At no point did I look at my phone, so when I wake up the fourth time and find Digby sitting at my desk, throwing my wasabi peas in my face, I say, “Go away . . . why do you never let me sleep?”
Digby laughs and says, “It’s four thirty in the afternoon. You’ve been asleep all day.”
“I have?” I tell myself I should be rested, but my body begs to differ. I flop back onto my pillows. “I don’t care. I’m exhausted.” And then I remember. “Hey. How’s Sally?”
“We’re all talked out for now,” Digby says.
I think back to Friday night and say, “Wow. Just two days ago, we were digging around for her dead body and now . . . she’s hiding out in your garage.”
“Yeah. It’s a damn miracle, no doubt about it,” Digby says. “You know, Sally wants to stay . . . like, effective immediately. She doesn’t want to go back to New Jersey again.”
“You’re kidding,” I say. “What about her family?”
“Well, technically . . .” Digby says. “That’s us now. We’re her family.”
“I know,” I say. “But you know what I mean.”
“No Stockholm syndrome with that kid. It took me hours to talk her out of calling the cops on the Pickleses,” Digby says. “I told her how we found her . . . de Groot and Book. There’s a lot to figure out. The last thing anyone needs is for all this”—he makes a general waving motion with his hands—“to come out.”
Excellent. More lies to juggle. They’re really starting to pile up.
“Speaking of which. I just talked to Henry. He’s going to file a police report,” Digby says.
“Yeah, he told me he would,” I say. “I need coffee, I think.” I get out of bed and feel weirdly self-conscious in my tank top. I throw on a sweatshirt. “I’m glad I’m not the one who’s going to have to sell that lie. The gun? And the bullet holes everywhere?”
“Henry’s going to say two guys tried to rob the place and that the gun fell in the fryer . . . blah, blah, blah . . .” Digby says. “The empty register and blurry CCTV footage the cops got from the ATM across the street will help the story stick.”
“Let me add that to the stack of lies I’m going to have to remember when Cooper starts grilling me later,” I say. I notice he’s eating my stale study snacks and since I know he only forages in my drawers when he bypasses the kitchen and climbs in through my window, I ask, “You want anything from downstairs?”
Of course he does.
* * *
• • •
The kitchen is empty and when I look out the window, I see that both my mother’s and Cooper’s cars aren’t in their spaces. The realization that Digby and I are alone in the house suddenly makes me nervous. On the way back to the room, I stop at my bathroom and brush my teeth. This is a dumb thing to do, since the first thing I do right after is take a big sip of coffee. I walk back into my room and hand him the grocery bag I’d filled with his various food requests.
“Thanks, Princeton,” he says.
“You know, you didn’t have to climb in my window. Nobody’s home,” I say. I hope he hadn’t noticed how weird that came out. But alas.
“Princeton. Are you . . . blushing?” Digby laughs. “Are you having ‘thoughts’?”
“No,” I say. But I’m immediately sorry that I’ve closed that door. “I mean . . . maybe? I don’t know what I’m saying.” I cover my face because I can’t take his staring at me. “I don’t know where we stand.”
Digby gets out of my chair and sits next to me on the bed. He peels my hands away from my face and says, “I think we are both attracted to each other and have wanted this to happen for a long, long time but there was always something getting in the way. Am I right?” When I nod, he says, “It really bothered you when you thought that I might’ve slept with Bill.”
I nod again.
“I swear to you, I didn’t. Do you believe me?” When I nod again, he says, “But it bothers you that I’ve slept with two other girls—”
“But I’m trying not to let that bother me,” I say.
“How’s that going?” When I don’t say anything, Digby gets up and says, “That’s what I thought.”
My heart sinks when he grabs his jacket from the back of my chair. “No, don’t go,” I say.
But instead of putting on his jacket, Digby takes out a tiny spray can from a pocket.
“I hope you don’t think I was being presumptuous but I thought we might have this conversation today, so . . .” He raises the can above his head and starts to spray.
“Is that hairspray?” I say. But then I get a whiff of the toxic-smelling cloud. “What the hell is that?”
Digby tosses the can onto the bed next to me. I pick it up and I’m just beginning to realize why on earth he’d spray NEW CAR SMELL all over himself when he says, “Brand-new, just for you . . .” Which is what it says on the New Car Smell can.
Digby takes my hand, spins me around, and dips me down low. He says, “Seriously, Zoe. As far as I’m concerned, there’s never been anyone but you.”
He kisses me but just as I feel my thoughts slipping into an incoherent chain of fantasy world gibberish, I give in to an intrusive thought that’s been following me around for the last little while.
“Digby, stop. Wait,” I say. “I have to ask you something.”
“Okay . . .” Digby laughs. “What would a real Princeton romantic moment be without the awkward questions. What is it this time?”
“Did you really mean it when you told my mother you wanted to be an actuary?” I say.
Before I even finish asking, Digby lets me go and flops onto my bed, laughing.
“Oh, my God, Princeton. Have you been walking around worrying about that since I said it?” He looks at me and laughs harder. “Look how upset you are . . .”
“Don’t laugh at me. I’m serious. I can’t even imagine . . . you in some office . . . filling in time sheets . . .” I say. “I’m just having trouble picturing it.”
“No, you can picture it, all right. You’re picturing it right now. What you can’t do is find it attractive,” Digby says. “And you’re right, who plans to sell out?”
“Well?” I say.
“Well . . . I’m ambushed by your mom one day. I’m trying to date her daughter. She already doesn’t like me,” Digby says. “Am I supposed to say I want to be broke and possibly get murdered working to bust human traffickers?”
“Is that what you want to do?” I say.
“Help people who’ve been taken and held against their will?” Digby says, “What do you think?”
“Well, why didn’t you just say that?” I say. “Mom would’ve loved that.”
“First, no, she wouldn’t have loved hearing that. Not from her daughter’s boyfriend. She would’ve loved hearing it on CNN from some dude making amends for being born rich. And, also, I didn’t say it because I didn’t think I needed to explain myself to her like that,” Digby says. “Honestly, I didn’t realize I had to explain myself to you, either.”
And I realize he’s right. “No. You don’t.” I look at the can of car air freshener in my hand. “Digby . . .”
“Princeton.”
“I’m not ready . . .” I say.
“I know,” Digby says.
“I’m scared,” I say. Admitting it feels like throwing off a heavy burden from my shoulders.
“I’m terrified,” Digby says. “You’re my best friend. For a while, you were my only friend. I don’t want to let you down.”
“Do you think it would be weird?” I say. “Because we’re friends?”
“I think it’d be weirder if we did it with our enemies,” Digby says.
And then the thing that’s really bothering me bubbles up. “Digby, I’m going to Prentiss next year,” I say.
Digby laughs. “Of course you’re going.”
“But what about . . .” I cannot bring myself to say “us.” “Would we still be . . .” I cannot finish that sentence either.
Digby kisses me and says, “Zoe. I spent nine years looking for a sister everyone else had given up for dead. Do you think I’d give up on you just because you’re moving to New York?”
With the pressure off, the vibe between us is different when we kiss again. When my eyes blink open for a second, I spot my neighbor Mrs. Breslauer giving us dirty looks from her window. I give her a small wave.
And then Digby pulls away. “Okay, Princeton, it’s my turn now,” he says. “There’s something I have to tell you.”
Oh, no, I think. There is an earnest look on his face that fills me with the anxiety that he’s about to tell me something I’m not ready for, like, I love you.
“What?” I say.
Digby reaches into his jacket and pulls out a sheet of paper, which he hands to me.
“What is this?” I say.
I open it to find a spreadsheet with a list of some River Heights High School students’ names and rows of test scores.
“I took that from Principal Granger’s desk drawer,” Digby says. “Princeton. He’s manipulating standardized test scores to defraud the school district of performance bonus money.”
Here we go again.
Acknowledgments
I am so lucky to have written my first three books with Kathy Dawson. SO lucky. I came into this process knowing very little about myself as a writer, and Kathy had to be a lot more than an editor to me. She taught me about the process, the business, the audience, and gave me priceless on-the-job training I couldn’t have gotten from anyone else. Kathy taught me how to work and got me past the blocks, past the fear, past the false plots that went nowhere . . .
Three books in the three years we’ve known each other. That’s a big deal for a sloth like me. Thank you, Kathy.
And thank you to my agent, David Dunton, for taking the time to get to know me and my writing quirks before choosing whom to put me with. Thank you also to you and Nikki Van De Car for your consistently outstanding notes.
I also want to thank Claire and Regina at Penguin for their patience (I’m always late) and the care they take going through my books. I’m always impressed when they find inconsistencies because it’s in those moments that it becomes clear to me how much mind-space they’ve given me over the years. Thank you also to Anna and the many other generous Penguin team members who vet my work and then turn around and put it in the world.
I’ve had amazing luck with my foreign language translations and I’d like to especially thank Sylke in Germany for caring so deeply about capturing Zoe and Digby. Thank you also to Veronica Taylor for your killer narrating skills. So many people have come up to me to praise your version of the book.
LT and HB don’t want cheese of any kind, so I’ll limit myself to saying a simple “Thank you” and a blanket “I’m sorry.” You know what you’ve done for me and I’m aware of what I’ve done to you boys. Hey, SCPY, guess what? It is nice. To my brother, Steve: Sorry in advance for being a bad influence on Sabrina. And, finally, to my parents: Thank you so much for not insisting that I be normal.
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Trouble Never Sleeps Page 22