and thought it might be the flowers. Anders’s phone buzzed in his pocket, and he set the vase down, then tugged it out of his pocket. After glancing at the screen, he tossed it on the bedside table, in the empty space the vase had left.
“You gotta tone it down a little bit.”
Anders stared at his stepdad, and nearly laughed at the irony of someone who was gregarious and over-the-top in every aspect of his life asking him to tone it down. His phone buzzed again, and Anders ignored it.
“Are you kidding? We need answers! This is absurd. Your risk of having a second stroke doubles for up to five years after the first one—and they can’t even tell us why you had the first one. How are you supposed to prevent it?”
Leonard looked Anders squarely in the eyes and said calmly, “Maybe I’m not supposed to prevent it.”
Anders’s head jerked forward on his neck like a chicken. “What? What is that supposed to mean? You’re OK with just dying next time?” His phone came alive again, and Anders wasn’t sure if it was his imagination or if it was buzzing more loudly, more insistently, this time. Leonard glanced at it, too, and then back at Anders.
“Well, no, I’m not OK with dying. I’d prefer not to, if I can help it. But some things in life are out of our control. Most things, actually.”
“That’s absolutely ridiculous,” Anders said, as his phone went off for a fourth time.
“Are you going to get that? Sounds important.”
“No,” Anders said.
“Who is it?”
“Nobody.”
Leonard raised an eyebrow at him.
“It’s Good Morning America.”
Leonard laughed, but quickly stopped when Anders’s face didn’t change. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah. They want to do a segment on What the Frick?”
“Anders! That’s amazing! Why aren’t you answering the phone?”
Anders sighed. And then he sat down heavily into the chair beside his stepdad’s bed and slowly began to unravel the entire story, starting with his dishonesty from the outset, through to Piper’s confession and her secret meetings with the developer, and ending with Piper never wanting to see him again.
“Well,” Leonard said when he was done. “You sure made a mess of things.”
“I know. And I don’t know how to fix it.”
“What’s your gut tell you?”
“That I need to explain everything to Piper—whether I do Good Morning America or not. Though I think I should—and not just for me, but because I really think it could help. The publicity from a platform that big could be a boon to tourism there, bringing sorely needed money into the island, which is exactly what she’s trying to accomplish.”
“True,” Leonard said thoughtfully. “But maybe that’s not the way she’s trying to accomplish it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just that, from your podcast anyway, it sounds like the people on the island are very private—and maybe they wouldn’t view that amount of attention or exposure in the same way.”
Anders absorbed this, and then, realizing Leonard was right, felt even worse that he had done exactly that with his podcast. Leonard reached over and patted Anders’s hand.
“Chin up. You’re a good kid. You’ll do the right thing.”
Anders’s hackles raised—as if Leonard had scratched his fingernails down a chalkboard. Anders wasn’t a good kid. He wasn’t good to the people on Frick Island and he hadn’t been good to Leonard, certainly—growing up he’d been difficult and temperamental and ungrateful. He’d shouted horrible things at him. Anders cringed remembering the unoriginal juvenile insults he’d lobbed Leonard’s way: that he wasn’t his real dad, that just because his mom loved him didn’t mean he had to, and worse, that he hated him, he hated his stupid laugh and his stupid jokes and his goofy smile. And Leonard took it, in his roll-off-the-back, life-is-ducky, I’d-prefer-not-to-die-but-whatever-happens-happens! kind of way.
“Why do you do that?” he said, irritated.
“Do what?”
Anders thought of the video—of Leonard’s raucous cheering—and he thought of the ridiculous comments he left on every single one of his podcasts. And he thought how he didn’t deserve any of it—especially not for the break-dancing, anyway. “Why do you believe in me, when I’ve given you absolutely no reason to?”
Leonard cocked his head, his eyes dancing with amusement, as if he knew the secret to the universe and Anders was just too thick to see it. “For the same reason the people on Frick Island believed Piper.”
Anders raised his eyebrows. “Because you’re insane?”
Leonard chuckled. “Yes, that’s it. Because I’m insane.” He looked pointedly at Anders. “And because I love you. So very much.”
Anders stared at his stepdad