we have any further questions.”
“I have to work.” He told them where, and they took down his cellphone and work phone numbers. Then they put their hats on and left the house.
Anthony followed them onto the porch, watched them get into the cruiser without either of them saying a word, and watched them drive away. He could only imagine the conversation they must be having right now: rich girl who lives in a mansion surrounded by forest, a girl so lovely that none of them (himself included) could possibly rate a real chance with her, keeps provocative, show-all photographs of guy who lives in little row house with a single tree growing on its pitiful square of lawn. Rich, lovely girl gets busted by mother—who would without a doubt be extremely pissed, so complaint gets filed with the cops. What a joke it must be to them, doing the bidding of people like the Wilkeses. He could just see them placating Sheri Wilkes by agreeing to question him and file a report. Placating Harlan, too—she’d probably gotten him to come help with the crisis—with their questions and their notebooks and their serious yes-ma’am, yes-sir faces. And coming here, questioning him, the poor SOB in the photos, who was probably going to get a real ass-kicking from the girl’s father … they had to be having a good laugh about that.
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