Reckless Girls(67)

More pictures, more links.

Amma at her fancy Catholic school, photos from her mother’s Facebook page of Amma all dressed up on a horse—a fucking horse!—and another of Amma when she was younger, standing in front of the Eiffel Tower with her parents and two older girls.

Oddly enough, that’s the one that takes Brittany’s breath away.

“She said … she said she’d never been to Paris.”

Chloe puts an arm around her. “Jesus, what a lying bitch.”

Brittany shakes her head, her eyes welling with tears. “She lied to me about all of it. About her family, about her background. About where she’s lived and traveled. Why?”

“People are weird.” Chloe sighs. “Maybe it was some kind of atonement or something? Like, ‘Sorry my boyfriend killed your family, let me make it up to you by being your friend’?”

The words make Brittany wince, and her stomach clench. Had Amma been there in that courtroom? Had she seen Brittany? She must have. All of this had to have started on that awful day.

“Or maybe she was just curious about you, you know?” Chloe adds. “In any case, it’s pretty fucked up. And it’s a pretty complicated lie to commit to.”

It’s more than fucked up. It’s a betrayal that Brittany almost can’t fathom, and she’s suddenly so angry, so fucking furious …

“How did you find out?” she asks.

Chloe just shrugs.

“Something about her whole vibe just didn’t feel right, you know? So, I looked her up. Found it all in a couple of minutes.”

Of course. Of course, all those answers were right there, but Brittany had never even thought to google her, had believed Amma when she said she didn’t really do social media, that after what happened to her boyfriend, she tried to minimize her internet presence as much as possible. And Brittany had just … trusted her.

She had fucking trusted her.

“But I guess the question now is,” Chloe goes on, “what are we going to do about it?”

Brittany doesn’t know the answer to that. Confront Amma? Show her what she’s discovered?

She can picture it. Morning, Amelia-Marie, she’ll say snidely.

But that’s not enough. It would shock her, maybe upset her.

But it won’t hurt her.

Brittany shakes her head. “I have to think about it,” she finally replies.

“Of course,” Chloe says, dropping her lighter in her bag. As she does, Brittany catches a flash of gold, sees the band of a watch lying there, and it seems familiar—but honestly, she’s seen so many fucking watches, chains, even rings lately, that she can’t be sure.



* * *



CHLOE ISN’T THERE WHEN THEY wake up the next morning.

For a long time, Brittany refuses to believe she’s gone for good.

“She’s just gone to get coffee,” she says to Amma. “She’ll be back.”

But the day drags on, the two of them sitting in their bunks, playing on their phones, and Chloe’s bed stays empty.

There’s no note, no text. Nothing left behind at all, like Chloe simply vanished in the night.

Like maybe Chloe had never really existed.

Amma would like that, Brittany thinks, her thoughts turning darker the longer Chloe is gone.

Chloe was her true friend in all this. Chloe, who was actually fun, who had kept them traveling, kept them from returning home where everything would be bleak and sad.

Chloe, who’d actually brought Brittany into the after.

Chloe, who was actually honest with her, as opposed to Amma, who’d lied over and over again.

The third day that Chloe’s been gone, Amma sits up in her bunk. There are shadows underneath her eyes, and her hair is tangled around her face. She looks as rough as Brittany has ever seen her, and that fills her with a petty sort of joy.

“Look,” Amma says, sighing, “I think she’s probably taken off. I mean, this is where she’s from, right? Maybe she went home. Back to Sydney or wherever.”

Brittany wants to argue that Chloe wouldn’t just bail on them without saying goodbye, but instead, she nods. “Maybe.”

“And I gotta be honest with you, I’m feeling ready to go home, too.” Amma offers her a tiny smile. “Or at least, my bank account is ready for me to go home.”

Except that you’re rich, Brittany thinks. Except that when you go home, there are people waiting for you. You still have a family. And Sterling may be in jail, but he’ll be out one day.

That’s the part Brittany finds the hardest to wrap her mind around. All these months of sharing their grief, of leaning on one another, of understanding one another, and it was all bullshit? Amma had people to go back to. Amma had sisters, a mother, a father. The worst thing that had happened to her was that her boyfriend was in jail.

And she’d let Brittany believe that they were the same. Now her impatience made sense. Her barely concealed exasperation when Brittany would lose whole nights crying.

It hurts so much to think about, that for a second, Brittany feels like she can’t breathe, like there’s something stabbing her in her chest.

Amma was never really her friend.

But Chloe had been, and now she was gone.

“Fine,” Brittany says now, getting off her bunk and pulling her bag toward her. “We can go home.”