The Unlikelies

by Carrie Firestone

  After I helped her with her kennel chores, she wiped her hands on her jean shorts, took a sip from her water bottle, and hesitated.

  “Tonight’s the night we bury the poppet. He’s waiting patiently in my bag.”

  “We?”

  “Will you go with me? I can’t go to a cemetery alone.”

  “Fine. I’ll go with you. How does it work again?”

  “We need to bury the poppet in the cemetery with nine pennies and a bottle of rum, except I have no idea where I’m going to get rum. My parents drink wine and Scotch.” We walked away from the cacophony of barking and howling sounds.

  “My parents drink tea and beer,” I said. “Does it have to be rum?”

  She stopped and put her hands on her hips. “Yes, Sadie. These spells are very specific. And I know you think it’s friggin’ idiotic, but it has to work.”

  I still didn’t think getting rid of Hector was the answer to all of Izzy’s problems. But I knew Alice wouldn’t quit until she finished the Hector poppet spell.

  “The only place we ever get served in my town is the Japanese restaurant,” Alice said. “And they’re not going to give me a bottle of rum. Sake maybe.”

  “I think I know where we can get some rum,” I said.

  We went back to my house for dinner with Mom, the grandmas, and Dad, who pulled up late after a long day serving happy memories on cones. After dessert, Alice and I pulled out our weak supply of camping gear from the garage.

  “I have to say, I don’t know if I’m up for this camping trip tomorrow,” Alice said, shaking out my butterfly sleeping bag. “I hate camping. It’s disgusting.”

  “Come on. It could be fun. Don’t you think we all need a little break?”

  “I don’t even know if it will be all of us. Do you really think Val will leave Javi? And Jean is still trying to get somebody to take his weekend lawn-mowing gig. Besides, I don’t know if babysitting a bunch of developmentally disabled people is a break.”

  “We’re not babysitting, Alice. They’re adults. We’re just keeping Gordie company. God, stop being so negative all the time.” I riffled through a plastic bin for flashlight batteries.

  “Okay, Mom.” She sat on the step and watched me collect the batteries and stack the flashlights, bug spray, and waterproof mat before we told my parents we needed to buy snacks for the camping trip.

  We pulled up in front of Shawn Flynn’s hedgerows a little after nine. I was sure we would be early and I would be able to make small talk with Shawn and D-Bag, grab a bottle of rum, and leave. But it must have been one of Shawn’s happy-hour-starts-at-four parties, because people were already stumbling all over the place.

  “You can totally stay in the car,” I said to Alice, whose violet hair, piercings, and camo skirt didn’t exactly fit in with the bikini chic.

  “No, I’m dying to see what one of these parties is like. I’ve heard they’re exponentially more obnoxious than anything we have in my town.”

  “I’m sure.” We bypassed the inflatable bounce house, probably left over from one of Shawn’s little sister’s over-the-top kid parties (a vomit disaster waiting to happen), and went around back.

  “Oh my God, Sadie, where have you been? I’ve texted you, like, five times.” Parker was drunk.

  “Hey, Parker.” I hugged her and reintroduced Alice. Parker had also been in troop 186. “Sorry. I’ve been recovering still. My spleen is really acting up.”

  “Oh, you poor thing.” Parker made a pouty lip. “I feel terrible. I have a bunch of cranes I’ve been meaning to drop off.”

  “That’s so nice of you to keep making them,” I said, pulling Alice into the crowd.

  Music blasted from the Flynn mega-speakers and people were actually dancing. Shay and I always tried to get people to dance at last year’s parties, and nobody would.

  “Sadie, where’s D-Bag?” Seth’s friend Alec said, dripping water all over my sandaled feet.

  “I think he’s up in Shawn’s room,” I lied, glancing over at Alice, who was taking it all in. I grabbed Alice’s hand and pulled her toward the laundry room entrance. Lucky for us, the door opened. I checked the cabinets above the washing machine. “Voilà,” I said. A row of small bottles was shoved behind the detergent and fabric softener.

  “Do I even ask?”

  “Shawn’s housekeeper has a bit of a drinking problem. And I was the friend who washed the puke towels the morning after parties.”

  “Of course you were.”

  I grabbed one of the small bottles of rum, tucked a ten-dollar bill under one of the other bottles, and led Alice out the front door. It was both a relief and a disappointment that nobody noticed I had been missing from the parties for weeks.

  “Yeah, pretty much what I expected,” Alice said when we were safely in the car and en route to the old cemetery. “Was there any part of you that wanted to stay?”

  I considered the question, thought about the times I would get a little nervous if I had to miss a party, worried I would be out of the loop, afraid I wouldn’t get the latest round of inside jokes. “No. Actually, I’d much prefer to be burying a drug dealer poppet in a cemetery with nine pennies and a bottle of rum.” I laughed. Alice laughed so hard she snorted.

  “When you put it that way, it does sound kind of weird.”

  We parked at the edge of the cemetery.

  Alice whispered, “Come on. Let’s do this.”

  With the light of our phones, we waded through brush that was probably full of ticks and thick, overgrown woods to the cemetery, a mismatched plot of seven or eight stones. Alice reached into her bag and pulled out the Hector doll, which she had wrapped in black cloth, tied with twine, and knotted precisely nine times.

  “Here, start digging.” She gave me a serving spoon.

  After several minutes of digging furiously, tossing rocks, and burrowing around stubborn roots, I looked up. “I think we’re good.”

  “Remember, we’re supposed to walk away without looking back,” she said, kneeling down. I nodded. She placed the wrapped poppet in the hole, along with the bottle of rum and the nine pennies, supposedly gifts to the spirits, and we quickly covered the hole with dirt.

  “Let’s go,” Alice said. We walked back through the creepy wooded lot and sped away in the Subaru.

  “Feel better?” I asked before I got out.

  “I think so,” she said.

  I hoped, for Alice’s sake, her spell would work.

  Usually, the only thing my parents ever fought over was yard work. Mom was abnormally protective of her garden and she went ballistic if Dad accidentally mowed one of her plants. She might be less upset if he mowed me.

  But that night, my parents had a huge fight. They fought so hard I was sure Willie Ng could hear them over the sound of his porn. They fought about how to best help me get over the night wanderings. Dad said to let me be and allow me the freedom to hang out with my friends and get over it in my own time. Mom accused Dad of still not being over what happened to him when he lost his thumb. Dad accused Mom of taking away his stand-up comedy, the only thing that helped him stay sane. She told him not to go there.

  I stayed in my bed, still as the summer air, overhearing the whole ugly interaction. I woke terrified in the middle of the night, sticky with sweat. But Flopper and I stayed right where we were.

  I didn’t want to cause any more trouble.

  By breakfast, the storm had blown over, and my parents were annoyingly affectionate.

  “You must be pretty comfortable with this crew to introduce them to your Flopper,” Dad said as I tucked Flopper inside my sleeping bag and rolled it up.

  “Hey, there’s no shame in having a Flopper, Woody,” I said.

  My parents loved that I was hanging out with the homegrown heroes, that I was going camping with the Turtle Trail folks, that I had found my do-gooder people. “And guys, please stop worrying about me. I’m good. I’m really good.”

  I kissed them and got into Gordie’s car before Are y
ou sure? Let’s talk about it could escape from either of their mouths.

  TWENTY-ONE

  SOMEHOW WE ALL managed to get out of our tangled interpersonal and work situations to meet at the farm stand at nine a.m. By the time we loaded our gear into the Range Rover, there was barely any room for us. Alice called shotgun and gained full control of the music, which would normally have involved a lot of nineties grunge. But Alice was now a Beatles convert. It was a beautiful day, clear and not too hot. The clouds were faint brushstrokes high in the sky. The air rushed in the open windows as we zigzagged through the back roads to the state park.

  Val was pretty down. She smiled, because she always smiled, but her eyes were full of worry and guilt. Javi had picked a fight, told her she was a pain in the ass, ordered her to get out of his room. But she still felt bad for leaving him. And nothing we said could ease that burden.

  The Turtle Trail bus had just pulled into the campground when we arrived. Twenty people, ranging in age from early twenties to late thirties, made their way down the steep bus steps. They lit up when they saw Gordie.

  “Look what I’m wearing, Sadie.” Keith waved his Woody’s Ice Cream hat in my face. It smelled like dirty couch, which meant Keith was getting a lot of use out of it.

  A woman with thick glasses and short red hair leaped into Gordie’s arms. He picked her up and swung her around. Her Wonder Woman backpack went flying.

  “Come on, Anna Banana,” he said. “Let’s set up camp.”

  It took us two hours. I gave up trying to help with the tents and focused on food storage. Gordie and Jean built a massive fire pit above the high tide line and we set out a circle of folding chairs. An older guy with salt-and-pepper hair and seersucker shorts followed Alice back and forth to the bus. They chatted about sand fleas and bug spray and how Alice liked to sprinkle cinnamon on her s’mores.

  When Alice genuinely smiled, the worry creases in her forehead disappeared.

  When the campsite was finally set up, we tied sneakers and rubbed sunscreen on noses and lined everyone up for a beach hike. The sun was still high in the sky when we set off down the beach. Seabirds swooped down over the calm water and cut back up in groups of two.

  Jean waved a stick in the air. “Get away from me, you nasty bitches,” he yelled, prompting widespread teasing.

  We walked slowly, meandering up to the dunes and back down to the water, collecting shells and sculpted wood, worn smooth by the unrelenting waves.

  “What’s that on your face?” Anna Banana said, pointing to the monster tail.

  “I had an accident.”

  “What kind of accident?”

  “I banged my head on a toolbox.”

  “Ouch,” she said. “Does it hurt?”

  I touched it with the tip of my finger. “No. Not anymore.”

  We were all hungry by the time we got back to camp. Gordie and the Turtle Trail director handed out sandwiches and bags of chips while Alice and Val and I pulled soda cans out of a tub of ice and sat down on a blanket.

  One of the women jumped up and whispered something in Gordie’s ear, then erupted in giggles.

  “Does anyone not flirt with Gordie Harris?” I whispered.

  “Jealous?” Alice said.

  “No, Alice. I’m not.”

  We, the Unlikelies and the Turtle Trailers, stuffed ourselves with s’mores and played tug-of-war and beach volleyball, and Gordie led the campfire songs with his harmonica.

  Bedtime took a while. We helped some of the women in the bathhouse with their teeth brushing while Gordie helped the director organize the medications. When everybody was tucked around the fire with their blankets and their ghost story ideas, we retreated down the beach and built our own campfire.

  Gordie passed around a bottle of wine from his parents’ wine cellar that didn’t taste any different than Grandma Sullivan’s boxed wine. We tore open bags of potato and tortilla chips and chased the chips down with the outlandishly expensive cabernet.

  “I just swallowed, like, eighty bucks,” Jean said.

  “For that price we should really be enjoying it. Put down the chips,” Alice said.

  “I can’t. I need the chips,” Val said. “It’s burning my throat.”

  Gordie held up the bottle. “Cheers to the Unlikelies. May this be only the beginning of our renegade adventures.”

  “Cheers,” we said, touching our chips together.

  “Stop backwashing, you pig,” Alice said, hitting Jean.

  “By now the canaries should have reached their destinations,” Gordie said.

  “You sent them overnight?” Val said.

  “Yup.”

  We sipped the wine and stared at the fire. I tried to picture Ella’s mom opening the package, staring at the diamond, feeling relief. She would be able to buy Ella toys and baby sneakers and hair bows and a baby swimming pool and floaties and bunny crackers and milk and books. Lots of baby books. It made me so happy to think about what we had done.

  “How will we even know if the mission’s successful?” Val said.

  “The same way we vetted the recipients,” Gordie said. “Facebook stalking.”

  Alice stood up, stretched, and sank back down in her chair with her animal shelter fleece blanket.

  “The first time I drank wine it was from an old man’s glass at the country club when I was twelve,” Alice said. “Izzy dared me.”

  “Oooh. We should play truth or dare,” Val said.

  “No,” Alice said.

  “How about just truth?” Val said.

  “Okay, Val. When was your first sexual experience?” Alice said.

  The fire crackled. The Turtle Trailers’ voices rose and fell.

  “I guess it was a year and a half ago. With Javi.”

  “Was Mute Mike in the other room preparing ants on a log?” I said.

  “Probably.” Val laughed.

  “Well, well, well, straight-A, school-supply maven Valeria is a closet freak,” Jean said. “There was talk of it in the locker room.”

  “You mean the art room, I’m sure,” Val said.

  I couldn’t look at Gordie, or the way his face flushed from the fire. I didn’t want him to talk about his conquests, or gorgeous Sylvie. The wine traveled through me and warmed me inside. I took another drink, then changed the subject. “Did you guys know Jean and Umi are applying to all the same colleges?”

  “Damn, you really are into this girl,” Gordie said.

  “God, college is stressing me out. I’ve applied for seventy-four scholarships and counting,” Val said. “It’s torture.”

  “What if we just skip college and hang out here forever?” Gordie said.

  We toasted to that.

  A trace of sunlight peeked through the clouds to the west of us as night dropped over the choppy Atlantic.

  We dug our bare feet into the cool sand and sat back in our chairs.

  It was nice to be in the moment, not checking phones for hospital updates, or stalking Hector, or arguing over what the hell to do with my promise to Mr. Upton. It was nice to just be friends on the beach with a fire and the waves and wine and chips on a perfect summer night.

  The Turtle Trail campsite grew quiet. I pulled at my hoodie strings and stared at the bonfire embers. I could feel Gordie next to me, silent, staring like I was. Our knees brushed together. The fluttering started deep, in that place where the body meets the soul. He was my secret.

  “Gordie, we have a problem, Houston!” a voice came from behind the tents and scared the hell out of us.

  “What’s wrong, David?”

  “Keith won’t flip a coin for the spot near the door. So now what?”

  Gordie got up. “Come on. I’ll get him to flip a coin.”

  “I call heads.”

  Alice stood and wrapped herself in her blanket. “I’m tired.” She disappeared into our tent. Val and I followed.

  “You guys okay?” I said.

  “Yeah,” they both said.

  We talked abou
t our families. We talked about our friends.

  We decided it was serendipity that we found one another when we did.

  We agreed that choosing the perfect college was almost as much pressure as finding the perfect relationship. And sometimes it was impossible to have either. Ever. And the thought of that was seriously depressing.

  Alice told us she was in no mood for relationship drama and really just wanted a puppy. She also admitted she was finally able to sleep soundly now that Izzy was in the hospital because she didn’t have to worry about waking up to an Izzy’s dead phone call.

  Eventually, Alice and Val crashed and I lay on my side, holding Flopper and listening to Alice grind her teeth and Val mouth-breathe. I thought about that breathless, tingling ache I used to feel when I was under Seth’s blanket in the dark, pulling at his T-shirt, taking in his smell. It was pretty obvious why I’d stayed with him. But I felt so much more than I ever did with Seth just touching knees with Gordie. I wondered if he felt it, too, and what it would be like to be under Gordie’s blanket.

  I needed air.

  I lifted the tent flap and tried to unzip it quietly.

  “What happened?” Val whispered, half asleep.

  “Nothing. Going to the bathroom.”

  I wandered toward the cluster of Turtle Trail tents surrounding the last of the sizzling bonfire cinders. The breeze felt great on my itchy legs. I pulled on my hoodie and shined the flashlight down on the sand, afraid a crab might pop up and bite my bare toes.

  “What are you doing, Sadie?” Gordie half whispered from behind me.

  I jumped. “Gordie! Why are you lurking around?”

  “I can’t sleep. Jean is all sprawled out and there’s literally no room. Come on. Walk with me.”

  We walked toward the open beach and the nearly full moon.

  “Thanks for coming, by the way. It’s nice having non–Turtle Trail people here for one of these outings. The director isn’t exactly friend material, and Keith and those guys are always trying to get rid of me.”