He nods. “I figured.”
“So thanks a lot for the ride,” I tell him. “And just so you know, Charlotte left tonight because she got into a fight with the guy she’s been seeing. A fight over your CDs. Okay?”
“Really?” Denny smiles.
“See you tomorrow morning,” I say.
“Yeah, okay. Be careful, Fleming.”
“It’s only a block.”
“All right, don’t be careful then,” he says. He pushes off with his feet and takes off down the street.
When I walk into the house, my father’s sitting at the kitchen table with a sketch pad. There are wavy lines all over the paper, and little figures shaped like animals—or people, I can’t tell. “Hey, Dad.”
“P. F. You scared me half to death,” he says when I speak, catching him off guard.
If you only knew what I did tonight, I think. You’d be really scared. “What are you drawing?” I ask. “Your new long program?”
“Um, no,” he says, covering the sketch pad with his right hand. “It’s my short program. Very short. For the rodeo.”
“I thought you were finished with that,” I say.
He shakes his head. “I met with the rodeo people tonight. And Mr. Stinson. I did my program for them.”
“Did they love it?” I ask.
“Not exactly. They told me I need to make some changes.”
“Oh. Well, do you think it’ll be okay?”
He chews his thumbnail. “Sure. Of course. It’s going to be great.” Then he puts his head on the table, doing a face plant on the sketch pad. “Who am I trying to kid? P. F., it’s awful. It’s going to be the worst program in the history of figure skating.” He sits up, and I notice dark circles under his eyes. “I haven’t told you this yet, but it has to have an animal theme. Sheep, cattle, horses—the things that draw people to the rodeo,” he says. “P. F., I don’t know a thing about handling livestock. How am I going to do this? Costumes are one thing, but since when do actual animals factor into figure skating? They want animals on the ice with me.”
I stare at him. I don’t want to say anything, but isn’t this sort of his problem? He’s the one who agreed to skate at a rodeo. I warned him not to.
“I can’t even broach the subject with Ludmila. She’d have my head on a platter. I’ve called a couple of skating friends, and they all think I’m crazy to even attempt this. I still can’t think of the right music. Tchaikovsky didn’t write about bucking broncos much.” He is still scowling as he starts laughing in despair. “Why did I say I’d do this? Am I insane?”
Yes, I think. But he has so much invested in this that I can’t say that. “Is it too late to say you’re not going to do it?” I ask.
He nods. “Way too late. They’ve already booked me for three shows a night, starting on the tenth—opening night. I’ve signed a contract. They’ve even advanced me some money.”
“Oh. Three a night? Really?” That seems like a lot. “Okay. So we’ll figure it out,” I tell him. “You need a song with animals . . . is that what you said?”
“Yes, but not ‘Old McDonald,’” he says. “Something sophisticated. Something I won’t be embarrassed to skate to.”
I decide not to point out that the entire fact he’s skating with livestock is going to be embarrassing enough. “Hey, I’ll ask Denny tomorrow,” I say. “He knows a lot about music.”
My father frowns. “Okay, but I don’t want any heavy metal. Make a note of that.”
“Don’t worry, that’s not what he likes.”
I’m about to leave the room, when my father says, “So what did you and Charlotte do tonight?”
“Oh, um, not much,” I say. “Nothing, really.”
“Uh-huh. Well, you’re only half an hour late, so that’s an improvement, I guess.” He taps his pencil against the table, then runs his hand through his thinning hair.
I quietly go upstairs to my room and close the door behind me. I stand at my dresser and look at myself in the mirror. My hair’s slightly flattened from the motorcycle helmet, and my cheeks are extra pink. I can’t believe my dad didn’t notice that.
I also can’t believe I was making out with Mike. What was I thinking? He’s the wrong guy. And if he tells Steve about it, would that be a good thing or a bad thing?
I can’t figure it out, but I stare at myself in the mirror, wondering what I’m up to.
No French Connection
“This is so easy. You really couldn’t think of this yourself?” Denny says the next morning at Gas ’n Git after pressing me for more details on Charlotte, and Ray, and Charlotte’s fight with Ray.
“No.” I take a gulp of coffee. I cannot wake up this morning.
“He has to skate around a horse and some goats, right?”
“Sheep,” I say, sipping.
“Whatever. Okay, are you ready? Here’s the song. ‘Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses’! U2!” Denny says, as if it’s a battle cry. “From Achtung Baby.”
I try to think of the song. I’m not sure I know it. I’m not sure that I’m convinced. “Is that about horses?” I ask.
“No, but who cares?” Denny says. “That’s one of my favorite songs in the entire world.”
It’s by U2, so doesn’t that go without saying? I think.
“And it could work for skating, definitely,” he goes on.
“Well, what about . . . a U2 medley or something?” I ask.
Denny looks deathly offended. “U2 doesn’t do medleys.”
“I know that!” I say, irritated and tired of this. “But see—figure skating? It kind of does.”
“Hmm.” Denny’s face is turning a little splotchy. He looks like he’s breaking out into a sweat. “If you could forget the animal theme . . .” He starts laughing nervously. “You could use ‘Elevation,’ that’d be good for skating. Or ‘I Fall Down’ from October—for all the jumps and stuff?” He continues to laugh nervously. “How about ‘So Cruel,’ you know, he could make it into this sort of statement about cruelty to animals. How about ‘Even Better than the Real Thing’ or ‘With or Without You’? Or wait—he could forget the animals, do a lemon theme and use ‘Lemon,’ because that has that sort of clubby sound skaters go for.” He’s gone crazy. He’s babbling. I wonder if I should slap him to stop him from reciting song names.
“A lemon theme?” I ask as the automatic door sensor rings. I turn and see Charlotte walking into the store. So that’s why Denny is suddenly acting so weird.
Her face lights up and she hurries up to me. “I thought you were working today, but I couldn’t remember—I took a chance and caught the bus. So Kamikaze says he wants a triple mocha today with extra whipped cream instead of his usual.”
“Really?” I ask.
“No, I’m just kidding. God, can you imagine him and whipped cream and his beard?” She shudders and looks at Denny. “Hey. Thanks for the CDs.”
Denny clears his throat and says, “Hey, no problem,” then rushes off to pour himself a soda from the fountain. He stares at Charlotte while he’s filling his cup with ice, and the crushed ice cascades onto the floor. He’s just so suave.
While he cleans up, I tell Charlotte what happened the night before with Mike, after she and Ray left us in the Lot.
“You kissed Mike! Like, a lot,” Charlotte concludes.
“Not that much.”
“No, I can tell.” She stares at me. “So how was it?”
“Weirdnice,” I tell her, flustered by remembering very vividly how it felt. It wasn’t like Steve. But was it worse? Or better? “I just don’t think I’d want to go out with him. As anything long-term.”
“Oh, is that all? Who cares about that?” Charlotte asks.
I laugh. “Denny actually showed up,” I whisper to her, “looking for you. Then he gave me a hard time about being with Mike. Then he gave me a ride home.”
“I think he likes you, not me,” she says.
I shake my head. “No. Really. You’re the one. I didn’t ev
en get one CD,” I tell her.
“Hmm. I’ll have to think about this,” she says. She looks over at Denny as he gets back behind the counter to ring up customers’ sales.
I hurry over to a customer who’s waiting for coffee. As I make her a latte, Charlotte comes behind the counter and says, “So you’re coming to meet me at work tomorrow for the fireworks, right? We’ll go see them together?”
“Sure,” I say, “but what happened with Ray last night?”
“Forget Ray,” she says in a low voice. “It’s over. Really over this time.”
I look over at Denny. Maybe there is hope for him.
Charlotte picks out a banana-nut muffin for breakfast, and I pour her a cup of coffee. She grabs a Lindville Gazette, takes her coffee, and sits at one of the tiny tables we have by the windows.
“Look at this!” she cries a minute later. She gets up from the table and comes over to me and Denny. “That robber guy is hitting the next town now. He held up a grocery store. Aren’t you guys scared?” she asks.
Denny jiggles a key in the register. “Nah. Not really.” He seems to have recovered a little from his first glimpse of Charlotte.
“God. Who wants to come to work thinking someone’s going to stick a gun in their face? You guys are crazy to work here.”
Denny giggles, and then must realize he sounds funny doing that, because he stops. He coughs, then says in a lower voice, “Yeah, it’s just something you sort of deal with in this job. But it’s a good place to work. We don’t get harassed.”
“Much,” I add as I see Coffee Breath’s car pull up in front. He’s here for his second Tanker of the day.
“You guys are brave,” Charlotte says. Then she goes back and sits at her table by the window.
“She has no idea,” I say to Denny, but he’s too busy staring at Charlotte. I know he wants to go sit with her and talk to her and ask about the CDs—and tell her about the songs he’s writing. But he doesn’t. He shows remarkable restraint. He doesn’t even flirt with me to make her jealous. He’s . . . mature or something.
Or else his Bono obsession doesn’t leave room for anyone else in his heart. If Bono ever came in here, I don’t want to think how Denny might act.
After I get out of work, Charlotte and I take the bus over to Edison for French class.
Kamikaze half grunts when I hand him his usual coffee with cream. He gives me back one of the dollars I hand him, as a tip, but he doesn’t say a word.
“Good afternoon to you, too!” Charlotte says as she shows him her transfer.
He looks up at her, and then over at me. “Don’t tell me. The mall again?”
“We’re going to summer school,” Charlotte says. “Okay? Not the mall. We’ve been to the mall once together. We’re going to French class. Parlez-vous français?” she asks, and I notice that her accent is actually, amazingly, improving.
Kamikaze starts talking in French, and I don’t understand a word he says. When he sees how confused we look, he says, “I drove a bus in Montreal for a while. Now sit down.”
When we get to class, we find out Monsieur LeFleur now has car trouble.
“He’s survived some sort of horribly disabling flu, he’s lost a member of his family, and now he’s going to let a busted starter keep him from teaching our class?” someone asks.
“He could call a cab. He could take the bus—like us,” Charlotte says.
We all sit there at our desks, feeling small and pathetic.
He hates us. It’s obvious. He’s not even in town this summer. He’s sitting on a beach in southern France, sipping wine and laughing as he thinks about us, the fools in his Edison High summer-school class.
“Today, Monsieur LeFleur thought you could absorb a little French culture and some of the language by watching an Academy Award–winning movie,” the sub says. “It’s called The French Connection. Has anyone seen it?”
Nobody has.
“Then you’re . . .” The sub skims the note she received from Monsieur LeFleur, then glances at the back of the video box. “You’re in for some nonstop action, featuring the best car-chase scene in movie history.”
“Is it a French car?” Charlotte asks.
“Well, no. I don’t think so,” the sub says.
“Then what’s the point? I mean, what’s the connection to French?” Charlotte demands.
“This is supposed to be French class,” I say angrily. “Why aren’t we watching a French movie, at least? Doesn’t anyone care that we’re not learning anything?”
“Girls, relax. This movie features some French characters. It has subtitles and everything,” the sub says. She taps me and then Charlotte lightly on the head as she walks past, as if we’re small children, as if patting us on the head will solve anything. Duck, duck, cut it out.
The movie is rated R—the kind of movie they don’t allow us to see in school. Parents would definitely protest this. Some students protest by actually getting up and walking out of class.
Charlotte falls asleep during the exciting chase scene, where Gene Hackman is driving underneath the elevated subway tracks, racing the train. I close my eyes and picture myself racing through the streets of New York. I drive as well as Gene Hackman and then I apprehend the evil French killer when he gets off the train. Only I catch him in French. I don’t know how you shoot bullets en français, but that’s what I do.
Then I stay in New York and get a very cool apartment.
When I open my eyes, I see that both the sub and Charlotte have dozed off in the afternoon heat.
Fireworks
It’s the Fourth of July and it’s almost dark. I am supposed to be meeting Charlotte right now, to go to the fireworks together.
Instead I’m at the town park’s playground with Dorothy, Torvill, and Dean. Mom is doing a remote, a live broadcast from the big event, so she’s perched at a table in the middle of the war memorial plaza. People keep stopping by to request songs and pick up free bumper stickers, and they all keep asking when she’s due. I got tired of watching strangers touch her belly and listening to them predict whether she’s having a girl or a boy.
Dad isn’t here because he got some special session at the rink, because no one in their right mind wants to practice on a national holiday except Ludmila and Dad. He’s supposedly going to meet me at the KLDV booth at 8:30, and then I get to find Charlotte in the huge crowd.
My parents make my life so complicated. They really do.
I told them I already had plans. But no. I’m pushing Torvill on a swing. I’m watching Dean climb on the jungle gym. I’m helping Dorothy create a sand sculpture. I’m trying really hard not to take how annoyed I am with my parents out on the kids, because it’s not their fault our parents don’t have a clue about how not to act on the Fourth of July.
“Just tell KLDV you can’t do it!” I said to Mom when she came home this afternoon and informed me she had to work tonight.
“Just tell Ludmila you don’t care if she doesn’t celebrate July Fourth—you do!” I said to Dad.
“Peggy, honestly, we’re only talking about one night here,” my mother said. “Does one night really matter that much?”
In a word? Yes. Especially when it follows an afternoon, and a morning. But try telling my parents that. “I already promised Charlotte I’d go to the fireworks with her,” I said. “I’m supposed to meet her at work.”
“So call her and tell her to meet you at the park,” my father said. “I’ll be there by eight-thirty, I promise.”
Yes, and that really means a lot these days.
“Dorothy shouldn’t be out that late, should she?” I asked. “Shouldn’t she be home?”
“It’s just one night,” my mother said. “Anyway, do you think she could actually sleep when fireworks are going off?”
They have an answer for everything. It’s another gift of theirs.
At 8:25 I get the kids assembled and we circle back to the KLDV booth, but Dad’s not there yet. So I take the kids with me t
o the place where I’m meeting Charlotte—at the top of the hill, near the statues of Lindville’s founding fathers. As I crest the hill, I don’t see Charlotte. I don’t believe what I do see. It’s Steve, leaning against one of the statues. And for the first time all summer, he is actually alone. Jacqui is nowhere to be seen.
So here it is, my moment. Me and Steve, alone. Except I’m not alone. Torvill and Dean are toddling along beside me, and I’ve got Dorothy on my shoulders.
I wave hello to Steve and walk over to him. I’m about to say something when the fireworks start going off. The first one makes a loud hissing noise, pops, and then nothing happens. No lights come out of it. It falls with a pathetic sigh, a complete dud.
Steve and I look at each other and start laughing. “Typical, right?” I ask him.
“Oh, yeah,” he agrees. “So this is how Lindville celebrates July Fourth. Why am I not surprised?”
I laugh again, probably a little too hard, but I’m sorry—it’s funny. There’s a delay in the fireworks display, so they must be working on fixing something. “So have you seen Charlotte around here?” I ask Steve. “I’m supposed to be meeting her.”
“Nope. Not yet,” he says.
“Oh. Well, where’s Jacqui?” I ask. I keep an eye on the twins as they chase each other, doing figure eights around the two statues.
“She had to work. Did Kyle have to work, too?” he says.
“Um, I guess so, yeah,” I say. I haven’t actually talked to Mike. And right now, I don’t want to. “Hey, you know what? We actually got to watch a movie in French class the other day. Have you seen The French Connec—”
My sentence is interrupted as more fireworks are launched into the air. They explode with what seems like double force, as if they’re trying to make up for the dud. There’s a giant boom that nearly shakes the earth.
Torvill starts shrieking and crying, and runs away, heading straight for Mom and the KLDV booth. Dean chases after her, and then I have to leave Steve and bolt after both of them, which isn’t easy with Dorothy on my shoulders. “I’ll be right back!” I call to Steve. “Don’t go anywhere, okay?”
Unforgettable Summer Page 31