Exposure (11 page)

So okay, they could predict that she’d try to use the phone, but that didn’t mean they really knew her, or even truly wanted to, or ever would.

———

Cameron had what Amelia wanted: a mother who was a girlfriend, who liked the things she liked, who supported Cameron’s future goals 100 percent, who didn’t use the time she spent with Cameron directing and managing and educating. Not that mothers shouldn’t do those things, but did hers, Amelia’s, have to do
only
those things? Mrs. McGuiness knew where to draw the line; she didn’t let Cameron drink or swear or run wild. The difference between Cameron’s mother-daughter relationship and her own was that when Amelia was hanging out with Cameron, and Mrs. McGuiness was around, Cameron talked and acted in exactly the same manner she did when her mother was not. Cameron’s mother didn’t only support and encourage her daughter, she
enjoyed
her, actively and obviously. Cam’s mother
got
her—and the reverse appeared to be true, too.

Amelia was fifteen when she and her mother had driven together to Greensboro, where she was to perform solo in a singing competition. They’d left home midafternoon, with Amelia working on homework and her mother listening to an audiobook during the ninety-minute drive. At their hotel, they’d unpacked their clothes and toiletries, and argued about which of the two outfits her mother had packed for the competition was best, given that the next morning was forecasted to be rainy and cold. Amelia wanted to wear the burgundy pencil skirt they’d bought a week earlier at Saks, with a short-sleeved pearl-gray blouse they’d found at Uniquities. Her mother, who’d been fine with both items—she’d paid for them, after all—was now pushing for the black turtleneck and hunter-green plaid skirt, with black tights, an outfit that had seemed perfect six months earlier but now seemed desperately childish to Amelia.

They left that matter unresolved and shifted to debating the song Amelia had prepared, “What I Did for Love” from
A Chorus Line
, which her mother worried was a bit slow and serious, and which Amelia explained had been chosen for exactly that reason. They debated whether she should audition for Ravenswood’s next production, for which she was almost sure to get the lead role, or try for a lesser part in the upcoming Raleigh Little Theatre play. Amelia argued for the latter, watching the lines between her mother’s eyes deepen until her mother said, “Amelia, be sensible. You’re the rising star at school, Ms. Fitz says so. I don’t see why you want to take a step backward. Thrive where you’re planted.”

“But what does that add up to, if all I ever do are school plays and these competitions?”

“Why does it need to add up to anything? You’re doing great and having a good time, isn’t that what matters?”

“Yes, but Momma,” Amelia insisted, “what if someday I could transplant myself—to Broadway, for instance—and thrive even better?”

“You know what Daddy says, and I agree: choose something practical.”

“But you did what
you
wanted. Why shouldn’t I?”

“I’m not sure you want that. Not really. Girls always have big dreams, but once you’re grown? Well, let’s just say we ought not always follow our first impulses. Now let’s go find us some supper.”

They’d gotten directions to a one-size-fits-all restaurant nearby, but then on the way, Amelia spotted a Japanese restaurant and begged her mother to go there instead. “Please? We never eat Japanese.”

“Daddy doesn’t like that kind of food.”

“What about you, though?”

“Well, I don’t really know, to tell you the truth.”

“That’s why now is a perfect time to go,” Amelia said. Seeing a chance to make her point from earlier, she added, “It’s good to try new things.”

“Sometimes it is,” her mother agreed. “But other times it causes nothing but trouble, trust me on that.”

After they were seated in the restaurant, Amelia unwrapped her chopsticks, saying, “Let’s get some sushi.”

“Raw fish?” her mother said dubiously.

Amelia scanned her menu “Look.” She turned it so that her mother could read where she was pointing. “It’s not only raw fish. This one doesn’t have any fish in it at all. And did you know that sushi’s good for you? Japanese women have the lowest breast cancer rates of any developed nation.”

“Now, how do you know that?” Her mother unwrapped her own chopsticks and set them on the table, where they began to roll, slowly, toward the table’s edge.

“We learned it in Health and Fitness,” Amelia said, intercepting the chopsticks and resting them across her mother’s plate.

In Health and Fitness they’d also learned that using birth control pills could lead to blood clots, heart attacks, and ovarian cancer, a lesson that she and her friends had all agreed was Miss Jones’s attempt at a scare tactic. They’d looked up “oral contraceptives” online and gotten the facts—which were that those side effects were possible, yes, but extremely rare. Some of her friends were already in need of this information, while Amelia had wondered whether she would ever be. Still, all of them were glad to have access to the truth without having to go ask their parents, who were not, in many cases, any more reliable than Miss Jones. “Technology to the rescue,” one of the more mature girls said, clicking a link that led her to the Planned Parenthood site.

Miss Jones had insisted, too, that although Ravenswood was not a parochial school, it was her personal duty to remind the students that hell was a real place, and she would be awfully sad to see any of them end up there. Which of course prompted a lot of after-class laughter about how, exactly, Miss Jones might know who went to hell, and the viewing, later that week at Robert Sorensen’s house, of a very grainy, very dark online video of the classic porn film
The Devil in Miss Jones
.

What was it, Amelia wondered, that made adults so conservative about sexuality? Everyone who was presently an adult had been a teenager before, so surely they had the same curiosity, the same preoccupations, the same pressures that Amelia and her peers did. A person had only to read Jane Austen or the Brontës or Shakespeare to know that feelings of love and desire and passion were as prevalent among teenagers in those authors’ times as they were today, and would have been when Miss Jones was young—which, based on the way she talked, may well have happened during Queen Victoria’s reign, or, more fittingly, at the time the Puritans were settling New England, and she simply looked young for her age.

Love was not a force that could be legislated and prevented until after a person turned eighteen or twenty-one. Amelia, at fifteen, believed this quite firmly even though she had not yet experienced it for herself. She’d believed it even as she was sure nothing so amazing and wonderful would happen to her—at fifteen or any -teen, and possibly not for a very long time after that. Possibly not ever. For all of her advantages, and for all that she’d been petted and admired for—her pleasing looks, her quiet, polite demeanor, her well-written essays and high test scores—she’d felt she wasn’t worthy. For some reason that no one had ever been able to pin down, something inside her brain had, at age five, gone wrong, causing her to stutter, making it so that she’d spent eight years of her life seeing psychologists and speech therapists, and hiding her defect from everyone. The boys seemed to sense that she was glitchy; they kept their distance, and why wouldn’t they, when there were so many other smart, pretty, talented girls to choose from?

At fifteen, she believed in love but knew better than to look for it. Instead, she sang about it, read about it, lived it vicariously through movies, and waited to be considered old enough to act it out onstage.

“Watch me,” she told her mother, chopsticks in hand. “I’ll show you how to use them.” Amelia used her chopsticks to lift the silverware, her napkin, the wrappers, and then helped her mother try to do the same, to comical effect. “Okay, okay, one thing at a time,” her mother laughed, laying down the chopsticks. “It’ll be enough of a challenge for me to eat sushi at all.”

They studied their menus. Her mother asked, “Which kind are you having?”

“I like the tuna.
Maki
, which is the roll.” Amelia set down her menu. “Did you know Juliet is only thirteen?”

“Juliet who?” her mother said. “Maybe I’ll try this one, with the cucumber and crab. Did I tell you how we used to go crabbing, my brothers and me, when I was little?”

Amelia tilted her head, intrigued. Her mother rarely spoke of her life before this incarnation, mother of Amelia, wife of Harlan. “No, I don’t think so,” Amelia said. She waited for more, and when it didn’t come, she said, “Juliet Capulet, from
Romeo and Juliet.
”

“Was
thirteen
? My, it’s hard to think that’s right.”

The waitress came to take their orders. When she’d gone, Amelia said, “You didn’t meet Daddy until you were thirty, right?”

“Yes. He hired me to decorate his first house.”

“And you fell in love with him right off.”

“No, not right away,” her mother said. “He was a client, and I took my job very seriously. But yes, after a time, we decided it might be nice to see each other.”

“What about before Daddy?” Amelia asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Did you have a high-school boyfriend? And what about later, when you were in design school, and afterward?”

“Of course I dated some, but I’m sure your daddy wouldn’t appreciate me talking about that.” She waved her hand dismissively.

Grinning, Amelia leaned forward and whispered, “Was there someone special? It’s okay, I won’t tell him you told.”

“I’ll suppose this one is soy sauce,” her mother said, shifting her gaze and reaching for the condiments caddy. She touched the lid of one bottle. “Same as at Chinese places, right? But what are the other sauces?”

“Momma, come on, tell. Was he from High Point, too, or was it after you moved to Raleigh?”

“I said I’d rather not discuss that. Drop it,” she said sharply.

Amelia sat back, stung. “Why? It was a long time ago. What’s the big deal?”

Her mother pushed the sauces back to their spot near the wall. “Come to think of it, the burgundy skirt and gray top is probably the better choice for tomorrow, what with the rain. Black will seem gloomy, don’t you think so?”

Amelia fought back confused tears. “Whichever you want,” she said. “I just want to sing.”

7

P E
NGLISH WAS ORDINARILY
A
NTHONY’S FAVORITE CLASS
. Yes, because Amelia was in it with him, but also because this was the one class he had where discussion got them into the meat of things. Mr. Edmunds, his teacher, was that right combination of cool and youthful, intellectual without being a geek; he regarded literature as relevant, and insisted his students do the same.

Today’s discussion centered on
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
, a book Anthony thought got at the heart of being a teen, a book that, true enough to its billing, got into the issue of “passivity vs. passion.” This interested him because he saw in himself elements of both—more passion than passivity, whereas with Amelia it was the other way around, and maybe that was what made them fit so well. He’d been eager to talk about the book. Now, though, he sat with his phone in hand, waiting—and waiting, and waiting—for Amelia to text her explanation for going missing. When he wasn’t glancing at his phone, he was watching the door.

At the bell, he bolted from his seat. Mr. Edmunds snagged his arm as he passed. “Hold on.”

“What’s up?” Anthony asked, moving aside as his classmates streamed past, some of them wearing the same expression of curiosity that Mr. Edmunds showed.

“My question exactly. You were pretty tuned out today.” The teacher’s thick eyebrows were raised behind his black-framed glasses, but the unsaid question—was Amelia’s absence part of this?—was not one that Anthony would answer. Maybe Edmunds knew, or thought he knew, about their relationship, but either way, Anthony wasn’t going to confirm it with a careless display of concern.

“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry. Distracted.” He edged toward the door.

“Can I help?”

Anthony shook his head, already on the move. “Thanks.”

Outside the classroom, he dialed Amelia as he walked, and ducked into the bathroom, where he’d be able to talk unseen by faculty. Again, he got her voice mail.

Next period and sixth, too, were a repeat of fourth, only with teachers who seemed unaware that he had little to contribute today. Nothing improved even after final bell; it wasn’t as if he could go running to Amelia’s house, looking for her.

He found his mother in the classroom where she taught sixth-period French. She was cleaning the whiteboard and singing along to an Édith Piaf CD that was playing on the portable stereo she toted with her from classroom to classroom.

“Non! Je ne regrette rien.…”

Anthony said,
“Ça va, Maman?”
and she turned to him and waved. He closed the door and leaned against it. “Was Amelia in class just now?”

“No—I figured on asking
you
why she wasn’t here. Thought you had the inside track—or maybe something to do with it?”