Lulu Dark Can See Through Walls

by Bennett Madison

  The jungle gym on the playground at the lower school of Orchard Academy isn’t actually that tall. But when you’re eight years old, things look more impressive than they really are. In third grade, let me tell you, that jungle gym appeared truly unconquerable, the tallest thing ever erected for climbing. It had been built back in the fifties, when kids were expected to do crazy stuff and no one worried about safety concerns, so the thing was metal and complicated and treacherous. Nowadays, if you tried to build something like that, you’d have some group of Concerned Mothers Against Fun on your back in a second, petitioning city hall to ban playgrounds altogether for the safety of dim toddlers.

  No kid that I knew of had ever climbed to the very top of that jungle gym, which was shaped like a big cylinder of twisted iron. Mostly everyone just hung around under it, pretending it was a clubhouse or digging pits in the wood chips in the hopes of finding a worm to chase someone around with. Every now and then some boring girl would climb a couple of rungs up and hang upside down, but even that activity stopped when Rachel Buttersworth-Taylor pointed out that they were allowing the entire world to see their underpants.

  I for one have rarely cared if anyone sees my underpants. It’s not like they’re dirty or anything, so big deal. That day on the playground, I decided that I was going to conquer the jungle gym no matter what. So I climbed and climbed and climbed while all the other kids just stood around staring. Every time I glanced down at Charlie, far below, he looked like he was about to have a heart attack, red-faced and bug-eyed, fists clenched tight.

  Like I said, Charlie used to be a little neurotic.

  When I got to the terrifying crossbar that ran across the tip-top of the jungle gym, I heard him call out after me.

  “Come down, Lulu!” he yelled, in that panicky, whiny screech he had before his voice changed. But I didn’t pay attention. Instead I used my arms to hoist myself onto the narrow metal beam, standing straight up with a grand flourish. There was a collective gasp from the crowd below and then Charlie’s voice again. “Lulu! Stop!”

  Heedless, I placed one foot in front of the other, hands outstretched like a tightrope walker, and slowly made my way, one foot in front of the next, to the very middle of the structure, twenty feet off the ground and nothing but spiky wood chips to catch me if I stumbled. When I reached the sweet spot in the center, I dropped to a crouch and grabbed the bar, using momentum to swing my knees over it so I could dangle, upside down, in the place where no one had ever dared to dangle.

  Triumph!

  I had been hanging there for about a minute, congratulating myself on my own bravery, when I started to really feel the blood rush to my head. It was time to come down.

  And then a terrible thought dawned on me. I had no idea how to reverse my position. The way I was dangling, I couldn’t manage to swing my arms back up to the bar. I was stuck.

  I kept hanging there, wondering what I could possibly do. My head was really aching, and the kids below were whispering frantically. They could all see the predicament that I was in. The only way out was to drop. It wasn’t actually that far, I decided, and maybe I would break a leg and get to wear a cast, which might be a novelty. Then I felt a cool breeze on my butt. My skirt was hanging around my neck. Maybe it was all the blood in my brain, but for the first and only time ever, I was embarrassed about the fact that everyone could see my underwear. I had to get down from there if it was the last thing I did.

  I flexed my legs, trying desperately to straighten them enough that my knees would release their grip and send me plummeting to the ground. It wasn’t much of a solution, but it was something.

  Ironically enough, as I was dangling there in the air and praying to fall, gravity was working against me. Suspended I would stay.

  There was really nothing left to do. If it hadn’t been beet red because of my unfortunate position already, I’m sure my face would have flushed like never before. Humiliated, I heard a pathetic, tinny squeak creep from my throat. “Help!” I peeped.

  There was some conference on the ground. I couldn’t really see or hear what was going on, but after a moment I saw a figure ascending the jungle gym.

  “I’m coming, Lulu!” Charlie warbled. His shout sounded weak and unsure.

  It felt like he took forever to reach me. I started to wonder if I was going to pass out. Eventually there was a shadow in the corner of my eye. From what I could tell, Charlie was creeping, on his hands and knees, across the beam to the point where I was suspended.

  When he reached me, his voice, along with the rest of him, was trembling. “Grab my hand,” he said, and reached for me. When I felt our fingers touch, I wheezed with relief. Shakily he yanked and pulled my hand up, giving me just enough of a head start to reach the beam.

  At that point it was no problem for me to lift myself back up, but as I did it, Charlie wobbled.

  “Uh-oh,” he croaked.

  And then, as if in slow motion, he was falling, in skydiver pose. I was perched safely at the top of the jungle gym, and I saw Charlie hit the ground with an ominous thud. When he rolled over, there was blood on his face.

  In the end, he’d been lucky. He’d been stabbed in the jaw with a sharp wood chip, but otherwise he was all right. I got in big trouble for being such a show-off, and he’s had the mark, about half an inch long, ever since.

  Scarred for life, all because of me.

  I guess he could have been mad at me about it. But instead, we became inseparable.

  Charlie was never the same after that, and honestly, it was kind of a good thing. From that day on, all his nervousness, all his striving goody-goody ethos simply evaporated. There was hardly anything that made him nervous anymore.

  With that in mind, eating my fabulous dessert at Medardo, I decided that whether I forgave Rachel or not, I forgave Charlie for comparing me to her. If he was criticizing me now, it was only because he had my best interests at heart.

  When my mom left, seven years ago, Charlie was the only one who noticed how truly upset I was. Only Charlie could cheer me up because he was the only one who had any idea that there was cheering up to be done. A year later, when I was freaking out because my dad had taken up with a man, Charlie was there to tell me it was no big deal.

  So, long story short, Charlie’s the greatest and like I said before, he’s extremely good-looking.

  I shocked myself by thinking, What if we were out on a date . . . ?

  I rolled the idea over in my head, watching Charlie devour his dessert. Scooping up bites in that endearing, messy-boy way, dropping a little on his lapel, wiping it off and licking his fingers. Here he had gone to all this trouble, making a reservation, getting dressed up (which he never does), ordering wine, dessert, everything.

  “Want a bite?” Charlie said, offering me his spoon.

  Whoa, I thought. What if he thinks this is a date?

  “No, thank you,” I said as graciously as possible. I knew I’d have to let him down easy.

  There’s something a little sick about dating someone you’ve known since you were practically in baby carriages. Something almost like incest, right? You can’t get much grosser than that. Maybe having a torrid romance with a hamster or a goldfish is worse, but that’s pretty much the only thing I can think of, and I surely didn’t want to commit any crimes against nature. No, it simply could never be.

  Charlie was scraping the final bits of soufflé from the dish when he spoke. “By the way, Lulu,” he said uneasily, “I hope you don’t think this is a date or something.”

  I practically choked on my water. I smiled, making a quick recovery. “Why would I think it was?”

  “It’s just that, you know, I didn’t want you to get weirded out or something. Thinking that I was all liking you like that. Because I totally don’t. I mean, you’re my best friend. But I’m not trying to make it something that it isn’t. I just wanted to, you know, have a nice dinner in fancy clothes. And make you feel better.”

  I felt a knot forming in my stoma
ch. How could I have been so dumb?

  “Charlie,” I said, trying to stay composed. “I know the difference between a date and two friends having a good time. Don’t worry about it. I’d never want to date you.”

  Charlie smiled, tight-lipped. “Good. Because, you know, I wouldn’t either. Want to date you, I mean. Of course not.”

  “Well, it’s settled, then,” I told him.

  We waited for the check in silence. I couldn’t figure it out. I was actually disappointed. And pissed off. I decided that I probably had a mental problem. I would have to talk to my doctor about this. Maybe there was some kind of medication that would make me less of a freak.

  As we were getting up to leave, I told Charlie to hang on for a second. Even if he didn’t think I was girlfriend material, I’d decided that he was right about Rachel, at least the part about not being a bitch to her. There was no point in having enemies. The one exception was Berlin Silver. She would be my enemy for life.

  So I walked over to the table where Rachel and Jordan were sitting. I was hovering over Rachel’s shoulder, waiting for a pause in the conversation, when Jordan looked up and saw me.

  “Lulu Dark,” he said. “What’s up? We saw Charlie’s flaming dessert. Very impressive.”

  “Yeah, pretty awesome,” Rachel said sarcastically.

  I turned to her. She didn’t seem pleased at all to see me, and I took a deep breath, bracing myself to eat crow. “Look,” I said. “I just wanted to let you know that I’m sorry about what happened the other night. And everything in general. It’s stupid for us to hate each other, so let’s just bury the hatchet. My friends all say you’re cool, so why not, right?”

  She wasn’t buying it. “Lulu Dark,” she said, “you are a total hypocrite. Forget the other night. What about the fact that you’ve been spreading gossip about me all over town? You think I don’t know what’s what?”

  She lowered her voice and continued. “You know, it’s really messed up, even for you, telling everyone that I have a third nipple.”

  “What?” I yelped, shocked. “I didn’t tell anyone anything about you!”

  It was true. I hadn’t said a word about Rachel to anyone except Daisy and Charlie. And I definitely didn’t tell anyone anything about a third nipple.

  “Save it, Lulu,” Rachel said, dismissing me with a wave of her hand. She picked up her fork and turned back to Jordan, adding sweetly, “Just for the record, I have the appropriate number of every single body part. Two eyes, two ears, ten toes, et cetera.”

  Jordan’s jaw dropped, and he looked like he was about to heave. I wanted to get out of there before Rachel attempted to prove her case, so I scurried off, turning only to see Jordan waving a furtive goodbye with a desperate rescue me! look on his face.

  This was why it didn’t pay to be nice to Rachel. It always back-fired. I’d probably show up at school on Monday to have her pull some vicious prank on me again. I shuddered to think what it would be.

  But I wondered, why would she make something like that up? Just to have an excuse to be mean to me? That made no sense. If she thought she was impressing Jordan Fitzbaum that way, she was wrong, too—dead wrong. He looked ready to bolt at any minute. So what in the world was Rachel thinking?

  Things were almost back to normal after Charlie and I left the restaurant. Even if my attempt at conciliation was a failure, he was proud of me for it. As for the rest of what had happened, it had been really narcissistic and unfair of me to assume that Charlie was into me. I decided to put the idea out of my mind for good.

  “So what’s the plan now?” Charlie asked as we wandered up the bustling street, being spare-changed left and right by kids who probably live in mansions when they’re not busy playing homeless. Charlie bounced on the toes of his Pumas and reached his arms for the moon. “Are you ready to go out?”

  “Not really,” I said. “But Dad and Theo want us to come by for poker. The girls from the softball team backed out.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Charlie said. “I’ll win big.”

  We headed off to my place.

  Dad and Theo are totally different from anyone in Charlie’s family, and I think he’s a little jealous. His parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles and sister and even her dog are all variations on the same theme: the most stuck-up, anal-retentive beings in the universe.

  Every now and then I think Charlie even wishes he had parents like mine. And that includes my mom, because she’s allegedly such a “free spirit.” Personally, I think “free spirit” is just a nice way of saying irresponsible lunatic, but whatever. She’s fun to hang out with when she’s in town.

  My mom and dad got divorced when I was five, but mom didn’t move away until I was almost ten. I guess she left because she freaked when Dad started dating Theo, but still, she could have considered her only daughter before moving all the way across the country.

  The thing is, even when she was supposedly “around,” she hardly paid any attention to me—except when she needed a child as an accessory, like to pose with for People magazine profiles.

  My mom’s name is Isabelle Dark, and she used to be slightly famous. Now she’s pretty much a has-been, although sometimes people still recognize her on the street from her most famous movie, Sorority Vampire Party. In that movie she played the president of an evil, bloodsucking sorority that preys on drunk frat boys and turns them into zombie slaves.

  Nowadays she plays, like, sassy judges, mean social workers, and Julia Roberts’s neurotic mom. And that’s when she works at all.

  Mom’s always been insane, which according to my dad is why he liked her in the first place. He says it’s also what makes her a good actress.

  Lucky for me she lives on another coast, because I don’t think I’d be able to cope with all of her issues. That responsibility falls on the shoulders of the endless parade of beefcake models that she dates—and more power to them.

  While I’d been thinking about Isabelle, Charlie and I had made it back to my neighborhood, where my dad has lived since he was a twenty-two-year-old starving artist. Our street used to be all factories and warehouses, and I guess back in the day it was considered pretty sketchy. But over the years a bunch of artists moved in and turned the warehouses into really cool places to live. Lucky for Dad—he got in when it was really cheap, and now it’s pretty much the best place to live in Halo City.

  Since Mom moved out, it’s just been me and Dad, which is the way I like it. I never bothered to ask Dad what his deal was—why he married a lady and then got with a guy. It seems like his business, not mine, and everyone is happy with the arrangement at this point. Sometimes Theo talks about moving in with us, but I don’t think it will ever happen. He lives only a few blocks away, and he spends so much time at our place anyway that it seems pointless to go to the trouble of making it all official.

  When Charlie and I entered the apartment, Dad and Theo were chilling in sweatpants, with the stereo pumping and popcorn popping in the microwave.

  “You kids ready to get your butts kicked?” Theo asked. “I’ve been reading up on strategy since last time.”

  Yeah, right, I thought.

  Every single time we play poker, I take everyone for all they’re worth. They’re always saying they’re going to beat me, and it never happens. You should see my bluff: it’s unstoppable.

  “You guys look fancy,” my dad said. “How was your date?”

  “It wasn’t a date!” I yelled, without meaning to.

  “Jeez. Sorry,” Dad said. He was trying to look very serious, but he had a smile in his eyes. “I had no idea. All I know is that when someone takes me someplace like Medardo and dresses up in his fanciest Gucci suit, it’s a date.”

  “I don’t even have a Gucci suit,” Theo pointed out, piling on. “I’m strictly a Men’s Warehouse kind of guy.”

  Charlie looked like he wanted to turn around and run for the hills. He’s not used to having my dad make fun of him. It tends to be the three of them against me.<
br />
  “Charlie and I are just friends,” I told Dad and Theo judiciously. “You guys should know that by now. After almost seventeen entire years.”

  “Thank you for reminding us,” my father said. “You guys just look so good together that it’s easy to forget.”

  Charlie’s face had turned a sick shade of green. “Let’s just play,” I said, mustering all of my magnanimity.

  We all sat down at the card table, gearing up. I put on my customary poker visor and began shuffling the cards, pulling a few flashy moves to intimidate everyone.

  “No way,” Theo said. “We are not letting that card shark deal anymore. She cheats. She has some trick.”

  Sometimes Theo can be such a baby. I looked to Charlie for support, but he just put out his hand. “I’ll deal,” he said.

  “Whatever, you guys,” I told them. “You’ll see who’s laughing when I win again.”

  “In your dreams, Lulu,” Theo challenged. “My new strategy is unbeatable.”

  As I raked in the chips like always, I told Dad and Theo about my terrible afternoon. I left out all the Berlin Silver stuff because I didn’t think Dad would approve of my sneakiness and I didn’t want him to do something embarrassing like call the headmistress and demand to have Berlin suspended.

  “And then,” I was saying, “he pretended not to know me! He acted like a complete stranger!”

  Dad and Theo were both laughing, which I didn’t appreciate.

  “He told me I must be looking for some other Alfy Romero! As if!” I said indignantly, trying to bring the point home. They weren’t having it at all.