The Downside of Being Charlie (13 page)

“It's fine, Mom,” Charlotte says with a sigh.

Her mom studies Charlotte, then begins scooping little balls of dough on a baking tray with a mini ice-cream scooper. “It looks neater pulled back, Charlotte. I always say that but you never listen.” She looks over at me. “Charlotte here can be a bit of a slob.” She winks at me. I feel weird. I didn't see anything wrong with Charlotte's hair, so I don't say anything.

“Mom, I swear, why can't you just—”

“Charlotte,” her mom says with an edge in her voice, “not in front of your guest.” Then she looks at me again and asks, “Don't you think she should show off her pretty face, Charlie?”

I don't know what to say and luckily I don't have to say anything because Charlotte yells, “Fine!” Her mom raises an eyebrow. Charlotte lowers her voice and says, “Okay, Mom. You win.”

Her mom seems to ignore this and says why don't we go upstairs and she'll bring up the cookies when they're finished.

Charlotte gives her mom a look, which her mom also ignores, and then Charlotte grabs my arm and pulls me out of the kitchen, through the living room, and up some stairs that lead to a loft. I sit on the couch while Charlotte goes down the hall and returns with her hair pulled back. “Sorry about that,” she says. But I don't know why she's apologizing because it's not that big a deal.

“It's nice your mom comes home from work and bakes cookies for you,”
and is alive
, I feel like adding. My mind returns to Mom's eerie phone call.

“Oh, she doesn't work,” Charlotte says as she turns on the TV. “She's here all the time.” She mumbles something else, but I don't hear it. Home all the time? I can't relate. I sink into the couch and look around. Here I am with perfect Charlotte VanderKleaton in her perfect house with her perfect mom baking perfect cookies, and yet, I can't shake off my shitty mood. Why can't I be able to enjoy this?

“What's wrong?” Charlotte asks after her mother brings up a tray of warm cookies stacked high on a plate with a couple of drinks. I look at them like they're grenades because they're that dangerous. If I scarf one, I'll end up eating them all. My stomach is growling because I barfed up the pizza and the cookies smell amazing. I cross my arms across my chest so my hands can't reach for one and so I can make the growling stop and Charlotte won't hear it. But, at least that's not much of a worry since another gratuitous explosion
from the action movie Charlotte put on blasts loudly from the TV.

“Nothing's wrong,” I answer. I know my current mood isn't her fault, but I can't keep the irritation out of my voice. She stares at me for a minute before shrugging her shoulders and biting into another cookie. Fucking cookies.

The movie Charlotte chose is pretty horrible. It seems like the only things going on are explosions and martial arts/bar fights by a group of ninjas in business suits and . . . are those aliens? It doesn't help that Charlotte is a real talker while she watches movies. She's constantly asking questions and making comments, and if you don't answer her or comment on her comment, she just repeats herself until you do. After the first half hour, I'm ready to chew my arm off. I thought for sure she would have chosen some artsy movie from a little-known director that was really deep, not the latest action flick to go to DVD. I wonder if she picked out this movie because this is what she likes, or because she thinks this is what I like. I look over at Charlotte, her eyes glued to the TV as she asks me if I think that burly guy who just kicked some ninja's ass is somehow a CIA agent or, “Wait! Cool, I think the aliens morph and take on different forms. Right?
Right?
”

“Yeah,” I say.

She goes back to watching the movie, but I give up and start looking around Charlotte's well-kept home. It makes me think of a time when I saw a house being built that only had all the beams and partial walls up. It looked like nothing more than a bunch of empty little
wooden compartments. I imagined the family that would move into the house, how they would go from room to room for the rest of their lives. Sleeping here, sitting there, and eating over there. Then they would leave for a while and come back to move from little compartment to little compartment all over again. It looked too small to live a life in. It made me sad to think that's how we spend our lives—in little rooms....

My thoughts get cut off when the movie finally ends. Three brawls, a car chase, and a sudden appearance of a mafia king later (who may or may not actually be an alien), Charlotte declares it a four-star flick. I agree because I don't want to spend our time discussing how much it actually sucked—no plot, no story, and I could give two shits that anybody got their head blown off because the characters sucked too.

But right now I don't care too much about her terrible taste in movies because I'm happy enough sitting here next to her and seeing her smiling back at me. Now that the movie is over, Charlotte's house is quiet, except for the comforting sound of her mom washing dishes in the kitchen. It's nice, not like the lonely quiet in my house.

Maybe one day she'll tell me she loves me. I wished she loved me. I look over at her. Am I someone worth loving?

“So, I guess I'll see you in drama,” she says. We get up from the couch and head outside, where we stand awkwardly on her porch. It feels nothing like the previous night. My heart sinks. I know the night's been a bust. It's my fault and I wish I could explain everything to Charlotte. Maybe I should tell her why I'm in a funk. Maybe she'll understand. Maybe she'll lean in and kiss
me and make everything else go away. But I know it's too much to lay on her. It would be wrong to taint Charlotte's perfect world with mine and everything associated with me. She'd never understand, and even if she did, who wants to be around somebody else's crap? Even now, she must think I'm some kind of depressing leech that sucks the fun out of everything. I look down at the floor, wondering if maybe I'm just reading this all wrong.

“Okay,” she says, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, “so, see you Monday?”

“Yeah, right. Monday,” I say, even though I want to reach out and hold her. I want to kiss her, just like last night, but everything's changed since then and I don't feel the slightest bit like the idiot dancing on the sidewalk last night, so I turn and leave, thinking I've just messed up the only good thing I had going.

On Saturday, I wake up thinking about Mom. Dad calls and I almost tell him about the call yesterday, about how I'm worried she might be dead, but then decide against it because what does he care? He left. But I really want to forget about it, so I grab a bag of old stale chips from the back of our pantry and sit down to watch some brainless reality TV.

After the chips, I eat a yogurt and five fudgesicles. They're supposed to be a low-cal once-in-a-while treat, but like there's anyone here to know. Anyway, after all of that I feel like a big fat loser. My jeans dig into my waste, and I can hardly breathe. I feel my stomach
expanding like rising dough. I think about last night and how I made the pizza and soda come up, and I wonder if I can do it again. One minute it was there, and then—poof—it was gone, just flushed down the toilet like it never existed. It was so easy.

I go to the bathroom and lean over the bowl. I can do this. I stick my finger down my throat and gag a few times. I can do this. My eyes get watery. Come on, come on. I stick my finger down farther, my stomach contracting with each gag until I feel the food churning. A minute later, it makes its way out of my stomach, up my throat, and finally out of my mouth. I get that instant feeling of relief again and feel better. I go back to the couch and tuck a flannel blanket around myself supertight, vowing not to eat anything the rest of the day.

Later, I go to Ahmed's because I can't stand being in my house anymore. When I get there, Ahmed's mom answers the door.

“Hello, Cha-lie,” Mrs. Bata says. Her black hair is parted down the middle and worn in a bun at the nape of her neck. “Come in,” she says in her Turkish accent.

I step into their house that feels warm and smells like sweet cinnamon.

“You are just in time, Cha-lie,” she says, pronouncing each word carefully and deliberately the way she always does. I like the way she says Charlie without pronouncing the
r
.

“I made baklava today. I will give you some. So delicious,” she says and heads to the kitchen. “Ahmed!” she calls, “Cha-lie is here!”

I think of the junk I've already eaten today, but not
really. It doesn't really count. I follow her to the kitchen.

The kitchen smells so good and except for a couple of dishes in the sink, is in complete order. The tray of baklava sits in the center of the Batas' yellow kitchen table.

“It is still warm,” Mrs. Bata says. I sit down as she grabs a knife and cuts into the crunchy, flaky, syrupy sweetness in front of us.

“Hey, what's up?” Ahmed says as he comes into the kitchen.

He looks at his mom and me, and I suddenly feel as guilty and sheepish as if Ahmed had just caught us in a long, passionate kiss. But he just looks at the baklava and grabs a piece.

“I thought you weren't supposed to eat this,” he says, shoving it into his mouth.

“Oh, sorry, Cha-lie. I know you are very healthy now. That's good,” she says, cutting one of the squares in half for me. Ahmed grabs another piece. My face turns red. Even though Mrs. Bata has seen me at my heaviest, I still feel embarrassed whenever my weight comes up.

“Ahmed!” she chastises as he reaches for another. “Not so much. You need to be healthy, too, like Cha-lie,” she says.

“You know, baklava tastes very good with fruit,” she says as she grabs a banana and starts slicing it up. She puts it on a small plate, along with the tiny half of a baklava square. She sets it in front of me and pats me on the head. If I were a cat, I think I'd be purring.

“No more for you, Ahmed,” she says as she walks out of the kitchen. She speaks to him in a harsher tone
than she uses for me. Secretly, I love it and secretly, I love Mrs. Bata. I feel guilty that on more than one occasion, before I ever saw or met Charlotte, she was mainly the focus of my fantasies.

“So what's up, player, you okay?” He can tell something's up. He grabs another piece of baklava. Thanks to Ahmed, I am very well versed in the difference between player and playa.

“Playa,” Ahmed had explained to me one time, is the urban-street butchering of player. Player is a class A cat who knows how to take a chance, take a gamble, you know, play the game of life. A playa is a bastardization of the original definition and refers to a guy's game with the opposite sex. So while a playa might know how to play the ladies, he is by no means as sophisticated as a player. “Never say playa, Charlie. Always say player. It's not a mistake, my man, it's an educated decision.” The first time he came at me with that, I was like, Holy Bat Balls, Batman! If Ahmed put that much thought into class, he would probably get As instead of Cs.

I shrug and take a small bite of the tiny piece of baklava. The sticky nuttiness melts in my mouth. I don't look up or respond, so he changes the subject, and that's why Ahmed, who eats junk food by the pound in front of me without even thinking how much it sucks for me, is my best friend.

“Hey, guess what? That extreme sports show is on,” he says without waiting for me to respond with, “What?” I wonder why people say guess what when they don't really want you to guess. “I just saw a guy bust his freakin' knee. The bone was sticking out and
everything! I can't believe they showed it, but they kept replaying it and then zooming in and out, in and out.” Ahmed goes on about the stunt the guy was pulling and what went wrong, growing more excited by the second.

He jumps off one of the kitchen chairs and starts acting out the faulty stunt. He rolls on the floor in slow motion, holding on to his knee and fixing an exaggerated look of pain on his face. I finish the banana.

“Come on, I've got it DVR'd.” He jumps up and we head to his room. After more unsuccessful attempts to get me out of my funk, he finally says, “All right, my man, lay it on me. What's the deal?”

“Forget it,” I tell him as he starts bouncing a basketball off one of his walls.

“Spill it,” he says. I know he means it, but I just don't feel like delving into all the ridiculous wrongness in my life.

“It's a bunch of crap, dude, forget it.”

I know I should tell him about it, or them, or however you quantify all the things that suck right now, but there's too much. I don't even know where to begin nor do I want to deal with it.

Ahmed shakes his head and shrugs his shoulders. “Fine.” I feel like a jerk.