“Chipmunk to chipmunk?”
He nods, then stops walking and faces me. I stop, too, and lean back against the wall of the tunnel. “Why are you so sad?” I look at my fur feet and try to come up with a smart-ass answer, but I can’t. I can feel the tears in my eyes, and suddenly, they’re spilling down the front of me, making drops on the fur. “Ella, I’m sorry,” he says, reaching out and touching my arm. “I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
“It’s okay,” I say, and take a deep breath. “Do you really want to know?” I ask, looking up at him. He nods, and I take another breath and tell him. Tell him everything.
14
Luke
For a while there, it seemed like everybody was totally down with the idea for Dalebration. Some people passed around a list of their un-favorite party foods (Funyuns, honey mustard potato chips, bacon-flavored pretzels), and went searching out the off-brand sodas (Mountain Juice, Dr. Wham), and the music was going to be a bunch of one-hit wonders, and everyone was going through the lost-and-found box to pick out some hand-me-downs to wear. Then everything started going to crap. First off, most of the Lesser Characters, as we started calling them, didn’t like thinking of themselves that way, and a few were even insulted. Is it my fault nobody ever heard of Jim Hawkins or Perla the Mouse? That no one ever wants their autograph or pictures? They spend their days walking around the park like homeless people, followed by voices saying over and over, “Daddy, who’s that?” “I don’t know, sweetie.” You grow bitter over time, I guess. Then, when it was determined that we had a shortage of women signed on, Robin Hood and the Merry Men dropped out, and of course, the Army Men do whatever the Merry Men do (I sometimes imagine the Army Men’s mothers saying, “If those Merry Men jumped off a cliff . . .”), and now even Amy doesn’t want to go, because Jesse isn’t going, and that’s that.
“Well, listen,” Mark says, “who said you can’t have a party with just four people?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Abraham Lincoln?”
It’s the end of dinner in the cafeteria, just me and Cassie and Mark and Ella. The food tonight was the worst ever: hot dogs with packets of ketchup, and instant lemonade. This starts a brand-new round of rumors that they are about to settle the strike, that they aren’t buying any new food for us. The picketers have been missing for two days now, so who knows.
“No, no,” Mark says, missing my joke, “I mean that we can still
have
the party.”
“That’s okay,” I say. “I’ll drop the idea. No prophet is accepted in his own country.”
Ella laughs. “So it was a mystical vision, your plans for Dalebration?”
Cassie frowns. “Luke, what are you talking about? If they don’t want to party, screw them, you know?”
I nod, but I’m looking at Ella, smiling. “The whole thing came to me in a dream.”
“No, it came to you during a banana-split-related social gathering, remember?”
“Yeah, but who says I wasn’t dreaming?”
Cassie slides in closer to me, her hand on my thigh. “I have a cool idea,” she says. “Forget the party. The four of us will just go out, get a
real
dinner for a change. A double date.”
“Yeah,” Mark says, “and maybe we can combine contest lists, since, you know, it’s really for all of us in the end. The prizes, I mean.”
“Right,” I tell him. “We’ll tell you about all
three
things that we’ve found.” He laughs, and I glance at Ella, whose face looks like I imagine my own to look. A little sick to her stomach.
“Then it’s settled, okay?” Cassie says, an edge in her voice. “Tomorrow night?”
I remember once in Mr. Forrester’s office, his calendar said “Keep Your Friends Close and Your Enemies Closer,” and I imagine that’s what Cassie is doing right now. Get Ella on her own turf, make a show of holding my hand, kissing me.
She’d been like this since two days before, when she and Mark were coming back from list hunting and Ella and I were walking out of the tunnel in the Chip and Dale costumes, carrying our heads. Ella was still crying while I rubbed her shoulder.
“Well, look who’s here,” Cassie said, her smile frozen in place. “So . . . what’s all this?”
“This is you not showing up for work,” I said.
“And she was all broken up about it?” she said, waving her clipboard at Ella.
“Cassie, lay off,” I said. “She’s upset.”
“Ella, what’s wrong?” Mark said. “Why are you wearing
that
?”
“Aww, sweetheart, I’m really sorry,” Cassie said, putting her hand on Ella’s fur arm. “I didn’t know, and I’m being insensitive. Why don’t we go talk about it, just us girls?” More and more it was like some layer had been peeled away from Cassie, so I could see what was really there. And what was really there was mostly fake. Sometimes I think that layer was just my own naïveté, wanting to believe that people are what they seem to be. And what Cassie seemed to be was how she was being now, with Ella. But that wasn’t real, either, just something put on for the benefit of everyone else, just another costume she wore.
“I’m fine, really,” Ella said. “It’s just the heat and all. I’m fine.”
“Ella, why are you
wearing
that?” Mark said, like maybe a change in emphasis would make the question work better. The costume seemed to be his only worry. For him, probably a big enough worry to make his head explode—if Cinderella could turn into Chip, what next? Ariel turning into Minnie Mouse? Belle turning into Dopey? Maybe Snow White would turn into Daffy Duck,
who wasn’t even a Disney character.
Really, it would be a lot like the Apocalypse.
“Try to figure it out, Mark,” Ella had said before walking off.
Now Ella glances at me across the cafeteria table and shakes her head just slightly so that only I can see it.
“You know,” Cassie says, leaning harder into me, “there are like a ton of really good restaurants here. So, maybe you two pick a time, and Luke and I will pick a place. How does that sound?”
“Well, you know,” I say, “I bet you don’t want to miss a whole night of working on your list, do you?”
I’m looking at Mark as I say it, and if the Jedi mind trick worked, even a little bit, right now he would be saying,
I don’t want to miss a whole night.
Instead, he just looks at Cassie, who smiles and says, “Oh, everyone needs a little rest,” and Mark nods and agrees, yes, they do need a rest. Maybe the mind trick
does
work. Ella doesn’t say anything but just keeps looking at me or glancing down at Cassie’s hand on my arm, until I want to just pull it away. Instead, I just try finding a few more outs, and of course, Cassie bats them all down. “It will be the most fun ever, I swear,” she says, and by now she has worn us all down, worn all the excuses out, and so the plans are made.
Late that night I walk out behind the castle, in the shadows of the leaves. I’m looking for Ella, but our bench is empty. I sit there, anyway, and reach up to pull a leaf from the tree, and then tear off bits of leaf to throw at my sneakers. It beats sleeping, which is getting harder to come by every night. All I’ve been able to do for the past two days is think about Ella, about everything she told me. I don’t even know how to think about something huge like that, like it’s all the hurt someone usually has over a whole lifetime wadded up into one ball and dropped from a height. And that’s how I picture it, like maybe it doesn’t totally kill you, but it breaks both your legs, and they never heal right, and for the rest of your life you walk with a limp. If Ben died, it
would
kill me, no broken legs. I know that, and so I think about how strong she must be inside, how she can get up in the morning, and it’s not like she’s off to work filing papers in some back office. No, she’s out there every day, looking beautiful, smiling for everyone. She is nice to the little kids—
really
nice, not the kind of nice that they teach us in the character seminars, not fake nice, not scripted nice.
Not Cassie nice.
And part of me felt stupid, too, when she told me. I mean, I did everything I was supposed to do, not because I was supposed to, but because it was just what you do—she was talking and I listened, really listened, not just to her words, but to the way she took small breaths between words; listened to the rustle of her hair against her fur costume as she tipped her head back when the tears came, listened to the slight quaver in her voice and to how unfamiliar the words sounded coming from her, like she had never really said them to anyone before. That’s how you listen. And then she cried, but not as much as you’d think. Maybe there had been so much of that already, or maybe after a time it just seemed like not enough. But I held her as well as I could with both of us in costume, and for about five minutes I felt like an idiot because I’ve been freaked out about what? Taking a good job? That’s my tragedy? “I had tuberculosis as a child.” “Oh yeah? Well, I had to share a corner office.”
But that seems wrong, too, finally. I mean, both of us are trapped inside something, like mirror images of ourselves and each other. She’s trapped inside her loss, inside everything that’s missing from her life, trying to breathe in a vacuum. And me? The opposite—I’m trapped inside everything that’s given to me, handed to me, placed on top of me, as I try to breathe under a thick pile of expectation. Her future had been dismantled under her, and mine was constructed over me. And neither of us has a way of escaping. Unless maybe we do—I think the most hopeful moment of my life was when we were in the Chip and Dale costumes, holding hands while we danced in a circle, and I could hear her laughing a little bit inside there, could barely see her through the mesh, and I laughed just because she was, just because we were so dumb and she didn’t know the routine and we were just winging it, winging the whole thing, and I kept thinking,
We’re in here . . . hidden, smaller than the thing around us, but still inside here.
If only your life were a costume, and you could just take it off when you wanted to, leave it hanging on a hook, and walk away.
I take another long look down the quiet walk that leads toward the castle, hoping I will see her, that she will know I’m out here and come find me. I have so much to tell her. Everything, really. But there are only a few browned palm boughs, blowing around in the wind, and as much as I want her to be, she’s not there.
The next day, before I’m even out of bed, my mother calls. For a little while we talk about the weather and how hot it is and how Dad is away on some project and how Ben is learning to play golf, taking lessons at the club every evening.
“Golf is a wise business move,” she says, though I can tell she’s just quoting Ben.
“I thought it was a game played with sticks and balls,” I say.
“Well, it’s that, too, silly. But Ben says it will help him woo clients.”
I nod at the phone. “Did he actually say ‘woo’?”
“Yes, I believe. Why?”
“Tell him that’s gay. That I said so.”
She tries not to laugh. “I will tell him no such thing.”
“How is Dad with the headaches?” Our phone is this old-school black thing mounted to the wall of the dorm, and every time I talk on it, I end up tangling the curly cord around my wrist.
“Oh,” she says, “his life is a headache, I guess. But he’s fine. He just works too hard.”
“Why?”
“That’s a silly question, Luke. You work hard, too, don’t you? I know you do. And we’re all proud of you.”
“I do. If there is some chipmunkin’ that needs doing, I am
on
the job.” I spin my wrist around trying to free it from the twists of cord.
“We all want to know when you’ll be home,” she says. “We have so much planned for you.”
I feel my stomach knot up.
So much planned for me,
I think.
Like maybe the next fifty years.
“I don’t know,” I tell her. There is a brief silence, the conversation shutting down; then without really knowing what I want to say, I ask her, “Mom, what happened?”
“What happened when, honey?” I can see her face when she says it, the way she will look at someone so quizzically, but with all this patience, too, like she wants to know something and you have all the time in the world to tell her.
“I mean . . .” I stall for a second. “I meant, What will happen the rest of the day? Your day.”
“Oh, well.” She sighs. “The usual, I guess. I am getting my hair cut at one. And then I’m meeting with Sandy to talk about the rummage sale at the church. And I need to take the Honda in for an oil change. Big excitement, huh?”
“Could be worse. I mean, you have no major disasters planned, huh?”
She laughs and says maybe tomorrow, and I have that urge to ask her again, What happened? Instead, I tell her I love her, untangle the phone from my wrist, and hang up.
We head to Shula’s because Cassie says it’s the best place in the whole resort. Robin Hood hooks me up with a jacket and a white shirt, and I wear my boots and good jeans, so it’s not half-bad. When Cassie shows up at the dorm to walk over with me, she’s wearing this little brown, pin-striped skirt, pretty much up to her ass, and these tall heels, her legs tanned and perfect, and a tight pink sweater, her hair all blow-dried and loose. Robin Hood hands her the knife he’s using to make a peanut butter sandwich. “Kill me now,” he says, and she laughs like it’s the best joke she’s ever heard. All throughout the common room the Merry Men and Army Men are whistling and screeching, and Jesse walks by and just solemnly pats my shoulder and tells me that it nearly makes him want to weep. And she does look amazing in a way—I mean, I’m not immune, but I guess I end up feeling like an accessory as we walk along. Or maybe more like a prop, built with an arm that’s designed to be held in her grip. Plus I’m not a big fan of makeup, and she has on enough to kill someone.
“This place is superfantastic,” Mark says as we meet them in the lobby, and right away I cut my eyes at Ella, and she tries not to smile. She looks beautiful—just this pretty flowered dress, her shoulders pale and freckled, her dark hair in loose waves, tiny diamond studs in her ears. Simple, sweet, perfect. Mark wears a Mickey tie and a shirt with Donald and Daisy cuff links, and he has his hair combed exactly the way it is when he plays Prince Charming.