Free Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight Page B

better not fucking be late again.”
    When I looked down at my own watch, it was 3:02, two minutes past our appointed meeting time.
    “What is this anyway?” Tempest shot back, working her head like she couldn’t have cared less who Zadie and her friends were, only that they were wasting her time. “Why don’t you people start by telling me what the hell it is I’m supposedly late for.”
    Zadie fluttered her eyes shut, then took a deep satisfied breath like she was inhaling something delightful.
    “See,” she said, looking back over her shoulder at the other girls. “What did I tell you? A badass ballerina. How fucking great is that?”
    “What are you talking about, badass baller—”
    “Tsst.” Zadie sliced an index finger in front of Tempest’s nose. “Shut the fuck up. I like you, but not that much.”
    My heart was beating hard. I didn’t belong there. I was not a badass anything. The whole thing was just . . . it wasn’t me. I wanted to run and hide back in my safe little world with Sylvia. So what if lately it seemed like she treated me well only when a guy dumped her? That was okay. We’d been friends for a long time. She’d get back to being the friend she used to be, sooner or later. And I had Ben now. I didn’t need anyone else.
    But now I’d seen them. Seen the Magpies. They weren’t just going to let me go. There’d be a price to pay. How high, I could only guess. But it wasn’t one I wanted to pay, that I was sure of.
    Dylan came forward then. “Why don’t you guys come over, have a seat,” she said. Her voice was nice and her smile friendly. “I know all the secrecy stuff is a little weird. But it ends up being part of the fun, I promise.” She smiled wide and waved us forward. With her face lit in the sun, her eyes warm and twinkling, she was even prettier than I’d realized. When she smiled a second time, it was right at me. “Come on.”
    I felt myself moving before I’d fully decided to. I headed toward the tangle of low, heavy trees where the rest of the girls were propped against limbs, sitting on book bags, and sprawled out on blankets. I knew most of their names. I’d been going to Grace Hall with them for practically my whole life. Except for one or two surprises, they were exactly the girls I’d have expected to be in the Magpies—pretty, popular, well dressed, and well connected. They all made sense—even Tempest and Charlie, in their own, offbeat ways. Everybody except for me. But my not fitting in wasn’t nearly as weird as how much I wanted to all of a sudden. Really wanted to. I knew I should leave. I was doing wrong by Sylvia still being there. I was doing wrong by myself. But I didn’t want to go. I couldn’t. Not yet.
    Zadie and Dylan were still standing out in the sun, whispering to each other. Zadie looked pissed. Dylan looked a little spacey and kind of sad all of a sudden. People talked about the two of them, Dylan and Zadie, the way Zadie was always circling around Dylan like a bulldog. People thought it was creepy. And it was. It was weird.
    “I’m serious,” was the last thing Zadie said, pointing hard at Dylan. “Don’t.”
    Dylan drifted away then, smiling and blinking fast as she took a seat under the trees on a low boulder. She was trying to look happy but didn’t. Zadie stayed on the path in the sun for a minute longer, then crossed her arms and frowned. She looked right, then left down the long sidewalks that wove through the park, like maybe she was considering taking off down one of them. But instead, she finally stepped forward and took her rightful place at the front of the group under the trees. Heather, Rachel, and Bethany flanked her on either side.
    When Zadie finally turned to look at the three of us, it was in a not-so-nice way. Actually, she seemed kind of disgusted. All I could think about was the story I’d once heard about her making a girl at some party swallow a bottle cap. Which made me wonder what exactly they were