Charlie Joe Jackson's Guide to Planet Girl (12 page)

But just between you and me … why can't men ever pick up their socks?!?!?!

 

25

As soon as I got home,
I started videoing everything my family did.

I filmed the dogs sleeping and playing outside.

They were cool with it.

Then I filmed my mom paying bills.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Filming you paying bills.”

“Why?”

“It's for a school project,” I explained.

“Aha,” she said, clearly suspicious. But she let me keep filming.

I filmed my sister twirling her hair while she was on the phone in the front yard.

“Cut it out!” she yelled.

“It's for a school project!”

“I don't care! I don't have any makeup on!”

I kept filming until she threw her sandal at me.

I filmed my dad when he came home from work. My dad is almost always singing when he walks in the door. I guess that's because he's in a good mood, which is probably because he's home from work, which makes a lot of sense to me.

Anyway, that night, after he walked in the door and dropped his briefcase on the floor, he saw me pointing my phone at him and stopped singing.

“Charlie Joe, what are you doing?”

“Filming.”

“Filming what?”

“The family.”

“Why?”

“School project.”

I followed him up the stairs until he turned around.

“Don't school projects usually involve reading and writing?”

I hesitated.

I wasn't sure I wanted to tell him that my paper on my personal hero wasn't going to be an actual paper at all.

That I'd figured out a way to do a great job without having to do any actual reading and writing.

So instead I just said, “Don't worry. I have to get a good grade on this project or else for the rest of the year I have to spend recess in Mrs. Sleep's office.”

That seemed to satisfy my dad. “Okay, fine,” he said. “Just don't film me putting on my pajamas.”

I put down my phone—the battery was about to run out anyway.

“What's the assignment?” my dad asked.

“Um … it's complicated.”

He squinted at me. “Complicated how?”

I tried to figure out how to answer him. I didn't want to tell anyone what the actual assignment was, because then they would have acted differently. I wanted everything to be normal. I wanted people to see that my hero was great, just because of how he acted, every day.

“It's a secret,” I admitted, finally.

My dad shook his head, but then he put on his slippers and sighed happily, and I knew everything would be okay. I'd heard him say many times that putting on his slippers was a highlight of his day.

“A secret,” he said. “Well, it better be an A-plus secret.”

“Oh, it is, Dad, I promise.”

So I filmed at dinner.

I filmed after dinner, while we watched TV.

I filmed when we took the dogs for a walk.

When I filmed my sister, Megan, eating ice cream, she said, “Just make sure I don't look fat.” Two seconds later, she said, “Turn that thing off.”

“But you don't look fat!” I said.

She shook her head. “Eating ice cream makes anyone look fat.”

I turned the camera off.

Then I turned it back on two seconds later.

 

26

As the week went on,
I didn't tell anyone about my project—not my family, not my friends at school, not my teacher. I just kept shooting. I started editing over the weekend, since the assignment was due on Monday. I got it down to the best three minutes, but I realized something was missing. Everything I'd filmed was in the house or the yard. I felt like the video had to end with a family trip of some kind, so I convinced everyone to go to Lake Monahan. It's an awesome place, even though it was where I started my unfortunate dog-walking business, which ended up involving a missing dachshund, a playful Great Dane, and a very lucky gopher that cheated death.

Anyway, on Sunday morning we all piled in the car—dogs included, of course—and headed out to the lake. It was a pretty cloudy day, so there weren't as many people as there usually were. But Moose and Coco didn't care. They made a beeline into the water, as Megan, my parents, and I set up a delicious lunch at the picnic table. Well, to be fair,
they
set up the lunch. I was busy shooting.

“Is this documentary thingie just your latest way of getting out of doing any chores?” Megan asked me.

I kept filming. “Hopefully.”

“I don't get it, Charlie Joe,” my dad said. “You're videotaping us doing boring stuff like watching TV and eating lunch. Doesn't seem very exciting.”

“Yeah,” my mom added, “how come you don't want us to jump out of an airplane or something?”

“Have you ever jumped out of an airplane?” I asked her.

“Uh, that'd be a no.”

“That's why.”

“Hey, check it out,” Megan said, pointing a few picnic tables down. “Who's that kid with all your girlfriends?”

I stood up to take a look. The first thing I saw was Hannah Spivero's dog, Gladys, wagging her tail. Then I saw what she was wagging at: Hannah, Eliza, and Katie, who were laughing hysterically at something Emory, the new kid from California, had just said.

“Huh,” I said.

“Well, aren't you going to go say hi?” asked my mom. “At least tell them to come over here. I never got a chance to say goodbye to Katie in the city.”

“But we're in the middle of lunch,” I said.

My dad looked up from his plate just long enough to say, “Don't be rude.”

I sighed, put down my phone, and walked over to their table. They didn't see me coming until I was about two feet away. Then Eliza smiled, got up, and gave me a big hug. (Ever since she'd stopped liking me and started liking Emory, she'd been a lot nicer to me. That's how girls work.)

“Charlie Joe, what are you doing here?”

“Hanging with the family.”

Emory got up and gave me some California version of a handshake that was pretty complicated, but I tried to keep up.

“Hey, dude,” he said.

Hannah came over and gave me a hug, too. Things were okay between us, considering the kiss and everything. Jake and her were totally back to being a normal couple. I guess they talked about everything and worked it out like two mature people.

I should try that sometime.

That left Katie. I looked at her. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

We all stood there, not saying anything, for a few too many seconds.

“So what are you guys doing here?” I asked.

“Dude, we're celebrating finishing our Personal Hero projects,” Emory said. “It's the sweetest feeling in the world, dude.” I was starting to think Emory was worried he would get arrested if he didn't use the word
dude
in every sentence.

“Cool,” I said. Then I looked around.

“Jake is still working on his,” Hannah said, answering my question before I could ask it.

“Cool,” I said again. “Well, I better get back.”

“What about your paper, Charlie Joe?” Katie asked. “Are you done with it?”

I hesitated. It was nice that she was making an effort to have a conversation, but I was pretty sure I wouldn't like where the conversation ended up. Looking back on it, I could have just said “Fine,” but for some reason I didn't.

“Well, uh, actually, I'm not writing a paper.”

Katie's smile faded. “What do you mean, you're not writing a paper?”

“I mean, I'm not writing a paper. I decided to do something different.”

“Can you do that?” Emory asked.

Katie stood up suddenly. “Charlie Joe, how long do you expect to get away with just doing whatever you want? Life doesn't work that way! Sometimes you have to play by the rules! The assignment was to write a paper, but for some reason you can't even do that. You can't keep treating everything like a joke! And you can't treat people like a joke, either! You need to grow up!”

No one moved for a minute.

“Are you saying I treat you like a joke?” I asked. “Because I don't.”

Katie gave an exaggerated shrug of her shoulders. “Whatever. Do what you want, it's none of my business. I really don't care. Seriously.”

“Okay,” I answered. “Glad to know you don't care.”

We stared at each other for a few seconds.

“You know something, Charlie Joe?” Katie said, finally. “You make me act mean. And you make me act petty, and you make me not like myself sometimes. Thanks for that. Thanks a lot.”

And with that, she walked off toward the lake. I stood there for another minute, then I bent down to pet Gladys, who actually seemed happy to see me.

I went back to my family and sat down. That night, as I edited my school project on the computer, I thought about what Katie had said.

Sometimes you have to play by the rules
.

She was right. Sometimes you do.

But not always.

 

27

“Hey, Mom?”

“What, honey?”

“I have a favor to ask you.”

It was the next morning, and I was eating my favorite cereal, ChocoFrostees. My mom had tried to get me to stop eating sugary cereals for years, but eventually we compromised when I agreed to add in a banana, which actually made it taste even better (I didn't tell her that part).

“What's the favor?”

“I need you to come to school today.”

“To pick you up?”

“No, during school.”

She looked up from her computer. “How come?”

“Because I need you to bring me something.”

“Okay, honey. What is it? Won't it fit in your backpack?”

“Nope,” I said. “It's bigger than that. A lot bigger.”

My mom sat down next to me. “Oooh, this sounds intriguing,” she said. “Tell me everything.”

So I did.

 

28

Pete Milano's hero
was Angus Young, the guitarist for the band AC/DC. According to Pete, Angus “changed the face of music forever, and he changed it really loud.”

“Thank you, Pete,” said Ms. Albone. “Food for thought.”

Pete looked confused. “What does food have to do with it?”

Betsy Armstrong's hero was Betsy Ross. We all just assumed it was because they had the same first name, but Betsy said it was because “She sewed the fabric of our nation.”

“She most certainly did,” said Ms. Albone. “Well done, Betsy.”

Then it was Emory's turn. His hero was some surfer whose name I forget. I remember how many times Emory used the word
dude
in his paper, though. Forty-two.

“And for our final presentation of the day,” Ms. Albone announced, Charlie Joe Jackson will tell us all about his personal hero.”

Right at that moment, I noticed Mrs. Sleep slip into the classroom. Yikes, the pressure was really on now.

I went up to the front of the room. I could feel Katie's eyes on me. “Actually, Ms. Albone, I'm not.”

“You're not?” asked Ms. Albone.

I walked behind her desk, reached up, and pulled the screen down. “I'm going to be doing something a little different.”

“I see,” Ms. Albone said. She looked skeptical for a second, but then she sat down.

I signaled to Jake, who turned the lights off. Then I plugged my computer into the projector in the back of the room. “Please enjoy this short film on my personal hero.”

NARRATION:

Hello, my name is Charlie Joe Jackson, and I'd like to tell you a little bit about my personal hero.

A SHOT OF MY FAMILY EATING DINNER.

He is a member of my family.

A SHOT OF MY FAMILY WATCHING TV

And he is an incredibly important part of my life.

A SHOT OF MY FAMILY HANGING OUT IN THE YARD

I would even go so far as to say he is one of my heroes.

CLOSE-UP ON MOOSE, LYING IN THE YARD.

My hero is my dog, Moose.

SHOTS OF MOOSE EATING, SLEEPING, WAGGING HIS TAIL, JUMPING IN THE LAKE, PLAYING WITH COCO

Moose is my hero because he has the purest heart of anyone I know.

SHOT OF MOOSE ON THE COUCH, RESTING HIS HEAD ON MEGAN'S LAP

He is full of love.

SHOT OF MOOSE WAITING PATIENTLY FOR FOOD AT DINNER TABLE

And hope.

SHOT OF MOOSE GREETING DAD AFTER COMING HOME FROM WORK

He is always there when you need him.

SHOT OF MOOSE NUDGING MOM'S ARM WHEN SHE'S TRYING TO TALK ON THE PHONE