“It sucks so bad that you’re going through this. It’s too much.”
“I can’t even tell you what it has been like to deal with my best friend nodding off, trying to score smack all day, stealing money from my car, lying, smelling like shit because she never showers. It’s hell.”
“I’m so, so sorry.” I reached out and touched her arm.
She turned on her side and faced me. Her mouth twisted from side to side.
“If I show you something, do you promise not to judge or tell anyone?” she whispered.
“Of course.”
“It’s weird, Sadie.”
“Perfect, Alice. It’s the summer of weird.”
I followed her up a back staircase to a dark, creaky attic with high ceilings and swathes of cobwebs. We went through a smaller room and Alice moved an old hutch.
She pushed a handleless door inward and we inched sideways through the narrow opening. The room, not much bigger than a closet, was empty except for a long folding table pushed up against the back wall. On the table, different-colored half-burnt candles were lined up in front of a row of handmade dolls.
“What the hell is this?” A chill ran all the way through me.
“You said you weren’t going to judge.”
“I’m not judging.”
“You sound judgy.”
“Oh my God. I’m not judging.” I took a breath. “What is this, oh, friend who shall not be judged?”
“It’s a voodoo altar. I made a voodoo doll of Hector, the dealer, and I am in the process of trying to eliminate him.” She said it in a matter-of-fact way, as if eliminating drug dealers using voodoo was a thing.
I tried really hard not to be judgy. “Wow.”
“I’ve spent a lot of time on message board support groups for addicts’ loved ones, and at some point voodoo altars popped up. Sadie, I know it sounds crazy, but who knows? It could work.” She picked up a doll made of black cloth with sewn-on button eyes and pins sticking out of its body.
“This is my attempt at a Hector poppet. I’m supposed to burn a black candle for seventeen minutes each day for nine days and drip the wax on the poppet. I’m only on day three. You guys have been distracting me.”
I bent down to get a better look at the Hector poppet.
“Then what do you do?”
“I wrap him up and bury him in the cemetery with nine pennies and a bottle of rum, and that should do it.”
She looked at me, trying to gauge my expression. I nodded. “I get it. I’d be making poppets, too, if my friend was a heroin addict.”
“I just want Hector out. And I want my Neigh back.” She wiped shavings of candle wax from the table and set little Hector down in his spot.
“Jean would not like this room,” I said, walking out of the voodoo-altar-poppet closet.
“No. He would not,” Alice said, pulling the door shut. “But we’re not telling Jean. Or anyone else.”
We went down to the hammock under a big oak tree in Alice’s backyard.
“Will you come help Val tonight, Alice? Work can be a good distraction.”
“I guess. I’m not going to be fun, though.”
We lay side by side staring up at the thick overgrowth above us.
“Hey, I never asked you how the date with Javi’s friend went.”
I laughed. “Not good. He told Val he thought I was stuck-up.”
“You’re, like, the friendliest person I know. Was Javi an asshole?”
“Pretty much.”
“Damn, I wish Val would get rid of that guy,” Alice said. “She’s too nice.”
“Do you want to hear something awkward?” I said, turning toward Alice. “I kind of, sort of have feelings for Gordie Harris and I can’t help it and I get he’s gay, but, like, I get fluttery when he’s close to me.”
“Fluttery.”
“Yes, Alice. Fluttery. I have to just put it out of my head, which I can do. It’s my body that keeps doing the fluttery nonsense.”
She stared at me blankly.
“What, Alice? Is that just too cheesy? God, I’m a loser.”
She shook her head and stared down at the hunter-green hammock fabric. “Like that wasn’t totally obvious.”
“It’s that obvious?”
“Yeah. It’s pretty obvious. Maybe you’re just missing sex and projecting it onto Gordie since he’s around all the time.”
“I’ve never actually had sex, so I’m not technically missing it.”
“You didn’t with Seth?”
“Everything but.”
“Oh, yes, the good old everything but,” Alice said. “This whole thing with Izzy has distracted me so much I don’t remember the last time I thought about hooking up.”
“Absent fluttery might be better than unrequited fluttery,” I said, awkwardly swinging my legs over the side of the hammock.
“Okay, Sadie. I’ll only go tonight if you promise never to use the word fluttery again.”
“Fine. I’ll never say FLUTTERY again.” I leaned down and kissed Alice’s forehead.
“Where are you going?”
“I have to run home before we help Val. You’d better be there. Otherwise, I will torment you with the F word forever.”
On top of doing shifts at her grandparents’ store and working on dozens of college scholarship applications, our petite, pigtailed Valeria was running a school-supply-collection empire.
Gordie, Alice, and I met Val at the farm stand, where Mute Mike hovered by his car waiting for Javi and Val to finish fighting.
“I’ll see you there,” Val said to Gordie and me as she loaded the last of the empty cardboard boxes into the back of her car en route to sort school supplies. A sullen Alice sat in Val’s passenger seat. Izzy was refusing to acknowledge her texts.
Some guy near Amagansett had let Val use his barn to store the supplies she collected at the end of the school year, after she had the brilliant idea of asking kids from all the area schools to dump their unused supplies into bins during locker clean-out day. Then she hit up civic groups and churches, synagogues and summer camps.
“Man, Val’s in a shitty situation,” Gordie said.
“I know. She feels like she can’t break up with him because he’s sick. But I’d dump him because of the jealousy. It’s annoying.”
“How’s your boyfriend over there?” Gordie said, raising his eyebrows and looking at Mute Mike across the parking lot.
“You’re one to talk,” I shot back. “Your boyfriend must be worse than Javi if you won’t even talk about him. Or are we too lowbrow to meet him? Is it that guy Keith everybody was talking about at Speakeasy?”
He shook his head and stared forward. “You know what? I need to make a quick stop before we meet up with those guys.”
“Wait, where? Val thinks we’re right behind her.”
“It’ll be quick.”
Gordie turned off the car on the edge of the farm stand parking lot and ran back inside. He came out with Farmer Brian, who was locking up, and a bag of sweet corn. He cut in front of a truck and turned right toward Southampton. A few more turns, and we pulled down a long driveway flanked by tall hedgerows.
“Come on.”
“What are we doing?”
“Just come.”