The Downside of Being Charlie

by Jenny Torres Sanchez

  “Holy crap,” I whisper. “Mark?”

  “Yeah, because they checked his locker and, well, they found stuff. Anyway, I think you’re next,” she says, her eyes looking at everyone who passes by. “He told them you gave the brownie to Tanya.”

  Oh crap....

  “But . . . she didn’t even know. She didn’t eat it,” I tell her.

  “But she saw you throw it out!” She looks around nervously. “Listen, don’t mention my name at all, okay?” she pleads. “I’ll get in trouble for just knowing about it, and my mom will have my ass! Please, don’t mention my name, okay?”

  She looks pretty scared. Actually, she looks terrified, just like how I feel.

  “I know Mark didn’t say anything about me, so . . .”

  “Yeah, of course I won’t,” I tell her, setting her somewhat at ease but still scared shitless for myself.

  “What am I gonna do?” I ask her, hoping she’ll have some sort of miracle answer.

  She shakes her head. “This was such a stupid idea. Now we’re all gonna go down because of Tanya Bate!”

  “No, not because of Tanya, because of Mark and his shitty ideas,” I tell her. I’m pissed because I’m finally fed up with the fact that she doesn’t see what a dumbass he is. “And I’m the one who’s gonna go down.”

  She nods and looks down at the floor. “I’m really sorry, Charlie.” I shrug my shoulders.

  “Forget it,” I say.

  “I’ll see you later, okay?” she says, “Hopefully?”

  “Yeah, hopefully,” I mumble. She turns away and gets swallowed up by the crowd. I take a couple of deep breaths and decide to act as normal as possible. Just go with the flow, I tell myself, do what you always do.

  CHAPTER TEN

  It happens during my next class. The dean, Mr. Gouche (aka Mr. Douche), whom I’ve thankfully never had reason to speak to the whole three years I’ve been at Kennedy High, stands in the doorway and barks my name to the teacher. My body feels like I’ve just been jolted with a million bolts of electricity.

  “Come with me,” he says as he leads me to his office. When we get there, he motions for me to sit down.

  “So, Grisner,” he begins, managing to squeeze his enormous frame behind his tiny desk. The way he looks reminds me of a cartoon. “I heard some stuff. I’m gonna be straight with you as long as you’re straight with me. I checked your file, talked to some of your teachers, and you seem like a good kid, so I know you’ll be honest with me, right?”

  I swallow hard and nod. He continues with his interrogation.

  “You know a Tanya Bate?”

  “I share a locker with her,” I tell him. My voice comes out shaky. I clear my throat. He makes a note on a yellow legal pad.

  “What about Mark Delancey?”

  “I’ve hung out with him a couple of times. He’s friends with my, uh . . .” What exactly was Charlotte? My girlfriend? Friend? Girl I know? Shit. I’m not even supposed to mention her name. “With some other people I know.”

  He nods. “But you guys aren’t friends?”

  “No, not at all.”

  “Okay.” He makes another note. “Well, here’s the thing, Grisner, someone came to us and told us they heard Mark had cannabis in his possession.” He studies my face. I swallow hard.

  “Cannabis, sir?”

  “You know, weed, pot, marijuana . . . ,” he barks, like some drill sergeant. The way he’s talking and the fact that I’m nervous as hell makes me want to crack up because that’s the typical reaction when you’re up shit’s creek, right? To laugh? At least for me it is. So I bite the inside of my lip, hard.

  “Right.” I nod.

  “However, when we questioned him,” he says and then pauses for effect, “he mentioned your name in the conversation.”

  “Me?” I ask, with what I hope is an appropriate amount of shock. I bite my lip harder. While I know this isn’t funny, I can’t help but want to laugh. And I’m terrified that if I do, I’ll never stop and will just be on the floor, roaring with crazy laughter from now until eternity.

  He nods and waits.

  “Sir, I would never . . . ,” I begin. “I don’t . . .” But I’m supposed to act like I don’t know what I’m being accused of and I don’t want to mention the pot brownie unless he brings it up. I take a deep breath and look down because I can still feel a Joker smile wanting to spring across my face.

  “Well then, why would Mark single you out?” he asks.

  I can’t tell Mr. Gouche that this is probably a monumental occasion when in fact Mark did actually tell him the truth or that Mark hates me because for some crazy reason the girl he likes sort of likes me back or that Mark in general is an asshole and likes to make everyone’s life miserable.

  “I don’t know.... I mean, he’s kind of a jerk, and he doesn’t like me so . . .”

  He waits for me to say more. I don’t. We sit in silence for a long time, and it takes every bit of my strength not to laugh as Mr. Gouche uses his superhuman dean-ray vision to look into my soul and figure out if I’m telling the truth or not. In order not to laugh, I start thinking about Tanya. There was something in the way she looked at me that stuck with me. What was it? It was kind of like . . . you too ? Was that what it was? It makes me feel shitty. I look up at Mr. Gouche. If he knows about the brownie, he can bust me. I deserve it anyways.

  Mr. Gouche takes a deep breath and sucks his teeth.

  “All right, tell you what I’m gonna do,” he says finally. “I’m gonna take your word for it this time,” he says, “and only because you’ve never wasted my time before, and well, we already checked your locker because we can do things like that. But I’ve got my eye on you, Grisner. And I don’t want to see you here again.”

  He scribbles a late pass.

  “Now get out of here,” he says and throws the get-out-of-jail-free card my way. I grab it and get the hell out of there.

  I tell Charlotte everything in bits and pieces during drama. She thanks me for not mentioning her name and is glad I’m not suspended, but wonders how I managed to get out of it.

  “I don’t think Tanya mentioned the brownie,” I tell her. “Honestly, I don’t even think this whole thing went down because of her. Mr. Gouche said someone tipped him off about Mark’s locker, and then I guess he called me in because Mark started blabbing about the brownie or something and he mentioned my name.”

  “Weird,” she says.

  “I know,” I tell her because without a doubt the tipster was Tanya. I mean, it was the perfect revenge. She’d put the pieces together and figured it out. Afterall, it doesn’t exactly take a genius to know that being offered a “homemade” brownie isn’t a good thing when you’re the school pariah. But I don’t tell Charlotte this because she’s still Mark’s “friend” or whatever. And Mark is the one who mentioned my name, not Tanya. So what all this means is I pretty much owe Tanya a big one. And I don’t want to give Charlotte any information that she can go back and relay to Mark, which also means I guess I don’t completely trust Charlotte. Which basically . . . sucks.

  That afternoon, I’m still thinking about the whole thing with Mr. Gouche and Tanya when I open our back door that leads to the kitchen and I suddenly see them—little white cartons of Chinese food stacked in the middle of the table. And there’s only one explanation of how those little cartons of fast food that haven’t been in our house for the past two months got here. It’s Mom.

  Wherever she goes, whatever she does, the way she comes back is always the same. Mom slips back into our lives after days, weeks, or months of being gone, like she just stepped in from taking a breath of fresh air. She always brings some kind of culinary peace offering—baked goods, ice cream, pizza, or cartons of Chinese food. I hear her footsteps as she comes into the kitchen.

  “Hey, honey. Wow, you look great!” she says, all no-big-deal-like as she comes into the kitchen. Her hair is chopped short, and all I can do is stare. For as long as I can remember, Mom has had long, brown
hair. Now it’s maybe two inches from her scalp and so dark it makes her face look pale and small.

  “Mom?” She comes over and gives me a hug. I pull back faster than I mean to because even though I’m relieved she’s okay and not dead, I still get weirded out when Mom comes back. I don’t know what to feel or how to act because I’m relieved and pissed all at the same time. And this time is especially weird because of what’s going on with Dad. So I just stare at her speechless.

  “What?” she asks and then her hand flies to her head. “Oh, yeah, needed a change. What do you think?” she asks. I say nothing because I can’t believe she’s really here in this house after two months of being gone, after the phone call just a few days ago, and after what Dad has done.

  “I know, it takes awhile to get used to,” she says when I keep staring at her hair. “Anyway, are you hungry? Or . . . well, I guess maybe we should wait for Dad.” She crosses her arms across her chest and bites her lip when she mentions him.

  Wait for Dad? Like we’re a big happy family? Like she didn’t leave for two months because he’s cheating on her? What the hell is going on? Did they make up and Dad didn’t tell me? Was that business trip he got back from yesterday really a trip to visit Mom and plead with her to come back?

  As if on cue, the front door opens and then closes.

  “I’m home early for once, Sport!” Dad yells as the tapping of his shoes on the hardwood floor comes closer to the kitchen.

  “Hey, Doug,” Mom says as Dad appears in the kitchen doorway. He’s looking through a bundle of mail in his hands.

  “Carmen . . . ,” he says. He stops abruptly, turning his attention to Mom, and then puts the rest of the mail on the counter. He doesn’t say anything about her hair.

  “How . . . are you?” Her hand flies up to her hair and smoothes it down. She walks over and gives him a hug. He looks awkward and uncomfortable, and I can’t believe she’s hugging him or talking to him or that she actually came back.

  “Sit down, guys. I brought food.”

  “Of course you did,” Dad says.

  “I already ate,” I lie.

  “But sit with us,” she pleads. I sigh and sit down.

  My stomach growls. On the table there’s lo mein, fried rice, General Tso’s chicken, sweet and sour chicken, and man, how much did she get? It smells so good and makes me feel like some kind of animal. All I want to do is shovel it into my mouth and fill the emptiness inside the pit of my stomach.

  “Come on, come on,” Mom urges as she busies herself opening more cartons and getting plates.

  “Charlie, aren’t you going to have at least some?” she asks when I don’t serve myself any food. She breaks apart her chopsticks and stares at me.

  “Carmen . . . don’t, please,” Dad starts.

  “What? Come on, it’s a celebration, sort of, and besides, it’s not good to deprive yourself of things,” she says, looking back at me. Celebration? What the hell would we be celebrating?

  Dad snorts.

  Mom gives him a look. The air gets heavy and thick.

  “I’ll have some of the rice,” I say loudly before either of them can get into it. Mom starts to scoop some of the fried rice onto a plate.

  “No, white rice,” I tell her, “and those vegetables over there, the ones with the least amount of sauce.” She shrugs her shoulders, scooping heaping spoonfuls of food onto my plate.

  Mom tries to make conversation. She’s doing her usual “everything’s normal” routine. Whenever Mom comes back, I can tell she feels sheepish or embarrassed or sorry even though she never says so, and she tries to cover it up by talking or laughing too much, and, of course, by bringing food home. And she always studies Dad’s face trying to figure out if she’s forgiven. She’s doing it right now—forcing big smiles and laughing even though no one else is. She’s acting the way she always does, and Dad is acting anything but remorseful. Which means she must not know. She has no idea that Dad is cheating on her. But I do, which makes everything worse than usual, because now I have to keep his secret, which he doesn’t even know I’m keeping. It also means that she left us for the same reasons she always leaves. She doesn’t want to be with us.

  I move the food around on my plate, and Dad grunts an answer from time to time. After awhile she gives up. I guess this is our way of punishing her. Why should she ask us about things here at home? If she really wanted to know, if she really cared, she would stay. She wouldn’t pick up and leave for no reason and then come back like it’s no big deal. We sit in a terrible awkward silence—so silent I can hear the crunch of Dad chewing his broccoli, the scrapes of his fork and mine on our plates.

  Finally, Dad finishes up and goes to his study. I hear the door close and the click of the lock. I start to follow his lead, but then halfheartedly offer to help clean up. Even though I’m upset with Mom, I also feel bad. If anyone should be feeling terrible, it’s Dad. He’s a big ass for letting her sit out here feeling like everything’s her fault—and leaving me to deal with it. Even though I know better, I wish the food she brought would have somehow had us all talking and laughing and feeling better. But it didn’t—nothing ever will. I wish I had talked more or answered her questions about fat camp and school. I wish I had said something, anything, so she wouldn’t be sitting here looking like she wishes she hadn’t come back. Why do we do this? Why do we make her feel unwelcome? Why couldn’t she want to be here?

  “Just leave it,” she says when I pick up my plate. Her voice sounds flat and I feel like there’s something I want to say to her—something I have to say to her—but I don’t know what it is, so I just go upstairs and leave her at the table all by herself. I head to the bathroom and quietly retch up all the food I just ate. Then I go to my room and close the door and try to forget the whole night by closing my eyes and listening to music. But I can’t because she’s really back now. It seems like she’s been gone for years, and everything’s changed since she left. I don’t know how we all fit together anymore. Things are far more screwed up than ever before. I know stuff I wish I didn’t know, stuff she doesn’t, stuff she can’t know. And I can’t decide what’s worse. Mom knowing or Mom not knowing. I pluck the earplugs out of my ears because I can’t stand the music anymore, and I put a pillow over my head because I can’t stand the quiet in our house.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I try to act normal and go about everything the way I always do, but it’s not the same. School drags on. Ahmed gets on my nerves. And instead of being happy when I see Charlotte, I’m depressed, even when we go scout out more places to take pictures. Nothing is the same when Mom is home. I don’t feel like myself at school or at home. It’s like having a stranger visiting and staying at your house. When I walk into a room and she’s there, I don’t know what to say to her and I’m constantly thinking of a reason to be somewhere else. Dad has gone completely AWOL. He leaves before I wake up and comes home long after I’ve gone to bed. I understand why he does it, but I wish he would stick around. If not for her, at least for me.

  One day I get home just as Dad calls and he says he’ll be late. Mom sounds pathetic on the phone, telling him she made his favorite, then sounds annoyed when she can’t get a specific time of when he will be home. I don’t tell her I had planned on skipping dinner when she serves me a heaping bowl of spaghetti and meatballs she made. She serves herself some, too and we sit down.

  For once, she’s not talkative. She eats quietly, not looking over toward me. I look down at my plate and chew slowly, willing myself to eat only half. I imagine taking the pot full of marinara and meatballs and hiding out in my closet while I gorge on it all by myself. Lately I’ve been hungrier than usual and the diet crap I’d fooled myself into believing could fill me up, doesn’t cut it. This is what I want. I want to scarf it down and stuff more in until I’m full, so full that I can’t think or move or speak. I abandon my plan to eat only half and end up stuffing a whole meatball in my mouth. It’ll be easy enough to get rid of later.

&nbs
p; “More late nights,” Mom mutters suddenly and shakes her head as her voice trails off.

  The way she says it makes my stomach turn. Could she possibly know? If she did she would die—or maybe she would kill. Would Mom be one of those people who kills their spouses in the heat of the moment? Would she get off by reason of insanity? She couldn’t find out. I couldn’t let her find out.

  “Mom.” I choose my words carefully. “Dad really missed you this time,” I say.

  She looks over at me. Does she believe me?

  “I mean, he always does, but this time he kept talking about all these things he wanted to do together once you got back.”

  She bites her bottom lip and stares out our kitchen window. “I . . . ,” she starts, but she doesn’t continue.

  “He told me he wanted us to go camping at Morrow Mountain State Park like we did that one time, remember?”

  She nods her head and pushes the plate of food away from her. She looks confused and fragile. I remember thinking Mom used to be, like Mr. Killinger said about his mother, a “free spirit.” The way she seemed to blow in the direction of the wind. The way her mind hopped from this to that. Now I don’t think Mom is a free spirit. The thought makes me sad. I take another bite of food.

  She brushes her hair with her hand and looks over at me. “Really, Charlie?” she asks. She’s looking at me, and I can barely meet her gaze. I swallow hard and do the worst thing I’ve ever done.

  “Yeah, it’s all he’s talked about,” I say. “I’m surprised he hasn’t mentioned it to you yet. Maybe because he’s been working so much. You know, he took some time off to spend with me while you were gone.”

  She takes a deep breath and smiles. She sits, then nods her head, and kind of laughs. The creases on her forehead disappear, and suddenly, she looks soft and vibrant and the happiest I’ve seen her in a long time. I can’t believe the transformation from that one little lie. I should be happy that I can offer her this one moment of peace. But it’s the shittiest thing I think I’ve ever done, and I hope I go straight to hell for it because that’s what I deserve. I shove a forkful of spaghetti in my mouth.