Dreaming of Amelia (45 page)

So this is me shouting that name. They say nobody ever escapes from a black hole. They don't know the strength in my Amelia. The strength in your grip when you want to stay out dancing, the strength in your wicked smile.

Riley

The Committee for the Administration of the KL Mason Patterson Trust Fund

The KL Mason Patterson Scholarship File

 

Rob and Chris,

Just got off the phone with the hospital and you should be the first to know: in a ‘miraculous turn of events', it seems that Amelia's awake and lucid.

Cheers all around.

My concern now is this: Riley might find a way to slip out of the charges against him — seems these kids know how to land on their feet. Next thing, they'll be running back wanting that scholarship bonus. Technically, they're entitled to it since they completed their final year of high school (although
did
Amelia complete it if she didn't come to her English exam?).

Whatever, we need to shut down the possibility, right away.

Set things in motion to strip them of their scholarships.

Backdate it so they won't get the bonus.

Make it like they were never here.

Cheers,

Bill

Just following on from my last email —

I assume I don't need to tell you what the ‘grounds' are for termination of the scholarships, but I'm thinking we should throw in as many as we can.

So: now that we know Riley's true colours, we should look back over ‘unsolved crimes' for the last year. What about that Brookfielder's artwork that got attacked while it was here in the exhibition? I seem to remember Riley's art was in the same exhibition? Look at him for that.

Cheers,

Bill

 

 

Still thinking aloud . . . but wasn't there some question of them stealing castanets from the music room? Isn't that why we got security cameras?

Bill

PS And no offence, Chris, but you can be a bit of a pompous ass, and your emails are overwritten. Keep the next one to bullet points! Cheers.

TERMINATION OF SCHOLARSHIP

• In accordance with Article 19(a)(i) of the Scholarship Charter, the KL Mason Patterson Scholarship Committee hereby moves that the scholarships granted to:

Amelia Damaski
Riley Terence Smith

be terminated, with retrospective effect.

• Grounds for termination are as follows:

1. That, without reasonable justification, Amelia failed to attend her HSC English Extension 3 exam.

2. That Riley has been charged with assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

3. That Amelia and Riley engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct in the course of their original scholarship interviews, in that they did not disclose the true nature of their criminal record.

4. That Amelia and Riley broke into music rooms after school hours.

5. That Riley may have destroyed the artwork of a Brook-field Student (Sebastian Mantegna) while it was on display as part of the Ashbury-Brookfield Art Exhibition.

6. That Amelia and/or Riley may have stolen a set of castanets.

7. That Amelia and Riley deceived their fellow students by pretending to be friends with them although they did not, in fact, like or respect them.

• In accordance with Article 20(a) of the Scholarship Charter, the KL Mason Patterson Committee will hear the response of the scholarship holders to the above grounds before termination is confirmed.

Extracts from Transcript of Hearing — Friday 12 December

Absent:
Bill Ludovico and Constance Milligan

EVIDENCE OF AMELIA DAMASKI

Mr Botherit:
Amelia, can I begin by saying how happy we are to see that you've recovered so well? Also, we assume you know that the Board of Studies has accepted estimates from each of your subject teachers for exams you missed while in hospital, so you'll still get your HSC. We care about you and wish you the best, no matter how things might turn out here . . .

[
Amelia gazes steadily
]

Mr Botherit:
Let's get started right away. This is a formal hearing during which you and Riley will have the opportunity to persuade us that the grounds for termination of your scholarship are without foundation. Do you understand that?

[
Amelia blinks, which we take to be a nod
]

Mr Botherit:
In effect, if the scholarship is terminated you will miss out on the bonus.

[
Another blink
]

Mr Botherit:
Right. Can you tell us why you failed to attend your English exam?

Amelia:
Okay. Earlier this year I met a girl who lives in a mental institution in Castle Hill. She has serious depression. We got to be friends and I met up with her a lot. I missed the exam because I went to see her; I thought she was going to kill herself.

[
Long pause
]

Mr Botherit:
Why — why did you think that?

Amelia:
Not long before this she told me her heart was broken. And then she started falling apart — not eating, not sleeping, fading away.

Mr Botherit:
. . . Okay, but you came to the exam that morning — people saw you arrive. And then you suddenly left?

Amelia:
Yes.

Mr Botherit:
You suddenly became convinced this . . . friend . . . was going to kill herself?

Amelia:
Right.

Mr Botherit:
Amelia, you say that your friend was in an institution. Presumably they would have had safeguards in place to stop patients from killing themselves.

Amelia:
They didn't have safeguards in place to stop a patient killing another patient with an axe earlier this year.

[
Some murmurs of shock around the table — another long pause — then
]

Mr Botherit:
All right. And it was more important to you to . . . save this girl's life than to attend an HSC exam?

Amelia:
Ah. Yeah.

Mr Botherit:
Forgive me, Amelia. You see, this is all rather . . . out of left field, is the expression I think. We had no idea about your friend in the . . . mental institution.

[
Silence
]

Mr Botherit:
Amelia, where is this mental institution?

Amelia:
It's near the heritage park.

Mr Botherit
(
voice softening
)
:
Okay. So that's why you went there. A friend — a friend had a broken heart — and she wanted to kill herself. So you went to . . . stop her.

Amelia:
Right.

Mr Botherit:
And what happened when you got there?

Amelia:
She wasn't there, where I usually meet her. In the vegetable garden. I spent a couple of hours searching around the park and the neighbourhood. I was heading back to see if I could speak to the people at the institution itself — she's always told me to stay away from there, but I was too scared by now. I wanted to make sure. And that's when the storm
started — and when I saw her. There was a rope — a tree — I started running — and then I woke up in the hospital. And two weeks had gone by.

Mr Botherit:
Did you tell the people at the hospital about this friend?

Amelia:
Of course. I wanted them to find out for me if she was okay.

Mr Botherit:
What did they say?

Amelia:
They said there is no mental institution in Castle Hill.

EVIDENCE OF RILEY T SMITH

Mr Botherit:
Riley, have you ever seen the mental institution that Amelia refers to?

Riley:
No.

Mr Botherit:
Why do
you
think Amelia went to the heritage park instead of to her English exam?

Riley:
Because of me. I betrayed her. I told her I'd given up on her.

Mr Botherit:
Okay. And do you have anything to say to explain the criminal charges against you.

Riley:
No.

[
Long pause
]

Mr Botherit:
All right. We'll move on to the next gr—

Mr Garcia:
Can I interrupt? Riley, you turned yourself in to the police. Why did you do that?

Riley:
I couldn't have stayed with Amelia in the hospital if I was running.

Patricia Aganovic:
Can I ask when you realised that your hands were fractured?

Riley:
When they tried to take my fingerprints.

EVIDENCE OF AMELIA DAMASKI

Mr Botherit:
Amelia, did your mother ever come to the hospital when you were there?

Amelia:
How is that relevant? [
A pause during which Amelia thinks and then laughs to herself and says:
] Well, my stepfather was in the hospital while I was, and Mum would have come to see him, so, yeah, I guess my mother did come to the hospital while I was there.

Mr Botherit:
To see your stepfather. Okay. Do you have anything to say about the criminal charges against Riley?

Amelia:
They're excessive. My stepfather was only in hospital overnight.

Mr Botherit:
Excessive? But Riley's hands were broken. You have to hit somebody pretty hard to break your own hands.

Amelia:
I don't think that's how Riley broke his hands. I think he punched the wall.

Mr Botherit:
So he swung at your stepdad and got the wall, it's not really rel—

Amelia:
Riley doesn't miss.

Mr Botherit:
You're saying he just randomly, deliberately hit the wall.

Amelia:
Yes.

Mr Botherit:
Why would . . . Oh, perhaps we should leave this for now.

EVIDENCE OF RILEY T SMITH

Riley:
Why did I not tell you in the scholarship interview that I once beat a guy so badly I snapped his spine? Well, I didn't plan to do it again.

EVIDENCE OF AMELIA DAMASKI

Amelia:
Why would we tell anybody that?

Mr Botherit:
You didn't think we deserved to hear the full tr—

Amelia
(calmly)
:
If you want the full truth, you should know this about Riley. From the age of two, he drummed on everything — garbage bin lids, walls, the TV. It gave his dad a headache. He used to punch Riley in the head, so the kid would know what a headache felt like. Sometimes he'd press Riley's hands against the hot element of the stove, hoping it would stop him from drumming.

They put him in five different foster homes — he ran away from all of them, ended up in the hostel where I live, and that's how I met him.

Mr Botherit
(quietly)
:
It's not surprising that Riley became a violent person.

Amelia
(slowly, calmly
)
:
Riley is not a violent person. That time he attacked the guy in the petrol station? It was the manager. He had my arm twisted so hard behind my back I was about to pass out. Riley went wild — he was protecting me.

Mr Botherit:
But how could you know he wouldn't go wild again? When another occasion came up to . . . protect you?

Amelia:
He promised he wouldn't.

Mr Botherit:
Amelia, a promise —

Amelia:
Do you know what he promised? That if he ever felt that angry again he'd punch a wall with both fists. My stepdad got off easy. Look at the wall, and look at Riley's hands, and then give me a lecture about promises.