Amberly: A Day in Jersey City
Chapter 1
Disclaimer: Amberly Carmichael and other Private characters were created by Kate Brian. Non-Private characters are my own creation.
Author's Note: This story is set somewhere near the end of Ambition. I chose to write about Amberly because I wanted to do a story about someone trying to get Ariana out of the mental hospital, and Amberly is the only one who has both the resources to do this and the naivete to think this would be a good idea.
It was indeed possible to be too rich, Amberly Carmichael thought to herself one cold day in late November as she waited in the outer office of Hell Hall for Headmaster Cromwell's secretary to get her the off-campus pass she'd requested. There was politely rich, like Billings president Cheyenne Martin had been before her mysterious death, and then there was obscenely rich, like Amberly was. At least at Easton Academy, a family pedigree dating back to the Mayflower trumped even billions of dollars worth of new money. Amberly's fondest dream, being the first freshman girl to get into coveted Billings Hall, seemed farther away than ever.
Amberly had idolized Cheyenne Martin when she first came to Easton, but this was before she'd discovered two things. First, there was an essential coldness about Cheyenne that really bothered Amberly, who considered herself a warmhearted person. Second, and much more importantly, Cheyenne had not liked her. Not the generalized dislike she might have expected a senior to feel towards a lowly freshman, but raw, unadulterated hatred. Amberly had no idea why Cheyenne had hated her so much, but quite frankly, she'd been relieved when Cheyenne killed herself. Now the police were saying she might not have killed herself after all, she might have been murdered, just like Thomas Pearson the year before. Amberly had asked Lydia, her father's executive assistant and all-around troubleshooter, to find out about Cheyenne, but strangely enough, Lydia had never answered her.
Amberly looked around the sparsely decorated waiting room. Where was that woman with her pass? Amberly caught sight of her reflection in one of the mirrored pillars flanking the door into Headmaster Cromwell's private office. With great effort, she had straightened out her naturally wavy blond hair. She had deliberately worn less makeup than usual, and carefully selected an outfit designed to look as if she had just thrown it together from her closet: a white sweater, dark blue jeans, a gray eiderdown coat and the signature piece, an aquamarine scarf. Her handbag was dark green, which didn't clash with her outfit but also didn't look so perfect that people would accuse her behind her back of being "matchy-matchy." All in all, Amberly decided, she had done a superb job of looking like her new idol, falsely accused murderess Ariana Osgood.
Mrs. Bazzle, a round, matronly lady somewhere in her sixties, came out of Headmaster Cromwell's office holding a pink off-campus pass in her birdlike hand. Mrs. Bazzle had replaced Cara Lewis-Hanneman, the previous secretary, who had left last year under a cloud of scandal. Mrs. Bazzle beamed at Amberly. "Now where are you off to again, dear?"
Amberly had already explained this over the phone, but she sighed and told the woman again. "I'm going to the New York Public Library to do some research for Mr. Barber's ninth-grade history class."
"Ah." Mrs. Bazzle nodded. "And how are you getting there?"
"My father's driver is taking me," Amberly explained patiently. This was true, at least as far as Manhattan. After that, Amberly was taking the PATH train across the Hudson River to Jersey City, but she certainly wasn't going to tell Mrs. Bazzle that.
"Wonderful!" Mrs. Bazzle exclaimed. "Your father must be so proud of you. You must be quite the genius to be in ninth grade at your age."
"What?" Amberly asked with a puzzled look. People had called Amberly Carmichael lots of things, but "genius" was rarely one of them.
"How old are you, anyway?" Mrs. Bazzle continued, squinting at Amberly through her bifocals. "Ten? Eleven?"
Amberly flushed with embarrassment. Because she was so petite and childlike in appearance, people were always mistaking Amberly for younger than her actual age, but ten was a new low.
"I'm fourteen," Amberly said frostily. She snatched the pass out of Mrs. Bazzle's hand, ignoring the secretary's scandalized expression, and stalked outside to wait for the driver.
Five minutes later, the driver pulled up in a black Lincoln Town Car. Amberly usually traveled in a limo, but she had specifically asked the driver to bring the Town Car because she knew it wouldn't stand out as much. She couldn't risk anyone else, especially adults, finding out what she was up to.
Vito, her bodyguard, was sitting in the front seat as Amberly climbed in back. Amberly greeted him politely but distantly, as she had been taught to treat everyone who worked for her father, except Lydia, of course. Still, Vito had saved her life as a child, and Amberly had never forgotten this fact. When Amberly was seven, two men had tried to kidnap her. That had been the only time Amberly had ever seen Vito's gun. It was a really big gun—at least, it had seemed really big to Amberly at that age—and it killed quickly and messily. That was all Amberly remembered about that day.
There wasn't much traffic, so Amberly put on her iPod, turned on the latest Landon Jacobs song and tuned out the world around her. When she finally emerged from her cocoon, they were already on the bustling streets of midtown Manhattan. Within minutes, the Town Car had stopped in front of Manhattan Mall.
Amberly told the driver to come back at five p.m. to pick her up in front of the mall, then she got out of the car and walked inside. Purposefully, she walked across the mall to the Burberry store on the first level. Burberry was one of her favorite brands. Even though it wasn't really why she was here, Amberly ended up buying a bottle of perfume, which she put on her father's American Express black card. From the blank expression on the cashier's face, Amberly guessed the pretty but common-looking young woman had no idea what a black card meant.
Carrying the perfume in her right hand, Amberly left the store and looked out at the street. The Town Car was gone. Good; no one was watching her. Amberly hurried back to the other side of the mall and took the elevator down to the PATH station on the lower level. She paid for her ticket with cash so there would be no record on the credit card, and looked around for her train. Amberly saw two trains, one going to Journal Square, the other to Hoboken. Ariana's last letter said the lawyer's office was three blocks from Journal Square in Jersey City, so she got on the Journal Square train.
The only other person in the car was a young Latina woman with a crying baby on her lap. Amberly thought this would be a perfect time for her iPod, but then decided against it after all. Music tended to distract her, and she might easily miss her stop. Instead, she reached into her handbag and pulled out Ariana's letters, reviewing them carefully to make sure she had each and every last letter ready to show the lawyer.
Ariana had been so happy to have someone to write back and forth to that she tended to ramble at times, making some of the letters a chore to get through even for someone as star-struck as Amberly. Still, Amberly didn't care. Ariana was her best friend. More importantly, she was Ariana's best friend, and once she got her out of the mental hospital and reinstated back at Easton, Ariana was sure to be eternally grateful. If that gratitude included getting Amberly her own room in Billings as a freshman, Amberly certainly wasn't going to complain…
A sudden wave of fear washed over Amberly. The checkbook! She fumbled around in the bottom of her bag until she felt it between her fingers and sighed with relief. Amberly wasn't used to writing checks. In fact, she'd never written a check before, which was why her checkbook was in such pristine condition. Still, this time she'd have to break down and do it. Her father's black card gave her a literally infinite line of credit, but every transaction, including cash advances, would be reported to her father's office within minutes. At least with Amberly's emergency checking account, she was the only one who got a copy of the statement, something she'd insisted on when she'd gone off to Easton. She only had a hundred thousand dollars in the account, but how much could a lawyer cost, especially one with an office in Jersey City?
Having satisfied herself that the checkbook was safe, Amberly spent most of the train ride reading over the letters, and by the time she was done the train was across the Hudson River and almost ready to stop in Journal Square. The woman and baby had gotten off at Grove Street, one stop earlier, so Amberly was alone when the train finally ground to a halt. After she left the train, Amberly rode an enormous escalator up to the top level of the Journal Square station. Her research had warned her that there could be pimps and drug dealers on every street corner in Jersey City, but the train station looked a lot like the one in Manhattan, except maybe a little older, a little dingier.
Keeping her eyes firmly fixed in front of her, Amberly walked across the crowded train station toward the main exit. This time she would do it, Amberly promised herself. She would find the Law Offices of Gerald N. DeFiore, she would pay him with her very own money, and he would get Ariana out of that horrible place. This time, Amberly Carmichael would be the hero. Pulling her aqua scarf tightly around her neck against the cold breeze, Amberly took a deep breath and stepped out onto the streets of Jersey City.