When I thought of him, I thought of the same sound bites: the screaming and cursing, calling me an A-rab, slamming down the basket, the liquor breath. I wondered if maybe, in some deep place where a flake of love floated inside him, he had wanted to take Ella away to the mythical Hamptons where rich people sip liquid gemstones on marshmallow yachts, but somewhere along the way, the demons got him and extinguished the instinct to give his baby a better life than he had.
Whatever his intent, he was a lizard now. I realized I could help Ella by keeping him away from her. I needed to write that letter.
I sat at the coffee shop with my laptop, my Guide to Northeast Colleges, a caffeine buzz, and a good frame of mind. I opened a blank page and wrote my letter, the letter that would be presented to the judge, the letter that would possibly help determine his sentencing. I wrote about the incident and how terrifying it was and how it left me with blood in my urine and spleen pain and broken ribs and a bruised forehead and a scar on my face. The scar was still there. The headaches were still there sometimes. I had bad dreams. I had night terrors. I got nervous when a car pulled into the parking lot too fast. I got nervous when I smelled liquor on someone’s breath. I got nervous when I saw a baby crying. (I left out the part about stalking Ella’s entire family on Facebook. That just made me look pathetic.) The incident left me a little broken. It also left me humiliated. People made fun of me, judged me, made me feel bad about myself. I was afraid that if he got out of jail, he’d come after me. I was even more afraid of what he’d do to his baby girl.
Those things were all true. They were what needed to go into the letter. But they weren’t the lasting effects of the incident. The lasting effects of the incident started with Mr. Stewy Upton nominating me as a stand-in for Alexis Ahern.
“Here, Mom. It’s done.” I handed her the letter. She read it and reread it and smiled, which seemed inappropriate.
“Why are you smiling?”
“Because you laid it on thick, and I think it’s going to influence the judge to get that bastard in the balls.”
“Weird, Mom. You’ve been hanging around Dad too long.”
My mother got out her meticulous file of bruise photos, a rainbow of ugly Sadie faces and monster tail poses.
“Gross, Mom.”
“We’re not entering a beauty pageant, are we?” She got her phone off the counter. “One more for luck.”
We went out to the garden, where the hydrangeas were browning a bit and the chill had killed the daylilies. “Don’t move.” I held my hair away from the monster tail and Mom took too many pictures.
I didn’t want to look, but I did. It was there, as it always would be, curled and trying to look cute. It had gotten slightly lighter, more flesh-toned. “Better than it was, honey,” she said. “And after all that complaining, you’re done. Remember that when I suggest you get going on the college applications.”
“Will do, Mom.”
I was in the mood to clean my room and purge my summer shit and get ready for school. I stood in the doorway, staring at the origami cranes hanging haphazardly from corner to corner. In one long tug, I pulled them down.
Every last one.
THIRTY
GRANDMA SULLIVAN WAS fine creeping around the neighborhood in her Toyota Avalon in daytime, but after sunset she was all squints and panic. I can’t see! I can’t see, damn it!
“Take Grandma to get the lotto tickets,” Mom said, giving me the I have a migraine sign.
I was in the middle of a virtual tour of Pepperdine with Shay and her very awesome roomie Eleanor from Detroit. The other two roommates were book troll gadflies, but Shay and Eleanor from Detroit were two sweet peas in a pod with their friendliness and unending quest for fun. Shay had left the hellish tennis camp behind her and was starting anew.
“Here comes the sun,” I sang.
“What?” Shay said.
“She’s singing the Beatles,” Eleanor said. And I liked her even more.
Even though Grandma Sullivan couldn’t see at night, she was still perfectly capable of backseat driving all the way to the convenience store so we could buy her lotto tickets.
“Turn left up ahead. It’s a shortcut,” she said.
“I’m going the way I like to go,” I said.
I waited in the car for a while and finally decided to go into the store to see what was taking her so long. That was when I literally collided with Seth and D-Bag. It took me a couple seconds to process Seth’s grinning face. I almost turned and ran away. Then I saw D-Bag’s T-shirt.
“Speak of the devil. We were just talking about you.”
I ignored Seth and stepped in front of D-Bag. “Where did you get that T-shirt?”
“This? It’s the Unlikelies. Have you been living under a rock?”
“I know what it is. Where did you get the T-shirt?”
“Online.”
I couldn’t believe D-Bag was standing in a convenience store, holding a Red Bull and wearing a T-shirt with our five masked Civil War soldiers, our avatar printed on the front.
I shook my head and started to walk away.
Seth grabbed my arm. “You’re that bitter? You can’t even say hi?”
I took a deep breath. “Hi, Seth. How was your summer?” I said with my sweetest Sadie Cakes voice. I stared at the T-shirt. Some self-serving online loser was making money off our movement.
“It was good. I’m just packing for college. I guess you were too busy with Gordie Harris to answer my texts.”
“I’m sorry, Seth. I really, truly hope you have the best four years of your life.” I reached up and gave him an awkward hug. “I have to go.”
I left the store and fumbled with the Prius keys. Grandma Sullivan was already in the backseat. The last thing I wanted to do was cry in front of my grandmother, but I couldn’t help it.
“What’s wrong, Sadie?”
I reached for the tissue box. “Nothing, Grandma. I was just freaked out to see Seth.”
“The new guy is better looking. You can tell Seth will be bald by the time he’s twenty-five. Good riddance.”
That was Grandma Sullivan’s best attempt at consoling me.
“Thanks, Grandma.”
“Don’t waste any more tears on that slob.”
But the tears weren’t over Seth. They were tears of rage. The Unlikelies was our thing. It was built of our goodwill and pure intentions, and it had degenerated into a freak show on the news and a T-shirt business catering to the poseurs and wannabes, including a kid who purposefully referred to himself as Douche Bag.
I dropped off Grandma and her tickets and rushed home to Google the Unlikelies. There it was—an online store with hats, Tshirts, sweatshirts, bumper stickers, mouse pads. I forwarded it to everyone and sank into the chair in the corner with my Flopper and a stomach full of fury.
Gordie was right. He had said it was only a matter of time before the whole operation became convoluted. And now there was nothing any of us could do to stop it.
Early the next morning, I tiptoed to the basement to dig my leprechaun T-shirt out of the dirty laundry. I stopped in front of the family photo wall. Great-Grandma Sullivan watched, smiling her goofy toothless smile.
“Don’t judge,” I said out loud. “I need my damn shirt.”
I wondered what Great-Grandma Sullivan’s life would have been like if she had kept her feet but left the children to die. They weren’t her children. They weren’t even any relation to her. Would she still be smiling in that picture?