Reconstructing Amelia

by Kimberly McCreight

  * * *

  Because there are 176 definitions for the word loser on urbandictionary.com.

  Don’t Be a Statistic

  * * *

  Hey bitches,

  Here with the shit that’s not fit to print . . .

  Ah, the clubs. The place where all you desperate social climbers might finally get your slippery hands on that higher rung. Just remember that there isn’t actually any honor in your boobs or your wee-wee getting sized up against the pledge next to you, no matter how many hundreds of years they’ve being doing it.

  Then again, could be I just think that because I’m still waiting to get tapped.

  Word on the street is that the Tudors and Devonkill are trying to lift their street cred by going hard core with hazing, the Magpies are thinking outside the box—ha-ha—on invites this year, and Wolf’s Gate is staking out a great British invasion.

  Speaking of great British invasions, how many people is Ian Greene going to bed down? It’s only the second week of school, and from what I hear he’s approaching double digits with lots more fair ladies lining up to be laid—our resident harlots Sylvia Golde, Susan Dolan, and Kendall Valen just to name three.

  And Dylan Crosby? Dear, beautiful, mysterious Dylan? No, she’s not one of them. Not sure who she’s getting with, but she’s not the kind to queue up for anything.

  Word is George McDonnell and Hannah Albert finally consummated their decade-long obsession with each other. And Carter Rose has his eye on one tight-legged sophomore. Oh poor Carter, don’t bother. That chastity belt snaps open for no man.

  And stayed tuned, everyone. I’ve got mad scoop on the academic probation roll . . . I’m thinking I’ll just put it up in its entirety in the next issue. I mean—imho—if you can’t keep your head above water in a cush school like this, you deserve to get made a fool out of.

  facebook

  SEPTEMBER 14

  Amelia Baron

  Can’t believe she let her best friend talk her into wearing skinny jeans during a heat wave

  George McDonnell and 2 others like this

  Sylvia Golde can’t believe her best friend is such an epic fashion failure; u should be thanking me you know . . .

  Amelia

  SEPTEMBER 14

  Halfway down our front steps, I could already see Sylvia waiting up in the usual spot—Garfield and Eighth Avenue, the near corner. Sylvia lived on Berkeley between Seventh and Eighth, around the corner from Mr. Wonton and one block over from Ozzie’s, the coffee place where they would sometimes give you free refills on hot chocolate and had huge samples of cookies practically every day. For four years, Sylvia and I had been meeting on the same corner every day to walk the last couple of blocks to school together. Four years ago—when we were eleven—was the first year that Sylvia’s mom would let her walk to school on her own. And she had all sorts of tests Sylvia had to pass first, about what to do in an emergency, who to go to for help, what to do if someone tried to grab her.

  My mom finally said I could walk to school alone when I was eleven, too. She had her own tests. But I think she got them from Sylvia’s mom. I love my mom, but she gets most of her ideas about how to be a mom from other moms. Pretty much whatever Sylvia was allowed to do, I was allowed to do, too.

  But Sylvia had never had a nanny, so getting rid of Leelah was on me. I liked Leelah and all, but what sophomore in high school had a nanny? That was pretty much my argument. And I was psyched when my mom finally said okay. Now that school had started, I did kind of miss Leelah. I never would have told my mom—I didn’t want her to feel bad or whatever—but it was weird being alone, like, all the time.

  I waved at Sylvia, and she held up a hand in one of her two-finger, too-cool-for-school salutes. It was the second week of September, but it was still that disgusting, soupy New York City hot where you feel like you’re walking through mesh and everywhere smells like garbage, or pee. Of course, Sylvia wasn’t about to let a little heat keep her from busting out her new fall styles. Clothes were to Sylvia what books were to me: the only thing that really mattered. So there was Sylvia, up at the corner in skinny jeans, platform sandals, and a long, sleeveless sweater. Sleeveless yes, but it was still a sweater. She’d showed it to me the afternoon before—it was a cool purplish-eggplant color with a big loose collar. Funky and almost a little weird, the kind of thing I would have looked stupid in. But it totally worked on Sylvia.

  I waved back to her as I stuffed The Handmaid’s Tale into my bag to finish reading at lunch. For the first time ever, Sylvia and I weren’t in the same lunch period except on Fridays. I could always sit with Chloe or Ainsley or someone from the field hockey team. Sylvia and I weren’t each other’s only friends, but we didn’t have a posse like a lot of other kids. We’d never be asked to join one of those clubs either. Not that we wanted to. The clubs were a stupid idea, with all their dumb secrets and hazing crap. They’d been around at Grace Hall from like the 1920s up through the 1980s, when some freshman kid pledging the all-boys club tried to go train surfing drunk and got his head cut off. After that the school banned the clubs.

  Then a couple of years ago someone started bringing the clubs back. Woodhouse, the new headmaster, went all schizoid at first, saying he was going to expel people and whatnot. Then it was, like, radio silence. Rumor was that some of the parents of kids in the clubs had paid him to butt out because they were worried about their kids’ college apps.

  But Sylvia and I had made a pact that we’d never join a club anyway, at least not unless we were both invited and even then probably not. We had other things. Sylvia had her boyfriends, and I had my books and my new friend Ben. But mostly we’d had each other. It had always been that way. We might have seemed like oddball friends to some people—me the virginy, brainy jock and Sylvia the slutty fashion queen—but we were alike in ways that mattered, especially when you were like five, which was when we started out being BFFs. We became friends in kindergarten, mostly because we’d both hated playing dress up. I’d thought that kind of girly thing was dumb in general. Sylvia had hated dress up because the clothes on offer were always shitty. That was us. We always ended up in the same place, just for different reasons. Plus, we had history. A lot of it.

  Up on the corner, Sylvia tugged at the neck of her sweater, pretended to look at the watch she wasn’t wearing, and waved for me to hurry. She was probably sweating to death in that stupid sweater. But Sylvia would have gotten totally hurt if I’d pointed out that she looked kind of silly wearing it in that heat. Then she’d say something mean. Sylvia was like a crab that way: if you poked her wrong, she’d snap your finger right off.

  Besides, Sylvia did look good. She might not have been so practical, but she was always stylish. Sylvia read British Vogue and fashion blogs like Style Rookie and dreamed of turning into the next fifteen-year-old fashion phenom. Ick—that was what I thought, in general, about the whole stupid fashion thing. But Sylvia thought the books I read for fun were pretentious, and she wasn’t totally wrong. All in all, it was safer to keep my mouth shut in my own glass house.

  I tried to pick up the pace before Sylvia had an aneurysm, but between my field hockey bag and my backpack and the fact that my legs were starting to sweat under my own skinny jeans, it was hard to move very fast.

  “Jesus, you’re slow,” Sylvia said when I finally made it to her.

  “It’s these jeans,” I said, pinching at the sticky fabric. “Which—do I have to remind you—were your idea.”

  Sylvia smiled. “They make you slow as all get out, but they do look good.” Then she frowned, pointing at my T-shirt. “But what’s up with that gross top? That’s not what I said to wear with them.”

  “The shirt didn’t fit right.” That was a lie. I hadn’t even tried it on. When Sylvia had left it for me, I’d known there was no way I’d be caught dead in it. “It had these, like, puffy shoulders that made me look, I don’t know, like—”

  “Like a girl?” Sylvia crossed her arms.

 
; “I was going to say like a doily.”

  “Your problem is you confuse feminist with frumpy. Have you ever seen pictures of Betty Friedan? She was actually kind of fabulous.”

  “How do you even know who Betty Friedan is?”

  “I’m not an idiot.” Sylvia rolled her eyes as she started toward school. “I just like my social activism with a little style.”

  Sylvia readjusted her books on her narrow hip. They were tied together with their usual satiny brown ribbon. On style principles, Sylvia refused to carry any kind of book bag. Secretly, I think she’d been hoping to start a trend. She’d tried to launch a bunch of different ones. So far, none had taken off. But nobody at Grace Hall made fun of any of Sylvia’s weirdo fashion statements either—not her crazy hats or huge sunglasses or purses covered in Skittles—which was like a victory, you know, full stop. I might have been a better student, and a better athlete. But Sylvia had always been way better at being herself.

  When we turned onto Prospect Park West, the sidewalk was jammed. It was like that every morning on the way to school. And every morning beating your way through it totally sucked ass. There were stressed-out, lower-school parents ramming their strollers into your ankles or huffing in your ears as they dragged their little kids to school. There were middle-school kids on scooters crashing into you, and all of the high-school cliques screaming at one another up and down the block, most of it swears. As if that could turn them from rich prep-school kids into the Brooklyn thugs they wanted to be.

  That stretch of Prospect Park West leading up to the school’s main doors was where a lot of the real Upper School drama played out. People broke up with each other, got into fights, made plans to hook up. And whenever something real bad happened—like when George McDonnell gave some first-grade girl a bloody nose when he accidentally clocked her with his backpack while chasing some other idiot down the sidewalk—Mrs. Pearl would jump on the PA system first thing, sounding like she’d been dying for an excuse to ream everybody out.

  “Misbehavior en route to school is equivalent to misbehavior on school grounds,” she’d screech, like that was going to make us all listen more. “Once you leave your parents’ guardianship you are deemed under the supervision of Grace Hall. Fighting will not be tolerated, nor will horseplay involving rough bodily contact. Punishments will be imposed for such conduct in accordance with the Grace Hall Student Code of Conduct.”

  I wasn’t any expert, but that didn’t even sound constitutional. The first time I heard Mrs. Pearl say it, I’d tried to stay awake late enough to ask my mom her professional opinion, but I’d fallen asleep waiting for her to get home.

  “Ouch,” I yelped when we were still a block away from school. I grabbed the back of my head where something had whacked into me.

  When I looked up, Carter Rose was smiling back at me. He pointed a finger in my direction, then darted off toward the school. This was how the sophomore boys flirted: by hitting you on the head.

  “Did Carter seriously just smack me on the back of the head?” I asked, my ears still ringing.

  “He likes you.” Sylvia grinned, as we watched him dive into the mess of people slowing down in front of us. “You should give him a chance. He’s supercute and he’s a lacrosse player. You guys have so much in common.”

  “I play field hockey. They are two totally different sports. You know that, right?” I asked, kind of annoyed. Sylvia was always pushing me toward guys, any guy. “Besides, Carter’s like a big hyper dog. No thanks.”

  “Yes, but he is a cute hyper dog.”

  With his lanky body, shaggy blond hair, and high cheekbones, Carter was widely crushed upon. But not by me. I wasn’t sure yet what my type was, but it wasn’t him.

  “Yeah, no thanks,” I muttered. “When I need a matchmaker, I’ll let you know.”

  “Suit yourself.” Sylvia shrugged as the school’s front steps came into view, the crowd clogged up into a big pile around them.

  The security guard, Will, was standing at the top, waving everyone inside with his big puffy hands. As we slowed to a stop on the edge of the pack, Sylvia grabbed my arm hard, jerking me toward the bushes.

  “Ouch, Sylvia. What are you doing?”

  “Sorry,” she said. Her voice was wired all of a sudden, and her eyes were jumping around like she wanted to be sure no one was listening. “I was going to keep this a secret so I didn’t jinx it, but I can’t stand it anymore. I have to tell you.”

  “Tell me what?” I had to give Sylvia credit, it was a good opening. Then again, I knew not to get my hopes up. Sylvia could find crazy high drama in the way somebody stopped to tie his shoes.

  “I said hi to him yesterday”—she leaned in even closer—“and you are not going to believe what happened!”

  “Him who?” I asked. I could tell I was supposed to know. But then I got suspicious. Sylvia was acting like such a whack job all of a sudden. The last time she’d been that way it had been for a bad reason. “You didn’t take one of your mom’s Ativans again, did you, Sylvia? You shouldn’t go into school if—”

  “I didn’t take anything!” Sylvia yelled so loud a bunch of people, mostly moms, turned to look at us.

  “Whatever—sorry,” I mumbled. I folded my arms out of reach so she couldn’t manhandle me again. “I was just trying to help.”

  “I don’t need your help, okay?” she said. “I have a mom, remember?”

  “Okay, ouch.”

  That was Sylvia. She had no filter. She said really mean stuff: about my MIA dad, my mom not being home. Little Orphan Amelia, she’d even called me once. She did it when she felt like you’d hurt her feelings first. It wasn’t the best part of her. And sometimes I yelled at her about it. But I tried to overlook the stuff she said about my mom because I actually think she was jealous. My mom was all I had, and she wasn’t home a lot, but the time we had together was awesome, and when my mom wasn’t there, I knew she wished she was. We fought sometimes about stupid stuff, but I always knew she loved me. Really knew it. Sylvia’s mom, Julia, seemed great to me, but Sylvia kind of hated her. I never really understood why.

  “I was just trying to tell you something that happened.” Sylvia was all sour now. “It was important to me, but if you don’t care—”

  “I care,” I said, swallowing the dig about my mom. Because Sylvia couldn’t help being Sylvia. “Come on, tell me. I’m totally listening now.”

  Sylvia looked around with a crunched-up face for a minute more, as if there was any chance she wouldn’t tell me her secret. Who else was she going to tell?

  “Okay, fine,” Sylvia said finally, her face bouncing back to a mischievous grin. “Ian Greene,” she breathed. “I finally said hi to him yesterday, and guess what happened?”

  Sylvia was more obsessed with Ian Greene than she had ever been with any guy, ever. And that was saying a lot.

  The first time we’d both seen him was the week before school started. We’d been lying side by side on my bed, my laptop resting on our knees as we went through the new Grace Hall “meet book,” which had just been posted online. Ian Greene was new. And with his perfectly imperfect hair and dark, moody eyes, he was hot, no question. Even I could see that. Plus, it said HAMPSTEAD HEATH, UK, under his name, which meant he was also going to have an accent. Hampstead Heath sounded fancy, too. Noble even. For all we knew, Ian Greene might be royalty.

  “Don’t be stupid,” Sylvia had said when I’d suggested as much. She’d been to England several times. “Hampstead Heath is like the Brooklyn of London, except there they all live in these gazillion-dollar minimansions.” Then she’d turned to me and smiled. “But you never know, he could be, like, a count or something.”

  Not surprisingly, Sylvia wasn’t the only person jacked up about Ian Greene’s arrival. Half the girls in the Grace Hall Upper School had their sights set on him before the first day of classes. And in person, even I had to admit he was a lot of a lot. He had a natural, bad-boy charisma and a quick, lopsided grin that made him hard
to look away from. He played acoustic guitar and wrote music, too, but his real talent lay in photography, as did his father’s, whose photographs were supposedly hanging in MoMA. The Greene family had moved to Brooklyn so that Ian’s mother could take over as chief curator of the Brooklyn Museum.

  Ian hadn’t wasted any time taking advantage of all the female attention either. But somehow, the very unassuming way he’d gone about sleeping with every girl who came his way made the whole thing seem sort of civilized.

  “Aren’t you even going to ask me?” Sylvia demanded, glancing in the direction of the Grace Hall steps.

  “Ask you what?” I’d completely lost track of what we’d been talking about.

  “What happened when I said hi to Ian,” Sylvia snorted, stamping her foot.

  “Oh yeah, totally. What happened?”

  She squinted at me for a second. “He came over to my house.” She gushed finally. “And . . .” Sylvia looked around again, but the crowd on the sidewalk was thinning as most kids—the nonlate ones—had streamed inside. Her eyes got wide as she put a hand to her lips. “And we totally kissed.”

  “Really?” I asked, trying to sound excited. But really I was kind of aggravated. I didn’t even know why. “That’s amazing!”

  Because I had to give it to Sylvia. A lot of times she exaggerated, but this was big. Ian Greene had his choice of girls, but he’d picked Sylvia, at least for one afternoon and one kiss. It wasn’t actually that much of a surprise that she’d snagged his attention. Boys had always loved Sylvia. She was pretty and curvy in just the right way, but lots of girls at Grace Hall were. Sylvia had something more than that. She had a wildness tucked inside her that made her seem fun and unpredictable and just a little tiny bit dangerous. Of course, it was also the exact same thing that eventually ended up driving the boys away. After all, there’s a fine line between wild and full-on whack job.

  So if getting with Ian was serious news, why was I so annoyed? Oh my God, was I jealous? Not jealous that Sylvia had kissed Ian Greene, though. It was more like I was jealous that she had wanted to kiss him and she had. I couldn’t imagine feeling that way about someone, much less acting normal enough to pull it off.