Trouble is a Friend of Mine

‘Uh …’ Digby said. ‘What does twenty bucks buy?’


‘Usually, not much. But for you … a dime of my finest. My thank-you-and-please-come-again rate.’ She took the twenty from Digby, weighed out a pile of shriveled leaves, and poured it into a Ziploc bag labeled BALONEY. She winked and said, ‘Recycle and reuse.’ She gave Digby her card. ‘They call me Mello Yello. For obvious reasons.’

‘Right,’ Digby said.

‘Because I’m chill,’ she said. ‘Anyway, I’m shutting down my bricks-and-mortar operation. Call anytime.’

On the way out, Alistair pointed at Henry wearing Digby’s jacket. ‘My jackets fit like that too. My wrists get cold in the wintertime. I wear wristbands.’

The sun seemed brighter when we finally got out of that shed. My skin was buzzing. Maybe it was the relief of making it out alive. Or maybe I was high from breathing Mello Yello’s smoke. I looked to see if Digby and Henry felt weird too.

‘I’m starving,’ Digby said. The munchies? But then, Digby was always starving, so that might not have meant anything at all.

At the diner, after we stuffed our faces and high-fived each other for surviving another one of Digby’s idiotic dares, we pieced together what we knew.

Marina Miller: still missing. Her gynecologist: Schell, known pornographer and small-time drug dealer. Ezekiel: friends with Schell. There was a good chance Ezekiel was also stealing from a drug dealer named Bananaman. Bananaman: not small-time.

‘Lemme guess, you’re not telling the police any of this,’ Henry said.

‘Not for free, anyway,’ Digby said.

‘You mean in exchange for your sister’s case files?’ I said.

‘For starters,’ Digby said.

The guns, the drugs, the missing girl: these were really happening to the three of us. But after we were done talking about all that, the conversation turned to the dance. Even at the time, I was aware it was ridiculous that the ideas of getting shot and turning up dateless at the dance caused me an equal amount of stress. They did, though.





SEVENTEEN


At school the next week, I was on my way to Spanish when I realized I really needed the bathroom. ‘No biggie, just go to the bathroom,’ you say? It’s not that simple. Girls’ bathrooms here are marked off and defended like gang turf. The bathroom I usually went to was clear across campus, though, and I was already late to class. Again.

The nearest one was the main bathroom by the cafeteria. I’d gone to it once at the beginning of the year and swore I’d never go back. This was the bathroom where the Big Girls on Campus (mostly seniors and a select group of junior girls who were either majorly ballsy or had been given the seniors’ seal of approval) hang out and competitively primp. No one went in alone and no one’s there to actually use the toilets. The place smelled like a salon.

But I really needed to pee, so I went in, hoping it was close enough to the start of classes that it might have emptied out. No joy: it was packed.

One group of girls shared a curling iron. ‘No, it’s good when your hair steams. It’s the frizz coming out,’ one girl said.

Another group huddled together passing around lipsticks they took turns trying on.

At one of the stalls, two girls were using Sharpies to write a Hot or Not list of boys on the door.

‘Ew, Darla … no. Nose grease,’ one said as she crossed off her friend’s last entry. ‘Disqualified.’

I felt a fireball of hate hit me in the chest. Sloane. She stared at me as I walked to the stalls. She and her backup blond girls were at the sinks nearest the windows, which was probably the most valuable bathroom real estate because they were beside the only full-length mirror and the hand blower with a nozzle that could be flipped up so it doubled as a hair dryer.

One blond backup pointed at me. ‘Hey, isn’t that –’

‘Yeah. Why’s she here?’ Sloane said.

I ducked into a stall and caught my breath.

Outside, Sloane said, ‘Okay, check this out. Who am I?’ I peeked out of the crack by the stall door and watched Sloane do robot arms and mime falling forward stiffly over and over. ‘They had to cut the volleyball net,’ Sloane said to her laughing posse. ‘Loser.’

I felt a wave of exhaustion. Two more years of this if I didn’t get into Prentiss.

Then the laughter hushed up. It reminded me of a video I once saw where it went really still right before a tornado touched down and ripped up a town. I looked back through the crack but Sloane and her gang weren’t by the window anymore. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Sloane’s phone peeking over into my stall.