“Are you Sandra Tackett?” Alex said.
“That’s me. Now, who are you three?”
Alex introduced us all.
“Is this you?” Oliver said, and held up the 1967 yearbook opened to her photo.
“Where on earth did you get that?” she said, and then laughed in this very good way. “I’m actually the one next door. My twin sister and I thought it would be funny if we tricked everyone. She was photographed as me and vice versa.”
Alex and Oliver and I exchanged glances.
“Now—what, may I ask, brought you to my front door wielding a yearbook?”
I said, “We’re friends of Nigel Booker. Do you remember him? He was in your class.”
“How do you know Nigel?” she asked.
“We’re technically his fans,” Alex said.
“Nigel has fans now?”
“Have you read his novel?” Oliver asked.
“I have not,” she said.
“It was published in 1988, but it went out of print shortly after,” Alex said. “We think that two of the characters might be based on you and your sister.”
“Well, I’ll be,” she said, and then put her hand on her chest as if to suggest she was highly flattered. “Why would he write about us?”
Her asking that question seemed bad for Team Stella. If Sandra had been the real-life twin in the woods with Wrigley, she would know exactly why he would write about them. But then again, that was almost fifty years ago, so maybe she had forgotten. She also could have just been playing dumb, like she did for her twin—well, in the novel at least.
Regardless of whose theory was right, I could tell that the woman in front of us was excited, which scared me, because what if she was the bad twin in the novel? There was no way she would enjoy the read if we had it wrong. It seemed like we were playing with emotional dynamite.
“And it’s a love story,” Oliver said. “Maybe even a love letter.”
“A mystery we’re hoping you can solve,” Alex said. “We’d like to interview you after you read the book.”
“Why don’t you ask Nigel whatever questions you have? He’s the author. So certainly he can fill in the blanks.”
“He won’t talk about the novel anymore,” Alex said. “He’s put a moratorium on book discussions.”
“Why?”
“Well,” Alex said, “we believe he’s heartbroken. And that it might be you he’s pining for.”
“That sounds positively salacious!” the woman said with a huge smile on her face and both hands over her heart now, which seemed like a good sign for Team Stella. “Where can I get a copy of this novel?”
“It’s out of print, like we said,” Oliver said. “But we made you a photocopy.”
Alex held up the photocopied manuscript. “Again, we’re hoping you’ll be willing to read it and then answer a few questions for us.”
“Well, it certainly sounds interesting. And I have nothing but time these days.”
Alex gave her the manuscript, we agreed to return at the end of the week, and then there was no turning back.
“Shotgun!” Oliver yelled, relegating me to the backseat.
Alex and I went inside to speak with Oliver’s mother when we dropped him off. Oliver marched straight back to his room and pulled the door shut a little harder than necessary. Alex said he would visit the fathers of the boys who had broken Oliver’s glasses, but she needed to talk to his school. She agreed, but I got the feeling that she wasn’t going to follow through, because she kept saying, “I’ll call in a few days—once everything calms down,” even though Alex kept saying it was important to call right away.
“He needs an advocate. Two would be even better,” Alex said, and I could tell that he was really trying to do the right thing, to make a difference in Oliver’s life, but at the same time I wanted to remind him that he, too, was just a kid and not Oliver’s father.
Oliver was in his room, but the house was so small that he had to have heard the whole conversation. At one point, I got up and checked on him. He was pretending to read The Bubblegum Reaper, although he glanced over at me real quick when I knocked and opened the door.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Yeah. You okay?”
“Yeah.”
I didn’t know what else to say, so I went back into the living room and waited for Alex to finish. He phoned Oliver’s school, and when the answering machine came on, he held out the phone to Oliver’s mom, but she wouldn’t take it. Alex left a message asking the school to call her as soon as possible.
When Alex parked his Jeep in front of my home, he said, “You didn’t really say anything to Sandra Tackett when we visited her today. Oliver and I did all the talking.”
“I don’t think you should go visiting the fathers of those boys tonight,” I said, totally changing the subject.
“Why?”
“Because you’re not Oliver’s dad. Because you’re still a teenager like me. And we have eight months of high school left and—”
“The kid’s getting killed every day. We have to do something.”
“Kids get killed in every middle school in America.”
“Exactly.”
“But I feel like I’m getting killed, too, Alex.” The words were out of my mouth before I really had a chance to think about what I was saying. “I don’t even know what’s happening to me anymore.”
“What do you mean?”