Trouble is a Friend of Mine - Hardcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Stephanie Tromly was born in Manila, grew up in Hong Kong, graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, and worked as a screenwriter in Los Angeles. She is currently on leave from her PhD program in English Literature at the University of Toronto and lives in Winnipeg with her husband and young son. Stephanie is the author of the Trouble Is a Friend of Mine trilogy.

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Of course I didn’t like Digby when I first met him. No one does. He’s rude, he doesn’t ever take no for an answer, and he treats you like a book he’s already read and knows the ending to even if you yourself didn’t yet. Now, if you’re a normal sixteen-year-old like I am, and you spend half your time obsessing about the future and what you’re supposed to be and spend the other half reading about makeup, diets, and all the ways to change who you already are, then the stuff he hits you with is hard to take. Like Digby himself said: The truth is almost always disappointing.

Not that I need him to tell me about the truth. Or disappointment. In the last six months, I went from living in an almost-good part of Brooklyn to my parents divorcing and Mom and me moving to River Heights, a small city in the armpit of upstate New York. Trust me, it’s an even bigger lifestyle demotion than it sounds like. 

Here’s my first confession. I hung out with cool people, sure, but looking back, I think maybe we were friends only because we were in the same classes and our parents all got divorced around the same time. Digby calls them circumstantial friends. Right place, right time—it was easy to be friends, and so we were.

My friendship with Digby, on the other hand, while circumstantially convenient—he just shows up, after all—is not easy. Nothing with that guy ever is. At first, I thought I hung out with him because I was bored and wanted to get back at Mom for moving me here. Then I thought it was because he seemed so lost and alone all the time. 

But now I’m standing outside a house wired with enough explosives to blow up our entire block into a pile of matchsticks, trying to figure out the best way to get back in, and I realize that really, I’m the one who’s been lost. 

But I’m jumping too far ahead. All this began on the first day of school and we need to go back there for you to understand.

ONE

I’d been telling Mom to change the drained batteries in the doorbell since we moved in. The chimes were out of tune and dinging at half their normal speed. They sounded like a robot dying in slow agony. And now some jackass was ringing it over and over. After five minutes of pretending nobody was home, I thought I was going to snap, so I answered the door.

“Nice bell,” he said.

He was my age, wearing a black suit that made him look even taller and skinnier than he already was. It was a hot morning and he was sweating into the collar of his white button-down. He held a black book and I would’ve thought he was a Jehovah’s Witness with a Bible, but I doubted they wore sneakers when they came calling. His messy brown hair had probably once been pop-star shaggy, but now it needed cutting. His sad brown eyes turned down at the corners and he had a bored facial expression that I later realized was one of his main weapons in life.

“Sorry, not interested.” Just to be safe, I yelled, “It’s no one, Mom, just some guy selling something.”

“Why are you pretending your mom’s home? You’re here alone. You guys drove off together, but you’re back and her car isn’t. I’m guessing she dropped you at school and you walked home,” he said. “Next time, fake sick and save her the gas.”

I tried another one. “Dad!”

“You only had the one car in the garage—the tires are squishy, by the way—the grass on your lawn that isn’t brown is a foot tall, recycling isn’t sorted, and you know . . . the doorbell,” he said. “There’s no dad in the picture.”

I was too shocked to deny it.

“What, were you casing the place? Because I gotta tell you, we don’t have anything nice.” The following catalog ran through my head: letter opener in the hall drawer, knives on the kitchen counter, poker by the busted fireplace in the den, and a collection of advice from Sexual Assault Prevention Day, like: “Never let them take you to a second location.”

“Casing the place? No. Well . . . technically, I guess I was casing around your house, but not your actual house,” he said. “Anyway, I’ve watched you photograph yourself every morning—”

“What?! You’re looking in my window—”

“I need to see the photos,” he said. “Although, if you only take them at the same time every day, they probably won’t tell me much because they never do anything interesting in the mornings. Then again, you never know . . .”

“I’m calling the police.”

I slammed the door so hard, the doorbell started ringing on its own. 

“Listen, my name’s Digby. Here’s my e-mail address.” He slid a small piece of paper under the door that said: Digby@TheRealDigby.com. “E-mail the photos if that’s less freaky for you.”

Through the glass panel in the door, I saw him start to knock, so I grabbed the letter opener and flashed it in an I’m-gonna-stab-you way. I guess I was convincing, because he said “Whoa” and backed away. When he got to the sidewalk, he looked up to my bedroom window, then stared at the mansion across the street for a long time. 

And that wasn’t even the weirdest thing that happened that day. I’d just started as a junior at River Heights High and didn’t know they phoned parents of absent students after first period bell. They called it the Ferris Bueller Rule. Apparently the school board made the new rule after a girl disappeared during summer vacation. Marina Jane Miller (TV news always used all three of her names) had been kidnapped while friends were sleeping over in her room. They hadn’t heard a thing. The whole of River Heights was freaked, especially the rich people, because Marina Miller was rich.

The school called Mom at work and she called me, but when I didn’t pick up, she rushed home only to find me napping. Naturally, she had a mini conniption fit but much worse than that was the fact that cutting school landed me in an early intervention meeting with thirteen other kids who got busted that day.

Which is where I saw Digby again.

TWO

The truancy officer was a hard-ass named Musgrave. He was the kind of man about whom Mom would say, “Poor thing wasn’t held enough as a baby.” He sat us in a circle and slowly walked around outside it. When I was first summoned to the meeting, I didn’t think it was going to be a big deal, but Musgrave’s black uniform and shiny badge were intimidating. 

Meanwhile, our guidance counselor, who introduced himself as “please-call-me-Steve,” stood in the middle of the circle handing out chocolate chip cookies he’d baked for us. He’d also made hello, my name is stickers. Mine had zoe webster in swirly red ink like all the girls’. The boys’ were done in blue. 

Musgrave scowled when Please-Call-Me-Steve offered him a cookie. Funnily, the two of them looked evil-twin/good-twin alike. Both were short, dumpy men with bad haircuts and red splotchy faces, but where Steve’s was red with sunburn from riding his bike to work, Musgrave’s was red from, I’d guess, drinking and rage.

Musgrave was halfway through his threats about unexcused absences and summer school when Digby arrived. It had taken Musgrave twenty minutes to wind up to this climax, so he was totally derailed when Digby sauntered in.

“You must think you’re a funny guy, almost...