by Mark Lowery
As we get closer, Charlie nods his head and snaps his fingers. Then he just starts dancing in the middle of the station. And not normal dancing either. Dancing like he’s having a fit or something. Flinging his arms and legs around, waggling his head with his tongue hanging out, attempting to do head spins and the worm.
It’s pretty funny in a Charlie kind of way because he’s totally out of time with the slow rhythm and he’s so uncoordinated—kind of like a drunk baby donkey being electrocuted. Plus, no one seems to have noticed him, which makes it even funnier. People are just stepping around him the way people seem to do in big cities, staring dead ahead or down at their phones, and the musician’s eyes are still closed, so he can’t see him either. But now Charlie is completely wigging out, leaping up and down and head-banging.
I’m about to start laughing when I hear a “Hey you!” from behind me.
My heart freezes.
Two policemen are jogging down from the other end of the station, thirty feet away and getting closer. Tight short-sleeved shirts. Big muscles. Angry faces.
Oh no.
They know about the orange juice.
I’m a wanted man.
I grab Charlie, but the police are closing in on us and I shut my eyes and squeeze him and that shaky feeling is growing inside me again and I make a whining noise and wait for the handcuffs but . . .
“You know you need permission to play music here,” growls one of the policemen.
“Come on. Beat it,” says the other. “This is twice today.”
I open my eyes, and they’ve got their broad backs to me, crowding the musician toward the wall. I feel relieved for a minute, but then I see the man’s face and I feel sorry for him. His frown seems to show anger, confusion, fear, and disappointment all at once.
“Leave it out, man,” begs the musician in a strong accent. “Haven’t you got any criminals to catch?”
Trying to stay dignified, he stuffs his guitar into its case, then pockets the coins from his woolly hat.
“Don’t get rude with me, son,” snaps the first policeman. “I could take you in for breach of peace.”
The musician sucks his teeth as he balances the hat on top of his dreads. “Police,” he says, with every ounce of hate in his body. “All I’m doing’s making people happy.”
“Well, you can make us happy by going home,” says the second policeman, easing him along by his shoulder.
As they pass, I catch the man’s eye and give him a thumbs-up to say I liked the music. He returns it with a sad smile. “See that?” I hear him say to the policemen. “People like my music. The world needs more joy and you’re stealing it. You’re nothing but happiness thieves, man.”
Toilets and Tickets
The Plymouth train is completely crammed. There are people standing in the aisle with suitcases and bikes everywhere. I only manage to find a window seat at a table of four. Right away, I find out that beggars can’t be choosers.
At my table are the following people:
An old woman diagonally across from me who cleans her false teeth with a little brush and a cup of water before sticking them back into her gums. Then she picks up the cup of water and swirls it around. It’s all cloudy with bits of food floating in it. Finally, and I promise this isn’t a lie, she downs it in one large gulp. Gross.
An enormously fat, sweaty man right next to me. His bare arms are touching my bare arms, and I can’t escape. He’s watching a funny movie on his iPad with his earphones in. I only know it’s a comedy because he keeps laughing really loudly, his whole body shaking up and down. Sometimes after a big laugh, he turns to me, eyes tearing up, and shakes his head as if to say, “Wasn’t that great?” How should I know, man? I can’t hear it.
The angriest-looking girl I’ve ever seen. Huge backpack on her knees, blue hair, multi-colored wool coat even in this warm weather, pierced eyebrow and lip, and a come on, I dare you to look at me glare burning on her face. She’s sitting right across from me in the other window seat, and I’m really doing my best not to catch her eye.
Charlie, by the way, is in the bathroom. When the train left Birmingham, the announcer said they’d just gotten a new conductor on board so they’d be checking every ticket. Charlie was actually delighted when I told him to hide in the bathroom and not to move until I came for him. Told you, he loves a good toilet.
I keep thinking about the musician. He’s given me an idea for a poem, so I start jotting it down in the notebook. But it’s hard to concentrate because of the wheezy fat laughter, and the clicking false teeth, and Angry Girl, who’s trying to read what I’m writing. I glance up at her and she gives me a proper death stare, so I cover the notebook and finish as quickly as I can.
Mr. Hendrix told me to find a cool, calm, peaceful spot to write poetry. This train is definitely not what he had in mind, so I don’t think the poem’s got much going for it. I mean, it starts out okay, but I end up rhyming room with boom chinga boom, which is completely lame (and in any case I’m not sure the station is considered a room). Also, I rush the last line a bit, so it ends up having a sad ending.
I know Mr. Hendrix would be like, “Hey, don’t sweat it. A true poem is always better than a good poem.” But was this poem true? Why did I need the weird last line? I suppose it’s because of how the police just stopped the music like that. I wish Charlie was here. He’d have come up with something funnier.
Actually, scratch that. I’m way better off with Charlie in the bathroom. By now he would’ve said something inappropriate about the fat man, or tried to tickle Angry Girl, or asked the old woman if he could borrow her false teeth or something.
Thinking about Charlie wearing the old bird’s false teeth makes me smile to myself.
“What?” snaps Angry Girl.
“Nothing,” I mutter, and I lean back into my chair. This is going to be a long journey.
Classic Economy Budget
After the dolphin had disappeared, we headed off to find a café. All of us were in a great mood, and of course Charlie was the most excited of all of us.
“Did you see her?” he was saying, his eyes wide and the words shooting out like sparks. “The way she just flipped up like that, I’ve never seen anything like it, I mean, she was just alive, you know?”
“Of course it was alive,” laughed Dad. “I doubt a dead one’d swim quite so fast.”
Mum gave Dad a soft slap on the shoulder. “I know what you mean, Charlie. But just don’t get too excited. You know what the doctors say.”
Charlie’s meant to avoid getting overstimulated, just in case his heart beats too fast. Even though he’s had millions of tests and scans and checkups, the doctors still aren’t sure exactly how strong his heart is. It’s impossible to tell. He could live until he’s a hundred, or, well . . .
Probably shouldn’t think about it really. I mean, Charlie never does.
Charlie waved his hand at Mum like he was batting away her words. “But it was the most mega-magic thing I’ve ever seen.” He grinned, practically bouncing up and down. “It was like a . . . a . . . a beanie full of hope and happiness.”
“A what?!” cried Dad as we stopped outside a place called the Sandy Bottom Beach Diner. “Well, I’m wearing a baseball cap full of hunger. Let’s all get in here, calm down, and get some bacon and a drink. . . .”
Inside, we each had a full English breakfast— bacon, sausage, eggs, mushrooms, tomatoes, beans, and toast—apart from Charlie, who ordered three fried eggs on top of a bowl of porridge, just to see if they’d make it for him. They did, and we were all treated to the sight of it sloshing around in his mouth as he relived every millisecond of the dolphin’s appearance again and again.
When Charlie had finished his breakfast, which according to him “tasted of the future,” he made us all eat up; then he dragged us down to the harbor to see if the dolphin had come back. Unfortunately, the tide was heading out by then. The fishing boats that’d been floating around an hour or so ago were lying tilted in
the shallow water, and the harbor walls were slick with seaweed. Of course the dolphin was long gone.
Charlie stared out at the sea for a while, quietly scanning the horizon. There was no sign of a fin or even a splash. Disappointed, he made Dad take a photo of a blackboard with all the tide times for the week on it so we’d know when to come back. As we walked away toward the car, he kept glancing over his shoulder as though he expected the dolphin to come slithering up onto the sand any second. It didn’t.
For the twenty-minute drive out of town, Charlie was pretty quiet for a change. He sucked his thumb as we whizzed out through the suburbs, then along narrow country lanes. In fact, he didn’t perk up until we pulled into the RV park. There was a massive sign as we drove in: “Surfside—One Life—Anything’s Possible.”
“I like that,” Charlie remarked as Dad parked outside reception.
As soon as Mum went to the office to collect the keys, Dad turned around in his seat to face us. “Okay, boys,” he said, “I’ll warn you. The RV might not be the nicest one in the park. . . .”
From the brochure we had at home, I already knew that Surfside was a pretty massive place that backed onto a beach about seven miles along the coast from the main town of St. Bernards. As well as a pool, and a game room, it had around six hundred RVs and cottages of all different shapes and sizes. There were some sweet brand-spanking-new accommodations, but we’d booked a “Classic Economy Budget” RV, which is a fancy way of saying Old, Cheap, and Crap.
Dad stroked his stubble and cleared his throat. “We needed to save a bit of money so we could do more stuff while we’re here,” he said apologetically. “Better to sleep in a cave and live like a king than sleep in a palace and live like a beggar, right?”
I got the feeling he’d been working on this line for a while. “We don’t mind,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. I mean, a vacation’s a vacation, isn’t it? I didn’t care where we were staying; I had this quiet, buzzing, excited feeling in my belly, and I couldn’t wait to get unpacked and get the vacation started properly.
But Charlie stared at the big Surfside sign for a few moments. “I’m going to help Mum,” he said. Then he hopped out of the car and ran over to reception.
They were gone for ages. Dad sat resting his head on the steering wheel, and I stayed in the back, eating some warm, squashed Starburst left over from the night before. After about ten minutes, they came back to the car. Charlie had a big grin on his face, and Mum was looking a bit confused.
Closing the door, she handed a map of the park to Dad. “They’ve drawn a circle around where we’re staying,” she said. “We’re in the red zone, right by the sand dunes.”
Dad stared at it for a moment. “Hang on. That’s not right. We should be in the brown zone. It says here that the red zone is for Deluxe Premium Sea-View Cottages.”
I raised one eyebrow. “Deluxe Premium” is a fancy way of saying Ultra-Fancy Super-Expensive. I glanced over at Charlie, who was deliberately looking out of the window.
Mum shook her head. “I know. We got upgraded.”
“Upgraded?!” cried Dad. “Well, you can just go back in there and downgrade us. I’m not paying another five hundred pounds for a fancy kitchen and a nice view.”
Mum put her hand on his arm. “No. You don’t understand, love. It’s free.”
“You what?”
Still looking out of the window, Charlie casually said: “I just asked if they had any spare. Turns out they did.”
“They aren’t fully booked this week,” explained Mum. “And they’ve had some cancellations, so there are quite a few empty. They said they wouldn’t normally do it, of course, but Charlie charmed them. . . .”
“Don’t ask, don’t get,” said Charlie.
Dad spun around to face him. “What? And they just gave one to you like that? For nothing?”
Charlie looked at him with his head tilted to one side. “Well, I had to sing to ’em first.”
“He’s not kidding either,” said Mum. “They were like, ‘How can we refuse after hearing that?’”
I felt a giggle tickling my throat. “What did you sing?”
“‘If I Was a Rich Girl,’” Charlie said, totally deadpan.
“Were you any good?”
Mum shook her head. “Absolutely. Awful. I think they only upgraded us to shut him up.”
There was a moment of silence before we all broke out laughing.
Charlie didn’t laugh, though. He just smiled. “Anything’s possible,” he said to himself. “Anything’s possible.”
Fat Men and Toilets
Along with most of the other people on the train, the fat man finally gets off at Bristol. Relief. His heavy-metal T-shirt, from a band called Monkey Apocalypse, clings to his body along with a kind of musty, damp odor. Charlie would’ve said the smell was the mold growing under his man boobs.
The old woman gets off too. She’s spent pretty much a whole hour eating a single salmon sandwich with tiny sparrow bites. It was gross. Her false teeth clacking up and down and her mouth full of mashed-up fishy paste. Why did she bother cleaning her teeth if she was just going to eat a sandwich right afterward?
Anyway, when she stands up, the fat man grunts, “Hurry up, Mum,” and I realize that they’re traveling together. This is really weird. They haven’t said two words to each other the whole way. In fact, they haven’t even looked at each other since we left Birmingham.
I suddenly think of my mum. We don’t really talk much these days either. I hope I don’t end up like the fat man when Mum’s old—lost in a trance and totally ignoring her.
Oooh. He’ll miss her when she’s gone. That’s what Mum would say if she was here. I just know it.
I feel my stomach sag. Somehow, the idea of the old woman dying and the fat man missing her makes me feel sad. I make a mental note to talk to Mum more when I get back tomorrow. You can’t take people for granted.
Mum.
Is she out of bed yet? Has she realized we’re gone? Is she upset? Has she noticed the missing cookie tin?
The last one makes me smile sadly to myself, and I tap my backpack to make sure the tin’s still there. It is.
Hmm. Maybe I should just send her a text to let her know we’re okay. I reach for my phone, but then I remember it’s still in my open drawer at home, which in turn makes me regret making it so obvious that we’d run away. I wish I could go back in time and clean up after myself: alarm off, drawer shut, cereal box away, train times in my backpack, cookie tin back on the shelf (keeping the cookies of course), lid back on that jar.
It’s too late to do anything about all that now, though. I can’t go back and change anything. I have to look forward. As for Mum, I’ll get in touch once we’ve done everything we need to do in St. Bernards.
Thinking of families, I remember that Charlie’s been in the bathroom since Birmingham. As the train pulls out of the station, I pick up the backpack and wander down to him. The aisle is empty now, and it feels weird walking in the opposite direction of the way we’re going. Am I going backward or forward or just standing still? I knock on the door, and there’s a swooshing noise as it slides open. Charlie’s sitting on the toilet seat, looking surprisingly happy.
“Has the conductor been around yet?” he says, jabbing the close-and-lock button.
I let him have a big glug of the stolen orange juice, then drink some myself. “No. The train’s been too busy. I’m sure he’ll be along soon. I’ll come and get you soon as he’s gone.”
“No rush.” He grins, waving his arms around to show the space. “I’ve got the best seat in the house. Look at this leg room.”
“But it stinks,” I say, then tuck the juice bottle back into my bag.
Charlie shrugs. “I’m used to it. I’ve been sitting next to you all morning, remember. Anyway. I’m starving. Can I have a cookie now?”
“I told you,” I say, rolling my eyes, “when we get there. Now get out. I need to use the facilities.”
As
I—ahem, you know—go, Charlie’s jabbering on in my ear the whole time. It’s a wonder I don’t get stage fright.
“Hey, do you remember the bathroom in the cottage at Surfside? It was like a palace.”
I smile at the memory. “And it was the only room we could get a phone signal,” I say over my shoulder.
“Yes!” chuckles Charlie. “I’d forgotten that. I spent hours in there, checking Dolphinwatch on Dad’s phone.”
“Mum said if you stayed in there any longer someone’d use you as a toilet brush!”
Charlie laughs so much he has to take a puff of his inhaler. Mum’s got a great sense of humor when she’s in the mood, you know? I guess that’s just Charlie’s influence. He brings out the best in everyone.
Then Charlie’s face turns serious. “So . . . since going to St. Bernards was your idea, have you been checking it, then?”
“Checking what?” I say, zipping my trousers up, then turning around.
“Dolphinwatch.”
I wash my hands and dry them under the pathetic air dryer. “Of course I have. Every day since last year. You know that.”
Checking Dolphinwatch was something I got in the habit of after our vacation had finished. It’s a bit strange that it’s me who does this. I mean, it was Charlie who was into looking at it when we were actually in St. Bernards. But he gets bored easily, and I just felt like I should keep checking it once we’d gotten home.
When I turn to face him, his eye is wide open. “And . . . ?”
I try to look innocent. “And what?”
“Is she back?” he asks, half pleading now.
“Is who back?” I say, playfully flicking water at his face. I’m determined to drag this out as long as I possibly can.