She was instantly surrounded by bodyguards and bandmates. They were within earshot, and I was eager to hear exactly what had happened up there.
“Are you okay?” Booth asked her.
She combed her fingers through her hair. “I’m fine.”
“We have another ambulance on the way. They’ll want to check you out.”
“I said I’m fine.”
Booth said, “I’d like a full account of what happened. Can you come down to the station for an interview?”
“That won’t be necessary. I can tell you right here, right now.”
Meredith looked over to us.
“She’s going to thank us,” Apple said.
Josie said to me, “She’s going to tell him about the Smoothie Factory, the pier, and the jellies. This is the moment everything gets fixed.”
“I think so,” I said to both of them, and I stood up a little, proud of what we’d accomplished. It isn’t every day you save a species and thousands of people.
Meredith pointed at us. “It was them!”
Booth looked over to us. Bodyguards looked at us. Even Evan, Austin, and Lucien stared at us.
“This is all their fault,” she said. “Those girls kidnapped me.”
“What?!” I said.
“Is she kidding?” Josie said.
Booth pointed to us and asked, “Those girls? Stella and Josie Higley?” He didn’t believe what Meredith was saying.
“Yeah.” She flipped her hair and smiled for incoming photos. “None of this would’ve happened if it hadn’t been for them.”
TJ whispered to me, “What did you two do?”
Tucker said, “Is this what you wanted to talk about? Were you going to flee the country or something?”
Tucker said, “Too late for that.”
“It’s not as bad as it sounds,” I said.
Timmy said, “It sounds pretty bad.”
“I think maybe it is,” Josie said. “But not as bad as what you three were doing.”
Apple said, “I’m outta here.” And by the time I turned my head to thank her for helping us, she was gone.
Tucker asked, “Us? We didn’t do anything.”
“That you know of, which is part of the problem. You didn’t even ask questions to know that what you were doing was harmful,” Josie said. “Dreadfully harmful.”
The Three Ts looked at me for an answer.
“Your little eight p.m. rendezvous under the boardwalk,” I hinted. “Did you stop to think for a hot sec about what you were actually doing?”
TJ began. “How do you—”
“That’s not important,” I said.
Meredith’s security guard said to Booth, “Miss Maxwell needs to rest now. We can bring her to the station a little later to make an official statement. Why don’t you deal with those girls, and we’ll take care of her?”
Timmy said to us, “Look, the lady from the Smoothie Factory said it was fruit. The best, freshest fruit for her customers. She couldn’t get it locally.”
TJ defended him. “It’s not like pineapples or coconuts grow in New Jersey.”
Josie said, “Or wattle berries.”
Timmy asked, “Wattle what?”
I said, “You were transporting their secret sauce. And that sauce has terrible side effects.”
Tucker asked, “How were we supposed to know any of that? In fact, how do you know that?”
TJ said, “Seriously. It made sense that they needed fruit from the islands, and that it would be delivered by boat. So don’t make us out to sound dumb.”
Booth scratched his head and confirmed with Meredith one more time. “Those two girls kidnapped you? But you’re right here.”
Timmy said, “It’s not like we kidnapped someone.”
Meredith said to Booth, “Pay attention. They kidnapped me before I was right here.”
“We didn’t kidnap anyone!” I yelled.
“Tell me,” Josie asked the boys. “What did they pay you to participate in their scheme?”
“Not a cent,” Tucker said, then added, “Miss Smarty-Pants.”
Booth nodded at Meredith Maxwell, then walked over to us. “Josie, Stella, what the heck happened?”
“You see—” I started.
“We can explain everything—” Josie added.
He held up his hand for us to stop talking. “We’re gonna have to do this downtown after I get things sorted out here. That’s gonna take me a little while. Then I’ll drive you.”
“Like, in a cop car?” I asked.
“In the back,” he confirmed.
Fifty-Six Stella
Police Station
June 26 (Continued)
“So there we were in the back seat of Officer Booth’s squad car. He left the window cracked open, like you might for a dog. We could see and hear all the hub-bub.”
“What I don’t understand is that if you were in Booth’s car, how come your dad brought you in here?” Santoro asks. “Why didn’t you come in with Booth?”
“Can we just say that maybe all the choices we made yesterday weren’t great?”
“I think that’s an understatement,” Santoro says. It’s the type of comment that might be accompanied by a tension-breaking smile,