Wonder When You’ll Miss Me (8 page)

Off in the distance a train whistled and then a car alarm began to bleat. We were still for a long time. I took a deep breath.

“How'd you come to be so into the circus?” I asked. I couldn't look at his face.

“It's a long story,” he said. “I'll tell you some other time,” and then we went inside.

 

“I knew her,” I said later while he hoisted garbage from the dishwasher's trash can. “Your sister, Starling. I knew her. At Berrybrook.”

 

Later we sat outside under the stars in the parking lot and I told him how Starling used to laugh and make us all laugh. How, in her manic periods, she could convince us to do anything that occurred to her. Dance, play Truth or Dare. Or, one time, gather all the toilet paper on the ward and use it to bowl down the hall. How when she was gone we barely spoke to each other anymore. How still those halls became without her wild energy, her all-encompassing madness.

While I spoke and he listened, I was calm. It felt right, like he was a part of Starling and she was with us.

Charlie smoked cigarette after cigarette, his jaw clenched, fingers trembling. It was very late, nearly midnight. The restaurant had closed at nine and everyone had left by ten.

“I miss her,” he said. “So damn much.”

I reached out and touched his arm, lightly put my fingers on the falcon. Only for a second. Then my hand felt heavy and awkward. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a blur of blue and turned. The fat girl leaned against the side of the building. She looked angry and mean.

“What do you see?” He sounded curious and turned to look over his shoulder one way, and then the other. “Is it a ghost?” he asked, but I could tell he wasn't making fun. I shook my head and closed my eyes. I felt the fat girl watching and couldn't breathe. I bit my bottom lip and dug my fin
gernails into the soft underside of my wrist as deep as I could, and it hurt. I blinked the tears back.

“I see things sometimes,” he said. “It's okay.”

“I'm going to leave here,” I blurted, and felt the fat girl's fury like a laser beam but I didn't care, not at all, it was so good to get it out. “I'm going to get out of here and go somewhere else.”

“Where?”

I wished that I knew. “Maybe New Orleans,” I said. “Or San Francisco. Or somewhere north, you know. Like New York City.”

“When?”

I shrugged. “I don't know.”

“Hmmmm.” He didn't seem surprised or alarmed. It was really quiet then. Not even a car in the distance, no moon to get the crickets going.

Charlie lit another cigarette, then pointed to his falcon. “I got this one at this place called Mike's in Nashville. It wasn't my first.” He touched his heart, where I knew the chickens were. “I got something else first. But I knew I wanted more after that. Tattoos are weird, you know. They're, like, addictive. You fall in love with them and then you want to cover yourself. It's like you're reclaiming your body or something. Marking it up just for yourself.”

He blew a smoke ring and I leaned over and took a cigarette without asking.

“The thing is I always wanted to be in the circus, ever since I was little. Well, Starling must have told you that. But, see, I didn't have anything I could do. I'm not the clowning type, right. I'm not a juggler or an aerialist or a tumbler or whatever. So it wasn't until I met Marco—” He jerked his head up suddenly. “Starling probably told you that too, right? About me?”

“He's your boyfriend?”

Charlie nodded. “Yeah. And he's in the sideshow. I never thought it could be possible until I met him.”

He shook his head. “But anyway, Nashville, right? I'd left town and was living there for a while. I was trying to find a place…I don't know. I liked it and all, I mean I sort of connected with some of the folks I met, but…The thing is, the only place I've ever felt like I wasn't all the time getting judged for some bullshit or other was when I've been with a show.”

I waited for him to go on but he didn't. After a minute or so, he said, “Sometime—I mean not tonight, okay—but sometime you should tell me why you're going.”

I nodded.

He put out the cigarette and stood up.

I stood also and then Starling's big brother wrapped his long arms around me, and I couldn't fight it back anymore, I began to sob, all of it tumbling out of me like an avalanche. He held me tight and rocked a little. “It's okay,” he said.

 

Oh, the freedom in that. The freedom in letting even some of the bats out of the attic, the rats out of the dungeon. Charlie drove me home and I left his car feeling light and giddy. When I got upstairs, the fat girl was sitting on my bed.

“Move,” I said. It was odd how strong I felt. Without saying a word she rose slowly and walked to the chair. I threw my bag down and pulled my pajamas from under my pillow.

“Tomorrow's Fern,” the fat girl said.

“I know.”

“I hope you won't be sharing anything inappropriate with
her
.”

I changed out of my clothes completely before answering. I turned but she was staring out the window into the night. I shook my head. “No,” I said quietly.

 

First period. Art. Tiny, chipper Ms. Winters wasn't there. Instead we had a substitute, a huge, barrel-chested man in a crisp white shirt and a camouflage tie.

“I am Mr. Goffelnowski,” he said, and wrote it on the board at the same time in huge loopy letters. His handwriting was girly, but he looked like a marine.

He leaned against the blackboard and ran one hand through his silvery crew cut. “I'm your substitute today, and I will not put up with funny business, am I understood?!” He had the voice of a drill sergeant. Everyone exchanged looks. Across the table from me, wheezy Bobby Thomson raised an eyebrow. No one was in the mood to argue at eight-fifteen. We all nodded.

“Take out some paper,” Mr. Goffelnowski commanded. We didn't move. This was confusing: did he mean notebook paper or the drawing paper that Ms. Winters kept in the cabinet by her desk? “I SAID TAKE OUT SOME PAPER!”

Out came the notebooks. The room filled with the clatter of binders opening and closing, the zip of paper torn from spirals.

Mr. Goffelnowski paced the room now, depositing a small pile of number-two pencils on each table. “Don't touch these until I tell you to!” he said, pointing at the pencils and warning us with his eyes. “Okay. Now,
everyone take a pencil
.”

We did.

“And…” he raised one arm above his head and pointed a finger at the ceiling tiles. “GET READY…
get set
…” He lunged forward and lowered his arm as if we were to clear the starting gate. “DRAW!”

Again confusion kept us from moving. We were used to Ms. Winters, who was in her mid-twenties and liked to play music and tell us to choose a color for the way we felt that day.

“DOES ANYONE IN THIS ROOM WANT TO DO
PUSH-UPS
? HUH? IN FRONT OF THE WHOLE
G.D.
CLASS?!”

Silence.

“WELL THEN YOU BETTER GET
TO
IT, UNDERSTAND?”

We did. We spent the rest of the period scribbling, doodling, and shading, in consecrated silence.

 

When the bell rang, the fat girl was waiting by my locker with a corn dog that she swirled in a small cup of ketchup.

“Hi,” I said. I was sleepy and my hand, which was covered in graphite from the number-two pencil, ached from all the drawing. “You missed a hell of a sub,” I told her, but she was deep into the corn dog. We walked to the bathroom. I saw Jenny Sims down the hall and wondered if she'd visited Andrea Dutton yet.

“Doubt it,” the fat girl said. She had ketchup on her chin and down the front of her blue shirt. I pointed at it. “Shit,” she said.

Ahead of us Jenny pushed through the bathroom doors and we followed. There was a cluster of five or six girls in there, so I had to wait for a sink. The fat girl stood in the corner dabbing at her chest with paper towels. Finally a sink opened up. In the mirror I could see that the bathroom had emptied out and I squirted my palms with stinky pink soap from the dispenser.

“Great,” said the fat girl. “Now you're going to smell like a dentist's office all day.”

“Shut up. Like you smell so great yourself,” I said, just as Jenny Sims walked out of a stall.

I froze. She raised her eyebrows and gave a little laugh. “Excuse me?” She looked around. “Who were you talking to?”

“No one.”

She opened her eyes wide. “Riiiiiiight,” she said slowly, then washed her hands and left.

“Hey,” the fat girl said.

I looked down; the water was still running and my hands were red. I turned it off and wiped them on my jeans. I had the dizzying feeling that the world had just tumbled away from me again.

“Oh shit,” I said, and we headed to English.

 

By fourth period I was convinced that everyone was laughing at me.

“You need to relax,” the fat girl said, but I kept my mouth shut, afraid to answer. We passed Tony Giobambera in the hall and he didn't look at me. I stopped and turned to follow him, but the fat girl hooked my arm and dragged me to math.

Missy Groski smiled creepily when I walked in.

When I sat down she turned around. “Talk to yourself much, freak?” She shook her head and wrinkled her nose in disgust.

My face burned. Jenny was friends with Missy. I felt sick.

“Page two seventy-six,” Mrs. Lemont said.

 

By gym, I was a sweaty wreck. All of a sudden I'd been noticed, but in the wrong way, in an awful way. I told Coach Ford that I didn't feel well and he let me sit on the bleachers even though I didn't have a note—more proof that I was an acknowledged crazy person.

“You're really paranoid,” the fat girl said.

The class was playing volleyball, split into four teams, rotating serves. The room was incredibly loud and echoed as balls slammed off the ceiling and walls and gym floor, and people yelled things back and forth to each other. I felt it might be safe to talk.

“Okay,” I said, trying to move my lips as little as possible. “How are we going to leave?”

“You want to get them back, Faith. To send a message, you have to make a move.”

“I don't even know who they are,” I said, and my voice was small.

“I think you do.”

But I didn't, did I? Everything seemed insurmountable. I stared at her until she met my gaze. “I really don't know who they are,” I said. “Really.”

She sighed and shook her head. “Unbelievable.”

“But you know?”

She nodded.

I looked back at the game as a tall, muscled boy lunged at the net and missed a return. I bit my lip. “What exactly did you mean by make a move?” I said.

She watched me for a minute and then she smiled.

“All right,” she said. “Good.”

 

I was nervous to see Charlie again. I hadn't worked since that late, confessional evening and I worried that he might behave as though nothing at all had happened. But I was wrong.

“Faith!” Charlie called from across the restaurant. “How's my gal?” He was grinning. My whole body through to my bones relaxed and I smiled back at him. “Look at this,” he said when I got close enough. He unbuttoned and unrolled his sleeve to show me a huge white bandage with a dark stain, covering the middle of his forearm.

“What happened?”

“New tattoo,” he said.

I made a face. “I didn't know they bled.”

“Totally normal.” But he winced as he carefully peeled the bandage back. On his arm was a carousel, very colorful and scabby.

“It's beautiful,” I said. It was so detailed and intricate I could almost see it moving.

“Look carefully…what's missing?”

I concentrated but I wasn't sure. I blinked up at him and he smiled.

 

“It's the brass ring,” I said half an hour later when we had both donned our aprons and were drying the silverware with bar mops.

“Huh?”

“That's what's missing, right?”

“You're good,” he said, and smiled.

“Did your boyfriend get the brass ring on his arm?”

Charlie dropped a fork and clamped a hand over my mouth, his eyes wide with alarm. He hissed,
“SHHHHHHHHHH,
” and looked over his
shoulder, but the chef was downstairs; the wait staff had only just begun to arrive and were chattering away in the dining room.

“Sorry,” I mumbled through his palm. And when he released me: “What's wrong?”

“Look…no one knows about me here and I like it that way, okay?”

I nodded. All secrets were safe with me.

 

At school I was a robot, a Martian, a ghost. I floated through the halls with my mouth closed and my eyes open. I was stealthy, like a busgirl, but I was watching.

 

“Can you cover for me?” Charlie whispered. I had a tray of waters and the dining room was full.

“Whatever you need.”

“I'm just running to the bathroom.”

“No problem, Charlie. Go.”

He was gone twenty or thirty minutes. I cleared dishes so fast that Jerry, the dishwasher, gave me a dirty look. Finally Charlie returned, drowsy-eyed and amiable. He thanked me.

“It's nothing,” I said. “Anytime.”

He gave me the thumbs-up.

 

After chemistry, which I was barely passing, I walked home. Instead of Yander's small houses and the neighborhoods beyond them, instead of the housing projects and then the lovely gates of our street, I saw city streets and skyscrapers. I saw the Eiffel Tower and the Mississippi River. I saw California hills and the Hollywood sign. I saw anything else I could conjure besides Gleryton.

 

By the Dumpster Charlie smoked with his thumb and forefinger. He exhaled upwards. I watched carefully and tried my hardest to copy him exactly. When he dropped a cigarette on the pavement, he ground it to nothing with one delicate twist of his right toe. I did the same. If we were very busy and very tired, sometimes we'd squat while we smoked, the relief in our tired legs making up for the discomfort. When he stood, he
stretched his arms and twisted his back until it popped. I did the same, and followed him inside with the closest imitation of his cocky step that I could muster.