Because it was true.
No, it’s not possible, he thought.
Nate’s father felt slightly dizzy, and his throat went dry and tight. Finally he understood what was happening. In a cautious voice Larry said, “Wendell? Wendell Bruno? Is it really you?”
The other man smiled slightly and nodded. “Yes, it’s really me. Your old Scrabble partner.”
It had been twenty-six years since these two men had been here together as twelve-year-old boys. Back then, Larry had obviously had no beard, and he hadn’t even begun to shave. Wendell had had a full head of frizzy hair then, and no dark glasses shielding his bright blue eyes. They had been good friends and Scrabble partners, but the loss of the game in the final round had devastated them both.
Their friendship became painful, and whenever they got together after Yakamee, all they thought about was losing. So the two boys drifted apart, and then Wendell’s family moved away from their town in Arizona, and Larry never saw him again. He had mostly stopped wondering about him. Even thoughts of Wendell Bruno had needed to be blotted out.
But here he was, miraculously, after all this time. Unblottable.
“Wendell, what are you doing here? Do you have a kid in the tournament, too?” Nate’s father asked.
His former Scrabble partner shook his head. “No,” he said. “I just come here to watch every year. I live right in Yakamee.”
“You do? That’s a coincidence.”
“Not really. I moved here years ago. I wanted to live in the place where my loserdom began.”
“You moved to Yakamee, Florida, just because we lost the tournament here?” asked Larry.
“I guess you could put it that way,” said Wendell. “And besides, the climate is nice. I got myself a job at Funswamp.”
“The amusement park? What do you do there?”
“I’m a character.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well,” said Wendell Bruno, “Funswamp is trying to be competitive with the more well-known amusement parks in the state. So it came up with its own set of characters. You know—the cute, lovable creatures that kids want to meet and shake hands with and hug. I’m the main one: Scaly the Gator.”
“Scaly? I’m not sure that’s the most appealing name,” said Larry.
“Ah, the kids love Scaly. At least I think they do,” Wendell added. “I dress up as a big green-and-rust-colored alligator that’s the color of certain kinds of algae. And I go up to the kids and I say”—and here Wendell put on a dopey, slowed-down voice—“‘I’m Scaly! Would you like to hug me? But be careful, those scales are rough!’”
“Oh,” said Larry politely. “I see. You know, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they do love you, Wendell. Actually, we’re going to the amusement park tonight. There’s going to be an outing there. All the kids from the tournament are being bused over.”
“That would never have happened in the old days,” said Wendell.
“Funswamp didn’t exist in the old days,” said Larry. “It was just a swamp crawling with alligators.”
“True. I see you’ve got a son playing,” said Wendell. “I saw his name on the roster, and I knew it had to be your kid. Every year when the tournament pulls into town, I look to see if there’s a Saviano. I figure that Scrabble talent is at least partly genetic. And this year, what do you know: ‘Nate Saviano.’”
“In all honesty, my son Nate would rather be on his skateboard,” said his father. “He’s really good at it. You should see him.”
“Me, I come to the tournament every year just to drink in the atmosphere,” said Wendell. “And to remember what it was like back then.”
“Oh, come on,” said Larry. “Be honest. You come here every year to torture yourself. To remember how close we came to victory, and how we lost it.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s pretty accurate,” Wendell admitted with a sad little laugh. “We were two kids who had a chance to become winners,” he said. “And then we didn’t.”
“No, we didn’t.”
“And our lives have been affected because of it. At least, mine has. How’s your life been, Larry?” Wendell asked. “Loserish or winnerish?”
“It’s been a mixed bag,” Nate’s father said. “I got divorced. But the best thing that ever happened to me was my son. I know I drive Nate crazy. I just can’t help myself.”
“He’s got to win the tournament, right?” said Wendell.
Larry nodded. “Yes,” he said softly. “It would really mean a lot to me.”
“You know, I’ve been watching your kid since this morning,” Wendell Bruno said. “He had a squeaker with the first game, but then things picked up. He’s a strong player, Larry. I started thinking that if he and his partner win the whole thing, it would mean a lot to me as well. It would be like reliving the past and fixing it, you know? Having it end the right way, finally.”
“That’s exactly how I feel,” said Larry Saviano.
“Maybe,” said Wendell, coming closer, “I could help make that happen. Can we go somewhere private to talk?”
Nate’s father nodded, and followed him onto the up escalator.
One level above, in Ballroom B of the Grand Imperial Hotel, the Junior National Gymnastics Competition was taking place. Some of the gymnasts’ parents wandered around the upstairs atrium, which was identical to the one below, but none of the parents looked familiar to Larry. There was no overlap between this world and the world of Scrabble one flight down. He and Wendell could talk freely here.
Out of curiosity, Nate’s father opened the door of Ballroom B a crack and peered inside. Gym mats had been rolled out on the floor, and there was a blur of movement. All around the edges of the ballroom, parents sat watching their kids. “Go, Suzy, go! Go, Suzy, go!” a mother and father chanted excitedly. All the young gymnasts had intense expressions on their faces as they performed their elaborate routines.
Larry gently shut the door and the two men went to sit in big armchairs in the adjacent atrium. “Here’s the thing,” Wendell said quietly. “I’ve been following the different games today.”
Larry nodded. “And?” he said.
Wendell Bruno took a crumpled receipt from a fastfood place out of his pocket. “Here,” he said. “I made a list of the teams that pose the greatest threat to Nate and Maxie.”
Larry looked down at the receipt for a triple bacon burger and a large Frooty Slurp. Across it Wendell had written:
THE OREGONZOS
THE SURFER DUDES
THE WORD GURRRLS
THE DRILLING FALLS SCRABBLE TEAM
“So how can this list help?” asked Larry. Whatever Wendell was planning, he didn’t like the feel of it.
“Just trust me,” said Wendell. “Can you do that?”
“I don’t know. We haven’t seen each other in twenty-six years. That’s over a quarter of a century.”
“Think what it would be like if Nate won,” Wendell said. “Can you picture it? Can you taste it? Can you imagine it?”
Nate’s father closed his eyes. Yes, he could almost imagine it. He desperately needed to find a way to make his son win, and he would do whatever it took.
Chapter Thirteen
PREPARE TO BE AMUSED
The doors of the ballroom were thrust open and Duncan emerged, limping on his injured knee. He took a deep breath, then slowly let it out. His team had won game three, the last game of the day, although it had been a rough game, and not because of their opponents, but because of Carl. Early in the match, when it was Duncan’s turn to draw tiles, he’d picked an N, an E, and an L, which were completely ordinary letters—not disastrous, but not good. Carl, who’d been watching him closely, was shocked that Duncan had picked those tiles. He fiercely wrote on the notepad: FTPS, DORFMAN, FTPS!
Duncan didn’t have to be told that FTPS meant “fingertips.”
Carl drew three thick lines under the second FTPS.
But Duncan just shook his head no. He had resolved that he wanted to play witho
ut any help for as long as he could. Carl was confused, because he believed that Duncan had already used his fingertips to help win the first game. So why wasn’t he doing it again now? Carl wrote on the pad:
Why not?
And Duncan just wrote back:
Because I don’t want to.
Carl didn’t realize that the good letters Duncan had picked in the first game had been selected completely by chance, and that the second game, against the Wranglers, had, of course, just been a blowout. But the opponents in game three, the Proud Nerds, were very, very good, and the Drilling Falls team’s tiles were not. It became obvious to Carl as the game wore on and the clock ran down that Duncan was not using his fingertips at all. Drilling Falls managed to pull ahead through intense planning and smart moves, and at the end of the game, which Drilling Falls won 391 to 378, Carl pulled Duncan by his arm over to the side of the ballroom, and said, “What were you just doing in there?”
“Playing.”
Carl kept his grip on Duncan’s arm. “Look, we had a deal, dude. The only reason you’re here is because of how you can help the team. We came really close to losing that one. Did you hit your head, too, when you fell off the skateboard? Is that it? I want to see you using your stuff. Do what you’re supposed to do.”
He sharply released Duncan’s arm and walked off, but as Duncan went to tell his mother they’d won, he could still feel the pressure of Carl’s grasp.
Duncan’s mother was nowhere to be found. She had told him she’d be waiting for him right outside the ballroom after the game, but she wasn’t here. He watched as other kids went up to their parents to tell them how their games had gone. He had an uneasy feeling that something was wrong.
Duncan limped to the lobby, and was making his way toward the elevators to go up and check on his mother, when April Blunt tapped him on the shoulder.
“Hey, Duncan, how’d you guys do?”
“We won again. You?”
“We won, too. And I hear that so did Nate and Maxie. It’s a good way to end the day. That knee okay? You’re limping pretty badly.”
“They gave me some ice and some antibacterial stuff,” Duncan said. “But it’s no big deal.” Actually, the knee was still throbbing, but he had other worries.
“Hey, listen,” said April, “tonight at Funswamp, maybe we can go on a couple of rides together.”
“Sure,” he said. “Do you know I’ve never been to an amusement park?”
“Really? Never? Well, prepare to be amused.”
Duncan took the glass elevator upstairs to eighteen and slid the card into the door of his room. The green light popped on, and Duncan pushed the door open and went in. The room was dark and the shades were drawn. In one of the two beds, his mother lay under the covers.
He knew what this meant: she’d had another migraine. MIGRAINE, he thought, is an anagram of IMAGINER. These days he couldn’t stop doing that.
“Mom?” Duncan asked. “Are you okay?”
“Oh, hi, honey,” she said, opening her eyes. “You’re back. How was the game?”
Duncan slowly walked through the room.
“You’re limping!” she said. Even in the dark she could tell, and she reached out a hand for the light.
“It’s nothing,” he said quickly. “You don’t need to turn on the light. It’ll hurt your eyes.”
“What happened?” she asked.
“I fell,” said Duncan. Which wasn’t untrue. “But we won,” he added quickly. “Carl and I are undefeated.”
“Well, that’s wonderful. Congratulations.”
“When did the migraine start?” Duncan asked, sitting down on the other bed and elevating his painful knee.
“It came on all of a sudden,” she said. “I saw the aura— you know—and then I got into bed and waited for the headache. And boy, it came. It’s been vicious.”
“But did something happen first?” Duncan persisted. “Something stressful?”
“No,” said his mother. “I was sitting and having a nice conversation with Nate Saviano’s dad, Larry.”
“What were you talking about?”
“Oh, nothing much. He was saying something about how hard it is to be a single parent. I agreed. We compared notes, and we both said that you kids are terrific. That was all.” She paused. “Listen, I don’t think I can go to Funswamp,” she said. “Will you be okay without me?”
“No problem, Mom,” Duncan said.
“If I rest up, I should be all better by tomorrow,” she said. “And we can watch the final round together on the big screen. Unless, of course, you’re in it.”
Duncan thought about his mother’s conversation with Nate’s father. He remembered that once, when he was little, he’d had a bad cough with lots of phlegm. His mother had dragged an air mattress into his room and spent the night on the floor beside his bed. The vaporizer had hissed, and Duncan had coughed and coughed, and he and his mother had told each other knock-knock jokes all night.
He knew he’d missed out on having a father who could also lie on the floor on an air mattress once in a while when you had a bad cough. But if you’d never had something to begin with, then after a while you forgot what you didn’t have. If your father had died of panosis before you were born, then you always thought of yourself as someone whose father had died of panosis before you were born. It was just your story; it was just part of who you were.
His mother dropped back to sleep now, and Duncan went into the bathroom to change out of his bloody, ripped pants and into a fresh pair. Then he grabbed a sweatshirt from his overnight bag and slipped from the room.
Two flights down, April Blunt sat on the bed she was sharing with her sister Jenna, who was thunking a basketball against the wall. “Don’t you think the people in the next room might not like that?” April asked her.
“Might not like what?”
“The basketball hitting the wall sixty times a minute.”
“Oh,” said Jenna, stopping. “I hadn’t realized.”
Instead, she began to spin it on her finger. Jenna could never keep still. It was similar to the way April couldn’t keep still inside herself now. Something kept knocking against her brain, reminding her how much she wanted to show her family that Scrabble was a sport, an amazing sport. Reminding her how much she wanted them to be interested in her.
But still, though she knew it was crazy, she also wanted to find that boy from the motel pool. He wasn’t here at the YST; she was pretty sure of that by now. But maybe, she thought, if she and Lucy won the tournament and their picture appeared in the papers and on the Internet, the boy from the pool would see it, wherever he lived, and a tiny lightbulb would pop on in his brain.
I know that girl, he would say to himself. We met once. She told me the anagram ROAST MULES, and I never figured it out.
ROAST MULES, he would think . . . ROAST MULES . . . I have to get in touch with her.
But this was a ridiculous, demented fantasy, April knew as she sat on her hotel bed with a basketball spinning near her head. The boy would never reappear.
Three more flights below, Nate Saviano walked down the long hallway with his skateboard under his arm, heading for the vending machine. His earbuds were in his ears, and he was listening to his favorite band, The Lungs.
Nate wished he could get on his board now and skate forever, and never have to think about anything else. He pictured himself and Maxie Roth doing ollies and heelflips while yelling out math problems to each other. That was how he wanted to spend a lot of his day. Skating and doing math.
The music poured into his ears, but in the distance, Nate thought he heard a voice. He turned around and saw his father waving and calling from the other end of the hallway.
Nate grabbed the earbuds from his ears. “What?” he yelled.
“I thought that maybe before Funswamp you and I could go over a few word lists.” His father tentatively held out a stack of index cards.
“Dad,” said Nate. “I’ve been playing all day. I
’m wiped.”
“Okay,” said Larry. “Say no more.” Even from all the way down the hall, Nate could see his disappointment. The sight of this bothered him, and so Nate sighed, then headed back toward the hotel room.
One more day, Nate told himself. One more day, and then I will be done forever.
If only it could be that easy.
Chapter Fourteen
WHAT THE GATOR KNEW
As the coach buses pulled up to the amusement park, an irritating song groaned from the loudspeakers strung up over the entrance:“FUNSWAMP IS THE FUNNIEST SWAMP
IT’S THE SWAMPIEST FUN IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD
HO HO HO AND HA HA HA
COME MEET OUR GATOR
’CAUSE THERE’S NO GATOR GREATER
THAN AT . . . FUNNNNNNN . . . SWAMP!”
And then the song began all over again.
Duncan pressed his face against the bus window and looked out. The amusement park was lit up with hundreds of brilliant lights. WELCOME YST! read a banner over the archway.
All the players from the YST were given wristbands and ushered out of the buses. “Stay in groups of at least two!” they were told. “Don’t get lost!” And, of course, “Have fun!”
If there was anything word-related or educational about Funswamp, it was well hidden. As everyone pushed through the turnstiles into the park, Duncan Dorfman could smell the sweet stink of cotton candy, and the aroma of shining hot dogs as they turned on the rotating rods of their grills.
Funswamp was sort of the opposite of the Scrabble tournament, and yet it filled up another part of him that had long been empty: The amusement park part; the part that craved junk.
“Whoa, look at this place,” Duncan said to Nate, who stood beside him.
“Yeah, it’s totally cheesy,” said Nate. He had been to many amusement parks in his life, but this one was probably the worst ever. Nate took in the sight of the cruddy-looking rides, and the adults dressed as reptiles and amphibians walking around having their pictures taken with kids.