Trouble is a Friend of Mine

‘It’s not my fault you assume there’s always some catastrophe about to happen when I call you.’


I tapped the scar on my chin and said, ‘You don’t think it’s your fault? Not even a little?’

‘Oh, come on … bygones.’

‘So, what’s going on anyway?’

‘Nothing. I’m on my break and I wanted some company,’ he said.

It took a second for me to realize he meant he just wanted to hang out. ‘Uh … okay. Walk, I guess?’

We left the yogurt shop and were window-shopping and mocking the other mall shoppers until we got to the pet store. Digby just stared into the window where there was an open-topped glass case in which sat two furry rats with oversized ears.

‘Those rats are gigantic,’ I said. ‘And they look like they stink.’

‘That doesn’t even make any sense,’ Digby said. ‘And these little guys are chinchillas, not rats.’

‘I don’t get it.’

‘Chinchillas. They’re awesome.’

‘You like these things? You don’t like anything.’ When he just stared at the chinchillas and ignored me, I shoved him and said, ‘Is it, like, some kind of weird fur-based fetish?’

‘My sister asked for a chinchilla for her fourth birthday. My dad said no and made up an allergy as an excuse. Chinchillas live for fifteen years, you know? If we’d gotten her one like she’d asked for, we’d have a nine-year-old chinchilla named Mu. For Muhammad Ali. The Chinchilla from Manila,’ Digby said.

I felt awful. ‘Digby … I am so …’ But then I realized he was laughing at me.

‘The Chinchilla from Manila? You believed that junk?’ he said. ‘Man. Making you cry is too easy.’

‘I’m not crying, you moron. And you can’t tell a sob story and then make fun of the people who sob. That’s entrapment.’ I flicked a spoonful of melted yogurt at him that landed on the arm of his Suzie Bear suit.

‘Hey, watch the fur.’ Digby looked surprised and caught himself. He said, ‘Wow. I was just seriously annoyed you did that. You know … maybe I do have a little something weird going with fur.’

‘It’s not funny,’ I said.

‘What? My sister getting kidnapped? No, of course it’s not. It’s the most horrible thing that’s ever happened to me. But it’s also not the only thing I think about. I can like a chinchilla without it being about my sister, Princeton.’

‘You brought her up.’

‘But you were thinking about her.’

‘Only after you brought her up.’

‘Semantics,’ Digby said. ‘Seriously, though. I need to change my life story. I’m done being the Boy Whose Sister Was Taken. I need to either find Sally or find out how she died.’

It was shocking to hear it laid bare like that. I checked to see if he was smiling again, but he wasn’t this time.

‘She disappeared exactly nine years ago tonight,’ he said.

His anxiety attack from the day before made a new kind of sense to me. He put the Suzie Bear head back on. ‘Come on, Princeton. Let’s go traumatize some kids.’

When the Friday of the dance rolled around, I woke up early, worried I’d caught some kind of small-town fever because I was totally excited to go to a school dance. I didn’t know why I was. It wasn’t because of the photo Felix sent me of the crazy stretch limo he’d rented. It definitely wasn’t because we were going to Red Lobster, even though he was allergic to shellfish and had to demo his EpiPen for me ‘just in case.’

Everyone at school was amped. The halls were decorated with WELCOME CHESTER B. ARTHUR STUDENTS posters (there was a mini-scolding over the PA because someone defaced a poster to read FArthur) and there was glitter on the floor. People peeked through gaps in the locked gym doors. Some popular tenth-grade girls were crying in the cafeteria, complaining it was unfair they couldn’t go even though eleventh-grade boys had asked them.

The bathrooms were crazier than usual and teachers had to come in after the bell to yell at girls to go to class. Sloane and two of her blondes walked around with pins and curling papers in their bangs and I overheard Sloane insist a ‘real pin curl is soooo different’ from one you make with gel and a curling iron.

In short, the dance was already a success. Everyone was obsessed.