Chapter 4: Still Waters Run Deep

When we get back to the house Sandy turns on the radio to a rock station and Johnny grills hamburgers. I walk with Charlotte into the bedroom. I feel weird with her here. For the past week this has been my space, and I’ve come to like it that way.

Okay, start off my making her not think that I’m intruding on her space. “Sorry if I took over, I wasn’t sure which bed was yours and stuff.”

“It doesn’t matter.” She flops down on her bed, hair fanning out around her face. “Oh my god, it feels so good to be home. My bunk at camp had the lumpiest mattress you ever saw.”

I could tell her that I’ve seen a lot of mattresses, but I shut up. Her top has ridden up and there’s this bit of tanned skin that’s visible. I look away quickly.

All of a sudden I feel stupid here. “I’ve gotta go to the bathroom,” I mutter, and duck out. I feel superfluous. That’s one of last year’s vocabulary words. I remember misspelling it on purpose.

In the bathroom, I sit down on the toilet and try to catch my breath. I feel really strange. That girl makes me nervous. She’s harmless, but at the same time she’s so dangerous.

She’s bringing something dangerous out in me, I think, not quite sure what that means.

I can’t bear to go back to the room. I slip out onto the deck and ask Johnny if he wants any help with the burgers. “Yes. Um, get me a plate, would you?” he asks, grateful for the help. Good. At least I’m useful to someone.

“I’m gonna teach you a trick, Shane,” he says, when I return with a large blue platter. “When you make hamburgers, mix in a packet of onion soup mix and a little A-1, and it tastes great.” He flips the burgers one by one, causing grease to spatter and sizzle. His face is bright red and he seems to be into his second beer. The beer scares me a bit, but I’ve seen him drink before and he’s never touched me. And the smell of the burgers is so good.

“They smell great,” I say.

“Be a doll and go ask everyone of they want cheese, ok?”

“Sure.”

Back inside, Charlotte is in the bathroom. I can hear the shower running. I feel like a total intruder, thinking about how she must look under the water, but I knock anyway.

“Yeah?”

I open the door just a crack. The steam inside the room smells wonderful. “Sorry to bug you. Your dad wants to know if you want cheese on your burger.”

“Tell him yeah. And tell him I want two.”

“Okay. Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she says.

This girl is so mellow, I think, turning around. I inhale another deep lungful of pretty-smelling shower air, and walk back down to the kitchen.

After dinner, Johnny and Sandy wind up in the TV room, watching TV. He drinks beer and she drinks wine. There’s an old episode of Cheers on the TV, the one where Cliff gets sick and no one wants to visit him. That episode always made me sad. Charlie and Jakey are up in the playroom, where she’s indulging him in his latest Dukes of Hazzard fantasy.

I go upstairs, lie on the bed. The house feels full and bright, and I don’t belong. I feel a weight on the bed, and I look up to see Dora padding across the comforter. She steps right onto my belly, making me go “oof.”

I pet her anyway, and she walks until she’s sniffing my face, no doubt drawn by onion soup mix and A-1 sauce. I scratch her ears and slowly she settles down on my chest, purring loudly. She whips her tail up toward her face, gives the end of it a few half-hearted licks, then closes her eyes slowly. I blink at her, slowly. She blinks back. She purrs. And for a moment the ache inside me doesn’t seem so big.

I didn’t sleep, but Dora and I were definitely chilling. I hear loud footsteps on the stairs and they’re moving toward the room. It has to be Charlotte. She pops inside the room, and Dora, startled, jumps off of me, digging her back claws into my belly. I feel strangely naked.

Charlotte’s hair is pulled back in a scrunchie, still damp at the roots. She’s wearing a UCLA sweatshirt and shorts. She tilts her head to look down at me.

“Are you okay Shane? Aren’t you feeling well?”

“I’m a little tired.”

She sits down at the foot of the bed without asking. I can’t say I mind. “My mom and dad really like you.”

What? Really? Why does that make me so uncomfortable?

“I really like them.”

She smiles. “Cool. They can be lame sometimes, but they’re not too bad.”

Lame? She doesn’t know the meaning of lame. Lame is sparkly glitter and BO...

“So where did you come from,” she says. Oh shit, here we go.

“All over L.A.. Montana originally.”

“Big sky.”

“Yeah. Big sky.” Big crazy state hospital, where I was born. Big dad. Hey Cubby.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to come up and interrogate you.” Interrogate. Another vocabulary word.

“It’s okay.” I sit up. I feel less naked, if we’re both sitting. “That wasn’t an interrogation.”

If she’s surprised that I know the word, she doesn’t show it.

“Did you have fun at camp?” She’s already told us all about camp, all the way home, and I feel stupid the minute it’s out of my mouth.

“Yeah, I did. I learned a lot.”

“That’s cool. Was it hard to learn the violin? How long did it take you?”

“Well I’m still learning. But I’d say it took me a year to be sort of good at it, to be able to play most songs.”

“Wow. I always thought violins seemed unreal.”

“What do you mean?” She squinches up her eyes in a confused look, and I wish I hadn’t said it. Rule number three of being me. Keep your fucking mouth shut, Shane.

“I mean, it just seems like magic, like you shouldn’t be able to touch a bow to a string and make that kind of noise.” She tilts her head a bit, looking at me really closely. Oh shit. “It’s really amazing,” I say, not wanting her to be mad, or think I’m a space cadet. Last thing I need to be is on this girl’s bad side.

But she smiles. “I never thought of it like that before.” She’s staring at me and I want to squirm. Fuck. Broke my own rule. Stop staring, Charlotte. Stop...

I look down at my knees. Then up. She is still looking at me. “What? I say, aware that I’m blushing.

“Nothing! Just... the way you said that, it was really cool.”

I shrug, wanting to crawl out of my skin.

“You’re a really deep person. My grandma has this saying: still waters run deep. That’s you,” she nods.

Yeah. Deep. Right. It’s too quiet. Down the hall I hear the splashing of Sandy giving Jakey his bath.

“So,” she says, looking sort of embarrassed. “Do you really wanna go to the pool tomorrow?”

“If you do, that would be cool. I bet you’re anxious to see all your friends.”

“Actually, I was hoping to hang out with you. I mean, if you want to.” She starts moving her finger down quilted line of the duvet. Oh shit, I’ve made her anxious.

“I’d love to,” I say quickly.

“Okay. The pool it is.”

“Cool.”

“Cool,” she grins, and suddenly I’m not so afraid.

.

The next day I wake up just before sunrise. I groan and know that I’m not gonna get back to sleep. I lift my head up a little, see that Charlotte is just a lump under her comforter, messy hair all over the pillow. Looks sort of like an octopus. I thought somehow that she’d always be neat, even while she’s asleep.

I lay back down and close my eyes. Go away, sun. I want to go back to sleep.

Normally when I feel like this, like my thoughts are on crack and they won’t stop, I can get back to sleep by touching myself. But I don’t think I can do that with Charlotte in the room... can I?

No way. Last thing I need is to get caught.

I roll over, and try to breathe really slow. Please, let me sleep.

.

Charlotte opens a drawer and tosses out three different bathing suits, and tells me I can wear whichever one I want. I look at her closely to see if she really has a preference. Some girls are like that, they’ll say, whatever you want, but then they won’t be happy with what you choose. Charlotte doesn’t seem to give a shit, because she’s already unpacking her purple bathing suit and working the knot on the straps of her bikini top.

There is a black one, but it’s a bikini, and the idea of her seeing me with all that skin exposed feels sort of scary. There’s a green one with black stripes across the top. I pick up that one, and take it into the bathroom, smiling at her. Does she think I’m gonna get naked in front of her? No way. She’d laugh.

The green suit is okay. It bunches up at the top in a way that doesn’t make my boobs look so small. I frown at myself in the mirror, then comb my hair.

When I go back to the bedroom, Charlotte is already dressed, and I can see purple straps sticking out from her tee shirt.

She looks at me, her eyes moving from head to toe. I swallow. A weird burning feeling comes over me, and it’s not pleasant. But yet it is.

“What?” I say.

She realizes that she’s staring. She blinks, and realizes that I caught her.

“Nothing. Just, that suit looks really good on you. I wish I was tall like you.”

Is she being funny? Did she put on her bathing suit while I was in the bathroom? Did she not care that I could have walked into the room at any time?

She thinks the suit looks really good. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah. I’m shorter than most of my friends.”

My stomach sinks. Her friends. What is wrong with me, that I just met this girl, and I don’t want to share her? Get a grip, Shane.

We eat some cereal. She eats Corn Pops and I eat Froot Loops. Sandy comes down and hands us each a five dollar bill.

“Thanks,” Charlotte says, putting the money in her pocket, like it’s nothing. I sit there and stare at the bill.

“What’s this?” I blurt.

“Your allowance.” Charlotte says.

What for, I’m about to ask, but then good sense kicks in and I shut up, slide the five into the pocket of my jeans shorts. “Thanks,” I say. How often do they pay her? Maybe while I’m here I can double, maybe even triple my savings... I’ll need it some day. That way when they send me to the next place, I’ll have it in case I need it.

“You never got an allowance before?” Charlotte asks.

“Not recently,” I lie. The truth is that the idea of getting money for nothing is totally foreign to me. The $34.50 that I have is all from lunch money that I saved, and mowing Mrs. Prescott’s lawn. No wonder I’m too skinny. Somehow I don’t think that when school starts, my lunch money will have to come out of the five dollars. Thirty-nine fifty, I think. That’s almost forty dollars. It seems like a lot of money.

I finish first and rinse my breakfast dish. The Greenes have dishes that are all different colors, but the same size. My breakfast bowl was blue. Charlotte’s is yellow. I rinse my bowl and stack it carefully in the dishwasher. I know how to do this because the Leisters had one too. Charlotte puts her bowl in the sink and I rinse it too. She thanks me. Then we head out.

“Let’s walk instead. I wanna show you some stuff.”

“Okay.” As if I’m going to argue.

As we walk down the street I see the tidy perfect ranch houses, the clean gutters, the rambling, streets. I begin to feel more and more out of place. “That’s where we’ll catch our bus. Our bus number will be seventy-six. I’ll probably be staying after school a few days a week so I’ll get the late bus or get mom to pick me up, but if you join an activity you can stay late too.”

“Cool,” I say. With every step I take I can feel how unfamiliar the new sneaks are. It’s hot today, August.

“My ex-boyfriend Chad Stover lives there,” she points to a ranch house made out of stucco. He’s not too bad but he always wanted sex.”

I wrinkle my nose and we keep walking. Did you give it to him, I wonder? The thought makes me vaguely ill.

“When did you break up?”

“Last year. It was no big deal, really. He’s a dork.”

We keep walking and I’m feeling funny. Like I’ve been socked in the gut and it’s slowly starting to kick in. She walks beside me, purple shorts and purple bikini top. She’s already tanned. I can see a line of pale skin under the strap of her top.

“Do you have a boyfriend?” She looks at me, so directly that it feels her eyes are looking straight through me. In the bright sunlight, her eyes are a wondrous shade of pale aqua.

“No, not at the moment.” I’ve never had a boyfriend, except in first grade when David Dyers kissed me in the cafeteria line. And that doesn’t count. But I don’t tell Charlotte that. She doesn’t need to know how deficient my life is.

“Me neither. All the boys I know are all hung up on sex and it’s gross.” I think of Darien Devlin. Puke.

“You’ve never had sex?”

She laughs. “Shane! No. I’m only twelve.”

That might mean something in Whittier, but I’ve lived in places where girls were mothers at thirteen. But, she doesn’t need to know that either.

“Have you?”

“No. No, thank you.” I think of Frank Devlin putting his hand on my breast, and that bad feeling comes back. Ugh. “So how deep is this pool?”

“It’s twelve feet deep in the deep end. And there’s a slide and a high dive and a low dive.”

“Awesome.”

“You like to swim?”

I think for a minute. “Yeah, I really do.” And it’s true.

“You should join the swim team with me.”

“For real?”

“Yes, for real,” she laughs.

Usually that kind of thing costs money. Will they pay for me? I might be able to pay for it by then, if I wanted to take money out of my savings? No, I need that money. But somehow I really like the idea. We did swimming once in gym class and it made me so tired I didn’t have energy to think so much. There was something about the rhythm, the energy used swimming laps, that I really liked. And the water felt cleansing. Stupid, but that’s how it felt.

“Oh, see that house down that street, the one with the red van?” She leans toward me and I can smell her. Her shampoo is sweet.

“Yeah.”

“My friend Ginger lives there. I’d normally go swing by and see if she’s coming too but she’s away at camp until next week.”

“Oh.” I don’t want her walking to the pool with us. I want Charlotte all to myself. Which is stupid. Because I barely know her.

“When’s your birthday?”

“Huh? Oh, July nineteenth.”

“That’s cool. Mine’s on December nineteenth.”

“So you’re a half a year older than me,” I say. “Roughly.”

“I guess so.” She smiles and damn, she’s so special, is that smile just for me? I really hope so.

“If you go down that street you hit Chaparral Road, and that’s where our school is.”

“Cool.” I’m dreading school already.

“And the high school’s up that way.”

Does she actually think I’ll be staying with them until high school? I know better than that. We’re only going into seventh.

We stop at the corner of Monroe and Palo Verde. She looks at me from under her eyelashes and presses the button on the stoplight.

“So what’s your favorite song?” She asks.

I’m quiet for a minute. I probably have that constipated look on my face. I feel uncomfortable in this bathing suit. When I tied it I managed to get a few strands of hair and every time I move it pulls them.

She’s looking at me, and her eyes are open and interested. She’s actually interested. And if I say something totally off the wall, she’s not gonna look down at me for it.

“Imagine,” I say. “By-“

“John Lennon. Very cool. I thought I was the only one my age who would know that.”

She feels different from people her age? Her? No way.

I just smile like an idiot.

“I love that song. Why’s that one your favorite?”

Dammit, Charlotte.

But she really wants to know. And there’s nothing mean in her eyes.

Why?

Sunlit living room, playing Candyland on the floor. He bundled me up against the cold wind, my little coat with fur around the hood. It tickled my nose and when he held me I could smell his soap, Irish Spring. Sun so bright in the living room, Grandma’s old hi-fi and the scratchy record player. His laugh was deep and rumbly... But his voice was smooth when he sang along. “You-hoo, oooh, you may say I’m a dreamer...”

I blink, and see Charlotte glancing at me. She catches me looking, and looks away, shy. She feels bad for prying. And that makes me feel bad.

Still, I can’t bear her questions about my father, so I just shrug. “I dunno.”

She takes that without arguing. She giggles, feeling stupid about prying, but she also looks... happy.

“You... you’re a very old soul.”

I grin and roll my eyes. I shrug, stupidly. Feeling myself come undone in the sunlight, sort of jittery and ragged. I need more sleep. I don’t like this feeling.

“I’m sorry, I’m totally making you self-conscious.”

I’m always self-conscious.

How to answer that? I don’t want to make her mad. And I don’t want to put her off from trying to know me. Less than a day and she has me going against my rules.

“A little,” I say. I know that I’m blushing.

“I’m sorry. I meant it as a compliment. You’re not all shallow and boring like my other foster sisters.”

“Oh.”

A compliment?

Okay, so maybe rule number three isn’t such a good one after all.

Maybe I can let her know me, just a little.