“She’s forgiven you. She knew how stressed you were. We all have our moments of awfulness.”
“Sorry I haven’t been in the mood to text. I was mind-bendingly tired. It’s a good thing you’re getting my lazy ass out of bed.”
I didn’t know if it was the long sleep or the strong coffee, but Alice was in the mood to talk. I told her about my visit to Jean’s room and my talk with Sissy.
“So I guess anything goes now, huh?” she said. “Canary party.”
“Actually, I feel more paralyzed than ever. I mean, I think this is a decision I have to figure out myself. I’ve been trying to get you guys to figure everything out for me, just like Mr. Upton tried to pawn it off on his friends.”
“You’ll do the right thing, Sullivan.”
Alice told me Izzy got shipped to Utah. Her dad wanted to send her to Oman because it was a Muslim country and she might have a tougher time getting drugs. But her mom worried about the hot weather and was afraid that if Izzy did get her hands on drugs, she’d be thrown in prison. “These conversations seriously happened. In my kitchen,” Alice said. “After a lot of Bloody Marys.”
Izzy’s mom said she didn’t want to continue living in a community that judged her and shunned her daughter and made them all look like “trailer trash,” so she found an apartment near the rehab place and left Tanner to fend for himself with his dad, a nanny, and a new puppy. Puppies were notorious consolation prizes.
The duck pond was nearly empty when we got there. We took our coffees and breakfast sandwiches and sat on the grass near Jean’s dreaded pack of ducks. Alice pulled a letter out of her bag. “Here, read this while I eat.”
The letter was written on Hello Kitty stationery with a green felttip pen.
My Allie Belle Poocher,
You know how much I adore you, right? How did we get to this place? How did I get to this place? I wanted to be a dancer. And a waitress (remember?). I wanted to go to college in Boston. I hope I can do even one of those things. I hope I can get clean. I’m not there yet. That’s a start, right? Saying I’m not there yet. But I’m going to keep trying. You, my sweet Allie, are always the branch I grab on to when I’m floating down the river. And no matter what happens, I’ll never forget that.
I love you so much, my Allie Belle Poocher.
Neigh
“That’s good, right?” I said, folding the letter and tucking it in Alice’s bag. “It is a good start.”
“She gave that to me seven months ago.”
“Oh.”
Alice laughed. “I don’t think I ever told you… Izzy and I had a secret brick. We kept money under it so we’d always be ready when we heard the Woody’s Ice Cream music. We’d run down to that brick and dig around in the dirt for change.” She stopped talking then. It was as if that one memory dislodged something so painful there was no place for the pain to go.
I held Alice’s head in my lap while she cried and cried and trembled with grief. I stroked her spiked hair and played with the silver studs that lined her ear. A couple walked by our spot near the pond and I gave them the My friend is having a hard time smile and they understood.
When she was done, Alice looked at me and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and said, “I lied, Sadie. I do feel bad about killing Hector with the voodoo doll.”
I didn’t want to leave Alice on her porch with swollen eyes and a guilty conscience, but I had to go to work.
Daniela was there before me, which was a rare occurrence. “Limonada!” she said when I walked out back to help fold boxes.
“Hey, give Papi and those guys a chance. They’re cool.”
“We have nothing in common.” She made a face.
“What are you doing tonight?” I said, smiling.
“I’m parenting, like I do every night. But obviously you want me to ask you what you’re doing. What are you doing tonight, Sadie?”
“Me? Oh, just going on a date.”
I stood in the spot where the incident happened, where my whole summer changed course, and felt all fluttery at the thought of being alone with Gordie Harris.
Hannah S. caught me off guard. I was filling the flower buckets with the hose when she snuck up behind me.
“Hi, Sadie, what’s going on?” She had a strange look on her face.
“Not much. Just watering the flowers. How are you?”
“Good. We’re going down to the beach tonight. Do you want to come with us?”
“Thanks for the invite, but I have plans. Do you want a free sunflower?” I held out the sunflower. She took it. “Soooo. When were you planning to tell me about Gordie Harris?” Now the casual Just stopping by to say hi and invite you to the beach made sense.
I stared at Hannah.
“There’s nothing to tell. A bunch of us have been hanging out.”
“It all adds up now,” Hannah said, as if all the mysteries of the universe were instantly solved. “No wonder you haven’t been at Shawn’s. Gordie is so not a Shawn Flynn party guy.”
“Yeah. He’s way too cool for that,” I said.
It seemed like for better or for worse, our fate was sealed. Sadie and Gordie were a rumored couple.
Senior year could begin.
There were a ton of texts waiting for me after work.
Turn on channel one, Gordie texted. A spin-off group calling themselves Ebenezer is asking radical religious groups to lay down their arms and join the movement.
Val: Why didn’t we think of that?
Spin-off groups were taking down hater sites with armies of masked avatars, demanding kindness, urging renegade tipsters to join the Unlikelies.
It was good in a weird way and weird in a good way. And it was exhilarating.
Mom always had a way of making me tell her things. She’d get me when I was distracted, like when I was watching a show or trying to figure out what to wear. She’d slip in a random question nonchalantly and I’d let my guard down and tell her something. Then she’d hold it against me for the rest of my life.
Once I let it slip that Shay had HPV. I was unaware HPV was a sexually transmitted disease. I thought it had something to do with her yeast infections. So after the slip, Mom would say things like Maybe if Shay’s mother didn’t play tennis so much she wouldn’t have that HPV, or Maybe if Shay’s parents didn’t attend so many fund-raisers, she wouldn’t have that HPV. That was always said in Farsi. All of Mom’s judgy statements came out in Farsi, unless, of course, she was saying them to Grandma Sullivan.
I had to avoid Mom because I had become a bomb, packed full of wires and chemicals and tiny traps. One lit Mom-match could blow bits of secrets all over the East End. And they weren’t that HPV kind of secrets. They were trap house, cyber vigilante, we weren’t with the Turtle Trail people in New York, I’m falling for Gordie Harris kinds of secrets.
A slow drizzle fell on the roof and bathed the flower beds. We sat in our usual chairs with our plates of sautéed mushrooms and lamb.
“I’m thinking of going vegetarian,” I announced.
Mom laughed. “That’s crap,” she said.
“Why is that crap, Leila? She can go vegetarian if she wants.”