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The Unlikelies Page 8


  “Actually, I made all these.”

  “Shut up,” Alice said. “You did not make these.”

  “Yep. I kinda did. I studied indigenous mask making and started coming up with my own variations.”

  We sat on Jean’s fluffy teal rug, gnawing on the extra candy necklaces and learning about the art of mask making. Our friend Jean-Pierre was a genius.

  “I want to make a mask,” Val said.

  “Yeah. We’ll get on that,” Jean said, patting her on the back.

  Gordie let out a long yawn. “Damn, it’s late.”

  “Oh my God. It’s almost five,” I said, checking my phone. “I have to be at work in a few hours. I’m supposed to be sleeping at your house.” I looked at Val.

  “I’m supposed to be at Alice’s.”

  Alice stood up and tossed her soggy candy necklace string in Jean’s trash can. She swiveled, put her hands on her hips, and said, “Let’s go to the beach.”

  We flung open the Range Rover doors, just as the sun crept up over the horizon. It was high tide and the waves were whitecapped and feisty. Gordie dug around the back for a blanket and a bunch of towels, and we went as close to the water as we could. We sat, five in a row, and watched the sunrise.

  “Do you know I’ve lived out here since third grade and I’ve never made it to sunrise?” I said.

  Gordie was the only one who had. I pictured him leaving Speakeasy with the elusive and mysterious Keith, who may or may not have been Gordie’s boyfriend.

  The colors of early morning layered the sky. Yellow sat on the horizon. Red faded to pink, and orange faded into deep purple. Jean ran to the car to get his sketch pad. Val and Alice lay back on the sand and snuggled under the blanket. Gordie wrapped a beach towel around my shoulders. For a long stretch of time, nobody said a word.

  “Do you still have your Geiger counter in the trunk?” Alice said.

  “It’s not a Geiger counter, Einstein,” Gordie said, laughing. “It’s a metal detector.”

  “You really that hard up that you need lost coins?” Jean said.

  “No. But who doesn’t like treasure hunting?”

  “Have you ever found anything good?” I said, resting my head on Gordie’s shoulder, drawing body heat from his leg pressed against mine under the beach towel.

  “Lots of things. I keep them in my treasure chest.”

  I never knew when Gordie Harris was joking.

  I arrived at the farm stand in my grungy funeral dress with my hair sticking up and my teeth coated in bacteria. We had stopped at the convenience store to pick up breakfast when I realized I didn’t have time to go home and change.

  “I cannot believe you have to work. You poor thing,” Val said.

  “Hey, I have to teach art to toddlers in an hour,” Jean said.

  “Get out, people,” Alice said. “Let’s sit with Sadie until her boss gets here.”

  I told them they didn’t have to, but in an act of solidarity, they joined me under the willow tree. We ate egg sandwiches and drank strong coffee and made fun of Gordie.

  “Is that a harmonica in your pocket or are you happy to see me?” Alice said.

  “Is that a Geiger counter in your trunk or are you happy to see me?” Jean said.

  “Hey, pull up Greg O.’s blog,” Val said.

  “Has anybody seen it lately?” Gordie said, taking out his phone. He pulled up Greg O.’s page. It had exploded with comments and posts about Mayans and photos of Mayan temples made out of toothpicks, recycled strips of paper, reclaimed wood.

  Thanks to our collective social media campaign and Gordie’s magical abilities to boost website visibility, Greg O.’s site was going viral. Who knew so many people were into the Mayans?

  This one looks real! Greg O. had posted about a mini temple made of clay.

  “I think our work here is done,” Gordie said. “I dare those asshats to screw with our man Greg now.”

  “Can we make more candy necklace care packages?” Val said. “That was really fun.”

  “Candy necklace revolution!” Alice said.

  “We need a badass revolutionary name,” Gordie said.

  “How about the Troll Slammers?” Val said.

  “Lame,” Jean said.

  “The Troll Assassins,” Alice said.

  “Too violent,” Val said.

  I stared at the shuttered farm stand. I could barely keep my eyes open. But then it came to me.

  “I’ve got it.”

  They all looked at me.

  “The Unlikelies.”

  “Yes!” Alice said, punching me in the arm.

  “That is us,” Jean said.

  “Yup,” Gordie said. “See? You can’t tell us you don’t have a thing. You’re a natural-born revolutionary namer, Sullivan.”

  “The Unlikelies,” Val said.

  “Never speak of this to anyone,” Alice said.

  “That’s a given,” Jean said.

  We all agreed.

  When Farmer Brian pulled up, I was saying good-bye through the window of the Range Rover.

  “Hey, do you want the suitcase? I can drop it off later,” Gordie said.

  “Yeah. I’ll get it at some point.”

  “Maybe Jean would like the creepy Raggedy Andy doll, huh, Jean?” Alice said.

  “Wait, what’s Raggedy Andy?” I said. My heart quickened.

  “You don’t know what Raggedy Andy is, Sadie?” Alice said. “That’s what the doll is called. Raggedy Andy. Duh. Who doesn’t know Raggedy Andy?”

  You need to rip off Andy’s legs. Don’t forget. Rip off Andy’s legs.

  And suddenly it all made sense.

  TEN

  MOM NUDGED MY leg with her pink slipper. “Sadie, Gordie Harris is outside.”

  I sat up, disoriented, in the darkened room and looked at my phone. “How is it after nine?”

  Farmer Brian had shown mercy on me and let me leave work at lunchtime. I’d been sleeping ever since.

  “You know sleep deprivation is not good for you, Sadie. How about you stay in and relax for once?”

  “I am staying in. Can you tell him I’ll be right down?”

  My parents were used to my comings and goings. I didn’t have a curfew or any annoying parental restrictions. But every few days they delivered their mantra, which always came out as more threatening than assuring: “We trust you implicitly, Sadie.”

  I rubbed my eyes, guzzled warm Gatorade, and smoothed down my bed head.

  Gordie was on the porch with Dad and Mr. Ng. All day, since Alice had clued me in that Raggedy Andy was the name of the doll in the garment bag, I had been obsessed with getting my hands on that suitcase. I had texted Gordie no fewer than ten times before my eight-hour nap. Can you bring it tonight? Is tonight going to work? I suddenly really want that suitcase in my possession.

  Chill, Sadie. I’ll bring you your suitcase.

  “So Mr. Upton wanted me to have a suitcase full of random belongings,” I announced to my parents. “Which is very strange, but it was nice of him to think of me.”

  “You really left an impression on ol’ Stewy,” Dad said. “You need some help?”

  “No, we’re good.”

  I motioned to Gordie, who walked toward the Range Rover.

  “Sadie tells me you’re a shoo-in for valedictorian,” Dad called after him.

  I cringed a little.

  Gordie’s muscles flexed as I tried to help him with the bulky suitcase. “I got it,” he said. “Where do you want it?”

  I wanted it in my room.

  Mom hovered awkwardly in the dining room, watching us drag the suitcase up the narrow staircase. “We’re good, Mom,” I said, closing my door.

  “Holy origami cranes,” Gordie said, looking up at the flock of cranes I had fastened to a string and hung in rows across my ceiling. He picked up the twin bobbleheads of Shay and me and shook aggressively until the heads nearly came off. “Can I help you with anything else, Sadie Cakes?” Gordie said, wiping his hands on
his shorts and looking at my bulletin board, still scattered with pictures of Seth.

  “Please don’t ever call me that again.”

  “What happened with you and Seth anyway?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, I don’t want to talk about Seth right now.” The entire forty-five seconds up the stairs, I had contemplated sharing my promise to Mr. Upton with Gordie. I didn’t want to rip Andy’s legs off alone.

  He sat on my bed. “Can I have some of this Gatorade?”

  I nodded and knelt in front of the suitcase.

  Then I caved.

  I told Gordie everything, from the moment I retrieved the key from Mr. Upton’s wallet to the things he said about me being the one for this job and Do something noble to the cryptic You need to rip off Andy’s legs.

  He sat and listened, nodding occasionally, until he finally said, “I’m thinking it’s time to rip off those legs.”

  We opened the suitcase with the key and carefully removed the lizard’s belongings, layer by layer, until we got to the garment bag with the leather buckles.

  “There you are, Andy, you creepy bastard,” Gordie said, lifting him by his red yarn hair.

  I grabbed one of the legs and squeezed. It was stuffed with something hard and bumpy. Gordie grabbed a pair of scissors from my desk.

  “Be careful,” I said, laying Andy down on the floor and spreading his blue-and-white-striped legs like he was a filleted fish. Gordie snipped the first leg off Andy’s body and then carefully cut along the seam, beginning at his slippered foot. We pulled open the fabric and stared down at the rolled cheesecloth bags, the kind Grandma Hosseini used for making yogurt.

  I opened the first rolled bag and felt a rush of adrenaline.

  We stared down at the loose bright yellow gemstones.

  “Holy shit, Sadie.” Gordie picked up the next bag. More stones. And more. Each bag held dozens of gemstones the size of pencil erasers, some even bigger.

  “These can’t be real,” I said, rolling a single stone between my fingers.

  “I think they might be real,” my well-to-do friend said, holding one close to his eye. “These are too light to be topaz. I think they might be yellow diamonds.”

  “We need to Google it.” I reached over and pulled my laptop off the bed.

  We Googled yellow diamonds. They looked a lot like yellow diamonds. Then we Googled How to tell if a diamond is real and did all the tests. We fogged one up with our breath. The fog disappeared immediately. We dropped one in a glass of water. It sank straight to the bottom. We lit a match in front of one. The flame did nothing to the stone. We tested the next stone and the next. We ripped open Raggedy Andy’s other leg and found more cheesecloth bags of stones.

  Tucked up in Andy’s genderless crotch was one last cheesecloth bag. Inside was a piece of mint-colored stationery, rolled like a scroll.

  I carefully unrolled the letter, dated 1992. We sat against my bed and read.

  My love,

  If you are receiving this letter, I am dead. I implored my sister to deliver Father’s suitcase to you, and despite her “feelings” about us, I believe she will honor my wishes. She most certainly has no use for Father’s suitcase.

  I’m giving this to you because you are the kindest, most generous person I know. You will find a way to make good use of these, something I just couldn’t do.

  I only wish I had been man enough to avenge the hell that man brought to my sister, my loving mother, and me, a little boy with no defenses.

  Please, darling, find a way to make the world a bit better. I hope you have forgiven my abrupt departure. You, dearest Bruce, were the love of my life.

  I often wonder if I was ever worthy of love.

  Until we meet again, Stewy

  “Finished?” I looked at Gordie.

  He nodded.

  I stared at the letter.

  “That’s some heavy shit,” Gordie said.

  I turned over the paper. On the back, Mr. Upton had written BRUCE LEONISI, JANE ST., NEW YORK CITY.

  “This is bullshit,” I blurted. “I’m Mr. Upton’s ex-lover’s backup do-gooder? First I’m plan B after the Hamptons Hoodlum gets caught, and now this.”

  “That’s what you took from this, Sadie? Seriously?”

  Gordie opened my laptop and Googled Bruce Leonisi. It didn’t take long to figure out he had been dead for sixteen years.

  “Now what?” I slowly poured the cheesecloth bags full of alleged yellow diamonds into a pile on my floor.

  “If you want, I can take a few stones over to my grandmother’s appraiser. She’s always sending me over there,” Gordie said.

  “Yes. Please do that. I mean, if the lizard was so shady, we can’t assume these are real, even if they did pass the tests.”

  “True.”

  “But, Gordie, can you even imagine what we could do with these if they’re real?”

  “I’d invest. Like in aggressive, high-risk, high-yield shit.”

  I looked at him. “No. As in saving-the-world shit.”

  He laughed. “I think you’d need a bigger pile to actually save the world.”

  We sifted through the stones, pulled out a few of the bigger ones, and restuffed Andy’s shredded legs before we shoved Andy back into his garment bag. “Are we going to tell the Unlikelies?” Gordie said.

  “Not yet. Let’s make this one a Sadie-and-Gordie secret.”

  “You got it.”

  Gordie and I shared a frozen pizza on the porch with Mr. Ng and Dad before he left, still exhausted from the night before.

  I lay on my bed, flushed and nervous. I didn’t even want to think about what I would do if the diamonds were real. I thought instead about our night at Speakeasy and how much fun it had been.

  I dialed Shay’s number.

  “Hey, Sadie.”

  “Guess what random person I just ate a frozen pizza with on the porch with Dad and Mr. Ng?”

  “I don’t know. Pooch? Gordie Harris?”

  “Actually, yes. Gordie Harris.”

  “I saw the pictures. Looks like fun.” Shay was using her fake voice.

  “Are you okay, Shay?” I knew she hated it when I asked her if she was okay.

  “Yeah. I’m fine. I’m just working a lot. I’m tired.” Her tone was giving me anxiety.

  “Do you just want to talk later?”

  “Yeah. I still have to do a bunk check.”

  “Night, Shay-Shay.”

  “Night, Sadie.”

  I stared up at Shay’s origami cranes and wondered what I had done to piss off my best friend.

  ELEVEN

  THE UNLIKELIES DELIVERED care packages to troll mill victims three nights in a row. My heart ached a little every time I read through the list of recipients:

  Jackson R. (tortured for bad hygiene and weirdness)

  Mary Michele (harassed for being overweight and sneaking food during class)

  Erik (bullied for being from Sweden)

  Annabella F. (slut-shamed after she slept with two guys on the same team)

  Jamie (tormented for being thin and pretty)

  We stuck handmade cards into tiny gift bags with candy necklaces and tied the bags with curly ribbon. Val had the best handwriting, so she was the message-writer. We’re bringing down the trolls. You’re one of us now. —The Unlikelies.

  Val got a text from Javi just as we were finishing the care packages. They were back to being in love.

  “Javi’s friend Mike likes you, Sadie.”

  “The guy you were with when you stopped for strawberries?”

  “Yeah. He thought you were cute.”

  “Why didn’t he get out of the car?” I said.

  “He’s shy.”

  “Tell him I’m not over Seth.”

  “You are so over Seth.”

  “I’m not into guys with longer bangs than mine.”

  “One date. Mike will pay for your dinner. He’s a gentleman that way.”

  “I can get free food at home.”
/>   “So do it for me.”

  Pause. Sigh. “Okay, Val. I’ll do it for you.”

  We loaded the care packages in the cars and fanned out across the East End with lists of addresses and revolutionary music playlists. The Beatles. Dylan. Taylor Swift.

  “Haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate,” Val belted out.

  I delivered the candy necklaces in my poncho and baseball hat. I darted up to front porches, ran to mailboxes, dodged stressed-out dogs and a couple of dads peering through the curtains. But every mission was successful.

  At the end of the third night, we sat with our feet in Gordie’s pool while Gordie blasted the slam pages with anti-troll GIFs. He found a picture of a troll and superimposed candy necklaces dangling all over it. Under it, he just wrote:

  Choose kindness. —The Unlikelies.

  “We need a mascot,” Jean said.

  “Oh my God, we so need a mascot,” Alice said.

  We spent the next hour arguing over the mascot. Alice wanted us to pick our favorite animals and then somehow merge all five animals into one. Val wanted to stick with the happy-faced troll wearing candy necklaces. Jean wanted something badass. I didn’t care. I just wanted us to agree on something.

  “We’ll table this,” Gordie said. “A good mascot doesn’t happen in a day.”

  We ended up sitting in a circle on the pool deck, playing Val’s “first and last” game.

  Alice: “First time your heart broke.”

  Jean: “When my dad died.”

  Gordie: “Last time you kissed someone.”

  Me: “I’ve never kissed anyone.”

  Gordie: “Very funny.”

  Me: “It was Seth. But I have no idea the last time we kissed.”

  Val: “First pet.”

  Alice: “Twin kittens named Alice Jr. and Cattie.”

  Alice: “Last really good meal.”

  Gordie: “Sushi in New York on the last day of school.”

  Jean: “Last time you felt really happy.”

  Val: “Right now.”