42. Amelie
42
AMELIE
“Amelie. Up.”
I’m going to disembowel whoever is talking to me.
I haven’t figured out who it is yet because my vision isn’t working. My eyes are probably swollen shut from how much I cried before bed, and on top of that, I hardly slept after everything that happened.
Just the thought of last night makes my headache come back.
“Leave before I hit you,” I murmur, rolling over so my face is buried in my pillow.
The intruder sighs and pulls my blankets off me, and I practically hiss. “Come on.”
Oh. It’s Margot. That’s her military officer voice. If I decline again, she’ll drag me out of bed by my toes.
“I’m not in the mood,” I mumble. “I’m tired.”
“Don’t care. We’re going to Brenn’s.”
Oddly enough, that’s the part of this that piques my interest. “Why?”
“Because I want breakfast.”
“What time is it?”
“Seven, I think.” She shrugs. “You’re leaving today, right? We need to go early.”
“It’ll be fine.” I wrap my sheet around my shoulders like a cape. “We can just?—"
“We’re going now,” Margot says calmly. “Come on. I’d like to talk to you.”
I roll my eyes. “You can’t just spring this on me at six?—”
“Seven,” she repeats. “You’ll survive. Let’s go.”
I don’t find it likely, but since there’s basically no chance of her backing down, I get out of bed.
I stumble to the bathroom and brush my teeth, nearly jolting when I catch sight of myself in the mirror. My eyes are puffy, and my face is still red. Even my lips look like they went through a meat grinder.
Margot is sitting in my window seat when I get back to my room. She stays completely silent as I lower myself into my desk chair, and I stare at her, gauging how ‘ready’ I need to get. She looks more put together than I will—her hair is done, and she’s even wearing eyeliner. That won’t be the case for me; I don’t attempt the Dark Arts before ten in the morning.
I put on a minimal amount of makeup and the same red lip as always, hoping it’ll cover up the dried blood and dead skin. I throw on a pair of jeans and a sweater, then shove my feet into some fleece-lined boots.
Margot is wearing a blazer. I do not own a blazer.
“Let’s go,” I say, grabbing my purse. “Before Mom and Dad wake up.”
“That was my goal.” Margot steps out of my room before I can. I trip over a high heel as I follow, and I hear her sigh from down the hall.
Margot drives and I control the music. This has always been our routine, mainly because I detest driving. I’ve driven us once, and it was a…negative experience. Margot was loopy from the dentist, and Mom and Dad couldn’t get us home, so it had to be me. Let’s just say that she might’ve been better behind the wheel on drugs than I was sober.
I order my usual stack of pancakes when we sit at the booth. Marg gets French toast and eggs on the side, then orders two coffees with sugar and cream for us. We sit in an awkward bit of silence for a few minutes until Margot says, “I’m sorry.”
Which was honestly the last thing I expected to leave her mouth.
I stir a pack of sugar into my coffee as I plan my words. “How hard was that for you to say?”
“Amelie.”
“Alright, I’m sorry.” I set the spoon aside on a napkin. “But what makes you say that? Is it because I’m leaving?”
She shakes her head. “No. I just…I’ve never understood, Amelie. You could’ve gone to the academy with Henry. Maybe you’d even be working alongside him now. You could’ve had what you wanted.”
“I eventually wanted something different,” I argue.
“But why ? What spurred that decision?”
I wring my hands together under the table. I don’t want her to know the real reason, but I guess I have to tell her at some point. My options have run out. Talking around this can only serve me for so long.
“You’re too perfect,” I say casually, taking a sip of the too-hot coffee to give myself a moment to think. “You’re better than me, and you know it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You were better at everything, Margot. Anything we did together, you’d best me. When I found out you applied for art school, I just couldn’t do it anymore.” I glance out the window. “I knew I’d always be trying to measure up to you. Trying to beat you, even in slight, knowing that I couldn’t.”
Her face is blank, and I presume that mine is, too. “I don’t understand.”
“I wanted to be good , Margot, and I finally found something. I knew you’d never attempt it, so you couldn’t beat me.”
“Well, you are good at it,” she says, almost flatly. “ Too good at it.”
I scoff. “You wouldn’t know.”
Margot crosses her arms on the table, not responding to that statement. Her gaze lands on the NO CELL PHONES sign to our right, though I know she isn’t paying attention to anything in here. She’s taking time to think.
“That’s why you stopped talking to me?” Margot asks.
I keep quiet because I don’t want to say yes. I don’t want to say that she unknowingly made me feel so horrible about myself that I wanted nothing to do with her. Despite the fact that I made it her fault, it wasn’t, not really.
“People love you,” she says when I don’t respond.
I blink at her. “What?”
“People love you. They don’t like me.”
I tip my head. “That isn’t true. You have friends.”
“I’m not talking about friends.” Margot folds a napkin into a tiny square to busy her hands. “You know the reason I tried so hard at everything?”
She looks at me, awaiting a response. I just shake my head.
“I tried because that’s all I had. Good grades and medals were it for me, Amelie. But you actually had people that ached to be around you. You made people feel wanted, and I had a slight prayer of graduating with honors. Only one of those really mattered.”
Hearing this is almost like hearing a foreign language. It doesn’t add up. I never saw it this way; never considered that this was an option. I always saw Margot as someone people wanted to be around. People looked at her. People talked about her .
“I know what you’re thinking,” she says, “and you’re wrong.”
Well then.
She notes my fallen expression and continues talking. “People didn’t want to be around me. People either worshiped me academically or tore me down behind my back. It was never what you thought. And I’m not trying to play the victim. I’m saying this so you know that I was no different.”
I sigh. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this?”
“Why didn’t you tell me ?” She asks, and for the first time in a very long time, her voice holds something other than stiffness or hostility.
She sounds hurt.
“I didn’t think you’d care,” I say quietly, and her frown deepens. “And I don’t mean that as anything toward you. I just mean that it seemed minimal to me. It wasn’t your problem.”
She exhales. “We should’ve just talked more.”
I nod slowly. “I think that would’ve fixed a lot.”
Margot grabs a pack of sugar and stirs it into her coffee, taking a sip to find it still bitter. She adds another, then looks up at me with narrowed eyes. “I don’t like this topic anymore.”
“Me either,” I agree, feeling mildly squeamish. This topic is horribly alien to us. We can’t be fully stitched up over a cup of coffee. “Talk about something else.”
She shakes her head. “You first. Tell me all this Henry stuff. I heard some racket in the attic last night, and it sounded like you guys.”
My stomach twists into knots again. I’m hoping that this isn’t going to happen every time I hear his name, because it’s already getting old. I need to relax. “What did you hear? Talking?”
“Muffled noise.” She shrugs. “I went up this morning to find it strangely pristine, but there was paint on the floor.”
She eyes me, but I’m just trying to figure out how on earth that attic could look pristine. Henry straightened up after I left, I guess. A shame he didn’t clean up the paint as well.
“That’s my fault,” I mumble, hoping my face isn’t as red as it feels. “Knocked it over and forgot to clean it up.”
She hums. “Must be why there’s paint on your collarbone.”
I gape. “Okay, well?—”
“I’m not saying anything.” She raises her hands innocently. “Do what you want.”
“It wasn’t like that .” It was maybe the furthest thing from whatever she’s thinking. “He came upstairs because I tripped, and he heard it. That was it. Not a worry for you.” I take a breath and contemplate my next words, wondering if it’s foolish to say what I want. “I did find something else, though.”
She looks up. “Oh?”
“Yeah. Letters.”
“Letters?”
“From Henry.” I nod. “A whole box of them. There were, like, at least twenty, maybe more. Someone blacked out his address on each one.”
Margot’s jaw drops a little. “So you two finally talked, then?”
“About…?”
“What happened after high school. He told me that you two never discussed it.”
I blink in disbelief. “When did that happen?”
“We briefly talked the other day. It was unimportant. But what did you find out?”
I swallow. “Well, apparently, he wrote me letters for a little while after our contact stopped. I never got a single one because someone intercepted them. I guess…I guess it had to have been Mom and Dad.”
Just saying it aloud makes me feel wicked, but it’s genuinely the only thing I can think of. Margot was at school, as far as I know, and despite our feud, I can’t see her caring enough to do anything like this.
“I’m going to ask them this morning,” I add, then shake my head. “I’m livid, Margot. That’s years that he and I lost.”
She sinks back into the booth. “What about the calls?”
“He says he never got any of mine, and I never answered any of his.” I shrug. “It’s weird, but…I believe him.”
The admission is more to myself than Margot, but it makes my skin crawl all the same. I do believe him, I think. That’s what’s so terrifying to me. The desperation he showed wasn’t fake. Neither was the anger—not at me , but at what happened.
I’ve always known that he doesn’t play games. This isn’t any different.
“His parents, maybe,” Margot says, dragging me back to our conversation. “On the calls.”
I raise a brow. “You think they were in cahoots with ours? Because I don’t think they’ve ever spoken.”
“No, not at all. But Mom and Dad can barely work their own phones, so I can’t see them blocking calls from yours.”
I take another sip of my coffee, just to realize that I’ve drained the cup. I don’t remember drinking any, but I’ve been a little preoccupied. “If it’s true, I’m mad at them. Really. I don’t understand it. Henry never did a wrong thing to anyone, and they’ve seemed to adore him this whole time. Are they putting on?”
“I mean, if you really think about it…” Margot’s voice trails off, and she zones out on a fork.
“No.” I snap my fingers. “Focus. What?”
She shrugs. “Mom and Dad were art thieves, and Henry’s dad owns an art museum. Something could be there.”
“ Like ?!”
“I don’t know! A subtle hatred or something.”
I’m still not convinced our parents have even met. “You’d think they would’ve said something once I took their clients, though.”
“No. It would’ve put you closer to figuring out what they did.”
“I probably wouldn’t have thought about it. I’m not that deductive.”
Margot laughs at the obvious lie. I overanalyze most things, and now, I’m extremely irritated that I didn’t look further into this. I shouldn’t have just accepted all of it. I should’ve looked for answers, rather than being bitter and praying on Henry’s downfall for four years. Present Day Amelie would have driven to the academy, screamed at him, and ripped his lashes out of his pretty eyes.
But you know. Hindsight and all that.
“It’s just a lot,” I murmur, scratching at my neck. “I have no idea what’s going to happen when I get back, and now I have to deal with this ?—”
“What do you mean?” Margot asks, sounding genuinely curious. “What’s going on when you get back? Is it something with work?”
“It’s—” I start, then instantly shut my mouth. I forget that she doesn’t know everything. She’s got no idea that this whole thing started with Henry blackmailing me. She doesn’t know about Roman. She doesn’t know anything because I haven’t told her anything. “It’s nothing,” I say. “Just in general.”
She sighs. “Doesn’t this job give you anxiety?”
“I prefer the term adrenaline rush .”
“Most people just bungee jump.”
“I’m bored, not suicidal.”
She laughs, then sets her mug aside. Hers is empty, too, and I’m starting to wonder where our waitress is. “I really am sorry, Amelie,” she says quietly. “For all of it.”
“I’m sorry, too,” I tell her.
We don’t speak again until it’s time to pay the bill.