Chapter 5
“Newton’s Third Law: for every action, there is an equal and opposite embarrassment.”
—It’s science
Iris
I was greeted by our administrative assistant, Dorothy’s, sweet voice as I walked into the office the next day.
“You’ve got snail mail!”
She was eating what looked like a jelly donut in one hand as she used her other hand to give me a stack of letters. I took the bundle, assuming they were thank-you letters from a few recent school talks I had done, and thanked her as I walked through the door that led to our offices.
I walked over to my desk and dumped them out to read them. Kids’ letters were great for uplifting your soul because they were always nice, included colorful drawings, and sometimes had very funny things written in them.
A few of them had already been opened by our boss, mostly because people would address mail to whatever the first name was they found on our websites or social media pages, even if the subject really belonged to another person or department.
It was pretty common for things to get rerouted before they made it to the right hands.
In this case, I’m guessing after the fifth letter she opened, she assumed that most of these were for me.
Thank you for teaching me about the weather. My favorite thing was learning about boobs.
—From Lucas in Miss Shirley’s class.
I rolled my eyes. Of course, boys would hear anything with the word boobs in it and gravitate toward that. The correct word was haboob, which was a type of dust storm, but boys would hear what they wanted to.
Thanks for visiting our school. I liked your presentation because we didn’t have to take any tests or sit in boring classes.
–From Andie in Miss Frizzle’s class.
Oh, and kids were also usually brutally honest.
“Any good ones in there?” Leah asked over my shoulder.
“A couple, yeah,” I told her, handing her some so she could help me read through them.
We chuckled at a few and shared them with each other and everyone else sitting nearby.
The next one I opened was different from the others.
First, it was stuck to the bottom of the other letters thanks to jelly—the kind that came from a jelly donut.
Second, it actually had a stamp and everything on the outside.
Usually, the school letters came in a large mailer envelope sent by the teacher if there were a bunch of them together.
Other times the teacher would put a dozen of the best ones in one single envelope and mail it.
Every once in a while, you had one single letter that the teacher wrote but had all the kids sign the back of it. This one felt like that last option.
I opened it and began reading, noting very quickly that this was not from a teacher or a school.
Hello Iris,
My name is Steve, and I’m a crime podcaster.
I read in a news article that someone from the weather service found the body in Lake Echo, and then I saw you on TV at the crime scene.
I tried to search for an email address for you but was only able to find your name, so I hope this letter makes it to you.
I am hoping you would be interested in letting me interview you for my podcast about what you saw that day.
Even better, maybe you would be willing to meet me at the lake to show me where exactly the body was found and if you could re-enact the scene for my listeners.
Did you happen to take any bones or even some of the dirt that was around it that day?
If so, I can help you analyze it. Or maybe you could get some from the police and bring it to me.
I’m an amateur sleuth, so I would be able to help you in that matter.
—Steve Stanton
“The hell?” I mumbled the question to myself, but Leah must have heard me.
“What?” she asked, grabbing the letter from my hand and reading it. “This dude is nuts!”
I muttered my agreement while pulling out my phone to text Agent Andrews and let her know about the letter and that if she hasn’t blocked off the area already, she may need to since some crazy person wanted to re-enact it.
Oh, and that this guy wanted me to grab some of the evidence from the police so he could “borrow” it for his crime podcast.
She called me almost instantly, wanting details. “Are you okay?” she asked me, and I appreciated the concern, though it felt a bit like an overreaction.
“I’m good,” I responded. “It’s mostly just weird that someone would even ask this.”
“You’d be surprised at some of the crazy things these podcasters home in on.”
“How did they even know it was me who found the body?” I asked her, knowing my name wasn’t publicly released.
“As much as we tried to hide it, the TV crew that showed up was clearly able to get some of your faces on camera,” she explained.
“These people may be amateurs, but some of them do have some basic hacking skills and ways to get information. As long as there is even one picture of you on the internet with your name next to it, they can find it and go from there.”
That made sense, especially because I knew there were photos of me with my name out there from other public service events I had done in the past. But it was still creepy as hell how easy it was for people to get information about you.
“I’m headed out of town for a few days, but if something comes up, please feel free to reach out to me I just may not be quick to respond,” she told me. “I’d like to send someone from our team over to your office to pick up the letter if you don’t mind.”
She let me know to put it back in the envelope and prevent anyone else from touching it before they arrived.
“Do you mind if I send someone over to collect it?” she asked. “Just in case he does show up at the crime scene, I’d like to have this as evidence to use if we need to arrest him.”
“Yeah, sure. I have absolutely no desire to save it, so it’s all yours,” I told her.
She let me know someone would be by within the hour, and then I thanked her and hung up the phone.
Leah was still leaning against my desk, as if she had been waiting to pounce. “People are crazy,” she remarked.
“I just hope this guy doesn’t keep sending letters,” I told her.
“My mom always told me that you never let bad people take up your time or brain space just because they think they’re entitled to it.”
Her words hit closer to home than she knew. My mom had also taught me something similar too—before she left.
My father had already walked out when I was five, causing my mother to turn to whatever bottle of alcohol she could find. When my mother finally spiraled, I ended up in the foster system. It wasn’t much, but it stuck with me.
I never knew much about my parents beyond scraps of memory and what people had told me.
Supposedly, I was a good mix of both of them.
My father was Haitian, my mother Portuguese.
From him I inherited my terrible eyesight—hence the glasses or contacts I wore daily just to see more than three feet in front of me—and a love of Caribbean food.
From my mother I got my super curly brown hair, short stature, my curves—complete with big hips and big boobs—and a complexion that settled somewhere between her fair skin and his darker tone, leaving me with a bronzed look that was all my own.
After entering the foster system, I was placed with the O’Hara family, and they were great. I honestly couldn’t have asked for a better family to end up with.
Winnie and Tia O’Hara were sisters who had also been through the foster system, constantly bumping around because no one wanted two older sisters.
They had dedicated their adult lives to opening their doors to as many foster girls as they could, determined to give them stability instead of endless moves.
Some girls hadn’t stayed long, usually because a parent or relative eventually stepped in to care for them.
But for the ones whose families either couldn’t—or simply wouldn’t—take them back, the O’Haras made sure we always had a place to belong. I was one of those lucky ones.
Winnie—who we just called Mom—and Tia—which was Spanish for aunt, so we’d always called her Auntie—lived on a small property in Stratus Cove, a coastal town in Northern California.
The place was beautiful—lush green landscape, salty ocean air, and friendly people who waved at you on the street.
Being a small town, everybody knew everybody’s business, but that also meant they knew what the O’Hara women did.
Nobody batted an eyelash when another foster kid appeared at their house. It was just accepted.
Most people couldn’t imagine what it felt like to wonder if anyone would remember your birthday or whether you’d have a seat saved for you at Thanksgiving dinner. For kids growing up with their own families, that kind of security blanket was a given. For foster kids like me, it wasn’t.
In total, there were more than fifteen girls the O’Hara women had fostered, but only five of us had stayed permanently—Gale, Cora, Anna, Hazel, and me.
I was closest with Anna because she and I had arrived around the same time, when I was eleven and Anna was ten.
Anna and I had shared a room and instantly bonded.
Not just because we arrived at the same time, but also because we realized over time that we shared a lot in common.
We had never had pets growing up but always wanted them.
The O’Haras had them. We had two dogs, three barn cats, two llamas, and an ostrich.
We all had chore duty on the small farm, helping out, but I loved it.
Animals didn’t judge you like people did.
You could just be yourself around them, and they didn’t care.
As if I had conjured them up with just my thoughts, my phone buzzed with several incoming texts.
Hazel:
Ladies! The storm last night was epic and washed up hella awesome shells for my collection! I got a fully-intact conch shell, four sand dollars, an iridescent pāua abalone, and perfectly symmetrical chambered nautilus!!!
Cora: