The Fingertips of Duncan Dorfman

by Meg Wolitzer

  But he had never waded through a “swamp” in his life. “I’ve got to do this, Maxie,” he said.

  “Exactly what are you going to do?”

  In answer, Nate lowered himself into the water.

  “Whoa,” said Maxie Roth. “Be careful, man.”

  Nate had no idea how deep it would be, and he was relieved when the water level stopped at his thighs. Even with his shoes on, he could feel the slippery bottom. With a shiver, he made his way through the water toward the opening of the tunnel. He pushed through the rubber flaps and found himself back inside the darkness.

  When Wendell Bruno, who was still dressed as Scaly the Gator, calmly told Larry Saviano that he had trapped a bunch of kids from the tournament inside the Lazy Swamp Ride, Larry couldn’t believe it. “What do you mean, you trapped them inside? Why would you do that?”

  “I just wanted to tire out the best teams a little,” said Wendell. “To keep them at the park longer, and make them a little bit exhausted, so that they wouldn’t concentrate as well in the morning. Nate wasn’t supposed to be among them, but he got on the ride before I noticed. Luckily he was in the first car, so I managed to get him out.”

  The two men stood by the caramel corn booth, the smell overpowering them. A little while earlier, Larry had realized that he couldn’t find his son; in fact, he couldn’t find any of the kids Nate had been hanging around with at the tournament. They all seemed to have disappeared in one clump, like the astronauts who had been whisked back in time in Larry’s Zax novels.

  “Have you become a maniac over the past twenty-six years?” asked Larry.

  “I told you that I had a plan,” said Wendell Bruno. “You said you were glad.”

  “A plan to trap a group of kids inside a ride in order to tire them out for the games tomorrow?”

  “It wasn’t meant to be all of them, Larry. What am I, stupid? The whole point was that Nate and Maxie would be the ones to have a relaxed evening tonight, while all the other strong players would be a little . . . tuckered out. It was a totally harmless prank. Lighten up.”

  “I cannot believe you would do this,” said Larry. “To minors!”

  “Oh, that’s a good one,” said Wendell, shaking his large alligator head. “I believe you’re the one who makes your boy study Scrabble words day and night, am I right?”

  “That’s an exaggeration.”

  “Look,” said Wendell, “we both know that losing the tournament made us each a little crazy. As I was about to tell you, my plan to jam the ride and tucker out the kids didn’t work out exactly the way it was supposed to. Who knew you would have such a goody-goody son? The long hair and the skateboard and the hipster, ultra-pierced skater-girl partner sure fooled me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Nate went back inside to get his friends out,” said Wendell. “The woman who’s dressed as Cuddly the Iguana told me she saw a long-haired kid slip inside. Cuddly knows everything that goes on at Funswamp.”

  “What? Nate’s inside?”

  “Yes. He waded into the water.”

  “Isn’t that dangerous?” said Larry.

  “Nah. The only thing that could go wrong is there could be a sudden electrical current in the water. But the chances of that happening are as low as . . . the chances of getting a bingo-bango-bongo.”

  “An electrical current?” Larry was terrified and angry, but he had to take action. “Go get a flashlight from a security guard, Wendell. We’re going in.”

  Wendell found a flashlight, and he and Larry jogged through the crowd toward the Lazy Swamp Ride. Together, the man and the alligator stepped into the water.

  But inside the ride, Duncan was wondering something. This fingertip ability of his, this “power”—was it good for anything real?

  Was it actually useful, or was it just some kind of cheater’s trick?

  Quietly, without calling attention to himself, Duncan reached his left hand out and ran it along the slimy wall in the darkness.

  Carl sensed movement and understood what Duncan was doing. “Getting anything?” Carl whispered. “Picking up any information?”

  “Not yet,” said Duncan. For a foot or so there was just a stretch of algae-covered wall, and then, finally, there was a sign. Duncan ran his hand across it, waiting, waiting. Within seconds his fingertips began to heat up. They were like five hot little pokers, and together they worked to lift the letters on the sign to life. “Emergency Equipment,” he read aloud.

  “Fantastic,” said Carl.

  “Break glass below,” Duncan kept reading. “Anybody got anything heavy?” he called out.

  “I have my Scrabble dictionary,” Josh admitted. “The hardcover edition.”

  Somehow the dictionary was handed over in the darkness from boat to boat, and Duncan rammed it against the panel of glass he had now located with his hand. All he heard was a dull thud. Some of the kids said “Ohhh,” and “Too bad,” so he tried again. Nothing.

  “Oh, for once in your life don’t be such a weakling, Dorfman,” Carl said, starting to grab the book from him, but Duncan didn’t want to give it over. This time he slammed the dictionary against the glass panel, and it broke with a resounding shatter that sounded like falling icicles.

  Duncan carefully reached inside and felt around. His fingers gripped the edges of a big flashlight, and he took it out and switched it on. The whole area was illuminated, and he could see the players’ faces, some frightened, some relieved, some (the Surfer Dudes’) smirking. He also reached back in through the panel and pulled out a couple of emergency oars, and handed them over to the others. Slowly, Lucy and April were able to push off and start to paddle.

  “All right, how did you do that?” asked the Surfer Dude Jonno, looking directly at Duncan.

  “Do what?” said Duncan innocently.

  “Read the words on the wall.” Jonno gestured toward the sign that read EMERGENCY EQUIPMENT. “You read it out loud in the darkness. I heard you.”

  “Yeah, we all heard you,” echoed his partner, Bradley. The two of them were big and blond and menacing with their sharks’ teeth hanging on leather straps around their ample necks.

  But Duncan didn’t have to answer, for distantly there came splashing, and the sound of voices. A flashlight beam appeared in the long tunnel, and Nate Saviano was standing in the water. “There you are!” Nate called.

  Coming up behind him, his father sloshed through the water as swiftly as he could. Beside him, Wendell Bruno pushed through with more effort, his furry, clanking wet costume slowing him down.

  When Tim from the Wranglers team saw the alligator in the water, he began to fall apart. “It’s an alligator!” he cried. And then he added, “I have to urinate!”

  “Come on, Tim, do you really have to urinate?” Duncan gently asked him.

  “Yes! Yes, I do!” said Tim. After a moment he added, with wonder, “No, actually, I don’t. I just thought I did.”

  “You’re fine,” said Duncan. “Just take it easy, okay?”

  “But there’s still an alligator coming toward us,” said Tim.

  “You’re frightening that kid,” Larry Saviano hissed to Wendell. “He thinks you’re an actual alligator.”

  “Tim, use your head,” said Duncan. “That is just a grown man dressed as Scaly the Gator. Listen, Tim,” he went on, “can you figure out a five-letter anagram for SCALY?”

  Tim blew his nose. “Is it an obscure word?”

  “No,” said Duncan. “Not the one I’m thinking of.”

  “CLAYS,” said Tim after a beat.

  “Nice work,” said Duncan.

  “And ACYLS is good, too,” Lucy couldn’t help but add.

  Nate’s father and Wendell Bruno helped Nate push the boats back out though the tunnel. Nate was completely confused. Why was his dad here? And how did he know this guy dressed in the alligator costume, anyway? What was going on?

  Just as the Scrabble players emerged, climbing back up onto the dock, a bright
flash came from inside the tunnel, and they heard a loud electrical snap. A shower of sparks poured through the flaps.

  “What was that?” someone asked. Later, they all found out that there had been an electrical short in the covered wires snaking beneath the water.

  But as it was, no one had been hurt or even tired out by getting stuck in the ride. And it didn’t, in the end, affect the outcome of the tournament.

  But it was strange, Nate thought as he sat wrapped in a towel on the bus heading back to the hotel, that his father had been in the tunnel with that man in the alligator costume. That man who, when he finally took off his alligator head, was revealed to be the bald guy who had been seen staring at Nate earlier in the day. The dark glasses were off now, but April and Lucy had immediately recognized him and let Nate know.

  Something peculiar was going on, but Nate Saviano couldn’t figure it out.

  A little later, back in the hotel room, his father ran him a vanilla-citrus-scented bubble bath. “Take your time,” Larry Saviano said. “I’ll order us some hot soup from room service. And be sure to give your mom and stepdad a call in their room down the hall. They were so worried about you when you came off the ride all wet. Dr. Steve practically wanted to put you in an iron lung.”

  “An iron what? I wasn’t going to get sick from being wet. We’re in Florida, Dad, not Alaska,” Nate reminded him. “I’ll be fine. But yeah, I’ll give them a call.”

  Father and son stood in the big marble bathroom. Larry turned off the taps and said, “Your bath awaits,” then walked out of the room to give him privacy.

  “Dad?” Nate said. His father turned around. “Who was that guy?” Nate asked.

  His father paused. “Which guy?”

  “You know which guy!” said Nate, his loud voice echoing off all the marble. He didn’t want to use his “inside voice” now. “Come on, Dad,” he said. “Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

  His father sighed and shook his head. “All right,” he said. “Nate, listen, I’ve got to tell you something. You might want to skip the bath for now, kid.”

  Nate drained the water from the tub and followed his father back into the hotel room, where they sat facing each other on the beds. Mints in silver foil had been placed on the pillows earlier, but they just left them there. “Go ahead,” Nate said.

  His father said, “The man in the alligator suit is Wendell Bruno.”

  Nate heard himself gasp. “Your Scrabble partner?”

  “Yes. He lives right here in Yakamee,” his father continued. “It’s the first time I’ve seen him in twenty-six years.”

  Larry told Nate about how Wendell Bruno had deliberately jammed the Lazy Swamp Ride in order to tire everyone else out a little. “In his defense, I should say that he’s not a criminal,” Larry said. “Just a weak person. He still can’t get over losing.”

  “And neither can you,” Nate said.

  “That’s true. Losing the tournament changed the path of both our lives.”

  “And my life, too, in case you hadn’t noticed,” said Nate.

  “Yes, your life, too,” said Larry. “And I’m sorry about that, Nate, I really am. I know I’m tough with you. But I’m hoping that after the weekend’s over, I’ll be able to move on. And now,” he added, “there are two of us counting on you, not just one.”

  Nate looked at his father. He imagined him as a twelve-year-old sitting on a bed in this very hotel, twenty-six years earlier. Of course, Larry wouldn’t have had a beard then. In some ways, though, Nate’s father was the same person now that he’d always been. Larry and Wendell had just been two boys who played Scrabble a lot and wanted to do well.

  Nate felt sorry for his father for being so unrelentingly competitive. There were a few kids at the YST who were like that; Carl Slater was one of them, Nate knew, and so, he’d heard, were the Surfer Dudes. But most of the kids here weren’t that way at all.

  “Dad, it’s an amazing story, but I’ve got to get some sleep,” Nate said finally. “I’ve got a big day tomorrow. A huge day.”

  For once, his father didn’t try and stop him. In silence they crunched on the mints from their pillows, and then Nate got into bed.

  The Blunt family let themselves into their hotel suite after the long night at Funswamp. Jenna turned on Thwap! TV, which was broadcasting a basketball game. Everyone sat around and watched it, and after a moment, because she had nothing else to do, April joined them. To her surprise, the game was very exciting.

  She noticed, for the first time, that the players kept their eyes on the ball the same way she kept her eyes on the tiles. “Shoot!” she found herself calling out when a player paused and dribbled before the basket. “Shoot!” Her whole family turned to her, shocked.

  “April?” said her brother, Gregory. “Was that you?”

  “Yes,” she said. She was as surprised by her outcry as they were. April imagined herself on that screen, being televised as she played the final round of the YST. She pictured her family watching her as if she were a basketball player in the crucial last seconds of a game. Everyone in her family would be rooting harder for the Oregonzos than they had ever rooted for any other team.

  Up on the eighteenth floor, Duncan Dorfman’s mother was sitting up in bed with the light on, reading a book.

  “Oh good,” Duncan said as he entered the room. “You’re feeling better, Mom?”

  “Much. Stupid migraine finally went away,” she said, closing her book. “I was really sorry to miss the amusement park. Was it fun?”

  Duncan plunked himself down on the other bed and said, “Only if your idea of fun is being trapped inside a ride, and then being rescued by another player’s father and an alligator.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Duncan explained what had happened. “It was really strange, sitting in the dark for so long,” he said. “Not knowing when we’d get out. But I think maybe I helped a little.”

  “That’s good; I’m glad to hear it. What a night,” his mother said. “And you had quite a day too. By the way, I took a look at the pair of pants you changed out of, Duncan. That rip in the knee, and all that blood! You must have really hurt yourself. It wasn’t an ordinary fall that you took, was it?”

  Duncan paused, remembering how hard he had landed when he flew off the skateboard. “No,” he said. “Not exactly.”

  “Don’t tell me,” his mother said, raising her hand up. “I don’t want to know. I know I’m overprotective. I know I need to give you a little more independence. You’ve had a hard year, moving to a new state, giving up our home. And even if things don’t go your way tomorrow, I hope you’ll be okay with it. You’re a terrific person, and that’s what matters.”

  But Duncan had to wonder if he was all that terrific. A terrific person probably wouldn’t have lied his way here. A terrific person wouldn’t do what Duncan Dorfman knew he was finally going to have to do tomorrow when reaching into the tile bag. As far as he could see, there was no other way.

  Chapter Sixteen

  THE END IS NEAR

  And yet, by the last moments of round four the next morning, Duncan still couldn’t bring himself to use his fingertips.

  Four minutes and eighteen seconds were left on Drilling Falls’ timer, and he and Carl were losing badly. The score was 225 to 301, and their opponents, the Surfer Dudes, were on a roll. The team from Malibu had recently made a high-scoring bingo; then they’d played ZA with the Z landing on a double-letter square in two directions. Both times, they’d high-fived each other with their clamshellsized hands. Their Hawaiian shirts were insanely bright and distracting across the table, and Duncan practically heard the ocean roar in his ears. The situation looked dire.

  Do it, he told himself. He reached into the bag with his left hand and let the tiles sift between his fingers. They felt as cool and smooth as sea glass. Carl was now watching him to see what he would do. In that moment, Duncan knew he absolutely had to close his eyes and finally let his mind take him
to the place where his brain sent a signal to his fingertips, making them grow hot. Making them sensitive to every bit of ink spattered upon the plastic surface of a factory-made tile.

  Do it. But he just couldn’t. He still wasn’t ready to tilt the game in his favor. He still wasn’t ready to almost-cheat. Maybe by the next game he’d be ready, but not yet, not now.

  And he also wasn’t ready to tell Carl he wasn’t ready. Inside the bag, Duncan’s fingertips tapped against the tiles. While Carl was watching, Duncan closed his eyes and made it look as if he was concentrating. He wanted to let Carl believe that his fingertips were once again alive with heat.

  “Hot,” he mouthed to Carl, who smiled, pleased. From across the table, the Surfer Dudes watched with curiosity. Duncan plucked up five tiles and held them in his fist. “Whew,” he said to Carl quietly, faking it.

  “Let’s see what you brought us,” whispered Carl. “Let’s see your catch.”

  How bad could the tiles be? Duncan thought. No matter which ones he had picked, he could try to explain them to Carl later. You see, I thought selecting the W and the H seemed like a good idea, he’d say. I had a strategy in mind . . .

  “Hey, no coffeehousing,” said Bradley.

  Carl happily pried open the fingers of Duncan’s left hand and pulled out the letters. He placed them on the rack so they could both look at them.

  They were unbelievable.

  Unbelievably bad.

  There was no way that Carl could think that Duncan had picked these on purpose. He had drawn:

  UUUVV