The Fingertips of Duncan Dorfman

by Meg Wolitzer

  “That’s very thoughtful of you,” said Duncan’s mother. “My son will need his sleep for the tournament.”

  “I wonder why everybody makes ice cubes round these days,” said the woman. “A few years back, the ice people just up and changed the standard shape.”

  “You know, that’s true,” said Duncan’s mother. “I never thought about it before.”

  The ice people? There was no time to discuss this boring subject right now, Duncan thought. But the two women looked as if they were settling in to discuss something deep and urgent, like global warming. He would have to put a stop to it.

  “Mom,” hissed Duncan. “I have to go find Carl and register!”

  The Dorfmans had flown with Carl and his mother early this morning, though the Slaters had sat in first class, where they were handed rolled-up warm washcloths, and served omelets from a cart with a little flame that cooked them. As soon as they all arrived at the hotel in Florida, where the Slaters rushed through some kind of VIP check-in, Mrs. Slater had gone upstairs. Carl had slipped away, warning Duncan to hurry up and meet him at the registration table “ASAP,” and Duncan saw him step onto the escalator, heading up to the mezzanine.

  “Oh, all right,” said Duncan’s mother, blinking at Duncan as if she’d almost forgotten he was the reason they’d come here in the first place. “You go on. I’ll catch up with you in a little while.”

  He couldn’t believe she was letting him go off on his own; she almost never let him do that. Duncan walked quickly away from the front desk. He got on the escalator and rose up toward the roar of other kids, and the sound of tiles being shaken in their bags, and whatever else awaited him this weekend.

  Right behind Duncan Dorfman, a gloomy-looking boy with long dark hair and a skateboard stepped onto the escalator. Someone who appeared to be his father stood beside him. Behind them was another man, along with a woman holding a baby girl. The father had one of those beards that you could hide objects in, if he were in a “Find the Hidden Pictures” puzzle. A spoon could be hidden in his beard, and a cricket.

  “So the big day has come,” the father was saying. “Are you excited, kid?”

  “Oh, sure, Dad,” said his son. “Thrilled to death.”

  Although he didn’t want to show it, Nate Saviano actually was a little excited. For most of the plane ride down from New York first thing this morning, he’d been in a horrible mood. He had traveled here with his father, his mother, Dr. Steve, and baby Eloise. They’d taken up all the seats in row fourteen except one; some poor lady had to sit directly in the line of smell-fire from Eloise’s diaper. Maxie Roth, who incredibly enough had agreed to be his partner, had taken the bus down yesterday with her parents, and was already here, somewhere. Nate had to find her right away. He and Maxie had played a few games together since he’d invited her to be his partner, but all the pressure was on Nate to win the games for them. Maxie knew she was just a seat-filler, though Nate thought she was an extremely cool one.

  During the trip his father had wanted him to look over some word lists “just for the heck of it,” but Nate shook his head no, and instead he’d watched the tiny TV screen at his seat. He’d even watched the video of the safety demonstration, in which oxygen masks dropped down from above the seats, and all the passengers in the video calmly reached for them, as though getting glasses from a kitchen cabinet.

  Then Nate watched some dumb show on the little kids’ channel. That terrible kiddie singer Kazoo Stu came on, singing his big hit about wanting someone to take the kangaroo out of his hair. To spite his father, Nate even watched it a second time. By late tomorrow afternoon, this period of his life would be over forever, and he’d never have to form the words KEF or OORIE or QANAT again.

  But now that he was here at the hotel in Yakamee, Nate had to admit he was impressed by the number of Scrabble players around him. Since Nate had started being homeschooled this fall, he had rarely been around large groups of kids. As the escalator rose to the mezzanine, Nate took in the size of the crowd, and he was amazed.

  There were many, many kinds of kids, all of them in motion. What they had in common was Scrabble.

  “Whoa,” said Nate to his parents as they all stepped off the escalator.

  They walked out into the atrium, which was jumping with players. Palm trees actually grew indoors here; the scene was wild. A woman with a clipboard came over and said, “Have you registered?” Nate shook his head no. “Better hurry, then,” she said. “You’re among the last of them.” Maxie Roth was waiting for him by the table with her own parents. Her hair was magenta with a new skunky white streak through it. She held her own skateboard under her arm. When she saw Nate, she flashed him a peace sign, and he flashed one right back.

  Someone took a picture of Nate and Maxie, then slapped name tags onto their shirts. They were team #64, the Big Apple Duo—a boring name, Nate thought, but they hadn’t been able to come up with anything better.

  “Your partner, Maxie, is certainly very alternative looking,” Nate’s mother said after the picture was taken. “And neither of you smiled. It looked like a mug shot! Those boys over there are smiling,” said his mother, nodding toward a team that was having its own picture taken. They were called the Surfer Dudes, Nate would find out later. They both wore Hawaiian shirts and shark’s-tooth necklaces, and had golden blond hair that looked a little greenish. They were massively big, and their smiles glinted. They were smiling as if they owned the world and all its oceans and landmasses.

  “I didn’t feel like smiling,” he told his mother.

  “Well, even so,” said Larry Saviano. “You want to look nice, Nate.”

  “I do?”

  “Of course, wise guy,” said Dr. Steve. “If you win, they’ll put your picture in the paper.”

  “If they win?” said Nate’s father. “You mean when they win.”

  “Way to keep up the pressure, Larry,” Nate’s mother said to her ex-husband. “Way to turn your son into a basket case.”

  His parents glared at each other the way they always used to when they were married and had an argument, and Nate felt his stomach get tight.

  “I just want him to have fun,” Larry Saviano murmured, but Nate knew this wasn’t entirely true. His father had everything resting on Nate and Maxie winning the championship.

  “PAIRINGS!” a man shouted, and approximately two hundred kids swiveled their heads in his direction.

  “‘Bearings?’ What’s that mean?” asked Dr. Steve.

  “Pairings,” said Larry. “It means they’ve posted the teams that will be playing together for the first round.”

  All the kids in the atrium swarmed toward the bulletin boards that had been set up by the doors of Ballroom A, where the games would be held. Nate found himself wedged between a slightly chunky, wavy-haired, nervous-looking boy and a small redheaded girl.

  He got a good view of the pairings sheet, and he traced downward with his finger until he located his team. “There we are,” Nate said to Maxie. “We’re playing team number eighty-eight, the Evangelical Scrabblers from Butterman, Georgia.”

  There would be three rounds packed into today, then a tournament-wide trip to the amusement park Funswamp tonight, then three rounds tomorrow, plus the final round between the two top teams that all the other players would watch live on a movie-theater-size screen, and which would simultaneously appear on Thwap! TV. Nate and Maxie were turning to go back to his family when the redheaded girl spoke up.

  “Hi,” she said. “I’m April.” She pointed to her name tag, which read: APRIL BLUNT, TEAM #41, THE OREGONZOS. PORTLAND, OR.

  “I’m Nate.”

  “Hey. I’m Lucy,” said her partner, who had just joined them. She was a tall black girl with springing dreadlocks. Then Lucy said to April, “So?”

  “So nothing,” said April. “It’s not him.”

  “Not who?” asked Nate.

  “Nothing. Not important,” April said. Then she said, “Nate, can I ask you something? Wh
o taught you to play Scrabble?”

  “My dad did,” he said. “He was a Scrabble player when he was my age. He played in this tournament.”

  “Oh, wow. Well, that’s that.”

  “That’s what?” asked Nate.

  “Sorry, never mind,” said April. “I just wanted to make sure you weren’t somebody I once knew. But I didn’t really think you were.”

  “Whatever,” said Nate. They wished each other good luck in their games and said they’d see each other later.

  As Nate and Maxie walked away, April told her partner, “I didn’t really think it was him. I wanted it to be him, I guess.”

  “What about that one?” asked Lucy, pointing toward the boy with the wavy brown hair and a T-shirt that read: DRILLING FALLS SCRABBLE TEAM. The boy looked a little clueless and lost.

  “Oh, it’s pretty unlikely that that’s him,” said April. “But he looks nice,” she added.

  “Let’s say hi, then,” said Lucy.

  “Okay, sure.”

  “He looks like he could use a hi.” They walked over and introduced themselves. “We’re April and Lucy from Portland, Oregon,” Lucy announced, and the boy seemed startled to be spoken to by them.

  “I’m Duncan. From Drilling Falls, Pennsylvania,” he added after a moment, as if he weren’t happy about this fact.

  “Nice to meet you, Duncan,” said April. “Who are you playing first?”

  “A team called the Tile Hustlers, from somewhere in Maine.”

  “Hope you know how to hustle them back,” said Lucy. “Are you very experienced?”

  “Experienced?” Duncan felt like an impostor here, even though he had improved so much since he’d begun, and now loved the game. Still, it was strange to be wearing one of the T-shirts that Carl Slater’s mother had had specially made. She’d given it to Duncan recently, on the day he’d spent at the Slater house unhappily posing for photographs of himself and Carl playing Scrabble for the Smooth Moves cigarette ad.

  An unfriendly young woman had come up to Duncan in the Slater living room that day with a makeup kit in her hand. “You need color,” she’d said. “You look like death. No offense.”

  Before he could respond, she’d started brushing powder all over his face. He’d opened his mouth to object, but some of the powder got sucked inside, as if he was in a sandstorm. The whole day had made Duncan feel horrible, including the moment when he’d had to hand in the release form on which he’d forged his mother’s signature. He’d carefully written:

  Caroline Dorfman

  No one even bothered to check whether or not it looked real. Mrs. Slater didn’t seem to care.

  Duncan had asked Carl to tell his mother not to bring any of this up—the ad, the release form, or the money—to Duncan’s mother over the weekend in Yakamee. “She’s really sensitive,” he’d said vaguely, and Carl had said not to worry, his mom wouldn’t say a word.

  Maybe, Duncan thought, the ads would never appear anywhere, and he would never have to tell his mother what he’d done. She still thought the trip had been paid for by the school. Not only that, but she still had no idea of the real reason Duncan had been invited to participate. She knew what the fingertips of his left hand could do, but she didn’t know that anyone else knew. To Duncan’s relief, none of this information had made its way back to her over the fall.

  “I’m not experienced at all,” Duncan admitted to the girls at the tournament now.

  “Well, I’m glad to hear it,” said Lucy. “In case we end up playing each other today, I mean. But I bet you’re good.”

  “I don’t know about that. How about you two?” he asked.

  “We’ve been playing for a while, but this is our first tournament. We mostly just like the game,” said Lucy, but Duncan knew she was probably being modest. He had a feeling the two of them were extremely good.

  “I like your T-shirt,” April said to him. Then she casually asked, “Do you have a lot of shirts with things written on them?”

  “No, just a couple,” said Duncan. “I mostly wear regular shirts. My mom brings them home from the store where she works. Unfortunately,” he added.

  “Why unfortunately?”

  “They’re the exact colors of mustard, ketchup, and relish.”

  “Oh. That’s not good. But you could be a walking ad for a barbecue,” said Lucy.

  “I’m already a walking ad for cigarettes,” Duncan muttered.

  “What?” said Lucy, but Duncan said it was nothing, just a joke, never mind.

  “I’m pretty sure the answer to this is no,” April said, “and I know it’s going to sound completely weird, but I have to ask you a question: Did you ever own a T-shirt that said ‘SETTLE MARS’?”

  “No,” said Duncan. “Why?”

  “Long story,” said Lucy Woolery. “But basically, April met someone years ago at a motel pool. He was wearing a T-shirt that said SETTLE MARS. Anyway, you’re not the boy from the pool, I assume. You don’t have food allergies, like he did, do you? You never met my friend April before. You would probably remember if you had.”

  “No, I don’t have food allergies,” said Duncan. “And I’ve never met your friend. I’m not that boy.”

  He thought about how he had never been to a motel with a pool before, let alone a big fancy hotel with a pool on the roof, like this one. But still, he thought it was pretty great that he was here now. He lightly curled the fingers of his left hand, then flexed them. In the distance, Duncan could see his mother coming up the escalator, waving to him as soon as she picked him out of the crowd. He waved back.

  Suddenly the tall doors of the ballroom were flung open from inside. “IT’S STARTING!” someone shouted, and everyone rushed through the doorway.

  Duncan Dorfman, April Blunt, and Nate Saviano went in with the crowd, feeling themselves pushed into the enormous red-and-gold hotel ballroom. Row after row of tables were set up there, each one with a Scrabble game lying on it. Everyone went searching for their tables.

  Nate Saviano’s father Larry stood for a moment just inside the doorway, looking around in wonder. “I remember this place like it was yesterday,” he said to no one in particular, for Nate had already gone deep inside.

  A voice came over the loudspeaker. “Attention, players,” it said. “Welcome to the tournament. Everyone please find your tables and take your seats. Round one is about to begin.”

  Chapter Ten

  22 MINUTES ON THE CLOCK

  The ballroom went dead silent. Duncan Dorfman, his heart wild in his chest, sat beside Carl and across the table from the Tile Hustlers. They did not look like hustlers at all, but still Duncan felt as if he were going to die. What was he doing at a major Scrabble tournament? He didn’t belong here.

  Duncan shifted in his seat and something rustled in his back pocket. He reached in and pulled out a folded piece of looseleaf paper, having no idea how it had gotten there. Oh no, he thought, my mom put a humiliating note in my pants. It would be covered with hearts and would say something corny like, I LOVE YOU SO MUCH, DUNCAN, AND NO MATTER WHETHER YOU WIN OR LOSE, YOU ARE “TILE-RIFIC.” XOXOXO MOM

  Duncan unfolded the note and saw that he was wrong. It was a note with doodles of space aliens all over the top—the same kind of cartoons that Andrew Tanizaki always drew. He read it to himself:

  “What’s that?” asked Carl.

  “Nothing.”

  “‘Turnoment?’” said Carl, reading over Duncan’s shoulder. “Oh, right, the Chinaman. He made you a sweet little drawing. Awww,” he said in a sarcastic voice.

  Duncan carefully placed the note back in his pocket. He felt a little guilty that Andrew, who he no longer sat with at lunch, had given this to him. But he also felt pleased that he had. Though Duncan was nervous as he waited for the game to begin, he realized he would have felt even worse if he hadn’t had Andrew’s good-luck drawing.

  The room was completely hushed now, all the kids focused and alert. Some of them, like Duncan, felt their hearts thumping in
their chests.

  “We are about to start,” said the director of the YST, a slightly red-faced, earnest man named Dave Hopper, speaking into a microphone. “Are there any final questions?”

  Everyone looked around the ballroom. No, there were no questions.

  But then, oh wait, wait, how annoying, there was a question. Just when you thought everyone had silently agreed not to ask questions, someone always ruined it. A boy’s hand had shot up from the corner. He looked very young, and he and his teammate, a girl, wore matching cowboy hats.

  “What if you have to urinate?” the boy asked.

  Some kids laughed, and someone else shouted out, “URINATE is an anagram of TAURINE!” but the director took the question seriously.

  “I’m glad you asked that,” he said. “The answer is in the official rules, which I hope you’ve all read. But just to remind you: If a player has to go to the bathroom, the other teammate may continue playing, but the bathroom-goer must leave after his or her team has played, and before new tiles are drawn.”

  Now, were there any more questions?

  No, it seemed, there were not.

  “Well,” said the director, “I guess that’s it. Good luck, everyone. Draw your first tiles.”

  At each of the fifty tables, a player picked up a little tile bag, held it up high, and with the other hand reached inside and blindly swirled the letters around to pick a tile. The player then handed the bag to one of his or her opponents, who selected a tile, too.

  At Duncan and Carl’s table, Carl drew a P. He handed the bag back to the Tile Hustlers, and the boy with freckles bursting all over his face drew an M. This meant that the Tile Hustlers would go first, since their letter was closest to A. The P and the M were returned to the bag. Duncan gave it a hard shake and placed it on the table. As soon as one of his opponents picked the first tile and looked at it, Duncan slapped his hand down on the button of the electronic timer. It made a pock sound, and the clock began counting down from twenty-two minutes.