Gone Girl(119)
“Can’t stand to watch something suffer,” he says. “Quick dunk?”
“I’m okay,” I say.
“Not in my car, you’re not—come on, quick dunk, you have more crap on you than you realize.”
We run off the dock toward the rocky beach nearby. While I wade ankle-deep in the water, Jeff runs with giant splashy footsteps and throws himself forward, arms wild. As soon as he’s far enough out, I unhook my money belt and fold my sundress around it, leave it at the water’s edge with my glasses on top. I lower myself until I feel the warm water hit my thighs, my belly, my neck, and then I hold my breath and go under.
I swim far and fast, stay underwater longer than I should to remind myself what it would feel like to drown—I know I could do it if I needed to—and when I come up with a single disciplined gasp, I see Jeff lapping rapidly toward shore, and I have to swim fast as a porpoise back to my money belt and scramble onto the rocks just ahead of him.
NICK DUNNE
EIGHT DAYS GONE
As soon as I hung up with Tommy, I phoned Hilary Handy. If my “murder” of Amy was a lie, and Tommy O’Hara’s “rape” of Amy was a lie, why not Hilary Handy’s “stalking” of Amy? A sociopath must cut her teeth somewhere, like the austere marble halls of Wickshire Academy.
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-oh. 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.