The Unlikelies

by Carrie Firestone

  “It’s an SAT word. They should know it.”

  Jean banged on the glass doors and Val jumped to open them. “What?” Jean said. “You’re all staring at me.”

  Gordie and I looked at each other. I stood up, smoothed down my shorts, cleared my throat, and asked everyone to sit on the couch near the popcorn machine because I had to tell them something. After much grumbling and speculation, we stood in front of Val, Jean, and Alice and told them the entire long, convoluted Andy’s canaries story.

  At first they just sat there, looking baffled. Then came the barrage of obvious questions. I answered every one, grateful that no one seemed irritated I had kept the secret.

  “I have no idea what to do with this,” I said. “I need help.”

  “You can’t just give out diamonds,” Jean said. “People will trade them in to buy useless crap. Have you ever seen what the people who win the lottery spend that money on?”

  “We also can’t show up at a jeweler and cash them in,” said Gordie.

  “Why not?” I said. I had assumed we’d cash them in.

  “It doesn’t work that way. That would get flagged as suspicious activity, and then the IRS and parents and other irritating entities would get involved. You just can’t.”

  We focused on what Mr. Upton had said, about his lizard father dabbling in bootlegging, prostitution, and stealing from widows, and tried to focus on modern-day things that would somehow redeem his shady dealings.

  “So boozers, hookers, and rich old ladies,” Jean said. “That narrows it down.”

  “Or old-lady boozer-hookers,” Gordie said. “We’ll buy a retirement island for drunk, old hookers.”

  Jean typed something into his phone. “We could easily buy our own Speakeasy, you know. There’s a property on the water for sale at auction for four hundred thousand.”

  “Seriously, Jean?” Val said, glancing at me. “Can you stop? This is not helpful.”

  Alice stayed quiet. She chewed on her chipped green nails and stared into space.

  “Hey, can we finally figure out our mascot?” Gordie said.

  “What does this have to do with the diamonds?” I said, frustrated. Our brainstorming session was getting us nowhere.

  “Maybe Andy should be the mascot,” Val said. “Or not.” She looked at Jean. “You’re afraid of birds and dolls. Any other bizarre fears?”

  “Just pirates. But the real ones. Not like from the movies,” Jean clarified.

  We loaded into the Range Rover, on a new mission to find a mascot.

  “There’s still a bunch of care packages back here,” Val said. “Let’s drop them on the way.”

  We had delivered care packages to every victim of trollery we could think of. But I had an idea.

  “What if we give the rest of the care packages to the trolls themselves?” They looked at me like I was an idiot, but I explained. “We’re going to kill them with kindness. Trust me. Trolls hate being called out. It’s their worst fear.”

  “I defer to the queen of care packages,” Gordie said.

  “Okay, nerd boy. Let’s do it,” I said.

  We scribbled notes and stuffed them in the bags. If you choose kindness, we’ll let you in. —The Unlikelies. First stop was this kid A.J.’s house, the one who had started all the shit with Greg O. in the cafeteria. I sprinted across the street and stuck the bag in his mailbox. After that, we tossed a bag onto queen gadfly Meghan Rose Sharp’s fancy front deck.

  “You run like a gopher or a groundhog. I can’t put my finger on it,” Gordie said when I jumped back in the car.

  “Gopher,” Jean said.

  “Thanks for making me self-conscious.”

  I modified my gait at the next three houses, then made Val do a few. All in all, we hit four ruffians, two gadflies, and three Izzy-bad-mouthers before we ended up parked in Mr. Upton’s gravel driveway. There were no cars, no signs of life. Still, it was unsettling. But an idea had sprouted in Jean’s genius mind as we were trolling for trolls and he absolutely had to get something from Mr. Upton’s shed.

  Jean grabbed an empty laundry bag from the trunk and instructed us to wait. He had a vision and wanted to use something from the shed to make a surprise mascot.

  “You’re going in there all by yourself?” Val said.

  “Yes I am.”

  Jean returned with a full bag of shed stuff. He was very excited to start his mascot project. We went back to canary brainstorming on the way home, but once again, the conversation quickly degenerated. Alice didn’t say much the whole night. I wished I could have done something to take the heavy weight off her shoulders.

  The next morning, I woke up on my parents’ floor with no sign of Flopper or a blanket or pillow, and snuck back upstairs before either member of the snoring section discovered me.

  THIRTEEN

  I DROVE THE Prius up the perfectly landscaped circular driveway of Alice’s perfect white house with perfect hillside views. I was hoping Alice would emerge from her funk and help us sort school supplies with Val.

  “Hey, Sadie,” Alice said flatly after I rang the doorbell a dozen times and she finally shuffled to the door.

  She led me through the immaculate rooms, each more nautical and sea-foam than the next. From the second-landing window, I could almost make out a square of ocean past the tree line.

  Alice’s room was as different from the rest of the house as Alice was. Tie-dyed tapestries covered with black-and-white photos of dogs covered the walls, and dream catchers hung from the ceiling. The room smelled of essential oils. It smelled like Alice and a little bit like Shay.

  We stretched out on the bed.

  “Okay, tell me what I can do to help you feel better,” I said.

  “I don’t think anybody can help me. I have this constant bad anxiety feeling. Izzy’s parents are still planning to go to Croatia for their vacation. She convinced them it was the first time she tried drugs and she promised never to do heroin again.” She threw up her hands. “Like, seriously, how are they letting her out of the hospital so soon?”

  “It sucks so bad that you’re going through this. It’s too much.”

  “I can’t even tell you what it has been like to deal with my best friend nodding off, trying to score smack all day, stealing money from my car, lying, smelling like shit because she never showers. It’s hell.”

  “I’m so, so sorry.” I reached out and touched her arm.

  She turned on her side and faced me. Her mouth twisted from side to side.

  “If I show you something, do you promise not to judge or tell anyone?” she whispered.

  “Of course.”

  “It’s weird, Sadie.”

  “Perfect, Alice. It’s the summer of weird.”

  I followed her up a back staircase to a dark, creaky attic with high ceilings and swathes of cobwebs. We went through a smaller room and Alice moved an old hutch.

  She pushed a handleless door inward and we inched sideways through the narrow opening. The room, not much bigger than a closet, was empty except for a long folding table pushed up against the back wall. On the table, different-colored half-burnt candles were lined up in front of a row of handmade dolls.

  “What the hell is this?” A chill ran all the way through me.

  “You said you weren’t going to judge.”

  “I’m not judging.”

  “You sound judgy.”

  “Oh my God. I’m not judging.” I took a breath. “What is this, oh, friend who shall not be judged?”

  “It’s a voodoo altar. I made a voodoo doll of Hector, the dealer, and I am in the process of trying to eliminate him.” She said it in a matter-of-fact way, as if eliminating drug dealers using voodoo was a thing.

  I tried really hard not to be judgy. “Wow.”

  “I’ve spent a lot of time on message board support groups for addicts’ loved ones, and at some point voodoo altars popped up. Sadie, I know it sounds crazy, but who knows? It could work.” She picked up a doll made of black clot
h with sewn-on button eyes and pins sticking out of its body.

  “This is my attempt at a Hector poppet. I’m supposed to burn a black candle for seventeen minutes each day for nine days and drip the wax on the poppet. I’m only on day three. You guys have been distracting me.”

  I bent down to get a better look at the Hector poppet.

  “Then what do you do?”

  “I wrap him up and bury him in the cemetery with nine pennies and a bottle of rum, and that should do it.”

  She looked at me, trying to gauge my expression. I nodded. “I get it. I’d be making poppets, too, if my friend was a heroin addict.”

  “I just want Hector out. And I want my Neigh back.” She wiped shavings of candle wax from the table and set little Hector down in his spot.

  “Jean would not like this room,” I said, walking out of the voodoo-altar-poppet closet.

  “No. He would not,” Alice said, pulling the door shut. “But we’re not telling Jean. Or anyone else.”

  We went down to the hammock under a big oak tree in Alice’s backyard.

  “Will you come help Val tonight, Alice? Work can be a good distraction.”

  “I guess. I’m not going to be fun, though.”

  We lay side by side staring up at the thick overgrowth above us.

  “Hey, I never asked you how the date with Javi’s friend went.”

  I laughed. “Not good. He told Val he thought I was stuck-up.”

  “You’re, like, the friendliest person I know. Was Javi an asshole?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Damn, I wish Val would get rid of that guy,” Alice said. “She’s too nice.”

  “Do you want to hear something awkward?” I said, turning toward Alice. “I kind of, sort of have feelings for Gordie Harris and I can’t help it and I get he’s gay, but, like, I get fluttery when he’s close to me.”

  “Fluttery.”

  “Yes, Alice. Fluttery. I have to just put it out of my head, which I can do. It’s my body that keeps doing the fluttery nonsense.”

  She stared at me blankly.

  “What, Alice? Is that just too cheesy? God, I’m a loser.”

  She shook her head and stared down at the hunter-green hammock fabric. “Like that wasn’t totally obvious.”

  “It’s that obvious?”

  “Yeah. It’s pretty obvious. Maybe you’re just missing sex and projecting it onto Gordie since he’s around all the time.”

  “I’ve never actually had sex, so I’m not technically missing it.”

  “You didn’t with Seth?”

  “Everything but.”

  “Oh, yes, the good old everything but,” Alice said. “This whole thing with Izzy has distracted me so much I don’t remember the last time I thought about hooking up.”

  “Absent fluttery might be better than unrequited fluttery,” I said, awkwardly swinging my legs over the side of the hammock.

  “Okay, Sadie. I’ll only go tonight if you promise never to use the word fluttery again.”

  “Fine. I’ll never say FLUTTERY again.” I leaned down and kissed Alice’s forehead.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I have to run home before we help Val. You’d better be there. Otherwise, I will torment you with the F word forever.”

  On top of doing shifts at her grandparents’ store and working on dozens of college scholarship applications, our petite, pigtailed Valeria was running a school-supply-collection empire.

  Gordie, Alice, and I met Val at the farm stand, where Mute Mike hovered by his car waiting for Javi and Val to finish fighting.

  “I’ll see you there,” Val said to Gordie and me as she loaded the last of the empty cardboard boxes into the back of her car en route to sort school supplies. A sullen Alice sat in Val’s passenger seat. Izzy was refusing to acknowledge her texts.

  Some guy near Amagansett had let Val use his barn to store the supplies she collected at the end of the school year, after she had the brilliant idea of asking kids from all the area schools to dump their unused supplies into bins during locker clean-out day. Then she hit up civic groups and churches, synagogues and summer camps.

  “Man, Val’s in a shitty situation,” Gordie said.

  “I know. She feels like she can’t break up with him because he’s sick. But I’d dump him because of the jealousy. It’s annoying.”

  “How’s your boyfriend over there?” Gordie said, raising his eyebrows and looking at Mute Mike across the parking lot.

  “You’re one to talk,” I shot back. “Your boyfriend must be worse than Javi if you won’t even talk about him. Or are we too lowbrow to meet him? Is it that guy Keith everybody was talking about at Speakeasy?”

  He shook his head and stared forward. “You know what? I need to make a quick stop before we meet up with those guys.”

  “Wait, where? Val thinks we’re right behind her.”

  “It’ll be quick.”

  Gordie turned off the car on the edge of the farm stand parking lot and ran back inside. He came out with Farmer Brian, who was locking up, and a bag of sweet corn. He cut in front of a truck and turned right toward Southampton. A few more turns, and we pulled down a long driveway flanked by tall hedgerows.

  “Come on.”

  “What are we doing?”

  “Just come.”

  The house, which had yellow shingles and a white gazebo to the right of the garage, was landscaped immaculately. Dozens of blown-glass figurines and wind chimes dangled from a grove of birch trees to the left of the house. I stood on the front lawn while Gordie rang the bell.

  “Mom! Mom! Gordie’s here,” a man shouted from behind the open windows on the first floor. The front door flew open, and a tall, gangly guy stepped out. He high-fived Gordie.

  “What’s up, Gordie?” the guy said, pressing his hands flat against Gordie’s cheeks.

  “I wanted you to meet my friend Sadie.”

  He turned and followed Gordie down the steps.

  “Sadie, this is Keith. Keith, this is Sadie.”

  Keith extended his hand. “Nice to meet you, Sadie. I have a birthday coming up.”

  He shook my hand and dropped it abruptly.

  “Really, when?” I said, trying to figure out the connection between Keith and Gordie.

  “Next week, on Tuesday. I’ll be twenty-seven years young.”

  “That’s great,” I said.

  “Gordie’s taking me and David and my girlfriend, Zoe, to Speakeasy after ice cream cake at Turtle Trail.”

  Gordie took the bag of corn out of the backseat. “We can only stay five minutes, okay, bud? We brought you some sweet corn.”

  A lady with fluffy white hair and a powder-blue housedress stepped onto the front porch.

  “Frances, this is my friend Sadie. She works at the farm stand,” Gordie said. “We brought you some fruits of her labor.”

  “Lovely to meet you.”

  “How do you guys know each other?” I said as Frances gave me a warm hug.

  Gordie draped his arm around the lady’s shoulders. “Frances is my nanny. Keith and I have been buddies since I was a baby, huh, Keith?”

  “Gordie and Sadie have to leave in two minutes,” Keith said.

  “That’s okay, love,” said Frances.

  “Gordie can’t shuck with me this time, huh?”

  “He’ll be back.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow at eleven thirty at Turtle Trail, right?” Keith said.

  “Eleven thirty sharp,” Gordie said. Keith set down the bag of corn and hugged Gordie.

  “Bye, Sadie. You look like Princess Jasmine.”

  When we were in the car, Gordie said, “Keith has a bit of a Disney princess fetish.”

  “I’ve been called worse,” I said. “He’s sweet.”

  “Yeah. When I saw how well he was doing at Turtle Trail, I decided I needed to work there. And according to half our school, Keith and I have been dating for years.”

  It took a minute to register. Th
e whole Gordie Harris is gay rumor started when the ruffians saw Gordie “hooking up” with some guy. The “some guy” was Keith. And the hookup… wasn’t.

  He stared at the road as we drove through the maze of hedgerows.

  “So are you or aren’t you gay?” I said it. I had to lay it out there.

  “No. I’m not gay.”

  “Oh.”

  Silence.

  “Aren’t you a little old to have a nanny?”

  Gordie laughed. “I’ll never be too old to have a nanny.”

  “Where were you guys? I’m so overwhelmed right now.” Val was drenched in sweat and trying to prop open a heavy barn door. “It’s miserably hot in there. Jean’s late and Alice is just sitting on a bucket.”

  We followed Val into the barn turned school-supply-stockpile warehouse.

  “We need to sort the stuff into piles and box it up before the mice start getting at it,” Val said. “A guy from the Rotary is donating backpacks, but I want to get it all sorted first.”

  The barn smelled like hay and tractor fuel. It was cluttered with rusty tools and stacks of old billboards. “Biscuits and honey, five cents,” Gordie read. “I could go for a biscuit with honey right about now.”

  “Can we focus?” Val was in worker-bee mode. She scurried around barking orders. Gordie and I were the only ones working. Jean was stuck at his job and Alice didn’t move from her perch on an upside-down bucket. She held a stick in her right hand and her phone in her left. She drew suck it with her stick in the sawdust. She cleared that suck it and wrote a larger, neater suck it.

  “Alice, get up. We need your muscles,” I said. She wouldn’t get up.

  “Gordie, do you have any latex gloves in the back of your junkyard car?” Val called from the front of the barn. “I keep thinking a spider’s going to eat my hand.”

  “No. But I have condoms. You could fashion a glove,” Gordie called back.

  Gordie Harris wasn’t gay. Gordie Harris kept condoms in his car. It was getting more intriguing by the minute.

  Jean arrived in cargo shorts and a fedora. “It’s sweltering and I’m only helping if you scare those pigeons away.” He lingered outside the barn door.

  “We have a lot of neuroses to deal with here, don’t we?” Gordie said.