“Bernard?” she says. “You are so nice to have us over. Can I ask you something?”
“Pretty girl like you? Ask me anything you like.”
She nods. “Well, when you are here, and you come home from work, and you eat your dinner—what do you think about?”
I can hear the question inside her question: How do you get your thoughts around your life? How do you reconcile yourself to yourself? How do you make it make sense, finally? They are my questions, too, but I wonder what’s making her ask them.
Bernard ponders for a while. “Well,” he finally says, “I’ve been thinking some about Billy and Benny McCrary. You know them? They were the world’s fattest twins, back in the day, and they even played a gig here once, riding around on their tiny motorcycles.”
Ella nods, nudges me again.
“I’ve seen a picture of them, I think,” I say. “So . . . you just think about them in general?”
“No, no.” Bernard shakes his head. “I’m thinking how Billy died first, a full ten years before Benny, and I’m wondering what Benny did. I mean, how did he bill himself? The world’s fattest twin? You can’t have one twin, right?”
Amy shrugs. “Maybe he was the world’s fattest man after that.”
“That’s just the thing,” Bernard says. “He wasn’t. Not even close. So his brother dies, and suddenly he’s not anything at all. It’s like he just lost half of himself, and after that he’s just another guy with a weight problem.”
Ella suddenly looks very flushed, and she stands up, struggling a little to do so with the sagging couch. “I think we should get back,” she says.
“So soon?” Bernard says. “I have more tomato juice.”
She nods, not looking at anyone. “Yeah. We don’t want to get busted.”
We leave and walk along in silence until Amy says, “Pretty weird, but I like him.” She thinks for a moment. “Actually,” she says, “I can say the same of just about every friend I have.”
“Thanks a lot,” I say, and smile at her. I look to Ella, but she’s not even listening, just looking at the ground, putting one foot in front of the other.
The next night Cassie is in a good mood and so am I, because we had this special birthday campfire for some spoiled little six-year-old whose father hired us just to lip-synch “Happy Birthday” and dance around and hand out the presents (how many six-year-olds get their own DVD players?). But the cool part was, when we finished, the father tipped us both fifty bucks. We aren’t supposed to take tips, which is, like, number 583 on the list of things we aren’t supposed to do but do anyway. So we’re happy.
Cassie walks out of the shower room in a T-shirt and shorts, her hair just blow-dried, and slips her arms around me. “Save that money,” she whispers. “I’ll get Robin Hood to hook us up with some really good champagne for our nights at the Old Key West.”
“Did his mead source dry up?” I say.
She blinks. “What?”
“Nothing,” I say, and kiss her, my own hair still wet. “Dumb joke.”
This feels like the first time I have seen her in a week, and I’m only seeing her now because Mark insisted on taking a night off because of the poison ivy he got while looking in the bushes for stuff from his list. (“It’s not like he has poison ivy of the eyes,” Cassie said when she first told me.)
“I’m glad you’re here,” I tell her, almost surprised to discover how much I mean it. I feel almost nostalgic for Cassie, if you can feel that way for someone you’ve known only a few weeks. Or maybe I’m just nostalgic for the days when I thought I could come here and forget all my problems. I remember our very first day at the park and how she sat next to me in orientation because she said at least I didn’t look criminally insane, which is more than she could say for some others there, and how an hour later, over our first Disney lunch, she told me that she’d sat there really because she thought I was cute, and then she reached across the table and took my name tag, trading for hers, and we wore the wrong ones for the rest of the day, and I couldn’t believe this amazingly beautiful girl was giving me this much attention. All day I wondered what it would be like to kiss her, to touch her blond hair. And so I touch her hair now, remembering, and it feels like the first time, lifting the soft strands and watching them fall between my fingers.
She kisses me, pressing against me. “I’m glad you’re here, too,” she says. “Have you been behaving yourself while I’m busy winning the contest for us?”
“Of course,” I say, kissing her hair. I feel the warmth of embarrassment push through me, and right then I’m glad to have an excuse not to be looking at her. Then again, I tell myself, I haven’t done anything wrong—I’ve just thought about Ella, let myself swim in thoughts of her. But you can’t control your thoughts, can you?
“What have you been doing?”
I tell her how some of us went over to visit Bernard, about his trailer and the story about Tomorrowland and the tomato juice in jelly jars. “You have got to meet this guy,” I tell her.
“Uh, no. I don’t think so.” She shakes her head, still holding me. Down the hall I hear the Merry Men laughing at something on TV.
“Why not?”
She leans back and looks at me, her hands on my waist. “Luke, sweetie, I’m a
girl
. That guy is, like, a pervert. There’s one story that he almost got fired three times for ‘groping incidents,’ but they can’t ditch him because he’s Roy Disney’s great-nephew or something.”
“And you believe that?” We start walking downstairs. Cassie told me earlier that after all the marching around the park all week, she just wants to sit under a tree and rest her head against my shoulder.
She shrugs. “I didn’t
not
believe it. And even if I don’t, I just have no desire to be around people like that.”
“People like that . . .”
She takes my hand, pulls me toward Main Street. “I’m not a snob, Luke. It’s like hippies, right? People think they were so cool and uninhibited, but what were they really like? They wasted half their lives doing drugs, then figured out what they actually wanted was BMWs. The whole thing is stupid.”
“Stupid how?”
“Stupid to romanticize failure.” She tugs my hand, and we sit on top of a brick wall watching the sun sink down in the sky. “Everybody pretends that getting ahead is bad, having ambition is bad, right? If you live in a trailer, then you’re doing your own thing. Right? Stupid. Take
anybody
who thinks that way and offer them the deal. They can have a ratty trailer and jelly jars and broken furniture and all the freedom they want for the rest of their lives. Freedom and used coffee filters. How many people are going to take that deal?”
“Not many,” I say. “Pretty much no one.”
“Exactly. I mean, even
you
guys. Why did you go over there? Just to kinda
look
at him, right? Like he’s a freak show?”
“A little, I guess,” I tell her, embarrassed at the truth of what she’s saying, remembering when I thought the same thing myself. And then I think of my own parents—if they were the same as thirty years ago, still dressing up in tunics and light sabers, they would probably have groups of kids coming by to gawk at them, too.
“That’s all I’m saying,” Cassie says. “I don’t want to see life as a freak show. Least of all
my
life.” She curls into me, slipping her arm around me, and whispers, “It’s not bad to want things, baby. For example . . . I want
you
.” She moves her hand along my thigh, just the tips of her fingers. She kisses me then, and I kiss her back, still thinking about what she’s just said.
She pulls back and looks at me. “Luke?” she says. “I know I don’t have to ask, but
you
wouldn’t take that deal, would you?”
I glance into her blue eyes, the way they search my face, half hopeful, half testing, then look away. Part of me is trying to think of how Ella would answer that question, or how she would
ask
it. But Ella isn’t here. After ten minutes with Bernard, she ran out, scared of something. Maybe she wouldn’t see Bernard’s life in that trailer as a coin flip, not a heads-or-tails that you have to call in the air. But that’s how everyone treats things—parents, teachers, bosses—if your life is not one thing, it will be another thing. I know that must be right, know Cassie is right, but I keep trying to make one correction in my head: If your life is not one thing, it be can
anything
. How much do you gamble? Once I was in Mr. Forrester’s office, in trouble for something else, and his desk calendar said “If You Fail to Plan, You Plan to Fail.” Maybe that’s all that happened to Bernard, and maybe that’s what happens if you fall in love with some girl from Maine when you’ve never even been to Maine, a girl with something hidden so deeply inside of her that she may never let you see it. If it’s a gamble, then I know everyone’s money is on Cassie. She’s the safe bet. The sure thing.
I look at her, really look at her, and she smiles. “No,” I tell her. “I guess not.”
The next day I go by Fantasyland on my break and have a chili dog with Bernard. Now I have the opposite problem— when he’s in costume, I have trouble thinking of his character name. Bernard the Fox doesn’t sound so terrible. And I think the same thing I did the other night—after almost three and a half decades inside that costume, he seems more comfortable when he’s wearing it than when he’s not. His steps are more agile, more alive, his gestures more certain, is maybe the best way to think of it. More full, more confident. All the shyness of Bernard eaten up by mean old Foulfellow.
On my way back I feel a tap on my shoulder, which usually means a dad wanting a photo, except I’m not Dale right now, just me. It’s Ella, also on break, though her hair is still swept up on top of her head (her Cinderella hair, she calls it). She’s eating a funnel cake on a paper plate.
“Hey, listen,” she says, falling into step beside me. “Amy and I thought maybe we could all go in together and take a dinner over to Bernard’s. You know, like we can make him some mac-and-cheese and cut up some lettuce and do some slice and bake cookies. I mean, we have more stuff in that dorm kitchen than you realize—”
“Ella . . . maybe that’s not such a good idea,” I say.
“Why?” She takes a bite of the cake, then breaks off a piece to give to me.
“I dunno.” I take a bite and chew. Funnel cake always tastes like the carnival when you’re eight years old. “Maybe it’s like we’re a church, and he’s our shut-in, our charity case.”
“You just had lunch with him, ding-dong,” she says.
“That’s different.”
“Because it didn’t involve doing anything nice?” She licks powdered sugar off her finger. “Sorry to break it to you, buddy, but your company is nice all by itself, even if he did pay.”
“‘Nice,’ huh? Next I’ll catch poison ivy and turn into a prince.”
“There are worse things than nice,” she says, though her voice makes it sound like she’s having trouble thinking of any. “Besides, I’m kinda changing your status as we speak.”
“To?”
She throws her plate into a Mickey trash barrel. “I will keep you updated.”
“Look, Ella,” I say, “you were the one who ran out of there the other night, not me. I’m just saying that whole thing was a little weird, and maybe we don’t need to go back.”
She looks away. “I wanted to leave because I was uncomfortable for a minute. Big deal.”
“That’s my point. It’s
not
comfortable. We’re going there for bad reasons. I mean, what are we, his friends all of a sudden?”
“Man, this doesn’t sound like you at all. Yes, all of a sudden. That’s how it works, Luke. You know, like five weeks ago you didn’t know me at all. Now, oh my God, all of a sudden we’re
friends
.”
I nod as we stop in front of the dorms. “Yeah . . . friends,” I say. I look into her face, her eyes, the depths of her eyes, like I could fall into them and keep falling, and that would be enough. You could fall forever and never worry about where you land.
“What is your
problem
? First you are anti-mac and cheese, and now you’re upset that we’re friends?” She turns from me and shakes her head, and I want to say that no, I’m upset because it feels like with us it’s just a starting place—Step One. Become Friends. And there are eight hundred steps left, or a thousand, or an infinite number, but we—she—will always be stuck at one.
13
Ella
“I can’t believe they added in another meal.” I stuff my hair back under my wig, still slightly damp from lunch. “And why don’t they have a Disney Prince lunch?” Mark smiles up at me from where he’s sitting eating his apple. “It would be way easier,” I say. “Forget finger sandwiches and punch. Throw some hot wings on a plate and pass a bowl of popcorn around and call it a day.”
“Football and a keg?” Amy asks. “For the dads,” she says, seeing the horrified look on Mark’s face.
“Exactly.” I swap out my pink headband for a lavender one to match my dress. “Think sports bar with royalty.”
“Except that in most sports bars, guys in tights would get the crap beat out of them,” Amy says.
“So what is the deal?” I sit down by Mark, who offers me a bite of his apple.
“The deal?” he asks, wiping at the apple juice running down my chin.
“None of the stories would work without the princes,” I tell him. “Snow White and Aurora would still be in comas. Cinderella would still be a peasant. Belle and Ariel would be unhappy and lonely. Jasmine would be married to an evil magician.”
“Aladdin isn’t a prince,” Mark says.
“Still,” I say, poking him in the thigh. “You see where I’m going here. What’s the deal with little girls and princesses?”
“I think it’s the whole ever-after thing,” Amy says, stepping into her black ballet slippers. “Boys don’t think like that. Boys want to be space rangers or archers or cowboys, or swing around the jungle on vines.” Mark nods, taking another bite of his apple.
“Okay, but Tarzan has Jane and Buzz Lightyear has Jessie and Robin Hood has Maid Marian. Those are all love stories,” I say.