The Ballad of Amelia Winter

Even though her favorite season was fall, Clara lived her life in Winter.

The Ballad of Amelia Winter

"She looks gorgeous," came the whispers among the crowd.

My hands were shaking, but Amelia paid no notice. She waved instead to the cluster of friends waiting for her by the punch bowl, and clasped her hand tighter around her boyfriend Matt's arm. I swallowed, shifting between feet and looking for a distraction. Courtney grabbed my wrist, her big blue eyes wide and curious.

"How come you're not dancing?" She was a few inches shorter than me, but on the $200 stripper heels she was wearing tonight, she could meet me face to face.

"I'm really not...in the mood."

"Prom just started, don't be a party pooper!" she giggled, and I couldn't help but notice her caked-on green eyeshadow sparkling brightly under the spotlight that passed. "Seriously, hun, just join us tonight. We're having a great time."

"I just"I don't want to ruin your night," I stammered slowly, rubbing my God-awful shoes together. She was relentless, though, yanking my arm so I'd follow her into the mad frenzy of uncontrolled dancers in the middle of the ballroom.

It only took a few minutes of standing there idly observing Colin and Courtney gyrate against each other like there was no tomorrow to make me more than a little sick to my stomach. I searched the crowd once more for Amelia, her flaming red hair and the dress that cascaded down her body like molten gold. She sat at the bar and, thank goodness, Matt was nowhere to be found.

"I'm gonna grab a drink real quick, I'm dying," I called to Courtney over the music, and she nodded absently while I pushed through the swarm, making my way across the floor.

And there she was, in all her maddeningly unapproachable glory; her full pink lips, the glowing green eyes, the scattered freckles that seemed to dance when she laughed. I edged closer, climbing slowly onto the barstool beside her.

"Clara!" she lit up, her hand falling onto my thigh. "You look amazing tonight, babe. Where's David?"

"David," I repeated, suddenly remembering my lackey of a date. "Um...I'm not quite sure at the moment. Where's Matt?"

She rolled her eyes, plucking the Maraschino cherry out of her Shirley Temple. "He's probably getting high in the parking lot with his stupid sister as we speak." She sighed, skimming her nails across the counter, and the charm bracelet on her wrist glistened under the lights. "Sometimes I just don't get him, Clar. It's like, at times he's there and he's the best guy ever, and at other times..." She chewed her lip, her eyes moving down to the counter. "...it's like I'm nothing."

"Amy, you've never been nothing," I said softly, my eyebrows knotting together. "You're...the most beautiful person I've ever met, and if Matt can't appreciate that then he doesn't deserve you."

It was the bravest thing I'd ever said to her, and for a moment, she didn't quite know what to do but stare at me. Then, she took my hand, my heart racing, and her face drew closer to mine. I closed my eyes, feeling her cool, cherry breath on my face, as she kissed me on the cheek and whispered in my ear, "You're such a good friend."

Fall has always been my favorite time of year. School started and Mammy liked to take me to the candy store the day before. The house always smelled like pumpkin pie and my older brother Chris would let me rake leaves with him sometimes. I loved the new school clothes and the shoes with the rubbery soles and wearing soft brown jackets. But the best part of it all was when Amelia came back from her mom's house in Florida, usually a week or two before school started again.

When we were younger, we did everything together. We were in the same Girl Scout troop, and our houses were across the street from each other, so sometimes, on the weekends, we would make a little campsite in one of our backyards and roast marshmallows on a stovetop. We borrowed each other's clothes and wore goofy animal sunglasses to the pool on the hot days, and when we got our allowances from doing chores, we went down to the drug store to buy magazines with the Backstreet Boys in them. You could say we were best friends. She said we were like sisters. I didn't say what I thought we could be like.

I noticed it first in the seventh grade. She had her bright red hair, her signature, tied up in a pink scrunchie toward the top of her head. She wore a faded pink shirt with the long sleeves pushed up to her elbows, and a pair of cutoff jean shorts that showed off the ample freckles on her colt-like preteen legs. Her shoes were too big for her, but nobody cared"none of us had everything perfect. Amy Winter in fall, even then she was the prettiest girl I knew.

The hard part is, the most popular boy at our school agreed with me. They went steady for four months, drinking Cokes and eating fries and doing everything that we used to do together. When I told Chris about them, he told me not to worry; it happens all the time and you just have to get used to not latching onto your friends 24/7. For the first two months it made sense. The last two were harder. Because he wasn't making her happy anymore. It made me sick, when he ignored her and she chased after him, and she cried on my shoulder, saying that if she couldn't be with him, no one else would love her. And that...well, obviously that was ridiculous. If it were me, I mean...

I didn't tell anyone, ever. Not Chris, not Mom or Dad, especially not Mammy. It would have broken her sweet, Christian, old lady heart to hear that her own granddaughter was having "the stirrin's" for another little girl. I just pretended I liked all the boys who liked me, and they'd take me out and it was nice. But I never felt anything more than friendship, and when they would want to do things with me, pressed up against each other in the backs of cars or on couches, I shut off. And that got me a reputation as a tease, or a prude, or whatever they wanted to call it that day, but anything was better than being called a dyke, or worse, the L word.

Amy and I stopped hanging out when high school started, but I still tried to look out for her. Whenever she needed something, I was there. She tried to be there for me when I needed something too, but I just didn't have the heart to tell her something was wrong when it was. The only other friend I had was Courtney Long, who I'd known since kindergarten when she accidentally stepped on my pink toy dinosaur and hurt her foot. And, don't get me wrong, Courtney was great. But she was the kind of girl who hated to go without a boyfriend. She usually made herself act stupid for them, which I didn't like, but I figured it wasn't really my place to say anything about it. I liked Courtney, idiot boyfriend or not.

And Amy went on to hang out with a bunch of the more popular crowd. The jocks and the cheerleaders and the Associated Student Body. Most high schools you hear about don't adhere to the stereotypical movie clique rules, but ours did. And once you got into a group, you were there for the rest of your high school career. I wasn't popular or unpopular. Just kind of in the middle. Amelia, on the other hand, was the kind of girl that everybody knew and liked. And how could you not? She was beautiful and sweet and real and a generally good person. But she never got to be with boys who treated her right. I didn't like that.

I won't give you the nitty-gritty details, but I'll have you know they were pretty much all the same person. The very first one wasn't that bad to begin with; he played baseball and he was overall a pretty nice guy. But he didn't pay her enough attention. They broke up because he spent so much time with his friends. We found out later that they had been telling people things about Amy. Really bad things that got her looked at differently in the cafeteria. And then they were over for good.

Th next one hurt her a lot. See, he told her he loved her and was really nice and sweet with her to her face, but on the weekends or whenever he wasn't with her, he would go around with other girls. And he would say that it was her fault for not having sex with him. He'd even talk about it in front of his friends while she was there. She got really embarrassed by that. I didn't like him. When he started taking her money so he could buy him and his friends drinks, that was the end of that.

And now she's with Matt. I don't hate Matt for being with her. I never hated any of them for being with her. I just hated them for the things they did to her. He was really good to her, until prom, of course, when he got high in the parking lot with his sister and his friend and ended up ditching Amy after all their friends had left so that I had to give her a ride. I didn't mind giving her a ride. He just wasn't considerate, was all.

"Thanks for this, Clar," she whispered to me, leaning her forehead against the passenger window and pretending I couldn't see the tears dripping off her nose. I reached over and squeezed her leg encouragingly, chewing on my lip as I watched the road ahead. "Hey, Clar? Can I ask you something?" I nodded, holding down the brake until the car in front of me decided he'd finally go after this stop sign. "Why do you think he acts like this? I mean, should I break up with him for leaving me there by myself, or...?"

I sighed. Of course I wanted her to break up with him. But that was me being selfish, not me being a friend. "He's just being a boy, Amy. And I've decided that boys are stupid."

"You're right." She turned to face forward, tapping her foot impatiently against the floor. "Clar? Do you...do you still think about me? I mean, I know we haven't talked much in a while, but...I don't know. I miss you. I miss you a lot."

"I think about you all the time, Amy," I mumbled, pulling into her driveway. "I miss you a lot, too."

"So then...so then do you...?"

I hadn't noticed, in turning off the car, that she'd already undone her seatbelt, and was now leaning across the center console. I hadn't noticed, in taking my own seatbelt off, that she'd wiped the tears off her face and had her elbow pressed up against mine, and that now her eyes were closed and she was edging toward me, inch by inch, until her mouth met mine, and in a hot sweet mess of tangled hands and hair, I kissed her back. She leaned away after about ten seconds, looking sheepishly into her lap.

"I'm sorry. Was that...was it okay?" Her eyes flickered up to me, waiting for my answer.

"It's fine. Do you regret it?"

"No."

I touched her arm, a wistful smile tugging at the corners of my mouth. "I didn't either."

"You're still a really good friend, Clar."

"I know."

The next Monday at school, I was really looking forward to seeing Amy again. After I walked her up to her door Saturday night, she'd smiled at me and touched my arm again and told me she'd see me in class. I'd heard that she wasn't coming, because she'd gotten sick Sunday night, but she never missed school. My suspicions were proven correct when I saw her in the hallway just before seventh period.

It was strange, though. As soon as I got closer to her, her beautiful green eyes grew wide, and she bit her lip and sidestepped into the nearest door until I passed. The smile faded from my face, but I continued on to my next class.

Why would she avoid me? She kissed me. I kissed her back. Maybe now, after all these years of pretending that there was nothing, maybe we'd get to be together. So why on earth would she act like she didn't want to talk to me?

I managed to see her after school, in the parking lot next to her little blue Mazda. When she saw me standing there waiting for her, she shifted her books into her other arm, glancing between me and her feet.

"Hi, Clara."

"What's the matter, Amy?"

She paused, chewing furiously on her lip until I thought it would bleed. I reached out to touch her shoulder, and she flinched away. A few people were staring. I tried my best not to make too big of a scene.

"Amy," I mumbled, looking down at my shoes. "You regret it."

"Clara, it's not that," she started, leaning against the hood of her car, and opened the door to toss her school stuff into the passenger seat. She sighed, putting her hands on her hips in the stance that I knew couldn't be any good. It was defensive, and it meant bad news for me. "I was emotional Saturday night. I was hurt that Matt ditched me, I missed being around you, I was just...I was just looking for a little bit of comfort. I didn't mean to lead you on and I'm just...I'm really sorry. I don't feel that way about you." She gently touched my elbow. "I hope we can still be friends after this. And I won't tell anyone if you don't."

And then it hit me. She didn't care about how I was doing. She didn't care that, in this moment, she was throwing my heart out the window of an airplane and watching it explode on impact. She wanted to keep it quiet. There wasn't any concern for my well-being, or my state of mind. Amy Winter, being self-serving. Did I really love her, or the person I'd made her out to be?

"Fine," I choked, and brushed my sleeve under my nose. "I won't tell anybody. Good luck with Matt." With that, I turned on my heel and headed back to my car, knowing full well that things could never possibly be the same.

I was glad to have fall again. A long, hot summer spent in the kitchens of the local Greek restaurant finally paid off when I got the last check and packed up my little old Volkswagen on the way to Penn State. I cried for my mother and father and for Chris, but as soon as I put miles between me and the house, I couldn't help but feel an overwhelming rush of relief. It was a new start. And even though a particular couple of people from my high school were going to the same college as me, I could still make first impressions.

The dormitories were cramped and old and smelled a bit like stale bread, but they felt like a place I could relax and drink coffee and read The Lord of the Rings in peace. My roommate was very sweet. And as hard as it was, she was also the first person I told.

"I don't know how you'll feel about this," I said slowly, trying to work up my courage, "but I think I like girls." She went quiet for a few seconds, and smiled. She was very religious.

"That's fine by me."

"I don't know how I feel about it just yet, but I thought you should know. Could you...could you not tell anybody, please?" To this, she put her hand on my shoulder, and smiled a bright white teeth and soft pink lipstick smile at me.

"Okay. I'll pray for you."

I wanted to cry, really cry like I used to when I was younger, but I couldn't. I promised myself I'd only cry over terribly important things, and I didn't want to frighten my roommate so much that she wouldn't want to live with me. So instead I just thanked her, and told her that if she ever needed anything I'd be there for her. She smiled at me again, and headed down to the dining commons to meet up with her friends.

At dinner, I sat by myself, not wanting to disturb my roommate or her friends. There was a girl, though, a few tables away, who was sitting by herself too. I only saw her from the back. She had short, choppy, bleached hair and long star earrings that dangled to her shoulders. She was wearing a thick, fuzzy wool sweater with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows and bright bangles all up her arms. She was drawing, it looked like, too preoccupied with her charcoals to pay attention to the food on the tray in front of her. So, I picked up my things and took the seat beside her, peeking curiously to see what she was sketching out.

The picture looked familiar. The wide open eyes and dark curly hair and the tilt of the nose. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but the girl on paper was familiar. And for some reason, I didn't want to like her. She looked too quiet, too afraid and passive. Her lips, pressed tightly together in a thin line, looked as though they'd let nothing, nothing intelligent at least, pass. This girl was ugly, not physically, the way she was drawn, but whoever she was, as a person.

"That's an interesting sketch," I said quietly, taking the spot beside the bleach-blonde girl. She jumped a little bit, and buried the surgical art tools back into her bag.

"Thanks," she whispered, and turned away, starting to gather her belongings.

"Hold on, I just...I only wanted to sit with you."

"No, you don't."

On this note she turned to face me, and it punched me in the gut like a load of bricks.

"Amy." She looked down, trying with unsteady, dirtied hands to close the clasp of her bag. "You look different."

"Thanks," she spat sarcastically, standing to leave. I slid my hand into the crook of her elbow, pulling her back.

"I didn't mean it in a bad way. Just...different."

"You told, didn't you?"

"About us? Of course not."

"Then how did Matt find out?"

I paused, swallowing the heavy stone in my throat. Matt found out?

"He knows? Did he tell anyone? Amy, I'm so sorry..."

"F**k it, Clar, I just can't afford to be near you right now."

"Why are you mad at me? What the hell did I do to you?" I tried to keep the tears from welling in my eyes. Only cry for important things. But this was important. I'd loved Amy Winter for as long as I had known her, and the one chance I had at her falling in love with me back, she suddenly decided to hate me. It wasn't fair. I deserved someone to care about me the way I cared about her. And here she was throwing it all back in my face.

"We're not supposed to fall in love, Clara." She said it so flatly it almost made me shiver. "We were best friends, we were sisters. We're not allowed to fall in love. We're not allowed to feel like that. It's not right." Something in the way it came out, though, sparked in my head. We, she said. Not you. She didn't tell me to stop loving her. She acted like it was a mutual thing. Like we were in this together.

"You love me, too," I mumbled, running my thumb across the top of my bag. After all these years of wishing for this...it just wasn't as satisfying as I had thought it would be.

"I can't. I'm so sorry, Clara." She stood up, and this time I didn't stop her. It was that genuine sadness in her eyes that kept me from going after her, from pulling her chest to mine and running my fingers through her hair, from pressing my lips on hers the way she did to me, from pulling back and holding her and telling her how much I loved her.

Because she wasn't ready for that. And, when I thought about it, neither was I.

I did deserve someone who'd care about me. Amy was afraid of being looked at like a lesbian, and, honestly, so was I. But when I loved someone, I loved them. And she let it simmer and pretended that it died out. She wasn't right for me, even in this transformation, even now when she was free to make anything of herself that she wanted. There was no version of this where we ended up together. And now I had been freed from this painful crush that made me nothing more than a passive, sidelined observer.

I was still hopelessly in love with Amelia Winter, and I probably would be for a long time, but for right now, I was ready for the fall.

Author's Note

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