You’d think in a neighborhood as huge and sprawling as mine, I could play servant boy to the pissy octogenarian without everyone I know finding out. The theorem would read: If the neighborhood is huge, then the chance of being seen is small.
In my experience, though, a more accurate representation might be: If the neighborhood is huge, then everyone will still be all up in your business because this is the South, man, and being nosey is what we do.
I shouldn’t be surprised to find Charlotte walking some monstrosity of a dog past Dimwit’s house, but I’m shocked enough to freeze in plain sight rather than hide.
“Charlie?” She gives a gentle tug on the leash and the ginormous dog heels.
“Uh, hey.”
The hellhound positions itself between us, eyeing me like I’m a feast. A low growl is rumbling in its throat.
“Nice doggie,” I whisper. It growls louder in response. Charlotte laughs, and the sound, if possible, is more unsettling than Satan’s growl.
“Sit, Luna,” Charlotte commands. The dog sits, but doesn’t take its eyes off of me. “I never figured you for the do-gooder type,” she says, surveying my work.
“I’m not. This is penance.”
“For what?”
“Preoccupation.”
“Oh-kay? I’ll bite. What is that supposed to mean, great genius?”
Dimwit’s voice, harsh like the caw of a crow, swoops down at me from the porch. “Now don’t go getting all distracted by a pretty face. You’ve got work to do.” Both Charlotte and the dog skitter back a few steps at the hollering.
“Just give me a second,” I snap at Dimwit, which surprises us both.
We’re staring each other down across the beat-up garden when Charlotte says, “I can help. Maybe it’ll go faster.”
Dimwit switches her focus, glaring at Charlotte now. To Charlotte’s credit, she doesn’t flinch away again. “Get her a shovel,” Dimwit says before lowering herself back down into her rocking chair. “Let’s see what she can do.”
I retrieve a shovel for Charlotte. As she takes it from me, I say, “You don’t have to do this.”
She smiles. “But I can, and I will.”
Charlotte bends to scratch her hellhound behind the ears. She whispers, “Stay,” and then gives it a kiss on the top of its ferocious head. A pang of jealousy whaps me in the face.
“Let’s do this,” she says, grinning her crooked grin at me.
I eye the dog, but it doesn’t move. Course, if Charlotte told me to stay, I’d probably do the same. Especially if I thought I might get another kiss.
I shake my head and turn back to the wheelbarrow of ick. Together, Charlotte and I work shovelfuls of the compost into the garden.
I break the comfortable silence to ask, “How’s your sister?”
Charlotte breaks up a chunk of mud with the tip of her shovel. “When I left she was scratching away in her lesson planner. I’m not even sure she noticed me leaving.”
“And that’s good?”
“Very good.”
“Sometimes I wonder if we’re being mean. I wonder if we should just drop it.”
“No.” The word is a projectile and it hits me at point blank range. Even the dog, who was lying in the grass watching us, sits up. From the porch, I notice the absence of the wooden squeal of Dimwit’s rocker.
Charlotte wipes a bead of sweat from her pink cheeks. “I mean, why would you stop? I thought Brighton kids did this every year—the whole ‘English sucks’ thing? Isn’t that the motto?” She raises her shovel like a sword, “All hail King Math.”
My smile feels sickly as I nod. “Yeah,” I say, turning away from her to heft another shovelful of ick into the garden, “you’re right.”
Dimwit’s rocker starts squeaking again as we return to work. The soil is wet from all the rain, and it’s hard to move around. We’re both grunting and sweating and slipping in the muck.
I hear Charlotte’s shovel cut through the sloppy mud behind me, followed by a shrieky, “Whoop.” When I turn around, she’s on her butt.
I try to maintain my cool, but before I can stop myself, I’m laughing.
“Thanks for the concern, assbag,” Charlotte mutters trying to stand, but slipping again. I laugh harder, closing my eyes as my face tilts toward the sun. This is why I don’t see Charlotte grabbing a handful of mud and hurling it at me.
Thwump!
I look down, bewildered by the glob of mud running down my chest, my brain scrambling to figure out what just happened.
Charlotte’s got an arm on her because that hurt like hell.
No one’s thrown mud at me since I was four.
Payback’s a bit—
Thwump!
I’d stooped to make my own mud ball when Charlotte hurled a second one.
“This means war!” I throw a huge wad of mud at Charlotte, who dodges it by rolling to one side, but her supporting arm slips and she goes down on her face.
“Aaarrrgh,” Charlotte screams and stumbles to her feet, blindly throwing another handful of mud. This one catches me in the nuts.
I gasp and crumple in the mud. Charlotte presses both her muddy hands over her mouth. “Oh, man. I’m sorry. Total accident.” She drops to her knees so she’s eye to eye with me.
“S’all right,” I groan, biting back the tears. Thankfully, she only nicked my junk so I can still make words. “Not broken.”
She dissolves into the mud in a fit of giggles.
“Un-cool, Charlotte. Very un-cool laughing in the face of my pain. Now you must pay.” I dive in the mud and start lobbing it at her as fast I can.
She retaliates by rubbing mud into my hair like it’s shampoo. She’s laughing so hard that tears are rolling down her cheeks, making muddy rivers flow down her neck and empty into the neck of her shirt.
“The hell’re you doing?”
We freeze and look up at the shadow falling over us. Dimwit. She’s leaning on her cane, her brown knuckles white against it, and a look in her eye darker than any black hole. On the other side of us, the wolf dog is whining, shaking with the desire to either comfort Charlotte or tear me apart.
Charlotte goes silent and focuses on the mud covering her clothes like it’s the Mona Lisa.
I stand and help Charlotte to her feet. Her left foot slips out from under her, but I manage to grab her under the arms and pull her toward me for balance. We’re face to muddy face, and I know I’m surrounded by the twin threats of a pissed off Dimwit and an overprotective pooch, but I can’t seem to disentangle my arms from hers.
Mrs. Dunwitty clears her throat. “Asked you a question, son. What do you think you’re doing?”
Charlotte pulls away, cooing at her dog to calm it down. I shrug at Dimwit and grab our shovels. “Shoveling?”
“Do I look like a dumbass?”
“Uh, no?”
Dimwit turns to Charlotte. “Sweetheart, I know you’re trying to help, but this just won’t work. Can’t say we didn’t try.”
Charlotte’s face flushes so pink I can see it even through the dirt.
Dimwit gently takes Charlotte’s shovel. “I’d like to see my garden fixed before I expire. No one lives forever.” Dimwit smiles at her, her lips stretching tight. “You can go.”
Charlotte looks at me, but I’m as stunned as her. Then, she gets the giggles.
“Later, Charlie,” she says punching me in the arm. The sound of her punch landing makes a squishy noise—mud on mud. She gives a whistle to her beast and leaves me with one more smile.
I watch her walk away. The familiar tang of anxiety coats my throat. What am I doing with this girl? I’m standing in a busted garden, covered in mud, with my heart racing so fast, it’s leaving all logical thoughts in the dust.
“Back to work,” Mrs. Dunwitty says, but before she can teeter away on her cane, she leans in to get a better look at my muddy face. “You all right, son?”
My eyes feel swollen. I can’t go back to the paralyzing black hole of fear I sl
ipped into two years ago. That was over a chemistry problem I couldn’t figure out. This—this is way bigger. This is Charlotte Finch.
“Girl’s got you confused.”
“I’m not confused.” But that’s a lie, and we both know it. I look at the wheelbarrow of rotten compost and blink my giant eyes, hoping they don’t start crying giant tears in front of Dimwit. Oh, she’d never let that go.
Having a girlfriend has never been something I had the bandwidth to take on. Not that I don’t think about girls. I do. A lot. But, one thing I’ve learned is theoretical mathematics is a vastly different creature from applied math.
I’m a theoretical mathematician, thus I will never get laid.
Shit.
“You afraid?” Dunwitty asks, her tone teasing, but her face serious.
“Of what?”
The smile on her face shrinks, and I realize with a sick pang she’s about to impart some sort of old-lady knowledge. “Know why I love a garden?”
I shake my head.
“It’s always changing.”
Dimwit’s garden has definitely changed. It went from beautiful to smashed and now it’s, well, in progress. How this relates to me, I have no idea.
“Don’t you nod your head at me like you understand.”
“But it’s only a garden.”
“You’ve never heard of a metaphor?”
She pulls her sun hat off her head and shoos me off with it saying, “Get back to work.”
I open my mouth to say something, but end up closing it again, like some deranged fish.
How’s that for a metaphor, you old hag?
2.9
I have to shower twice. The first time I don’t get all the mud out of my hair. I find some in my ear when I dry off. Shower v2.0 is much more successful.
Mud-free, I clear the steam from the bathroom mirror, double-checking my reflection before opening the door, my towel hanging low on my hips.
“Oh.” It’s the faintest of sounds, an inhalation more than a word, but it pounds in my ears like a gong. Charlotte halts on the top step, one hand over her open mouth. Her eyes roam over my torso, as one brow twitches upward.
I clutch at the towel wrapped around my waist with one hand, hitching it up and securing it in place, and try to casually drape my other arm across my chest.
“Sorry. I mean, don’t mind me,” Charlotte says, the words tumbling over one another in a rush to get out of her mouth.
“No. I mean. Why would I mind? I, uh…” I drift off and stare at her feet. I’m an idiot. I should have guessed Charlotte would be here. She spends most of her time at our house.
Mom and Dad love her. They love the way she makes Becca more like a normal teenage girl rather than the paper doll she used to be. I get the feeling they’d like some of that normalcy to wear off on me, but Charlotte’s different around me. We juggle lemons in a grocery store, hold hands in my kitchen, and argue over the logic of old movies…and then she shows up at Dimwit’s and lobs mud at my balls? What the hell? How am I supposed to know how to act around her?
It’s like I’m being tested somehow. I’d easily pass the test, if only I understood what she wants.
Charlotte chuckles and says, “I had to shampoo my hair four times to get all the mud out. I even had mud between my teeth. Why didn’t you tell me I had something in my teeth?” I peek up at her and see that she’s smiling, but her eyes are darting around like she’s looking for a safe place to rest them. Her gaze settles on her own feet.
“So, listen,” Charlotte continues without waiting for my response, “Becca and I are making pizza for dinner. We just picked up the ingredients. You want to help?”
I glance at her face for a second, but my own is so red I look back at my bare feet. “Can’t,” I say, “I have to be somewhere.” I take a few sideways steps toward my door.
“Right,” she says. “Of course.”
I peek at her again. She’s smiling this crooked smile with her full lips closed and hiked up to the left. I’d love to close the gap between us, just one step now, and kiss those lips. The thought hits me so hard that I begin to worry about the flimsiness of the towel currently hiding my growing interest in Charlotte Finch.
Don’t mind me, Charlotte, just pitching my tent here in the hallway. You know the motto: thrifty, clean, brave, uh, I don’t know—I totally flunked out of Cub Scouts.
Once she turns back down the stairs, I fall into my room and close the door. Leaning my back on it, I thump my head softly against the wood. I’m in over my head. Trouble is that I’m not sure I want to surface again.
---
When I get to James’s, Greta is already there. I can hear his deep laugh, and when I peek through the sidelights, I see them in the kitchen tossing bits of bread at each other, trying to catch them in their mouths. Greta lunges to catch one, and they both cheer.
I don’t want to intrude, and I know that’s weird because we’re all friends and I’m invited and—I don’t know. But James is looking at Greta like her athletic display of bread-in-mouth catching is the coolest thing he’s ever seen anyone do, and I don’t want to be the third vertex tonight. Without me, there’s no triangle. They get to be something entirely different. Adjacent points.
When I get home, I text a lame excuse.
I’m just in time for pizza.
Charlotte hands me a plate with a large wedge of pizza, the steam still rising from the cheese. She and Becca are at the table. Mom and Dad are perched on the stools around the kitchen island. Charlotte pats the chair next to her. We begin to eat in comfortable silence.
I take a bite of my pizza, immediately spitting it back onto the plate. “Hooooot,” I breathe, my upper palate cauterized.
“You okay, honey?” Mom asks, holding out a napkin for me, like a paper napkin is any kind of salve for fried flesh. I’m afraid talking would slough off the tender layer of skin I’ve singed, so I give her a thumbs up before waving away the napkin.
Charlotte hands me her water, saying, “This’ll help.” Our fingers overlap around the glass. Adjacent points.
The heat between our fingers is more intense than the molten cheese that just laid waste to my mouth. Dear god of numbers, help me, but I want to be burned alive right now.
3.0
Greta and I are lab partners. As soon as Dr. Hale sets us loose to run our lab experiments the next morning, Greta says, “We need to talk.”
I freeze with my head in the storage cupboard, wondering, if I stabbed myself in the eye with this test tube, would I still “need to talk?” Probably.
I grab our supplies and set them on the lab table between us. “I’d love to talk about how we’re going to test Hooke’s Law on this rubber band.” I pull one of the rubber bands taut and let it loose. It flies across the room and lands in Misty’s hair. She doesn’t notice.
Greta gives me a why-are-you-so-dense look before pulling the equipment toward her on our table. She moves with speed and grace setting up the experiment. Once it is ready, she crosses her arms over her chest and snaps, “Happy? Now listen.”
“How’d you do that?” I nod at the elaborate set-up before me.
Greta shrugs. “About last night—”
“Yeah, sorry to bail, but I got home from Dimwit’s and was too tired to go out. I didn’t think you guys would mind.”
“I saw you. At the window. I saw you leave.”
I’ve wrapped a rubber band around my finger so that the tip is turning purplish. “I didn’t want to be in the way.”
“That’s stupid. You know that, right?”
“Of course I know that.” I release my finger from bondage. I can feel my heartbeat throb under the nail.
Greta grabs a rubber band from the pile on the table and aims it at me. “I mean it. Chances of me killing James are much less if he’s got a witness around. You’re doing him a favor.”
“Sure.”
“You don’t believe me?” She pulls the rubber band tauter.
I hol
d my hands up in surrender. “I totally believe you.”
Dr. Hale walks by checking experiments. “At ease, soldier,” he says to Greta. He rushes to help Jacob and Rashaad shouting, “Nonononono! Not like that, boys!”
We turn back to our own work. I appreciate what Greta is saying. It’s not like she and James throw their relationship in my face. They’re discreet.
But three is an odd number.
I want to tell her about Charlotte. I want to explain that I couldn’t hang out with James and her last night because for the first time ever I want what they have. Maybe. At least, I think I want what they have. I don’t know. I do know I want to kiss Charlotte.
That I know.
---
By the time I reach Mrs. Dunwitty’s house, my nerves are as knotted as the gray clouds looming over the pines. She’s waiting for me, as usual, on her front porch. When I get out of the car, she motions for me to follow her around to the back of the house.
“You’ve got to get busy if you’re planning on staying dry,” she’s saying as we walk to a small outbuilding made of windows.
“What’s this?”
“Greenhouse. My Darryl built it for me years ago.” She opens the door and we duck inside. “I keep my babies in here.”
The heat in the greenhouse hits me like a fist in my chest. The idea of Dimwit as the old witch in the candy house cooking up children feels about right.
Mrs. Dunwitty picks up a tray of young plants. “Harvest Moon roses. My own breed.”
I can tell she thinks I should be impressed from the way her eyes are lit from behind, but they look like plain old roses to me.
Dimwit purses her lips and shoves the tray at me. “Plant the roses, and don’t screw it up.” She waits for me to leave then turns back to the other plants.
Kneeling in the soil I tilled yesterday, I snatch a plant from the tray and wince as its tiny thorns bite into my fingers. I stare at the rose in my hand for a second and cram it in the hole I’ve dug.
“Christ, Charlie, a turkey could do a better job than you.”
Love and Other Unknown Variables Page 8