Please Ignore Vera Dietz(55)
Author: A.S. King

The night of the funeral, a pickle talked to me inside my head. It said, “Eat me and you will know the truth.” Sure, it was after I took those shots of vodka, but it did talk to me, and I did eat it. I’ve been waiting ever since.

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO CHARLIE KAHN—PART 2

There are three more napkins. The first one has only four words on it.

Please don’t hate me.
I’m crying now, and there’s snot dripping off the tip of my nose. I feel so bad for Charlie. I wish he had told me this stuff. I wish he had told my dad or the guidance counselor or a teacher or something. I wish he had stopped before it went this far.

I’m going to run away tomorrow. I’m going to get on the bike and drive as far as I can. I’m going to start over. Either that or by the time you get this, I’ll be in jail.
“I wish you were in jail, Charlie,” I say. I do. I wish he was in jail. I’d visit him tomorrow and bring him a carton of Marlboro Reds. I’d be his best friend again. I’d show him that it’s possible to become the opposite of your destiny.

The last napkin I find, unattached to the others, has been crumpled and then straightened out again. It says,

I wish we could go back in time and climb trees together again. I love you, Vera. I always will.
I stare at the yellow envelope and wonder are its contents enough to make a small-town cop reopen a closed case? Will anyone care that a dead kid didn’t set that fire? (A dead kid who died choking on his own puke, with a blood alcohol level of .31?) I pull the sheets up to my neck and look around my room. I look out the window at the trees swaying in the night breeze. No one will ever know if Charlie died on purpose or if he was just being reckless. No one will know who saw him last or who kicked him out of their car. I thought, when I found this box, that I’d know more about how he died, but I don’t. I’m not sure why I thought it would matter, though. Knowing won’t bring him back.

I flip through the napkins with my thumb. There is nothing left to read. So I read I love you, Vera. I always will over and over again. Then I put them all back in the cigar box and shove it into my backpack. I see my Vocab notebook and I take the study sheet out and browse the words, and every single one seems fitting. Fugacious, tourbillion, moiety, repugn, sacrosanct, censure, morass, El Dorado, and turpitude.

None of them matter, though. Because I’m not going to make it to my Vocab class tomorrow. This should make me feel relief, but it doesn’t. It makes me scared and nervous and jittery. I’m afraid I won’t ever see the thousand Charlies again, and that he’ll stop making me turn on heavy-metal radio stations.

As I lie here in the dark, I say, “But if I do this, then I’ll lose you.”

Clear as day, he says, “You’ll never lose me, Vera. I’m the Great Hunter now.”

LIVE A LITTLE—WEDNESDAY

Charlie is the almonds in my granola. He is the 2% fat in my milk. Ingesting him is making me stronger.

Dad looks at his watch. “You’re late, Veer.”

“It’s cool. My Vocab quiz isn’t until ten.”

“I’ll write you a note,” he says, searching for a spare piece of paper in the earthenware bowl on the breakfast bar.

“What are you doing today?”

“Oh, you know. Exciting stuff. Tax returns and payroll.”

“Want to come with me?”

He looks up. “To school?”

“Eventually.”

“You’re not making sense,” he says, and then he notices the tears in my eyes and adds, “You okay?”

“Better than ever. You want to come, or what?” I say that confidently, but really, I’m scared.

He stares at me.

“It’s a magical mystery tour, Dad. Live a little.”

He smiles and nods. “Okay. I trust you. Why not?”

I drive along the road through Mount Pitts for five minutes with the stereo up, and Dad is trying his best to maintain a laid-back Zen appearance about not knowing where we’re going. When we’re two blocks away, I say, “I lied to you.” He’s having too much fun to notice the change in my tone. I pull out the cigar box from my backpack. “We’re going to clear Charlie’s name this morning. He didn’t burn down Zimmerman’s. He was messed up in a bunch of other stuff. The proof is in this box.”

He’s staring at me now as if I just smacked him.

“I need you to help me talk to the police.”

“Vera, I—”

“You wish you knew more? Seriously. You don’t.” I think, And when you do, you’ll wish you didn’t.

Dad says nothing for the next two blocks, but that’s because he’s leafing through Charlie’s stack of napkins and fingering the yellow envelope. He won’t feel too bad until I tell him about where it all started. Back on Overlook Road—so long ago, Mom still lived with us. When I tell him, he will be consumed with regret like I am.

We get a guy who knows Dad from community college. What luck. I start with what I should have told the police nine months ago. I tell him everything about what I saw on the night Zimmerman’s burned down.

I hand him the cigar box and explain about John the pervert. I tell him about the underwear and the things Charlie wrote about in his note to me. Dad looks so appalled, I feel scared to answer the detective’s questions about when it all started, but I figure it’s all or nothing.

“Charlie and I were walking one day, when we were eleven. We were right across from my house when he stopped his car and asked us if we wanted to get our pictures taken.”

Dad tenses.

“Charlie told me a few years later that was the first time he sold something to him.”

The detective asks, “And you know where he lives?”

I tell him.

At the end, the detective makes us sign a few forms and tells us we’ll have to come in again for more formal affidavits, but that they’ll need some time to prepare a case.

Dad says to me, when we get back into the car, “Vera, I—” He shakes his head as if he doesn’t know what to say. “What you just did was really responsible and right,” he says.

He can see that I’m crying. He says, “Oh, come on. Don’t be sad.”

I manage “That was so hard” before I can’t say any more. I’m thinking about how regret begets regret begets regret, and about the cycle I’ve just broken. I thought I’d feel better when I did it. I thought part of me would feel lighter. It doesn’t.