Reconstructing Amelia

by Kimberly McCreight

  Kate’s phone vibrated again then, rattling loudly against her desk. A second message. Kate sucked in some air as she leaned tentatively to look at it.

  Amelia didn’t jump. You know it and I know it.

  Kate clamped a hand over her mouth and tried not to cry.

  “Whoa, what’s the matter?” Jeremy asked, stepping inside the office.

  He headed straight for her desk and picked up the phone. His brow was wrinkled as he looked down at the message.

  “Who sent this?”

  Getting the messages was bad enough. But Jeremy standing there, looking at Kate as if she was some kind of maimed animal? It was entirely too much.

  “I have no idea,” Kate said, trying to swallow back her rising tears. “I got another one a couple of minutes ago. Someone trying to get their kicks, I guess.”

  “Kicks? That doesn’t make any sense,” Jeremy said skeptically. “You don’t think there could be any truth to it, do you?”

  “Truth? No, I don’t think so. The police—” Kate shook her head. Despite her efforts, tears had made their way into her eyes. She looked down at her desk, hoping no one would notice. The worst part was that its being an actual, legitimate message hadn’t even really occurred to her. Kate had assumed that it was just someone harassing her. “But I guess . . . I honestly don’t know.”

  “Well, it’s a blocked number,” Jeremy said, looking back down at Kate’s phone. “At a minimum, we should find out who sent it.” He turned and held the phone out to Beatrice. “Would you mind taking Kate’s phone to Duncan in IT? I’m sure he can help us get a number for the person who sent it.”

  “Good idea,” Beatrice said, snatching the phone from Jeremy and striding out the door. “Blocked number, my ass.”

  Jeremy watched Beatrice leave, then looked down at the floor. Kate felt as if he was looking for a way to leave gracefully.

  “Thanks for that. But I don’t want to hold you up, dealing with this. I’m sure it’s nothing, and anyway, aren’t you going to be late for court?” she asked, trying to let him off the hook. “Daniel told me about the subpoena getting quashed. Victor must be happy.”

  “Victor, happy? I’m not sure I’d go that far,” Jeremy said finally, looking up at Kate. The morning sun coming in the windows behind her had turned his eyes a sad, watery blue. “For the record, I agreed with you about the Motion to Quash being pointless. You were giving your client sound advice. I thought pursuing it might even open us up to sanctions. But Daniel—” Jeremy shook his head and clenched his jaw. “You know how he is, like some kind of little yapping dog. He wore me down. But I said he’d have to pay any sanctions out of his own pocket. Looking forward to that possibility might have been the real reason I gave the go-ahead. That and we moved into the new apartment that same week. Exhaustion had left me vulnerable.”

  Jeremy had never liked Daniel, starting back when he was a summer associate in the same class as Kate, buzzing around Jeremy like an insistent fly. Bald-faced ambition was not a quality Jeremy tolerated, probably because he was so very good at camouflaging his own. But his disdain of Daniel did seem to be about something more. What, Kate did not allow herself to contemplate too deeply. She could have been imagining it anyway. In any case, Daniel wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Jeremy’s personal opinions notwithstanding, Daniel was an exceptional lawyer, one of the best in the firm. And Jeremy liked winning more than he disliked Daniel.

  “It seems to have turned out all right,” Kate said.

  “The fact that it turned out okay doesn’t mean that challenging the subpoena was the prudent course. Good luck is not the same thing as wise counsel. And by the way, we’re going to lose today on appeal, no question. Why do you think I have Daniel arguing the second half of the brief?” Jeremy smiled, looking very pleased with himself. Then his face changed, turned serious again. “Listen, it may not be my place here even to ask—actually, it definitely isn’t. But with this message and everything, are you sure Amelia’s death was a suicide? I know they talked about that ‘note’ she supposedly left on that wall near where she fell. But it was really just one word, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah: ‘sorry.’ That was it. I kept telling the police that Amelia took writing and words so seriously. That if she’d left a suicide note, it would have been epic.” Kate shrugged, then shook her head. “But maybe I’m just deluding myself. The police certainly thought I was.”

  “They confirmed that it’s her handwriting?” Jeremy asked.

  Kate blinked at him. Such a simple, simple question. Why hadn’t she thought about getting the handwriting analyzed? She’d been so overwhelmed, upset, vulnerable. Alone. And Detective Molina had acted as if there was something wrong with her whenever she’d asked one too many questions. It was bad enough being the mother of a child who had killed herself. Being regarded as a mother in denial was just unbearable.

  “God, I am so stupid,” Kate breathed. “I never questioned it when they said it was Amelia’s. You’re right. I should have had it analyzed myself.”

  “Taking the police at their word is reasonable, not stupid,” Jeremy said with his usual ease. “But now, with this text, maybe it’s time to take a closer look . . . at everything.”

  “I think maybe I’ve been afraid this whole time to question too much. Maybe I’m afraid of what I might find. I don’t know.”

  “Amelia was a good kid,” Jeremy said. “And you were a good mother. Nothing you find is going to change that.”

  Kate smiled sadly, tears filling her eyes again. Jeremy always knew the perfect thing to say, to everyone, about everything. He couldn’t help himself.

  “Listen, I know the police commissioner. Well, ‘know’ might be a stretch, but we’re both on the board of the Boys and Girls Club. Let me make a few calls, see if maybe we can get that handwriting analyzed. We’ll start there and see where it leads.”

  Kate nodded. There was a part of her that was worried about letting Jeremy do this. Of letting him get too involved, especially when she so desperately wanted him to.

  “That would be great, thank you,” she said, feeling as if she was betraying someone. She wasn’t sure whom. “It’s . . . I’ve been . . . thank you.”

  Jeremy turned back at the door.

  “Please.” He smiled, but with a tinge of melancholy. “It’s the least I can do.”

  Amelia

  SEPTEMBER 14, 12:16 PM

  AMELIA

  shld I go?

  BEN

  go where?

  AMELIA

  to the thing in the park; you know, birds of a feather flock together

  BEN

  Idk come alone? snds like a trap to me

  AMELIA

  but I’m curious

  BEN

  so was the cat

  AMELIA

  good point

  BEN

  your school is filled with crazies

  AMELIA

  u r freaking me out

  BEN

  good. Scared is safer.

  AMELIA

  grt. Thx.

  BEN

  have Sylvia go w/ u

  AMELIA

  she wasn’t invited

  BEN

  oh my

  AMELIA

  yup. oh my

  BEN

  she will b mad

  AMELIA

  yup

  BEN

  yikes and b careful.

  AMELIA

  I will . . . love u!

  BEN

  luv u 2; text me aftr. byeee

  facebook

  SEPTEMBER 14

  Amelia Baron

  is flirting with disaster

  Carter Rose that’s hot

  Sylvia Golde flirting? Sorry, but I’m gonna have to call bullshit on that one

  Carter Rose you kiss your momma with that mouth

  Sylvia Golde f-off carter

  Amelia

  SEPTEMBER 14

  When I poked my head out from the littl
e path that ended at the Picnic House in Prospect Park, I could see them in a big pack up by the edge of a clump of trees. At least I figured it was them, and I was actually kind of surprised they were there. I’d been pretty sure that I’d go to the trouble of lying to Sylvia about where I was going and haul my butt all the way to the park, only to find nobody anywhere. Like it would all be one big joke. But there they were, all girls, it looked like, hanging out under the old, crooked trees, waiting.

  The Magpies. They had to be.

  They’d brought four of the clubs back—the Maggies were all girls, Wolf’s Gate was all boys, and Devonkill and the Tudors were coed. They were all crazy about keeping who was in them and what they did a big secret. But people talked in the hallways and on Facebook, and there was stuff about them on gRaCeFULLY, too. Word was that the Maggies had contests about who gave the most blow jobs, and that boys from Wolf’s Gate had broken into the school and stolen iPads. But people were careful about what they said. Nobody wanted to get on the clubs’ bad sides. There were rumors about what happened then, too.

  Half of it was probably true. But half was plenty. Mostly, the clubs supposedly did pretty much what you’d expect—hung out, had parties and sex, and decided who could and who couldn’t be in them. Actually, it seemed like they spent most of their time doing that. Wolf’s Gate and the Maggies were Grace Hall’s version of football players and cheerleaders—the coolest kids. Kids in Devonkill and the Tudors were more like second-tier cool.

  It wasn’t like I’d been looking for an invite into one of the clubs. The people in them were basically sheep, at least most of them, and Sylvia and I had our pact about not joining. Unless and until we changed our minds together, and then only if we were both invited. Because any club that didn’t want the both of us wasn’t a club either of us wanted to be part of. And my being curious and showing up didn’t change that.

  I never thought in a million years I’d get tapped anyway—if that was even what was going on. And definitely not by the Maggies. Which was another reason I didn’t feel so bad about going to check out the whole thing. I was still pretty sure it was all some messed-up joke. But I had to know. It wasn’t like I cared about being cool, but then again I’d never had the chance to be cool before. Also, it felt kind of good getting picked for something that wouldn’t have anything to do with how smart I was or how fast I could run. If the Maggies wanted me, it would just be for me being me.

  Besides, it wasn’t like Sylvia brought me along every time she got a new boyfriend either, and I didn’t blame her for that. But maybe I didn’t have to sit around and do nothing all by myself until she got dumped this time. Because Sylvia always got dumped, eventually. And I was always there, picking up the pieces.

  I squinted into the crazy-bright sun as I turned at the Picnic House, then pushed my hands deep into my pockets. They were shaking. I didn’t know why. It wasn’t like I was that nervous, or whatever.

  When I was a little closer, I could finally make out what looked like twenty or so girls—only girls as I’d thought—leaning or squatting in the shadows under a clump of trees. They were still too far away for me to make out any of their faces, but I saw one point in my direction. A few others turned to look. Someone raised a hand. It wasn’t so much a wave as, like, a signal.

  They were definitely waiting for me. The Magpies: beautiful, vicious birds known for pecking people’s eyes out.

  I tried not to speed up. I didn’t want to look like I was in any hurry to do what they wanted me to do. No, I was laid back and cool and not stressed about the whole thing. Because it was one thing to let the Maggies try to play me. It was another for me to run over there so they could do it.

  When I was about halfway there, I saw two other girls coming from the opposite direction. It was a relief—and kind of a letdown—to see that the whole mess wasn’t just for me. On the upside, if it was a joke, at least it wouldn’t be only me that the Magpies were playing it on.

  I was almost there, but the sun was still so bright that I couldn’t make out much of who it was under the trees, except that there were five people standing. One of them I recognized from her huge head of long reddish curls. In a school full of blend-in people, it was wild, stand-out hair, and it belonged to Dylan Crosby—beautiful, popular, junior. Dylan was the kind of girl you’d expect to be a Magpie, except she was so ultracool that she was like above the cool kids. An actress who’d had the lead in almost every Grace Hall play I could remember, Dylan didn’t seem to care what anyone thought, which, of course, made everyone want to be her best friend. It was exactly the way that Sylvia and I thought of ourselves. Except when we colored outside the lines, no one tried to follow.

  Dylan had never had a boyfriend at Grace Hall. And a girl like her was too pretty not to. Half the school thought she was frigid; the other half figured she must have some secret boyfriend somewhere—someone older, maybe even married. Or famous. For a while there was even a piece on gRaCeFULLY called Dylanwatch—everyone holding her breath to see whom she’d finally decide to give the green light to. But the column fizzled when no dirt on Dylan ever got dug up. There were even some rumors for a while that Dylan was still a virgin—which I took as like a personal endorsement. But then people seemed to decide that that was too stupid even to joke about.

  Finally, I hit some shade on the path, and I could make out the faces of the four other girls who were standing: Zadie, Bethany, Rachel, and Heather. Along with Dylan, the five of them looked like the ones who were in charge. It made sense. They were the main crew of popular senior girls, except for Dylan, who’d made the cut even though she was a junior. That was probably because she was Zadie’s best friend—a match that was almost as weird as Sylvia and me. Those five girls were the ones all the boys at Grace Hall wanted to sleep with and all the girls wanted to be. They were always together, too, even if it didn’t seem like they necessarily liked one another very much.

  I knew Rachel and Heather from the field hockey team. They were cocaptains. Heather was an old-school, upper-crust preppy with Mayflower looks and Rockefeller money. She spent summers in Nantucket and winter break at horse shows in West Palm Beach. The weirdest part about her was that she lived in Brooklyn and not on the Upper East Side. Rachel was from Paris and swore in French, which pretty much sealed her coolness. They both had thick, straight blond hair—Heather’s chin length, Rachel’s much longer—and could have passed for twins. Heather and Rachel were both really bitchy to all the other players on the field hockey team. So far, they’d mostly left me alone. It helped that, even as a freshman, I’d been twice the player they would ever be.

  I didn’t know Bethany personally, but I knew she was the group’s comic relief. She made sure everyone at school knew that. Ballsy and a little on the heavy side, she got suspended all the time for these big school pranks. She had a vicious sense of humor, too. She made kids cry all the time. That was probably part of how she got in with the Magpies: they were too afraid to keep her out. Rumor was that she was also willing to sleep with just about anyone, anywhere, too. In the Grace Hall world of emaciated skeletons, that could have helped make up for her extra poundage.

  And everyone knew Zadie. Dylan’s best friend and Grace Hall’s wildest child. Pale and wiry, Zadie had short, shaggy black hair that covered her bright blue eyes and a nose ring. She also had a big stripe of white hair on one side of her head, almost like a skunk. I wasn’t the only person who wondered if she’d put it there on purpose. I also wasn’t the only person way too afraid to ask. Zadie was always dressed in skinny jeans and a rumpled army jacket that was more couture than standard issue. She even had a little tattoo, on her forearm: CAVEAT EMPTOR. Word was that Zadie’s parents were totally lax—I mean, she was seventeen and had a tattoo—and that they even let her drink at home and went clubbing downtown with her sometimes. I was most surprised and most unpsyched to see Zadie there. I would have thought some dumb high-school club would have been way beneath her.

  When I stopped walking,
I could finally see the faces of the two girls coming up the opposite hill: Charlie Kugler and Tempest Bain. They were sophomores, too, and looked as nervous as I felt. Neither of them was exactly mainstream popular either. Tempest, a ballet dancer, was new to school. She was a tall reed of muscle, with purplish streaks in her jet-black hair. Charlie was a teeny girl with cute, droopy eyes, baggy clothes, and, rumor had it, a $50 million trust fund, which included an original Warhol hanging in her bedroom.

  Charlie and Tempest and I looked at one another with the same confused, kind-of-spooked expression, shrugging as we met in front of the pack sunk in the trees. It seemed like the only thing the three of us could possibly have in common was that we’d all been curious enough—or dumb enough—to show up.

  “Finally, for fuck’s sake,” Zadie said, clapping her hands together. She looked down at her big black watch. “You guys better not fucking be late again.”

  When I looked down at my own watch, it was 3:02, two minutes past our appointed meeting time.

  “What is this anyway?” Tempest shot back, working her head like she couldn’t have cared less who Zadie and her friends were, only that they were wasting her time. “Why don’t you people start by telling me what the hell it is I’m supposedly late for.”

  Zadie fluttered her eyes shut, then took a deep satisfied breath like she was inhaling something delightful.

  “See,” she said, looking back over her shoulder at the other girls. “What did I tell you? A badass ballerina. How fucking great is that?”

  “What are you talking about, badass baller—”

  “Tsst.” Zadie sliced an index finger in front of Tempest’s nose. “Shut the fuck up. I like you, but not that much.”

  My heart was beating hard. I didn’t belong there. I was not a badass anything. The whole thing was just . . . it wasn’t me. I wanted to run and hide back in my safe little world with Sylvia. So what if lately it seemed like she treated me well only when a guy dumped her? That was okay. We’d been friends for a long time. She’d get back to being the friend she used to be, sooner or later. And I had Ben now. I didn’t need anyone else.