Charlie and Me

by Mark Lowery

  The train squeaks to a stop, and a door clunks open right in front of us.

  “Don’t care. Come on,” says Charlie, dragging me toward the train by the hand. “We’re getting out of here.”

  “What are you talking about?” I say, confused. This isn’t like Charlie at all. “She’s our friend.”

  Charlie stares angrily at me. “No she’s not. Let’s go. Now. She’ll just get in the way.”

  He releases my hand and storms onto the train. “This is nuts,” I call after him. “You don’t even know where it’s going.”

  But Charlie is already sitting down in a seat, and the train doors are beeping like they’re about to close. I look along the platform. I can see Hen’s feet as she jogs down the stairs. Now her shins. Now her legs.

  The doors hiss at the exact moment that Hen reaches the platform.

  I feel like a horrible person, but I can’t afford to lose Charlie again. Turning away from Hen and hoping she doesn’t see me, I dive through the doors just before they close.

  Hooked

  “You can tell it’s a good vacation,” said Dad, “’cause everyone has a big smile on their face.”

  He was right. The vacation was amazing. After that first day, we didn’t stop beaming the whole week. On Sunday and Tuesday, we went to the beach. I tried bodyboarding and Charlie buried Dad in the sand while Mum sat and read her new book. Monday we went to Lands’ End; then we played miniature golf back until it got dark. Wednesday was a theme park (where me and Dad went on a roller coaster and Charlie managed to lose a shoe on the tea-cups ride), followed by a completely amazing monster-truck extravaganza in a park outside St. Bernards.

  Somehow, along with all of that, we still managed to get down to the harbor every day to watch the dolphin. Dolphinwatch and the tide timetable ruled everything: a stop off in St. Bernards on the way to or from somewhere, a quick ride out in the car at lunchtime for Mum and Charlie, while Dad and I played in the sea or played football back at the cottage.

  Charlie was happiest when he was down at the harbor. He’d stand, mesmerized, watching the dolphin skim around the harbor for as long as we’d let him. Sometimes he’d be pressed against the railings, sometimes drawing or taking photos with Mum’s camera, sometimes chatting to the old-timer from Saturday. But always there’d be a massive grin plastered across his face.

  On top of that, Charlie spent hours learning about dolphins, finding out facts on the internet on Dad’s phone, drawing pictures of them in his little pad. He even made us go to the local library so he could read books about them.

  Yep, the dolphin had changed him all right. Mum said she’d never seen him concentrate for so long. As the week went on, even his drawing and coloring improved—instead of his usual messy, multi-colored scribble, he’d take his time, carefully sketching then following the lines with his felt tips.

  Everything was perfect.

  Until Thursday.

  It was a wet day, and we’d been to visit an old mine, which was a lot more fun than it sounds, creeping around deep underground in the dark. Once, Dad hid in this little alcove and jumped out at us, but Mum told him off and said he’d scare Charlie if he wasn’t careful. While we were in the museum afterward, Charlie suddenly announced it was time to go. High tide was at four o’clock, and we’d promised.

  At the harbor in St. Bernards, sheets of drizzle were shrouding half the bay. To be honest, the rest of us were a bit bored with the dolphin now, so we huddled under a shelter by the side of the lighthouse with a flask of tea while Charlie paced up and down the railings in front of us, peering through the rain.

  After fifteen minutes of us watching Charlie watching the sea, there was still no sign of the dolphin. Dad called out to him: “Come on, son! It’s pouring. You’ve seen one big fish, you’ve seen ’em all.”

  Without turning around, Charlie replied that, actually, dolphins are mammals. He was starting to look agitated now, and he shoved fifty pence into a telescope. Ten seconds later, he stepped off the little platform again, muttering about how useless it was.

  “Well, what did that old fella say the other day? It’s the ocean, not a zoo,” said Dad.

  “Aquarium,” muttered Charlie, still looking out to sea. “And anyway. She should be here. It’s high tide.”

  “Maybe it’s the weather?” suggested Mum.

  “She’s a dolphin,” Charlie said sarcastically, turning around at last. “She lives in water. She’s not gonna be scared of a drop of rain, is it? Do you think she’s gonna look out the window and say, ‘Ooh, I’m staying indoors. I haven’t got an umbrella and a freaking jacket’?”

  “All right, sorry, Mr. Grumpy,” said Mum, her eyebrows raised. “No need to get angry.”

  “Well, don’t be so dumb, then,” he snapped.

  “Whoa!” growled Dad. “Cut it out.”

  This was totally out of character for Charlie. The only times I’d ever seen him like this before was when he’d been frustrated he couldn’t do something.

  We sat there in awkward silence for another ten minutes, Charlie chucking more coins into the little telescope until he ran out of money. Eventually, with the rain soaking him to the bone, we peeled him away and dragged him back to the car.

  On our way past a small office on the seafront, Charlie picked up a leaflet for a boat tour offering “incredible four-hour dolphin-watching tours around the coast” and handed it to Dad.

  Dad rubbed the back of his neck, then tucked the leaflet into his pocket. “Well. Er. We’ll see, eh, son?”

  That evening, while the rest of us played a game of Clue, Charlie sat in the corner, drawing his dolphins and eating gummy bears. In fact, he hardly said two words all evening.

  Later, in bed, he finally talked to me. “I wonder where she was,” he said through the darkness. The dolphin was always a she. I guess because the old-timer had said so on Saturday.

  “She’ll probably show up tomorrow,” I said.

  “Maybe Dad’ll take us on that boat trip?” said Charlie, his voice hopeful and excited. “They do ’em from the harbor. The old-timer said yesterday it’s the best way to get up close to wildlife.”

  Dad had left the leaflet on the kitchen table. At twenty-five pounds for adults and fifteen for children, I seriously doubted we could afford it. “Wouldn’t it be great if you had a pet dolphin in a tank?” I said, trying to change the subject. “You know, then you could see it every day.”

  The bedside light flicked on. Charlie doesn’t wear his glasses or patch in bed, so his face always looks strange, but tonight he had an expression I’d never seen before—total disgust. “You really don’t understand, do you?” he said. His voice was cold.

  “Understand what?” I asked, confused.

  But Charlie just grunted angrily and switched off the light. Then I heard him flop back to bed, his covers rustling as he turned away to face the wall.

  I lay there, staring into the darkness. I had no idea what I’d said wrong.

  Hiding and Escaping

  I sit facing Charlie at a table. This train is great; all plush dark seats, clean carpets, and tinted windows. But I can’t enjoy it because we’ve been sitting here for two minutes and we still haven’t left the station. I can see Hen from my window wandering around on the platform, looking for us. After a while she pauses, confused. There’s an awful pounding in my brain. I don’t want to breathe. Why isn’t the train moving yet?

  The loudspeaker announces, “We’re sorry for the delay; we’re waiting for a cargo train to pass through the station ahead of us, so sit back and relax and we’ll be moving shortly.” The cheerfulness of the voice irritates me, like it’s giving me good news. We need to get away from here before Hen sees us.

  I grind my teeth together. On the platform, Hen is running her fingers through her blue hair. Then suddenly her head tilts to one side and she approaches our train, peering in through the next window to ours. Oh God. She’s only ten feet away. Charlie and I duck under the table so we’re hidde
n. Why won’t this train just get a move on?

  “This is really mean,” I say. “After everything she’s done for us. I shouldn’t have listened to you.”

  “Bologna,” says Charlie, his face flat against the wall. “We don’t want her interfering with our business, do we? Other people are trouble. You think she cares about the dolphin? What if she makes us late?”

  “You’re the one jumping on a random train,” I say, but Charlie just shrugs.

  I peer over the table. Hen is moving along the platform away from us now. Part of me feels relieved, but this is still horrible. It’s like someone’s got hold of my guts in their fist and they’re trying to rip them out. I suddenly find myself angry at Charlie. The way he’s acting reminds me of our vacation when he didn’t seem to care about anything else but the dolphin. While we were away, I sometimes wished he’d never seen it.

  “You and your stupid dolphin,” I hiss, surprised at how angry my voice sounds. I can’t remember the last time I got mad at him. An old woman across the aisle is staring at me, and Charlie’s face is a mixture of shock and fear. I take a deep breath and lower my voice. “I’m sorry.”

  “Still not nice, though,” he replies, and I know he’s right. I’m only being like this because I feel bad about Hen. I huff out my cheeks and I’m about to say sorry again, but I don’t because, for the second time that day, I’ve got that feeling of being watched. And when I turn to my right, there’s Hen, glaring in at me through the window.

  Emptiness

  By Martin Tompkins

  Age 13

  Stage 5

  (Adjusted and Clarified)

  Plymouth to Par

  (by luck, then by quick escape)

  Distance–36 miles

  Train

  Hurt and Empty

  I can’t stand to catch Hen’s eye. Behind the heavy makeup, she looks so hurt, so let down. “What are you doing?” she mouths at me, her forehead all creased around her eyebrow piercing.

  I feel my mouth wobbling, trying to find words, but nothing comes out.

  Hen slaps the window with both hands and storms away toward the door of the train. And now she’s repeatedly jabbing the button. Luckily the door doesn’t open.

  When will this flipping train get out of here?

  That stupid cheerful voice again: “Ladies and gentlemen, we apologize again for the delay. Tea and coffee is available. . . .”

  I feel like screaming that I don’t care about the tea and coffee. I just want to get away from here so that I won’t feel so terrible anymore. But now Hen’s back at the window.

  “Sorry,” I mouth at her, but she’s already turned her back and she’s prowling off down the platform.

  I sit back in the seat, head in my hands. There’s part of me that’s surprised I’m not having another meltdown. I guess that maybe the one in the alleyway was like taking the lid off of a shaken-up bottle of Coke. Everything fizzed out, and there’s nothing left now.

  “Good riddance,” says Charlie, dusting his palms together, and it takes everything in my body not to whack him.

  Fuming silently, I grab the notebook and pen from my bag and try to come up with a poem. But I can’t write anything beyond the title, so I start drawing a dot on the page. Then I make it bigger, pressing harder and harder until the tip breaks through the paper and you can see the lines on the page below. The poem was going to be called “Emptiness,” because that’s how I’m feeling right now. Mr. Hendrix would probably look at the dot and the hole and say, “Great job. That looks like a pretty good picture of emptiness to me.” But this isn’t really a consolation.

  I feel so stupid. All I can think of is how this was such a terrible idea. The entire trip. I should’ve known Charlie would act like this. I wanted it to be magical. I wanted him to enjoy it. But something about that dolphin just makes him so single-minded and unpredictable.

  Rescue

  The next day, when I woke up for breakfast, Charlie was already checking Dolphinwatch on Dad’s phone.

  “There’s something wrong,” he said, before I’d even had a chance to say good morning. “She’s still not been back.”

  “It’s eight in the morning,” I yawned. “Give her a chance.”

  But Charlie kept tapping the screen to update it, which was totally pointless.

  Dad strolled in and clapped his hands together. “Right, boys! Get dressed. We’re going to be out all day. Big surprise.”

  “We’re going on a boat trip?” asked Charlie, bouncing up and down.

  “Definitely not,” said Dad. “I’ve had enough of staring out to sea to last a lifetime.”

  Charlie dumped the phone onto the sofa and screwed up his face like a baby. “Aw.”

  Dad ignored him. “Nope. We’re going to the zoo!”

  “Cool!” I said. I love the zoo.

  “But what about the dolphin?” cried Charlie, “It’s not been back to the harbor, and if we went out on a boat, then—”

  “We weighed up the cost of the boat trip, love,” said Mum kindly, “and it was just too expensive. We got an online discount for the zoo. They’ve even got a penguin pool. It’ll be just the same.”

  This was the wrong thing to say.

  “No. It. Won’t!” cried Charlie, stamping his feet. “And what about high tide? We’ll miss it. It’s this afternoon at th—”

  “Look, son,” said Dad, mildly irritated, “I’ve already bought the tickets and we’re not spending another minute at that harbor.”

  “We’ll go tomorrow morning, Charlie,” said Mum, appearing at Dad’s shoulder. “Before we go home. Promise.”

  “But . . .” said Dad.

  Mum squeezed his arm and gave him a look that said don’t argue. Dad sighed.

  So off we went to Newquay zoo. It took ages to get there because of the traffic, and it seemed like even longer because Charlie was sulking all the way. Then, just as we arrived, Dad got a text from his service provider asking him if he’d meant to go three times over his internet limit this week and how his next bill would be over fifty pounds, so that made two grumpy people.

  Personally, I thought the zoo was great. We saw lions, monkeys, red pandas, lemurs, and loads of other animals. Charlie wasn’t quite as impressed. He dragged his feet all day, moaning about how pathetic it was. He didn’t even smile when Mum took a photo of me and Dad standing in front of a sign that said “Warty Pigs” without us realizing. The whole day Charlie was a massive, glowering cloud hanging over our fun.

  As we got in the car to drive back to the cottage, Mum said, “Well that was amazing!”

  “Incredible,” said Dad, who’d eventually got over his cell-phone bill.

  “Not real nature, though, is it?” said Charlie. “It’s just a big, cruel animal prison.”

  Weird Relief

  Finally, the train roars to life and we ease our way out of the station. I still feel awful about Hen, but now that we’re finally moving, there’s also a kind of weird relief in the back of my mind. Charlie and I are on the move again, wherever it is we’re going.

  I even feel ready to write some poems again. I quickly jot one down about how happy I was to see Charlie again on the platform at Plymouth. It only takes about a minute because the pen just dances across the page. Afterward, I also write down the chant I had in my head back in the alleyway in Exeter. It seems important to do this, even though I’d rather forget all about my panic attack.

  As I finish the poems and put my notebook away, Charlie is back to being excited again. “Right, well, that’s that. Can we have a cookie from that tin now? I’m starving.”

  How many times . . . ? I think. I hand him the other half of my ham-and-jam sandwich from this morning and look out of the window as we leave the town behind, crossing a muddle of tracks past rusted-out old engines and dilapidated carriages until the train eventually runs straight.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the delayed fifteen-twelve service to Penzance, calling at . . .” says the cheerfu
l loudspeaker voice. I sit upright and listen as it trawls through the names of towns until it comes to: “. . . Hayle. St. Erth.”

  “That’s it!” I say, snapping my fingers. “St. Erth. That’s our stop. I remember it now. That’s where we’ve got to change trains for St. Bernards.”

  “So that means we’re on the right train?” says Charlie. “And we’re gonna make it?”

  “Yep,” I reply, drumming my hands on the table. “Ha-ha! Good news at last.”

  This is a pretty amazing coincidence. Of all the trains we could’ve randomly gotten on, we chose the right one. At least things are working out for us, even if . . .

  There’s a bit of a pause when neither of us says anything.

  “You could look happier about it,” says Charlie.

  I don’t reply.

  Charlie leans toward me. “You’re not still thinking about that girl, are you?”

  “Shut up. . . .” I say, wafting my hand in his direction.

  “Look,” he says, “this is our trip, right? Just me and you. Epic vacation replay. We don’t want some girl we don’t even know weasling her way in on it, do we?”

  “I guess not,” I say reluctantly.

  “And anyway, if I hadn’t dragged you onto this train, then it might’ve been ages till the next one. We might not have made it in time.”

  I’m about to tell him that okay, maybe he’s right when I see the conductor come into our carriage. “Get down!” I whisper. Charlie ducks under the table, then crawls under my seat and wriggles out of sight. Sometimes being so tiny has its advantages.

  When the conductor reaches us, she asks to see my ticket, so I show her. I feel quite in control until Charlie starts tickling behind my knees.

  I giggle out loud, and the conductor raises an eyebrow. “You all right?” she asks. She’s pretty young, maybe late twenties. A little bit overweight. Pants pulled high up over her stomach.