Uncovering Sadie's Secrets

by Libby Sternberg

  But I was also angry. Why did Sadie have to step on every move I made with Doug? Even without Marsha broadcasting it all over the school, it had to be obvious to Sadie that Doug was—well, special to me. And I was angry for feeling uneasy, too. I hadn’t done anything wrong, right? I crossed my arms over my chest and glowered at the chair in front of me.

  “Ah, yes. Sadie.” Mrs. Williston’s reedy voice cut through the auditorium, which had grown strangely silent. It occurred to me that Sadie Sinclair was viewed as an odd bird by everybody in the school, someone who kept to herself and tried not to stand out. I straightened and leaned forward.

  “She looks nervous,” I whispered to Doug.

  “Aw, she’ll be okay,” he said.

  But she didn’t look okay. She managed to squeak out a “yes, ma’am” so low that Williston had to ask her to repeat it. Staring at Sadie over her little half-glasses, Williston sighed with such bravado that even the balcony seats could pick up her little bit of stage business.

  “My dear, please try to project. Now, what would you like to sing?”

  At first, Sadie said nothing. She looked at Williston, then at the stairs on the other side of the stage as if contemplating a break for the door. Then her eyes lit on me, and by golly I couldn’t help myself. I gave her a big, go-get-’em grin and then—I couldn’t believe I was actually doing this—a thumbs up sign with my right hand. A wan smile flickered at the corners of Sadie’s mouth.

  “Uh. . . I can sing a folk song. . .”

  “Okay, dear. What is it? Do you need accompaniment?” Mrs. Williston was tired. Sadie was the last to audition.

  “No. . . I can do it a capella. . .”

  A capella? Where had this girl learned music terminology?

  “The Streets of Laredo,” Sadie announced. Then she stood stock still, fixed her eyes on some unknown point above the balcony and, like a meadowlark, proceeded to warble the old cowboy song about death and sadness. She had a sweet pure voice, just the kind that was made for folk songs.

  The auditorium had been built before microphones were commonplace, so its acoustics provided a natural amplification that enhanced a good singer’s voice. Sadie’s carried to the last slat of the last seat of the last row. When she was finished, we all applauded. It seemed to come from us spontaneously, as if we weren’t in control of our hands. At least that’s the way I felt as I smacked my hands together. Or maybe I was making up for the guilt.

  Mrs. Williston, too, was impressed. She stood up and asked Sadie to come talk with her privately.

  “What a nice voice,” Hilary murmured from down the row. Call me crazy, but I don’t think Hilary was all that happy about Sadie’s nice voice. Until this moment, Yum-Yum was hers for the taking.

  With no one left to audition, we all stood getting ready to leave. Sadie continued talking with Mrs. Williston while the rest of us aimlessly tried to make conversation.

  “I was thinking of having a Halloween party,” Kerrie chirped. This was news to me. “Costumes and all. My folks said it was okay.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of Sadie swiftly walking up the aisle. Instead of joining us, her new friends, she rushed out of the auditorium with the same red-faced look she’d worn coming into the cafeteria earlier. Despite my desire to stand alarmingly close to Doug, I broke away and ran after her.

  “Be right back,” I murmured to my circle.

  I caught up with Sadie outside the big double doors to this wing of the school. She stood shivering in the cold, her arms wrapped over each other. Her face was mottled from unshed tears.

  “Sadie!” I called over, trying to sound casual. “You were terrific!”

  She smiled shyly. “Thanks.”

  “We’re talking about a Halloween party,” I said lamely. Then again, blurting out “what’s the matter with you” didn’t seem like the right thing to say either. “Kerrie’s house.”

  “Oh. . .”

  “I’m sure she’ll invite you.” After I told her to, that is.

  “Thanks.”

  “Do you want to go inside? We were just kind of hanging out.” To make a liar out of me, Doug and Kerrie and Hilary and Nicole came out the door just then. Doug handed me my jacket and backpack, a small gesture of kindness that nearly made me hysterical with joy. But I controlled my emotions.

  “There you are!” Kerrie said to me, then turned to Sadie. “What a voice. You’re full of surprises, Sadie.”

  “I was just telling Sadie about your party,” I said.

  “Well, yeah, I have to pick a date. It’ll be a weekend.”

  “Make it a Saturday,” Doug chimed in. “I have to work on Friday nights.” Did he look at me when he said this? Was this a message intended for me? I took it that way, mentally filing it away under “why Doug won’t call on Friday nights.”

  “A costume party, right, Kerrie?” I asked, trying to divert attention away from Sadie, who still looked troubled.

  “Uh-huh,” said Kerrie, smiling at me and nodding in Doug’s direction. I think she was trying to tell me that this was my chance to have some soulful conversation with the guy. “I gotta get going, Bianca. Give me a call,” Kerrie said, running off towards the parking lot in back of the school. She was getting a ride home with a senior who would leave without her if she was too late.

  Hilary and Nicole also said hasty good-byes and went off to catch their rides and buses. That left an awkward trio of me, Doug, and Sadie.

  Doug shuffled a little, looked at me, then at Sadie, and my amazing new mind-reading powers led me to believe he was wondering if I was going to ditch her so we could talk. I’m ashamed to admit that, if given half the chance, I would have thrown Sadie into the bushes then. But something happened that threw us all for a loop.

  A large black car, expensive-looking with tinted windows, cruised past the front of school, slowing to a stop near the end of a long wide walkway that connects the auditorium doors and the street. Sadie saw the car first and her eyes widened. Her hands clenched at her sides as her white face flushed with heart-pounding fear.

  Doug, being a guy, was oblivious to this. His eyes were focused elsewhere. “Cool car. That your ride, Sadie?”

  She said nothing, but rushed into the school instead, leaving Doug and me on the steps with the mystery car just a few yards away. When Sadie disappeared, I figured the car would move on. But it didn’t. It stayed put.

  A few seconds later, the passenger door opened and a tall, sallow redhead dressed all in black—black leather pants, black leather jacket, black tee—got out. As she sauntered towards us, the window rolled down and a man’s voice shouted at her to get a move on.

  Without turning around, she picked up her pace, teetering forward on high-heeled boots that made her look like a bowling pin about to tip over any second. As she got closer, I could see that she was heavily made up with black eyeliner rimming reddened eyes, brownish lipstick, and eyebrows that didn’t match her hair color.

  “Can I help you?” I asked, and she looked at me like I had just spit at her.

  “Yeah, I guess. That girl. . .” Her voice was nasal and high-pitched.

  “Sadie?”

  The woman smiled. Or rather, she smirked. “Sadie,” she repeated. “Yeah. Sadie. Where’d she go?”

  Doug stepped forward. “Why do you want to know?”

  My hero.

  “Uh. . .’cause. . . I. . . I have to talk with her. . .”

  “Are you her mother?” Doug asked. Her mother? I nearly slapped my forehead with my hand. If this woman was Sadie’s mother, I was Jennifer Lopez.

  “Uh. . . yeah. . . yeah, that’s right. I’m her mother and I need to talk with her,” the woman said, but before I could cackle uproariously at this obvious untruth, Doug chimed in.

  “Oh, well, she’s probably gone back into the auditorium to get her things. Here, I’ll show you.” He turned to open the door. My chivalrous—but slightly dense—hero.

  I jumped between him and the door. “Tha
t’s okay, Doug. Look, I’ll show her. I want to talk with Sadie anyway. Thanks. I’ll talk to you soon, okay?”

  Doug shrugged and looked a little disappointed, which was okay by me. Maybe he had been counting on another pal-like punch in the arm followed by a cheery farewell. Better to keep him wanting.

  As he walked off, I turned and opened the door for “Sadie’s mom,” making small talk along the way.

  “So, how do you like Maryland, Mrs. . .” I paused just a breath, hoping she’d chime in with “Sinclair.” When she didn’t, I continued my snooping, using the techniques I had learned at lunch earlier that day—direct interrogation. “I’m sorry. . . I don’t know your name.”

  So many kids had divorced parents these days, you could never be sure if their mother’s last name was still the same as theirs, right?

  “Uh. . . Sadie. . . Just call me Mrs. Sadie.” She giggled nervously, and her thin heels clacked on the tile foyer to the auditorium. No one was around. I led her to the doors, first glancing in through the tiny slit between them. Sadie was gone. I shoved open the doors with a flourish.

  “Oh dear, she appears to have left already. Let’s go look for her locker,” I said in my “most-helpful-parochial-school-student” voice.

  I started walking at a brisk pace towards the cafeteria. It was highly unlikely that Sadie would be in there, but there was something about this “Mrs. Sadie” (how lame could she get!) that made me want to keep her away from her “daughter” as long as possible. As we came near the other end of the lunch room, I caught sight of Sadie through the slender glass window that ran the length of the doors. Her eyes widened and I saw her take in her breath. With an imperceptible nod of my head, I communicated—Balducci style— to “get the heck out of here.” Getting the message, Sadie turned back toward the locker hall.

  “So, what brought you to Maryland?” I asked conversationally as we ploughed through the doors to the next foyer. Avoiding the locker hall straight ahead, I turned right and headed up the stairs to the offices and first floor classrooms. She followed, lemming-like (if you can imagine a lemming in black leather and high heeled boots).

  “Huh? Nothing. Just travel. We like to travel.”

  At the first landing, I made a decision to bypass the first floor and head on up to the third. This lady wasn’t used to exercise and was huffing and puffing before we even reached the next level. Keep her in a weakened state—that was the ticket.

  “It must have been hard to leave. . .” I was going to say “California,” but stopped myself and substituted “New York” instead. “Such an exciting city. Baltimore must seem like a small town in comparison.”

  “Yeah, well. . .” she said between huge gulps for air as we headed up the third flight. “It’s not—so—bad—once—you get—used— to it.” She sounded like the oxygen had been sucked out of the room.

  The third floor was dark and I headed to an even dimmer hallway that led to the art rooms. Outside the rooms were several rows of unused lockers. The teachers stored art supplies in them. I had a slight hunch “Mrs. Sadie” wouldn’t notice that these lockers had no locks on them.

  “Oh dear,” I said with mock despair. “She’s gone. She must have left. She hates to miss her bus. I’m sure you’ll catch up with her.”

  The woman had nearly doubled over trying to catch her breath again. But her agony gave me a chance to go to a tall arched window that overlooked the back of the school. In the distance, beyond the softball field and track, I could see Sadie rushing off campus. She would be safe now.

  “Catch up where?” Straightening, the woman’s demeanor changed. The artificial smile was gone and any semblance of concern for her “daughter” was now replaced by anger. “Where did she go?”

  “Home—home, of course,” I sputtered. All of a sudden I wished I hadn’t led her up to this secluded floor. We were completely alone. The janitors wouldn’t come up this far to clean for hours. And Mrs. Sadie was beginning to look like Mrs. Sinister.

  “Well, where the hell is that, Miss Smartypants?” she hissed at me. It didn’t seem the right moment to point out that, as Sadie’s “mother,” she should know where home was.

  “Camden,” I improvised. “Down by the ballpark.”

  She advanced on me, sticking her hand in her jacket. I didn’t want to know what was in the pocket. I started walking quickly to the stairs again.

  “I’m sorry. I assumed she lived with you. I guess she lives with her Dad. . .” I started skipping down the steps, flying over them so fast I risked tripping. “I have to go myself, didn’t realize it was so late. I’m sure you’ll find her,” I called over my shoulder as I ran.

  As I reached the first floor, I felt a painful yank at my hair and nearly fell. She had somehow gained on me, and now pulled me up short, bending my neck back as she tore at my roots.

  “Listen, sister, I need to find her and quick. Where is she?”

  The searing sensation of having my hair ripped out by the roots made tears come to my eyes. My heart was thudding so loud in my chest I was sure she could hear it, and I kept wondering two things: when would her pal in the black car come looking for her, and had he taken the same course in “Manners for Thugs” that she had obviously aced?

  “I don’t know,” I managed to squeak out. “I honestly don’t know. Nobody knows much about Sadie. I thought I heard her mention Camden. I think that’s where she lives. . .”

  She pulled her hand out of her pocket, and, to my horror, she not only was holding a knife, but its thin edge was coming close to my arm.

  “When you see her,” the woman snarled at me, “tell her that her mother wants to talk to her real bad.” With a heart-stopping movement, she grabbed my backpack and, with the knife, slashed through its strap. It fell off my arm, thudding to the floor. Just as quickly, she let go of my hair and walked out the front door. As soon as I saw her go, I ran to the office to call my brother. I wanted a ride home. This was definitely not a day for the bus!

  THAT NIGHT at dinner, I could hardly hold my fork steady. I was still trembling from my afternoon encounter. I was so distracted that I let Tony grouse uninterrupted for ten minutes about having to pick me up at school that afternoon. After telling him to stop complaining, my mother told me I’d had a phone call. “Forgot to tell you,” she said. “It was on the voice mail when I got home. Must have come in when Tony was picking you up.” She reached for the salad and put some on her plate after eyeing the huge uneaten pile of it on Tony’s. “Sadie, it sounded like.”

  “Did she leave a number?” I asked with sudden interest.

  “No, she said she’d call later. Is she a new friend? I haven’t heard you mention her.”

  “Just another low-life she hangs with,” Tony sneered, but Connie kicked him under the table. Sometimes Connie was all right. I could tell from her silence at the table that she was in one of her “can’t wait to move into my apartment” moods where quality family time wouldn’t be a big factor.

  “Yeah, she’s a friend of Kerrie and me,” I said and finished off my baked chicken and Rice-a-roni as fast as I could. “May I be excused?”

  “All right. But you’re doing dishes tonight.”

  My shoulders sagged. “Con, can I switch with. . .”

  “Not on your life. I’ve got a serious date with LexisNexis tonight,” she said.

  Ouch. Double bad news. Not only would she not do the dishes for me. She was going to tie up the phone doing Internet research.

  “Okay, okay,” I said and headed for the hallway. “Just let me make a quick call.” I grabbed the broken end of my backpack strap and climbed the stairs to my room two steps at a time, first taking the cordless phone off the hall table as I went by.

  “What did you do to your backpack?” my mother called after me. She missed nothing.

  “It just broke. That’s all.”

  “That’s an L.L. Bean,” I heard her murmuring as I reached my room.

  Before the backpack hit the floor, I had alr
eady dialed *69. A ring, then a nasal electronic voice came on. “The number of your last incoming call was. . .” I grabbed a piece of paper and pencil stub in a frantic effort to catch the number, only to hear the phone number of the school pay phone pop up. It was my call to Tony, not Sadie’s call to me. Disgusted, I hung up and quickly dialed voice mail, feeding in my sister’s office number and password. A few run-of-the-mill messages and a hang-up. Why did I have the strong feeling the hang-up was Sadie?

  One last try—I dialed Kerrie’s number. But before it could ring through, I heard the telltale clicks of my sister using the phone line to log on to the Internet. I hung up and silently cursed my continuing bad luck.

  Chapter Five

  “YOU KNOW we should get one of those dedicated Internet server lines—the ones that connect to your cable television or something,” I complained a few minutes later to Connie, who was flipping through web pages with lightning speed. The dishwasher was humming along and I was scraping rice bits out of a sauce pan in the sink.

  I was jittery to get on-line myself for some cyber companionship. Ever since my encounter with Lemming Lady that afternoon, I’d been on edge. I mean, someone slicing through your backpack is nothing to sneeze at. Even though I consider myself to be pretty unflappable (okay, okay, except maybe around Doug), the blade in Lemming Lady’s hand was enough to put the fear of God into me.

  Only problem was I had no one to talk to about my fears. Mom was scared enough for us already. First off, she’s, well, a mom. So naturally, she’s protective of her brood. But given the fact that my father was killed in the line of duty, she’s probably a little more nervous about us than normal. Talking to Connie or Tony about the incident was out of the question. I mean, they’re my siblings.

  “I’m getting a dedicated line at my office,” Connie said, bringing me back to reality and out of the worry wormhole I had been sucked into.