With that, Josie took my hand and led us to the fun house line, which we didn’t have to wait in. “Anyone who knows you knows you’re not mean. Anyone who knows you knows you’re awesome. And Pete missed out.”
I smiled. “You know, Josie, you’re so nice. You say the nicest things. Maybe if I’d been nicer and said nice things, it would’ve been easier to make friends.”
“Trust me, you’re nice,” she said. That was so Josie—my ally, always. I thought that maybe I should make sure I had her back as much as she had mine.
Josie took my hand again and pulled me into the hall of mirrors. We wiggled through the foam pillars, scaled the rope bridge, and were at the floorboards.
A hot sec later we dropped to the sand under the boardwalk. Josie tucked the shell away while I went over to the Smoothie Factory’s freshly painted basement door that we’d gone through many times before. “I wonder if the bags are in here. We could see what’s in them. I’m dying to know what those guys are up to that’s so hush-hush.” I didn’t give her a chance to respond. “Only one way to find out.” I turned the knob, but sure enough it was locked. “Darn. I thought we could check out that secret machine, too.”
Then there was a sound from the other side of the door, and it cracked open.
“Go! Go!” I pushed Josie into the shadows away from the door. We crouched down.
Lydia, the girl who we’d asked about jobs, stepped out, tossed a bag of trash into a can, and went back in.
The lock didn’t catch.
Twenty-Nine Stella
Police Station
June 25–26
I tell Santoro, “So I stuck my hand in the door to hold it open, and I led Josie inside.”
“You entered the premises?”
“Yeah.”
He rubs his hands over his face. “Geez.” Then he stands up and bends at the waist, wincing. “Let’s take a break right there. I’m going to go talk to Josie for a while.
“Your dad called your lawyer. Is it Greg?”
“Gregory,” I correct with sort of an eye roll.
“You don’t like him?” he asks.
“I do.”
He gives me a look. “You know, he’s driving all the way down here in the middle of the night.”
“I know. He’s fine. In fact, when I got in trouble at school, he’s the one who came up with the three-strikes thing. It calmed my mom down.”
“So he wanted to give you more chances.” Then he asks, “Kind of ironic, isn’t it?”
“What is?”
“That he came up with a system to give you more chances, and it sounds like you aren’t giving him one.”
I pause for longer than a hot sec. “That’s a fair thought, Detective,” I finally say.
“Let’s bring your dad in.” He waves at the window.
Dad opens the door. “How’s it going?”
“She’s doing great,” Santoro says. “She has a lot to say. Lots of details.”
Dad looks at me. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
Santoro looks at his watch. “It’s just after midnight, and I’d like to talk to Josie. Stella can stretch her legs or whatever.”
“Thanks, Jay,” Dad says to him.
“No problem. But do me a favor. There’s a lot of context that I wouldn’t want to get lost, so don’t talk to anyone else about this except your lawyer. Do you know if he’s almost here?”
“Yeah. Should arrive soon.” Dad asks, “Any word from the hospital?”
“I got a text a little while ago,” Santoro says. “It’s touch and go.”
We get to the hallway, and I realize how hot it’s gotten in that little room, and how loud it is out here. People are in line to talk to the front desk sergeant; police radios and scanners chirp, bleep, and chatter with instructions from operators; and uniformed officers on breaks laugh about “You won’t believe what this guy did…”
I look in a window to another interview room, where a detective is screaming at some guy handcuffed to a table. I mean, right in his face. I wonder if Santoro does that. He probably does. The guy thrashes around; it must hurt his wrists, and create those nicks and dents that I saw in the table. I’m dying to know what this guy did.
Santoro walks away, but I call him back. “Detective?”
He turns. “Yeah, Stella?”
I step up to him and realize how tall he is.
“Can you take it easy on her?”
He says, “You might not believe this, but I’m a nice guy. I’m only interested in finding out how that girl ended up in the hospital.”
“It’s just that, you know, I’m from New York, so I can handle all this”—I indicate the police station—“a little better than Josie.” I add, “She scares easy.”
“Got it.” He goes to walk away again.
“One more thing,” I say.
He turns around to listen, but he twists his neck to give it a crack, and I think that’s a sign that I’m frustrating him.
“It was me. I held the basement door open, and I dragged Josie inside to look around.”
Part Two Josie
Thirty Josie
Police Station
June 26 (Continued)
Detective Santoro is a good listener. He takes some notes to help him remember stuff. It’s thoughtful of him to give me a Coke and chips. It must be late, because I’m getting really tired. I wonder if he has kids, maybe a daughter. He doesn’t smile much. I think maybe he’s so used to trying to be scary that he forgot how not to. And he is… scary, that is. I’d prefer it if he’d smile. I wonder how Stella is. I hope she’s okay. She’s had a rough year; she doesn’t really need this drama.
“How did this all make me feel?” I ask myself, because I figure that would be the detective’s next question. “I was really happy that we were both excited to find out what was going on in Whalehead—the pier, the Three Ts’ secret trips under the boardwalk, the machine in the Smoothie Factory basement.”
Detective Santoro pushes a corner of his lip up, but it looks like it takes great effort for him to do it.
“I felt good that Stella and I shared an interest in this adventure.”
“That’s nice. Thanks for sharing,” Detective Santoro says. “But can we talk about things that happened? You know, the facts.”
“I guess I wanted you to have the whole picture,” I say. “Just before the basement door closed, I stuck my hand in it. To hold it open. Then we froze there for three winks. When it seemed like the girl wasn’t coming back, I pushed the door open and peeked inside. No one was there, so I said to Stella, ‘Let’s go in and look around.’ ”
Detective Santoro closes his flippy notebook, leans back in his chair far enough that the front legs lift, and rocks a bit. He stares at me like I’ve confused him.
I clarify. “Stella didn’t want to go inside, but I told her she was a wimp if she didn’t.”
He raises his eyebrows a little at that. “It was your idea to go inside?”
“Right. All me.”
“And you told Stella that she was a wimp if she didn’t?”
“That’s right.”
“I talk to a lot of people; I can usually spot the troublemakers. And you don’t seem like the type to sneak into a place,” he says.
“Sneaking? No. We’ve gone in through that door hundreds of times. We just wanted to look around. It wasn’t really sneaking.”
Thirty-One Josie
Under the Boardwalk
June 22 (Continued)
We’d been in this basement lots of times when it was Water Ice World, because it’s easier to get back to the boardwalk by cutting through the store, rather than walking out to Thirty-Fourth Street and going around. Plus it was just more fun to take a shortcut. And sometimes Yasmina would give us free water ice.
While lots had changed upstairs in the main section of the store, the basement looked pretty much the same as when it had been Water Ice World. Lots of boxes, piles of cups, l
ids, and cleaning supplies. Except for one thing: A big machine was in the middle of the space, just like Lydia had mentioned.
The contraption hissed and squirted water out its bottom. The drainage flowed into a hole in the basement floor, in order to prevent flooding.
“What is it?” I asked Stella.
“It ain’t a dishwasher.” She looked at the drain in the cement floor. “Where d’ya think that goes?”
I said, “Same place all the local runoff goes—” Just as I was about to give her specifics, we heard voices headed our way from upstairs.
Stella tugged me by the sleeve to follow her behind a cardboard mountain, and she put a finger to her mouth, signaling me to be quiet.
It was Lydia and an older woman who I recognized, because Stella and I had seen her talking with Mayor Lopez when we were jogging. Actually, they hadn’t been talking—she’d been yelling at him.
Lydia said, “It’s going to be the highlight of the summer, Mrs. Gardiner. I can’t believe you were able to arrange it.”
There was the sound of the walk-in refrigerator opening as the woman, Mrs. Gardiner, said, “A promotional event with Meredith Maxwell is going to put the Smoothie Factory on the map. And that map covers the whole country.”
“Will she actually come here?” Lydia’s voice dipped as she entered the refrigerator. “Like, can I meet her? A photo op?”
I had to struggle to hear the rest. “As long as it’s okay with her people. She probably has to be careful. She has security and all,” the woman, who I’d now pegged as the manager, or more likely the owner, said. Then she directed Lydia: “Just a few scoops. We don’t have an endless supply.”
Lydia asked, “Where do you get this—”
My cell phone vibrated with my alarm reminder to text Dad.
Stella’s eyes popped out of her head at the hum of the phone.
I snagged it before Mrs. Gardiner and Lydia came out of the refrigerator, and texted Dad that we were at the Smoothie Factory, which I didn’t like saying, because it implied I was actually buying something from there, and I didn’t want him to think I’d broken my boycott.
Mrs. Gardiner was saying, “… brings it, but just once a year. So we have to make it last.”
“How come no one else uses it, if it’s so great, so healthy?”
“If I tell you, then it wouldn’t be a secret ingredient,” Mrs. Gardiner said.
“Okay, okay, but just tell me Meredith’s schedule.”
“She’s coming to Whalehead, and she’ll bop around the boardwalk for a bit, and then she’ll come here for a smoothie and interviews with the news media. We’re going to set up a cart on the boardwalk that day to be able to handle all the customers. We’ll sell a million smoothies, which will make our investors very happy.” Their voices muffled as they went back up the stairs. The last thing I was able to hear was “And after that, with her endorsement, there’s no telling how big this business can get.”
Once we couldn’t hear them anymore, we slunk out from our hiding place, and I walked around the machine, studying it. That drain. It was a piece of the puzzle. When I snapped it in place in my brain alongside the clues I’d found while snorkeling, it started to form a picture. One I didn’t like.
Stella said, “That Mrs. Gardiner lady is right. They’ll sell a ton that day and forever with Meredith Maxwell’s endorsement.”
I didn’t answer. Actually, I hardly heard Stella, because I was thinking so hard.
“We need to talk to Mr. Rodney,” I said.
“About what?” Stella asked.
“What he was looking for in the arcade.” I added, “The toxin. I think he was right.”
Thirty-Two Josie
Boardwalk
June 23
“Murielle duPluie here with all the shore news from WLEO. Finally the new bungee jump is installed on the pier, and wow is that thing high! Don’t know if I’ll have the nerve to try it.
“In other news, local experts have noted that Whalehead has an influx of dead jellyfish, a variety called medusas. They’ve been washing up onshore, so watch your step.”
It had rained during the night, bringing with it much appreciated cooler air.
We set out for Mr. Rodney’s bungalow via the boardwalk, dodging morning walkers, joggers, and Rollerbladers. It sounds safer than it was.
“Why are we going to see Mr. Rodney, aside from the usual entertainment value?” Stella asked.
“I want to learn more about this alleged toxin he was looking for in the arcade. It sounded crazy at the time, but now I’m not so sure.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Stella said while texting, I assumed with TJ.
I glanced out at the ocean. As a kid I hated going to the beach in the morning to find that my castle project from the day before had been leveled, but now I loved how when the tide came in at night, it smoothed the sand. It set up for a new day of fun and adventure on the beach.
“Ohmigod!” Stella grabbed me by the arm and twisted me around, turning my back to oncoming “traffic.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“Something you don’t want to see. For real. Trust me on this, Josie. Don’t look.”
After a comment like that, I had no choice. I turned and I saw it. It was our dad, Gary Higley. Rollerblading. Badly. Shirtless, knee-padded, elbow-padded, helmeted, holding Laney’s hand. And, get this—her pads matched his! They were smiling and so focused on not falling or crashing that they didn’t notice us.
“Phew,” Stella said. “I thought that if they saw us, they’d stop to talk.” She pinched her eyes shut incredibly tightly and reopened them.
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to unsee that.” She blinked hard again. “It isn’t working.”
“Oh come on. They’re wicked cute,” I said.
“Too cute,” Stella said. “Besides, I don’t trust that lady.”
I asked, “How can you not trust a lady who rollerblades with matchy-matchy safety pads?”
“Whatever is going on with the Koala, the boys’ nightly escapes on kayaks to deliver something from the boat to the Smoothie Factory—she’s somehow involved. Why else would she have so many pics of the boat? And that guy, the man. I think she’s leading a double life.”
“Why would Dad’s friend set him up with someone living a double life?” I asked.
She said, “Maybe he didn’t know. It’s a secret double life.”
“But that fishing buddy is a detective, so he’d know.”
“Maybe,” Stella said, “he’s not a very good detective.”
Thirty-Three Josie
Police Station
June 26 (Continued)
Detective Santoro looks up from his flippy pad. “What was that?”
“Sorry. That was before she met you. She probably has a different opinion now.”
“My feelings don’t get hurt easily,” he says. “I’m tough.”
“Of course you are. You probably have a tattoo, right?”
He rubs his eyes like he has some kind of headache.
“Do you get migraines? Sometimes that’s from not drinking enough water, you know.”
“Josie, it’s late. All this is very helpful information, but let’s try to stay on track? Okay?”
“For sure, Detective Santoro,” I say. “You got it.”
Thirty-Four Josie
Boardwalk
June 23 (Continued)
Dario’s sister, Angie, called from behind us, “Was that your dad?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Nope,” Stella said.
Angie Imani laughed. “Hey, I have parents too, so I totally get it. Mine are more embarrassing, by the way. I just hope your dad and his lady friend don’t take out a trash can or something. You know, cause a scene and end up in a viral video.”
“Geez. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen,” Stella said.
Angie was so pretty. A lanyard crowded with keys and her Water Sport Adventure ID badge dang
led from her neck, and she held her phone in a totally cute seashell case in one hand, and held a lime-green smoothie cup in the other. A Coach wristlet hung under the cup. She could’ve put everything in a purse or backpack, but the way she had it made her hands look dressed-up and busy. She was like an important woman on the move.
“Whatcha up to today?” Stella asked Angie. Stella’d been dying to hang out with her forever, but Angie never had an interest. Stella thought it was because Angie was older than us, which makes sense, but I think it’s more because she always thought of us as her nerdy little brother’s mates, and there was a rule somewhere that said she couldn’t be friends with Dario’s mates.
“You know, living the dream,” Angie said. “I work at WSA at ten, grab lunch at Sprouts with Trish, and I’m moonlighting to earn a little extra moolah. Can you believe my dad is making me pay for my own insurance this year?” She wrapped her perfectly glossed lips around the wide straw.
“Moonlighting?” Stella asked. “What’s that?”
“An extra night job. Just for a few days—actually, nights. It’s cool.”
Stella said, “Sounds cool.”
I studied the cup that was clearly from the Smoothie Factory, but instead of saying “Whalehead, NJ” under the logo, it said SHELTER HARBOR, NJ. I pointed to it. “I didn’t know they had a store there.”
“Oh yeah. It’s perfect for me. I get a breakfast smoothie down there when I pick up the van, and then later in the day, I get a second one up here.” She jutted out her chin. “Can you even believe how awesome it’s making my skin?”
Her skin did look fab.
“I can’t believe the vitamins in these things. You can look up all the values online. It’s off the hook. I could eat spinach all day and not get this much iron.” She held out the cup, indicating that was the source of the iron. “It’s totally worth waiting in line, if you ask me.”
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