The Jelly Heart

A heart-shaped yeasted donut, dusted with cinnamon sugar and filled with deep-red cherry jelly. Sweet, tart, and tangy!

An hour later, Mattie and Beanie’s candy bags were empty. The girls hadn’t seen any sign of Sasha, and they’d only spotted two more white trucks. One belonged to the volunteer fire chief, whose favorite donut was a Jelly Heart, which just didn’t seem like a suspicious kind of donut to Mattie. The other truck belonged to the hermit woman who never talked to anybody.

“Look,” whispered Mattie, poking Beanie, who was sprawled in the dirt, staring at clouds.

Beanie popped up and watched Hermit Harriet slam her truck door and lurch across the parking lot. She was about the right size, Mattie thought. Tall and stooped. She could have been the taller person from the night before. But what would Harriet have dumped? She was a carpenter, and that slimy stuff wasn’t sawdust.

Harriet usually wore a beat-up pair of jeans and a short-sleeved man’s shirt. She kept her long hair in a gray bun that was twisted so tight it looked like a hand grenade. She didn’t smile or pass the time with anyone, and whenever she came into the donut shop, all she got was a cup of black coffee.

Never a donut.

Which Mattie did find pretty suspicious.

“Do you think it was her?” Beanie shout-whispered.

Mattie watched Hermit Harriet disappear into the shop.

“Maybe,” she said, writing down Harriet’s license plate.

She was definitely the most likely suspect. Besides being tall, Harriet was grouchy and she drove a white truck with toolboxes in it. Mattie had never seen Harriet Hargrave hanging around a stumpy sidekick, but she’d never seen Harriet with anyone period. The new suspicions made Mattie feel queasy. Even though she’d decided the gloopers might be locals, she still didn’t want them to be anyone she knew. In fact, she kind of liked watching Harriet order her coffee with as few words as possible. She liked the puzzle of people like that. Or she used to. Now she was starting to feel like she wasn’t even safe at home.

“I’m bored,” whined Beanie. “Can we go somewhere else now?”

“Fine,” Mattie said.

Mattie knew it was time to find Sasha, even if Sasha wasn’t ready to be found. Mattie wanted to run the list of suspects by her. Sasha was great at being suspicious. The feeling wouldn’t make her queasy. Besides, Mattie was tired of keeping Beanie entertained all by herself.

Since they hadn’t found Sasha in all her usual places, Mattie pretty much knew where she’d gone.

The Riverside Inn.

“Let’s stake out the parking lot downstream, by the inn and the restaurant,” Mattie suggested to Beanie.

Mattie convinced her that it would be easier and more fun to slosh their way toward the inn, splashing down the river rather than walking along the highway. It would take a few more minutes, but Mattie didn’t want to go near that road again. Not yet. People easing their cars into parking spots at the donut shop was one thing. A place where cars went speeding by at fifty miles an hour—that was another.

After about ten minutes of slipping their way over the green stones of the riverbank and through the cool water, they reached a restaurant, a general store, and a twenty-room hotel with a big long parking lot all around it. Mattie panted as they trudged up the nearest bank and into the lot. The restaurant had a country band playing out on the huge deck and an outdoor barbeque smoking too. The parking lot was almost full for some end of summer festival. But Mattie wasn’t looking for suspects anymore. She’d already spotted Sasha sitting on a hay bale at the edge of the deck. Sasha was bopping to the music and sitting next to her other friend.

Christian Castillo.

Christian’s parents managed the inn, and he lived in a special set of rooms upstairs that had no numbers on the doors. Sasha glanced over like she could feel Mattie staring and then looked back at the band, wiggling like the music was the best thing she’d ever seen and Mattie was a stranger.

Or invisible.

Christian hadn’t done anything wrong, Mattie reminded herself. He’d never been mean to her. In fact, he and his parents had been super nice in the months after Mattie lost her mom. They let her hang out at the hotel restaurant, nibble on cherries and peanuts from the bar, and watch TV on the smooth leather couch in the afternoons anytime Aunt Molly had to take a trip up to Monterey.

A thing Mattie wasn’t willing to do anymore.

She’d been sitting on that hotel couch when Aunt Molly came back with Mom’s ashes in an urn. Christian never said anything about it. But still, she hated him just a little bit. Mattie wasn’t sure if the hating him was because he was Sasha’s Big Sur best friend or if he’d seen her cry. Both, probably.

Beanie zoomed over to the hay bale and crammed herself right between Sasha and Christian. Mattie knew she could go sit down on the hay too. There was room. Sort of. Christian even looked over and smiled. Mattie could squeeze herself into the leftover space.

But Mattie didn’t want leftover space.

Especially not after being ditched.

Sasha didn’t even look like she wanted Mattie to come over. She always had this weird frozen expression on her face when she was around Christian and Mattie at the same time. Like they weren’t supposed to both exist. Like Mattie was butting in just by being alive.

So Mattie stood there.

Arms crossed.

Trying not to glare.

Why couldn’t Sasha just believe her? Sasha should have been helping, not sitting around and listening to music. Beanie started whispering into Sasha’s ear, and something Beanie said made Sasha glare right back at Mattie.

Now what’s she got to be grouchy about? Mattie wondered.

She didn’t have to wait very long to find out. Sasha marched over, tugging Beanie by the arm. Sasha’s skin was all blotchy at the neck, which was never a great sign.

“You think my dad is a suspect? You think he would dump that stupid goo into the river?”

“It’s gloo . . .”

Sasha didn’t let Mattie finish. Didn’t let Mattie explain that it was just some silly idea of Beanie’s, and of course she didn’t suspect Mr. Little. “You can’t even get into a car and now you have this weird story about an owl.”

Beanie looked back and forth between her older sister and Mattie, like she was trying to figure out who to believe.

“Cut it out or we’re not friends,” Sasha said.

Beanie’s eyes went round as soap bubbles.

Mattie turned around, walked for a few steps, and then ran. She stumbled down the riverbank, hurried over slippery moss-covered rocks with her sneakers still on, splashing water everywhere and not caring. She didn’t decide where to go. She just went, until her wet shoes slopped across the black asphalt at Owl’s. She went straight for the back door of the donut shop and slammed her shoulder into it, wrenching the handle.

The door swung open, banging against the wall of the shop’s back room. Aunt Molly was standing with a tray full of freshly arranged Jelly Hearts.

“What in the . . .”

Aunt Molly whirled to look at Mattie. The tray tilted and donuts went flying. Little sugar-dusted donut hearts plopped all around Mattie’s feet.

Without looking up, Mattie lifted her soggy sneaker and stomped. She stomped so hard that a Jelly Heart burst and spurt red rockets of filling halfway across the room.

She stomped until all the Jelly Hearts were squished, their insides oozing out of the edges.