Reconstructing Amelia (8 page)
Read Reconstructing Amelia Online
Authors: Kimberly McCreight
“But why us?” Charlie asked quietly. “I mean, the three of us are totally different.”
And if they were assigning categories, I was definitely the nerd of the group.
“Come on, Charlie, you know this is just some kind of fucked-up joke,” Tempest said, finding her backbone again. She pushed herself off the tree she’d been leaning against. “They get us to say we want to join and then they make us eat, like, ten gallons of vodka and Jell-O and take pictures of us throwing up or something. And then we get to be
in
the club and they get to keep on doing even more messed-up stuff to us.”
Zadie smiled viciously. “Basically.”
Dylan moved forward, putting a hand on Zadie’s shoulder.
“No,” Dylan said, “that’s not what we’re doing. I promise. This club is supposed to be fun. It is fun.”
“Hold up. I don’t know why you’re kissing their asses. It’s not like they’re even fucking
in
yet.” Zadie glared at Dylan, then turned back to us. “You three have got shit ass-backwards too, if you think we’re going to fucking sell you on joining. You don’t want to be here, turn the fuck around and take off. We’ll see you around.”
She didn’t make it sound like anything bad would happen if we left, which meant I should go, now. Take her up on her offer. I waited for my body to lurch for the sidewalk. But it didn’t. Something in me still wasn’t ready to go.
“Listen, I know this probably seems kind of weird,” Dylan said, stepping in front of Zadie. “We know there are other sophomore girls who are, like, more popular or whatever. But we think all those girls are boring. We think
you
guys have, I don’t know, personality. You’re not trying too hard or pretending to be something you’re not. You’re not all obsessed with being cool, which is so
not
cool.”
I felt the air get sucked out of me when Zadie suddenly swiveled her black-lined eyes in my direction.
“But I’ll say it again. If you don’t want to be here,” she hissed in my direction, “leave right now. Get the fuck out. No hard feelings.” Zadie walked closer to us, pulled out a cigarette, lit it, and inhaled heavily. She exhaled in a long steady stream, directly in our faces. “Because if you do stay
and
we decide to let you pledge in, there won’t be any leaving after that. At least, not any
easy
way.”
My heart was beating so fast I worried that Zadie would be able to see it. That she’d pounce if she did. I could leave right then. She’d said I could and it would be like nothing happened. Like I’d never betrayed Sylvia or let myself down. Leaving was what I should do. I knew it. No doubt about it. Except just thinking about taking off made me feel so let down.
So I stood there instead. I watched Dylan go back and sit on her low gray boulder. Relaxed, carefree, at ease, she stretched her legs out in front of her and crossed them at the ankles. Dylan looked up at me then like she’d heard me thinking about her. She smiled once, her cheeks lifting into warm red apples.
“It’s okay,” she mouthed. Then she smiled again, and nodded once. “Stay.”
“So, what’s it going to be, ladies?” Zadie asked, sticking her cigarette between her lips and clapping her hands together, hard. “Speak now, or forever hold your fucking peace.”
SEPTEMBER 14, 7:36 PM
BEN
sounds all Skull & Bones
AMELIA
kind of, I guess; can’t even use their names in texts; have to call them Maggie #1 & #2, etc, kind of crazy
BEN
yeah, crazy. We have a computer club at my school
AMELIA
ha, ha
BEN
french club too. that’s kind of cool right?
AMELIA
sort of, yeah
BEN
for albany
AMELIA
i guess
BEN
is there a secret handshake?
AMELIA
no
BEN
do you like wear masks and do weird creepy stuff
AMELIA
not yet
BEN
that was a joke; u r not laughing; tough crowd today . . .
AMELIA
u r making me feel even more stupid
BEN
sorry
AMELIA
no u r not
BEN
i am, seriously. it sounds cool. I’m just jealous.
AMELIA
cool?
BEN
come on, you know it is. u live in New York City. everything there is cool.
AMELIA
brooklyn
BEN
same difference to us up here in the sticks
SEPTEMBER 14, 7:41 PM
SYLVIA
hello??? where the hell were you after school?
AMELIA
sorry! Xtra field hockey practice
SYLVIA
Jesus will that woman ever chill out?
AMELIA
state is coming up
SYLVIA
state? U sound like such a jock; ew
AMELIA
yeah, that’s me; see you tomorrow a.m. usual time?
SYLVIA
yeah; maybe THEN I can give you an Ian update, finally
SEPTEMBER 14, 8:03 PM
BLOCKED NUMBER
no underwear or bra tomorrow fledgling; we’ll be checking. And wear a skirt. Meet same time, same place
SEPTEMBER 14, 8:07 PM
BLOCKED NUMBER
don’t worry about Maggie #1; she’s all bark and no bite. Xoxo Maggie #2
AMELIA
thx I needed that
BLOCKED NUMBER
anytime; and I went commando too. Key is a loooong skirt.
SEPTEMBER 14, 8:11 PM
BLOCKED NUMBER
who’s your daddy?
NOVEMBER 26
When Kate got home, she headed straight upstairs to Amelia’s room. She was hoping that the rapid forward momentum might help her outsmart herself. She’d been unable to get herself to go inside Amelia’s room since she’d died. Seth had picked out Amelia’s clothes for the funeral. He’d even straightened up a little—threw out a half-eaten apple, collected the dirty clothes, and made the bed—so Kate wouldn’t have to go in until she was ready. Since then, the door to her dead daughter’s room had stayed closed. Kate wasn’t any more ready to open it now. And so there she stood, hand on the doorknob, her stomach twisting into a knot.
All she’d been able to think about since getting the text that said Amelia hadn’t jumped was how she should have been more involved in the investigation in the first place. How could she have trusted all of it to some detective who she suspected might care more about closing cases than finding out the truth? She should have looked through Amelia’s things herself. She should have thought more about the right questions to ask and had the courage to ask them, no matter how much people had wanted her to be good and stay quiet. No matter how guilty she had felt. Instead, Kate had folded in on herself and around her grief, accepting an explanation for her daughter’s death that she never fully believed. Because blocking it out had been easier than fighting. It had been the only possible way to survive.
But Kate could do this now. She was stronger than she’d been right after Amelia died. Not much, but a little. And she would need to be. Because as horrible as it had been trying to get herself to accept that Amelia had killed herself, Kate knew that there could be even worse things to come.
She took a deep breath and went to turn the knob. But before the door opened, the house phone rang. Kate exhaled in a relieved gasp, then looked around for the upstairs extension, which wasn’t on its cradle. When the phone rang again, Kate realized the sound was coming from downstairs, where she must have left it. She raced down the steps, glad to be headed far away from her daughter’s room. When she finally laid her hands on the phone in the kitchen, it took her a minute to believe that she was seeing
NYPD
on the caller ID. It had been so long since anyone had called her. And on that day, of all days? It couldn’t be a coincidence. Maybe the police had gotten some kind of message, too.
“Hello?”
“Ms. Baron? Detective Molina here.”
“Hi, yeah, it’s me, Kate.” She was already bracing herself. As much as she was hoping Molina was calling with news about Amelia, she was afraid of what that news might be. “Is there . . . do you have some . . . How are you?”
“Been better, to be honest,” he said. “At the moment, I’m wondering why, out of nowhere, I’m hearing complaints about my work on your daughter’s case. If you had concerns, you’ve got my number.”
Jeremy had already called the police commissioner? Kate didn’t know why she was surprised. Jeremy didn’t generally make empty promises. Still, she hadn’t expected anything to come of it, certainly not within hours.
“Oh, um, sorry,” Kate said. “I think that was my boss. He was trying to be helpful.”
“Helpful to who?” Molina muttered, as if he was talking half to Kate, half to himself. “What would have been worth your doing was asking me a question that I could have just answered. Because, not for nothing, this wasn’t exactly how I wanted to get on the commissioner’s radar.”
Molina was worried about his career prospects? This conversation was bringing back everything Kate hadn’t liked about him. The aggressive way that Molina had hammered Kate with questions in those early days. Like gunfire. So that Kate had ended up constantly on the defensive, focused less on the answers she’d wanted and more on ducking for cover. Kate had waited and waited for Molina’s bad-boy harshness to break open and reveal a heart of gold. It never had.
“I’m sorry that you’ve been
inconvenienced
.” Kate hadn’t realized the depth of her anger until she heard it in her own voice. “But I got a message today saying my daughter didn’t jump. As you can imagine, it raises questions that I’d frankly like answers to. Now.”
“Oh yeah?” Molina asked. “A message from who?”
“I don’t know. It was an anonymous text.”
Duncan had returned Kate’s phone to her, able to tell her only that the message had been sent using a telephone company website, making it effectively untraceable.
“Ah, anonymous, huh?” His sarcasm was palpable.
“Yeah, anonymous. That doesn’t mean it’s not true,” Kate said, wishing she sounded more firm and less defensive. But she wasn’t going to let herself get bullied by Molina. Not this time. “I want the text looked into. And I want someone to do a handwriting analysis on the
one
word that was written on that wall. I assume you have a photograph? Because that wasn’t any suicide note, and Amelia didn’t write it. I’ve known that from the start. She didn’t kill herself either. I’ve known that all along, too.”
Kate didn’t realize how true that was, until now. Amelia hadn’t killed herself. Amelia hadn’t jumped. There was no question about it anymore.
“So I take it, then, that it doesn’t matter to you anymore that the ME’s official findings were to the contrary?” Molina asked.
“I
knew
my daughter. I
know
she didn’t kill herself,” Kate said, struggling to keep her voice steady, but the floodgates were open now, and all the doubt she’d kept so tightly bottled up was rushing out. “I’m going to find out who or what did kill her, Detective. You can help me, or you can get out of the way. But I promise you that I am not going to stay quiet because you want me to. Not anymore.”
“That so?” Molina sounded as if he was smiling. “Then why don’t you—”
Kate hung up, then threw the phone down too hard onto the long farmhouse table. It shot across the top and crashed onto the floor, where she heard it crack into pieces.
“Shit,” Kate said, welling up as she dropped herself down hard onto one of benches that ran the length of the table. She buried her face in her hands. “Goddamnit.”
What was she doing? Her new no-more-Mr.-Nice-Guy routine should have skipped Molina. She
needed
him. He was the one with Amelia’s case file. Only he knew what he had and hadn’t found. And now there was no way he was going to help her.
Kate rested her head down on the rough-hewn tabletop, then turned to look around the brick-walled kitchen, with its European cabinetry, polished stone, and stainless fixtures. Kate never cooked, and yet the huge appliances would not have been out of place in a small restaurant. She’d bought all of that for Amelia. Amelia, who didn’t have a dad and hadn’t had enough of a mother. Kate had figured she could at least have the very best of everything else. So stupid. What had Amelia needed with a four-thousand-dollar stove? And now Kate would have to stare at it as she ate takeout alone in that kitchen for the rest of her life. Right on cue, she felt that acid in her throat.
Kate swallowed hard as she pushed herself up and headed back for the stairs and Amelia’s room. She had a job to finish, and she was going to do it. She owed that much to her daughter.
Upstairs, Kate took a deep breath as she pushed open Amelia’s bedroom door. When she stepped inside and flipped on the light, the air smelled stale. Like death. Like Amelia had died right there, in that room, and her body had been left there to rot.
This time Kate felt sure she was going to vomit. She rushed across the room and shoved open a window, sticking her head out and gasping for fresh air.
She was imagining the smell. The rational part of Kate realized this, but knowing it didn’t help. It still took about a dozen deep breaths of fresh air for the nausea to ebb. When it finally did, Kate turned and lowered herself onto the windowsill, the sharp November air rushing in on either side, slicing at her arms.
It was even worse being in Amelia’s room than Kate had imagined. Sitting there, she missed her daughter so much it made everything ache—her legs, her hands, her eyelids. Her flesh felt covered in bruises as her eyes moved over the crammed bookcases lining almost every wall in Amelia’s room.
Amelia had learned to read when she was four, and after that a book was forever in her hands. She read in the bath, while walking down the sidewalk, in the dark at night with a flashlight. Even those many shelves had not been enough for Amelia’s library, and the overflow sat in tall stacks along each wall. Kate had sometimes worried that Amelia’s obsession with books was a sign of loneliness. That if she’d had a sibling or even a dad—if Kate hadn’t been working all the time—that Amelia might have been more fixated on real people instead of made-up ones.
Now it seemed such a stupid thing to worry about, especially when Kate looked away from the books and over to the one wall without shelves. It was covered with photographs—Amelia as a little girl with Leelah, with her teammates and camp friends. With Kate. There was a large one of Amelia and Sylvia on the sixth-grade field trip to DC that Kate had chaperoned. It had been one of the few times over the years that Kate had been able to sneak away from work for that kind of school commitment. And it had been perfect, except for the lingering sense Kate had had afterward that almost every other parent there—even the full-time working ones—had come along on that kind of trip many times before.
What mattered now, though, was that Amelia had been happy in the photographs. Every single one. Their small family might not have been the one Kate had planned on, but Amelia had never cared. At least not until a couple of weeks before she’d died, when she’d suddenly started asking about her father.
“You seriously
never
told him about me?” Amelia had demanded, waking Kate up early one Saturday morning. “I mean, did you ever even try to find him?”
“Find who?”
“Hello, my
dad
.” Amelia had crossed her arms. “You know, the hippie with the guitar on his way to Africa? The one that you supposedly met one dark and stormy night at a dive bar up by Columbia? Did they even have bars in that neighborhood back then? Wasn’t it like a war zone up there?”
Kate blinked at the clock, then at Amelia, then back at the clock. Seven fifteen a.m. on a Saturday. She didn’t want this to be happening. She didn’t want Amelia to be asking these questions, not now. She’d known that someday, when Amelia was old enough, the sketchy story Kate had told her about her father would require elaboration. But it was too soon. She hadn’t yet worked out what to say. The truth still felt out of the question. But a vague lie to a child perpetuated over the years by silence was different from a brand-new one straight to her teenage daughter’s face.
“What are you even doing awake, Amelia?” Kate asked, trying to buy time. “Let’s talk about this later. I’m really exhausted, and you must be, too.”
“Later, sure.” Amelia sounded angry, but there was something else in her eyes—fear, worry. It made Kate’s stomach churn.
“Amelia, what’s wrong?” Kate asked, pushing herself up in bed. “Did something happen?”
“No,” Amelia said, crossing her arms. She looked away from Kate with a pout, her eyes fixed on the far corner of the bedroom. Kate kept staring at her daughter, hoping the weight would make Amelia confess whatever had brought her there, demanding answers at the crack of dawn. “Nothing happened. I mean, except for me getting tired of waiting for you to tell me the truth.”
But it was more, Kate could tell. Did she want to know what? No, that was the honest truth. Kate did not.
“Amelia, I don’t know what you think—”
“Mom, come on,” Amelia said, her voice cracking. She turned to look out Kate’s bedroom windows. Anywhere, it seemed, but at Kate. “You, alone, in a bar? Hooking up with some random guy? Some accident that was the ‘best thing that ever happened to you’?” Amelia shook her head, then finally looked at Kate. Her eyes were glassy. “No way, Mom. I’m not buying it. It’s not you.”
Kate stared at Amelia for a minute, then dropped back down onto the bed. She turned over and pressed the side of her face into the pillow so that her daughter wouldn’t be able to look into her own damp eyes.
“I never said it
was
me, Amelia. That’s kind of the whole point. I also never said I was perfect. Back then I was doing a lot of things that weren’t exactly well thought out,” she said quietly, careful to make sure she didn’t suggest that Amelia had been a mistake. “Anyway, if you have questions about your dad, you can ask them. I’ve always told you that you can ask me anything you want, Amelia.”
“And you’ll tell me the truth?”
“Yes, Amelia,” Kate said, her little liar’s heart pounding hard in her chest. “I’ll tell you the truth.”
And in that moment, Kate had decided that she would. She would tell her daughter everything about how she had been conceived, about the mistakes Kate had made and the things she had done to cover them up. Because Amelia deserved the truth. She was entitled to her history, whatever the cost. Just not at that precise moment. Kate needed time, to prepare.
“I want to meet him,” Amelia said.
Kate had blinked at her daughter, trying to hold her face still.
“Okay,” she’d said finally. And then she’d decided to lie some more. “Then we can try to do that. But I just . . . I can’t make any promises that we’ll find him.”
Four days later, Amelia was dead. Kate didn’t think that Amelia’s questions about her dad were related to her death. And not knowing her dad would never have been a reason for Amelia to kill herself. But it was strange, the timing of Amelia’s suddenly suspecting something. Worse yet was the possibility that Amelia had died thinking Kate had lied to her.
Kate forced herself off the windowsill and over to the bookshelves. She ran her hand down the well-worn spines—
The Odyssey
,
The Sound and the Fury
,
Lolita
, and, of course, all those books by Virginia Woolf. Virginia Woolf—suicide committer extraordinaire—was her daughter’s favorite author. The coincidence hadn’t been lost on Kate. But Amelia would have found copying her literary hero in that way to be a pathetic cliché, of that Kate felt sure.