The Unlikelies

by Carrie Firestone

  I’m outside your window, I texted. I waited a few seconds and then tapped on the glass. I waited a few more seconds and tapped harder.

  Jean pulled the blinds apart and peered out. It was still light enough for him to make out my grinning face. I waved. He shook his head, opened the blinds, and pulled up the window.

  “What the hell are you doing?” He was not amused. “Do you know what would happen if somebody like me tried this shit?”

  “A short, bearded person?”

  “Are you just going to keep pissing me off?” He didn’t crack a smile. “What is it, Sadie?”

  “I really only want to talk to you for a minute. Please, Jean?”

  “Fine. Whatever.”

  I crawled through the window and landed on his bed.

  The room was cluttered with sketch pads and masks in various stages of completion. Jean was doing what Jean did, escaping the world in his art room.

  “You don’t have to talk. I just want to tell you that there is no excuse for saying what I said.”

  He sat on the desk chair turning a chisel over and over in his hand.

  “I never shared those drawings with anyone before you. Not even Umi.” I watched his hands move as he talked. “So, yeah, it felt pretty shitty when you said what you said.”

  I stood in front of him, sick to my stomach as the full awfulness of what I had said enveloped me. I felt my lip tremble.

  His face softened.

  “I guess I shouldn’t have yelled at you for whining about your nasty feet,” he said.

  I smiled, still not 100 percent sure he was offering an olive branch.

  “Did I ever tell you that my great-grandmother, also named Sadie Sullivan, had both her feet burned off in a fire while successfully saving seven children?”

  Jean laughed. “You are such a pain in the ass, Sadie Sullivan junior.”

  “Can you please forgive me? I am so, so sorry.” I picked up a carved mask painted black and white. “And this panda bear mask is freaking adorable.”

  He wiped his hands on his pajama bottoms and took my hand. He hugged me and then we took a selfie of us smiling cheek-to-cheek and texted it to everyone.

  Val texted, Aww. So sweet.

  Gordie texted, Um. Why is my girlfriend in your bedroom, might I ask?

  Alice didn’t text anything at all.

  As I was leaving, this time through the front door, Jean said, “Oh, and you’ve told us about your great-grandma burning off her feet no fewer than a million times.”

  “Good. As long as you know.”

  I watched TV all night with my parents, something we hadn’t done in a long time. Between Shay back-to-normal texts, and group texts (most of them joking about my “hookup” with Jean, all of them ignored by Alice), and Can’t wait for tomorrow Gordie texts, I scrolled through chat rooms literally flattened by our avatar. Gordie had figured out how to code the “sniffing” so it could tell the difference between My mom is bitching at me and Taylor is an ugly bitch. He even took down the book trolls, the ones who thought it was cool to bully fictional characters. OMG. Hermione is SOOOOO annoying was replaced with five masked Union soldiers. BAM.

  The craziest part was that other people were creating copycat avatar masks to take down bullies, assholes, and trolls all over cyberspace. There were articles popping up about chat rooms full of bullies being driven out by people posting Come to the light over and over and over again. Kids who were struggling talked about how You’re one of us now just appeared on their social media pages out of nowhere.

  I almost felt bad for the bullies and the trolls, the gadflies and the ruffians, sitting alone in their rooms, banging their keyboards in utter frustration.

  When Dad turned on the eleven o’clock news, a caption read THE UNLIKELIES REACH THE EAST END.

  “Wait, I know that girl,” I said. It was Meghan Rose Sharp, the one who always laughed when people were mean to Greg O., the one who thought it was hilarious when Greg O. hit himself out of humiliation, the one who received one of the very first asshole care packages.

  The news lady with the bleach-blond bob stuck a mic in Meghan Rose Sharp’s face. “They left a package on my deck a while ago. There was a candy necklace in it and a note that said choose kindness or something like that, signed the Unlikelies. My mom wouldn’t let me eat the necklace in case it was tainted with poison. It wasn’t in any sort of packaging.”

  “What a dumbass,” I mumbled.

  “Is she a friend of yours?” Dad asked.

  “No.”

  “Have you been following this Unlikelies story? It’s all over the place. They’re some sort of vigilante network. They uncovered a huge drug operation in the city.”

  “Yeah. It’s pretty cool.”

  My heart raced. I said good night and ran upstairs.

  Meghan Rose Sharp is on the news talking about the care package. They’re coming out of the woodwork, I texted.

  Val texted back, We were on the Today show. They’re gonna come out of the woodwork!

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  ALICE’S DAD ANSWERED the door when I showed up unexpectedly at eight a.m. on Saturday with breakfast sandwiches and coffees.

  “Sadie, hi. Alice is still sleeping.”

  “Sorry I’m here so early. I have to work, but I wanted to check on Alice. She hasn’t been answering our texts.”

  He held the door open. “We think all the Izzy stuff is finally hitting her hard. We’ve been letting her sleep, but, honestly, it’s time to get her up. Go ahead. Just yank the comforter off her.”

  “Uh. Okay.”

  I ran up the stairs and burst into Alice’s darkened room. She was all the way under the covers. “Alice, it’s me. Wake up, Pooch.”

  “Hey.”

  “I have breakfast sandwiches and coffee. How about we go to the duck pond for a quick little morning walk?”

  She said yes.

  She threw on leggings and an old T-shirt, grabbed her vegan bag, and climbed into the passenger side of the Prius. As I drove away, I noticed her dad watching us through the living room curtains.

  “I apologized to Val,” she said, between sips of coffee. “What I said was awful. I hate that I said those things.”

  “She’s forgiven you. She knew how stressed you were. We all have our moments of awfulness.”

  “Sorry I haven’t been in the mood to text. I was mind-bendingly tired. It’s a good thing you’re getting my lazy ass out of bed.”

  I didn’t know if it was the long sleep or the strong coffee, but Alice was in the mood to talk. I told her about my visit to Jean’s room and my talk with Sissy.

  “So I guess anything goes now, huh?” she said. “Canary party.”

  “Actually, I feel more paralyzed than ever. I mean, I think this is a decision I have to figure out myself. I’ve been trying to get you guys to figure everything out for me, just like Mr. Upton tried to pawn it off on his friends.”

  “You’ll do the right thing, Sullivan.”

  Alice told me Izzy got shipped to Utah. Her dad wanted to send her to Oman because it was a Muslim country and she might have a tougher time getting drugs. But her mom worried about the hot weather and was afraid that if Izzy did get her hands on drugs, she’d be thrown in prison. “These conversations seriously happened. In my kitchen,” Alice said. “After a lot of Bloody Marys.”

  Izzy’s mom said she didn’t want to continue living in a community that judged her and shunned her daughter and made them all look like “trailer trash,” so she found an apartment near the rehab place and left Tanner to fend for himself with his dad, a nanny, and a new puppy. Puppies were notorious consolation prizes.

  The duck pond was nearly empty when we got there. We took our coffees and breakfast sandwiches and sat on the grass near Jean’s dreaded pack of ducks. Alice pulled a letter out of her bag. “Here, read this while I eat.”

  The letter was written on Hello Kitty stationery with a green felttip pen.

  My Allie Belle Poocher,


  You know how much I adore you, right? How did we get to this place? How did I get to this place? I wanted to be a dancer. And a waitress (remember?). I wanted to go to college in Boston. I hope I can do even one of those things. I hope I can get clean. I’m not there yet. That’s a start, right? Saying I’m not there yet. But I’m going to keep trying. You, my sweet Allie, are always the branch I grab on to when I’m floating down the river. And no matter what happens, I’ll never forget that.

  I love you so much, my Allie Belle Poocher.

  Neigh

  “That’s good, right?” I said, folding the letter and tucking it in Alice’s bag. “It is a good start.”

  “She gave that to me seven months ago.”

  “Oh.”

  Alice laughed. “I don’t think I ever told you… Izzy and I had a secret brick. We kept money under it so we’d always be ready when we heard the Woody’s Ice Cream music. We’d run down to that brick and dig around in the dirt for change.” She stopped talking then. It was as if that one memory dislodged something so painful there was no place for the pain to go.

  I held Alice’s head in my lap while she cried and cried and trembled with grief. I stroked her spiked hair and played with the silver studs that lined her ear. A couple walked by our spot near the pond and I gave them the My friend is having a hard time smile and they understood.

  When she was done, Alice looked at me and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and said, “I lied, Sadie. I do feel bad about killing Hector with the voodoo doll.”

  I didn’t want to leave Alice on her porch with swollen eyes and a guilty conscience, but I had to go to work.

  Daniela was there before me, which was a rare occurrence. “Limonada!” she said when I walked out back to help fold boxes.

  “Hey, give Papi and those guys a chance. They’re cool.”

  “We have nothing in common.” She made a face.

  “What are you doing tonight?” I said, smiling.

  “I’m parenting, like I do every night. But obviously you want me to ask you what you’re doing. What are you doing tonight, Sadie?”

  “Me? Oh, just going on a date.”

  I stood in the spot where the incident happened, where my whole summer changed course, and felt all fluttery at the thought of being alone with Gordie Harris.

  Hannah S. caught me off guard. I was filling the flower buckets with the hose when she snuck up behind me.

  “Hi, Sadie, what’s going on?” She had a strange look on her face.

  “Not much. Just watering the flowers. How are you?”

  “Good. We’re going down to the beach tonight. Do you want to come with us?”

  “Thanks for the invite, but I have plans. Do you want a free sunflower?” I held out the sunflower. She took it. “Soooo. When were you planning to tell me about Gordie Harris?” Now the casual Just stopping by to say hi and invite you to the beach made sense.

  I stared at Hannah.

  “There’s nothing to tell. A bunch of us have been hanging out.”

  “It all adds up now,” Hannah said, as if all the mysteries of the universe were instantly solved. “No wonder you haven’t been at Shawn’s. Gordie is so not a Shawn Flynn party guy.”

  “Yeah. He’s way too cool for that,” I said.

  It seemed like for better or for worse, our fate was sealed. Sadie and Gordie were a rumored couple.

  Senior year could begin.

  There were a ton of texts waiting for me after work.

  Turn on channel one, Gordie texted. A spin-off group calling themselves Ebenezer is asking radical religious groups to lay down their arms and join the movement.

  Val: Why didn’t we think of that?

  Spin-off groups were taking down hater sites with armies of masked avatars, demanding kindness, urging renegade tipsters to join the Unlikelies.

  It was good in a weird way and weird in a good way. And it was exhilarating.

  Mom always had a way of making me tell her things. She’d get me when I was distracted, like when I was watching a show or trying to figure out what to wear. She’d slip in a random question nonchalantly and I’d let my guard down and tell her something. Then she’d hold it against me for the rest of my life.

  Once I let it slip that Shay had HPV. I was unaware HPV was a sexually transmitted disease. I thought it had something to do with her yeast infections. So after the slip, Mom would say things like Maybe if Shay’s mother didn’t play tennis so much she wouldn’t have that HPV, or Maybe if Shay’s parents didn’t attend so many fund-raisers, she wouldn’t have that HPV. That was always said in Farsi. All of Mom’s judgy statements came out in Farsi, unless, of course, she was saying them to Grandma Sullivan.

  I had to avoid Mom because I had become a bomb, packed full of wires and chemicals and tiny traps. One lit Mom-match could blow bits of secrets all over the East End. And they weren’t that HPV kind of secrets. They were trap house, cyber vigilante, we weren’t with the Turtle Trail people in New York, I’m falling for Gordie Harris kinds of secrets.

  A slow drizzle fell on the roof and bathed the flower beds. We sat in our usual chairs with our plates of sautéed mushrooms and lamb.

  “I’m thinking of going vegetarian,” I announced.

  Mom laughed. “That’s crap,” she said.

  “Why is that crap, Leila? She can go vegetarian if she wants.”

  “Animals were put on this earth for us to eat.”

  “Really, Mom? Do you ever think about the baby lamb that died so you can grow your ass?”

  “Lamb doesn’t grow my ass. Ice cream grows my ass.”

  “Don’t blame me for your ass,” Dad said. “Which I like, by the way.”

  Mom smacked Dad’s leg. “And what are you going to eat for dinner?” she asked me. “Mushrooms?”

  “Alice eats lots of stuff and she’s a vegetarian.”

  “What’s next? An earring in your nose? Maybe green hair to match the vegetables?” Mom stabbed a hunk of lamb with her fork.

  Dad laughed and changed the subject. “Let’s see a movie tonight.” He wiped the sauce off his whiskers with a leftover Fourth of July paper napkin. “We haven’t done that all summer.”

  “I kind of have plans.”

  “Oh.” I saw the My little girl doesn’t want to be with her old dad anymore and it hurts like hell expression.

  “Tomorrow?” I smiled my I still love you so much, Daddy smile.

  “Tomorrow’s good.”

  I showered and shaved, put on lotion and makeup, dabbed the monster tail, and stuck a little butterfly barrette in my slightly grown-out bangs. I wore my favorite blush-pink dress with silver sandals and the diamond studs Grandma Hosseini gave me when I turned sixteen. And I slipped out of the house before Mom could ask me why I was trying to look pretty.

  The Range Rover pulled up exactly on time, a first for Gordie Harris. I ran out just as it began to rain hard.

  “Sadie,” Gordie said, drawing out my name. “You look amazing.”

  “Thank you.” He squeezed my hand and didn’t let go until we got almost to Montauk. Gordie backed into a gravel lot behind a wall of sea grass.

  We sat in the car and waited out the rain, talking about Gordie’s “stuff going on at home,” which had to do with Frances and her cancer and that it was worse than they had hoped. I felt like an idiot for bothering him with Are you sure you’re not mad at me? texts when he truly was dealing with real issues.

  “Keith is sensitive, and when he gets upset, he regresses, so we have to be careful how much we tell him,” Gordie said, still holding my hand. “But we have a solid plan.”

  “Great. What is it?”

  “We’re going to adopt Keith and Frances. We’ll have an adoption ceremony and everything to make it official. That way my parents will be Keith’s legal guardians, and he doesn’t need to perseverate about Frances until the very end.”

  “What’s perseverate?”

  “Worry.”

  “Got it.�
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  “Of course, my mom is planning an adoption ceremony that’ll be bigger than most weddings. You guys are on the list.”

  “Aww. That’s going to be sweet.”

  “Yeah.”

  He pulled away a bit and stared at me, and tucked my hair behind my ear. He traced the monster tail with the tip of his finger.

  “So what do you want to do?” I said, staring back.

  He laughed. “Stay here.”

  “Why?”

  “I have a little surprise.”

  The rain had moved out to sea, and I waited, my eyes focused on the craggy trees in front of me, while Gordie opened the back and moved stuff around.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Don’t look.”

  If it had been Seth, the wild groping would have been wrapping up and we would have been on the way back to Shawn’s.

  “Okay, come out.”

  It was still light behind the dark storm clouds, and streaks of sun dropped down over the whitecaps. I jumped out and walked around to the back of the Range Rover. Inside, Gordie had arranged a pile of blankets and pillows and tiny LED tea light candles on a tray with a thermos of hot chocolate and a pie dish covered in foil.

  “You cleaned out your car for me?”

  “I did. Let’s hope we don’t need a shovel.”

  “Or a metal detector.”

  “Or a metal detector,” he said, laughing.

  We crawled in and lay on our sides facing each other. Gordie took off the foil from the pie dish.

  “Do you want some cobbler?” he said.

  “You made me cobbler?”

  He said, “I told you I owed you for those kickass biscuits. The peaches are kind of mealy now, so I went with blueberry.”

  He handed me a fork and I took a bite. It was delicious.

  We poured the hot chocolate and Gordie held up his cup. “Here’s to things worth waiting for.”