Please Ignore Vera Dietz(33)
Author: A.S. King

Spring was late that year. It snowed in April. Charlie had a job at the APlus, which Dad said was “too weird,” seeing he got a job at a convenience store when he was in high school, too. I kept my job at Arby’s and hoped to work a lot of hours in the summer to save up for my own cell phone—something Dad was vehemently against paying for, on account of him being stuck in the Dark Ages. (Best line from that argument: “I don’t care who says it makes you safer. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a marketing scam aimed at children who don’t know any better.” Sweet.) Also, he still wasn’t letting me drive Mom’s car, which was getting more aggravating by the day.

That summer, Charlie and I took a few walks to the pagoda together, and climbed the Master Oak for kicks. I still loved hiking the blue trail with him, him in his red bandanna and combat shorts that I could smell from a yard away, but we didn’t get to do that much. Both of us were working a lot, and Charlie dated a few more girls. He didn’t tell me, but I heard.

I’d met Mitch, a private-school kid who worked the breakfast shift at Arby’s with me on weekends and who asked me out to the movies twice. He brought his little sister, so I did not consider these real dates. More like babysitting. But I tried to act normal and spend time with a normal boy. We held hands. He smelled like onions. In the end, I realized he wasn’t daring or cool, and I hated how he dressed up all the time. So after the two movies, I slinked into my manager’s office and asked to be moved to evening hours on weekends.

I missed Mrs. Parker and Mr. Zimmerman and caring for the animals, but bringing home a paycheck was nice. I stopped by the adoption center a few times, and sent Mr. Zimmerman a card when I heard his wife died. Though I did that out of sympathy, I also did it because I really wanted a job in his store the next summer.

School started again. We were juniors. I was an invisible junior and Charlie was a very cool motorcycle-driving Tech junior. We’d occasionally see each other outside of school, but he quit the APlus and started work-study with the HVAC company his dad worked for, and often came home late. I bought myself a pay-as-you-go flip phone and we started texting each other sarcastic things about people in our lives. He’d tell me how lame some of the Vo-Tech kids were, and I’d tell him how dorky the geeks in my Trig class were and how they watched Red Dwarf on the Internet.

Dad had a busy autumn because he had to take two courses to stay up to date with some weird corporate tax return changes, and he asked me to tone down my work schedule on account of him not being able to drive me. I just couldn’t believe he was going this far to deny me driving a perfectly good car that was sitting in the garage.

Before I could answer, he put up his hand and said, “Don’t say it.”

“But—”

“Don’t.”

I sighed and waited a minute, but couldn’t stop myself. “It’s so stupid!” I said, which wasn’t what I would have said had he let me speak in the first place. Then I stormed to my room. I flipped open my phone and sent a message to Charlie about how much I hated my life. A minute later, I heard his bike on the road. When I looked out the window, he was parking it in the driveway and looking up at me. Even though it was getting dark, we walked up the blue trail to the Master Oak and climbed high enough to see the glowing red neon through the thin forest.

Charlie didn’t say much and smoked a lot. I didn’t say much, either. I wanted to flip open my phone and write Kiss me. But before I could, Charlie started to descend the tree. The next week I turned seventeen.

NO PLACE, NO TIME

I am in the dark forest and I can’t move. I am lying flat on the forest floor. There are bugs. I feel wet. I smell gas. Above me is the Master Oak. It drops acorns on me, like hail.

The tree explodes into flames. I still can’t move. The acorns are now flaming acorns, and I am wet with gasoline, bound to die. The strippers arrive.

Dancers with green sequins, G-strings, fishnet stockings, and garter belts dance around me. Tassels on their br**sts go in circles, and fan the flames closer to me. One girl looks new. Her tassels don’t synchronize. My attention is held by the lead stripper. My mother is taking off a feather boa and swinging it around with her lips pouted. She stares at someone in the audience, but I can’t move my head to see who it is.

I am on a swing, swinging high above a river. I am a little girl again, holding on so tight, my hands hurt and the cold chain of the swing gnaws itself into my knuckles. I wiggle my legs. I yell “Stop!” but the swing won’t stop.

Dad says, “But this is fun!”

I start to cry and scream like someone is stabbing me. I hope he will get the picture. Instead, he laughs and the swing does not slow down.

“Stop!” I cry. “Stop! Stop! Stop!”

There is a paper airplane floating on a current. I am riding it, wedged into the center fold, arms spread along the wings. I am flying over the town and up toward the pagoda. I zip down Pitt Street and then Cotton Street, full of Harley-Davidson motorcycles and American-made trucks. I hang on as the plane navigates around the S curves, and my hands grow stinging paper cuts. By the time we arrive at the pagoda, my fingers are bleeding, but I am overjoyed. It is beautiful up here. Flying is beautiful. Until I am thrown off, sent bouncing off the rocks to my death.

The strippers are now Nazis. I mean, they are in sexy Nazi uniforms—something out of a Mel Brooks movie. Fishnets and swastikas. The dancers’ tassels are red and black, and behind them crosses burn. I look around and see no one. I look down and see I am back in the paper airplane. Parked. Someone has put bandages on my bleeding hands. My mother has been replaced by Charlie, who is twirling a pair of white briefs above his head. He tosses them to the nonexistent audience, and as I watch to see where they land, the pervert from Overlook Road appears an inch from my face. “What pretty pigtails.”

Charlie is leading me through the dark woods. We are in real time—I somehow know this. Charlie holds my hand firmly and tugs. He is pulling so hard, my hand starts to bleed again. We get to a clearing and he stops and looks up.

“Look at that, Vera.”

I tilt my head back and see a sky full of stars.

“Can you tell which one is me?” he asks.

I point to the brightest one.

He grabs my hand again and we arrive at the foot of the tree house ladder. Then we are in the tree house and Charlie is showing me his secret floorboard under the mattress.

He says, “You have to do this.”