“On the road to it,” I confirmed.
She exhaled and then kissed my cheek, just above Nameless. “I’m gonna go home and sleep for a week,” she said, crawling out of my bed. “My soul is tired.”
“G, would you do me a favor?”
Her face lightened considerably. “Anything,” she said.
“I want to go to St. Augustine. To the Fountain of Youth. Will you go with me?”
“I’ll go anywhere you want.”
Now I was the one with bread crumbs.
She squeezed my hand, I promised to call, and she went home to rest her soul.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Max didn’t respond to calls, texts, or emails.
The next morning, he wasn’t in the hammock with a book and he didn’t come to his window when I pecked on the glass.
I made a blanket fort in my bedroom, reread Peter and the Starcatcher, and prayed my phone would buzz. He’d said he’d call.
He didn’t.
He’d felt closer when he was in El Salvador.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
There was still no word from Max the next day as Mom and I cleared away the breakfast dishes. I’d tried everything I could, short of banging on his door and demanding that Sonia tell me where he was. Silence was the price of keeping secrets.
Mine piled up like dirty laundry.
At Mom’s insistence, our little family planted ourselves like spokes on a wheel around the kitchen table. This talk smelled of pancake syrup and Clorox.
I groaned as Mom slid another envelope across the table and into my hands.
“Open it,” she instructed.
“Here?”
Her eyes nearly bugged out of her head.
I prayed as I tore the end of the envelope and took out the paper. Please don’t be about sex. Please don’t be about sex. I had a feeling God wasn’t listening to that request. Not that God is smug, but I pictured Him sitting back on a beautiful golden throne, steepling his fingers, and saying, “Sorry, Sister Sadie, you got yourself into this one.”
Dad leaned toward me, prepared to read over my shoulder.
“Stop stalling,” Mom said.
Our kitchen was her courtroom.
I unfolded the letter and read aloud:
The five of us broke into the community center tonight because Trent decided we needed a dance-off. I came in dead last, Max won, and I laughed until I cried. I’m really lucky to have my friends.
There was no sweet From a friend closing. Since I’d narrowed the culprit to Gray or Max, that made sense. Neither of them was talking to me.
“What does that mean?” Dad asked. He checked with Mom instead of me.
Just then my parents seemed young and unsure. Maybe no one put this type of crap in the parenting magazines and books they scoured. Or maybe, thirty-eight equaled wise on most things, but not wise on all things.
I lifted my shoulders in a half shrug. “No idea, Dad. I’ve been getting these things since the beginning of June.”
My shrug was worth a wooden nickel to my mother. “You know more than you’re saying.”
“Mom, I don’t know.” I wasn’t about to accuse Gray or Max in front of them.
“You don’t have a clue who wrote that?” Dad asked.
I bit my bottom lip and proceeded cautiously. “Well, yeah. They’re my words, but I sure as heck didn’t send this to myself.”
“You wrote that?” Mom repeated the words as a question, even though she already knew the answer.
“It’s one of the things I put in Big.” I explained that every envelope contained something I’d previously written and stuffed in Big, and I had no idea how anyone had access, much less why they were sending me these things.
Also, that I wasn’t worried.
Right. That last part was a whale of a lie, but after the weekend, I needed to de-escalate Mom and Dad’s anxieties.
“I don’t even know what to say,” Mom said, eyeing the paper as if it were a snake.
“Me either,” I said.
Dad examined the envelope and found exactly what I had. Nothing.