We made fun of Jean’s tongue sticking out while he sketched furiously, intent on capturing the layers of color as they appeared on the horizon.
“I think it’s time to break out the big guns,” Gordie announced, glancing at me. He went down to the cabin and came back up with a saxophone. He sat back and played, and we felt the notes bounce off the deck and fall into the sea. The music surrounded us. It found its way inside me. I held on to Alice and Val and closed my eyes as Gordie Harris’s music turned me into pure air.
“Show-off,” Alice said, wiping tears from her cheeks.
Gordie put the sax in its case and stretched. “You’re just jealous the men have all the talent in this operation.” He slid open a cabinet and grabbed a bunch more food. We lay around stuffing our faces and watching the lights zoom by. I couldn’t stop looking at Gordie. I loved his smile. I loved the way his hands were strong and smooth. I loved how he didn’t care how rich he was or how poor we were compared to him.
Unlike the rest of us, Val didn’t eat a thing. She smiled and said things like I really needed this and I’m so glad I have you guys, but her head and her heart and her stomach were in breakup land.
“So how long have you two been banging, may I ask?” Jean said, pointing his fingers at Gordie and me.
“Oh my God, Jean. You’re such an ass,” I said, mortified.
“We might as well discuss, right?” Gordie looked at me.
“What do you want to discuss? That we have hooked up? Yes. We have hooked up. No. We haven’t banged.”
“I don’t know if I’m cool with this,” Jean said. He made a sweeping hand gesture. “I kind of like this Unlikelies dynamic we’ve created. Now you two are going to screw it up with inevitable couple drama. It will happen. You know it will.”
He wasn’t wrong. Our hooking up definitely complicated things.
“Nice, Jean. Way to be positive,” I said. “I don’t know if I’m comfortable with you judging my business.”
“Sadie, can I have a word with you?” Gordie held out his hand and pulled me up.
“This is all so awkward,” I said as I searched for my flip-flops and hurried down the stairs.
“Go ahead, abandon your friends,” Alice called after us.
And then we were in the bedroom with the huge bed and the million-thread-count bedding, attached and struggling to get clothes off because our bodies didn’t want to separate, not even for a second.
“Stop. Stop. Stop.” I pressed the palm of my hand into his chest and looked up at his face in the dim light. His cheeks were flushed.
“Okay. I didn’t plan to go there,” he said, smiling. “I just wanted to talk about the situation. Shit, Sadie. What are you doing to me?”
I took a deep breath and put my T-shirt on. “Regroup, Gordie. We’re being rude. What did you want to say?” He kissed me two, three, four times.
“Basically that I can’t stop thinking about you. Like all day and night. I just think you are incredible. I mean, I always did, but then you were with Seth, and whatever. I like you. A lot.”
I buzzed like a hornet wedding.
“And I get what Jean is saying, but… sorry… don’t care right now,” Gordie said.
He stopped talking and looked at me.
All my body parts battled over first dibs at Gordie Harris.
“Are you saying you want me to be your girlfriend, strange boy?”
“Uh. Yes.”
My lips found his and I wished we were alone on a boat heading for eternity. But I felt bad for ditching our friends and I knew if we stayed any longer we’d be proving Jean’s point.
“Come on.” I pushed him toward the door. “Let’s not be assholes.”
Gordie announced our couplehood and gave a little speech about how he loved us and didn’t care about the future and he liked me and let’s just all be cool with that. He got flustered and passionate like he did in civics debates at school. And, just like at the civics debates at school, he was met with bland acknowledgment.
“Gordie, relax, man,” Jean said. “Congratulations. You like each other. Just keep the PDAs to a minimum. Nobody wants to see that shit.”
We sailed back to reality early, even before the Hamptons cars had arrived at their fashionably late dinner reservations. We needed to get home and rest up and lie low, and then just plain lie to our parents about the upcoming, fabricated Turtle Trail Recreation Center overnight trip to New York City.
Alice texted us that night at three a.m., One of Izzy’s junkie friends just responded. All he wrote was: Stop bothering me. Hector’s dead.
TWENTY-FIVE
I CALLED ALICE right away and tried to gauge her reaction to the Hector news. “I’m beyond happy. This means Izzy has a chance.”
“Don’t you feel bad, a little, about the poppet?”
I was thoroughly creeped out thinking about the cemetery and burying the doll and the rum and the death curse. I had never met Hector, but I still felt guilty.
“No, Sadie. I wouldn’t have made that doll if I didn’t want it to work. Do you believe in the power of the voodoo now?”
When I asked my parents if I could go into the city to assist with another Turtle Trail field trip, they happily let me go because I was going to be with the gay class valedictorian and my other wholesome, do-gooder friends. I stooped as low as I had ever stooped and justified it by telling myself I was helping a friend save someone’s life.
I remembered this girl from my school named Kelsey Rollins who played the cello. Kelsey Rollins cut school regularly to feed her gaming addiction by telling her teachers she had music lessons. They believed her because Kelsey Rollins was a music nerd and why would she lie to teachers?
I was Kelsey Rollins. Except instead of pretending to have music lessons so I could game in my basement, I was pretending to take developmentally disabled people on a field trip so I could hunt down a heroin addict.
I felt really, really bad.
Grandma Sullivan and Grandma Hosseini were the only ones at the house when Gordie arrived bright and early. He waved as I grabbed my stuff.
“That boy loves you,” Grandma Hosseini said in Farsi.
“What did she say?” Grandma Sullivan called after me. I ignored her.
Gordie’s dad called no fewer than five times between my house and Alice’s to remind Gordie to turn on the AC in the brownstone, flush all the toilets once we got there, and check the sugar jar for ants.
“How many toilets do you have?” I said.
“Too many.”