Trouble is a Friend of Mine

by Stephanie Tromly

  TWENTY-THREE

  Right around Halloween, I started to feel like I was finally cracking the River Heights social scene.

  “Join us,” Bill said. She and Darla ran lunchtime surveys and posted the most interestingly worded responses on Bill’s Facebook.

  I read the header on the sheaf of paper Bill handed me.

  93% of boys and 62% of girls are exposed to Internet porn before they turn 18, so we know what you’ve been up to. After the last time you saw porn, did you A) want to have sex, B) feel so grossed out, you had to shower, or C) no, really, I only use the Internet for homework. Add a comment.

  I said, “People won’t admit they’ve watched porn, will they? Doesn’t this need to be anonymous?”

  “People don’t even want to be anonymous when I post their answers,” Bill said. “Everyone wants to be a star.”

  There were a lot of names and answers on the booklet she’d made. “You talk to a lot of people . . . from a lot of different cliques.”

  “You want to know how we did it, right? How we got in? It’s all social networking and who people link to.” From her notebook, Bill took out a folded piece of paper that looked like a celebrity who-dated-whom map. Arrows went back and forth between cut-out yearbook photos of students. Underneath the photos were lists of names of other students. Above the arrows were words like is on the soccer team with and used to date. “We skipped the Dropouts and the Felonious Punks because they don’t have outside links. We started with the Dumb Geeks and then moved up to the Goody-Goodies. When the Wannabes started playing, it was basically like hitting the East Australian Current. We were in the mainstream. Everyone wanted to play.”

  “Isn’t it genius? Ask how she came up with it,” Darla said.

  “It hit me when I watched a thing on terrorist cells. Terror cells stay separated because it’s easier for them to resist penetration. That’s what high school is. Cells that resist penetration, orbiting our leader . . . Sloane Bloom,” Bill said. “She doesn’t talk to us . . . she doesn’t even acknowledge our existence, mostly . . . but we feel her presence everywhere and we arrange ourselves in order below her.”

  “And are you and Darla on this map?” I said.

  “We float . . . like a virus.” Darla looked pleased with her pronouncement until Bill’s hard stare wore her down. “As Bill says.”

  “Not a vi-rus, Darla. That’s negative. We’re vi-ral. We started by invading weaker cells, knowing each one had at least one person who had a toehold in the social cell above it, and we just rode it all the way up through the school,” Bill said. “The only person I can’t place on this map is Digby. He only hangs with you and Henry. Once I saw him in the computer lab with Felix Fong . . .”

  Ah, Digby. Here he was again. Bill mentioned him every couple of minutes. It was getting awkward. I knew she wanted me to produce him, but for some reason, I just didn’t want to make it happen. At the time, I told myself it was a “worlds colliding” thing.

  Despite the improvement in my friend situation, though, Digby’s prediction was right. No one else invited me to the dance.

  The Thursday afternoon before the winter ball, Felix cornered me at the lockers at rush hour. Half the school was going on second-shift lunch, while the other half was coming off first-shift lunch. Basically, everyone was stopping off at their lockers and caught the show Felix put on. The kids standing close enough to hear what Felix said repeated his goofy speech for the kids in the back who couldn’t hear.

  “Zoe, you’re a very special girl . . . um . . . lady? Woman?” Felix said. “Anyway. Would you do me the very big honor of letting me take you to the dance? Will you be my Doll?”

  The “doll” thing will be clear in a second. People laughed, staring at us, waiting for my answer.

  When I said yes, I tried to make it clear that I was agreeing only veeeery reluctantly. I put a lot of subtext behind my, “Um . . . yeah . . . fine . . . okay.”

  That paparazzi wannabe Derek Martino took a photo of Felix and me at that moment. I groaned because I could imagine exactly the caption, “The Moment,” floating under our picture in “Memories of a Night to Remember,” the ridiculously named thirty-dollar prom keepsake they were printing up. The worst thing, though, was that the photo memorialized yet another one of Felix’s awful T-shirts. This one said: GREAT STORY, BABE. NOW MAKE ME A SANDWICH.

  “Felix, what’s with the T-shirts?” I said.

  “Hilarious, right? Digby gets them for me from his work. Employee discount!” Felix said.

  Employee discount? Probably not from shelling shrimp at the Cajun place. Probably not from wearing the mall mascot Angelo the Duck. That left . . .

  “From the Make-Ur-Bear store? Are you wearing teddy bear T-shirts?” I said.

  “They’re from the Nasty Bear line for adults . . . the bears are bigger. They fit perfectly,” he said.

  “One condition, Felix, for us going to the dance together. No more rude T-shirts,” I said. “Ever.”

  “Oh . . . okay,” he said.

  “No outfits from the Make-Ur-Bear for the dance, either.” Boy, am I glad I made that clear, because his face fell and he made a disappointed “Ohhhhh” sound.

  The dance itself sounded like it might be cool. When Sloane’s mother had dropped off the check, she declared the theme to be “Guys and Dolls” and avoided the usual Enchantment-Under-the-Sea cliché. People were confused at first, but after everyone googled it, the whole school was talking about gangsters and flapper dresses.

  I found a pink dress that had a twenties-y shape at the Goodwill and glue-gunned tons of feathers to the bottom of it during a Gilmore Girls marathon that Saturday.

  I made a headband using three of Mom’s rhinestone necklaces and the lace from an old pair of tights and then joined together strings of plastic pearls to make one long knee-dusting necklace.

  Mom took out a sequined clutch bag from a tissue-lined box. “I slept in on dibs-day after Grandma died, and this was the only nice thing I ended up inheriting. It’ll look perfect with your outfit. And I’ve got the perfect shoes too.”

  She’d shined up an old pair of her pearly white tap shoes that were basically high-heeled Mary Janes.

  “Are these loud?” I was worried because the metal taps on my soles click-clacked as I walked around.

  “The music will block it out,” Mom said.

  “When did you tap dance, anyway?” I said.

  “I was trying to lose weight, but I never tapped fast enough to burn any calories,” Mom said.

  Speaking of failed attempts to exercise: It was November and out here, that meant cross-country season.

  “You can win a race without coming in first,” the gym teacher said. He and his assistant teacher were leading a small group of the sporty students in my gym class through a stretching routine.

  The rest of us were in the back, doing halfhearted versions of their moves. Our class had been divided into two groups: the social runners and the competitive runners. They supposedly did that so the social runners wouldn’t be pressured to run beyond their abilities. Really, though, it was so that they could use class time to drill runners who had after-school practice for other sports. They didn’t need us slowing them down. I sometimes ran the course, but after tweaking my ankle on the uneven path through the woods, I began to fake-start the run and then circle back to do homework before I fake-crossed the line ten or so minutes after the fast runners finished. I had my Spanish homework folded up in my pocket and I had a grassy knoll all picked out.

  The teacher’s pep talk wasn’t for me. “The intensity has to come from within,” he said. “Attack the course. Push past the pain.” And with a weird tribal screech, the fast pack were off.

  There was a bunch of kids who, like me, skipped the runs. I looked at us, straggling off in different directions, and wondered why all the lonely people didn’t just get it
together and decide not to be lonely anymore. But I guess that’s the problem with individualism.

  Suddenly, I heard, “Hey, Princeton. Up here.” There was Digby, looking down at me from the top of a rise leading to the dirt road beside the trail. “Come over here.”

  “That’s super-steep. Why don’t you come down here?”

  His breathing was labored. “Can’t. Just come up, okay?” And then he disappeared from my line of sight.

  I expected to see him looking down, laughing at me as I struggled up the slope, but he didn’t reappear. For every three feet I gained, I slid back down two. It was only by pulling myself up by the exposed tree roots that I finally managed to make progress. By the time I got close to the top, dirt was caked under my fingernails.

  I said, “I don’t understand why you couldn’t have come down—” I stopped short when I summited and saw Digby lying flat on his back. “Oh, my God, Digby. What happened?”

  Digby grunted but seemingly couldn’t get the words out to answer me. I ran over and in a weird reflex, opened his jacket to take a look at his chest.

  Digby was gasping. “Get . . . off . . . I haven’t been . . . shot.”

  “Then what—”

  “Can’t . . . can’t . . . I’m having an anxiety . . . attack . . .”

  I rifled through his jacket pockets. “Is there a pill you take or something?”

  Digby shook his head. “No . . . no . . . you gotta . . . you gotta sit . . . on my chest . . .”

  “What? Digby, is this some kind of scam?”

  “No . . . no . . . I gotta . . . gotta slow my breathing . . . please . . .”

  I’d never seen that look on his face before. It was scary. He really was in trouble. I climbed over him and straddled his chest. At first, I was too scared to put my whole weight on him but gradually, I was fully sitting on his ribs.

  Digby closed his eyes and sure enough, after a few minutes, his breathing slowed down. I started to wonder if he’d fallen asleep.

  “Digby?”

  He just sighed.

  “Are you feeling better?” I said.

  He nodded, blissed out.

  “What are you doing now?” I said.

  “Now I’m enjoying myself.” Digby’s eyes opened. “Strictly speaking medically, you could’ve just sat on me sidesaddle. Bump on a log style would’ve worked. This sexy cowgirl stuff’s a nice bonus, though.”

  “You’re gross.” I climbed off. “What the hell was all that?”

  “Oh . . . it’s just an anxiety attack. I get them sometimes.”

  “Uh, ‘just’ an anxiety attack? Shouldn’t you see a doctor?”

  “I have. I’m supposed to take Paxil for it.”

  “Supposed to? Does that mean you don’t?”

  “I don’t like them. They mess with my taste buds, my sleep . . . it seems crazy to take a pill every day to head off something that happens, like, once a month max.”

  “Wow. I don’t think medicine works like that, Digby.”

  “Besides, I have these triggers, and if I avoid them, I’m all right. I slipped a little today. Looked at something I shouldn’t have. My thoughts started cascading . . . that’s all. It’s nothing.”

  “Doesn’t sound like nothing,” I said. “What do you do when no one’s around to sit on you?”

  “I ride it out. Remind myself that it’ll end,” he said. “But the real trick, Princeton, is that after each one of these, I gotta pick myself up and not constantly dread it happening again, which of course it will, but you know . . . I gotta live.”

  “See, that whole thing you just said is basically the entire argument for staying on your medication,” I said.

  Digby stood up and dusted himself off.

  “What are you doing here, anyway? Not going to classes, I know that much,” I said.

  “I went to see Steve.”

  Please-Call-Me-Steve, as the faculty advisor assigned to us, had been e-mailing me for the last week about meeting to talk about our project. Our fictional, nonexistent project. That was due in five weeks. I’d been avoiding him for a while, putting him off with a series of excuses that were escalating in their BS factor. I’d almost reached my limit and just the day before, he’d e-mailed me that he’d track me down in class if I didn’t come to see him.

  “Now it’s my turn to have an anxiety attack. What did he say?” I said.

  “He said my oral progress report was great. He’s looking forward to reading it,” Digby said.

  “Reading what? We haven’t written a single word. What are we going to turn in?”

  “Oh, relax, Princeton. I’ll take care of it. It’s weeks from now.”

  I heard the gym teacher’s whistle. “I gotta go finish my race. See you tonight?”

  Digby nodded. “What’s for dinner, honey?”

  I kept up my end of the fifties housewife routine. “A roast with all the fixin’s, dear.”

  Digby broke character in surprise. “Whoa. Really?”

  “What? No, not really. More like chicken nuggets, tater tots, and bag salad.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  I jogged off.

  “Hey, Princeton. What would happen if I were just a normal guest tonight? Like, while Liza’s there? I mean, I know she doesn’t exactly love me, but she knows I come over and it’s not like we’re up to anything weird.”

  I stopped. I didn’t have an answer for him.

  “No, no . . . you’re right. I’ll wait until she leaves,” he said.

  He had a point, though. It had been almost a month since Mom told us she knew he was coming over, and I had no idea why we were still sneaking around.

  After school the next day, I got another one of Digby’s abrupt summonses: “Mall in 20,” it said. I messaged back about a dozen times and when he didn’t answer, I considered myself warned. I suited up in a face-obscuring hoodie and baseball cap combo and took the bus.

  When I got to the mall, I checked some of Digby’s usual hangs: the shrimp place, the comic book bar at the record store, and the frozen yogurt shop where the makeup counter girls liked to take their breaks. No joy.

  I was just paying for my yogurt when Digby sauntered in and laid a twenty on the counter.

  “Whoa,” I said. “Whaaaat is happening?”

  “Yeah, that’s right, Princeton. It’s on me today,” Digby said. He was dressed in his Suzie Bear tutu costume with the head removed and tucked under his arm.

  “I just have to check. You didn’t rob anyone, right?”

  “What? Of course not. I got this money for legit work. Well, I guess technically, it’s an advance on some legit work I’m gonna do,” Digby said. “Well, if you wanna get really technical . . . the work is legit-ish. I mean, I wouldn’t go chat with the police about it or anything.”

  “That’s not why you called me here, is it? To help you with your legit-ish project that we can’t tell the police about?” I said.

  “No, I have that whole thing under control. Wait, is that why you dressed all Bangarang?”

  “Don’t act like I’m crazy for thinking something was up.” I passed him my phone with his terse message pulled up.

  “It’s not my fault you assume there’s always some catastrophe about to happen when I call you.”

  I tapped the scar on my chin and said, “You don’t think it’s your fault? Not even a little?”

  “Oh, come on . . . bygones.”

  “So, what’s going on anyway?”

  “Nothing. I’m on my break and I wanted some company,” he said.

  It took a second for me to realize he meant he just wanted to hang out. “Uh . . . okay. Walk, I guess?”

  We left the yogurt shop and were window-shopping and mocking the other mall shoppers until we got to the pet store. Digby just stared into the window where ther
e was an open-topped glass case in which sat two furry rats with oversized ears.

  “Those rats are gigantic,” I said. “And they look like they stink.”

  “That doesn’t even make any sense,” Digby said. “And these little guys are chinchillas, not rats.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Chinchillas. They’re awesome.”

  “You like these things? You don’t like anything.” When he just stared at the chinchillas and ignored me, I shoved him and said, “Is it, like, some kind of weird fur-based fetish?”

  “My sister asked for a chinchilla for her fourth birthday. My dad said no and made up an allergy as an excuse. Chinchillas live for fifteen years, you know? If we’d gotten her one like she’d asked for, we’d have a nine-year-old chinchilla named Mu. For Muhammad Ali. The Chinchilla from Manila,” Digby said.

  I felt awful. “Digby . . . I am so . . .” But then I realized he was laughing at me.

  “The Chinchilla from Manila? You believed that junk?” he said. “Man. Making you cry is too easy.”

  “I’m not crying, you moron. And you can’t tell a sob story and then make fun of the people who sob. That’s entrapment.” I flicked a spoonful of melted yogurt at him that landed on the arm of his Suzie Bear suit.

  “Hey, watch the fur.” Digby looked surprised and caught himself. He said, “Wow. I was just seriously annoyed you did that. You know . . . maybe I do have a little something weird going with fur.”

  “It’s not funny,” I said.

  “What? My sister getting kidnapped? No, of course it’s not. It’s the most horrible thing that’s ever happened to me. But it’s also not the only thing I think about. I can like a chinchilla without it being about my sister, Princeton.”

  “You brought her up.”

  “But you were thinking about her.”

  “Only after you brought her up.”

  “Semantics,” Digby said. “Seriously, though. I need to change my life story. I’m done being the Boy Whose Sister Was Taken. I need to either find Sally or find out how she died.”