Please Ignore Vera Dietz(19)
Author: A.S. King

“What you listening to?”

I was startled. I’d been taking this bus for two years, and never had anyone from the high school talked to Charlie or me. We were eighth graders—bottom of the Crock-Pot. Plus, I knew what Tim Miller would think of Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell. He threw the n-word around like it was a conjunction.

I pressed STOP and stuck the whole thing in my pocket. “Nothing. Just some oldies.”

He looked me in the eyes and slipped his arm around the back of my neck, pulling me closer. “You want to know a secret?”

“No.” I pushed myself into the cold metal seafoam green bus wall so hard I could feel the rivets press into my arm.

“I know something about your boyfriend that you ought to know.”

“I don’t have a boyfriend.”

He put his hand out. “A dollar will buy it.”

“I don’t have a dollar.”

“A little rich bitch like you? Don’t have a dollar?”

“I’m not rich.”

“Sure you are.”

The bus driver put on the yellow flashers. Tim’s stop was fifty feet away.

“You need to know this. I’m telling you,” he said, his hand out.

I pulled my earphones out of my pocket and stuck them back in my ears.

“He can’t be your boyfriend if he’s a fag, can he?”

I pressed PLAY while he strutted off the bus, hitting a few younger kids on the back of the head. I comforted myself with the idea that any high school senior who still takes the bus home is a pathetic loser.

That day was the first time Charlie couldn’t come out and play—like, the first time ever. Ever. I went to his front door, rang the doorbell, and waited on the bench on the porch until his mother came out.

“Sorry, Vera. He can’t come out. He’s got diarrhea.”

“He’s sick?”

“It’s nothing serious, dear,” she said, her voice quavering a bit. “He’ll probably be in school by Wednesday.”

But he wasn’t. He wasn’t in school Wednesday or Thursday. When he didn’t come on Friday, and I’d finally moved to the front seat of the bus so Tim Miller couldn’t get anywhere near me on the way home, I decided I’d call.

Mrs. Kahn answered, and after much coaxing, she let me talk to him.

“Veer?”

“Wow, Charlie. You must be really sick.”

“Veer—you have to score me some smokes, man. I’m dying here.”

“I’m fourteen. I can’t buy cigarettes.”

“Walk to the APlus. Tell Kevin they’re for me.”

The APlus was two miles away. I was not allowed to walk that far. Plus, walking alone on Overlook Road gave me the willies.

“I can’t. I’m sorry.”

After a small chunk of silence, he sighed. “I know you would if you could. I’m just dying for a cigarette. It’s been like four days.”

“Are you really sick?”

“Nah.”

“So what’s going on?”

“My mom’s just being a worrywart.”

Suddenly I realized what might be going on. I felt so stupid for not realizing it sooner. My heart broke.

“Can you—uh—can you come to the tree house this weekend?” I asked.

“I don’t know. We’ll see what she says.”

“Get better soon, okay?”

After I hung up, I went to Dad’s office and sat in the orange retro chair until he was off his business phone call. I couldn’t say anything at first, because the thought of Charlie getting beat up by his dad just made me want to cry.

“Vera? You okay?”

I looked at him and made that face that says “Not really.”

“What’s up?”

“You know how we’ve always ignored what goes on next door?”

He stared at me over his reading glasses.

“Would we still ignore it if Charlie started to get hurt, too?” A wave of tears came then, and sobs. Dad didn’t know what to do, so he handed me a tissue box and organized the paperwork on his desk.

“You have to be sure of these things, Vera. You can’t just accuse people without proof.”

“He was out of school all week,” I said.

“A lot of kids get the flu this time of year, because the weather warms up.”

“He doesn’t have the flu.”

“It’s just not as easy as reporting it. There’s just so little we can do. The guy’s a jerk, and if we get involved, it’ll only make him worse.”

Maybe the adults around me were too cynical and old to do anything to help innocent people like Mrs. Kahn or Charlie, or the black kids who were called nigger at school, or the girls Tim Miller groped on the bus. Maybe they were numb enough to blame the system for things they were too lazy to change. Not me. As I sat there watching Dad tidy his paperwork, empty his pencil sharpener, and blow the dust off his glass paperweights, I vowed never to become a heartless, blind-eye hypocrite like him.

HISTORY—AGE FOURTEEN

At the bus stop on Monday, Charlie opened a brand-new pack of Reds and smoked two, lighting the second off the first. He hadn’t come to the tree house on Saturday and I’d had to work on Sunday, cleaning up dishes after the church crowd at Mika’s, so it had been a whole week since I’d seen him.

I looked for bruises. Anything out of the ordinary. But he was always disheveled and messy. I saw a small cut next to his lip, but it looked like a razor cut. I noted that his cheek and lip fuzz was missing and his eyebrows were now separated by a stark white space of skin rather than the unruly mess of hairs that had been there before.

“What’re you looking at?”

“Nothing,” I said.

He paced.

“I’m just glad you’re back.”

He took a long drag of his cigarette. “Why?”

“Tim Miller was bugging me last week on the bus home.” This was the fastest thing I could think of that didn’t reek of bullshit.

“The senior?”

“Yeah. He’s a creep.”

“Huh,” he said, and inhaled the last of his cigarette deeply.

The bus came and we went down the hill to Tim Miller’s house, where the Confederate flag flew on a pole in the backyard, but he didn’t get on.

About a minute before the bus pulled up in front of the school, I decided to ask Charlie straight out about his health. If I wasn’t going to be a hypocrite, I would have to learn to ask hard questions, I figured, and this was as good a time as any. “So hey, how’d the—uh—doctor’s appointment work out?”