Gone Girl(104)
When she picked up, I blurted: ‘This is Nick Dunne, Amy Elliott’s husband. I really need to talk to you.’
‘Why.’
‘I really, really need more information. About your—’
‘Don’t say friendship.’ I heard an angry grin in her voice.
‘No. I wouldn’t. I just want to hear your side. I am not calling because I think you’ve got anything – anything – to do with my wife, her situation, currently. But I would really like to hear what happened. The truth. Because I think you may be able to shed light on a … pattern of behavior of Amy’s.’
‘What kind of pattern?’
‘When very bad things happen to people who upset her.’
She breathed heavily into the phone. ‘Two days ago, I wouldn’t have talked to you,’ she started. ‘But then I was having a drink with some friends, and the TV was on, and you came on, and it was about Amy being pregnant. Everyone I was with, they were so angry at you. They hated you. And I thought, I know how that feels. Because she’s not dead, right? I mean, she’s still just missing? No body?’
‘That’s right.’
‘So let me tell you. About Amy. And high school. And what happened. Hold on.’ On her end, I could hear cartoons playing – rubbery voices and calliope music – then suddenly not. Then whining voices. Go watch downstairs. Downstairs, please.
‘So, freshman year. I’m the kid from Memphis. Everyone else is East Coast, I swear. It felt weird, different, you know? All the girls at Wickshire, it was like they’d been raised communally – the lingo, the clothes, the hair. And it wasn’t like I was a pariah, I was just … insecure, for sure. Amy was already The Girl. Like, first day, I remember, everyone knew her, everyone was talking about her. She was Amazing Amy – we’d all read those books growing up – plus, she was just gorgeous. I mean, she was—’
‘Yeah, I know.’
‘Right. And pretty soon she was showing an interest in me, like, taking me under her wing or whatever. She had this joke that she was Amazing Amy, so I was her sidekick Suzy, and she started calling me Suzy, and pretty soon everyone else did, too. Which was fine by me. I mean, I was a little toadie: Get Amy a drink if she was thirsty, throw in a load of laundry if she needed clean underwear. Hold on.’
Again I could hear the shuffle of her hair against the receiver. Marybeth had brought every Elliott photo album with her in case we needed more pictures. She’d shown me a photo of Amy and Hilary, cheek-to-cheek grins. So I could picture Hilary now, the same butter-blond hair as my wife, framing a plainer face, with muddy hazel eyes.
‘Jason, I am on the phone – just give them a few Popsicles, it’s not that dang hard.
‘Sorry. Our kids are out of school, and my husband never ever takes care of them, so he seems a little confused about what to do for the ten minutes I’m on the phone with you. Sorry. So … so, right, I was little Suzy, and we had this game going, and for a few months – August, September, October – it was great. Like intense friendship, we were together all the time. And then a few weird things happened at once that I knew kind of bothered her.’
‘What?’
‘A guy from our brother school, he meets us both at the fall dance, and the next day he calls me instead of Amy. Which I’m sure he did because Amy was too intimidating, but whatever … and then a few days later, our midterm grades come, and mine are slightly better, like, four-point-one versus four-point. And not long after, one of our friends, she invites me to spend Thanksgiving with her family. Me, not Amy. Again, I’m sure this was because Amy intimidated people. She wasn’t easy to be around, you felt all the time like you had to impress. But I can feel things change just a little. I can tell she’s really irritated, even though she doesn’t admit it.
‘Instead, she starts getting me to do things. I don’t realize it at the time, but she starts setting me up. She asks if she can color my hair the same blond as hers, because mine’s mousy, and it’ll look so nice a brighter shade. And she starts complaining about her parents. I mean she’s always complained about her parents, but now she really gets going on them – how they only love her as an idea and not really for who she is – so she says she wants to mess with her parents. She has me start prank-calling her house, telling her parents I’m the new Amazing Amy. We’d take the train into New York some weekends, and she’d tell me to stand outside their house – one time she had me run up to her mom and tell her I was going to get rid of Amy and be her new Amy or some crap like that.’
‘And you did it?’
‘It was just dumb stuff girls do. Back before cell phones and cyber-bullying. A way to kill time. We did prank stuff like that all the time, just dumb stuff. Try to one-up each other on how daring and freaky we could be.’
‘Then what?’
‘Then she starts distancing herself. She gets cold. And I think – I think that she doesn’t like me anymore. Girls at school start looking at me funny. I’m shut out of the cool circle. Fine. But then one day I’m called into the principal’s office. Amy has had a horrible accident – twisted ankle, fractured arm, cracked ribs. Amy has fallen down this long set of stairs, and she says it was me who pushed her. Hold on. ‘Go back downstairs now. Go. Down. Stairs. Goooo downstairs. Sorry, I’m back. Never have kids. So Amy said you pushed her?’