Reconstructing Amelia (22 page)

I figured I should at least make an effort to look halfway decent. Dylan would be seeing the pictures.

“Shall we check out our marching orders first?”

“Oh right, sure. Do the honors.”

Ian ripped open the envelope. “Check out
Birds of a Feather
blog,” he read. “Take same kind of pictures.” He looked up at me, forehead creased. “A treasure hunt. Lovely. Got a computer?”

I led Ian upstairs to my bedroom, which was a lot messier than I’d remembered leaving it. I hoped it hadn’t been that gross when Dylan was over the night before. I stepped over a pile of clothes and sat down at my computer and started combing through the many search results for a
Birds of a Feather
blog. Finally, I clicked on one and a picture of Heather popped up next to the name Honey Baxter. It was just a shot of her face. There was a small paragraph next to the photo, which included her home city (New York), her age (a lie that she was eighteen), and one sentence about her “likes” (chocolate) and “dislikes” (losers).

And then I clicked on the photo, which led me to several more shots. In the first, Heather was in a lace push-up bra and matching panties, bent over, legs spread. The next was her leaning in, hands on her boobs and another with a finger hooked in her mouth. There were twelve pictures, all of them pretty much the same: porn.

“Holy crap,” I said.

“Yes, crap indeed,” Ian said, his eyes wide.

Once I’d found my way back to the blog’s home page, I could see that there was a page of photos for every girl in the Maggies, with pretty much the same kinds of pictures. They’d each been “liked” by hundreds, sometimes thousands of people. Zadie had the most “likes.” I clicked on one picture of her, and several others flashed up on the screen. They were especially flattering, I had to give her credit for that. Black-and-white, with shadowy, dramatic lighting, they were almost artistic. And Zadie looked to be completely naked in each one, covered only by her hands, a scarf, a shadow.

“What’s the point of all this?” Ian asked.

At least he hadn’t seemed particularly interested in the photos of Zadie. I took it as a sign, proof even, that nothing had happened between them.

“I have no idea,” I said. “I didn’t know they were doing . . . well, nothing like this.”

“What’ll they do to you?”

“What do you mean?”

“When you say no?” he asked, then his brow furrowed even deeper. “Because you cannot possibly be contemplating participating in this nonsense.”

“No. I mean, I don’t think so.”

“You don’t
think
so? I’d assume you’d be uncomfortable with this kind of thing. I mean, given your situation.”

“Situation?”

“Just that you’re a . . .” He looked uncomfortable. “I don’t know, more modest than some of these other girls. Quite honestly, I mean that as a compliment.”

Sylvia had told Ian Greene I was a virgin. Ugh, it was beyond humiliating. Not to mention, not even true anymore.

I turned away from Ian and looked back at the computer screen. I held my breath as I clicked on Dylan’s profile. She was beautiful in the shots, of course. But there was something else, too, that made them stand out. A sadness, which made them hard to look at, and impossible to turn away from. She didn’t want to be playing the game any more than I did. It was Zadie who’d made her do it.

“You headed back to school?” Ian asked. He was gathering up his stuff. “Personally, I haven’t worked out how to get back in without anyone noticing. Perhaps you could lend a hand.”

As he moved toward the door with his big camera in his hand, I felt something slipping through my fingers.
Uptight, uptight Crazy Eyes
. Even if Zadie didn’t throw me out of the Maggies—a big if—Dylan might feel judged if I didn’t post my pictures, too. What if she didn’t want to be with me anymore because of it?

“Wait,” I said when Ian was almost at my bedroom door. He paused but didn’t turn around. “I want to do it.”

He turned around slowly.

“You don’t need these girls, Amelia,” he said quietly. He looked disappointed. “Sylvia is right. It’s all bollocks, this rubbish with the clubs.”

I shrugged. “I’m not doing it for them.”

“And what about Sylvia?” he asked. “I don’t expect she’d be chuffed about me seeing her best pal in her knickers.”

“Hmm, yeah,” I said, considering. He was, of course, right. “She already thinks you’re cheating on her, too. You know that, right?”

“Yes.” Ian Greene nodded, holding my stare. “I know.”

Not:
No way!
or
Isn’t that absurd!
Just:
I know
. He might as well have told me whom he was sleeping with. But it wasn’t Zadie. I felt sure of that after seeing his uninterest in her photos, unless he was uninterested because he’d already seen the real thing. But Ian Greene had to have better taste than that. Zadie was so obvious.

Why, oh why, had I even said that to him? It was bad enough that I’d known Ian was in Wolf’s Gate, now I knew something about him—at least maybe—that I
really
did not want to know. I’d just been so sure he wasn’t actually cheating on Sylvia that it had seemed such a harmless thing to say. I’d figured he and I would have a good laugh about how silly Sylvia was. And that would be that. I’d never thought in a million years that he’d basically confirm it.

It was one more reason to call off the whole nonsense with the pictures. Except with each passing minute, I felt more like I couldn’t. None of the reasons I needed to do it had changed.

“Sylvia won’t care about you taking the pictures,” I said. My biggest lie yet. She would definitely care if she found out. I was just banking on the fact that she never would. “I’m gay, Ian. I don’t even like guys.”

Gay. I felt a little light-headed. It was the first time I’d said it out loud, to anyone. Even Dylan and I—we were doing what we were doing, but we didn’t talk about it. Not that way.

“Oh,” Ian pulled his head back a little, then smiled kind of awkwardly. “Right. I mean, good. Great for you.”

And there it was, out in the world. I’d told someone—Ian Greene no less—and the world had not fallen apart. My head had not exploded, and Ian had not disappeared in a puff of smoke. It was amazing. I felt like I could fly.

“Sylvia doesn’t know yet, so please don’t tell her.” Who knows, maybe she really wouldn’t care about the pictures once she knew I was gay. It was possible. “I’m planning to tell her myself as soon as I find the right time.”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, of course.”

“Please, Ian, I need to do this,” I said, trying to push Sylvia as far out of my head as I could. Because not only was I doing this thing with Sylvia’s boyfriend, I was also asking him to lie to her about it. But if the situation were reversed, Sylvia probably would have done the same to me. She would do anything she had to, to keep a boy she really cared about. That didn’t make it right, but it did make it feel a little less wrong. “And I can’t without your help.”

Ian took a deep breath and exhaled with puffed-up cheeks, then shook his head as he stared at the carpet. Apparently, even Ian the philanderer had a line he didn’t much want to cross.

“Okay,” he said finally. Not that he looked happy about it. “But you owe me.”

Amelia

OCTOBER 18, 12:02 AM

AMELIA

hi! how r U?!

BEN

that’s how u r going 2 play it? . . .

AMELIA

u r mad. What did I do?

BEN

nothing

AMELIA

is this the silent tretmnt?

BEN

listen, you’re busy. I get that. You have a girlfriend now. But no one likes to be dumped by the side of the rd

AMELIA

u r right, sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. Friends again?

BEN

okay. Friends always

OCTOBER 18, 12:16 AM

AMELIA

forgot to ask. What about that kid on soccer team?

BEN

thx for asking. turns out he has a girlfriend at “boarding school.”

AMELIA

closet case?

BEN

definitely; you tell Sylvia yet?

AMELIA

told her I needed to talk, but then she ditched me 4 Ian.

BEN

you tell your mom?

AMELIA

not yet; she wasn’t home till late again

BEN

you’ve got 2 tell somebody; you’ll feel better if u do

AMELIA

when am I going to see u? I thought you were coming to NYC? I really really need to see you soon! we have to meet! if we don’t, I’m going to start to wonder if u r avoiding me on purpose ;(

BEN

still working on it; u’ll be 1st to know; xoxo

AMELIA

xoxoxo

Kate

JULY 19, 1997

When I woke up this morning, I had myself convinced I’d dreamed the whole thing. That I’d made it up. Because there was no way I’d done a thing like that. Not me.

But it was me. This me I hate. So I called in sick to the office and stayed in bed all day. I may never go back to work. They can give me a cold offer or no offer. I don’t even care anymore.

I deserve to be unemployed for the rest of my life.

JULY 22, 1997

To:
Kate Baron

From:
Daniel Moore

Subject:
?

Where are you? You missed an awesome summer associate event last night, and you know I think most of them are crap. It was an after-hours, private tour of the New York Stock Exchange. Seriously badass. Then dinner at Cipriani. I’m telling you, Kate, it was not the one to miss.

Feel better,

D

Kate

NOVEMBER 28

Through her living room windows, Kate watched the sun rise, turning the world a dull gray, then a muted pink. She’d stayed up all night. For a long time after Seth left, she sat huddled on her couch staring at her phone, wedged into the cushion of the armchair where she’d thrown it after he’d read aloud that last awful text message to her.

By dawn, Kate had finally made her way through almost all of the files that Duncan had sent her, except Amelia’s text messages, which she’d been putting off until the end. Kate had been planning to read the texts when she felt ready. Until finally, she realized, she never would be.

Kate first wanted to see the texts Amelia had received about her dad. The fact that they were both getting anonymous texts about whom Kate had slept with didn’t seem like a coincidence. But finding those particular messages was easier said than done. The Unknown and Blocked Number sections of Amelia’s texts were huge. It took twenty minutes of paging through before Kate finally found what she was looking for.

Your mommy was a home wrecker. And your daddy is a whore.

My God. Sylvia hadn’t said anything that prepared her for something that awful. What Amelia must have felt when reading that Kate could only imagine. Shame, surely. Shame that wasn’t even rightfully hers.

Kate paged through more of the Blocked Number and Unknown messages, trying to shake the awful empty burn in her stomach. They were a hodgepodge of junk texts, reminders from school, ordinary messages from friends who had blocked numbers. There were some weird references to Maggie, usually with a number, but there was no Maggie in Amelia’s contact list. Kate couldn’t remember Amelia ever mentioning one either. Eventually, reading so many meaningless messages, Kate’s eyes began to glaze over. She’d hardly made a dent in the Blocked Number messages, but she needed a break.

Kate turned instead to the texts to and from Ben. There were a lot of those, too, and Kate soon found herself haphazardly picking her way through them—reading some, skimming others, skipping a handful altogether. This less-than-methodical way of reviewing Amelia’s texts was bound to leave things overlooked. Maybe a small part of Kate wanted it that way. She was still afraid to know everything, at least all at once. There were also so many texts it would have taken her days to read through each and every one; she had no choice but to pick and choose.

At least the messages between Amelia and Ben were sweet and warm and supportive. Reading them, Kate couldn’t help but fall a little bit in love with this boy named Ben, whoever he was. The strangeness in how Amelia had met him soon seemed to matter much less than the fact that he had been such a genuinely good friend to her. Even compared to Sylvia. Because while it was obvious that the girls had loved each other, their relationship had tilted hard in favor of Sylvia. With Ben, it seemed that Amelia had shared more secrets, especially about the boy named Dylan whom Amelia liked or might like. It was a relief, too, the way Amelia talked about Dylan—nervous and a little embarrassed, giddy. Young. Not at all like some hardened girl who was hawking her wares on the Internet.

Kate moved on from Ben’s texts to read some of those between Amelia and the boy named Dylan, trying to follow the crooked trail of her daughter’s life. Of course, none of it was as clearly spelled out as Kate had hoped. Actually, it wasn’t spelled out at all. Including the many references in Dylan’s texts to Maggie #1, Maggie #2, and so on. They were code names, Kate had figured out, though she didn’t know to whom they were referring or why they were being used. What Kate was sure of was that there had been something romantic between Dylan and Amelia, how serious it was wasn’t clear. The two of them did make plans to meet at least once in the middle of a school day, which meant he could have been the boy who Kelsey had seen. It was possible: that was all Kate could say for sure. Of course, the more she looked into Amelia’s life, the more she was beginning to feel like anything was possible.

“I don’t want this to become the focus here,” Kate said, handing Lew her cell phone when he finally got to her house a couple of hours later. “But could you add this text to the others that your people are trying to trace? The messages seem to be getting more hostile. Also, I found one of the ones that Amelia got about her dad. It would be good to know who sent that one, too.”

Lew stared down at Kate’s phone, nodding slowly. Standing there in the living room, with a freshly showered Lew, Kate suddenly realized how strung out she must look: exhausted and unwashed and in the same clothes. She hadn’t even brushed her teeth yet.

“I’ll have the IT guys take a look,” Lew said. “I’ll also check in about their progress on the earlier texts. They’ve been moving a hell of a lot slower than I would like. But then our IT Department is pretty much a single guy with an old PC who works this stuff out for all the Brooklyn precincts. I’ll try to expedite the subpoena on the phone company, too.” He took a deep breath. “Now, given this new message, I think it’s time you tell me about Amelia’s dad.”

Lew—with his six grandkids, and the ailing wife he cared for so attentively—was such an upstanding person. He’d probably never slept with the wrong person. He certainly would have never lied to his own children. Kate stared at him for a moment, wondering whether she could wriggle away from her dirty little secret any longer. But she already knew that the answer was no. That it should have been no a long time ago.

“Okay,” Kate said finally, dropping down onto the couch and staring at her hands. Seth was the only other person who knew. Kate had known that she’d probably have to tell Lew eventually, but that wasn’t making it any easier. “His name is Daniel Moore,” she finally managed to say. “We went to law school together, and he works—or worked—at my firm. He’s not a very nice person.”

“Does he know about Amelia?”

“No,” Kate said. Her voice was high and tight. It was a liar’s voice. “I mean, yes. He knows about Amelia, but he doesn’t know that she was his.”

“He never suspected?”

“He must have, I guess. But he didn’t ask. To be honest, I would have lied if he had.” Kate couldn’t even bring herself to look at Lew. “We’d broken off whatever it was between us before I ever found out I was pregnant. Daniel kept his distance for a long time after Amelia was born. Maybe he was afraid I’d change my mind and come asking for something.”

“And you never told Amelia about him?” Lew asked.

Kate shook her head. “I know how it must seem. But Daniel’s not a good— We weren’t— He’s not the kind of man I wanted for Amelia’s father. So I guess I just made it so he wasn’t. I’m not proud of what I did, but we were never in a relationship. It was sex between two people who didn’t even really like each other. We couldn’t have a baby together. But
I
wanted her. And I didn’t want Daniel trying to convince me not to have her, which, knowing him, he definitely would have done. Then he got married a couple of years after Amelia was born, and it wouldn’t have been fair to tell him then. He’s divorced now, but it’s not like I can tell him about Amelia when she’s already dead.”

“Well, we can leave it alone for now, I suppose. But if it starts looking like Amelia had contact with him, we’re going to have to talk to him.”

“Oh my God, you don’t think . . .”

Lew shook his head. “I think it’s a lot more likely that Amelia’s death had something to do with this.” He held up his red folder. “I matched up the girls in the Birds of a Feather group with the school meet book.” Lew opened his folder and pulled out a single page. On it was a pristine chart—girls’ names, addresses, and parents’ names. “They’re all students at Grace Hall, mostly upperclassman. There are twenty-two of them.”

“Same number as the notes,” Kate said. “I think maybe Amelia refers to all these girls as Maggie in her texts. The name, with a bunch of different numbers, comes up again and again.”

“Could be,” Lew said. “Either way, I think it’s time we ask the school.”

Inside Grace Hall’s cool stone vestibule, there was a guard seated behind a computer at a big wooden desk. He was older and droopy-eyed. His loose, fleshy face had a bluish cast from the computer screen. His name tag read
WILL FINKLE
.

“Can I help you?” he asked lazily, keeping his eyes on the computer.

“We’d like to see the headmaster.” Lew flashed his badge, making him seem more like an actual police officer than he had since Kate first met him. “It’s about the girl who died here a few weeks ago.”

“You don’t say,” the guard said drily, like he’d gotten bored waiting for someone to show up asking questions about her. He met eyes with Kate. He recognized her, she was sure of it. But he was having no problem pretending that he didn’t. “Gonna need some ID first.” Kate dug out her driver’s license as Lew handed over his badge. The guard eyed them, hunting and pecking his way through recording their information in his computer. “Sign here,” he said when he was finally done, pointing to a small, electronic signature box. Seconds later, two visitor passes were spit out of a small printer.

“A lot of high-tech security for a school,” Lew said, nodding in the direction of the computer.

“When you’ve got more money than you know what to do with,” the guard said, “you find something to do with it.”

“Is it new?”

“Maybe three weeks ago for the computer . . . last week they added this.” The guard hooked his finger back toward a box to swipe key cards. “You know how many kids forget those damn cards? I must be up and out of this chair fifty, sixty times every morning unlocking the damn door.”

“What inspired it?”

“You tell me,” the guard said. “You’re the ones here about a dead girl.”

The heavily floral air of the main lobby brought on Kate’s nausea as they headed toward the main office. Two grand wood staircases curved up in front of a pretty, antique chest of drawers—old-looking, without been precious—with an enormous flower arrangement on top of it. Above was a painting that could have been an actual Picasso. On the opposite wall was a huge black-and-white photograph of a scantily clad, voluptuous dancer sitting in a filthy dressing room.

Lew and Kate stood shoulder to shoulder in front of the photograph, staring at it and the little plaque beneath that read
DIANE ARBUS, BURLESQUE COMEDIENNE IN HER DRESSING ROOM, ATLANTIC CITY, NJ, 1963. A GIFT OF THE GREENE FAMILY.
It was new. Kate may not have been at the school often, but a picture like that was the kind of thing she would have remembered. On the one hand, the edgy photograph’s bold placement dovetailed nicely with Grace Hall’s progressive streak; on the other, it seemed totally inappropriate. Especially now.

“Do you think the new security means something?” Kate asked.

Lew frowned. “Hard to say.” He was still staring at the picture. It wasn’t sitting well with him either. “Seems like they’re hiding something. Could just be a guilty conscience.”

“Ms. Baron!” someone called from down the hall then. The voice was high, shrill.

When Kate and Lew turned, there was an older woman marching quickly down the hall; her graying hair was pinned up, and she was wearing a tailored tweed suit. Mrs. Pearl. Kate might not have been able to picture Woodhouse very clearly, but Mrs. Pearl had left an indelible impression. And not a particularly good one.

“If we’d known you were coming, we’d have had someone come out to meet you,” Mrs. Pearl said, staring pointedly at Kate before reaching out a crinkled hand to Lew. “I’m Mrs. Pearl, the dean of students at Grace Hall.”

“Lieutenant Lew Thompson,” he said, shaking her hand firmly.

Mrs. Pearl stared at them for a moment longer, as if she was expecting an explanation for their surprise visit. When none was offered, she smiled, but not very pleasantly. “I’m afraid Mr. Woodhouse isn’t even here. He’s at an independent schools conference in Boston. He’ll be back tomorrow. If you’d like, I can schedule an appointment for you to come back—”

“It can’t wait,” Kate said, reaching out for the folder Lew was holding.

He relinquished it, reluctantly. He had made it clear that he was supposed to do the talking. But seeing Mrs. Pearl again, Kate was suddenly too angry to stay quiet. She held the folder out toward Mrs. Pearl.

“I’m sorry, what is that?” Mrs. Pearl asked, blinking down at the folder but not moving to take it.

“It’s a list of girls who were in some kind of club with Amelia,” Kate said, pressing the folder closer to Mrs. Pearl so that the corner was almost sticking into her breastbone. She sounded angry, too. In fact, she was much angrier at the school administration than she’d even realized. What had they been doing to stop kids from banding together into some kind of porn ring? It wasn’t as if they were short on resources. “They posted half-naked pictures of themselves on a blog.”

Mrs. Pearl took a step back, raising her hands in front of her chest, which Kate had apparently begun poking the folder into.

“That certainly sounds like upsetting information to have come across,” Mrs. Pearl said smoothly. “But as you can imagine, Grace Hall can’t control—practically or legally—what the children do off of school grounds.”

“Off of school grounds? This is something they’re doing
online
,” Kate snapped. “It’s not
happening
anywhere. And I think the girls were bullying Amelia, too. I found hate notes in her room, and I’ve only started sorting through her texts. God knows what else I’m going to find. Bullying has to be against the rules, no matter where it happens.”

Kate was aware that using the term
bullying
instantly transformed the conversation into a hot-button one. But she was glad. She wanted them to listen up. She was going to make it impossible for them not to listen this time.

“Bullied?” Mrs. Pearl asked, looking a little surprised and a lot skeptical. “That is an extremely serious allegation, Ms. Baron. I assume you have proof?”

“Amelia’s dead,” Kate said. “That seems like pretty good proof to me.”

“Lieutenant.” Mrs. Pearl’s eyelashes fluttered as she turned her attention from Kate to Lew, as though she were in search of a voice of reason. “I thought the police had ruled Amelia’s death a suicide. In fact, we’re planning to have a huge suicide awareness benefit a week from now in Amelia’s honor. It’s to raise money for a national hotline. Are you telling me now that she didn’t kill herself?”