Please Ignore Vera Dietz(34)
Author: A.S. King

I say, “I know.”

He says, “I’m sorry.”

I say, “I know.”

He says, “Do you forgive me?”

I say, “Not yet.”

He says, “There’s not much time left.”

I say, “For who?”

He says, “People will get hurt.”

I become annoyed.

He says, “What’s wrong?”

I say, “I’m scared.”

He says, “Just do it.”

He hands me an old cigar box.

I say, “Why me, Charlie?”

He says, “You’re the bravest.”

HISTORY—AGE SEVENTEEN

The first time I ever rode on a motorcycle, Dad displayed a shade of fear I’d never seen before, and said, “Charlie Kahn, that’s my only daughter you have on that machine.”

“Be cool, Mr. D. I’ll take good care of her.”

We went to the pagoda. When we got there, I felt like a new person—a seventeen-year-old grown-up. When I pulled the helmet from my head, I felt, for the first time in my life, nearly as cool as Charlie. When he turned around and kissed me, gently, on my lips, I blushed and told him to stop.

But I didn’t want him to stop.

Then we put our helmets back on and drove back down the hill—and when I put my arms around Charlie’s waist, I held on tightly, like a girlfriend would. It was nearly Halloween. I had just turned seventeen.

We had a movie night every Friday that winter. Dad would make popcorn and then leave us alone. Our friendship hadn’t suffered from the gaps of high school, like many did. Though we had our own lives, Charlie and I were able to come back to where it all began—just the two of us.

Sometimes Charlie would reach over and hold my hand, which made my brain explode so much I couldn’t concentrate on the movie. All I know about Apocalypse Now is that it’s about Vietnam. I can’t even remember who starred in it. What I do remember is Charlie’s hand and how strong it was, and how he rubbed my palm with his thumb and how he smelled of buttery popcorn.

I lost my job at Arby’s in January because I had become so part-time, I was useless. I blamed Dad and his inability to cough up Mom’s car, but he exhibited no signs of guilt.

Then, Valentine’s Day came. There was a dance, and balloons and flowers and cheaply made rings and all sorts of lame teddy bears and stuffed animals, as if teenagers can be wooed with the same shit as five-year-olds. It was the Dietzes’ most hated holiday of the year, too, because it dealt with the consumerization of something sacred. Mom and Dad had agreed never to buy each other anything on the day. It was a false, Hallmark holiday. A sham. A moneymaking sideshow for insecure couples who didn’t have true love. I agreed with this, for the most part. (I disagreed that Mom and Dad were the poster children for true love, though. Obviously.)

So, when I got home from school and there were a dozen red roses for me on the kitchen table, I tried my best not to be cynical. Dad had put them in an old crystal vase we had, and left the sealed envelope at its base next to a note from him that said Back at 5. Had to go to the notary. I opened the card and Charlie’s messy handwriting read, Let’s go out tonight. I’ll pick you up at 8. Love, Charlie.

Love? Love, Charlie? Out? Out where? You’d have thought I’d be used to Charlie and his spontaneous weird shit by then, but I wasn’t. Not when it amounted to a hundred bucks’ worth of roses and a date in three hours. Though he meant it to be sweet, all I could see was control and manipulation.

Over dinner, Dad said, “Nice flowers. Who are they from?”

I blushed. Sighed. “Charlie.” I added, “But I don’t know why he sent them.”

He looked up at me from over his glasses. “Occam’s razor, Veer.”

My father was obsessed with Occam’s razor, which, in short, says that the simplest solution is the best solution. (Meaning, Charlie sent me roses because he loved me.)

“We’re going out tonight, I think.”

Behind his eyes, I saw a thousand worried monkeys, knitting his eyebrows together into an indecisive frown. He’d told me a long time ago that I wasn’t allowed to date Charlie, but in the years that followed, he’d said more than once that we were cute together. I don’t think he knew what he really wanted anymore—and I wasn’t sure what I wanted, either.

I came downstairs at 8:05, sat down on a kitchen stool, and looked at my reflection in the patio door until 8:15. I’d put on my favorite pair of jeans and a pair of Doc Martens boots I hadn’t worn in yet.

I should have known Charlie would be late. At 8:30 I called his house, feeling so stupid I can’t even explain it. Mrs. Kahn answered in her usual chirpy hide-the-bruises sort of way, and when I asked if I could talk to Charlie, she told me he was out.

She didn’t sound surprised that I was looking for him. Or that I wasn’t out with him.

“Nice that he’s doing something social, isn’t it, Vera? After all these years of trying to be so different.”

I wanted to tell her that it was okay to be different. That different made Charlie who he was. But she would never get it. To her, anything weird was scary or stupid. Something to roll her eyes at. If Charlie was the next Einstein, she would have told him to not be weird, to comb his hair, and to stop thinking about physics, while his father forced him to go to Vo-Tech and learn about HVAC.

“Will you tell him I called?”

“Sure. But let’s not ruin his fun, okay?”

She hung up. I wanted to kill her. I wanted to kill him, too.

“Everything okay?” Dad asked.

“Yeah,” I said. Right when I said it, I heard Charlie’s bike buzzing up the road. When he arrived, he seemed distracted and upset by something. I figured it was just Charlie being intense.

I didn’t know how to feel, wrapped around Charlie, driving up Overlook Road. While I bounced around on the back of his bike, I felt stupid for not asking him where we were going first—for allowing him to lead me, like I was some blind idiot disciple mesmerized by his coolness, like everyone else. When I talked inside the helmet, it echoed.

“Where are we going?” I asked quietly. And the echo asked, “Where are we going?”

He took the left toward the pagoda and carefully maneuvered around the S curves until we came to the straight part in the road, about a hundred yards from the parking area. He took his hand from the handlebars and patted my right knee. Because he was slowing down, I took this to mean that our first stop was the pagoda, which I thought was pretty romantic.