The Fingertips of Duncan Dorfman (8 page)

 

 

After breakfast, when her father and her siblings were out in the yard, April sat alone in the den. It was a comfortable, woodsy room with a dark red couch that you could sink into, which was what she did now. She thought again about the boy in the T-shirt from the motel pool. She didn’t even know what she would say to him if she found him. What could she say?
So, um, like, what’s been new with you over the past three years?
Probably their conversation would be awkward, and he would think she was peculiar for wanting to track him down.

But she knew she didn’t have to worry about this, because she was never going to find him.

April lay on the couch with her hands linked under her head and looked around the room. There were books stuffed into the shelves, and sports trophies on every surface. On the shelf beneath the coffee table was a stack of photo albums that her family had looked through many times over the years. Each one had gold printing on its spine. One read, THE BLUNT KIDS—ICE HOCKEY. Another read, THE BLUNT KIDS—LACROSSE. April had patiently sat and looked at these albums while her siblings gave her a blow-by-blow account of everything that was happening in each picture. She’d seen them all before, but now something—a little jab of a thought—made her want to see them again. Maybe she could find something in one of them.

Within seconds April had pulled out an album. The words on the spine read, THE BLUNT KIDS—BASEBALL AND SOFTBALL. April sat down with it in the big leather armchair, swiftly turning the stiff, plastic-sealed pages, looking at photos of her brother and sisters in uniform. In one shot, Liz was catching a fly ball; in another, Gregory was sliding into home. April realized that she knew what she was looking for, but she didn’t actually think she would find it.

Then, on the second to last page, she did.

In front of her was a snapshot of Gregory in a baseball uniform doing a somersault into a pool. Her mother had labeled the photo, GREGORY SHOWING OFF. But Gregory wasn’t the person April was looking at.

In the background of the photo she could see a blurry image of herself, a few years younger, on a lounge chair in a bathing suit with a portable Scrabble set. Sitting across from her, also blurry, was the boy from the motel pool.

April opened her mouth, but no sound came out. This photograph had been here
for three years
, and yet until this second April hadn’t known it existed. Probably, she thought, her own face appeared in the background of other families’ vacation photos, a brief and random visitor in their lives.

She continued to stare at the boy. Though she could hardly make out his face, the white writing on his blue T-shirt was clear enough. It read: SETTLE MARS.

What a strange phrase to put on a T-shirt. April was surprised she hadn’t remembered it before now. Within seconds, she was back upstairs in her room, and she and Lucy were on the phone, whispering frantically. Lucy, who always had her laptop open in front of her, was a very fast Internet searcher.

“‘SETTLE MARS,’” Lucy murmured as she typed. “‘SETTLE MARS.’ Do you think it could be a command? Or even the name of a band? I’ve heard of a grunge band called Eat My Tinfoil.” Lucy’s computer keys clicked away. “Wait.
Got it
,” she said, and then she read aloud: “‘Settle Mars’ is an organization that believes we should settle the planet Mars, which holds so much promise for mankind, since the earth has become so damaged by global warming.”

“Well, that’s depressing,” said April.

“‘Meetings are held in the basement of the Bakersfield, California, Public Library,’” Lucy went on. “A bunch of Mars-loving people in a library basement? That’s depressing, too. I wonder if they dress up in green, and speak in a language with chirps and beeps.”

“Why are you reading me this?” asked April. “I don’t get it.”

“Don’t you
see
?” said Lucy. “The boy at the pool could be a member of this group. And maybe now,” she added, “you’ll finally be able to find him. And go see him again, and say to him . . . whatever you want to say to him.”

 

 

The next day after school, sitting in Lucy’s kitchen, April dialed the California phone number of Settle Mars. A woman answered, her voice pleasant if a little strange.

“Hello,” said April. “I have just been reading about your organization, and I was thinking of joining.”

“Do you live in the Bakersfield area?” asked the woman.

“Uh, nearby,” April lied. “Are there any members who might be about my age? I’m in the . . . almost-teenaged category,” she said.

“I should say not,” said the woman. “We are not some kind of after-school kids’ club. We are a respected group that entertains the highest scientific inquiries about the red planet. The earth is on its way out. Mars is the new earth.”

And with that, the woman rudely hung up.

At some point in the near future, April Blunt thought, humans might certainly colonize Mars. But for now, it seemed impossible to do something as simple as find a boy from a motel pool, a boy who lived somewhere—but who knew where?—on earth.

April turned to Lucy and said in a defeated voice, “He’s not in the group.”

For a second, Lucy didn’t answer. But then she said, “What if he’s in another group?”

“What?”

“What if he’s a member of his school’s Scrabble team? After all—and basically it’s our only hope—you did make him love Scrabble. It might have
stuck
.”

“Well, that’s a nice idea, and I’ve thought of it before, but I still wouldn’t be able to find him.”

“That isn’t necessarily true.”

“What are you saying?” April asked.

“Maybe,” said Lucy, “you will find him on December twelfth.”

SMOOTH MOVES SMOOTH MOVES

A
ll fall, ever since that astonishing morning in the school cafeteria, Duncan Dorfman had relied on his fingertips only twice, both times during Scrabble games against Carl Slater. Carl wanted Duncan to use them every time they played, “to get you in the habit,” he said, but Duncan refused. He was saving his ability, his “power,” for December twelfth. “And even at the YST,” Duncan had warned Carl repeatedly, “I’m only planning on using my fingertips when absolutely necessary.”

“Yeah, sure, whatever,” said Carl.

“I mean it,” said Duncan. “Okay, Carl?”

“Okay. Relax.”

One afternoon in late November, thirteen days before the tournament, Carl invited Duncan to play a few games at his house after school. Though they had been practicing all the time, they had always gone to Slice’s, setting up the travel set on a table in the back. But today Slice’s was closed for renovations, so Carl suggested they walk to his house instead.

Carl Slater lived in a section of Drilling Falls called The Inlet, which was surrounded by high metal gates covered with ivy and had its own security booth. Carl waved to the security guard and he and Duncan walked through. Each house in The Inlet looked as if it should have been on the cover of a magazine called
Rich People’s Life
.

“See that one?” Carl said, pointing in the direction of an enormous house set way back from the road. “Well, you can hardly see it, but you know who lives there? Thriftee Mike. The real guy.”

“Really?” said Duncan. “That’s my mom’s boss. Or anyway, the boss of her boss. Not that she’s ever met him. I heard he only comes into the store at night, when everyone’s gone.”

“Yeah, I heard that, too. I haven’t met him either,” said Carl. “He’s not very friendly, apparently. He lives there by himself, and he spends a lot of money on security for his house and stuff. I guess he’s not really all that thrifty.”

The Slater house, down the street from Thriftee Mike’s, was massive and white, with tall columns out front. In the driveway sat Carl’s mother’s black sports car, and on the hood was the leaping gazelle ornament that seemed to coax the car forward like a horse pulling a chariot.

CHARIOT, Duncan thought, was an anagram of HARICOT, which was a green bean. He had been picking up new words fast. A lot of them were simply
words
to him, but he had already learned the meanings of some of the weirder ones, and he’d started trying to use them in conversation.

“Oh,” said Carl. “I guess my mom’s home.”

Inside, the black-and-white hallway of the Slater house seemed to go on for a while, and the only objects in it were a few statues of the heads of Slater ancestors. On the wall was an enormous painting of Carl and his parents standing on the lawn, all dressed up and looking off into the distance unhappily. Carl’s father was a businessman who traveled a lot, Carl said.

“Carl! Carl! Is that you?” called Mrs. Slater from down the hall. There came the sound of clacking heels as she made her way toward the boys, a cigarette waving in her hand. “Oh,” she said, “you’ve brought home a friend.” When Duncan was introduced, she said, “Yes, Carl’s Scrabble partner.”

“That’s me,” said Duncan. He liked the way “Scrabble partner” sounded. Of course, Carl probably made fun of Duncan to Brian Kalb (who still hated Duncan for replacing him at the upcoming tournament) and Mitchell Farley and Tiffany Griggs and the others when Duncan wasn’t around, calling him Lunch Meat—perhaps even singing little mean songs about him that included the words “Lunch Meat.” But right now, Duncan almost imagined that he was Carl’s real friend.

“You boys want a snack?” asked Mrs. Slater. “We’ve got Hoo-Has in the pantry.”

Hoo-Has! Duncan’s mother never bought those kind of sugary treats (“High fructose corn syrup? Seventeen grams of fat? Are you out of your
mind
?” she’d say in the supermarket when Duncan handed her a box to put in the cart.), but Duncan wished she would, at least once in a while. And
pantry
? Who had a pantry?

Carl Slater’s mother said, “Remind your mom that she needs to send me that check.”

“What check?” asked Duncan.

“
The
check,” said Carl’s mother impatiently. “For the tournament.”

“Oh, sorry, dude,” said Carl. “I didn’t tell you about this? I guess it slipped my mind.”

“Carl, I distinctly remember telling you that you had to ask your partner to give you a check,” said Mrs. Slater. “It’s so I can be paid back for the registration fee for the YST, which I’ve already sent in, as well as for the special rate on the hotel rooms at the Grand Imperial. And, of course, the airfare.”

Why hadn’t Duncan thought about any of this before? He had been so excited by the whole thing that until this second he hadn’t really wondered how he and Carl were going to get down to Florida, or even where they would stay. Or how any of it would be paid for. He had daydreamed all the time about winning first place and bringing home the prize money. He’d imagined walking through the halls of school as if he were a popular football player in a uniform that said The Drilling Falls Dobermans; or even the middle school president—a slick kid who everyone high-fived. In this fantasy, Duncan was someone who would never be called Lunch Meat again. “Lunch Meat?” someone would say. “We were wrong to throw a piece of baloney at you, man. You didn’t deserve that at all. A million apologies. You’re
awesome
.”

All Duncan had told his mother was that he had joined the Scrabble Club, and that he and his partner, Carl, were planning to go to a tournament in Florida. He had let her think what she wanted; and what she thought was that the tournament and all extra costs would be paid for by the school. She knew nothing about the fingertips part of the story. Just as she and Aunt Djuna had their whispered secrets at night, Duncan had
his
secrets, and his mother knew nothing about them.

He had tried to put it all out of his mind. Instead, he’d been focusing on learning to play well.

“The total amount,” said Mrs. Slater coolly now, “is eight hundred and eighty-five dollars.”

Duncan certainly couldn’t tell his mother
that
, even though he and Carl stood a very good chance of winning a lot more than eight hundred and eighty-five dollars by the time the weekend was over.

But Duncan had to get to that tournament. If he didn’t go, he would return to being an invisible nothing at school. He would be Lunch Meat forever. He would be no one, and he would have nothing. He wouldn’t get his portion of the prize money, and he and his mother would never get to move into their own home. He would be a person of no significance.

Scrabble would save him; it had to. Sometimes at his great-aunt’s house he went into the hall closet and took out his mother’s old maroon Scrabble set, then he sat at the kitchen table by himself and moved the letters around on the board, thinking more deeply than he ever had in his life.

“Okay,” Duncan said to Mrs. Slater in a small voice. “I’ll let my mom know.”

Carl shot his mother a look, then mouthed something to her behind his hand. She mouthed something back. They stood in front of Duncan, talking behind their hands. Then Carl said, “Listen, Duncan. Just in case you don’t have the eight hundred and eighty-five right now, here’s a way to make it work. My mom and I have discussed this, and she wants to say something.”

“If paying me back is a problem, Duncan,” Mrs. Slater said, “I would like to offer you a job.”

“A job?”

At age twelve, Duncan Dorfman had never held a job, unless you counted raking leaves in Aunt Djuna’s tiny front yard, which Duncan had done for free every weekend that fall.

“Yes,” said Carl’s mother. “I work in advertising. One of my clients is a company that needs a great campaign. You know what a campaign is?”

“I’m not sure,” he said.

“It’s a way of getting people to know a product. We want to put up ads on billboards and at bus stops. We thought we’d start advertising locally, and see how it goes. I was thinking that the ads could feature you and Carl playing a game together. Of course, we wouldn’t show an actual
Scrabble
board, because that’s not allowed. And after all, this isn’t an ad for Scrabble. But we could make the board look kind of blurry, and show you and Carl concentrating hard. You would just be two wholesome boys playing a friendly game of . . . whatever.”