My parents were used to my comings and goings. I didn’t have a curfew or any annoying parental restrictions. But every few days they delivered their mantra, which always came out as more threatening than assuring: “We trust you implicitly, Sadie.”
I rubbed my eyes, guzzled warm Gatorade, and smoothed down my bed head.
Gordie was on the porch with Dad and Mr. Ng. All day, since Alice had clued me in that Raggedy Andy was the name of the doll in the garment bag, I had been obsessed with getting my hands on that suitcase. I had texted Gordie no fewer than ten times before my eight-hour nap. Can you bring it tonight? Is tonight going to work? I suddenly really want that suitcase in my possession.
Chill, Sadie. I’ll bring you your suitcase.
“So Mr. Upton wanted me to have a suitcase full of random belongings,” I announced to my parents. “Which is very strange, but it was nice of him to think of me.”
“You really left an impression on ol’ Stewy,” Dad said. “You need some help?”
“No, we’re good.”
I motioned to Gordie, who walked toward the Range Rover.
“Sadie tells me you’re a shoo-in for valedictorian,” Dad called after him.
I cringed a little.
Gordie’s muscles flexed as I tried to help him with the bulky suitcase. “I got it,” he said. “Where do you want it?”
I wanted it in my room.
Mom hovered awkwardly in the dining room, watching us drag the suitcase up the narrow staircase. “We’re good, Mom,” I said, closing my door.
“Holy origami cranes,” Gordie said, looking up at the flock of cranes I had fastened to a string and hung in rows across my ceiling. He picked up the twin bobbleheads of Shay and me and shook aggressively until the heads nearly came off. “Can I help you with anything else, Sadie Cakes?” Gordie said, wiping his hands on his shorts and looking at my bulletin board, still scattered with pictures of Seth.
“Please don’t ever call me that again.”
“What happened with you and Seth anyway?”
“I don’t know. I mean, I don’t want to talk about Seth right now.” The entire forty-five seconds up the stairs, I had contemplated sharing my promise to Mr. Upton with Gordie. I didn’t want to rip Andy’s legs off alone.
He sat on my bed. “Can I have some of this Gatorade?”
I nodded and knelt in front of the suitcase.
Then I caved.
I told Gordie everything, from the moment I retrieved the key from Mr. Upton’s wallet to the things he said about me being the one for this job and Do something noble to the cryptic You need to rip off Andy’s legs.
He sat and listened, nodding occasionally, until he finally said, “I’m thinking it’s time to rip off those legs.”
We opened the suitcase with the key and carefully removed the lizard’s belongings, layer by layer, until we got to the garment bag with the leather buckles.
“There you are, Andy, you creepy bastard,” Gordie said, lifting him by his red yarn hair.
I grabbed one of the legs and squeezed. It was stuffed with something hard and bumpy. Gordie grabbed a pair of scissors from my desk.
“Be careful,” I said, laying Andy down on the floor and spreading his blue-and-white-striped legs like he was a filleted fish. Gordie snipped the first leg off Andy’s body and then carefully cut along the seam, beginning at his slippered foot. We pulled open the fabric and stared down at the rolled cheesecloth bags, the kind Grandma Hosseini used for making yogurt.
I opened the first rolled bag and felt a rush of adrenaline.
We stared down at the loose bright yellow gemstones.
“Holy shit, Sadie.” Gordie picked up the next bag. More stones. And more. Each bag held dozens of gemstones the size of pencil erasers, some even bigger.
“These can’t be real,” I said, rolling a single stone between my fingers.
“I think they might be real,” my well-to-do friend said, holding one close to his eye. “These are too light to be topaz. I think they might be yellow diamonds.”
“We need to Google it.” I reached over and pulled my laptop off the bed.
We Googled yellow diamonds. They looked a lot like yellow diamonds. Then we Googled How to tell if a diamond is real and did all the tests. We fogged one up with our breath. The fog disappeared immediately. We dropped one in a glass of water. It sank straight to the bottom. We lit a match in front of one. The flame did nothing to the stone. We tested the next stone and the next. We ripped open Raggedy Andy’s other leg and found more cheesecloth bags of stones.
Tucked up in Andy’s genderless crotch was one last cheesecloth bag. Inside was a piece of mint-colored stationery, rolled like a scroll.
I carefully unrolled the letter, dated 1992. We sat against my bed and read.
My love,
If you are receiving this letter, I am dead. I implored my sister to deliver Father’s suitcase to you, and despite her “feelings” about us, I believe she will honor my wishes. She most certainly has no use for Father’s suitcase.
I’m giving this to you because you are the kindest, most generous person I know. You will find a way to make good use of these, something I just couldn’t do.
I only wish I had been man enough to avenge the hell that man brought to my sister, my loving mother, and me, a little boy with no defenses.
Please, darling, find a way to make the world a bit better. I hope you have forgiven my abrupt departure. You, dearest Bruce, were the love of my life.
I often wonder if I was ever worthy of love.
Until we meet again, Stewy
“Finished?” I looked at Gordie.
He nodded.
I stared at the letter.
“That’s some heavy shit,” Gordie said.
I turned over the paper. On the back, Mr. Upton had written BRUCE LEONISI, JANE ST., NEW YORK CITY.
“This is bullshit,” I blurted. “I’m Mr. Upton’s ex-lover’s backup do-gooder? First I’m plan B after the Hamptons Hoodlum gets caught, and now this.”
“That’s what you took from this, Sadie? Seriously?”
Gordie opened my laptop and Googled Bruce Leonisi. It didn’t take long to figure out he had been dead for sixteen years.
“Now what?” I slowly poured the cheesecloth bags full of alleged yellow diamonds into a pile on my floor.
“If you want, I can take a few stones over to my grandmother’s appraiser. She’s always sending me over there,” Gordie said.
“Yes. Please do that. I mean, if the lizard was so shady, we can’t assume these are real, even if they did pass the tests.”
“True.”
“But, Gordie, can you even imagine what we could do with these if they’re real?”
“I’d invest. Like in aggressive, high-risk, high-yield shit.”
I looked at him. “No. As in saving-the-world shit.”
He laughed. “I think you’d need a bigger pile to actually save the world.”
We sifted through the stones, pulled out a few of the bigger ones, and restuffed Andy’s shredded legs before we shoved Andy back into his garment bag. “Are we going to tell the Unlikelies?” Gordie said.
“Not yet. Let’s make this one a Sadie-and-Gordie secret.”
“You got it.”