This actually got her to smile at me, for the first time in what seemed like a year. “You wrote me a poem?”
“Yup! I’ve been reading a lot of poetry lately and I thought I’d give it a try. Can I read it to you?”
A quick look of distrust crossed her face—probably because of the reading comment—but she decided to give me the benefit of the doubt. “Sure, I’d like that.”
I took a deep breath, got out my notebook, and started reading.
“I would compare you to a summer’s day
Although, now that I think about it, you’re even more temperate, I’d say!
And May, darling, is when the rough winds blew
And summer is almost as hot as you—”
“Wait, Charlie Joe,” said Lauren Rubin, interrupting. “You’re kidding, right?”
I looked up. “What do you mean, kidding?” I glanced at Katie, who had her head down, and I felt a drop of sweat on my forehead as I heard the other kids giggle. Uh-oh. This wasn’t going to end well.
“Well, um, I hate to tell you,” Lauren said, “but you didn’t exactly write that.”
“I didn’t?”
“Nope. Shakespeare did.”
My eyes bugged out of my head a little bit. “Shakespeare? No way.”
Katie looked up, with pity in her eyes. “Way,” she said.
“How would you guys know that?” I said, panic starting to rise in my throat. “That’s crazy!”
“That’s like one of the most famous poems ever written,” Katie said, almost apologetically. “You just changed it a little.”
“Yeah, like, made it horrible,” snorted some girl I didn’t know. I made a mental note to keep not knowing her my whole life.
Another girl held up her phone. “I found the real poem,” she announced. Then she started reading.
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day
Thou art more lovely and more temperate
Rough winds to shake the darling buds of May—”
“Okay, okay!” I shouted. “Stop! I get it!” I hung my head. “I found it in a book called Elizabethan Love Sonnets. So, uh, I thought it was, you know, written by someone named Elizabeth.”
A few kids giggled at that one. Eric Cunkler raised his hand like he was in class. “‘Elizabethan’ means the period when Elizabeth the First was queen,” he said.
I felt a little nauseous. Why did everyone at Camp Rituhbukkee have to be so freakin’ smart?
“Charlie Joe, I don’t get it,” Katie said, getting up. “Don’t you remember at camp, when Jared wanted to cheat off of Lauren, and you helped put a stop to it? This is kind of the same thing.”
I don’t know what kind of face I was making right then, but it must have been a pretty pathetic one, because she actually put her hand on my shoulder in a comforting way. “You’re such a smart person, Charlie Joe, but you do the craziest things sometimes. As if I would ever believe that you would write a poem like that. Jeez Louise.”
She had a good point. I had no idea what temperate even meant.
As Katie sat back down, she looked up at me one last time.
“See you at home,” she said. And then she added, so softly that only I could hear it, “Thanks for trying.”
I stood there for about another minute, watching all the kids whispering and giggling. The only person who didn’t seem to think it was hilarious was Nareem. He just kind of smiled at me, with a sad look in his eyes.
Finally I ran out of there, with one thought running through my mind.
Love can make you really, really dumb.
24
“You left without saying goodbye to anyone,” George said.
“Yeah, what was that about?” Jack said.
It was fifteen minutes later, and we were all in the hotel lobby, waiting for our parents to check out.
“Nothing,” I said, avoiding eye contact.
“Well, see you next summer,” Jack said.
“Have a great rest of the year,” George added.
“You guys, too.” And that was about it. There wasn’t much more to add. “I should go.”
I turned to go find my mom.
George held out his hand to stop me. “Charlie Joe, wait.”
I stopped.
“Katie likes you,” Jack said. “I can tell. She really likes you.”
“Or, she would like you,” George added, “if you didn’t keep trying so hard to mess it up.”
I shook my head. “Thanks you guys, but you’re wrong. She used to, maybe, but not anymore.”
“You’re the one who’s wrong, Charlie Joe,” Jack said. “You just need to be yourself.”
George laughed a little. “You know, your usual obnoxious, annoying self.”
“Just be myself,” I said. “That’s funny. I read that in a book once.”
Jack and George stared at me.
“No, seriously,” I said. “I did. And I tried it. But it turned out, myself told me to say that liking her would be gross, like liking my sister. And myself told me to copy a poem out of a book that I thought no one would have heard of, but which turned out to be the most famous poem ever written.”
“Well technically, that’s not being yourself,” George said. “That’s being someone else.”
“D’uh,” Jack added, for emphasis.
George sat down on a bench, and we sat down next to him. “What you need is to do something really special and romantic and stuff, but that’s from your heart—not from some book.”
“Hey wait a second,” I said. “Wasn’t I giving you girl advice last summer?”
“Times change,” George answered.
I thought for a minute. What could I possibly do that was special and romantic? I was in middle school, for crying out loud. I was just trying to get my homework done with a minimum of effort.
Which gave me an idea.
“Hey, I have to do a class project on someone I consider a personal hero,” I told the guys. “It’s due in like a week. I was going to do it on my dad, but maybe I’ll do it on Katie instead! What do you guys think?”
George and Jack looked at each other, then back at me.
“You’re kidding, right?” Jack said.
“That’s the exact opposite of what I’m talking about,” George said. “That’s just like sucking up to her.”
Jack put his hand on my shoulder as if I were five years old. “It’s better if you do something that won’t embarrass her to the point where she never speaks to you again.”
Okay, so scratch that.
George scrunched up his eyes, which meant he was about to say something very intelligent. My friend Jake Katz does the same thing. I think it’s in the Genius Handbook. “Maybe you can do some research and find a hero that you actually think would be an awesome choice, but who’s interesting and different enough that Katie would think it was cool, too,” he said. “Or someone Katie already thinks is awesome. At least that would give you guys something to talk about, and who knows what would happen after that.”
“That sounds impossible,” I said. “Plus, it sounds like it would involve a lot of research. I like my projects to have as little research as possible.”
They sighed and shook their heads. Then George got out his phone and started recording me. “Can you say that again? The part about doing as little research as possible? I told the guys back home about my camp friend whose goal in life was to make it through middle school without ever reading a book, but they didn’t believe me. I need some actual evidence.”
I made a face into the camera. “Yo yo yo, this is Charlie Joe Jackson, big fan of not reading. The only book I like is my grandma’s checkbook, you know what I’m sayin’?”
The guys laughed. “See?” Jack said. “You’re actually kind of funny when you’re just being normal.”
“Good luck with your assignment without doing any reading,” George said, still recording me.
“Yeah, whatever,” I said. George was right, though. As if
there were some way that I could do a report about someone Katie really cares about, without reading. That sounded ridiculous. That sounded completely impossible. That sounded—
Wait a second.
I smacked George on the back. “You’re a genius.”
“I’ve heard,” he said. Then he added, “Ow.”
“I have an idea,” I said.
“Is it a crazy idea?” Jack asked.
“I think so.”
George whistled. “Remember what happened the last time you had a crazy idea?”
“It was about fifteen minutes ago,” Jack chimed in.
“You two are quite the comedy team,” I said.
I picked up my backpack, ready to get back to the real world. So what if my last crazy idea hadn’t worked out? I couldn’t worry about that. I had to look ahead. I had to have faith.
I had to give it one last shot.
I hugged Jack and George goodbye. Then I left the hotel, the city, the crowded streets, the building filled with books, the scary basements, and the most embarrassing moment of my life behind.
Claire Jackson’s Guide to Romance
PATIENCE. PATIENCE. PATIENCE.
My husband drives me crazy. He never puts his clothes away, he lets the dogs on every bed and couch in the house, and I’m not sure if he even knows how to use the washer and dryer. But guess what? I drive him crazy, too. I never answer my cell phone, I’m always late, and I’ve been known to lock myself out of the car.
Despite all that, though, we love each other. A lot. And even though we make each other nuts sometimes, that’s part of the deal.
So here’s my advice: Don’t get scared off by someone you like, just because they might have some habits that annoy you a little. Learn to be patient. It’s part of learning how to love.
But just between you and me … why can’t men ever pick up their socks?!?!?!
25
As soon as I got home, I started videoing everything my family did.
I filmed the dogs sleeping and playing outside.
They were cool with it.
Then I filmed my mom paying bills.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Filming you paying bills.”
“Why?”
“It’s for a school project,” I explained.
“Aha,” she said, clearly suspicious. But she let me keep filming.
I filmed my sister twirling her hair while she was on the phone in the front yard.
“Cut it out!” she yelled.
“It’s for a school project!”
“I don’t care! I don’t have any makeup on!”
I kept filming until she threw her sandal at me.
I filmed my dad when he came home from work. My dad is almost always singing when he walks in the door. I guess that’s because he’s in a good mood, which is probably because he’s home from work, which makes a lot of sense to me.
Anyway, that night, after he walked in the door and dropped his briefcase on the floor, he saw me pointing my phone at him and stopped singing.
“Charlie Joe, what are you doing?”
“Filming.”
“Filming what?”
“The family.”
“Why?”
“School project.”
I followed him up the stairs until he turned around.
“Don’t school projects usually involve reading and writing?”
I hesitated.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell him that my paper on my personal hero wasn’t going to be an actual paper at all.
That I’d figured out a way to do a great job without having to do any actual reading and writing.
So instead I just said, “Don’t worry. I have to get a good grade on this project or else for the rest of the year I have to spend recess in Mrs. Sleep’s office.”
That seemed to satisfy my dad. “Okay, fine,” he said. “Just don’t film me putting on my pajamas.”
I put down my phone—the battery was about to run out anyway.
“What’s the assignment?” my dad asked.
“Um … it’s complicated.”
He squinted at me. “Complicated how?”
I tried to figure out how to answer him. I didn’t want to tell anyone what the actual assignment was, because then they would have acted differently. I wanted everything to be normal. I wanted people to see that my hero was great, just because of how he acted, every day.
“It’s a secret,” I admitted, finally.
My dad shook his head, but then he put on his slippers and sighed happily, and I knew everything would be okay. I’d heard him say many times that putting on his slippers was a highlight of his day.
“A secret,” he said. “Well, it better be an A-plus secret.”
“Oh, it is, Dad, I promise.”
So I filmed at dinner.
I filmed after dinner, while we watched TV.
I filmed when we took the dogs for a walk.
When I filmed my sister, Megan, eating ice cream, she said, “Just make sure I don’t look fat.” Two seconds later, she said, “Turn that thing off.”
“But you don’t look fat!” I said.
She shook her head. “Eating ice cream makes anyone look fat.”
I turned the camera off.
Then I turned it back on two seconds later.
26
As the week went on, I didn’t tell anyone about my project—not my family, not my friends at school, not my teacher. I just kept shooting. I started editing over the weekend, since the assignment was due on Monday. I got it down to the best three minutes, but I realized something was missing. Everything I’d filmed was in the house or the yard. I felt like the video had to end with a family trip of some kind, so I convinced everyone to go to Lake Monahan. It’s an awesome place, even though it was where I started my unfortunate dog-walking business, which ended up involving a missing dachshund, a playful Great Dane, and a very lucky gopher that cheated death.
Anyway, on Sunday morning we all piled in the car—dogs included, of course—and headed out to the lake. It was a pretty cloudy day, so there weren’t as many people as there usually were. But Moose and Coco didn’t care. They made a beeline into the water, as Megan, my parents, and I set up a delicious lunch at the picnic table. Well, to be fair, they set up the lunch. I was busy shooting.
“Is this documentary thingie just your latest way of getting out of doing any chores?” Megan asked me.
I kept filming. “Hopefully.”
“I don’t get it, Charlie Joe,” my dad said. “You’re videotaping us doing boring stuff like watching TV and eating lunch. Doesn’t seem very exciting.”
“Yeah,” my mom added, “how come you don’t want us to jump out of an airplane or something?”
“Have you ever jumped out of an airplane?” I asked her.
“Uh, that’d be a no.”
“That’s why.”
“Hey, check it out,” Megan said, pointing a few picnic tables down. “Who’s that kid with all your girlfriends?”
I stood up to take a look. The first thing I saw was Hannah Spivero’s dog, Gladys, wagging her tail. Then I saw what she was wagging at: Hannah, Eliza, and Katie, who were laughing hysterically at something Emory, the new kid from California, had just said.
“Huh,” I said.
“Well, aren’t you going to go say hi?” asked my mom. “At least tell them to come over here. I never got a chance to say goodbye to Katie in the city.”
“But we’re in the middle of lunch,” I said.
My dad looked up from his plate just long enough to say, “Don’t be rude.”
I sighed, put down my phone, and walked over to their table. They didn’t see me coming until I was about two feet away. Then Eliza smiled, got up, and gave me a big hug. (Ever since she’d stopped liking me and started liking Emory, she’d been a lot nicer to me. That’s how girls work.)
“Charlie Joe, what are you doing here?”
“Han
ging with the family.”
Emory got up and gave me some California version of a handshake that was pretty complicated, but I tried to keep up.
“Hey, dude,” he said.
Hannah came over and gave me a hug, too. Things were okay between us, considering the kiss and everything. Jake and her were totally back to being a normal couple. I guess they talked about everything and worked it out like two mature people.
I should try that sometime.
That left Katie. I looked at her. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
We all stood there, not saying anything, for a few too many seconds.
“So what are you guys doing here?” I asked.
“Dude, we’re celebrating finishing our Personal Hero projects,” Emory said. “It’s the sweetest feeling in the world, dude.” I was starting to think Emory was worried he would get arrested if he didn’t use the word dude in every sentence.
“Cool,” I said. Then I looked around.
“Jake is still working on his,” Hannah said, answering my question before I could ask it.
“Cool,” I said again. “Well, I better get back.”
“What about your paper, Charlie Joe?” Katie asked. “Are you done with it?”
I hesitated. It was nice that she was making an effort to have a conversation, but I was pretty sure I wouldn’t like where the conversation ended up. Looking back on it, I could have just said “Fine,” but for some reason I didn’t.
“Well, uh, actually, I’m not writing a paper.”
Katie’s smile faded. “What do you mean, you’re not writing a paper?”
“I mean, I’m not writing a paper. I decided to do something different.”
“Can you do that?” Emory asked.
Katie stood up suddenly. “Charlie Joe, how long do you expect to get away with just doing whatever you want? Life doesn’t work that way! Sometimes you have to play by the rules! The assignment was to write a paper, but for some reason you can’t even do that. You can’t keep treating everything like a joke! And you can’t treat people like a joke, either! You need to grow up!”
No one moved for a minute.
Charlie Joe Jackson's Guide to Planet Girl Page 7
