As you could probably imagine, I caught all 31 flavors of holy hell from my parents when they heard from Mr. Carmichael. I never went back into the house, I just sat on the front porch and waited to hear the uproar. They subscribed utterly to Mr. Carmichael's version of the events and in between screaming damnation at me, they bombarded me with questions I couldn't possibly answer to their satisfaction.
The sun was rising when the riot act had finally been read out in its entirety. The gist of my further punishments were as follows:
1. I was now grounded for an additional month.
2. I would have no contact with Sadie for the indefinite future. This was at Mr. Carmichael's insistence.
3. I would not be allowed to take driver's ed or otherwise pursue my driver's license until I turned eighteen. And...
4. Upon my return to school, any grade I received below a B+ would result in further grounding and revocation of privileges to be defined if and when they occur.
I considered these punishments to be an outrage and bullshit of the highest order. The one that stung the most was being cut off from Sadie. I had a million questions to ask her, they buzzed through my mind endlessly like angry bees. I was dying of curiosity. More than that, though, I just missed my friend. That she had returned to us was a huge relief, I was glad for that, but to be denied contact was just cruel. The hell of it is, I couldn't blame them entirely.
I knew their anger arose from laboring under false pretenses. The only answer they had was that we had, for some unknowable reason, spirited Sadie away in some sort of hideout just to mess with them. They thought we would let the whole town go into an uproar, conduct a massive search, lie to the police, the media, make fools of everyone, just for a childish prank. Why would we do that? But there were no other answers. We didn't give them any, at least. What could we say?
We didn't know anything ourselves, apart from those few facts that were, to us, undeniable: Sadie entered that closet with Jeff, and Jeff left the closet without her. For two whole weeks, she was simply gone. No one, Sadie included, knew where she might have been. At the end of those two weeks, she emerged from that closet believing, or claiming to believe, that no time had passed.
Those facts provided no answers, only more questions. Our parents didn't even have that to fall back on. The only point at which they had to cling was that we were all present when she disappeared and we were all present when she reappeared. Thus, we were to blame. Ipso facto.
It was maddening. Maddening. All of my life, as far back as I could remember, I had been fascinated by real-life mysteries, just like this. Ghosts, U.F.O.s, Bigfoot, The Bermuda Triangle, unsolved murders, I read all about them. I wished again and again that I could experience something so strange and unusual. Well, here I was. The strangest thing I would probably ever encounter, sitting right next door, and I couldn't leave my room. How was I supposed to deal with that?
With nothing else to do, I spent hours with my desk pushed up to the window, watching the Carmichael house for any clues to what may be happening within. I scribbled pages of notes, but they were mostly obsessive ramblings. I didn't see anything. Of course, the only window I could see clearly was Eliza's, and that vantage point quickly became distinctly unhelpful.
Sunday night she had caught me staring up at her window. We locked eyes, and she slowly began unbuttoning her blouse. My jaw dropped, and in that frozen moment, I thought of something apart from the mystery of Sadie. Only, instead of baring the goods to me, she stopped halfway through and flipped me the old double deuce. Both birds, and a quick closing of her curtains. She hadn't opened them since.
