DEAR DRIZZLE

I watched Gerald get kidnapped.

Well, me and the guy mopping the front hall. But he had earbuds in, so he doesn't count.

Here's what happened. It was 7:42 on a Monday morning in October, which means it was raining, which, in Brightwater, Oregon, is like saying it was 7:42 and the sun came up. Technically true.

I'd just come in through the front doors of Brightwater High (student population 611, if you count the foreign exchange student and the kid who's been "homeschooled in the band room" since sophomore year), and I was standing on the welcome mat doing what I do every morning, which is wring out my braid like a dishrag.

That was when Brock Halvorsen came strolling down the front hall, whistling.

Brock is the captain of the football team, president of the senior class's "social committee," and the owner of a truck so large that the school had to repaint the parking space lines to accommodate it. He was wearing his letter jacket, a pair of sunglasses (it was dark. It was raining), and a look I can only describe as extremely proud of himself.

He stopped in front of the trophy case.

Now, you need to understand about the trophy case. It's not really a trophy case. Brightwater High has won exactly three trophies in its history (one for a 1987 regional spelling bee, one for a science fair project about moss, and one in 2009 for something called "Most Improved Spirit," which I'm fairly sure was a pity award). So the rest of the case is taken up by Gerald.

Gerald is a great blue heron. He is four feet tall. He is also, at the time of this story, dead, and has been since 1962, when he flew into the school's old gymnasium window during a basketball game and was donated to the biology department by a very sorry student body. Mr. Hollis, who has taught AP Bio at Brightwater for thirty-one years, says Gerald is "the soul of this institution." Mr. Hollis once cried at an assembly when a freshman tried to put a Santa hat on him.

Brock opened the case. Which, I'd like to point out, isn't supposed to be openable. There's a lock. Brock, apparently, had a key.

He lifted Gerald out. Gerald's legs are about as long as I am tall, and they stuck out in all directions like a giant, feathery, extremely upset lawn chair. Brock tucked him under his arm. Then he walked right past me and the mopping guy, out the front doors, and into the rain.

I said, "Brock. What are you doing?"

He turned around and gave me a big grin. "Relax, Jude," he said. "It's a joke."

And then he put Gerald in the back of his truck, under a blue tarp, like a body, and drove away.

That was it. That was the whole thing. Thirty seconds, tops.

I should have said something else. Like, Put him back. Or, That is a protected migratory bird, Brock, even if he's a dead one. Or even just a good old-fashioned HEY.

I didn't, though. And the reason why is a thing I'll get to later. Besides, I knew it was a lost cause. When you are a person who gets along with literally everyone, you learn very quickly which fights you can't win. And any fight that involves Brock Halvorsen is the kind of fight where you don't just lose, you lose and then everybody laughs at you.

So I just stood there, dripping on the mat, while the guy with the mop went, "Huh," pulled out one earbud, looked at the empty case, put the earbud back in, and kept mopping.

That's Brightwater for you.

Mr. Hollis didn't notice Gerald was gone until fourth period.

I know this because Bree, who has him for fourth, texted me the whole thing in real time.

BREE: HE WALKED PAST THE CASE ON THE WAY TO THE COPIER

BREE: HE STOPPED

BREE: HE WENT BACKWARDS

BREE: SARA HE'S MAKING A SOUND

BREE: IT'S LIKE A KETTLE BUT SAD

By lunch, of course, the whole school knew. That's the thing about Brightwater. There's nothing to do here, so information is the only thing that moves faster than the rain. By lunch, there were three different theories about who'd done it (the seniors, the juniors pretending to be seniors, and a vengeful raccoon), and a fourth, more upsetting theory that Gerald had simply come back from the dead and left on his own.

Nobody said Brock's name. Not once. Everybody knew. Nobody said it.

This is because everyone likes Brock.

Okay, that isn't true. Not everyone does. But the people who don't like Brock are the same people who understand that you do not say so out loud, unless you'd like to find your backpack hanging from the school flagpole. It's happened. In fact, it happened to a sophomore named Tyler last spring, and the flagpole in question was sixty feet high, and it took the volunteer fire department two hours and a ladder truck to get his calculator back.

Anyway. I felt sick about Gerald. I know how that sounds. A dead bird, one with glass eyes and a bald spot on his neck where Mr. Hollis once got a little too enthusiastic with a feather duster. But Gerald had been standing in that front hall my whole life. When I was a freshman and so nervous on my first day that I threw up in the second-floor drinking fountain, Gerald was the first thing I saw when I came back downstairs, and for some reason, I just felt better. Like if a giant dead bird could stand there with that much dignity in a building that leaks, then I could, too.

(The building does leak. There are buckets in the halls, each one labeled with a Sharpie: BUCKET 4 — SCIENCE WING — DO NOT EMPTY WITHOUT ASKING. The district has promised to fix the roof for eleven years. The most recent update was a very nice email that said the roof was "under review.")

"It's a prank, Sara," Bree said at lunch, jabbing a french fry at me. "Seriously. Relax. The seniors do one every year."

"Last year it was the goat," I said.

"The goat was hilarious."

"The goat got stuck on the gym roof for six hours and screamed."

"Right, and that's the part that was hilarious."

Bree Castillo has been my best friend since the sixth grade, when she sat down next to me on the bus and said, "I have decided we're friends, so you can stop pretending to read." I had actually been reading. It was Murder on the Orient Express. I'd been pretending to read it a little less than I usually do, since I was a hundred pages in and dying to know who did it. But Bree doesn't believe people when they say they're reading. Bree believes in eye contact, and conversation, and the sheer power of her own personality, which is considerable.

She's five foot two, with a cloud of dark curls that does not seem to be affected by weather, which I consider a personal insult, and she's been in the drama club since seventh grade. She's the captain of the color guard, too, which is the part of her life that's about to come up and ruin mine.

"And besides," Bree went on, "you're the last person who should be getting worked up about it. You don't even like football."

"It has nothing to do with football."

"It has everything to do with football. It's Brock. And you're being weird about Brock."

"I'm not being weird about Brock."

"You said his name just now."

"You said his name just now."

"Well, I'm allowed. I have immunity. He's in my Spanish class, and he copied off me for two years straight." She chewed on a fry thoughtfully. "Don't worry. Someone will do something. Mr. Hollis will complain to Dr. Beaumont, and Dr. Beaumont will get that look he gets, like he's trying to remember where he left his glasses, and then the seniors will send a stupid ransom note, and in three weeks, we'll all forget about it. That's how these things work."

I knew she was probably right.

I also knew she was wrong, and I couldn't explain why, because the reason was a secret, and the secret was a thing I couldn't tell Bree. Or my mom. Or my grandmother. Not because I don't trust them, but because they all have the biggest mouths in the entire state of Oregon.

I took a bite of my sandwich. Soggy. Everything's soggy.

"Fine," I said. "You're right."

"Of course I'm right," said Bree, who always is. At least, according to Bree.

****

I should probably tell you about Matthew.

No, wait. I should probably tell you about the tide pool.

The Tidepool is what we call the school paper, on account of the first editor, back in 1974, who was a marine biology nut and apparently thought "Tidepool" would be an inspiring name for a newspaper. (A tide pool is a little pocket of water left behind when the ocean goes out. Things get stuck in it. It's not an inspiring name for a newspaper.)

The Tidepool office is in the basement, in a room that used to be a boiler closet, and still smells faintly like one. It has six desks, two ancient Macs, a mini fridge, and a window that looks directly out at the bottom of a drainpipe. When it rains hard enough, the drainpipe waterfalls into the window well, and the whole room gets this soft green light, like we're working at the bottom of an aquarium.

We have staff meetings every Monday at 3:15.

I got there at 3:10, and Matthew was already there.

Okay. So. Matthew.

Matthew Lindgren has been my best friend since the third grade, when Mrs. Stacy made us pair up for a science project about owl pellets, and he looked at me across the table, held up a tiny rodent skull, and said, in a perfectly serious voice, "I think this one used to be a lawyer." I laughed so hard that I got hiccups, and the hiccups lasted until recess. We've been together more or less ever since.

He's six foot one now, which is a recent development, and still sort of surprises both of us. He has sandy hair that stands up in the back no matter what he does to it, and gray-green eyes that change color depending on the weather (which, around here, means they're mostly gray, with occasional flashes of green on the three sunny days we get in July). He wears flannel. Constantly. I don't think he owns anything else. He's got a fisherman's hands, scarred and big and a little rough, because he's been working on a wooden dory with his dad in their boatshed since he was fourteen. A 1974 clinker-built rowing boat that he found rotting in a neighbor's yard and is rebuilding one cedar plank at a time. It still isn't finished. He says he'll know it's done when it floats.

When he sits next to me in the Tidepool office, he smells like sawdust and cedar and the sort of lemon soap his mom buys in bulk.

I notice that. I'm just saying. I notice it.

I have noticed a lot of things about Matthew, over the years. I'm good at noticing. It's sort of my whole deal. I'd notice if someone changed their shampoo or got a haircut or had a fight with their parents. It's one of the reasons people tell me stuff. It's just that when it comes to Matthew, the noticing has gotten a little out of hand.

"You look like you've seen a ghost," he said, when I came in.

"I saw Gerald get taken," I said. "I mean, I saw who took him."

"Ah." Matthew leaned back in his chair, which creaked. "Let me guess. A guy with the neck of a bull and the vocabulary of a houseplant."

"Don't say it."

"I'm not saying it."

"I know you're not saying it."

"I'm just saying, if I were to say it, it'd be a six-letter name that starts with a B."

"Matthew."

"Brock's not a hard name. I'd even say it's an easy name." He grinned. He has this lopsided grin that makes one side of his face crinkle up, and I could, if you pressed me, draw it from memory. "I won't say it. Promise. Hey. Did you know that a heron can stand on one leg for up to eight hours?"

"That's flamingos."

"Herons, too."

"Flamingos are the famous ones."

"Fine. I'll fact-check it. You want me to fact-check it? I'll do a fact-check right now."

"Do it."

He didn't, of course. We were already laughing. That's the thing about Matthew. I could tell him my dog died and he'd find a way to make me laugh about it.

"I want to do a story on it," I said. And then, because I realized that what I'd just said was a little bit loaded, I added, "I mean, we should. The Tidepool. It's a school issue. It's about the preservation of school property. A missing heron is news."

"It's a funny news," Matthew said.

"It's a sad news."

"It's both," he said, because he's always been able to see both, and that's a thing I like about him. "Okay. I think it'd be great. We could do one of those missing posters, like for a cat. Reward offered. Last seen: wearing nothing."

"Gerald's always wearing nothing."

"That's the joke."

"I know it's the joke."

That was when the door banged open, and Delaney Frost came in.

Okay, so, Delaney.

I want to be fair to Delaney. I really do. I've tried, many times, to find the thing about her that I can honestly dislike, and I've come up empty. She's not mean. She's not stuck-up, exactly. She's just very, very polished. Like a really expensive faucet.

She's the senior class president. She's the editor of the yearbook. She's on the swim team (which, in a town with this much water, is basically a varsity sport). She's tall and tan, which is a mystery in this weather, and I suspect it's a spray, and she has hair the color of honey that has never, to my knowledge, frizzed. She's got a voice like she's reading you the news, calm and clear and completely sure of itself. And she's been dating my best friend since the first week of school.

"Matty," Delaney said, which is what she calls him, and which makes me want to put my head through the window well. "Are we doing the agenda? Because I have a swim meet at five and I need to leave at four fifteen."

"Hey," Matthew said, and the whole front half of his face went soft. "Yeah. We'll do it first."

"Great." Delaney sat on the edge of his desk. She's the only person in the world who can sit on a desk without it looking like she's trying to. She looked at me. "Hi, Sara."

"Hi, Delaney."

"Is it true that Gerald's gone?"

"It's true."

"That's so sad." She said it, and I think she meant it. She just also said it the way you'd say that's so sad about a news story from another country. "Mr. Hollis must be devastated."

"He is," I said. "He made a noise like a kettle."

"A kettle," Delaney repeated, and laughed, and put a hand on Matthew's shoulder, and Matthew…blushed.

I should say, at this point, that I'm fine with all this.

I'm totally fine. I'm very mature about it. I've known for seven years that Matthew Lindgren would one day fall in love, and I've known for approximately two years that I would very much like it to be me, and I've known for approximately four weeks that it wasn't going to be me, because it's Delaney, because it was always going to be Delaney, because it's someone like Delaney who people like Matthew fall in love with.

I'm okay. I just notice things. That's all.

The rest of the staff came in. There's only six of us, so it's not much of a crowd. There was Priya Raman, the sports editor, who covers all of Brightwater High's athletic achievements. There was Walter Nguyen, a sophomore, who does the crossword and a weekly feature called "Unsolved Mysteries of the Cafeteria," which has so far explained the "mystery meat" (it's turkey) and the "mystery soup" (it's also turkey). There was Hank, who was a freshman and mostly worked the camera, and who I'm fairly sure was just really into the free pizza we get at meetings.

We went through the agenda in about twelve minutes. Delaney (who joined the paper in September, mostly because Matthew asked her to, and who became co-editor in chief about forty minutes later, because Delaney does not do assistant) kept interrupting to say that we needed a bigger focus on "positive school culture." Matthew kept agreeing. I kept laying out the pages.

I do the layout, you see. That's my official position. I've done it since sophomore year. Matthew writes things, and Delaney "edits" things, and Priya complains about things, and I take everything and make it fit on the page, with the right size headline and the pull quotes and the photo placed just so. It's what I'm good at. I can look at a mess of stuff and see where each piece goes. I do it with people, too. I'm just saying.

Mostly I'm good at not minding. That's the other thing I'm good at.

"Okay," Matthew said, when we'd finished, "Sara's idea is to do a piece on the Gerald situation." He gave me a quick glance, and then looked at the agenda. "Walter, want to take it?"

"Sure," Walter said. "I'll do 'The Case of the Missing Heron.' I can do that."

"That's the sort of thing I'd hoped you'd do," said Matthew.

"Wait," I said, and my voice came out a little higher than I'd planned. "I thought I'd write it. It was my idea."

Everyone looked at me.

Delaney raised one perfect eyebrow. "Sara, you're already so busy with layout."

"I'm not that busy."

"You're always busy," Delaney said, with what I'm convinced was genuine concern. "You're, like, the busiest person I know. I honestly don't know how you do it all. I think you need to say no more often."

"I'm just saying—"

"I think Walter has a great angle," Matthew said gently, not unkindly.

"Fine," I said. "Sure. No. That's fine. Walter's great."

And I picked up my pen, and laid out the next week's page, and said nothing else.

Because the thing is, I could have told them. I could have explained that I wasn't just busy. That I was working on something bigger than the layout. That I'd spent the whole last year doing a thing that nobody knew about, a thing I'd been asked to do by Mr. Pruitt, the paper's advisor, and Ms. Dube, the school counselor. A thing that, apart from a handful of school administrators, nobody had the slightest idea I was doing.

But I couldn't, because the whole point of the job was that nobody could know.

So I just drew a very neat box for the Gerald story and wrote WALTER in the corner, in my best handwriting.

I'd been very good about being quiet for a very long time. I don't know why it suddenly felt like I was standing in a room with a wall of glass, the whole school watching me from the other side.

****

Here's the thing about my job.

It's a secret. It's the best secret in the whole school, and I'm the only one who has it.

I'm Dear Drizzle.

You know, the column. The one that runs on the back page of The Tidepool every week, under a little drawing of an umbrella with a question mark for a handle. "Dear Drizzle: Ask me your most complicated questions about school, friends, love, and the weather. No question too soggy." Every letter is anonymous, and every answer is signed Drizzle, and nobody—and I mean nobody—knows who Drizzle really is.

The letters come in through a wooden box that hangs by the library's back door, a box Mr. Pruitt built himself, and painted blue, and stenciled with a cloud. People slip them in on their way to class. I collect them on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I answer them at a card table in the Dry Room, which is a little windowless closet at the back of the library archive. It's the only room in the entire building that has never, in thirty-one years, had a leak. Mr. Pruitt says it's a miracle. Ms. Dube says it's "excellent energy." I just say it's a good place to think.

I've been doing it for eleven months. And the thing I've learned is that everyone in Brightwater is lonely, in some way or another, and nobody wants to say so out loud, so they say it in a letter, and sign it Soggy in Section B, and drop it in a box.

I've gotten letters from freshmen who are scared of the bus. I've gotten letters from seniors who are scared of leaving. I've gotten one from a girl who said she wanted to marry the school's vending machine. (I told her it was a commitment. She hasn't written back.)

I love it.

I love it more than I love almost anything. The only problem is that I can't tell a single person, because a person who knows who Drizzle is won't write to her anymore. And, as Ms. Dube told me over the summer, over a cup of chamomile and a lot of crystals: "Dear Drizzle can't be a friend, Sara. Dear Drizzle has to be a weather system."

I said that was very poetic.

She said, "Mercury is in retrograde, so I'd avoid signing anything."

I do not know what that means. But I'd said yes anyway, because the thing about me is that I say yes.

That night, I got home at six.

My house is on Pelican Street, which is a ridiculous name for a street in a town where nobody's ever seen a pelican, and it's a skinny yellow house with a front porch that sags and a gutter that sings. My dad captains the ferry that runs from Brightwater to Gull Island. My mom runs the town bakery, called Jude's, where she makes a marionberry scone that people drive ninety minutes for. My little sister, Poppy, who's eleven and has opinions, was sitting at the kitchen table, doing her homework with a pencil behind each ear.

"Gerald's gone," Poppy announced, without looking up.

"I know."

"Did you see who did it?"

"No."

I don't know why I lied. I think it was because, if I said I did, there'd be questions. And if there were questions, I'd have to give answers. And if I gave answers, I'd have to say a name.

Poppy squinted at me. She's eleven. She's smarter than all of us, and not at all subtle about it. "You're doing your thing with your eyebrows," she said.

"I don't have a thing with my eyebrows."

"You do. They go like this." She raised them both and made her mouth go flat, in an expression that, I'll admit, looked exactly like mine. "You do it when you're not telling the truth. Or when you're thinking about Matthew."

"Poppy!"

"I didn't say anything!"

"Go do your homework."

"I am doing my homework."

My grandmother was in the living room with the police scanner, Nana Jude is seventy-nine, five foot nothing, and the most dangerous person in town. She listens to the Brightwater police band like other people listen to the radio, and she knows everything—who got a speeding ticket, whose dog got loose, whose husband was seen at the other bakery. She waved at me without looking up.

"Somebody's reported a large bird in a truck bed on Route 9," she said. "Sounds like someone's drunk."

"I'm sure it's fine, Nana."

"It's Halvorsen's truck."

I froze in the doorway. "What?"

"The plate number. They read it out. It's Halvorsen's. The boy with the head like a canned ham." She took a sip of tea. "Don't tell your mother I said that. She likes his mother."

I took my backpack up to my room, and I shut the door, and I stood in the middle of the floor, listening to the rain on the roof.

It was just a prank. That's what everybody said. A senior prank. A joke.

I sat down at my desk, and I pulled out a sheet of paper, and I started to write, because writing is the only thing I know how to do when I don't know what else to do.

I didn't write to Brock. I didn't write to Mr. Hollis. I didn't even write to Matthew, which, for the record, I've done approximately four hundred times, and never mailed once.

I wrote a letter to Dear Drizzle.

Dear Drizzle, I wrote. There's a thing I know that I should say out loud, and I don't. I keep thinking it's not my business, but it feels like it is. What do you do when you're the only one who saw?

I read it over. Then I crumpled it, and threw it in the trash.

Because I already knew the answer.

I just didn't like it.

DEAR DRIZZLE,

Ask me your most complicated questions. No question too soggy.All letters to Drizzle are subject to publication in The Tidepool.

Names guaranteed confidential.

Dear Drizzle,

My boyfriend's name is on his phone as "Do Not Answer." He says it's a joke. Why does it feel like it isn't?

— Unsettled in Section C

Dear Unsettled,

Because it isn't. Nobody saves a contact under Do Not Answer unless they've personally wondered whether to. Ask him who it's for. If he laughs, he's lying. If he tells you, he's probably telling the truth. Either way, you'll get your answer, and then you'll get to decide what to do with it. Bring a coat.

— Drizzle