The telephone on the second floor of Hart Hall rings just after ten. Annabelle Wycoff answers. When the girl on the other end of the line asks for Emily Beam, Annabelle tells her that Emily is in the library. Annabelle also shares her concern for Emily, their resident orphan. The girl on the phone tells Annabelle that she must be mistaken. Emily’s mom and dad are fine—she saw them at church on Sunday.
When Emily arrives at the top of the stairs, Annabelle is waiting for her, holding the receiver out as if it were a fish she’d just caught. “Phone call, Emily.”
“Who is it?”
“I knew your parents didn’t ski,” says Annabelle.
Emily puts the phone up to her ear. “Mom?” But she knows it isn’t her mother, or Aunt Cindy; she talked to both of them on Sunday afternoon.
“Hey, Emily,” says Carey. “Is this a bad time?”
Annabelle crosses her arms and plants herself, looking like the troll who guarded the billy-goat bridge.
Emily turns away and talks quietly into the phone. “Hey, I’m sorry I haven’t called you back. There just aren’t enough phones for all of us girls, I guess.”
“Your friend said you were in the library.”
“Yeah,” says Emily. “I study there.”
“I haven’t been back in the one at school yet. Mr. Burton invited me to come and have a look around when no one else was in there, but I didn’t want to.”
“I don’t blame you.”
“They cleaned everything up, of course.”
“Of course.”
“I’m sure it looks just the same as it always has,” Carey says, “but it won’t feel the same, to be in there.”
Emily gets it. The library would no longer smell like the inside of books. It would smell like disinfectant and Band-Aids.
Annabelle gives her a little wave, and Emily waves back with her middle finger. To Carey she says, “Go ahead. I’m listening.”
Carey talks on as girls travel to and from the bathroom. Just as K.T. emerges from the stairwell and Waverley comes out of the room, Annabelle announces what she has learned: “The orphan story was bullshit.”
Emily gives K.T. a pleading look.
“Emily?” Carey asks. “Are you there?”
Annabelle takes a step toward K.T. and says, “You owe me an explanation, Keller True Montgomery.”
“I don’t owe you a damn thing,” K.T. says. “Because you were so obviously desperate for some drama in your life, you took what I said seriously. It was a joke, Annabelle. I can’t believe you fell for it.”
“All right,” says Annabelle, backing up a little. “Okay.”
“I don’t owe you shit, not after what you did to Hannah.”
“Waverley started it,” Annabelle says.
“She’s right,” Waverley says. “I did.”
“But you finished it, K.T.,” Annabelle says. “Remember? If you hadn’t ratted, Ho-Bag Hannah would still be here.”
“Damn straight,” says Waverley.
“It wasn’t like that,” says K.T., “and you know it.”
“You are such a liar,” Annabelle says. “No wonder you don’t have any friends.”
“Emily?” Carey says again. “Emily?”
Déjà vu, Emily thinks. Déjà vu all over again.
As soon as Paul went screeching out of her driveway in his truck, she knew she had made an irreversible error. When the phone rang a half hour later, Mr. Beam answered. He refused to let Emily talk to Paul, even though she tugged on his arm and cried and begged. He laid into Paul for ruining his daughter’s life.
After her parents had gone to bed, Emily slipped downstairs, picked up the phone in the kitchen, and dialed the Wagoners’ number.
Carey, not Paul, answered. “Happy birthday, Emily.”
“I wish,” said Emily. “Can I talk to Paul, please?”
“He’s locked in his room, and he won’t come out. My parents just went to bed. What happened?”
For a whole minute, Emily didn’t say anything. She kept picturing the letter in the back pocket of Paul’s jeans. Carey stayed on the line, and Emily put her hand over the tiny holes in the phone in case Mr. or Mrs. Wagoner picked up. Neither one of them did. The silence ticked away. Emily could hear Carey put down the phone, and in another minute, Paul said her name.
“Emily.”
“Paul.”
“Thanks, Carey,” Paul whispered. “I’ve got it now.” He waited for a second before he spoke. “Why? Why wouldn’t you let me in?”
“It was my dad,” Emily lied. “He’s such an asshole.” A light flipped on in the foyer. “Oh, shit,” she said. “Someone’s coming.” It was her mother; she could tell by the slide of her slippers.
“I wanted to talk to them in person,” said Paul. “I wanted to ask you this, and them, too, so I’ll just say it now. Let’s get married.”
Emily could hear the smile in Paul’s voice as her mother walked into view. In her thin nightgown, with the light behind her, Emily could see right through her. She was wearing granny underwear, and her breasts sagged.
“Tell him goodbye,” said Mrs. Beam. “Hang up right now, or I’ll go get your father.”
“I’ve got to go,” she told Paul. “I’ll see you Monday at school, okay?”
“Yeah,” said Paul, and he hung up.
For most of Sunday morning, Emily lay in bed, thinking about Paul, wondering how well she knew him. Her mom and dad decided not to go to church, and Emily wasn’t sure if it was because they didn’t want to run into the Wagoners or because they wanted to keep an eye on her. Just before eleven, her mom left for the grocery store, and her dad came in from the garage, where he’d been changing the oil in his car. Emily listened for him to get in the shower and called Paul’s house, but no one answered.
All day, she waited for an opportunity to try again, but there wasn’t one. Sunday afternoon, it snowed for a while, but all that was left on the ground early Monday morning was the dust of it, not nearly enough to cancel school. The alarm clock sounded at 6:15 a.m. like always, and Emily got herself ready to catch the bus.
She hears Carey’s voice. “If you’re still there, Emily, say something.”
A huddle of girls has formed outside the bathroom door, watching, listening. It is wrong, but she can’t help it: Emily hangs up the phone.
K.T. and Annabelle are in full face-off mode. Because K.T. is so much taller, it makes Annabelle look even more like a troll.
“Just because I’m not friends with you,” K.T. is saying, “doesn’t mean I don’t have any friends. I choose my friends carefully; they have to be people I can trust. Emily Beam is my friend, and she had nothing to do with it. I roped her into the story. And she has nothing to do with Hannah, either, so leave Emily out of it. You bullied Hannah. I saw the notes. It was no secret to Hannah who was behind them. Who the hell are you to tell another girl what to do with her body?”
“Come on, Annabelle,” Waverley says. “Let’s go.”
“I might not have loved Hannah every minute of every day,” says K.T., “but at least I treated her like a person. You treated her like a dog.”
Annabelle turns to Emily. “You’d better watch out,” she says. “I wouldn’t trust your dear ol’ roomie for a second. Oh, and, by the way, I’m really glad you’re not an orphan.”
Waverley grabs Annabelle’s arm and escorts her into their room. The door slams shut, and the girls in the hall disperse.
K.T. looks at Emily. “I went to Dr. Ingold because I was worried about Hannah. Just the same as I was with you. We girls are so good at hiding our pain.” K.T. picks up her book bag and cello case and walks down the hall to Room 15, leaving Emily alone.
The Doctor
The doctor was a woman.
She wore a smock of white.
And in the glow of evening,
she prayed with all her might.
She prayed for little children.
She prayed for all the land,
and for an angel not yet born,
tiny as a hand.
Emily Beam, March 15, 1995