Dodger Boy

by Sarah Ellis

  She wanted … to stop talking to Dawn inside her head. She wanted to take a break from fame. She stumbled upstairs to bed with Puff winding around her every step.

  Sixteen

  How is Jane Austen relevant to the lives of today’s teens?

  Charlotte was home alone, dipping into P&P. She was looking for answers. Everyone else was at Meeting but she had slept in.

  Dawn could be home by now. What if she phoned?

  Charlotte thought about the newspaper interview. She should have told the reporter that Jane Austen understood about fights between friends.

  Elizabeth and her best friend Charlotte (Charlotte!) didn’t exactly have a fight, but after Charlotte got married things weren’t quite the same, because she married a really pathetic guy. Elizabeth was always nice to her friend but things got tricky because they had such different ideas about marriage. Charlotte was pretty much one hundred percent ringy-dingy. Of course she had to be because of money. But when Elizabeth went to visit her it was just sad. It was maybe the saddest part of the book. But, because it was Jane Austen, it was also pretty funny.

  Charlotte found the scene. Amazingly, the Jane Austen Charlotte seemed happy even though her husband was such a dork. She just liked having her own place. Elizabeth thought, Her home and her housekeeping, her parish and her poultry, and all their dependent concerns, had not yet lost their charms.

  Poultry!

  Charlotte checked the time again. Maybe Dawn would just turn up.

  When Elizabeth tried to solve a problem she went into chess-player brain. If this, then that.

  Maybe chess player was the way to go.

  If Dawn came back all arrogant like Lydia then it would be impossible to be her friend. Wouldn’t it?

  If Dawn apologized for finking out of the school-board presentation then Charlotte could be just as generous as Elizabeth Bennet.

  The ifs and thens started to circle in her brain.

  If Tom Ed liked boys and Dawn liked him then …

  If you always thought you were one way and then you tried out being another way and discovered maybe you were a bit that way all along, was that fake or brave?

  If you had a friend and she changed and you changed, too, but it made you not get along then were you maybe not really ever friends anyway?

  The ring of the phone sent the questions scattering.

  Dawn. Should she answer? Yes, no, yes, no, leap for the phone on the last ring.

  It was somebody asking to speak to somebody called Lionel.

  This was just ridiculous. She couldn’t sort it out by thinking. She couldn’t write a script with good lines for her because she had no idea what Dawn’s lines would be. And she couldn’t float along without it being sorted.

  Dawn said, “Don’t phone.”

  She didn’t say, “Don’t come over.”

  * * *

  Charlotte stared up at Dawn’s balcony on the fourth floor with its three perfectly placed pots of spring flowers.

  What was she going to say? The only thing worse than ringing the intercom would be chickening out and going home. She pushed the button and said her name. There was a familiar blatting sound and the big glass door clicked open.

  Somebody was moving furniture into the elevator.

  Charlotte trudged up the four flights. Why was she here?

  Dawn met her at their suite door. She called over her shoulder. “Charlotte’s here. We’re going to the locker.”

  On the stairs Dawn said only, “I’m grounded.”

  There wasn’t much privacy in an apartment, but over the years Dawn and Charlotte had figured out places to go. Roof garden, laundry room, even the elevator. It was amazing how few people you saw in an apartment building, except at going-to-work and coming-home times.

  One of the best places was the locker in the basement. It was secret and cozy. Mr. Novak had organized it like a little workshop, with tools and bottles of screws and stuff. Light slanted in from the hall through the slats and it had its own smell. Warm dust, cardboard, thrift store.

  They sat on two boxes facing each other.

  Dawn looked bad. She hadn’t washed her hair and her pixie cut was greasy and clumpy.

  “So. You probably told everyone, right?”

  “What? No. Yesterday when some kids asked where you were I just said you were sick.”

  Yesterday. It was the perfect opening for Dawn to ask how the presentation had gone, the perfect opportunity for her to apologize.

  But it was as if she was deaf.

  “Oh. Okay. Thanks.” The thanks came out all narrow and stiff.

  Charlotte took a deep breath. The conversation was like a heavy boulder and it was obvious that she would have to push it up the hill.

  “So. What happened up there?”

  “What do you care? You just want to know about Tom, right?”

  It was a punch to the stomach.

  “No. I want to know what happened to you.”

  “Right. Sure. I know what this is all about. You think I don’t know. You’re like, oh, Dawn, she’s not that smart. But I do know stuff. You had a thing for him yourself, didn’t you? All that talking about books and listening to the Mothers of Invention. Faker. You wanted him for you.”

  Charlotte jumped off her box. Her feet were ahead of her brain.

  “That’s just stupid. You …” She felt her throat squeezing and the words disappearing.

  She tried to slam the door of the locker behind her but it had sticky hinges and barely closed. She kicked it into place and the walls of the lockers trembled.

  Stamp, stamp, stamp, down the hall, stamp up the stairs and into the lobby. Hand on the front door and then …

  Dawn’s a dope and she pushes you around too much.

  No. Not this time. She wasn’t going to give up. She wasn’t going to wait for Dawn to get over it. She wasn’t going to nice-nice her way back in.

  Dawn was just leaving the locker. “Forget something?”

  She kept moving down the hall toward Charlotte.

  Charlotte flung her arm out. “Get back there. We’re not finished.”

  Dawn stumbled back and blinked and the sneer on her face changed to something Charlotte couldn’t quite read, but she turned and went back to the locker.

  They both stayed standing, a fit as tight as an elevator.

  “You wonder if I forgot something? Yeah! I did. I forgot to tell you about yesterday with the O.O. thing. Remember that? Remember how you were going to be the speaker? Remember how we had a plan? Did you think about that? But I guess you had other things on your mind. Like using lines. Here’s what I don’t get about that. Why would you take the advice of some mean flute player that you don’t even like?”

  Dawn opened her mouth to reply but Charlotte shook her head.

  “No, you don’t get to talk now. Tom Ed? Yes, I had a thing with him. It’s called friends. We talked. It’s what I used to have with you. Before you started to act like some stupid teenager. You know what? If you’re quitting Unteen you could at least have warned me.”

  As it all spilled out, Charlotte felt her voice change. It was doing that thing from the O.O. presentation, getting bigger and deeper, filling every nook and cranny of the locker. She had absolutely no urge to throw up or cry.

  “And, by the way, Dawn, if you want to tell a story to impress some boy, get your own. I was the one who wrote those essays on plywood, not you.”

  She pushed open the door. That was it. End of what she had to say.

  End of Dawn as a friend, obviously.

  “Plywood?”

  The voice wasn’t mad, just small and confused. Charlotte turned back to see Dawn sliding down the wall. She looked up and her eyes were big and round. Then they started to leak and her face melted. All the edges got blurry and trembly. Her cheeks were w
et all over.

  “Oh, Charlotte. It was awful. He was … he was embarrassed by me.”

  It was pretty much impossible to stay furious at a person whose face was melting, especially if you’d known that person nearly your whole life and even if she had been acting like a total jerk.

  Charlotte took a deep breath and crouched down.

  “So you did see him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How did you even find him? I thought you got, like, arrested as soon as you got off the bus.”

  “It was Annie.”

  Dawn gave a hiccuping gulp. She twisted around to reach the pocket of her sweatpants. She pulled out a ragged tissue and mopped her eyes.

  “There was this woman named Annie. Youth worker. I went to her house for the night. Not jail. Anyway, she was really nice and she said that even though it wasn’t procedure, as I had come all that way I should have a chance to see Tom.”

  “She knew him already?”

  “No. But I remembered that name from the letter. Remember? Where you were supposed to send his check? V. Popoff. Annie knew them, Vern and Wendy. She said that most of the dodgers end up there to begin with. She had some stuff to drop off to Wendy so I could come along. We walked to this big old hippie-looking house and there he was right on the porch, playing a guitar. Did you even know he played the guitar?”

  Charlotte shook her head.

  “When I saw him something happened to my ears and all I could hear was the guitar. Like tunnel vision but for ears. I don’t even know what happened to Annie. I got to the front gate, and then he saw me. Oh, Charlotte. He …”

  Dawn’s voice snipped off.

  Charlotte rocked back and sat down on her bum. She let Dawn’s report sink in.

  Forget the formula. It was real. What Dawn felt for Tom Ed? It wasn’t made up to show off. It was Juliet and Elizabeth and whatshername in Love Story.

  Charlotte felt the whole story twisting into a new shape. How could Dawn feel like her best, oldest friend and a complete stranger all at the same time?

  “He what?”

  “I saw the whole thing go across his face. It was like, ‘Oh, here’s Dawn. What? What’s Dawn doing here? Oh, no. Get me out of here.’ And then back to yes ma’am polite and friendly. It was fast, fast, fast. I was a problem.” Dawn’s voice cracked.

  “What happened then?”

  “The happy hippies gave us lunch.”

  “What was Tom Ed like?”

  “Friendly. Funny. Nice. Beautiful. Even though I saw what he thought about me it didn’t change anything. I just wanted to be in the same room with him, breathing the same air. I know it’s crazy but I feel exactly the same about him as before.”

  Dawn’s voice rose toward a wail. “If only I was older. We did have something. I couldn’t have made it all up. He got me. Maybe I wasn’t smart enough. But I was smart with him. I liked me with him. No, it was me. I’m just wrong.”

  Dust motes moved through slats of light. Dawn abandoned the Kleenex and wiped her nose on the bottom of her shirt.

  Charlotte made a decision.

  “It isn’t you.”

  “Huh?”

  “I mean, it’s you, but it isn’t anything about being smart or right or old enough.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “So Tuesday morning? I got up early. It was Puff …”

  The story ended with the kiss.

  Dawn blinked a few times and frowned, like somebody doing a hard math problem.

  “Oh, they were probably just horsing around. Guys are always doing that, grabbing each other. Like on the football field or … Are you sure? “

  “I’m sure. James talked to me about it. I think it might be why Tom Ed left in such a hurry.”

  Dawn still had her math face on. Math was an improvement over melting.

  “So when I said he seemed like a person with a secret he might have thought I meant …”

  “Yeah. Probably.”

  There was a long pause. Charlotte stared at the yellow-handled screwdrivers on the wall, big to little.

  Dawn’s voice was small. “I don’t get it. He just doesn’t seem … you know.”

  “Well, neither does James.”

  There was a sound from the main door to the locker area, a creak and a scrape.

  “Shhhhh.” They both had the same instinct, to hide as though they were doing something wrong. They froze and gave each other “yikes” looks.

  The scrape came closer and then stopped at the locker right beside them. There was the clink of keys, more scraping accompanied by grunts and one inappropriate word. The shared wall shook as a box was slammed against it and then there were the sounds of retreat.

  As the footsteps reached the main door there was a click, and all the lights went out.

  There was a squeak from Dawn.

  “Charlotte?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m sorry about the presentation. I’m sorry I finked out on you.”

  In the light Charlotte would probably have tidied it all up and said something like, “Oh, that’s okay,” but in the pitch-dark it felt right to just say nothing.

  “It would have been good.”

  “It was good.”

  “What? Who did it?”

  “Me.”

  “No!”

  “Yeah. I was on TV.”

  Darkness was also good for describing what it was like to be famous. Charlotte told the whole story in detail.

  “Sounds like it worked. I bet O.O. will be back on Monday.”

  “Hope so. Bye-bye Blinker!”

  “And … I’ve been thinking about the Unteen thing. Maybe next January when we have our birthdays we could decide to be quatorze instead of fourteen? You know, French and cool.”

  It was a peace offering. Dawn might have turned into a stranger in some ways but Charlotte could still read her. Was that what she wanted, though, to be cool in the way Dawn wanted to be cool? And next January was months away.

  But a cupcake was a cupcake. Charlotte reached out with her voice into the darkness and accepted it.

  “Maybe. Let’s decide next year.”

  Seventeen

  O.O. was back in class on Monday morning with two more boxes of books to give away. She had been doing more weeding.

  The term wound down with old books and new.

  Larry moved on from pit bulls to the Hungarian Vizsla. Sylvia finished The Lord of the Rings but even 1008 pages didn’t get her an A. Charlotte gave P&P a rest and brought in some of James’s hand-me-down Mad magazines.

  “Excellent introduction to the art of satire,” said O.O.

  At the end of the year there was a big retirement party for O.O. in the gym with teachers, parents, kids and former students, including James. O.O. gave a funny speech in which she revealed that she was planning to write a book. She was secretive about the subject, just the way a former spy would be.

  Nothing more was heard from Bernice Radger or Dorcas.

  The year rolled to a close. There was elementary school “graduation.” Charlotte thought it was dumb and fake. Dawn said she did, too, but she still got her hair done at a hairdresser.

  As summer began, Charlotte got lots of babysitting work with the Seeleys, including going away with them to their swanky summer cabin.

  “Why do they need a babysitter when they’re both there?” asked Dad.

  Mom rolled her eyes. “Because with small children you’re never really there even when you’re there. Your mouth is saying things about, say, Leonard Bernstein but your mind is actually taken up with questions such as what did the baby just put in her nose.”

  “Leonard Bernstein?” said Dad. “Who’s talking about Leonard Bernstein?”

  “I imagine the Seeleys discuss serious music. You know,
with their high-falutin’ friends.”

  Charlotte smiled. The Seeleys and their friends were actually quite low-falutin’. They talked about shopping.

  It was a great job. Charlotte mastered a couple of valuable life skills such as water-skiing and how to make martinis. She got a tan and she earned a bucket of lovely money.

  Nevertheless, by the time three weeks were over she had had it with small children, even adorable ones.

  Dawn went back to the old country with her parents to visit her grandparents and what sounded like dozens of cousins who all seemed to be called Luka or Mia. She sent jokey postcards signed Ringo Starr or Chairman Mao.

  James decided to switch from Commerce to Computer Science. He was still trying to convince the family that money made the world go round rather than love, peace, understanding and houseplants, but he changed his tune to include money and computers. Charlotte paid close attention to his reports of his social life but as far as she could tell his friends were friends and not boyfriends.

  Uncle Claude and Gloria took the Fun Bus to Reno.

  Summer, which began slow, speeded up as always and then, boom, it was September and high school. There were lockers and timetables, a science lab, halls that thundered between classes and a choice of electives. There were clubs. Dawn joined junior string orchestra and Charlotte decided to give drama a try.

  The drama club kids were all new to Charlotte, from other schools and in all different grades. They were friendly in an easy way and even hung out together at lunch sometimes. The older ones, who had been in productions before, could have whole conversations using lines from the plays. One would say, “Everybody’s got an ism these days,” and that would start them all off and then everyone would crack up. There was a lot of talk about cast parties.