Charlie started crying, too. His sisters? His mother? His selfish father who had run off when Ben was six?
She put her hand on his shoulder. He was still shaking. “Babe, what is it? You’re scaring me.”
He wiped his nose. He turned around. Tears streamed from his eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“What?” Her voice was almost a whisper. “Ben, what?”
“It’s your dad.” He swallowed back his grief. “They had to life-flight him to the hospital. He—”
Charlie’s knees began to buckle. Ben caught her before she hit the floor.
Will he make it?
“Your neighbor found him,” Ben said. “He was at the end of the driveway.”
Charlie pictured Rusty walking to the mailbox—humming, marching, snapping his fingers—then clutching his heart and falling to the ground.
She said, “He’s so …” Stupid. Willful. Self-destructive. “We were in my office today, and I told him he was going to have another heart attack, and now—”
“It wasn’t his heart.”
“But—”
“Your dad didn’t have a heart attack. Somebody stabbed him.”
Charlie’s mouth moved soundlessly before she could get out the word, “stabbed?” She had to repeat it, because it didn’t make sense. “Stabbed?”
“Chuck, you need to call your sister.”
WHAT HAPPENED TO CHARLOTTE
Charlotte turned to her sister and shouted, “Last word!”
She ran toward the HP before Samantha could think of a good comeback. Red clay swirled up from Charlotte’s feet and gummed onto her sweaty legs. She jumped up the porch steps, kicked off her shoes, peeled off her socks and pushed open the door in time to hear Gamma say, “Fuck!”
Her mother was bent at the waist, one hand braced on the counter, the other at her mouth like she had been coughing.
Charlotte said, “Mom, that’s a bad word.”
Gamma stood up. She used a tissue from her pocket to wipe her mouth. “I said ‘fudge,’ Charlie. What did you think I said?”
“You said—” Charlotte saw the trap. “If I say the bad word, then you’ll know that I know the bad word.”
“Don’t show your work, sweetheart.” She tucked the tissue back into her pocket and headed toward the hall. “Have the table set before I get back.”
“Where are you going?”
“Undetermined.”
“How will I know how fast to set the table if I don’t know when you’re going to get back?” She listened for an answer.
Gamma’s sharp coughs echoed back.
Charlotte grabbed the paper plates. She dumped the box of plastic forks onto the table. Gamma had bought real silverware and plates at the thrift store, but no one could find the box. Charlotte knew it was in Rusty’s study. They were supposed to unpack the room tomorrow, which meant that somebody would have to wash dishes at the sink tomorrow night.
Samantha slammed the kitchen door closed so hard that the wall shook.
Charlotte didn’t take the bait. She tossed out the paper plates onto the table.
Suddenly, without warning, Samantha threw a fork at her face.
Charlotte was opening her mouth to scream for Gamma when she felt the tines of the fork stab her bottom lip. She instinctively closed her mouth.
The fork stayed, a quivering arrow in a bull’s eye.
Charlotte said, “Holy crap, that was amazing!”
Samantha shrugged, like the hard part wasn’t catching a somersaulting fork between your lips.
Charlotte said, “I’ll wash the dishes if you can do that twice in a row.”
“You toss it into my mouth once, and I’ll wash dishes for a week.”
“Deal.” Charlotte took aim, weighing her options: bean Samantha in the face on purpose or really try to get it into her mouth?
Gamma was back. “Charlie, don’t throw utensils at your sister. Sam, help me look for that frying pan I bought the other day.”
The table was already set, but Charlotte didn’t want to be enlisted into the search. The boxes smelled like mothballs and cheesy dog feet. She straightened the plates. She re-lined up the forks. They were going to have spaghetti tonight, so they would need knives because Gamma always undercooked the noodles and they clumped together like strands of tendons.
“Sam.” Gamma had started coughing again. She pointed toward the air conditioner. “Turn that thing on so we can get some air moving in here.”
Samantha looked at the giant box in the window like she’d never seen an air conditioner before. She had been moping since the red-brick house had burned down. Charlotte had been moping, too, but on the inside, because Rusty already felt bad enough without them rubbing it in.
Charlotte picked up an extra paper plate. She tried to fold it into an airplane so that she could give it to her father.
Samantha asked, “What time are we supposed to pick up Daddy from work?”
Gamma said, “He’ll get a ride from somebody at the courthouse.”
Charlotte hoped Lenore would give him a ride. Rusty’s secretary had loaned her a book called Lace, which was about four friends, and one of them was raped by a sheikh, only you don’t know which one, and she got pregnant and no one told the daughter what happened until she was an adult and she got really rich and she asked them, “Which one of you bitches is my mother?”
“Well, shit.” Gamma stood up. “I hope you girls don’t mind being vegetarian tonight.”
“Mom.” Charlotte dropped down into the chair. She put her head in her hands, feigning sickness in hope of soliciting a can of soup for dinner instead. “My stomach hurts.”
Gamma asked, “Don’t you have homework?”
“Chemistry.” Charlotte looked up. “Can you help me?”
“It’s not rocket science.”
Charlotte asked, “Do you mean, it’s not rocket science, so I should be able to figure it out on my own, or do you mean, it’s not rocket science, and that is the only science that you know how to perform, and so therefore you cannot help me?”
“There were too many conjunctions in that sentence,” Gamma said. “Go wash your hands.”
“I believe I had a valid question.”
“Now.”
Charlotte ran into the hall. It was so long that you could stand in the kitchen and treat it as a bowling alley. At least that was what Gamma said, and that was exactly what Charlotte was going to do as soon as she could get a ball.
She opened one of the five doors and found the stairs to the yucky basement. She tried another and found the hallway to the bachelor farmer’s scary bedroom.
“Fudge!” Charlotte bellowed, but only for Gamma’s sake.
She opened another door. The chiffarobe. Charlotte grinned, because she was playing a joke on Samantha, or maybe not a joke—whatever it was called when you wanted to scare the crap out of somebody.
She was trying to convince her sister that the HP was haunted.
Yesterday, Charlotte had found a weird black-and-white photograph in one of the thrift store boxes. At first, she had started to color it, but she only got as far as yellowing the teeth when she had the idea to stick the picture in the bottom drawer of the chiffarobe for Samantha to find.
Her sister had been appropriately freaked out, probably because the night before, Charlotte creaked the boards outside of her room so that Samantha would follow her down to the scary bedroom where the bachelor farmer had died, where she planted the idea that the old geezer had left the house in body, but not spirit. As in, he was a ghost.
Charlotte tried another door. “Found it!”
She yanked the cord for the light. She pulled down her shorts, but froze when she noticed a sprinkling of blood on the toilet seat.
This wasn’t the blood like Samantha sometimes left when she was having her period. This was a sprinkle, the kind that came out of your mouth when you coughed too hard.
Gamma was coughing too hard a lot.
Charlotte p
ulled up her shorts. She turned on the faucet and cupped her hands under the water. She splashed the toilet seat to wash away the red spots. Then she saw that there were more red dots on the floor. She threw some water on those, then on the mirror because there was some there, too. Even the moldy edge of the corner shower had been sprayed.
The phone rang in the kitchen. Charlotte waited through two more rings, wondering if they were going to answer it. Gamma wouldn’t let them pick up sometimes because it might be Rusty. She was still upset about the fire, but she wasn’t moping like Samantha. She was screaming, mostly. And she cried, too, but only Charlotte knew about that.
The handle of the ball-peen hammer was soaked by the time Charlotte banged off the faucet. Her butt got wet when she sat down on the toilet seat. Charlotte could see that she had made a mess. Some of the water had turned pink. She pulled up her shorts. She dotted at the water with a wad of toilet paper. The paper began to disintegrate, so she used more. And then she used even more. Paper was supposed to absorb stuff, but all she was doing was creating a giant wad of wet paper that would clog the toilet if she tried to flush it.
Charlotte stood up. She looked around the bathroom. The pink was gone, but there was still a lot of water. The room was kind of damp anyway. The shower mold was something out of a movie with a lagoon where a swamp monster comes out.
In the hall, a box jangled. Sam let out a strangled noise, like she’d stubbed her toe.
“Fudge,” Charlotte said, for real this time. The wad of toilet paper was pink with blood. She shoved it into the front pocket of her shorts. There wasn’t time to pee. She shut the bathroom door behind her. Samantha was ten feet away. Charlotte punched her sister in her arm to distract her from the wet lump in her shorts. Then she galloped the rest of the way up the hall because horses were faster.
“Dinner!” Gamma called. She was standing by the stove when Charlotte cantered into the kitchen.
Charlotte said, “I’m right here.”
“Your sister isn’t.”
Charlotte saw the thick noodles Gamma dug out of the pot with a pair of tongs. “Mom, please don’t make us eat that.”
“I’m not going to let you starve.”
“I could eat a bowl of ice cream.”
“Do you want explosive diarrhea?”
Charlotte got sick from anything that had milk in it, but she was pretty sure the ropey spaghetti would have the same effect. “Mama, what would happen if I ate two bowls of ice cream? Really big ones.”
“Your intestines would burst and you would die.”
Charlotte studied her mother’s back. Sometimes, she couldn’t tell when Gamma was being serious.
The phone gave the trill of a ring. Charlotte grabbed the receiver before Gamma could tell her not to.
“Hello?” she said.
“Hey there, Charlie Bear.” Rusty chuckled, like he hadn’t said the same words to her a million times before. “I was hoping to speak with my dear Gamma?”
Gamma could hear Rusty’s question from across the room because he always talked too loud on the phone. She shook her head at Charlotte, and mouthed the word “no” to make it clear.
“She’s brushing her teeth,” Charlotte said. “Or maybe she’s flossing by now? I heard squeaking, but I thought it was a mouse, only—”
Gamma grabbed the phone. She told Rusty, “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers/That perches in the soul/And sings the tune without the words/And never stops–at all.’”
She put the phone back on the hook. She asked Charlotte, “Did you know that the chicken is the most common bird on earth?”
Charlotte shook her head. She did not know that.
“I’ll help you with your chemistry after supper, which will not be ice cream.”
“The chemistry won’t be ice cream, or the supper?”
“Clever girl.” She held Charlotte’s face in one hand. “You’re going to find a man one day who is going to fall head over heels in love with that brain of yours.”
Charlotte pictured a man tripping and flipping through the air like the plastic fork. “What if he breaks his neck when he falls?”
Gamma kissed the top of Charlotte’s head before leaving the kitchen.
Charlotte sunk into the chair. She leaned back and saw that her mother was heading toward the pantry. Or the basement stairs. Or the chiffarobe. Or the bedroom. Or the bathroom.
She dropped the chair back to the floor. She leaned her elbows on the table.
Charlotte wasn’t sure she wanted a man to fall in love with her. There was a boy at school who was in love with Samantha. Peter Alexander. He played jazz guitar and wanted to move to Atlanta and join a band when he got out of high school. At least, that’s what he wrote about in the long, boring letters that Samantha used to keep hidden between her mattress and boxspring.
Peter was the thing that Samantha moped about losing the most. Charlotte had seen Samantha let him touch her under her shirt, which meant that she really liked him, because you weren’t supposed to do that otherwise. He had a cool leather jacket that he’d let her borrow and it had been burned up in the fire. He’d gotten into a lot of trouble with his parents for losing it. He wasn’t talking to Samantha anymore.
Charlotte had a lot of friends who weren’t talking to her, too, but Rusty said that was because their parents were imbeciles who didn’t think it was a bad thing for a black man to be executed on death row even though he was innocent.
She whistled between her teeth as she folded down the sides of the paper plate and tried again to turn it into an airplane. Rusty had also told Charlotte that the fire had switched things around for a little while. Gamma and Samantha, who were usually the logical ones, had changed places with Rusty and Charlotte, who were usually the emotional ones. It was like Freaky Friday, except they couldn’t get a basset hound because Samantha was allergic.
Charlotte licked the creases of the plane, hoping her spit would help it retain the shape. She hadn’t told Rusty that her logical switch hadn’t really flipped. She was pretending like everything was okay when it wasn’t okay. Charlotte had lost stuff, too, like all of her Nancy Drews, her goldfish—which was an actual living thing—her Brownie badges, and six dead insects she had been saving for next year because she knew that in honors biology, the first assignment was that you had to pin insects to a board and identify them for the teacher.
Several times, Charlotte had tried to talk about her sadness with Samantha, but all Samantha would do was start listing all the things she had lost, like it was a contest. So then Charlotte had tried to talk about other things, like school and TV shows and the book she had checked out from the library, but Samantha would stare at her until Charlotte got the message and went away.
The only time her sister treated her like a normal human being was at night when they washed their shirts and shorts and sports bras out at the bathroom sink. Their track clothes and sneakers were the only things they had left after the fire, but Samantha didn’t talk about them. She would walk Charlotte slowly, patiently, through the blind pass, like it was the only thing left in their lives that mattered. Bend your front leg, hold your hand straight behind you, lean forward, into the track, but don’t push off until I’m at my mark. Once you feel the baton snap into your hand—go.
“Don’t look back,” Samantha would say. “You have to trust me to be there. Just keep your head down and run.”
Samantha had always loved running. She wanted to get a track scholarship so she could run all the way to college and never come back to Pikeville, which meant she could be gone in a year because Gamma was going to let her skip another grade if she scored a perfect 1600 on the SAT.
Charlotte gave up on the airplane, defeated. The plate wouldn’t hold its new shape. It wanted to stay a plate. She should get some notebook paper and do it the right way. Charlotte wanted to throw the airplane off the old weather tower. Rusty had promised to take her there because he was working on a surprise for Gamma.
The bac
helor farmer had been a Citizen Scientist with the National Weather Service Cooperative Observers Program. Rusty had found boxes full of Weather Journal Data forms in the barn where the farmer had recorded the temperature, barometric pressure, precipitation, wind and humidity almost every day since 1948.
There were thousands of volunteers around the country just like him who sent their readings to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to help scientists predict when storms and tornadoes were going to form. Basically, you had to do a lot of math, and if there was one thing that could make Gamma happy, it was doing math every day.
The weather tower was going to be the biggest surprise of her life.
Charlotte heard a car in the driveway. She grabbed the failed airplane and tore it to pieces so that Rusty wouldn’t guess what she was up to, because he’d already told her she couldn’t climb to the top of the metal tower and throw a paper airplane off it. At the trash can, she dug into her shorts and pulled out the gross clumps of wet toilet paper. She wiped her hands on her shirt. She ran to the door to see her father.
“Mama!” Charlotte yelled, but she didn’t tell her that Rusty was here.
She pulled open the door, smiling, and then she stopped smiling because two men were on the front porch.
One of them stepped back onto the stairs. Charlotte saw his eyes go wide, like he wasn’t expecting the door to open, and then she saw that he was wearing a black ski mask, and a black shirt and leather gloves, and then she saw the barrel of a shotgun stuck in her face.
“Mom!” Charlotte screamed.
“Shut up,” Black Shirt hissed, pushing Charlotte back into the kitchen. His heavy boots tracked in red clay from the yard. Charlotte should’ve been terrified, she should’ve been screaming, but all she could think about was how mad Gamma was going to be about having to clean the floor again.
“Charlie Quinn,” Gamma called from the bathroom. “Do not shriek at me like a street urchin.”
Black Shirt said, “Where’s your daddy?”
“P-please,” Charlotte stuttered. She was talking to the second guy. He was in a mask and gloves, too, but he had on a white Bon Jovi T-shirt, which made him feel less threatening, even though he had a gun. “Please don’t hurt us.”