Trouble is a Friend of Mine

‘What’s that?’


‘Electrical tape I peeled off the camera,’ Digby said. ‘It was covering the little green LED that lights up when the camera’s on. He’s filming patients without telling them, so I doubt he’ll call the cops.’

‘That guy … Aldo? You paid him to do that?’

‘You didn’t really think the timing of that was a coincidence, did you, Princeton?’ Digby spat out brown-red stuff.

‘Is that blood?’

‘Meatball marinara. You kinda rearranged my lunch when you hit me …’ he said. ‘Nah … he won’t call the cops. Question is, should we?’

‘With what? All that is is a piece of tape which, hello, isn’t even on the camera anymore,’ I said.

‘Yeah … yeah … you’re right. Of course we can’t call them now, but I’ll bet we can after I get into these encrypted files.’ He scribbled in his notebook. ‘We should definitely go back for another look.’

This time, I did hit him in the nads.





FIVE


Obviously my mother couldn’t go back to Schell. But Mom isn’t big on confronting reality, not even when it’s right in front of her face. For days, I worried about it, saddled with the whole burden of knowing.

This wasn’t new for me. I’d had to do it before – with my father’s cheating. I’d figured it out one day, when I was doing laundry and it just came to me, apropos of nothing, that my father was having an affair. It wasn’t like any one particular thing had given him away, it was just a lot of little things. Once it occurred to me, I was sure divorce was inevitable, and for months, I had insomnia, waiting for them to tell me. Months later, when I realized that no divorce was coming, a new waiting game started. This time, I waited for my mother to catch up with me. But when more months passed, it finally dawned on me that Mom and Dad were both lying and to the same person: Mom.

I couldn’t believe it. I watched her go about her life, oblivious, until every mundane thing she did irked me. I mean, yes, Dad was a dirtbag. It wouldn’t even surprise me if he’d been cheating on Shereene the whole time he’d been cheating with her. But he knew what he was about and I could respect that at least. Mom chose to ignore reality. She was a coward.

The next day, I was raking leaves before school, mulling this over, when I saw Red Plaid from the diner exit the mansion across the street. Some boys in blue plaid followed him. As usual, girls in prairie dresses were in the driveway with buckets of disgusting-smelling cleaning fluids. None of the boys were scrubbing, I noticed.

‘Typical,’ I said.

The boys piled black garbage bags into a van parked in the driveway. One hotshot kid swung his bag over his head before throwing it in. The loud crunch of glass got him boxed in the ear by Red Plaid. When he readjusted the bag, I saw it had a biohazard medical waste logo.

‘That’s weird,’ I said.

‘Totally weird,’ Digby said.

I jumped and jerked the rake so hard, it threw a puff of leaves in the air. I hadn’t heard him come up behind me.

‘They’re supposedly running an herbal tea business.’ Digby was eating one apple and holding a second. ‘Medical waste? Definitely weird.’

‘You scared me. What are you doing here?’

‘I thought we’d walk to school together. What are you raking for? This is upstate New York. It’ll rain leaves until November.’

There was already a carpet of freshly fallen leaves where I’d just raked.

‘You’re crazy coming here. That guy’s going to kill you,’ I said.

Luckily, Red Plaid walked back into the mansion without seeing Digby.

‘The Twelfth Tribe Tea Company. And you know what’s really weird? There’s no mortgage on that mansion,’ he said. ‘They blew into town four years ago and paid cash. This is America – who pays cash?’

‘It’s a cult. They probably confiscated their members’ money. Anyway, how’d you find out about their mortgage?’

‘It’s online. All you need’s a real estate agent’s login.’

‘And you have one of those because …?’

‘It’s a long story involving a box of donuts, a cup of coffee with a loose lid, and the rule that there’s no such thing as a free lunch.’

‘I’m making a mental note to never use a computer around you.’

I guess Red Plaid saw us from the window, because he stalked out of the mansion, doing the corny roll-up-the-sleeves-to-fight move. Except because he was doing it to beat us up more effectively, it seemed a lot less corny.

Digby put his apples on my mailbox and took something – I couldn’t see what – from his pocket that he gripped in his closed fist.