She laughed. I tried to laugh along, waiting for the right moment to ask my next question. It took a while.
“Teresa?” I asked finally.
“Yeah?”
“Did Sky ever do prank phone calls using recorded voices?” I held my breath, waiting for the answer.
Her smile evaporated. “Not with me.” She said it slowly, carefully, her entire posture changing—until I caught a hint of the frightened girl I’d met back in July.
“Okay, not with you,” I said. “But with somebody else?”
“It wasn’t what you’d call a prank.”
“What would you call it?”
“I think Sky called it a favor,” she said. “But Dylan didn’t feel that way.”
I looked at her. “What happened?”
“Dylan had gotten into a fight with his father. I don’t even remember what it was about—there were so many. But this one was really bad. Bill threatened to cut him off completely. Dylan claimed he didn’t care. Lydia was begging him to apologize, asking me if I could get to him, but I couldn’t. Dylan was adamant. Plus, he was abusing Adderall, I think, which made him even more stubborn.”
“So Sky came to the rescue?”
“Yep,” Teresa said. “Sky patched together audio of Dylan making this eloquent apology, telling his dad how much he appreciated him, all kinds of stuff Dylan would never have dreamed of saying in real life,” she said. “Then she called Bill from Dylan’s phone, played him this Franken-apology. Bill was touched. All was forgiven. He even back-paid Dylan for the weeks he withheld his allowance.”
“Did Dylan ever find out why?”
“Yeah, and he was furious,” Teresa said. “He didn’t talk to Sky for months.”
“I can’t really say I blame him,” I said.
“I guess I can’t, either,” she said. “But at the time…I don’t know. I felt so sorry for Sky. She was only trying to help out a friend.”
“That always seems to be her motivation,” I said. “But in this case, she also made sure that the friend kept his fortune.”
Teresa didn’t seem to be listening. “I was scared for her,” she said.
“Why?”
“Sky told me that when he found out what she’d done, Dylan got this look on his face, like a wild animal. I mean…She played the apology for me, and it was beautiful. She’d actually worked really hard on it, and, I don’t know…for Dylan to react that harshly, to not even take into account her motivations…”
I gaped at her. “She used those words?”
“Huh?”
“You said Sky told you that Dylan got a look on his face, ‘like a wild animal,’ ” I said. “Were those the exact words she used?”
She narrowed her eyes. “Yes,” Teresa said. “I’ll never forget it. Years later, I saw that look and I finally knew what she was talking about. And the way she cried when she said it, you know? Sky’s tough. I’d never seen her cry before that.”
“Except onstage,” I said. “You told me yourself. She could burst into tears at the drop of a hat.”
“Well, yeah, Sunny. But that’s obviously not the same thing.”
An image of Sky sobbing in her hospital bed flashed through my mind, remembering the fight they’d had before Dylan’s disappearance over the missing funds—the first time, according to her, that she’d ever seen him shift gears like that. The very first time.He got this look on his face…like a wild animal…
“No, it’s not the same thing,” I echoed back to Teresa.
I didn’t mean it, though.
