“A stretch,” Alex said, “because that smile difference is barely perceivable. And even if there is a discrepancy between their smiles, maybe it was Sandra who put the song ‘Paperback Writer’ in the shared bio to let Booker know that she had faith in him even back then. And that’s why she’s smiling harder. Booker surely told her that he wanted to write a novel when they were talking in the woods. She knew he’d get the reference. It’s mind-numbingly obvious after all. Maybe even prophetic, since The Bubblegum Reaper was never published in hardback.”
“Wait,” I said. “So you’re saying that you have the Thatch twins’ real names and yet you haven’t done anything with them? You haven’t done any other research?”
“Oh, we have,” Oliver said. “But there’s a little problem.”
“And you’re not going to like it,” Alex said.
“Why?”
“Your girl Louise is no longer with us.”
“Guess what year she died?” Oliver said.
“How would I know that?”
“Nineteen eighty-nine,” Alex said.
Oliver said, “One year after—”
“The Bubblegum Reaper was published,” we all said in unison.
“Which might explain why Booker never resold the rights after he reacquired them,” Alex said.
“Why?” I said.
“Because,” Oliver explained, “he wrote it for Louise Tackett. He was trying to win her heart! So once her heart stopped beating, there was no point for the book to be in print any longer. At least as far as Booker was concerned. It’s not a novel but a public love letter to one woman.”
“Unless,” Alex said, “he had the twins mixed up, and I was right all along and Sandra Tackett was his great love—the twin who talked to turtles in the woods. Only Booker had it wrong the whole time, thinking he had that moment in the woods with Louise when it was actually Sandra, which would be the greatest tragedy I’ve ever heard of. It would even beat Romeo and Juliet. Only it would mean Booker’s Juliet isn’t actually dead but has been waiting all these years for him to figure it out!”
“But then why wouldn’t she come forward when she read the book?” I asked.
“Exactly!” Oliver said.
“Maybe she never read the book,” Alex said. “I mean, present company excluded, do you personally know anyone else who has—besides the teachers who gave it to us? Anyone?”
“Good point,” I said. “So why not track down Sandra Tackett?”
“Oh, we have,” Oliver said. “Like everyone else in South Jersey, she lives about twenty minutes from here.”
“So what are you waiting for?” I asked.
“It’s a gamble,” Alex said. “What if I’m wrong? What if Sandra Tackett gets mad when she reads the book? And what if Booker doesn’t want us to get involved? I mean—he’s forbidden us from even talking about The Bubblegum Reaper. What if Booker gets so mad at us that he’ll never speak with us again? We could be digging up an ugly skeleton here.”
I thought about how I’d lost Mr. Graves in an instant, and I didn’t think I could handle losing Booker, too.
“I’ve voted yes,” Oliver said. “Alex voted no. You’re the tiebreaker.”
“I am?”
“Yeah,” Alex said. “We agreed to let you end the stalemate. So your call, Nanette.”
“You really have her address?”
“Yep. She’s widowed,” Oliver said. “And pretty hot for an old lady. So if Alex is right . . .”
“Sometimes we go to her street and watch her do yard work from a distance,” Alex said. “She has a fantastic garden—vegetables and flowers. Her sunflowers grew seven feet before she cut them down this fall! And she’s spry for an older woman, moving around on her hands and knees quick as a spider. We’ve been scouting her for old Booker. It’s the least I could do after he wrote me so many letters and encouraged my writing—sending me so many book recommendations. Introducing me to Larkin and Bukowski. He’s the best teacher I’ve ever had, and he isn’t even officially my teacher. But I still worry about being wrong. Messing it all up. Crossing a line.”
There was that saying again, “crossing a line,” and I thought about Mr. Graves once more. Visiting the real live Stella Thatch, meeting another character from The Bubblegum Reaper, was almost impossible to resist—just like kissing Mr. Graves on Valentine’s Day—so hadn’t I learned my lesson? But this was different, because I would be doing it for Booker and not me. Or would I be?
“So what do you vote, Nanette?” Oliver said. “Moment of truth.”
“I have to think about it,” I said.
“Crushing anticlimax!” Oliver said, and then his mom came in right on cue.
“School night for Oliver,” she said, as if Oliver were six years old and not fourteen.
“Mom!” Oliver said.
“We’re going,” Alex said. “Talk tomorrow, Oliver.”
“Nice meeting you, Nanette,” Oliver said. “Good to have you on the team.”
“Good to be on the team,” I said, and then as I waved good-bye I saw the same goodness in Oliver’s face that I had seen in Alex’s many times. I started to wonder if that was what the bullies were after. Did they want to smash that goodness out of everyone? Alex was always calling the bullies “pretty boys,” maybe to emasculate them, maybe because they were the most popular and therefore considered the best-looking—but to me, being pretty wasn’t something to be ashamed of, and Oliver and Alex had a soft beauty in their glances and smiles that I found to be radiant. Maybe not in a sexual way, but in a way that makes everything okay, if only for a second or two. Mr. Graves had this quality, too.