Free Please Ignore Vera Dietz by A. S. King Page A

Charlie’s house and our house will fill up with the snowmelt and then slow to a trickle. In summer it will barely be there, and the crayfish will hide in the wet mud under rocks until the next rain. Salamanders will dry out and die next to fish that never made it to the lake in time.
    Something about death reminds me of birth, I guess. I have my own version of afterlife now that Charlie is dead. There is one. People there can see you and they live on in the things around us. In the trees. The birds. Like that feeling you get when someone behind you is staring at you—I get that all the time, but it’s Charlie who’s staring. From up there, or over there, or wherever it is that he went.
    Since I developed this idea, I sometimes joke with him when I eat things. I say, “Charlie, if you’re part of this Big Mac, I’m really sorry.” Then I eat the Big Mac. Because it’s possible, isn’t it? Isn’t anything possible? Charlie the pickle? Charlie the woodpecker? Charlie the raindrop?
    I took three Tylenol at Aunt Kate’s house and I feel better, but my mouth feels like something died in there, and I can’t get it to feel normal. I’ve got an hour before I have to leave for work, so I stupidly go to my dead-rodent-smelling room and set my alarm for 3:45 and sleep.
    When I get up three snooze alarms later, I feel worse.
    I rush to the kitchen, scarf down a granola bar, tuck my hair into the Pagoda Pizza hat to hide how one side is plastered down with drool, and run out the door.
    Right when the cold air hits and the door slams behind me, I hear it through the trees.
    “You’re a fucking idiot, you know that?”
    “You’re lucky I don’t kill you right now!”
    I don’t know where they are. Back deck, where Charlie and I used to play Uno? The front porch, where raccoons used to shit on the doormat because Charlie said it had some weird chemical that communicated “Shit here” in Raccoon? The upstairs balcony, where Mrs. Kahn would go every Saturday morning to beat the small sheepskin rugs they had in their bedroom?
    I can see movement through the trees, but rather than think about it, I ignore it, like I should. As I drive to work, though, I wonder about every house I pass, because I’ve read the statistics—haven’t you? Which of these houses hold the wife beaters? The child abusers? The rapists? The drunks and gamblers? Which of these houses hold the parents who hurt their own kids? Where are the signs? Wouldn’t it be nice if there were big flashing signs to warn us about these people?
    When I get to the main strip, I remember James and our kiss last night. He’s not the kind of guy I can bring home to Dad and call my boyfriend. I can’t take him to the prom.
    Because I barely ate anything at Aunt Kate’s, I go to the McDonald’s drive-thru and get a Big Mac. Because Charlie could be a pickle, I say, “Sorry, dude,” before I bite into it.

HISTORY—AGE FOURTEEN
    Charlie and I were sitting in our normal spots in the Master Oak. The leaves were nearly all fallen now, and the forest allowed the autumn sun rays to press through. He climbed two limbs up and reached into a gnarled old knot that had doubled as a squirrel’s nest. He pulled out a box pack of Marlboro Reds and swung back down into the crook where he usually sat, and unwrapped the cellophane. He banged the pack a bit on his hand, coaxed a smoke out of the middle of the front row, and popped it into his mouth. Fourteen, and I’d guess Charlie was already at a pack a day.
    “Where’d you get those?”
    “What?”
    “You always have a new pack.”
    “I have my connections, I guess.”
    I thought he meant his father. After all, there was no one at school who could get that many packs in a week.
    “Do you buy them by the carton, or what?”
    “Let’s go and check out the pagoda,” he said. “I’m bored as hell.” Then he pulled out a brand-new shiny Zippo lighter. It had his initials engraved on it: CDK . Somehow, I didn’t think