“Charlie Grisner,” Mr. Killinger booms. Someone slaps me on the back and congratulates me. I take a deep breath, unsure of how to react. Because even though I’m happy, and this is awesome and everyone is congratulating me, I’ve had enough experience to know the laws of the universe for Charlie Grisner. I know things like this don’t happen to guys like me. And when they do, it always means something bad is going to follow.
I don’t get a chance to tell Dad about being a finalist because he’s not home when I get home, but Ahmed, of course, tells his mom who insists we celebrate, so she prepares a meal of brown rice with amazing spicy chicken, vegetables, and yogurt sauce (that she prepared very healthy, she tells me quietly).
After dinner, we all watch some Turkish movies that Ahmed and I laugh at and his mother and father shush us without really meaning it. And Ahmed starts imitating some Turkish dance that he integrates with pop lock moves, and Mr. Bata gets up and starts imitating him, and Mrs. Bata laughs until tears come out of her eyes. It’s the best time I’ve had in a long time, and I laugh so hard my stomach hurts. I feel so much a part of a family that it almost doesn’t matter that it’s not my own. It’s just great to laugh, to feel a part of something, a part of others. I can’t remember if I’d ever felt that with my parents. I don’t think I have, which suddenly makes me sad, but I keep laughing with the Batas, join Ahmed and his dad, even though I can’t shut out the thought of my parents. I go home wishing I were Turkish.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The following Monday I head toward my locker when I start noticing people staring at me. I wonder if word got out about me being one of the finalists in the photography competition, but nobody else really cares about that, so it seems unlikely. I keep walking and become acutely aware of whispers and giggles around me. I feel like Moses as people make an open path for me as I get closer to my locker. I know this can’t be good. And then, I see them.
There weren’t many, but enough that anyone who walked past my locker would see them. So here it was, Mark’s revenge for the pot-brownie failure that led to his suspension, and for Charlotte showing interest in me. I picture Mark’s smug face and his words from the other day ring in my ears. So, you’re into photography, Chunks? Motherfucker.
The picture was obviously from an ad cut out of a magazine. A black and white of the beach, water foaming as it spills up onto shore on two bodies pressed and entangled in each other, they looked more like one body with excess limbs. The lovers look as if they just washed up on shore, exhausted but miraculously unscathed and unharmed from some boating accident, and are reveling in the refuge of each other’s arms after a perilous adventure.
Except the girl’s face is not that of a supermodel. It’s Tanya’s zitty face superimposed on the model. And Tanya is clinging on to and laying on top of me. My face—no—my face from last year had been carefully cropped and perfectly positioned onto the body of the male model. And as if that wasn’t enough, there are captions.
“Oh, Chunks, thank you for saving me. Oh, Chunks, your body is so muscular. Oh, Chunks, Oh, Chunks . . .”
“Hush, my precious, and kiss me. I will protect you forever.”
The craftsmanship was incredible, the idea typical, and yet the blow . . . catastrophic.
I stare at the pictures. They decorate my locker like wallpaper. My face looks like a big, puffy, pale pastry—glistening like it’s been glazed—my eyes are two small raisins, and the smile the photographer had forced me to do makes me look like I’m taking a dump. It was by far the worst class picture I’d ever taken . . . and now, Charlotte would see it. I wish I could die.
There I was. That was me. That ugly, doughy, loser boy was me. Who was I kidding? It didn’t matter if I lost the weight, if I strutted around like I was someone new, or if I was a finalist in some stupid photo contest. That right there, staring back at me with the most miserable face in human existence, was the real Charlie. That is who I’d always been, who I’d always be—miserable, scared, ugly, fat Charlie. The bell rings. The ringing laughter and whispers around me eventually fade, but I just stare. I can’t move.
I hear the squeak of sneakers behind me and Tanya appears out of nowhere. Great, just the person I want to see. My face gets hot with embarrassment.
“Watch out,” she says, sighing loudly.
I move, hoping she’ll just grab her books and leave. She rips all the pictures off and crumbles them up in one big heap. She walks over to the trash can and tosses them in like it’s no big deal. And I guess for Tanya, it’s not. This is just another typical day in her crappy life. Does she even realize her life sucks?
“Just forget it,” she says. “Mark’s a real dumbass, and all his little admirers are a bunch of mindless minions. Don’t let it get to you.” She looks at me. I spy what might be sympathy and understanding in her big owl eyes. “I guess this wouldn’t be the best time for me to tell you that the turd-head taped one of these on the back of every bathroom stall in the school.” She pushes up her glasses in true nerd fashion before opening the locker and trading out some books.
My stomach drops. She says it so matter of fact it makes me want to smack her. And suddenly I’m pissed.
“What is wrong with you?” I ask her.
“What?”
“What is wrong with you?” I repeat, louder this time. “I mean, I guess it’s because you’re already a freak, right? You just don’t care, right? Because you’re better than all these people?”
She cocks her head to one side and stares at me as if trying to analyze me. It only pisses me off more.
“But I don’t want to be a freak,” I tell her. “I don’t want to be ‘better’ than all of these people.” My words spill out before I can plug them up. “I want to be like them. And I would be if I weren’t sharing a locker with you. But . . . it’s not like anything could go my way just once, right? And your powers are so great, Tanya, so astonishingly great that I’ve been tapped a freak by association!” I yell at her, knowing that what I’m saying is not true, that I was a freak long before I shared a locker with Tanya, but I don’t care because it feels good, it feels good to yell at someone, to blame somebody else for my fucked-up life.
“My God, I actually felt sorry for you,” I yell. “But I don’t know why. You do nothing to try and fit in. You love that people look at you weird, that they ostracize you. Look at you,” I demand. “Look at you!” I shout until she actually looks down at her grubby sneakers and stretch pants.
“You know what? You’re an idiot!” she spits out. “You want to be one of these people? Why? Because they’re so fantastic? Because they can cut and kill people like you and me if we let them? Wake up, Charlie.”
“I am NOT like you!” I yell back.
“YES, you are! You may hate it, and you may fight it, and you may think it’s the worst thing in the world, but I’m telling you, you are EXACTLY like me and someday when you’re far enough from the disease that is this shallow, kill or be killed school controlled by a bunch of zombies, you’re gonna realize that, and you know what? You’re gonna be glad you’re like me!” Her face is red and blotchy, and I just want to punch her and make her shut up. Instead, I hate myself even more for being such a wimp.
“I hate you,” I say.
“You hate yourself,” she spits back, “and that’s worse. Get over it, Charlie, or you’re seriously gonna be fucked up.” She stares at me with her big owl eyes like she feels sorry for me. She feels sorry for me?
And that’s the last straw. I’ve sunk so low that Tanya Bate feels sorry for me.
I get the hell out of there—walk right past the lady guard at the front of the school who supposedly makes sure no one escapes this prison. Instead she’s sleeping in her golf cart. I walk home and ditch the rest of the day. It doesn’t matter. Nobody’s home.
I mope around until Ahmed stops by after school and tries to convince me it’s not that big a deal.
“Come over. Mom said she’d make another great dinner. We can watch T
urkish movies and free-style again.” He jumps up and does one of the Turkish pop lock moves he invented. I shake my head and tell him I just want to chill by myself.
“Dude,” Ahmed says, but he doesn’t know what else to say. “Come on.”
“I’m fine, really. It’s no big deal. I’m over it. I just want to hang here. Alone.”
I can tell he doesn’t want to leave, but he knows I’m not going to change my mind.
“All right, my man, gonna let you off the hook this time, but just this time. Pick you up bright and early,” he says. “I’m gonna go work on some new moves, so you better be ready to laugh your ass off tomorrow.” He offers me a weak smile that is so un-Ahmed-like that I figure I must be pretty pathetic to look at.
I make myself kind of chuckle, but only because he’s trying so hard. I feel guilty that he has to have such a messed-up best friend. He finally leaves, and when I can’t stand staring at the ceiling anymore, I order a pizza.
I try to act cool when the delivery guy gets there, but as he stands there trying to make change, I can hardly wait. I nearly take his arm off when I slam the door and head to the couch. I open the box, the warm comforting smell of the dough and sauce acting like a sedative. I take a deep breath and dig in. I start to wonder if eating will be the only thing that will ever make me happy. And maybe I’ll eat so much, that one day I’ll be one of those guys who has to be rescued by the fire department because he can’t fit through the door to get out of his house. And they’ll have to rip the roof off and get a crane to lift my fat ass out of here. I choke on the last slice as I picture the whole scene. I run to the bathroom and get rid of it.
Later, when the hunger pang hits me again, I go to bed trying to psyche myself out that the phone will ring. I get up and check to make sure it’s working. It is.
But it doesn’t ring. Charlotte doesn’t call.
I drag myself out of bed and go to school the next day, but only because Ahmed calls superearly and convinces me that the best thing to do is pretend it didn’t bother me at all. I’m tired of pretending, but I crawl into the Roller Skate and go. Ahmed tries to cheer me up. I stare out the window.
I go through the motions of the day, but really, all I care about is Charlotte and whether or not she saw those pictures. If she did, then that’s it. Now she knows the real me, and she’s probably grossed out that she ever wasted a minute on me.
I sit and wait for her to come through the door during drama, but for the first time that year, she doesn’t. She’s not in class. I know it’s because she can’t stand being near me. I know it’s because she’s embarrassed she ever sort of liked me. But all I can do is think about her, which makes me come up with what’s probably the worst idea I’ve ever had.
I get to Charlotte’s house right before eight o’clock. I almost leave when I spot Mark’s car, but I had already convinced myself on the walk over that nothing was going to keep me from talking to her tonight. And even as I walk up the stairs and ring the doorbell, I know no good can come of this, but something inside me won’t let me turn and run. I need to know. One way or another, I need to know.
She answers the door, but doesn’t ask me to come inside. Instead, she comes outside and says, “Charlie, hey, what are you doing here?”
And I’m stumped because I didn’t think it out this far. I suddenly wish I’d made note cards because now that I’m here, and she’s asking me why I’m here, and she’s standing so close, I can’t remember. I grasp at the only thing that still connects me to her.
“Um, I missed you in class today.” What a stupid thing to say.
“Yeah, I had a follow-up dentist’s appointment, so I left early. I wasn’t there yesterday morning, either. One cavity,” she says and shrugs her shoulders, but then smiles. She hadn’t been there yesterday morning. She hadn’t seen the pictures. She didn’t know what Mark had done. It made sense. Mark did it when he knew she wouldn’t be there because maybe Charlotte would’ve stopped him or gotten on his case. Though that might be true, I could still make Mark look like a total jerk by telling her about the whole incident. But how could I when it’s too embarrassing?
“Oh, okay,” I say and think about just leaving it at that and going back home. But I still stand there, and she still stands there, and it feels awkward as hell.
“So, I see you’re hanging out with Mark,” I say.
“He stopped by, and we decided to watch a movie. You . . . want to join us?” she asks.
Did I want to join them? She definitely didn’t know. I wanted to be nowhere near Mark right now, and I wanted him to be nowhere near her. I wanted her to be with me. Just me.
“Nah, it’s cool,” I say, even though it’s not. But I still make no move to leave, so I bring up the exhibit. It’s not for a little over a week, and it seems silly that I’m asking her because I know she’s going.
“Are you kidding? Of course I’ll be there,” she says. “I mean, I can’t believe there are going to be pictures of me hanging in a gallery.” She looks down at the ground. “It made me a little nervous, but it was fun being your muse. Did they turn out okay?” she asks and I feel terrible. What is she going to think when she walks into the gallery and there is no Charlotte VanderKleaton collection?
“Yeah, of course,” I say.
“Good.” She breathes a sigh of relief. “My God, Charlie, what if you win?”
I want to crawl into a grave and die. “That’d be cool, I guess,” I say because I have no idea what else to say.
“Oh my God, is it snowing?” she says looking past me. I turn to look. She runs out and starts to spin under the falling snowflakes.
It is snowing, and I’m here, watching Charlotte VanderKleaton twirl and laugh under the light flurry.
I walk over to where she is and start spinning, too, first slowly, and then faster and faster just like I did when I was a little kid. She does the same, and we keep at it until we fall and crash to the ground, laughing. Suddenly, it’s so hard to breath. I stare up at the swirling sky, at the crazy blur of the snow that falls on our faces, and Charlotte tells me about how she loves the snow.... God, I wished she loved me.
“So you’re going?” I ask Charlotte, still staring up at the sky.
“God, Charlie, YES!” she says and laughs.
I swallow the lump in my throat. Her phone starts ringing in her pocket, she looks down at it and silences it.
“Charlotte?”
“I said yes already!”
“No . . . I mean . . . What is this?” I can’t believe I’ve said it. As soon as I do, I wish I could eat the words right back up, stuff them down, and never let them come out again. But it’s too late.
“What?” she asks, even though I can tell by the tone of her voice that she knows exactly what I mean.
“This, you and me, what is it?” I ask because the words already came out, and I can’t take them back. This is the real reason I came over here tonight. I have to know, and Ahmed is right that unless one of us says something, it’s just going to keep going on and on like this.
She shrugs. “I guess this is what it is. Do you really, I mean, do we really have to define it? Because I don’t know what it is.”
I almost say no. I almost let it go. I should just let it go. But I can’t.
“I need to know. I need to know something is real. I can’t stand the not knowing anymore.”
She sits up and faces me.
“I do like you Charlie, really I do, but . . .” She looks down and she looks kind of confused, but I don’t care. Because what I feel inside is much worse. I look up at the sky so that she doesn’t see my eyes welling up with tears. It’s deep and dark and makes me think of the word zenith, and I wish I could get beamed up by some UFO. I am probably the only person willing to be abducted by aliens, willing to let them do whatever to me. I wonder what I look like from way up there. Pathetic?
“You and I, we’re different,” she says. I barely hear it, but I hear it. And my face flushes with embarrassment
. How could I have been so stupid? How could I have ever thought that Charlotte VanderKleaton could ever really like me? It’s cold and I’m sure the snowflakes are melting as they hit my burning face, and I know I should run. I should run and never look back and just forget all the stupid things I let myself believe. But all I can do is lie there and just pray she doesn’t say anymore. I think if she explains how she can’t be seen with me, I’ll . . .
Charlotte looks over at me. “Charlie, do you know why I hate Blanche?” she whispers, and I’m sure I didn’t hear her right. How can she be thinking about a stupid play right now? “I hate her,” she continues, “because she’s fake . . . like me.” I’m about to tell her she’s out of her mind to compare herself to Blanche, but she goes on.
“Do you know what it’s like to never feel like you’re enough? Like you’re always trying to be something you’re not? And when you do that so often, you don’t even remember who you really are? I mean, maybe you try to be a certain way for this person, and a certain way for that person, and a totally different way for another person, and everyone is happy. But the problem is, you forget who you really are.”
What Charlotte is saying starts confusing me, even as it thunders with some semblance of the deepest shit I’ve ever heard. I get what she’s saying, but I don’t know how to be a different person for different people. If I knew, I would stop being the loser that I am for Charlotte.
“What do you mean? Just, you know, be who you are,” I say.
“Right. You make it sound so easy, but it’s not. Think about it. I mean, are you the person you really are, Charlie? Or do you put up some kind of front?” she asks.
What she says freaks me out because I’m scared Charlotte might have figured out what a big liar I am.
“Charlotte, you’re really an amazing person. I can’t believe you can’t see that.” I reach for her hand, but she pulls it away.
“Come on, Charlie, You barely know me. You just think I’m amazing. And the problem with that is that after awhile, you’ll see that I’m not.”
The Downside of Being Charlie Page 16
