“Clues to finding Poppy,” Buttercup added.
“Why the hell would she run off in the first place?” Briggs groaned, deep and kind of sad. He yanked off his sweaty T-shirt and threw it on the ground. “What happened to spark all this?”
I picked up the shovel and put it behind my back.
I had to tell them. I had to suck it up and be the hero and tell the Yellows what happened to their fearless leader.
“Wink and I tricked her. We tied her to the grand piano in the Roman Luck house and left her there all night.”
All four Yellows went still.
“You did what?” Briggs. His head cocked to the side.
My palms were sweaty on the wooden handle, sweaty and slick. “We tied her to the grand piano and left her in the music room until dawn. When we got back she was . . . she was dimmed, if that makes sense. I never thought . . . I never thought it would crush her, not like that. And I haven’t seen her since that morning.”
Which was a lie, because I had seen her, on the top of the hayloft, just for a split second.
And I’d smelled her perfume in my room every night too.
But the Yellows didn’t need to know this. I might have imagined it all anyway.
I focused on Briggs, since he was the one I was the most worried about. His face was flushed, down his cheekbones, across his neck.
This was it. The Yellows were going to beat the hell out of me. And I had it coming.
Briggs grabbed for the shovel and it slid right out of my sweaty palms. I didn’t even resist. He put his arm back and . . .
And threw it. Right past me. It hit one of the trees, hard, and fell to the ground, a quiet, gentle thud.
After that Briggs just stood there, staring at me.
He didn’t look angry anymore. He just looked tired.
“We don’t blame you, for tricking her.” Buttercup put her hand on my forearm and rubbed her fingers up and down, from my wrist to my elbow. “What Poppy did to Wink at the Roman Luck party was unforgivable.”
“We helped Poppy do it.” The wind picked up and blew Thomas’s shaggy blond hair all around his head, like it was trying to get his attention. “We helped her humiliate Wink.”
Briggs kept staring at me, one blue eye, one green. “I saw someone out here in the woods last night. A girl that looked just like Poppy. I only saw her for a second, right before she disappeared back into the dark. You want to know what I think?”
No one nodded, but he went on anyway.
“I think Poppy is fucking with us.”
Long pause.
“Or she’s dead, and she’s haunting us.” Thomas said it kind of defiantly, chin up, like he expected us to start laughing.
Which Briggs did. “So she’s writing letters from beyond the grave? That’s so stupid. Poppy is a fighter, like me. She’s not a quitter.”
“Poppy is a lot of things,” I said. And meant it. “Look, Wink and I started this. Whatever happened in the Roman Luck house, whatever Poppy went through, it led to her going missing. I’m to blame.”
Buttercup turned suddenly and gave me a hug. Her arms were long and warm.
My mom had always said that fear brought out the truth in people. She based entire books on it. I guess Buttercup’s truth was better than I’d thought.
“I’m worried about Poppy,” she whispered in my ear. “I’m scared for her.”
“Me too,” I said.
“I’m going home.” Thomas started walking away, talking to us over his shoulder. “I’m going to study my letter and then I’m going to search every damn nook and cranny until I find her.”
“We’ll help you,” Buttercup said. And Zoe nodded. And Briggs followed behind.
THE THING ABOUT Briggs, the secret thing, was that he’d never hurt a fly. He was a bully, and like most bullies, like all bullies but me, he was a baby underneath it all. At least Midnight was a baby straight up, there was something to respect in that, there was. I said before that Thomas was the sad one, the sensitive one, but Briggs . . . I’d once seen Briggs cry over a spotted owl in the park that had broken its wing and kept hopping around because he couldn’t fly. Briggs tried to hide his tears but I saw them, and heard the way he was sniffling too, on his knees in the grass, and his voice was thick and choked and he kept asking me over and over what he should do, as if I was some sort of spotted owl wing-healer.
And right before the bird, Briggs had been taunting a nerdy little kid about his thick glasses and the soccer ball he couldn’t kick worth a damn, and the whole time it never occurred to him, the contradiction.
I used to meet the Yellows in the morning, not too early, at Lone Tree Joe. In the summer it was filled with wealthy, weasel-faced hipsters on break from school and staying in their parents’ vacation homes until September, but I was Poppy and had to have the best even if it meant rubbing elbows with the non-local trust-fund brat packs.