I wasn’t sure it mattered.
I tried to put together what I had learned in Mr. Schultz’s shed. Start from the beginning: One, Troy had seen Buck and his brother, Randy, both of whom he claimed used steroids, go into that shed with test tubes. Now that I’d been inside the shed, it was clearly some kind of laboratory. It could have something to do with making the PEDs-performance-enhancing drugs. Maybe Randy or Buck was tinkering with, I don’t know, their formula.
I frowned. I’m not sure Buck could spell the word chemistry, nonetheless start fiddling with complex compounds.
Then I remembered the urine samples.
I don’t know how many were stored in that cabinet-and, ew, I hoped none fell on the floor as we ran out-but what could Buck and Randy be doing with them?
Hmm.
I had read somewhere that steroid cheaters would often use someone else’s urine to beat the system. Here was how it worked: You hid a urine sample on you when you went to the test. When you entered the bathroom stall to urinate, you switched your sample with one you knew was clean.
Could that be it?
Possible, except for one thing. There were probably a hundred urine samples in storage. We only get tested once or maybe twice a year. Why so many?
I was missing something.
I didn’t know what. In a sense, it didn’t matter. Tomorrow I would head back to Adiona Island. There was some kind of clue there, some kind of link between that island and the Bat Lady and the Abeona Shelter and maybe even Luther and my father. I wanted to help here. I wanted to figure out why Troy had been set up and by whom. But it wasn’t my priority.
Except…
I had an idea. I took out my phone and called Brandon Foley. He answered on the third ring. “What’s up?” he said.
“I’m about two blocks from your house. You free?”
“Sure,” Brandon said. “Anything to avoid studying for this physics test.”
As I got closer, I heard the comforting sound of a dribbling basketball. Brandon was in his driveway again, working on his game. He tossed me the ball when he saw me coming. I stopped and took a jumper. Swish. He threw the ball back to me-“courtesy” is a universal basketball concept-but I just held the ball.
“You have your phone?” I asked.
“It’s in the house. Why?”
“I may need you to text Troy.”
“Why can’t you?”
“Because he and I…”
“What?”
And that was when I stopped. I liked Brandon. I really did. But I wasn’t sure that I wanted to confess to him that I had just done something illegal. He was president of the student council and all those other things. He took his responsibilities as basketball captain seriously.
Could he be trusted?
Sure, Brandon had been the one to get me involved in helping Troy, but what would he say if I told him that I’d just broken into a storage shed and run away from the cops?
Would he tell?
I had thought that I could ask Brandon to contact Troy for me, so that it wouldn’t get traced back to my phone. But now I wondered whether that was a good move.
“You and he what?” Brandon asked again.
“Nothing.”
“So why did you want to see me?”
In a way, Brandon couldn’t help me with this. I would hear from Troy or I wouldn’t. It didn’t change anything. Brandon couldn’t help with the break-in. He couldn’t help answer why I had found urine samples in that shed or really anything that could cast light on this situation.
So even if I did trust him, even if I believed that he only had my and Troy’s best interests at heart, what was the point of telling him?
Answer: nothing. There was no point.
But there was still one key to all this-one person who could answer all my questions about that shed, about illegal steroids, about why Troy had tested positive. It kept circling back to that same question:
Why had Buck left the town of Kasselton?
There was only one person who, it seemed, could really answer that question for me.
Buck himself.
“Where’s Buck?” I asked.
Brandon looked puzzled by the question. “I told you. He lives with his mom.”
“Where does she live?”
“I don’t remember,” Brandon said. “Somewhere in Maine or Massachusetts.”
“You have no idea?”
“I remember he used to go there a lot in the summer.” And then Brandon added something that changed everything: “He’d go boating or fishing off the island.”
I stood there. I was gripping the basketball so hard, I thought it might pop.
“Island?” I said.
“Yeah, his mom lives on an island. It’s got a weird name. Like Apollonia or Adonis or something with an A.”
I swallowed. “Adiona?”
“Yeah, that’s it,” Brandon said. “Buck’s mom lives on Adiona Island.”
CHAPTER 38
Ema and I barely talked on the way back up to Adiona Island.
The seas were choppy this morning. We stood at the front of the ferry. The wind ripped at our faces. I watched Ema’s pale complexion redden under the onslaught. She didn’t care. I didn’t care either.
We had stopped trying to piece this together. There comes a time when you need to put all the theories aside. Mrs. Friedman had a poster in her classroom with a saying from Sherlock Holmes. I don’t remember the exact quote, so I’m paraphrasing, but it says that it’s a mistake to theorize before you have all the facts because then you twist facts to suit theories instead of the other way around.
We simply had no theories anymore.
We needed more facts.
The wind picked up. Everyone else had ducked inside to escape. Ema and I did not. We stared out as the island emerged from the fog.
“Mickey?”
The wind snatched away the word, making it hard to hear her.
“What?” I shouted back.
“I’m scared.”
“We’ll be fine,” I said.
“I love when you’re condescending.”
“I’m trying to be comforting.”
“Same thing, Mickey.” Ema looked up at me. “It’s cute that you want to be the hero, but I’d rather you were just honest, okay?”
I put my arm around her. It was just to keep her warm. Nothing else. She moved in closer and rested her head against my chest. We stood like that as the ferry moved closer to the port. I could almost feel something change as we docked. There was something in the air on this island.
A tension. An electricity.
We both felt it.
I moved my arm away. I still hadn’t heard from Troy, but then again, I hadn’t contacted him either. Spoon had tried to find where on the island Buck’s mother lived, but he couldn’t come up with anything. It didn’t matter. The island was small.
We would find the house.
Meanwhile, there was still the other matter. Ema had to go face-to-face with Jared Lowell, this online persona who had, it seemed, captured her heart. We started down the same road I had walked with Rachel. The wind grew less powerful as we moved inland, but it never left.
“Do you remember what Bat Lady said to me?” Ema asked.
“She said a lot of things.”
“At the very end. Right before she got in that car and she drove off with that shaved head guy.”
I did remember. “She asked if you loved the boy.”
“She didn’t ask. She said it. Like she knew.”
I nodded. “Right.”
“Do you remember what she said after that?”
That line I remembered verbatim: “‘It will hurt.’”
“Right.”
“And then you asked what will. And she said the truth.”
We were nearing Jared’s road now. If the island had seemed quiet last time, it seemed completely abandoned now. We had not seen anyone or even a passing car since leaving the dock.