Kiss List (Book I of the List Series)

Chapter 22 - El Diablo

I sat in my room staring at my cell phone impatiently. I checked the clock on my wall every few seconds, watching the minute hand tick at an excruciatingly slow pace. 7 PM came and went and Missy had still not called. It was infuriating. On one hand, I wanted to call her and demand to know the clue so I could help the boys as soon as possible. I still had Missy's phone number from when Doug had forwarded the photos of Sam to her. On the other hand, I did not want to give her the satisfaction of seeing me panic.

Finally, I couldn't take it anymore. I had called David's and Sam's cell phones numerous times and not gotten any response. It was driving me insane. I snatched up my phone and dialed Missy's number.

"Hello," someone answered in a muffled voice.

"Missy? Is that you?"

"Oh yeah, hi Sadie, what's up?" Missy asked nonchalantly.

"What's up?" I almost screamed. "It's after 7 PM. What's the clue?"

I heard a crunch on the other end of the line. The girl was actually eating as she talked to me.

"Right, right, yeah, I forgot about that," Missy said. There was another crunch as she bit into something. "El Biabbo."

"What?" I asked, trying to understand her.

"El Diablo," Missy after she had cleared her throat. "The clue is El Diablo."

"El Diablo?" Now I was screaming. "What the hell is El Diablo?"

"Yeah, that's it, you're on the right track. Talk to you later, Sadie," Missy said. Then she hung up.

"Ahhhhh!" I yelled and slapped my palm on my desk. The girl was infuriating. El Diablo? It didn't make any sense. I grabbed my laptop and searched "El Diablo." According to the search results, "El Diablo" meant "The Devil" in Spanish.

Well that was fitting but besides knowing why Missy had said I was on the right track when I said the word "hell," I wasn't any closer to finding out where Sam was and the minutes were still ticking away. I tried searching for restaurants in the Lakeville area named El Diablo. No luck. I tried a broader search for anything named El Diablo in the vicinity. Nothing.

I gritted my teeth. I needed answers. Even though it might raise some embarrassing questions, I needed to ask someone for help. The person I knew with the most answers around was Olivia. Reluctantly, I dialed her number.

Olivia thought I was insane. I know that because she said it several times. "I don't understand you," she said. "You already know what El Diablo means. Why are you asking where he is? Obviously he'd be in hell."

"No," I said in exasperation. "I heard someone talking about El Diablo at school and it seemed like some sort of place or maybe a person in our school. You don't know about anything like that?"

"Sadie," Olivia said. "This is weird. Are you sure you're okay?"

I finally gave up trying to get something useful out of Olivia. I hung up and dialed Payton's number. I didn't really think Payton would know the answer but the only area Olivia was oblivious about was the school social life, and that was Payton's area of expertise. If neither Olivia nor Payton knew the answer, I would know that Missy was sending me on a wild goose chase. Then, I thought, the next rationale step would be going over to Missy's house and punching her right in the face.

"Yo girl, what's wrong?" Payton said as soon as she answered her phone.

That caught me off guard. "What makes you think something's wrong?" I asked uncomfortably.

"Uh, because you're calling me instead of texting me," Payton said. "No one does that anymore. I figured if you were going old school something serious must be going on."