“But that’s such a long name,” Pippa continued. “We just call him Char. Short for Charming.” She batted her eyelashes at him.
“Huh.” I narrowed my eyes at him. He was wearing a fitted, unbuttoned sport coat and a skinny blue-and-white-striped tie with dark washed jeans and spiffy white sneakers.
He nodded. “I know what you’re thinking, and I agree. Charming is a bit of an overstatement. But at least it gives me something to aim for.”
Pippa giggled. “Who wants to go up for a drink?” she asked, but she wasn’t asking me or Vicky.
Char shook his head. “I have to change the song. Sorry.”
He climbed back into his booth and put his enormous headphones back on. Pippa stayed where she was, like she had changed her mind about the drink. A second later, Char transitioned out of the Strokes and into Whitney Houston, “I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me).”
Pippa and Vicky squealed at the same time and started madly dancing. It was obvious to me that Pippa was putting on a show for Char, but when he climbed down from the DJ booth, he made eye contact with me, not Pippa.
“Do you want to dance?” he asked, holding out his hand to me.
“I wanna dance with somebody,” Whitney sang, “with somebody who loves me.”
I shook my head, feeling myself blush. “I don’t really dance.”
Char furrowed his brow. “Why not?”
“I … I don’t really know how.”
Char started dancing then, making weird jerking motions with his arms and stomping his feel at awkward intervals, like a spasmodic soldier. “Can you do better than this?” he shouted over the music.
I nodded, smiling despite myself.
“Great! Then you know how to dance.” He stopped doing the soldier moves and grabbed my hand in his. “Just follow my lead.”
“But I don’t know—”
He just shook his head and sang along in a loud falsetto: “So when the night falls, my lonely heart calls.”
He bent his elbow to pull me in toward him, then pushed me back with his arm. It was so fast that I didn’t have time to say anything before, suddenly, we were dancing. He twirled me in toward him, then switched hands and spun me back out the other way. He passed our arms over my head and then around my side. And the whole time he was doing some crazy, complicated footwork. His legs looked like spider legs.
“Watch my face!” he shouted over the music. “Not the floor!”
“I can’t help it!” I shrieked. “I don’t want to fall.”
“You’re not going to fall!” he shouted.
“I feel like I’m on a roller coaster!”
Char stopped spinning me around and pulled me in to him. “I need to change the song,” he said into my ear. “Playtime is over. Come with me into the booth for a sec.”
He led me into the DJ booth. It was only a few feet off the ground, but I felt suddenly like a god, looking down at the party from on high. The wall behind the booth was covered with Post-its on which people had written song requests or notes. Play some Sabbath! Something with a beat. Do you have anything by the Bluetones? DJ This Charming Man ROCKS! I watched Pippa and Vicky, just below us, still dancing like maniacs. Vicky was jumping up and down and punching the air, while Pippa swayed on her heels, rolling her shoulders and head around. Pippa stared at me for a moment, narrowing her eyes as if sizing me up for something—though for what, I could not have said. Then she tossed her hair and returned to ignoring me.
“I can dance!” I exclaimed as Char bent over his laptop.
“I told you,” Char said. “Everyone can dance.”
“Well, really it’s that you can dance. I just followed. Where did you learn to dance like that, by the way?”
“Church youth group,” Char replied without looking up.
“I don’t believe you.”
“That’s good. That’s a good policy. Try never to believe me unless you absolutely have to.”
“So, where did you learn to dance?”
“My wedding,” Char replied. He transitioned into a Primal Scream song. “I had to take a lot of dance classes before my wedding. You know, for our first dance to Elton John.”
For some reason this gave me a weird pang, which lingered even after I glanced at his ring finger and reassured myself that he was just kidding again. It was like the I don’t belong here feeling, sort of. It hit that same place in my stomach.
“Char,” I said, and asked for a third time: “Where did you learn to dance?”
He looked up at me then, though his hand was still fiddling with dials. “I taught myself,” he said finally. “I go out a lot.”
I nodded like I was very wise and knew all about going out a lot.
“How old are you?” he asked me suddenly.
“Sixteen.”
Char hung his headphones around his neck. “I like that.”
“What?” I felt self-conscious all of a sudden, and I crossed my arms across my chest. “That I’m only sixteen?”
He laughed. “That sounds creepy. No, I like that you’re honest. Some girls might claim to be older, you know, so they seem more mature or whatever. You’re not pretending to be anything you’re not.”
“I suck at pretending to be anything I’m not,” I told him, leaning against the booth’s railing. “It’s not for lack of trying.”
He laughed again.
“Your turn,” I said. “How old are you?”
“Nineteen. Twenty in June.”
“How long have you been doing this?” I gestured out at the room.
“I’ve been DJing at Start for a year and a half now. I’m precocious,” he confided.
“Oh, me, too.”
“Really?” He raised an eyebrow. “At what?”
“Pretty much everything. I started speaking in sentences when I was a year old. I could read chapter books by the time I was six. During fourth grade math class, I just sat in the back of the room with my own middle school pre-algebra textbook. My favorite band in kindergarten was the Cure, because I liked their lyrics.”
Why are you telling him this? Do you think this will make him like you more? In all your life, telling people these things about you has never once made them like you more. Don’t you know this by now?
“Wow.” Char pursed his lips. “So you’re, like, a genius?”
“No,” I said. “I’m precocious, and I work hard. It’s not the same.”
“All of that was in the past,” he said. “The middle school textbooks and all that. What precocious things are you up to these days, Elise?”
I tried to think of my answer to his question. The last thing I had really studied with that sort of vigor, the last thing I had thrown myself into so wholeheartedly and whole-mindedly, thrown myself into until I was covered in it, breathing it in until I almost drowned. The last thing was how to be normal.
“I’m not really doing that anymore,” I told Char. “I’m too old to be precocious.”
“Pshh. You’re a baby,” he said, and I felt that same pang again, deep in my stomach. “I am too old to be precocious. But I’ll keep claiming it anyway.” He turned back to his computer and clicked around some more. “All right, if you’re so smart, help me out here. What should I play next?”
“Well, what do you have?” I asked, trying to peer at his song list over his shoulder.
“I have everything,” he told me.
“‘Cannonball,’” I suggested. That had been the last song I was listening to on my headphones as I walked over here.
“The Breeders? Sure.” I watched as he pulled up the song on his computer, then put on his headphones and fiddled with the turntables in front of him.
Pippa came over and tugged on Char’s pant leg. He bent down to speak with her briefly, then stood up and said to me, “Hey, can you do me a favor? I’m going outside with Pippa for a sec. Take these”—he plopped his headphones around my neck—“and then, when this song ends, take this slider here and push it over to the oth
er side.”
“What?” I said.
“It’s really easy. It’s already cued up. Just move this thing here, and it will transition into the next song. I’ll be back before you have to do anything else.” Char laughed. “Don’t look so panicked, Elise.”
I looked out at the room of dancing, kissing, drinking people and asked, “But what if I screw up?”
Char placed his hands on my shoulders and looked into my eyes. “You won’t screw up. I believe in you.”
Then he hopped down from the booth, linked hands with Pippa, and ran out of the room with her. It was just me, standing alone, overlooking the party.
Anyone who said I believe in you obviously didn’t know me very well.
The Primal Scream song was nearing its end. I could hear the music beginning to fade out, and I could see on Char’s computer program that only twenty seconds remained. I took a deep breath, and then I shoved the slider over, as fast and as far as it would go.
The response from the crowd was instantaneous. As soon as the opening chords of “Cannonball” came out, everyone in the room screamed as one. People raised their hands and their drinks to the ceiling. A big group of boys in the center of the room started jumping up and down like they were on a trampoline.
The disco ball overhead scattered a million little lights over me, and I felt like I was sparkling from every inch of my body.
“Oh my God,” Vicky said right into my ear. I had been so focused on the crowd, I hadn’t even noticed her climbing into the DJ booth next to me. “Not you, too!”
“Not me, too, what?”
“You’re smiling,” Vicky said accusingly. “You’re smiling like a crazy person. Are you in love with Char now, too? Does everyone just have to go and fall in love with him on sight?”
I was smiling like a crazy person because I had just made a hundred people dance, I had just made a hundred people scream, I had just made a hundred people happy. I, Elise, using my own power, had made people happy. But I didn’t try to explain this to Vicky. All I said was, “I’m not in love with Char. I don’t even know him.”
“You see why they call him This Charming Man now, though, don’t you?” Vicky demanded.
I thought about Char for a moment as I stared out over the party. I thought about the way he smiled at me, the way he touched me when we were dancing, the way he said I believe in you. “I guess he could be kind of charming,” I conceded.
“Oh, ha,” Vicky replied sarcastically. “Ha, ha, ha.”
* * *
My entire childhood, I embarked on projects. Big, all-encompassing projects. When I was eight years old, my project was a dollhouse. I was everything to this dollhouse: contractor, architect, carpenter, electrician, furniture maker, and, once it was ready for dolls to live in it, I also played the roles of Mother, Father, and Baby.
When I was eleven I became fascinated by collages. My bedroom was filled floor to ceiling with catalogs, magazines, and fabric samples. I spent hours every day gluing paper to paper, and I was very happy.
When I was thirteen my big project was stop-motion animation. I spent most of my time writing scripts, crafting characters and scenery, filming them, editing the film, and uploading them to the Internet, where roughly three people watched them—my dad, my mom, and Steve.
My last big project was becoming cool. That one didn’t work so well. I don’t know why, exactly. I put as much effort into becoming cool as I ever put into my collages, but my collages turned out beautiful, while becoming cool turned out ugly and warped. Since then I focused on smaller projects. Waking up in the morning. Doing my homework. Walking around at night. Breathing.
I liked projects where I could take things apart and figure out exactly how they worked. The problem is, you can’t do that with people.
Even though it had been months since my last big project, my parents were still accustomed to them. So when I asked my father for DJ equipment, he didn’t ask why.
Because Dad works at a music store, he was able to get me turntables and a mixer for cheap. He brought them home for me on Friday evening, and I immediately ran up to my room and spent the rest of the night trying to figure out how to work the equipment. I didn’t even go downstairs for dinner.
That’s one of the nice things about my dad’s house: there is no official Dinnertime Conversation. If my mother’s house is filled with chatter and arguments and dog barks, my father’s house is filled with music and newspapers and books. Other people’s words, not our own. If I want to spend all night trying to transition between songs without leaving a gap in the music, then my dad spends all night alphabetizing his record collection, and we are both content.
The problem with my dad’s house, of course, is that it’s miles and miles away from Start. Which meant I had to come up with a way out of there for next Thursday night. Already some of the shininess I’d felt was disappearing from memory, my sparkle flaking off me like chipped nail polish. Friday morning, six hours after I’d left Start, I strode into Glendale High like no one could touch me. I saw Amelia Kindl looking at me out of the corner of her eye all through English class, and I didn’t even flinch. I thought about that moment of power, playing “Cannonball” for a room of strangers, and I thought, Amelia Kindl, you cannot hurt me.
That was the morning. But by noon, my armor had already started to wear away. At lunch, Emily Wallace paused at my table next to the bathroom and said, “You know you’re wearing my vest, right?”
I said, “Excuse me?”
She smirked and pointed. “That vest. It’s mine. I donated it to Goodwill last year.”
“Oh,” I said. I looked down and touched the buttons on my vest, which had looked so pretty and normal when I put it on earlier. I wanted to say to Emily, So what? I tried to call upon the power of Start, to remind myself of that moment when it was just me and the music and a roomful of people loving me and the music.
But that seemed so far away from me and Emily in this fluorescent-lit cafeteria right now. So I said only, “Oh,” while my friends, Chava and Sally, stared at their celery sticks and said nothing at all.
So, no, I couldn’t wait to go to Start again.
On Wednesday evening, as I prepared myself a mug of hot chocolate, I asked my father, “Is it okay for me to spend tomorrow night at Mom’s this week?”
Dad looked up from his newspaper. “Why?”
I’d been hoping he wouldn’t ask why. I didn’t mind lying by omission. Like how I’d just never gotten around to mentioning that I spent hours every night roaming the streets of Glendale. But I preferred not to lie directly.
“Because I have a big history project that I need to finish working on and hand in on Friday,” I answered. “It’s at Mom’s, and it would be a huge hassle to bring it over here.” Dad didn’t respond for a moment. “It’s a diorama,” I offered.
Dad nodded at that. He knows from experience how big my dioramas can get. “All right,” he said. “I hope Mr. Hendricks appreciates it.” He pulled out his phone and switched the dates on the Elise Calendar, and that was that.
And it’s a good thing he did, too, because Thursday … Thursday was bad. Thursday, I really needed Start.
6
Sometimes you just have those days. When you know, from the moment you wake up, that everything you touch you will break, so the less you touch, the better.
Thursday was one of those days.
My alarm didn’t go off, so I didn’t have time to shower before school. Dad was in a grumpy mood because his band’s show the next week had been canceled, and then he was in an even grumpier mood after I missed the bus and he had to drive me all the way to school. In Chem I realized I had forgotten my lab report, even though I had been working on it until midnight, so that was an automatic ten-point deduction. And then we had scoliosis testing.
For scoliosis testing, all the girls had to line up in the gym and then go behind a screen, one by one. It was unclear what happened once you went behind the screen. Presumably th
e nurse checked you for scoliosis, but it was equally possible that she made you recite the alphabet backward or perform an interpretive dance.
I wound up standing in the scoliosis line directly in front of Amelia Kindl. I could hear her sighing over and over, even though I didn’t look at her. Finally I couldn’t take it anymore, so I put on my iPod headphones, but I could still feel her sighing.
I was prepared to ignore Amelia for the entirety of fourth period, but Amelia, apparently, had other ideas, and eventually she tapped me on the shoulder.
I took off my headphones and turned around. “Yes, Amelia?”
“Why are you doing this to me?” she demanded.
I stared at her. The last conversation that Amelia and I had had was on the phone, the night after the first day of school. Over the past seven and a half months, I had imagined her saying many things to me. All of them started with sorry. Sorry I made you clean up our lunch table and possibly drove you to self-mutilation would have worked. Sorry I freaked out and told 911 that you tried to kill yourself also would have done the trick. Sorry I couldn’t be the friend that you wanted me to be was what I was really holding out for. Why are you doing this to me? was not actually an option.
“Why am I doing what to you?” I asked.
“Acting like I’m some sort of criminal,” Amelia replied.
“I’m not,” I said.
Amelia played with the ends of her honey-brown hair and adjusted her glasses on the bridge of her nose. She took a deep breath and went on. “You’ve spent the entire year ignoring me or glaring at me like I’m a serial killer.”
I thought, for the zillionth time, about what a nice girl Amelia was. She was a nice girl with a nice life, so people were nice to her. In Amelia’s world, nobody ever ignores you or glares at you just for kicks.
If Amelia had to be me for even one day, I think she would just fall to pieces.
“And, you know, if that’s how you want to act, well, that’s fine. But now this?” she said. “Don’t do this to me, Elise.”
“I don’t know what this is,” I told her honestly.