Uncovering Sadie's Secrets

by Libby Sternberg

  I wasn’t so lucky with Connie alone. She peppered me with questions, but I stuck to a simple, inelegant story—I had fallen asleep on the bus and missed my stop. She couldn’t quite understand why I didn’t catch another bus, but I suspect she just chalked it up to my self-centered laziness. Okay by me. Better to reinforce her poor opinion of me than to swim with the fishes because of Ice Man and Lemming Lady.

  At home, I quickly got dinner started per my mother’s instructions, slapping together some ground beef and onion to make meat loaf and throwing it in the oven with a few potatoes to bake. It was almost therapeutic, taking out my fear and anger on the glob of ground beef in the bowl.

  Then I called Kerrie. Thank goodness she was home. I finally spilled my guts about my adventures, even delighting in her screaming reactions to each new revelation. In fact, the more she screamed, the less fearful I felt. At the end of my tale, her voice became low, as if afraid of being overheard.

  “Why didn’t you tell the policeman you were being followed?” she asked.

  “I guess I think that Sadie could be in trouble, and before I go blowing the whistle, I want to find out what the trouble is.”

  “We have to find out what’s happening with her,” Kerrie said.

  “I know,” I said. “But how?”

  “Nobody knows where she lives or what her phone number is. And who knows if she’ll come to school tomorrow.”

  “She could be in big trouble,” I said.

  “She could need our help.”

  “What if she doesn’t come to school tomorrow, or the next day?”

  “Rehearsals for The Mikado start next week,” Kerrie said. “She has to show up then.”

  Round and round we went, mostly coming up with questions that had no answers. But by the time our marathon chat was over and the meat loaf was setting off the smoke alarm—a certain signal that it was done—we knew what we had to do. We had to find out where Sadie lived, or her phone number. And we had to find out why seedy folks like Lemming Lady and Ice Man were after her.

  EASIER SAID than done, it turned out. Sadie was not in school the next day or the day after. Kerrie and I continued our fruitless speculation over lunch and through long phone conversations and IM sessions on the computer. All to no avail. In fact, all this phone work did was make my sister mad at me, my mother worry about my school work, and Doug miss hooking up with me.

  That’s right. Doug called me! Surely you must hear my heart pounding because it’s drowning out everything else on my end. He called on Wednesday night, the last respectable night for asking somebody out on a weekend.

  In fact, Wednesday night is probably the night when phones across America are tolling with potential date-makers hanging onto every ring. Calling on Monday or Tuesday could appear too eager, too obsessive-compulsive.

  Thursday, however, is too late. It communicates either a careless disregard for the potential date’s schedule or feelings, or worse—it sends the message that the potential date is a second choice and the first choices already responded negatively on Wednesday.

  Wednesday, you see, is the perfect date-making night. Not too eager. Not too late. Especially if you call early in the evening, which is what Doug, Love of My Life, did.

  He called Wednesday at exactly 6:33 p.m., Eastern Standard Time. I know because I listened to the voice mail message about ten times before forcing myself to erase it. Saving it would provide too much ammunition for Tony.

  After a brief pause, Doug had said, “Uh. . . this is Doug and if Bianca is in, could she call me back at. . .”

  Only problem was I didn’t get the message until 10:53 p.m. Yes, I’m ashamed to admit it. I tied up our darn phone all night—but for a good cause, school work. Right after dinner, I got on the Internet, researching a paper.

  Okay, okay, I was Instant Messaging Kerrie and Nicole at the same time.

  Instant messaging can slow a body down when surfing the cyberwaves, so it was nearly 10:30 by the time I got off. And then I didn’t think to check the voice mail until pulling the blankets over me. It made for a sleepless night thinking of Doug wondering why I hadn’t called him back.

  DOUBLE SURPRISE The first two people I ran into on Thursday morning were Doug and Sadie. They were talking, quietly and confidentially, in the room with all the lockers on the same floor as the cafeteria. I couldn’t tell if I was pleased or angry to see them. I wanted to see them both. Just separately. Not together.

  “Doug!” I said, trying to sound casually cheerful and instead coming off like a carnival barker reeling in a bumpkin. I ratcheted down the volume as I sauntered over to him and Sadie. “I was on the computer all night. Sorry I missed your call.” Then I turned to Sadie. “Sadie, I need to talk to you.”

  “Yeah. Me too,” she said eagerly. But then she had the good sense to leave, telling me she’d see me around. I focused my attention on tall, handsome Doug, trying to quell my curiosity about Sadie’s mysteries.

  “I didn’t check the messages until too late last night,” I said, finally getting my voice down to a normal speaking tone.

  “Well, I was wondering. . .” he began, and time seemed to divide into nanoseconds between that introduction and his next phrase, “what you were doing Saturday night. If you’d like to see a movie or something.”

  My mouth went dry and my hands got clammy. Here was paradise within my reach. All I had to do was grasp it. Doug was looking at me with an intense gaze, a gaze that said he was afraid I’d disappoint him. This was sweet, and I tried to memorize the moment to tell Kerrie about it later and to store it up for rainy days when happy memories are as good as chocolate. Well, almost as good.

  “I’d love to do something, uh, go to a movie, yeah, or something,” I managed to sputter out with fantastic élan before the bell rang. And then we had to go our separate ways, neither of us with a game plan for this wondrous date, but both of us with the cozy sensation of having achieved a major mutual goal.

  Chapter Seven

  HERE’S THE deal—when your boyfriend can’t drive, you’re left with two options, right? One of his older relatives can drive you. Or, you meet the guy at the appointed place, getting a ride with a relative of your own.

  To Doug’s credit, he offered me both choices. After much bashful stumbling over what we should do, when, and where, we finally settled on an action flick that began at seven at the Towson Cineplex. In a Friday night conversation before he ran off to work, he calmly laid out the possibilities.

  “My Dad can take us, if you want,” he said, “or we can meet there. What’s your pleasure?” Wow. That was smooth. I was impressed.

  As much as I liked the idea of being picked up by a Doug surrogate, I wasn’t a great small talker with older folks. With all the stress I had been under, dealing with Doug’s dad just seemed like a bridge too far. I opted for Door Number Two and told him I’d meet him in front of the theater. He seemed relieved and suggested we meet at six at the mall so we could get a soda or something beforehand. We could then walk together down the road to the theater. This was nice—he was thinking of food, a romantic stroll, and a movie. What more could a girl want?

  But let me back up to my stressed-out week. Sadie remained as elusive as ever. The first Mikado rehearsal was slated for Thursday after school, and I had hoped to hunker down with her in some auditorium seats while Mrs. Williston disorganized the practice.

  Williston was really good at disorganizing. But this semester, she was disappointing me. She had a college student helping her and this girl had done a whiz-bang job of making sure not a moment was wasted. From the second we all marched into that auditorium until the minute we left it, we were corralled into place and had music seared into our brains. No time for small talk. Heck, this was too much like work.

  I was surprised, though, to see that Sadie was not one of the leading ladies or even one of the understudies. She was stuck in the chorus with the rest of us Great Unwashed. While warbling through choruses about pretty maidens, the analyt
ical side of my brain kicked in.

  I had seen Sadie in tears twice in the past week. And both times, the weepiness seemed to come right after she was praised or rewarded for good work. First, there was the office visit where she had been given the note on her advanced placement standing in computer science and math.

  Then, there was the audition in which it looked like Williston was offering her the Keys to the Theater Department Kingdom. But both times, Sadie had acted as if she were on the verge of being expelled, instead of being praised for good work. Curiouser and curiouser, I thought to myself.

  After rehearsal, I missed my chance to talk with Sadie when she sped off immediately, practically running in the direction of the back of the school just as she had when Lemming Lady had been in pursuit.

  Speaking of whom, neither of those ghastly folks were anywhere to be seen, and I began to think that my little ploy with Detective Paluchek had scared them off for good.

  Kerrie road the bus home with me on Friday, so we had ample time to discuss the whole mess in between intense planning of my wardrobe for my big date with Doug.

  “What do those two things have in common?” I asked Kerrie after passing along my observations of Sadie’s two crying incidents.

  “I don’t know. Well, maybe parents. You have to get your parents’ permission to take a lead role.”

  “I didn’t know that,” I said.

  “Yeah, I guess Williston started a permission slip system last year after some kid agreed to sing the lead role in ‘Fiddler’ and then had to bow out after three weeks of rehearsal because her family was taking a trip to France,” explained Kerrie. “Now, Williston insists on parents signing off on leads.”

  “Why would that be such a big deal for Sadie?” I asked.

  “Well, what about that woman who said she was Sadie’s mom? Maybe Sadie is embarrassed by her,” Kerrie commented.

  I twisted my mouth up, and looked out the window as we headed toward our neighborhoods. “I guess she could be Sadie’s mom. I mean, it was hard to tell exactly how old she was.”

  I started to conjure up an image of home life in the Sinclair household. It wasn’t a pretty picture. Lemming Lady screaming at Sadie to do this or do that, and the Ice Man standing in the background in his cowboy long coat just watching it all. I wondered if he was Sadie’s mother’s boyfriend. If that was true, no wonder the girl was strange.

  “But getting her mother to sign a permission slip—since when is that such a big deal?” I asked. “I mean, I’ve forged my mother’s signature once or twice when I forgot to get her to sign something I knew she’d sign anyway. You can’t tell me Sadie wouldn’t do the same.”

  Kerrie lapsed into thought. Just before her bus stop, she turned to me. “Maybe it isn’t the permission slip,” she said as she stood to get off. “Maybe she doesn’t want her mother coming to school for anything.”

  After Kerrie got off, I thought about what she had said. It made a lot of sense. The note from the principal was requesting a meeting with Sadie’s mother. That threw her into a tailspin. Then, she’s on the verge of getting a leading role in the school play and she turns it down. Why? Not because her mother would have to sign off on it but because her mother would be expected to attend it. Sadie obviously didn’t want her mother anywhere near the school.

  If Lemming Lady really was her mother, who could blame her?

  I NOW looked ahead to the best twenty-four hours of my short life. The mystery of Sadie had been solved, as far as I could tell. I had even figured out a reason why the Deadly Duo had chased me to Harborplace earlier that week. Sadie had probably run away from home for a night or two and they were looking for anyone who could lead them to her. When she returned, they gave up the chase. These unknowns now neatly tied up and compartmentalized, I resolved to become Sadie’s friend and help her deal with what was obviously a dreadful home life.

  I spent Saturday afternoon at Kerrie’s house, giggling and chattering about what to wear to her Halloween costume party and whether or not Doug was going to try to kiss me sometime during our date. I had already solved my clothes problem for the big evening. Kerrie had helped me settle on my peasant blouse with black jeans. The only problem was that the weather was a little nippy, and none of my jackets looked good over the peasant blouse. I resolved just to be chilly. Sometimes you just have to suffer for the sake of beauty.

  Everything was going well. I spent the rest of the afternoon with my family, and that managed to be pretty peaceful. Then— glory, hallelujah—I discovered that Connie would take me to my rendezvous, not Tony. Connie was much more sensitive to my desire to be places on time, whereas Tony—well, Tony just moved to the tune of a different band.

  After dinner, the Hair Gods smiled on me and I was able to brush my honey brown locks into a devil-may-care style that was as close as I would ever come to model hair. I applied some light makeup with a subtle touch of glitter shadow on my eyes, and some rose-blush gloss on my lips. I had just about secured my hoop earrings when I heard the phone ring. A few seconds later, my mother called upstairs to me.

  “Bianca! Phone!”

  My heart dropped into my stomach. Everything had been going too well. It was probably Doug canceling. I could already feel the tears start to well behind my eyes. Stop it, I told myself. After all, if he’s calling to cancel, it must be because something horrible has happened.

  Somehow, that made me feel better.

  “Hello?” I said tentatively in my best “don’t-disappoint-me-now-you-heartless-toad” voice.

  “Bianca? This is Sadie.” Her voice was low, almost a whisper, and scared.

  “Sadie! I heard you called the other day, but I didn’t have your number!”

  “Yeah, well, I forgot to leave it. I just wanted to thank you for the other day,” she said awkwardly.

  In the background, I thought I heard someone knocking on a door. It was hard to tell because she had the radio on, tuned to the same station I had playing in the background. I turned mine off.

  “Is someone at your door?” I asked.

  She paused, and it sounded as if she was walking to the door to see who it was. “No. . . no. . . probably somebody hammering something next door,” she said so unsurely that I knew it was a lie.

  “Sadie, who were those people looking for you the other day?”

  Silence.

  “Sadie? Are you there?”

  “Yes. It’s just that they. . .” The knocking started again.

  “Look, Sadie, if that was your mother, you don’t need to hide it.”

  I heard her sigh. Then: “Yes.” The knocking stopped and I heard a buzzing, like an electronic doorbell, followed by more knocking, now quite insistent and loud. That was no next door neighbor doing home improvement. Someone wanted in and Sadie wasn’t letting them.

  “Sadie, what’s going on? Do you need to get the door?” I asked.

  “No, no.” But her voice sounded frightened. “I have to go. This isn’t a good time.” I heard muffled shouting in the background, then the sound of a door opening and closing!

  “Wait! Tell me where you live at least!” I shouted into the phone.

  “Barrington. . .” she whispered frantically. Then I heard a woman’s voice—it was the voice of Lemming Lady, I was sure of it. She was angry. “You should have let us in, you. . .” Then the phone went dead.

  My palms were sweating as I thought of what to do. It was just before five.

  “Connie!” I shouted in the hallway. My sister appeared from her room, romance novel in hand.

  “What?”

  “Can we leave now? I have an errand to run.”

  Connie looked at her watch and shrugged. “Sure. I wanted to pick some stuff up at the mall anyway.” She went back into her room and reappeared a few seconds later with a shawl-collar sweater over her t-shirt and jeans. “You should wear a jacket,” she said, digging through her purse for her car keys. “It’s getting chilly.”

  “I’ll be fine,” I said a
nd followed her out to the car. I really wanted to call Kerrie but there wasn’t time. Plus, Connie might be able to help me. She was, after all, a PI. After we were on our way, I spilled the beans.

  “Do you know a street called Barrington?” I asked.

  “Why? I could look it up on a map for you,” she said heading towards Towson. “What’s on Barrington?”

  I had no choice. I had to tell her. But I kept the information flow to a minimum. I didn’t want to get Sadie in trouble and I didn’t know yet what the full situation was. I only told Connie about Sadie’s mom, the phone conversation, and my sense that something wasn’t right.

  “Is that why you wanted to leave early?” Connie asked me. “To find this Sadie person?”

  “She sounded like she needed help, Con,” I pleaded. “It would only take a minute, right? To drive past her house?”

  “You don’t even have a house number, for God’s sake,” Connie said, shaking her head. “All you have is ‘Barrington.’ You don’t even know how many Barrington streets, avenues, roads there might be.”

  “Give me your cell phone,” I said.

  “What? It’s in my purse.”

  I rummaged in her bag until I found it and punched in Kerrie’s number. After explaining to her what I was doing and why, I asked her to look up Barrington Street on a map.

  “Wait a minute,” Kerrie said excitedly. “My dad has one of those criss-cross directories. You know the ones that list people by their addresses, not their names. Let me get it.” It was typical of Kerrie to go for the more complicated solution. Instead of grabbing a map, or going on-line, she had to dig up a fancy directory.

  But in a few seconds she was back on the phone and I could hear her whipping through the pages of a directory while she looked. “Barrington Street. Barrington Arms! That has to be it, Bianca! The Barrington Arms. It’s a condo building in Towson, not far from the mall. That’s probably it, but I don’t see any Sinclairs listed.”

  “Maybe her mother’s last name is different,” I volunteered. “But where’s Barrington Street? Check that out too.”