by Meg Wolitzer
“That’s sixteen points,” said Wendell. “And we’re out.”
“Larry and Wendell,” said Lucy. “You have won the tournament. You are the big winners! Enjoy this moment. Soon, Wendell, I am going to wake you up again, and when I do, I want you to hold onto the happiness you felt at winning the tournament. Whenever you think about the real event, I want you to understand that yes, you actually did lose, but I still want you to remember the story I told you. To remember the wonderful pleasure of winning. I want you to absorb it and make it feel as good and as valuable as if it happened. Do you understand?”
Wendell nodded. Lucy woke him up, and he sat up on the blanket beside Larry, completely disoriented.
“Why are we here? It’s strange. I feel so relaxed,” said Wendell, stretching his arms.
“Think about what happened back when you and I lost,” said Nate’s father.
“Okay,” said Wendell. “I’m thinking about it.”
“And is it okay?” Larry asked anxiously. “Can you handle the memory?”
“Why wouldn’t I be able to handle it?” said Wendell. “It was a long time ago. We had a great time that weekend. It doesn’t matter how the finals ended up. It was very exciting.” Wendell looked happy; everyone could see that.
Moments later, Nate and his father stood at the shore together. “I wish Lucy had been able to hypnotize me, too,” Larry said. “But I guess I need to deal with this on my own. There’s no shortcut for me.” He looked hard at Nate and said, “When I was your age, I wasn’t half as brave.”
“I’m not brave.”
“Oh, yes, you are,” said his father. “I watch you navigate the city—the streets, and all the people in them. I watch you navigate all this technology that you kids use; every day there’s a new device, a new thing to learn, and yet you do it like it was nothing. I watch you navigate having two families, going back and forth all the time. And, of course, I watch you navigate having me as a dad.” His voice broke slightly. “That can’t be easy,” Larry said. “Not easy at all. But I want it to be easier now, Nate. A lot easier.” He paused. “I think it’s great that you and Maxie played so well. And that you made new friends here. But I think we’re done with Scrabble studying for a while, don’t you? It’s a terrific game. But there are other things you probably want to do, too.”
“Yes,” said Nate, “there are.”
“From now on, I want you to do them, kid. All of them. Whatever you like.”
Nate quietly began to cry. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d cried; it wasn’t what he did. His father had given up his obsession at last. “Dad,” he said softly. “I think you’re going to be okay.” And so am I, he thought. He and his father hugged, and then his father released him, and they walked back to join the others.
A little later, before the finals began, Wendell and Larry said good-bye to each other, probably for good. Wendell wasn’t planning on sticking around to see who won the big game that afternoon. He said he didn’t need to know. He was going back to his surfside cottage in Yakamee, where he planned to take a long nap, and then a walk by the ocean, and then maybe later he would invite someone to dinner. Cuddly the Iguana from Funswamp was nice, he told Larry. He’d always wanted to invite her over, but had never worked up the courage. Maybe today he finally would.
“Good-bye, Larry. Take it easy,” said Wendell.
“Oh, I will. Good-bye, Wendell,” said his former partner.
The crew from Thwap! TV had set up their cameras in the small room off the hotel ballroom where the final round would be filmed for live television. Tiny microphones were clipped to the four players’ collars. Bill Prescott, the sports announcer who gave blow-by-blows of the games that April’s family often watched, paced the room, rehearsing what he was going to say on air.
“Scrabble,” he said in his deep, syrupy voice. “One of America’s best-loved board games. But did you know that this mild-mannered indoor game can be as fast-paced as soccer, as elegant as polo, or as brutal and bloody as football? Today we bring you live coverage from the Youth Scrabble Tournament in Yakamee, Florida, where two teams will be fighting to the finish for the national title . . . and ten thousand dollars.”
Duncan sat in the corner by himself. He was so nervous that his whole body was quaking. The game would start in ten minutes, and he still didn’t know how he would handle the problem of his fingertips. He realized that it would have been nice if he could tell himself he didn’t care about winning. If he could tell himself he came here just to play.
But even though Duncan had come so far in a short period of time, and even though he knew how much fun it was to play your heart out, it would still feel interesting—no, it would still feel great—to win. He’d been thrilled each time he and Carl had won a game. He could barely imagine how it would feel to win the championship.
It would really be something to walk into Drilling Falls Middle School and hear people say, “Dorfman, you rock!”
It would really be something to give his mother the three thousand dollars.
And it would also really be something to know that Carl Slater didn’t hate him anymore—and would never hate him again.
But if Duncan didn’t use his fingertips when it mattered during the finals—and if Drilling Falls lost—Duncan would retreat back into himself. School would be agony again. Life would be, too.
The only way to guarantee a win would be for Duncan to simply give in and use his power, just as he had originally promised he would. Duncan told himself that April had already achieved what she’d hoped to here in Yakamee. In just a few minutes her whole family would watch her on Thwap! TV, and maybe it would finally sink into their brains that Scrabble was really a sport, and that April Blunt was amazing at it.
April didn’t need to win in order to get that, Duncan thought as he sat in the corner. She had a lot less riding on winning than he did. He could use his fingertips in the finals, and April and Lucy would never know. Lucy, too, would be fine if they lost; Lucy was good at everything, so what did it really matter? She’d probably turn around and become the U.S. kid champion in Ping-Pong. April and Lucy would both be fine; he shouldn’t have to feel guilty about them.
Everyone would go home tomorrow morning feeling happy. So it was settled; he would put his hand into the bag and bring on the heat.
That’s it, he told himself. I’ve decided. But the decision immediately made Duncan anxious. It unnerved him, and it felt wrong.
“Players, it’s time to get set up at the table,” said Dave Hopper.
Everyone took their places. A makeup woman came around with a powder puff, “to get rid of the shine,” she said as she lightly patted it against Duncan’s face. The powder made him cough, reminding him of the awful day when he’d shot the Smooth Moves cigarette ad at the Slaters’ house. The cigarette ad was just one more unpleasant detail that awaited him in Drilling Falls.
In the final seconds before the live TV broadcast began, Carl turned to Duncan and said, “Dorfman, I have something to say to you.”
“Okay,” said Duncan.
“Make it right,” said Carl in a low, intense voice.
“What?”
“You heard me. Make it right.”
“What do you mean by that?” Duncan asked. “Tell me what you mean, Carl.”
But it was too late to find out. The cameraman said, “Five, four, three, two, one . . .” and the red light on the camera snapped on.
Make it right, Duncan thought as he was thrust onto national TV. He tried to smile, but the white light was too bright. As soon as he looked down at the board, having just looked into the light, he couldn’t see a thing. Everything appeared as its ghostly opposite. Calm down, Duncan told himself. Just calm down. Don’t have a freak-out. Soon his vision returned to normal.
He took a few deep breaths and watched as Lucy Woolery drew the first tile from the bag. It was a C. Lucy smiled slightly, then quickly hid it.
Carl reached in and drew a W.
Duncan sat up straighter in his chair, his arms hugging his chest. The camera was trained on the board, and Duncan’s eyes were, too. Out there in the ballroom on the other side of the wall, all 196 eliminated players sat in rows of banquet chairs, watching the game on an enormous screen. They’d all been given bags of popcorn and cans of soda, as though they were spending a relaxing afternoon at a movie.
For the four players in this little room, the final round was the opposite of relaxed. The game felt surreal to Duncan. The Oregonzos played their first word, then the Drilling Falls Scrabble Team played theirs. The words intersected and fed off one another; points were added to points. Both sides played with confidence.
Duncan saw Carl stare meaningfully at him from time to time, as if asking:
When are you going to use your fingertips?
But it wasn’t necessary yet. Duncan and Carl chugged along, writing notes to each other on their pad, making good words and slightly less good words. Neither team had made a bingo yet. There were no blanks on the board. Anything could happen, Duncan knew, and probably many things would.
When the bag was half empty, Duncan reached in with his left hand and pulled out four tiles. He lined them up on the rack next to the three that were already there.
The letters, he saw, were astonishing.
Surely, on Thwap! TV right that second, the announcer was saying in a hushed and excited voice to the audience, “Folks, the Drilling Falls team has just drawn an incredible set of letters! Wow, baby, wow! Home run!”
Duncan and Carl were staring at this rack:
A
E
N
T
P
L
R
Carl gave Duncan a knowing look, and nodded. Then, on the pad of paper, Carl wrote:
Thank you, Dorfman.
Duncan realized that Carl had once again assumed that Duncan had deliberately selected these letters. Carl still didn’t seem to remember that chance could also bring you a winning rack. Duncan didn’t feel like letting Carl know that the tiles had been drawn the way anyone in any Scrabble game might have drawn them. Besides, there wasn’t time for that right now. The clock was running down.
Both boys had seen the word PLANTER. But the problem was, Duncan realized after a second, there was nowhere to put it.
Ugh.
It was a classic homeless bingo. They looked and looked, searching the board for a place to hook a letter, perhaps the P at the start of the word, or the R at the end of it, but there was nothing.
“What are we going to do?” Carl said under his breath. Duncan cracked his knuckles in anxiety, then realized how loud it had probably sounded on TV.
He was frantic now, but also powerless. The letters simply did not fit. Then Duncan told himself to calm down and think. He knew, of course, that you could also add another letter to your own seven in order to make an eight-letter bingo. Was there any single letter on the board that could fit seven letters around it?
The A could do it.
The A was just sitting there, part of the word ARCH. Duncan tried to figure out what eight-letter bingo he could possibly form around that A. He picked up a few tiles on his rack and moved them. With the A in the mix, he saw that he could make:
PRENATAL
He knew that word meant “before birth.” Right now, thinking about it, the word made him feel strange. It was as if he was being hypnotized, as Lucy had hypnotized Larry Saviano’s former partner, Wendell. He imagined himself as a tiny baby who hadn’t even been born yet, floating inside his mother’s womb. Caroline Dorfman and Duncan’s father, Joe Wright, must have been scared but excited, knowing that they were going to have a baby.
Then Duncan moved the letters around some more. It was so peculiar, but they also scrambled to make:
PARENTAL
Now he imagined his young parents several months later, eagerly awaiting his birth. Maybe they went out and bought a crib for Duncan’s room, and a mobile with ducks on it. Maybe they sang songs to him while he was still inside the womb. Surely Duncan’s father couldn’t wait to meet his son.
Duncan restlessly moved the letters again. This time they spelled out yet another word. It was:
PATERNAL
This word meant “having to do with fatherhood,” and it made Duncan Dorfman push back a little in his chair. He thought of Joe Wright looking forward to becoming a father, but dying tragically of a rare disease before he ever had the chance.
It was too sad to believe, Duncan thought. It was so incredibly sad that his father had died of panosis before he was able to become paternal. Before he could hold little baby Duncan in his arms.
It was too sad to believe, Duncan Dorfman thought again. And then he realized that he actually didn’t believe it.
He didn’t believe it at all.
After all, PANOSIS had been no good; Dr. Steve had confirmed that it wasn’t a real disease. Then why had Duncan’s mother always told him that his father had died of panosis?
Maybe panosis was just a made-up word told to a child thoughtlessly, in a hurry, when he’d begun to ask his mother a lot of questions. And once she’d said it, she’d needed to stick to it:
“What did my dad die from?”
“What? Oh, your dad died from . . . panosis. Yes, it was very, very sad. Now listen, Duncan, I’m seeing an aura again. I think I need to go lie down. I’ve put a cheese sandwich for you on the table.”
Duncan realized, too, that his mother’s migraine headaches had something in common. Each time she got one, she seemed to have just been thinking about or talking about Duncan’s father. Yesterday, she’d told Duncan that her migraine had come on right after talking to Nate’s father, Larry, about being a single parent.
Thinking about Duncan’s father always caused Caroline Dorfman a lot of stress.
Why? he wondered. Why would it cause her so much stress?
Why would she need to make up the name of a fatal disease?
Why didn’t any of this make sense?
In a way, Duncan knew, he had questioned the story about his father for some time. His mother had always been so vague about Joe Wright—what he was like, how long he had been sick with panosis. But Duncan had never wanted to bring it up and upset his fragile mother.
And then there had been all the whispered conversations she had at night with Aunt Djuna. “I realize it’s not perfect,” she had told his great-aunt.
And Aunt Djuna had said, “He deserves better.”
Yes, he deserved to know the truth. It was only now, during the finals of the Youth Scrabble Tournament, in front of a live TV audience, that Duncan could really concentrate on what the truth might be. Now, of all times, it came together and took on meaning.
PRENATAL . . .
PARENTAL . . .
PATERNAL...
The words were like a trail of clues, leading to a wild conclusion, perhaps a wrong one, but a conclusion nonetheless:
Duncan’s father was alive.
He didn’t even know he had fainted until he saw April’s face above him, looking frightened. “Duncan?” she was saying. “Duncan? Are you okay?”
“I think so,” he said, but he realized he was on the floor. This was like falling off a skateboard, but much stranger.
Someone helped him sit up and gave him a glass of water. The Thwap! TV announcer had cut to a commercial, and now the television crew was gathered around him, murmuring to themselves. A man with a headset came over and said, “Duncan, we’ve got a doctor coming in here in just a moment. He’s Nate Saviano’s stepdad.”
“Oh, he’s nice,” said Duncan, “but I don’t need a doctor. I’m fine now,” he added, and it was actually, suddenly true.
“Are you sure?” asked the man nervously. “Because you fainted, you know.”
“I know,” said Duncan. “What’s happening with the game?”
“Both of your timers are paused,” the man said. “You’ll resume playing when you’re ready. If y
ou can’t continue, we’ll cut to a taped sporting event. Boxing, I think. Humboldt versus Suarez. Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m ready,” said Duncan.
Make it right, Carl had warned him before the game started, and Duncan now knew how to do that. After he swore to all the adults around him that he was perfectly fine—that he had simply been overexcited because of the game—the players took their seats at the table again, and the red light of the TV camera came on.
The game resumed where it had left off. The bingo PATERNAL was selected and played by Duncan, and then it was April and Lucy’s turn. Back and forth both teams went, and the game was tremendously close the whole way. Something needed to be done to pull Drilling Falls ahead. To win.
It was now or never.
Carl pushed the tile bag toward Duncan and whispered, “Here you go, dude. Do it for Drilling Falls.”
Duncan reached his left hand into the opening of the velvet bag, his fingers fishing around inside. A new calm had settled over him.
Make it right, he thought. Duncan knew that he didn’t want any more lies. He wanted only what was real. Yes, of course he wanted his team to win, but he wouldn’t do it in some phony, cheater’s way that would make him feel bad whenever he thought about it for the rest of his life.
Also, he wouldn’t pretend to Carl that he had done it that way, either.
Make it right.
Duncan Dorfman took that phrase literally.
He removed his left hand from the bag. Making sure that Carl was watching, he plunged his right hand in instead.
“What are you doing?” mouthed Carl, practically hysterical. “This is it, man, this is the moment! Wrong hand, dude, wrong hand!”
Duncan calmly felt the tiles. None of them bloomed into hot life, of course; his right hand had never possessed that skill. He felt absolutely nothing on those plastic squares. Their surfaces were cool and flat, and Carl could tell this by Duncan’s expression.
“You know what you are?” said Carl. “You’re a nothing. You’re just . . . Lunch Meat.” He hissed the words close to Duncan’s ear, which grew red, as if it were on fire. “Lunch Meat,” Carl repeated, taunting him, and the cameras and the microphone picked up this moment, too.
