Stalker Girl

by Rosemary Graham

  As soon as Brian realized he wasn’t imagining things, that he was indeed seeing his ex-girlfriend inside the bedroom of his new girlfriend, he set in motion the series of events that led to Carly’s being escorted out of the Monroe Gallery by two New York City police officers. Assuming the worst of the girl he’d last spoken to on the night she’d called his mother’s house eight times, Brian called Taylor, who called her mother, who grabbed the rent-a-cop she always hired for these events and headed upstairs. And there Carly was, blocked from the stairs by the waiter and the chef and the woman who wouldn’t let R. Duffy Deen III have another bottle of wine, all on their hands and knees hastily trying to gather up all the dripping Gruyèrestuffed phyllo dough before it stained the carpet.

  “And the sweater?” Susan asked. As she had told Carly, the prosecutor was focusing on the fact that Carly was holding Taylor’s sweater in her hand when she was caught. Stealing an item of clothing or some other token from the target was apparently “textbook stalker behavior.”

  “I wasn’t stealing it. I was just—”

  Carly stopped herself. There was no point in trying to explain.

  EPILOGUE

  Six Months Later

  CARLY IS packing.

  The duffel is going with her to Turkey. Two of the three boxes sitting on her futon are headed to Greenville, where they will be stored in her father’s guest room/study until it’s time to move into her dorm at Denman. The third box will go to the new apartment. A paper shopping bag filled with wearable clothes that no longer fit or interest her is marked for Goodwill. The plastic garbage bag will go down the chute into the compactor in the basement of the crappy sublet.

  Almost everything has been sorted. One by one she’s decided the destiny of her belongings. The only place left to clear is the bottom cubby of the wobbly IKEA unit she put together in September. It’s packed with papers, random shoes, and she’s not sure what else.

  She starts with the shoes. Once-white sneakers, now gray and scuffed. A pair of blue ballet flats she never wore except at school.

  Garbage.

  Next, a balled-up regulation navy-blue Bellwin V-neck. She wants to put that in the garbage, too. But she won’t. She’ll give it to her mother, who’ll have it dry-cleaned and pass it along discretely to one of the girls who wear Payless shoes and shop at “the Marts.” And here’s her other winter kilt. She’d wondered where that went. Isabelle will take care of that, too. Make sure it gets to someone who needs it.

  Under all that she finds a hat she almost doesn’t recognize. Then she does. An ugly, brown knit wool hat with something—the turquoise reading glasses—inside. Beneath the hat, a pile of old school papers and tests and then a notebook. Her Harriet the Spy notebook, which, unlike Harriet’s, never fell into the wrong hands and so didn’t further complicate the complicated-enough mess that was her life six months before.

  What will she do with all this? The hat is easy enough. She’d pilfered it from her mother’s Goodwill bag in the first place. So back it goes. The glasses? She throws those in the Goodwill bag, too. She paid about ten dollars for them at a drugstore. Maybe some old lady who actually needs them to read will be happy to get them for a dollar or two. Or maybe they’ll become part of someone’s Halloween costume in the fall. Or maybe someone in search of a cheap and easy disguise will find them.

  And the notebook? What will she do with that bit of evidence? Should she go to Riverside Park and burn it? Would she get in trouble for that? Maybe mixed-paper recycling, where her words, all that dangerous information about Taylor Deen and her seemingly perfect life will get churned to pulp and reincarnated as . . . what? Environmentally correct paper towels? A clever greeting card printed on one hundred percent post-consumer recycled paper? Pages that bear witness to some other teenage girl’s worst missteps?

  “Missteps” was Susan G. Whitman, Esq.’s word. She’d also used “poor choices,” “bad decisions,” “clouded thinking,” and “mistakes” in her correspondence with the Deen family attorney and the prosecutor.

  In the face of the incontrovertible evidence, Susan had said the only thing they could do was ask for compassion. She asked them to consider whether Carly’s missteps were deserving of the criminal record that would be with her for the rest of her life if charges were pressed. Everyone agreed that prosecution would be taking it too far in this case, with a girl who had never been in trouble before. But Judith Monroe Deen still wanted that order of protection. When she learned that her daughter’s boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend had unlawfully entered her daughter’s bedroom, Judith was seriously freaked out. She wanted legal action of some kind.

  Carly didn’t want to fight it. Part of her agreed with Judith. Who could blame a mother for wanting to protect her child from a possible lunatic? But Susan pointed out that even without formal charges, simply having her name on such a document could cause Carly serious future grief.

  Through Susan, Isabelle and Tim and Nick convinced Judith that they, as her parents, would personally restrain Carly. They would see to it that she didn’t come anywhere near the Monroe Gallery and Deen house. Fourteenth Street, where Nick lived, was as far downtown as Carly was allowed to go for the next six months. Judith agreed, with the stipulation that if Carly was spotted anywhere near Taylor, the authorities would be notified and the Deens would pursue “every legal avenue” to protect Taylor.

  That was fine because by then Carly didn’t need restraining. She was done. She didn’t want to see Taylor or Brian or know anything about what they were doing, how things were going between them, any of it.

  Humiliation will do that to a person.

  Susan sent Carly to a psychologist for evaluation, to help make her case to the prosecutor. After hearing the story of how her obsession with Taylor started and grew, the shrink recommended that Carly take a good long break from the Web. Not as a punishment, but a precautionary measure, Dr. Stavros explained. All that information just a click away could “trigger” Carly’s “compulsive tendencies.” And given her inability to stop herself from acting, Dr. Stavros thought it would be best if the laptop was made completely unavailable to Carly.

  She surrendered it to her mother and did manage—despite her initial protests—to get through her final semester working entirely with books, paper, pens and pencils, plus occasional, limited, and closely supervised forays onto the Internet for legitimate research purposes only.

  The months immediately following her non-breaking and entering were hard. Word of her “poor choices” spread through Bellwin immediately. She had the experience of briefly being the cause célèbre du jour. Whispers, laughter, knowing looks. The whole bit. Word spread to other schools, too. Harris Gibson pretended he didn’t know Carly when they passed on the street. Shira Zeidman wrote it up on her blog, in a post titled “The Further Adventures of Little Miss Psycho.”

  But eventually, Carly’s infamy faded, overshadowed by Chloe Brosnan’s arrest for buying heroin on the Lower East Side two months later.

  Val stuck by her through all of it. After everything was settled with the lawyers, and Carly was finally allowed contact with the outside world, the first person she called—the only person she wanted to call—was Val. But she wasn’t sure Val would answer. Carly wouldn’t have blamed her if she’d wanted to keep her distance. So it was a huge relief when after only one ring she heard her friend’s voice. Carly didn’t care that there was no “hello.” No “How are you?” Just an angry, very Val-like “What the hell?!”

  The thing that bothered Val the most was how Carly had lied and kept secrets.

  “I could have stopped you, you know. If you’d just told me.”

  “I know. That’s why I didn’t tell you. It sounds crazy now, but it all made sense at the time. I was messed up.”

  “Yes, you were.”

  Val was the one to tell Carly about “The Stalker Girl Song.” It wasn’t Ernestine is Everywhere’s. It was put out by a Canadian band called Uncle Buddy. But, Val told her, it made ment
ion of enough details—like the red sweater and Bernie Williams and somebody calling somebody’s mom—to conclude that Brian was at least the source of the story, if not the ghostwriter of the song.

  Carly guesses, but hasn’t verified because it would mean going online, that Uncle Buddy and EiE crossed paths on tour. She hasn’t heard the song yet. She’s waiting for the day when it will all seem funny. Which might be never.

  She’s turning the notebook over in her hand, wondering if she’s brave enough to peek inside, when her phone rings. The caller ID says DAD.

  “Hey Dad.”

  “Whoa, is this my daughter live and in person?”

  “Who were you expecting?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Your voice mail. Hold on a sec,” he says. She hears her baby sister Ally gurgling, followed by some muffled sounds, and then the crash of the phone hitting the floor. After a few seconds, he’s back. “Still there?”

  “Still here.”

  “Oh, okay. Sorry about that. I had to turn Ally around in the Baby Bjorn. When she’s awake, she wants to face out and see the world.” His voice goes into a higher pitch as he says, “Isn’t that right, little girl? You want to know what’s goin’ on, don’tcha?”

  Carly smiles as she listens to her father dote. “How’s my little sister?”

  “Great. You should see her, Carl. She’s so curious. So here.”

  Professor Tim Finnegan is on paternity leave, and he’s taking it very seriously. He’s not teaching, not writing, not going to department meetings. Just his getting to know his new daughter.

  He’s read all the books, and he’s convinced that Ally is a genius. She’s hit every developmental milestone ahead of time. She rolled over at thirteen weeks, well ahead of the national norm. Ditto for the crucial skills of reaching and grasping. He swears he hears words in her babbles and squeaks. He still e-mails Carly pictures almost every day. The most recent was of the two of them “reading” a book. Actually, Ally was drooling onto the book and Tim had a maniacal, wide-eyed look on his face as he pointed to the pictures and read aloud.

  “That’s great. Tell her I say ‘hey.’”

  “Here, tell her yourself.”

  Carly laughs and shakes her head. “Dad, wait!” But it’s too late. She can hear Ally breathing and babbling on the other end.

  “Hi, Ally,” she says. “I hope for your sake this is just a phase. I can’t really say because I didn’t live with him after the age of four.”

  Carly listens to two more squeaks and one grunt and then says, “Okay, well. Can you put Dad back on? Dad? Dad!”

  “I’m here. She knows your voice. I really think she does. Her whole face lit up when you were talking.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. She can’t wait to see you. I just thought of a few more things.”

  “Dad. I’m totally ready. I was ready a year ago.”

  “I know. But I was thinking, are you sure your shots are still up-to-date? Because some of them might have expired.”

  “Yes, I’m sure. Mom double-checked today.”

  “And you got the hat?”

  “Yes, Dad. The hat, the sunscreen, the tampons.”

  Jess pokes her head through the flimsy blue drapes. She has a flower painted on her cheek, a remnant from the Bellwin all-school end-of-the-year picnic that afternoon in Central Park.

  “Can we go?”

  Carly nods. “Dad—I have to go. I’ll see you in a few days.”

  It’s Friday, and she and Jess are due down at Nick’s within the hour for their regular Friday-night pizza-movie-sleepover.

  Not long after Carly’s “bust,” Nick and Isabelle decided that Carly should be included in the weekend visits with Jess. Carly didn’t have any say in the matter, since she had pretty much agreed to give up her free will in exchange for Judith’s dropping her demands for a restraining order. But that was okay. She liked this decision they made for her. After all that had happened, she was afraid Nick might not want anything to do with her. She’d heard from her mother that Nick and Judith had mutual acquaintances in the art world, and she worried that she might have hurt his career.

  But Nick’s career seems to be going just fine. Nick has a show out in Los Angeles coming up that summer.

  Carly likes the ritual of their Friday nights: first taking the subway downtown with Jess, then the three of them picking out a video together and on the way back to the loft getting their pizza. She and Nick recently revived the DTM, “Don’t Tell Mom,” when they let Jess watch an R-rated movie. Nick had already seen it and knew that it didn’t have any sex or violence.

  “Just Irish people who drop a lot of f-bombs, which you can hardly even hear because of their accents,” he said in a bad Irish brogue.

  Isabelle seems to be making better use of her weekend nights, too. She’s started going to readings and other literary things around the city. She’s not exactly cheery, but she seems to be coming out of her funk. Tonight she’s staying home to finish packing.

  She’s found a better, if not perfect, apartment. One of Val’s aunts is going back to Puerto Rico to open a branch of the family restaurant—NYSJ—and subletting her two-bedroom to Isabelle. It’s still temporary, but they expect it to be at least two years. And it has the added advantage of being upstairs from Val. Maybe she and Carly will avoid the fate of so many high-school friends who drift apart when they leave for college.

  “Yes, let’s go,” Carly says to Jess. She reaches over, opens the zipper on her Turkey-bound duffel, and slips the notebook in. She’s not ready to read this artifact from her not-so-distant past. She’s not sure she ever will be. But she’s not going to destroy it, either.

  There’s a lot to be learned from the past. And there are still a lot of blank pages.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENT

  Huge thanks to Tracey Adams of Adams Literary for her patience and wise counsel, and to Joy Peskin for saying “No,” then “No,” and then “Yes!” Thanks to Nancy Brennan for designing a cover that captures the story so well; to Janet Pascal (and Janet Frick) for making me think about every word; and to the sales and marketing folks at Penguin Young Readers Group for their energy and enthusiasm.

  A fellowship at Hedgebrook on Whidbey Island in Washington State provided quiet space as well as the jovial company of other women writers. I found quiet inspiration in the Placitas, New Mexico, home of Deb Green and Jerry Blakely when my friend Deborah Davis let me tag along on her annual writing retreat—twice. The women of Word of Mouth-Bay Area provided good food, challenging conversation, and above all, the inspiration to keep at it no matter what.

  Several people provided generous reads and helpful notes despite the mess they were handed. Thank you Lou Berney, Elizabeth Stark, Ellen Sussman, and Laura Ruby. Elaine Korry convinced me to give it one more try when I’d all but given up. My sister, Ellen Gehrs, might not know how much her encouragement means to me. Members of Tyler Gehrs’ high school band may hear echoes of their songs in EiE’s.

  Finally, my husband, Kevin Griffin, and our daughter, Graham Griffin, loved and supported me even at my crankiest. They did without me for days—sometimes weeks—and celebrated when we finally got to “Yes!”