The Unlikelies

by Carrie Firestone

  “Gordie Harris told me he saw you in CVS and asked you if he should ask me to Parker’s party and you turned around and took off. But I wasn’t going with anyone.” My throat ached. “You knew how much I liked that kid.” I couldn’t hold back the tears.

  Silence.

  “Okay, I have no recollection of that whatsoever.”

  “I just want to know why you did it.”

  “I don’t remember running into Gordie Harris. But you know what, Sadie? I don’t have time to sit around and reflect on it. I am completely overwhelmed. And instead of asking me how I’m doing and helping me deal with the fact that I am not dealing well at all, you just want to tell me how great your new life is with Pooch and Gordie Harris and some random bearded guy.”

  She took a breath.

  “I’m glad, Sadie. I’m glad you’re having so much fun. But I’m not. I just really need to go right now.”

  And she was gone.

  I sat there feeling like a horrible human being. Because Shay was right. I had been fixating on the idea that Shay was blowing me off without thinking about her at all.

  Papi and Ramon passed by in the truck and honked repeatedly, cranking their music and waving out the window. I mustered a weak wave and plodded through the rest of the sweltering, fly-infested day.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about Shay. I needed to make it up to her. I texted Gordie, I could really use a friend right now.

  “I have to be home in an hour,” I said, swinging my feet off the bridge. Gordie rushed over, his hair messy. The duck pond was surprisingly empty for late afternoon.

  “Sorry. Traffic.” He was all out of breath.

  “It’s my grandma Hosseini’s birthday. We’re having a pancake dinner promptly at six thirty.”

  He sat down next to me. “Hi,” he said, smiling.

  “Hi.” I smiled back.

  He leaned in and it was all lips and salt and tongue and sweetness.

  I had worried the days after the beach night would be awkward. But it was just the opposite. Everything with Gordie was easy.

  A yellow Lab came up out of nowhere with three tennis balls stuffed in his mouth.

  “Really, buddy?” Gordie said, pulling away from me. He nodded politely toward the elderly owner. Gordie held my hand and we stared at the stream moving slowly below the bridge.

  “I have to talk to you about something. I wasn’t going to tell any of you, but it’s just bothering me so much,” I said. I told him about Ella’s mom. I pulled up the pictures on my phone. “I don’t know why, but I’m embarrassed. And I feel like I let you guys and Mr. Upton down.”

  “You have got to be kidding me with this,” he said as he scrolled through the photos. “What a lowlife.”

  “I know. Gordie, I think about Ella all the time. If you had seen her screaming in the car that day… Her little face was so scared.”

  He rubbed my back and I moved closer to him.

  “And there’s all this pressure to honor my stupid promise to Mr. Upton. It’s too much.”

  “We’ll figure it all out. I think the answer to the diamond thing is going to come to us. Like, we’re seeking the answer, but I think we should let the answer come to us.”

  “Okay, you sound like a fortune cookie.”

  He ran his fingertips up and down my leg and looked over his shoulder. Three-ball Lab and the old guy refused to leave.

  I told him about Shay and how I had thought she was blowing me off, when really she was struggling and I was the one not listening. I had assumed Shay would go off to California and be the center of the social scene and make dozens of friends and have the best summer ever while I sat on my porch and read magazines. But she was exhausted and overwhelmed and lonely and I wasn’t there for her.

  “Shay’s cool,” Gordie said. “She’ll understand if you just talk to her.”

  “I know it’ll be okay. It’s really hard going from seeing each other all day every day to figuring out three hours’ time difference and three thousand miles of separation.”

  We watched the dog chase and return the balls over and over again.

  Gordie looked at me with an expression I hadn’t seen before. He picked at the soft rotting wood on the bridge and looked up again. “So, Frances has lymphoma.”

  “Oh, no. That’s terrible, Gordie. I can’t believe you let me talk about my lame problems while you had Frances on your mind.”

  “Your problems aren’t lame. Anyway, we don’t know yet if it’s bad or curable. But she’s really worried about Keith, you know, about who’s going to take care of him if something happens to her.”

  “Of course.”

  “I’m hopeful. I’ve gotta be. She’s my nanny.”

  “I’m so sorry, Gordie.”

  We sat there quietly for a while, until it was time for me to leave for the birthday dinner. Gordie took my hand and led me through a maze of smaller paths in the shadowy forest until we got to a clearing. We stopped and he pulled me into him and we hugged under the tree canopy. I leaned up and kissed his cheek and his lips softly.

  “That was exactly what I needed,” he said, looking into my eyes.

  “Me too.”

  I tried to FaceTime Shay after ten pounds of pancakes and Grandma Hosseini’s heavily frosted chocolate birthday cake. When she didn’t answer, I texted, I’m so very sorry, Shay Shay. Then, a few minutes later, I texted, And I’m here for you.

  She texted back a smiling emoji and an I’m sorry, too, Sader. I promise I don’t remember CVS.

  The next day, on my lunch break, I made Shay a care package of Tate’s cookies, which would be smashed by the time they reached California, but I knew they would remind her of home. I tucked a deep blue hydrangea between two pieces of waxed paper and stuck it inside the pages of our local newspaper. I sent it priority mail with a note that said Roses are red, hydrangeas are blue. One hundred seven days ’til I see you.

  TWENTY-THREE

  GORDIE AND I scrolled through random slam pages, throwing our avatar up all over the place and undermining the hard work of America’s trolls while we waited for Val and Alice to show up before Jean’s Tiny Art Show. Jean hadn’t said much about what to expect from the show. We knew it was the culmination of weeks of little kids doing art with Jean every day. That was about it.

  “I bet Stewy Upton’s ghost is hovering over us right now saying, ‘You kids are slackers. Honor my promise. Do something noble, you damn fools,’” Gordie said in his Mr. Upton voice.

  “Poor Mr. Upton. He was very particular about his fruits. And his vegetables.”

  Val came through the sliding doors in a pale pink dress. She looked so pretty, but her eyes gave it all away.

  “You broke up with Javi, didn’t you?” I said.

  Val’s eyes widened. “How did you know?”

  I gave her a big hug. “Friends know these things, Valeria.”

  We squeezed onto one of the theater chairs and Val told us that Javi backed out of Jean’s Tiny Art Show, where he was finally supposed to get to know all of us, because he wanted to sit on the couch and play video games with Mute Mike. She confronted him about not showing up at the school-supply pickup night. He told her he was sick of her nagging. She told him she was sorry but it needed to be over and she hoped they could be friends. He told her if she wasn’t spreading her legs for him, he didn’t need another friend. She grabbed his phone, threw it in the toilet, and left.

  “Where was Mike during all this?” I asked.

  She started laughing. “Making a quiche from scratch.”

  “Of course he was.”

  I held her hand and Gordie brought her a milk shake from the upstairs kitchen. We told her we were proud of her for doing what she knew she needed to do.

  “It’s almost like he said that thing about spreading my legs because he wanted me to leave, but he didn’t have the balls to let me go.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe he’s just an asshole with lupus,” Gordie said.

  “At least he h
as Mute Mike,” I said. “And homemade quiche.”

  Val rested while Gordie and I kept troll-busting. We found a site in Nebraska where guys scored girls on any number of degrading things. Gordie added:

  Choose kindness, boys, and we’ll let you in.

  —The Unlikelies.

  “Where the hell is Alice?” Gordie said.

  “She said she might visit Izzy first. I’ll text her to meet us there.”

  I had assumed the Tiny Art Show was named after the size of the participants, but as it turned out, the art was tiny, too. The children had painstakingly glued beans on canvases in the shapes of butterflies, trees, and fish. One child had even made a tiny bean portrait of Jean, beard and all.

  Jean greeted people with smiles and warm hugs, dressed to the nines in a bright pink shirt and blue bow tie. We admired the tiny masterpieces and sipped club soda from fancy plastic cups with turquoise umbrellas.

  “Kudos to you, Jean-Pierre,” I said when Val and I finally pulled Jean aside.

  “Why, thank you. My protégés did all the work.” He took a sip of my club soda. “Is Alice here? She said she was going to take pictures.”

  “Not yet.” I was getting nervous. Alice was always early.

  The artists got rowdy as the party went on. A boy wearing a cape took down the tiered display of cupcakes, causing half the crowd to dissolve into a teary, snotty whine-fest until Gordie suggested I summon Dad to the rescue. Woody’s truck showed up ten minutes later to deliver ice pops free of charge to the horde of cupcake-deprived little kids.

  Val and I shared a chair while Gordie charmed Jean’s mom and her friends.

  Val checked her phone repeatedly.

  “Anything from Alice?” I asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Javi?”

  “Nope. I threw his phone in the toilet, remember?” We laughed.

  “You okay?”

  “Nope.”

  We helped Jean take down the tables, fold up the chairs, and put away the decorations before we walked across the street to a pizza place. Gordie brought a pizza out to the curb where Jean, Val, and I sat inhaling helium from the Tiny Art Show balloons.

  “I can’t believe Alice blew me off,” Jean said in helium voice.

  “I’m single,” Val said, also in helium voice.

  “I’m hungry,” I said in helium voice.

  At that moment, all our phones went off at the same time.

  Please come to hospital. Losing my shit.

  We got to the hospital in record time.

  Just before the elevator doors opened onto Izzy’s floor, I noticed someone had stuck a yellow KICK CANCER’S ASS FOR GARY! sticker on the wall above the buttons. I wondered if Gary had kicked cancer’s ass. When the door opened, we heard a low, grunty howl, like a walrus giving birth. It took only a minute to realize the sound was coming from Izzy’s mom. She was writhing on the floor outside the visitors’ lounge, nearly smacking her head on the edge of the doorway. Izzy’s dad knelt awkwardly next to her. Alice stood stiffly, her eyes wide, her hands in her denim jacket pockets, her body pressed against the wall.

  We walked boldly toward the scene. A distracted nurse passed us and snaked around the pathetic pile that was Izzy’s parents. Alice turned and motioned for us to follow her into the tiny family room, where a vase of peach-colored fake flowers lay toppled in the middle of the floor.

  I saw Tanner sitting in the corner, his ten-year-old face frozen in fear.

  Alice managed a weak smile and then shook her head. “It’s not good.”

  Gordie moved in for a hug and Alice collapsed into him, shaking and sobbing.

  I stood there paralyzed, convinced Izzy was dead.

  “What happened?” Val said, resting her hand on Alice’s back.

  “She’s gone. She disappeared. The hospital was discharging her because a bed opened at some rehab facility in Connecticut. She said she wanted to go down to the bathroom and freshen up while her parents sat here falling for her bullshit, yet again, and she disappeared.”

  She lifted her head from Gordie’s chest. “We ran around the entire friggin’ hospital searching for her. Security searched. The cops searched. She’s gone.” Alice wiped her nose on her jacket sleeve. “She has no phone, no wallet, nothing. Her mom had wanted to transport her to the rehab place by ambulance, and her dad was like, No, let’s stop at home and get her a few things and maybe have steamers and sweet potato fries at her favorite restaurant before we dump her at rehab. Yeah. Nice work, Elliott.”

  The hallway commotion intensified.

  “Do they need you to stay here?” Val said, holding Alice’s hand.

  “No. Let’s go. I was just here to say good-bye to Izzy,” Alice said. “But obviously she had other priorities than rehab in Connecticut. Those dumbass cops are never going to find her.”

  I thought of Izzy’s sweet face, the way she lit up when Alice showed her childhood pictures.

  “I have this sick feeling,” Alice said in the elevator after she helped Izzy’s dad get her mom off the floor and into a chair. “I’m so afraid she’s going to die.” Tears streamed down Alice’s face. Val handed her tissues. I focused on the KICK CANCER’S ASS FOR GARY! sticker.

  “How can we help?” Gordie said. We stood in the parking lot, watching cops search the perimeter for Izzy. “There have to be places we can look.”

  Alice played with the knot of silver rings on her right hand. “There are places. There’s a place in the city. I went with Izzy once when Hector was in rehab. I have to go through Izzy’s drug phone.”

  “Do you really think she’d go all the way to the city?” I said.

  “Sadie, Izzy would go to the bowels of the earth for heroin.”

  Dad was on the porch when I got home.

  “What a great event, huh, sunshine?” He motioned for me to sit.

  I had already forgotten about Jean’s Tiny Art Show. “Yeah, Jean did an awesome job.” I took the can of honey-roasted peanuts from the table and shook nuts into my mouth. We sat there crunching, Dad and me with the fireflies and Bruce Springsteen, until I hit Dad with a question.

  “How did you lose your thumb, Dad?”

  He must have known I’d ask again, though I’d stopped a long time ago, after his answers were always different, but equally ridiculous. A bird was hungry and I let him have a nibble. A snapping turtle got mad at me for taking her bus seat. Grandma Hosseini lopped it off with garden shears when I married Mommy.

  He took a sip of beer. Then another. “I guess you’re not going to buy The tooth fairy needed it to poke people, huh?”

  “No, Dad.”

  He set the beer down and leaned forward a little. “I got bit by a strung-out prostitute because I was trying to pry her kid away and she wasn’t having it. She fought and clawed and the kid wouldn’t let go of her mother, and the woman clamped down on my thumb. She severed the tendon straight through.”

  “Oh my God, Dad.” I saw it all in my head, the shock of toddler hair, the desperate mother, the teeth bearing down on my sweet father’s hand.

  “But I was Mr. Tough Guy and didn’t go to the hospital until the damn thing was necrotic.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Dead. My thumb tissue was dead. So they hacked it off.”

  I pulled Dad’s thumbless hand up to my mouth and kissed it. “I still love you, thumb or not.”

  “I love you, too, sunshine. I was never cut out for the force. Sometimes it seems like I’m a sponge, like I absorb people’s moods. There were too many rotten things on the job. I didn’t have thick enough skin for all the bad scenes. It really messed me up for a while.”

  I knew exactly what Dad meant. I was trying to kick the anxiety I had absorbed from Val’s guilt and sadness and Alice’s fear and worry. I must have inherited Dad’s skin, because mine wasn’t thick enough either.

  “That’s why the ice cream business is perfect for me. I absorb all that happy, carefree energy. It’s a blast.”


  I let go of Dad’s hand to grab more peanuts. “So you lost a thumb and Great-Grandma Sullivan lost her feet. I guess it runs in the family.”

  Dad laughed. “And my old man was missing a nut.”

  I nearly choked. “That’s way too much information.”

  “Didn’t lose it saving anybody, though. He was just born with one nut. Your grandmother teased him mercilessly.”

  “Why am I not surprised?”

  Later, after I had showered and dabbed vitamin E oil on the monster tail, I snuggled under clean sheets with my Flopper and my fans blowing. Jean texted just before I fell asleep.

  We all need a night out.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  WE DECIDED WE were going to do something fun and light for once, like a carnival or mini golfing. Things were getting intense again, and Val really needed a distraction. Mute Mike had shown up at her house early in the morning with her old math notebooks, a framed photo of her and Javi, and the watch she had given Javi for his sixteenth birthday. She broke down and Mike actually talked to her. He told her he really didn’t know whether Javi was deliberately pushing her away so she could live her life without feeling guilty about the lupus or if he was just an asshole. Val texted me a picture of Mike walking out of her building with the caption Mute Mike the snack man. Sent to do the dirty work.

  I finally heard from Alice during my lunch break. Not up for going out tonight. Need to find Izzy.

  I went to her house after work, smelling of hay and sweaty money. I marched straight upstairs to where I knew she’d be and found her kneeling at the altar, her hands clenched at her sides, her pale skin streaked with tears. I knelt beside her and rested my hand on her leg.

  “Who’s this?” I said softly, nodding toward a new poppet.

  She smiled. “This is my poppet to find a missing friend.”

  She picked up the doll and turned it over. “I made her out of Izzy’s Abercrombie T-shirt. That’s the only item of clothing I could find.” She sniffled. “This is a picture of Izzy and a picture of Saint Muerte. I was supposed to stuff her with items from Izzy and all the people looking for her, so I folded three of their family Christmas cards and I put in this little tin of mints from her aunt’s wedding and the business card of the cop supposedly leading the investigation. And I wrapped her in lace and tied it with one knot, and now I need to say the holy death prayer for nine nights until Izzy’s found.” Alice’s voice was high-pitched, almost ethereal.