The Downside of Being Charlie (2 page)

Ahmed is heavy on relationship advice now because he dated Tina Capelli for exactly three months and two days last year. Tina was Ahmed's first real girlfriend, and he'd fallen hard for her. I thought it was pretty interesting that he was telling me how to be such an ass when he had totally gone all gaga over Tina—bought her flowers for no reason, opened the door for her, walked
her to every class even though he ended up getting a ton of detentions from being constantly late to his classes. He even dropped me for a while because he was spending so much time with her. He'd gone the whole nine yards, but it wasn't enough. They broke up right before summer because Tina was going to Jersey for the entire vacation. She told Ahmed she couldn't have fun, real fun, if she had to worry about a boyfriend back home. Basically, it was her way of telling him she was going to be hooking up with other guys left and right all summer long. Nice. Ahmed was devastated. He even cried. But we made a pact never to talk about that again—and I mean he wrote an actual pact and made me sign it.
Ahmed's Rat Pack Pact
, he called it, and he outlined a creed of appropriate Rat Pack behavior, one of which was never cry for a chickie—and if that should happen—never, never, never discuss the incident.

It's not like I don't appreciate the advice Ahmed gives me. God knows I could use it if I really wanted to get with Charlotte. What former fat boy couldn't? I should be taking notes. I should be scribbling away like he's freakin' Hugh Hefner. But sitting here talking about her, thinking about Mark, knowing tomorrow is the first day of school and the last day to set my plans to get Charlotte VanderKleaton into effect, I feel sick.

The truth is, I hadn't come up with an
actual
plan. Even though I'd lost some weight (though I could still stand to lose a good twenty pounds more) and I'd gotten a few new items in my wardrobe, I still didn't have the smooth skills to actually talk to this girl. And talking to her would probably be a prerequisite to getting with her.
What was I thinking? I'm suddenly glad I never told Ahmed about how Charlotte was my motivation for losing weight. I'm glad he doesn't know that as I jiggled my fat ass in a frenzy of jumping jacks and sprints, I was thinking of her. And now, I really didn't want to hear Ahmed talk about girls and how cruel and heartless they can be.

“Tina back from Jersey?” I ask. I know it's a low blow, but I put it out there anyway. After Tina, all Ahmed did was go on these long, random tangents about girls and, ironically, the best way to stop it was to mention Tina.

Ahmed stops twitching and straightens up.

“Don't know. Don't care. I don't talk to that dame anymore. She couldn't handle the sophisticated stylings of a man like myself. In fact, my man, I have no idea what I ever saw in her anyway.” He pulls up the collar of his smoking jacket. I don't bother to tell him that, in fact, we both know exactly what Ahmed saw in Tina Capelli since it was impossible to miss the two swelling mountains on her chest that every boy in school wanted to conquer.

“Hey, how do you know that new girl's name anyway?” he asks, his mind backtracking to something I said five minutes ago, which is usually the case with Ahmed. He abandons his search for the perfect button-down shirt and skinny tie that will let all the ladies know he's back on the market and throws himself on his bed, props his feet on to the wall, and proceeds with an improvised tap dance.

“Heard her mom calling for her,” I tell him, which is true. I'd actually started jogging around the neighborhood
when I got back from fat camp with the pretense that I had to stay in shape and lose more weight, but really, for the more important purpose of getting another look at Charlotte. And it was on one of these jogs that I passed her house and heard her mom calling her from the car to help bring in the groceries. Charlotte. Beautiful, amazing, intoxicating Charlotte. And I thought maybe it meant something that her name is Charlotte and mine is Charlie—both beginning with “Char”—and then I got lost in the thought that we were destined to be together.

“Aha, so you got the nerve to do a little stalking did you? Get a little peekaboo in her window, too?” He grins.

“Shut up.” I get up from the swivel chair at his desk. The idea of peeking into Charlotte's window makes me feel ashamed and excited at the same time.

“I gotta jet,” I tell him. “My dad will be home soon, and I told him I'd take care of dinner tonight.”

“All right, Betty Crocker. Pick you up tomorrow. Be ready, my man, it's our senior year! Senior year! Woot!” Ahmed jumps off the bed and does some crotch-grabbing Michael Jackson moves. “Watch out, ladies, here I come!” he yells in a high-pitched voice.

“See you later, Freak,” I say as he moonwalks across his room.

I walk home thinking of what tomorrow will be like. I hope Charlotte is in some of my classes. I wonder if she will remember the fatty on the sidewalk that didn't wave back to her that day and figure out it was me. When I think of that day, I'm secretly grateful Dad did this, even though at the time I could've decked him for
insisting I was going to enjoy it.

I mean, sure, it was true that once I got there it was kind of nice not being the only fat kid around. For once, there were others
much
bigger than me, and I didn't look completely out of place. But the truth is, I couldn't stand being surrounded by those rejects. They were all so pathetic and weak. And since I didn't want to make any new friends, I sure as hell couldn't partake in the black market of Ring Dings and chocolate bars that ran through the place like a freakin' drug cartel, so I had to suffer all summer long with no one to talk to. But screw them. I chomped on my lettuce, did the exercises, and the weight actually started coming off, and then I thought,
wait . . . I can do this
. And I did.

I should've been ecstatic when the last day of camp finally came and Dad drove up in his black SUV and threw my suitcase in the back. I should have been grinning from ear to ear that I'd lost thirty pounds of fat that had apparently put me in the category of immediate intervention. I should have been pissing myself that my pants were falling off, that I'd shown Dad I wasn't as pathetic as he thought, and that I had actually learned some stuff and was determined to go home and continue this shit on my own. I should've been dancing because I would never have to see these freaks again. But I wasn't, because despite this momentous and felicitous occasion, as I got in Dad's car and listened to his congrats and what I think looked like a glimmer of pride in his eyes, I already knew. Mom was gone.

Maybe she left because Dad made me go to fat camp. Maybe she left because I didn't side with her. Maybe
she left because the moon was half-full or because there was a 30 percent chance of rain. Who the hell knows. I'm tired of trying to figure it out because here's the thing: my mom is a perpetual runaway.

I know, that doesn't make sense to anybody but me, but that's what she is. She just runs away. I don't know why; I don't know where. We just wake up sometimes—and poof!—she's gone. Then we wake up—and poof!—she's back. Dad pretends not to notice or care. Mom pretends not to notice or care—or maybe she really doesn't. So I have to pretend not to notice or care. And that's just the way it is.

What we usually do when Mom leaves is pretend she didn't, but I always wonder where she is. Even though I don't want to, I come up with 101 possible scenarios. Then I have to snap back to now, remind myself that this stuff happens all the time, and I should just forget about it. And I do because it's not like I want her around. I wouldn't even care if she decided to never come back, so long as she would just tell us, so I don't have to sit here and wait, wondering why she left. Even when we're doing something, we're really waiting to see if she comes back. We take out the garbage. We watch TV. We make dinner. Dad goes to work. I hang out waiting for school to start. We wait.

A
hmed picks me up the next day in a full peacock blue suit and wing tips. I shake my head wondering why I was destined to have the most abnormal of everything, including my best friend. Here I thought I was pimping in some ripped-up jeans, a plain white T-shirt, and the black studded wristband that Ahmed told me to take a chance on, to
use as inspiration for a new look, a new style, a new beginning, baby!
I get in Ahmed's car (aka the Roller Skate), with Frankie (aka Frank Sinatra), blaring on the stereo (which is pretty embarrassing, but whatever).

“I see you're trying to downplay things this year,” I say.

“Man, don't hate on my style. Not many people can pull off these threads. I look like the shiz-nit.” I grin and nod. He's right.

I shift in my seat and think of how Ahmed certainly did not have me in mind when he set his sights on this car. If I hadn't lost the weight, there's no way I would fit inside it. It's one of those tiny, good-for-the-environment kind of cars, but to the extreme. Ahmed called me up one day last summer and said, “Smart car. FORTWO. Look it up. It's mine.” I did a search for it
and started laughing my ass off when I saw it.

“Dude, that car could fit in your butt crack. I thought you would get a big boat, you know, like a caddie or something.”

“Nah, man. Boat cars are cool and all, but this is too AWESOME!” he yelled into the phone.

Ahmed worked like crazy the rest of that summer, all of last school year, and all of this summer at the local supermarket as a bagger. He squirreled away every cent he made (except for what he spent on flowers for Tina) and three weeks before summer ended, for his seventeenth birthday, his parents told him they'd put up the rest of the money as a birthday and early graduation gift. Ahmed almost exploded. He picked out a white one with blue stripes on the sides and named it the Roller Skate.

We zip into a parking space. I'm feeling okay as we walk up to the main school building. We turn some heads as we pick up our schedules, and while that's usually the case when I'm with Ahmed, I can't help noticing how people's eyes linger on me instead of moving right past me the way they usually do. I know it's because of the weight, which makes me feel oddly good and weird at the same time. Ahmed peers over his sunglasses at any cute girl we pass, then whistles and croons, “Hel-looooo . . .” or “Ring-a-ding-ding . . .” The younger girls smile and giggle. The older ones give him dirty looks, before looking my way. Looks of confusion and then shock cross their faces.

“Dude, this is weird,” I whisper to Ahmed as one girl says a little too loudly, “Oh my God, is that
Chunks
Grisner?
” I can't tell if the way she says it is good or bad.

“Shake it off, my man. It's gonna be your year, remember? Your year.”

I nod. We head over to the tables set up in the courtyard to pick up our schedules. Ahmed's right. This is going to be my year. I'd spent three years hiding in my own fat rolls, and now that I'd gotten rid of them, things were going to be awesome. I put on the cool shades that I hadn't had enough guts to wear, and do my best
I'm bored as shit waiting for my schedule but I look cool as hell
pose. When I get my schedule, I grab it from the guy with a bit of attitude before scanning the pink-and-white half sheet.

“Oh, crap,” I moan, suddenly deflated of all my short-lived confidence.

“What?” Ahmed says as he studies his.

“I got drama sixth period.”

“So?”

“Drama? Come on. Those kids are freaks. I didn't even sign up for drama. I can't get up in front of people and act.”

“Chill, man. It'll give you a chance to strut your stuff.” He grins because Ahmed can imagine nothing better than strutting his stuff.

“This sucks!” is all I can say because I've decidedly lost all desire to strut my stuff. “You think I can just get a schedule change? I can get it changed, right? Right?”

Ahmed mumbles a
yeah
as he looks over his own schedule. I fold the paper in half and make a mental note to stop by the guidance office after school. Even though administration always says they won't make any
“unnecessary” schedule changes, they usually do. And this was certainly necessary. And then I try to tell myself no big deal. I refuse to let anything bring me down today.

“Let's find our lockers,” Ahmed says and we head toward the 200 hall.

As soon as we enter, we see the huge crowd gathered at the end of it. We pass locker after locker, and I read off the numbers. Pretty quickly I realize that the crowd is gathered right in front of where my locker should be. We push our way through some of the kids, and soon it becomes all too obvious that the worst thing that could happen to me this year, what will guarantee that my senior year is a complete bust, what I never even thought to imagine, has happened.

“Oh, my man, total bombsville,” Ahmed says, sucking his teeth. “Tough breaks, Charlie.” He shakes his head.

“Crap,” I whisper as I stare at what will be the bane of my senior year.

“Literally, my man, lit-er-al-ly,” Ahmed says. I give him a pissed-off look. “Sorry.” He says and concentrates on smoothing his tie.

I watch Tanya Bate scrape what definitely appears to be crap . . . poop . . . feces . . . waste . . . dung . . . caca . . . shit . . . out of locker 243. My locker. Actually, it was
our
locker. Out of the one thousand other seniors at Kennedy High, I was the unlucky soul randomly chosen to share a locker with Tanya Bate this year. I choke on my own spit and cough until Ahmed gives me a hard whack on the back.

Everyone in the hall gives Tanya Bate a disgusted
look as she walks over to the trash can. Rebecca Sutter smirks and taunts Tanya as she disposes of the poop, which I'm desperately hoping is just dog poop.