Please Ignore Vera Dietz(50)
Author: A.S. King

Charlie was standing on my porch when I got home. I didn’t see him until I got out of the car and got my bags from the trunk. I was surprised he’d come back after trying to talk to me the day before. Dad’s car wasn’t there, so I was nervous.

“Jenny’s crazy,” he said before I could climb back into my Parliament funk spaceship. “I broke up with her, and now she’s crazy—like she’s either going to kill herself or kill me or … I don’t know. Something crazy.”

“Your problem, Charlie.”

“But I need your help,” he said.

I didn’t say anything and just shook my head.

“Fuck.”

“Yeah. Fuck,” I said, opening my car door. I tossed my bags into the backseat and got back in. He came to the window and put his two sinuous hands on the frame.

“You have to come to Zimmerman’s tonight.”

I glared at him. “Why don’t you ask one of your new friends?”

“They’re not my friends.”

Silence. Then, “You let them carve the Master Oak, Charlie.” He opened his mouth to say something, but I stopped him. “You took them to the pagoda and played paper airplanes with them. You f**ked them in our tree house, Charlie. And now you tell me they’re not your friends?”

“I could go to jail,” he said.

“Your problem.”

“I could die!” he said.

I rolled my eyes. “Oh, please.”

He started pacing and muttering to himself.

“You have to meet me at Zimmerman’s at seven. You have to help me stop her,” he said.

“I’m working,” I lied.

“Seven. You have to. My life depends on it.”

Right then, I realized three things.

He was completely serious.

I still loved him.

There is nothing more disappointing than the coolest kid in the whole world turning drama queen on you. Really. It was downright depressing. So depressing that I figured, what harm could it do to help him one last time?

TUESDAY—FOUR TO EIGHT

The whole way to Pagoda Pizza, I think about where Charlie could have hidden something for me. I’m pissed it wasn’t in the tree house, and half worried that it was in the tree house but that Jenny Flick already got her slutty little hands on it. But then I remember the note. Hi, Vera. No. Charlie was smart. The night when it all happened to him—and those poor animals—he knew Jenny was crazy. He’d have never hidden something where she could find it.

When I get in, Marie says James was looking for me, and that he might be back later. Middle-aged Lazy Larry is pacing around, avoiding work, and then goes out for a smoke. While I balance myself on the back step and place a stack of flat boxes in front of me, I notice the little logo on the back. It says “100% recycled materials” in a circle, around an image of a tree. I stare at it as I fold a box’s side flaps and secure the tabs inside the slots. I fold another one, and then another—still staring at the logo. Until it hits me.

Charlie hid something in the tree, not the tree house.

I walk to the front and say to Marie, “I have to go. I’ll be back in twenty minutes.” I don’t give her a reason, and I don’t hear her response.

Ten minutes later, I pull into the gravel parking area for the blue trail. I wonder how many pairs of Hanes briefs did Charlie sell at this very spot? I get out of the car and jog up the path to the Master Oak. Though I’m taller now than when I last climbed it, it seems impossible to get to the lowest branch. I try to clamp myself around the wide trunk and shinny up, using the rough bark as steps, but it doesn’t work. I scratch the inside of my forearms trying, though. I walk around the tree, look for knots, and remember how Charlie used to boost me up to them. I try the clamp/shinny technique again, aiming for a knot that will gain me a decent foothold. After several misses, I gently push myself higher, until I can grab a skinny limb and pull myself up.

By the time I’m twenty feet up, I’m out of breath. I look down and give myself a fright, knowing I still have about ten feet to go before I reach Charlie’s favorite hiding spot. I sit for a minute and say, “If I fall and break my neck, it’s totally your fault, dude.”

When I have my breath and courage back, I continue up, branch after branch, until I’m standing with one hand reaching into the old hollow, groping around. I find an unopened box of Marlboro Reds and shove them back in the hole. I feel the other box—the cigar box from my dream—and grab it, and just as I’m pulling it out of the hole, I tip it against the edge and lose my grip. I do one of those crazy adrenaline overreactive catch things and secure the box, but not without almost tossing myself out of the tree in the process.

I have it. It’s stuck in my armpit, and as I maneuver down the tree, I feel sad for the first time since Charlie died. Not angry or pitiful. Not hard-done-by or abandoned. Not sarcastic. Not protective. Just sad. I find myself hugging the Master Oak as I stop to balance on its strong, wise limbs. I find myself crying.

Which Zen guy said, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” That’s how I feel without Charlie. Like one hand clapping.

I stash the box under my driver’s seat and drive back to the store. When I get there, I see Larry’s car in front of the store and assume the rush hasn’t started yet. So I park in the far end of the lot, outside the party store, and I pull the box onto my lap. I break the Scotch tape seal with my thumbnail and lift the lid. It’s a small stack of messy, scribbled-on (mostly McDonald’s) napkins—and under them, a sealed yellow envelope. Some of the napkins are stapled at the top, like a booklet. The cover page reads, in all caps, DEAR VERA. The writing on the envelope isn’t Charlie’s.

I start reading.

After you read this, you’ll probably hate me.
“Impossible,” I think. “I already hate you.”

Valentine’s Day, I was finally going to ask you to be my girlfriend. I sent the flowers—
“Whatcha readin’?”

It’s James. His head is right by the car door. I drop the napkins in the box, close the lid, and move it to the passenger’s seat.

“Nothing. Just some old shit from when I was a kid.”

We look at each other.

“I miss hanging out,” he says.

“Me too.” I give him a quick peck on the cheek. “That’s for switching shifts.”

“How you feeling?” he asks, and points to his head.