“Oh, yes. She texted me to tell me to leave her alone because she is fine and I am a bad friend. And then she somehow blamed me for her getting caught. Because in her twisted mind, almost dying is getting caught.” She paused. “I just texted her to hang in there and that I loved her,” Alice said. “I told her to get better because we have a senior year to look forward to.” She stood up. “I can’t deal with this right now. Let’s just go to Gordie’s.”
When we got to Gordie’s, his mom greeted us with strawberry shortcake and a very long story about how Gordie’s brother missed his plane from Vienna to London.
“Does she know anything about our night at the hospital?” I asked Gordie, nodding toward his mom, who was raving about Alice’s newly cropped purple hair.
“No. It’s better that way.” He gave me a look that said My mother lives in strawberry-shortcake land.
We waited for Jean in the basement theater seats.
“Go to the slam pages,” Val said.
“No. Not tonight,” I said. “Alice doesn’t need more stress.”
But Alice wanted us to open up her school’s page. She needed to see what was out there about Izzy.
It was all there, how Izzy OD’d and what a whore she had become and how she used to be sort of cute but now she’s disgusting.
Gordie replied to every slam with:
Cyber trolls, bullies, and miscreants—come to the light. Join us. It’s beautiful over here! —The Unlikelies.
“Nobody knows what a miscreant is, Gordie,” I said, shaking my head.
“It’s an SAT word. They should know it.”
Jean banged on the glass doors and Val jumped to open them. “What?” Jean said. “You’re all staring at me.”
Gordie and I looked at each other. I stood up, smoothed down my shorts, cleared my throat, and asked everyone to sit on the couch near the popcorn machine because I had to tell them something. After much grumbling and speculation, we stood in front of Val, Jean, and Alice and told them the entire long, convoluted Andy’s canaries story.
At first they just sat there, looking baffled. Then came the barrage of obvious questions. I answered every one, grateful that no one seemed irritated I had kept the secret.
“I have no idea what to do with this,” I said. “I need help.”
“You can’t just give out diamonds,” Jean said. “People will trade them in to buy useless crap. Have you ever seen what the people who win the lottery spend that money on?”
“We also can’t show up at a jeweler and cash them in,” said Gordie.
“Why not?” I said. I had assumed we’d cash them in.
“It doesn’t work that way. That would get flagged as suspicious activity, and then the IRS and parents and other irritating entities would get involved. You just can’t.”
We focused on what Mr. Upton had said, about his lizard father dabbling in bootlegging, prostitution, and stealing from widows, and tried to focus on modern-day things that would somehow redeem his shady dealings.
“So boozers, hookers, and rich old ladies,” Jean said. “That narrows it down.”
“Or old-lady boozer-hookers,” Gordie said. “We’ll buy a retirement island for drunk, old hookers.”
Jean typed something into his phone. “We could easily buy our own Speakeasy, you know. There’s a property on the water for sale at auction for four hundred thousand.”
“Seriously, Jean?” Val said, glancing at me. “Can you stop? This is not helpful.”
Alice stayed quiet. She chewed on her chipped green nails and stared into space.
“Hey, can we finally figure out our mascot?” Gordie said.
“What does this have to do with the diamonds?” I said, frustrated. Our brainstorming session was getting us nowhere.
“Maybe Andy should be the mascot,” Val said. “Or not.” She looked at Jean. “You’re afraid of birds and dolls. Any other bizarre fears?”
“Just pirates. But the real ones. Not like from the movies,” Jean clarified.
We loaded into the Range Rover, on a new mission to find a mascot.
“There’s still a bunch of care packages back here,” Val said. “Let’s drop them on the way.”
We had delivered care packages to every victim of trollery we could think of. But I had an idea.
“What if we give the rest of the care packages to the trolls themselves?” They looked at me like I was an idiot, but I explained. “We’re going to kill them with kindness. Trust me. Trolls hate being called out. It’s their worst fear.”
“I defer to the queen of care packages,” Gordie said.
“Okay, nerd boy. Let’s do it,” I said.
We scribbled notes and stuffed them in the bags. If you choose kindness, we’ll let you in. —The Unlikelies. First stop was this kid A.J.’s house, the one who had started all the shit with Greg O. in the cafeteria. I sprinted across the street and stuck the bag in his mailbox. After that, we tossed a bag onto queen gadfly Meghan Rose Sharp’s fancy front deck.
“You run like a gopher or a groundhog. I can’t put my finger on it,” Gordie said when I jumped back in the car.
“Gopher,” Jean said.
“Thanks for making me self-conscious.”
I modified my gait at the next three houses, then made Val do a few. All in all, we hit four ruffians, two gadflies, and three Izzy-bad-mouthers before we ended up parked in Mr. Upton’s gravel driveway. There were no cars, no signs of life. Still, it was unsettling. But an idea had sprouted in Jean’s genius mind as we were trolling for trolls and he absolutely had to get something from Mr. Upton’s shed.
Jean grabbed an empty laundry bag from the trunk and instructed us to wait. He had a vision and wanted to use something from the shed to make a surprise mascot.
“You’re going in there all by yourself?” Val said.
“Yes I am.”
Jean returned with a full bag of shed stuff. He was very excited to start his mascot project. We went back to canary brainstorming on the way home, but once again, the conversation quickly degenerated. Alice didn’t say much the whole night. I wished I could have done something to take the heavy weight off her shoulders.
The next morning, I woke up on my parents’ floor with no sign of Flopper or a blanket or pillow, and snuck back upstairs before either member of the snoring section discovered me.
THIRTEEN
I DROVE THE Prius up the perfectly landscaped circular driveway of Alice’s perfect white house with perfect hillside views. I was hoping Alice would emerge from her funk and help us sort school supplies with Val.
“Hey, Sadie,” Alice said flatly after I rang the doorbell a dozen times and she finally shuffled to the door.
She led me through the immaculate rooms, each more nautical and sea-foam than the next. From the second-landing window, I could almost make out a square of ocean past the tree line.
Alice’s room was as different from the rest of the house as Alice was. Tie-dyed tapestries covered with black-and-white photos of dogs covered the walls, and dream catchers hung from the ceiling. The room smelled of essential oils. It smelled like Alice and a little bit like Shay.
We stretched out on the bed.
“Okay, tell me what I can do to help you feel better,” I said.
“I don’t think anybody can help me. I have this constant bad anxiety feeling. Izzy’s parents are still planning to go to Croatia for their vacation. She convinced them it was the first time she tried drugs and she promised never to do heroin again.” She threw up her hands. “Like, seriously, how are they letting her out of the hospital so soon?”