The American Girl: A disturbing and twisty psychological thriller

She must have felt me watching her, because she turned to me and explained in her usual delicate English, “The things she had with her, when …” As if the thought of this had upset her, she abruptly left the room.

I sat for a while, staring at the pale arms of birches waving in the hospital grounds, pure blue sky spilling between their branches like paint. I wondered how these nuns got to be so nice, when the ones in my high school were witches. Turning my attention to the bed, I looked at Quinn’s hand lying in mine, the groove of her lifeline casting a faint shadow. Her skin felt so new, as if it had just been made. If she never woke and the truth never came to light, what would happen? Would the nuns just keep her here sleeping forever, like Snow White in her glass case?

Make a difference, Bill had said. That’s what all this was about. It was why I let Quinn’s hand rest on the sheets and crossed the room to the chest of drawers. It was why I reached into the plastic tray until my fingertips found the rough lifeline in the glass of the broken phone. It was why I slipped it into my purse.

Molly Swift

JULY 31, 2015

The phone was charging, the battery percentage nudging slowly up. I’d found an outlet under Quinn’s bed and plugged it in with my charger, arranging my bag and feet on the floor to hide it from view. Every time a trolley squeaked past the doorway, I twitched around, trying not to look too suspicious and reasoning that if someone did come in I would just say the phone was mine.

As soon as the battery looked more green than red, I unplugged it and went to the bathroom, latching the door with unsteady hands. I sat on the toilet and clicked the phone on, feeling a passing moment of triumph that there was no passcode. I studied the wallpaper photo, of Quinn and Raphael Blavette huddled under a towel. They were beaded with water, grinning, his arm slung over her shoulders, her head half on his chest. They looked more than close—intimate. I wondered if they’d been an item, before whatever went wrong went wrong.

The big discovery was her blog on the Blogger app, which I glanced at with the same blushing fascination with which I read my older sister’s diary when I was a nerdy middle schooler and she was a popular senior, navigating the world of crushes and boys and Shakespearean friendship dramas. The blog’s title—Sympathy for the Devil—revealed an unexpected side to Quinn Perkins, one kept invisible in her Facebook account.

I made a note of the url and flicked through the phone’s other apps, cryptic emblems of the mysterious life of the teenager—Tumblr and Spotify, Tinder and Snapchat. The photos were much like her Instagram account—snaps of the sunny beach and hunks at the pool, though there were quite a few more of Raphael, including some glowing selfies of the two of them together that only confirmed my sense that they were involved.

The time caught my eye—I’d been in the cubicle for nearly twenty minutes, though it had felt like five. I hurried out of the cubicle and back to the room, glancing up and down the corridor before I went in. I didn’t see anyone, so it seemed safe to go to the chest of drawers and slip the phone back into the plastic tray. As I did, I noticed a pink iPod shuffle lying tangled in the hair band. I remembered reading an article about how familiar music stimulates the brains of comatose patients. Some patients who were thought beyond hope had woken after hearing their favorite songs.

No sooner had I taken the shuffle out than I heard Sister Eglantine’s voice from behind me. “I’m afraid visiting time is almost over,” she said apologetically.

“No worries,” I said, turning around slowly and trying not to look guilty.

“Look at her sleeping,” she said, putting her head to one side. “The poor angel. Anything you need—truly—you must inform us. We are here to hold you up in your necessity.”

“Well, there is one thing,” I said.

Eglantine hovered nervously while I pushed the earbuds into her patient’s ears, noting how their delicate folds looked translucent in the light streaming in from the window. As if she was carved from wax, not flesh. I tried to explain the coma theory. Embarrassed at not understanding me, she smiled and nodded and drifted away, reminding me one last time about visiting hours.

I pressed Play on the shuffle. Some Tom Waits song or other started up, sounding tinny and warped. I don’t know how long I stood over her, but my strongest impression from the whisper of the songs was that she had music taste a lot like my dad.

After a while, I had to sit down because my legs were shaking. I’d been standing so still, worried that she would move and I’d miss it. I don’t know if it was because I’d looked through her photos, her blog, but something had changed. I felt as if I belonged there somehow, with her. I noticed new things about her—the pale purple shadows under her eyes, the scars on her face knitting together, the new growth of hair on the shaved part of her head. I held her hand, and this time it wasn’t a lie.

I was just unplugging the charge from under the bed when I saw something out of the corner of my eye: a tiny movement, just like before. I looked up. Nothing. She was as still as a waxen effigy or a statue carved on a tomb. Perhaps it was wishful thinking or a trick of the mind or something. I dropped the charger in my bag.

As soon as I did, there it was again. And this time I saw it clearly: a twitch of her littlest finger, tiny, but definitely a movement. And then a twitch of all of her fingers, as if she were clutching at the sheets.

“Sister Eglantine,” I called.

She didn’t answer, so I called louder, my voice hoarse with excitement. It had worked. Her P300 wave or whatever was responding to meaningful stimulus, which meant she could wake up.

Sister Eglantine came in and I hurriedly explained. She summoned the doctor. They prodded and poked and checked the machines, but when they saw nothing, the mood turned into one of vague disappointment. Eglantine smiled apologetically. The doctor cautioned me not to feel too hopeful.

Like all relatives, of course I did secretly feel hopeful: that she would wake. And unlike relatives, I secretly worried: that she would wake.

Quinn Perkins

JULY 15, 2015

Blog Entry

This morning Émilie announced that it was a beautiful day and we were going to the beach. All fine and well, except that Noémie hadn’t spoken a word to me since she saw me with her brother yesterday. That, and I got to the car to find that Freddie was coming, too. Far from being considered a creep by everyone, he turns out to be some sort of universal family favorite, like the sex-pest equivalent of a Disney movie. Needless to say, it was the car trip from hell.

It wasn’t just that Freddie’s thigh was pressed into mine the whole time. His actual breathing made me to want to barf. I refused to look at him, even when he asked me something nice like did I want the window open or closed. I kept trying to move further across the seat, but how could I when beach towels and sun cream and plastic-wrapped sandwiches were packed in around us like Styrofoam peanuts? And despite how I felt, I didn’t want to seem or even be a bitch. So the whole time I just played nervously with my phone, avoiding the Snapchat app, but at the same time wanting to ward off anything that might’ve crept up behind me while I wasn’t looking, virtually speaking.

“Merde, Quinn. You look at it every one second,” says Noémie in disgust.

“I’m checking for messages,” I say lamely, ashamed to be caught out.

“Why? Nobody ever calls you. Do you have friends at home?” She wipes away pretend crybaby tears with her fists.

“Noé! Leave her alone,” says Raphael, sitting shotgun next to his mom. He smiles into the little mirror on his sunshade, catching my eye.

I smile back. At least he’s on my side.

“Maman, tell him to stop picking on me,” Noémie whines.

“Noé. Raffi. Quinn. All of you can stop it,” says Mme B brightly. “I need to focus, children.” She launches into a cheery round of “Joe le Taxi” and insists that we all sing along.

A graphic image of Émilie chaperoning a zillion saggy school bus trips fills my head. I crane my neck, trying to look out the window, embarrassed to have caused more conflict. When I look past Freddie to get a view of the white-powder-dust road, the blue zipper of sea just out of reach, Freddie grins goofily and blocks my view. I stare straight ahead to where Raphael is playing air guitar to “Hotel California” and I notice some new things about him—the little silver scar on the tanned nape of his neck, how he smiles to himself sometimes and his cheeks dimple. I tell myself to pack it in. Of all people to have a crush on, my French exchange’s brother is clearly the worst.

Madame Blavette swerves into the half-empty parking lot of a river beach we’ve been to before. She disapproves of sandy beaches, with their turning tide of tanned flesh—“like a roasted chicken on a spit,” she says. A pebble-filled clamshell at the foot of an aqueduct, this beach has pretensions, is within a hollering distance of culture. People read on it, quote Latin on it. Noémie hates it. She throws open the door with a disgusted sigh and steps out. I un-peel my bare thigh from Freddie’s and head out after her, standing for a dazed moment in the pure midmorning light to taste the salt air and let the heat drench me in a new slick of sweat.

Mme B fusses around happily, singing under her breath, flapping the beach towels out in a neat square of faded tropical colors, laying out her picnic of crackers and homemade pâté and cold 7UP and petits fours. When she unfolds her deck chair, a paperback falls out.

She picks it up, smiling fondly. “Have you read this, Quinn?”

I shrug. “What is it?”

“It is a romance novel by my dear friend Stella, racy in places,” she says with a giggle. “It’s written so simply, though. It is not so interesting. I could lend it to you later if you want to practice your French comprehension?” She hands me the book.

I look at the illustration on the well-thumbed cover: a kneeling woman, naked save for a choke collar. “Um, my mom always said romance novels were the opium of the domestic slam-hound, one of the tools of patriarchal subjugation. I’m pretty sure it’s one of the few issues my parents agreed on, so, um, no thanks.”

Frowning, Émilie strips off her floral halter dress, revealing a pink one-piece. “You know, Quinn, I may be in my forties, but I still get looks from guys, very young men sometimes, younger than Raphael. Probably more than you do, in actuality. Ah, what a beautiful day at the beach with my babies!” Smiling, she settles into her deck chair and puts the book over her face.

Okay, well … awkward. Her kids seem to think so, too. In order to avoid the moment, Freddie and Raphael break the volleyball out and start punting it around. Noémie, having basted every inch of herself, lies facedown to roast where no familial eye contact can harm her. In the midst of everything, I am alone, like Camus or something. I find myself missing Mom, who couldn’t have been more different from Émilie.

When I was little, Mom was always aiming her old Leica at me, calling me into the under-stairs cupboard she’d fitted with two big Belfast sinks for developing photos to watch ghostly reflections of myself appear under the flicker of red lights. Or she’d be baking bread, her hands callused with drying dough. When I hugged her, she’d smell of garlic and thyme from the garden and her long hair and fragile features reminded me of the pictures of Joni Mitchell on the vinyl albums she always played. Dad wasn’t there much and I didn’t like it when he was. He made fun of her photographs, her cooking, never letting her forget he was the important one. I know she wanted to get back to selling her art, maybe after I went to college.

I wish I could have a final memory of her happy at the opening of her very own exhibition instead of the one I do have: my dad’s book launch, the glasses of champagne clinking, the New England literati circulating. Mom in the corner with bandaged wrists, avoiding talking to any of Dad’s guests because he’d already made her feel ashamed of what she’d tried to do.

My nostalgia soured, I snap back to the present. Freddie’s phone is lying on the towel right next to my hand. I pick it up, all sleight of hand. I mean, wouldn’t you look? Come on. Be honest. It’s a fucking BlackBerry. God, I hate those things. No password, though. I look at his apps. Snapchat? Bingo! Username? Hmm, Lapinchaude. Well, that could still come up as “unknown” if he hid it somehow, some clever little hack. I have that feeling again—someone watching. Looking up, I see him staring straight at me. He even misses the ball because of it.

I drop the phone and walk to the water to hide my blushes. In the shallows, my feet slap angrily on the soft, sucking sand under the blue, walking faster, harder against the weight of water. It pushes me towards the beach. I push back, fingers skimming the playful licks of wavelets angrily. And when I’m deep enough, I dive, swim hard and fast for the aqueduct, wanting to get away from all of them, have some space for once.

I swim butterfly, half underwater. As it deepens, it changes from the color of pale sea glass to a murky, dark green. One time I surface inches from the orange fiberglass prow of a canoe that speeds past my head, the canoeist never seeing me at all. Today, I don’t give a fuck. I just plunge back into the cool green murk and head for the aqueduct, coming up for air at the rocky base of the middle foot. Rolling on my back, I scull idly between clumps of white rock, watching water shadows dance on the concave belly of the bridge. My sulk ebbs away. Everything falls away. I am nothing more than the fierce blood in my ears.

Something touches my hand. Not just touches. Grabs hold of. I panic, lurching upright, swallowing about a pint of water, choking. Through the red haze, I see Freddie’s pale face, smirking.

“I gave you a shock, hein?”

“Fuck!” I splutter.

“It is time pour manger.”

He scoops his hand to his mouth, miming eating. “Émilie she has made le petit déjeuner.”

He keeps grinning widely. I’ve decided that his face annoys me. “Couldn’t you just have called me instead of … creeping up on me?” The last words come out with a splutter of river bile. My chest burns. I don’t even bother trying to hide my annoyance. It’s the imbecile way he keeps smiling. It’s the fact that he came to get me for lunch instead of Raphael.

As we swim back, I keep my distance, but he keeps swimming into me. It’s like he’s bumping into me on purpose. And there’s no reason for it, because he’s a strong swimmer, a swim-team-type swimmer. He can only be doing it on purpose, the big stalker. The more I try to wriggle away from him, the more he torpedoes me, knocking into my ribs one time so hard I know I’ll bruise.

“Stop it!” I hiss.

He just grins wider than ever until all I can see is the gap in his teeth and the gleaming wet pallor of his high forehead, his bony nose. And then when we’re just near enough to shore to stand, he grabs my waist.

“Get off!” I shriek, slapping him, kicking him.

“I know you like me because you check my phone. Are you stalking me a bit, Quinn?”

“Are you fucking serious? Put me down,” I say in the voice I use on bad dogs and pollsters.

“If you say so.” He does, but in the same movement, he whips me around to face him and kisses me, his tongue squirming between my lips.

I push him away and run to shore. My face pulses. I want to be sick. I expect everyone to be staring, to look horrified and tell Freddie off. But no one seems to care. Noémie’s just lying with her sunglasses on, plugged into her iPod. Émilie is fanning flies from her sunbaked picnic. Only Raphael is looking at the water, his arms crossed over his sinewy chest, eyes studiously unfocused.

I’ve begun to think Freddie is some kind of sociopath, who kissed me for no other reason than to humiliate me. Who tried to drown me. Who’s definitely the person text-stalking me. When he walks up and kneels in front of me and pinches my cheek, I slap his face, hard.

He falls back into the sand with a surprised little cry.

“Mon Dieu!” says Émilie. “Quinn, what have you done?” She stands up suddenly, glaring down at me.

Her anger is shocking. I’ve only seen her face look passive and happy. Now it is dark. Crumpled next to her, Freddie sobs like a child while Noémie and Raphael stay right where they are, staring as the scene unfolds.

“He pinched my cheek,” I say. “He shouldn’t do that. And before, he grabbed me in the water and kissed me. And I think that he’s—”

“What do you expect when you dress like that?” she says, looking me up and down. “You are asking for it un petit peu, n’est-ce pas?”

“Are you kidding? Everyone’s in a bikini …”

She leans over me and takes the skin of my wrist and pinches it with her nails. “There,” she says, her eyes mean and narrow. “Now you know how it feels.”

Behind her, Freddie smiles through his tears.

Molly Swift

JULY 31, 2015

I sipped my Jack Daniel’s, my reflection vanishing by degrees as I eked out the last drops. I needed every last drop after my phone call to Quinn’s father, the great Professor Perkins. I’d called him to head off someone else telling him that there was an aunt type hanging around his daughter. To cover my ass, I’d pretended to be one Mademoiselle le Mesurier, the local contact for Quinn’s study abroad program, crossing my fingers that no one from the program had been in touch with him already.

“Bonjour, Professor Perkins,” I began in my best impression of a French accent. I explained my “role” and expressed my condolences for what had happened as well as my assurance that we were providing all the support we could.

“While I thank you for your call, I must inquire as to what it pertains?” he asked, his voice charmingly polite and yet so unconcerned it sent a chill through me.

Surely he must be devastated about all this, I thought; even if Quinn wasn’t a daddy’s girl, she was his daughter.

“And what day do you plan to come for Quinn, monsieur? I ask because, of course, we shall send someone to ze aéroport.”

Huffy silence on the other end of the line. Then—

“Well, of course … ahem … I’m grateful for the offer. So helpful of you. I just don’t know when I can be there, because, you see, my wife is very pregnant, so not until after the baby’s born at the least and even then …”

I put him out of his misery by thanking him for his time and expressing my hope that he would contact the program if he needed anything. I even gave him Mademoiselle le Mesurier’s real phone number, because by now I was sure he wouldn’t bother. I’d been worried about Leo flying to his daughter’s side and blowing my cover in the process, but I needn’t have been. He was a cold fish, that much was clear—one that wouldn’t swim over here anytime soon. But instead of being relieved, I just felt sad for Quinn, so lonely in her hospital bed. I wished I could go back to the hospital to sit with her.

I comforted myself with the company of Mr. Daniel’s and the contents of Quinn’s blog. There I read about the ups and downs you might expect on a teenager’s first stay far from home: tension with her host; a rocky relationship with her French exchange; unwelcome advances from the local lothario, a kid named Freddie. And then there was something darker: threatening messages from an anonymous stranger, apparently including footage of someone being suffocated.

I’d taken a look at her Snapchat app and found zip, just as she said. The messages erased themselves, hence the appeal to teens. Reading further on in the blog, it was clear she’d had her own suspicions about whoever might be stalking her. These seemed to circle around Freddie, beginning on a day at the pool. As I looked through the comments section, her online friends seemed to agree:

Update: Just looked at my blog and saw that all you guys came to the rescue on the stalking front!

loserguy38: That guy Freddie has got to be the stalker. Sounds like a loser. Avoid.

gothgurl: Maybe he did send you that snuff text, Q, then try to snuff you, too, but fight back: refuse to be scared.

malady_g: Just checked this, the law can’t help with stalkers. Unless he threatens you explicitly, police can’t do jack. Sorry, Q

dr_kennedy: Noémie’s brother sounds supercute. Pics please!

Qriosity_cat: Thank you, wonderful people

. I’ll do my best.

Qriosity_cat was Quinn apparently. Her reply to the comments made me sad. She’d put so much trust in these virtual acquaintances and not one of them had thought to call the police or do much of anything when she vanished.

Her story—what I’d read of it so far—gave me an uneasy sense that there was an awful lot going on under the surface of life in the Blavette household, and none of it had made it into the papers. Reading the description of the girl being smothered in the video, I remembered what Marlene had told me about why the school shut down. The poor girl suffocated. They said it was some sort of game that went wrong. It was too much of a coincidence. I had to go talk to Marlene again, and find this Freddie, too.

The chair next to me screeched. “How’s the aunt?” Aurelia Perla asked sweetly as she sat down and handed me her business card. Up close, I could see that she was very pretty in a put-together sort of way, her beige suit crisply dry-cleaned, the outline of her lipstick so neatly applied it looked machine-tooled.

“Holding up.” I smiled awkwardly.

I looked around the bar for a companion, but saw only the same journalists as when I came in, slouching on tables in groups of fours, smoking e-cigarettes and blending into the surroundings like oil blends into water. One table held a couple of hacks and a photographer. Judging from the amount of gear the cameraman was carrying, he was one of those mercenary mutant paparazzi that feed off of stories like this. I wondered if I’d missed a press release or something, if new details were about to emerge. Else why would the meat flies be swarming around me? It freaked me out.

“Excuse me.” Pushing my chair back, I started to get up.

“How are you coping?” Aurelia asked, the American word coping sounding labored in her accent. “It must be so hard.”

“Do you want something?” I asked, trying to sound naive and bewildered.

“It must be a very hard time waiting for your niece to be well again, not knowing …” She frowned sadly. “But the sisters say she has every chance of being well. If she … when she wakes, what will be your first words to her?” She smiled expectantly.

I sat half on, half off the chair. I couldn’t believe I was so slow to see what was going on—she had an audio recorder hidden on her somewhere and she was baiting me for a quote. Once I knew that, looking sideways at her was like looking at some weird, ghoulish, really well-dressed reflection of myself. This is what I did, sneaking up on people, asking sympathetic questions designed to pry revelations from them. Being on the other side of the questions made me realize how icky it felt to be soft-soaped. Jeez, I thought, I hope I’m more convincing than this woman.