Well, get on it, nerd boy, I texted. I had no idea what he was talking about.
Alice disappeared from our thread. I imagined her stomping around in her attic, stabbing the little Hector poppet with pins as the candles cast creepy shadows on the walls.
I signed on to Ella’s NeighborCare page. Nobody had donated.
Still awake, huh? Gordie texted. I had moved on to Ella’s grandma’s Facebook page.
How did you know?
I can see you on FB. Why are you on FB?
I’ve developed this weird obsession with the baby from the incident. Her grandma posts pictures sometimes.
You are sweet, Sadie Cakes.
Don’t fucking call me that.
Okay. Okay. I’ll stop.
Thank you.
Come over.
Why?
Just come over and hang out.
My stomach dropped. Gordie was obviously bored and nerding out with his Unlikelies avatar project and wanting a friend to keep him company. But I couldn’t help that fluttering, that stupid fluttering. I’d spent two full years of middle school running away from that feeling. I would stand behind him in the cafeteria line or unexpectedly turn the corner and run into him, and my face would get hot and he would look away and I would, too.
Can’t (obviously). Go to sleep.
It happened again that night. I woke with such a rush of terror I thought I was screaming. But I wasn’t. At least not out loud. Flopper and I made our way down to the nook in my parents’ room. Within seconds, I was back to sleep.
“Sadie. Sadie, your phone is buzzing,” Dad yelled. “Why the hell did you bring your phone down here?” My heart raced. I hadn’t even heard the phone.
“Sorry.” I jumped up, went into the living room, and read a long, drawn-out drunken text from Seth. First he rambled about how he was hanging out with a group of Australians and one of them reminded him of D-Bag. Then he cut to the chase. I miss you so much. I’m thinking we should try. North Carolina isn’t that far, Sadie Cakes. Can we talk?
I stood on the tufted wool rug, a relic pulled from an uncle’s warehouse stash. I noticed Mom had changed out the pillows. She had a pillow obsession. That and trays. She loved serving trays. And teacups. I blinked a few times and reread the text.
Seth hardly ever entered my mind. Still, it would be so easy to be pulled in, even if it was obvious he was drunk and lonely and having a moment of weakness.
I miss you, too, Seth. But I think it’s better if we just don’t do this right now.
We could try, Sadie.
My stomach turned. There was only one way out.
I’m sort of seeing someone.
He wrote back immediately. Who?
A friend’s boyfriend’s friend. You don’t know him.
I omitted the fact that Mike was mute, odd, and the only thing resembling a date that I could muster since Seth left.
Good luck with that, Sadie.
I almost texted Shay. But I didn’t want to get another Sorry, Sadie. Dealing with camper stuff.
So I curled up on the couch with my Flopper, pulled up NeighborCare.com on my laptop, and scrolled through dozens of fund-raising pages. There was too much need. I could see how Mr. Upton had become paralyzed. As many lizards as there were in the world, there were even more people, animals, communities in need. We were meeting at Gordie’s the next night to select our “recipients,” but it seemed impossible to choose which ones were worthy of our found diamonds. The family with the house fire? The dog with the congenital eye condition? The badly beaten horse? The funeral costs for a man who was murdered?
I rolled over on my side and closed my eyes.
I slept half the day and spent the other half watching movies on my phone.
“My head hurts bad, Mom,” I called down the hall. “Can you get me something to take?”
“Maybe we should mention this to the victim advocate,” she said, handing me Advil and water.
“Mom, we don’t need to mention every single thing to the victim advocate.”
“Sadie, every little thing may add time to his sentence. Remember that.” It struck me that the entire time I was running around with the Unlikelies, he was in jail waiting for a trial. Or at least I imagined he was. I didn’t really want to know.
My phone buzzed. I ignored it. It buzzed again. And again.
It was Alice.
At the hospital. Izzy OD’d. Tanner found her in his bathroom. Can you guys please come?
I stared down at the text, trying to figure out how Izzy OD’d in her own house.
I went into the kitchen, where Mom was back to cooking chickpeas in front of the small TV. She jumped when I walked up behind her.
“Can I take the Prius after dinner?”
“Not tonight, Sadie. I have to take Grandma Sullivan for lotto tickets.”
“She can’t miss one night of lotto?”
Mom tapped the wooden spoon on the side of the pot and drizzled olive oil over a plate of sliced tomatoes. “Oh, sure! And then the one night she misses, her numbers come up. I’m not having that on my head.”
The news guy with the heavy, shellacked hair was reporting from in front of the trap house. I barely recognized the wooded lot in the daylight. “And now more on that bizarre psychiatrist-drug-dealer case out on the East End. Investigators found a massive stockpile of heroin, cash, purportedly stolen merchandise, and drug-related paraphernalia at the Westhampton home rented by Dr. Ward O. Nelson. According to officials, the public was instrumental in cracking this case.”
“‘If you see something, say something’ works,” an officer said, looking into the camera. “Together we’re working for a drug-free community.”
I laughed out loud.
“What’s so funny?” Mom said, licking salty oil off her fingers.
“Nothing.”
I texted Gordie, Pick me up.
“I’m at the hospital more than my grandmothers,” I said, climbing into the Range Rover. Gordie was freshly showered, and I could smell his spearmint gum from the passenger seat.
We passed the big blue H sign and parked near Alice’s car. I remembered lying on the stretcher in the ambulance while a guy with coffee breath applied pressure to my head, and the blood from my knees stuck to the thin blanket.
Alice looked up at us from the bench with rage in her puffy red eyes. “They blamed me.”
“What? Blamed you for what?” I said, eyeing the mean-faced nurse smoking nearby.
“They said we were the only ones who visited her, that we must have smuggled in the heroin.”
“That’s bullshit,” Gordie said.
“Do you want us to talk to them?” I put my arm around her trembling shoulders.
She shook her head and rested her face in her hands.
“Tanner kept trying to get their attention and, as usual, they blew him off. He was finally able to tell them about some guy who pulled up while they were playing badminton. Remember I was like, why the hell is Izzy playing badminton with Tanner?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, now we know.”
“Was it Hector?”
“No. Apparently this time it was a dark-skinned guy in an Audi. Hector is white with friggin’ floppy blond bangs and blue eyes. And he drives a BMW.”
“Hector’s blond?” Gordie said. “Hector doesn’t sound like a blond-dude name.”