Now, look, I wasn’t going to not ask Beth out because it might annoy Alex. She could make her own decisions and he could fend for himself. But it was just one more thing to worry about, if you see what I mean. Not to mention the little matter of working up my courage to talk to Beth in the first place.
But that problem, strange to say, suddenly solved itself.
It happened right after my karate demonstration. I was feeling good. In fact, after the way everyone clapped and cheered for me, I was feeling really good. Really. Everyone was coming up to congratulate me. People would start clapping again when they saw me walking past in the halls. Guys were giving me approving punches in the shoulder as I walked past, and girls… well, maybe it was my imagination, but they just seemed to be looking at me a little differently, smiling at me a little more and so on. Breaking a cinder block with your fist may not be the most useful skill you can develop, but it sure seems to impress people. Even Mr. Sherman made a joke about it in history class: “Charlie may be a small-minded tool of America’s fascist overlords,” he said, “but given his self-defense skills, I’m not sure I’d want to say that to his face.” Well, whatever.
After Sherman’s class, it was time for lunch. I sat at my usual table. Josh Lerner and Rick Donnelly were already there with their brown bags when I approached with my lunch tray. Wednesday was mac ’n’ cheese day, the one day I shelled out the extra cash for a hot lunch at school. Rick and Josh looked up from opening their bags long enough to jut out their chins in welcome. At the same time, Kevin Miles-Miler Miles, we call him, because he runs long-distance- joined us with his mac ’n’ cheese. We all sat down together, same as always.
“So, dude,” Josh said to me. “You are the man of the hour.” Josh was a geek and looked pretty much like he’d been made at the Geek Factory: short, hunch-shouldered; big, thick glasses over a constant, nervous smile; a tight head of black curly hair.
“Only next time, you oughta break the cinder block with your forehead,” said Rick. Rick had a big cheerful face, dark brown, the color of chocolate. He was one of the tallest guys at school. Tall and so thin, he looked like a big wind would bend him double. But he was actually strong and quick and was one of the best players on the school’s basketball team, the Dragons.
“Oh, that would be so cool,” said Miler. He drove his head down toward his macaroni tray and made a crashing noise. Miler was a small guy, lean and compact, with short blond hair and a kind of long face with sharp green eyes. I always thought Miler ought to have a little sign on his forehead that said, “I am going to be a corporate lawyer one day and make a gazillion dollars.” It was one of those things you could tell just by looking at him.
“Or wouldn’t it be cool if, like, you drove your head into a cinder block and it didn’t work?” said Josh.
“Hey, thanks a lot,” I said.
But Rick laughed. “Yeah. What if you just, like, drove your head into the block and it went, like, splosh, you know, and there’d be, like, brains and blood everywhere.”
“Yeah!” said Miler, laughing. “And Mr. Woodman would say, ‘Hmm, well, Harley-Charlie, I guess you’ll have to practice that move a little more.’”
“Harley-Charlie,” said Josh with his trademark snicker. “I loved that. That killed me. What do you say from now on we just call you Harley-Charlie all the time?”
“Hey, Josh,” I said. “You remember what happened to that cinder block when I punched it?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, what do you say, from now on, you don’t call me Harley-Charlie at all?”
“Whoa!” said Rick, and he gave me a high five.
Josh snickered into his ham-and-cheese sandwich.
“You know what else would be cool?” said Miler Miles. We all turned to him to find out. But we never did. Because he didn’t say anything else. He just sat there, kind of staring into space.
“Well?” said Josh. He snickered some more. “He’s, like, you know what would be cool, and we’re, like, what, and he’s, like, just sitting there…”
Somewhere during Josh’s vivid recap of events, it occurred to me that Miler wasn’t just staring into space. He was actually staring at something. Or someone. So I turned around to see what it was.
What it was was Beth Summers.
She had come up right behind me. She was just standing there-I guess she was waiting for a chance to get my attention. She had her purse over one shoulder and her books in her other hand as if she was on her way somewhere else. Which made sense, because she didn’t usually have lunch the same period as me.
“Beth!” I blurted out, surprised. I stood up. I’m not sure why I stood up-I just did. I stood up and twisted around out of my chair and faced her.
The guys-Josh and Rick and Miler-all sort of sat there staring up at the two of us, Josh with the words dying on his lips, Rick and Miler with their lips sort of parted. They looked about as stunned as the people in New York City when they looked up and saw King Kong for the first time. It wasn’t that Beth was too good or too stuck-up to talk to me or anything. She wasn’t like that, not at all. And it wasn’t that I was the least popular guy in school either. That would officially be Al Dokler. It was just that she was Beth and I was me, and if I’d told one of these guys she was going to come over to my lunch table to talk to me, he would’ve said, “Yeah, only in your dreams,” and I would’ve thought, Yeah-he’s right. Only in my dreams.
But here she was. And there was no point just standing there, staring at her like an idiot. So instead I stood there and stared at her like an idiot and said, “Hi, Beth. What’s going on?”
“I just wanted to tell you how cool your thing in assembly was today,” she said. And there was that whole nice, warm business I was talking about. The way she said it, as if no one’s thing in assembly had ever been cool before.
“Thanks,” I said.
“When you came down on that block? When I saw what you were going to do, I was, like, oh my goodness, he’s gonna kill himself, like, break his hand into a hundred pieces. Then, when you actually broke through the block like that, I was, like, so, so relieved.” She really sounded like she was so, so relieved too. So, so worried about me, and so, so relieved. It was nice.
“Thanks,” I said again. I was really pushing the conversational envelope here.
“Anyway, it was cool. It was really cool,” she said.
And guess what I said? “Thanks.”
Then she stood there for another second, as if there was something else I was supposed to say. I felt like there was something else I was supposed to say, but for the life of me, I couldn’t think of what it might be. I didn’t want to say thanks again, and I couldn’t figure out anything else, so I just did the whole stand-and-stare-like-an-idiot routine again.
Finally Beth raised her free hand and gave that little metronome wave girls give-ticktock, ticktock-and said, “Well… I just wanted to tell you that. I’ll see you around, okay?”
“Okay,” I said. At least it wasn’t “Thanks.” Then I did some more idiotic standing and staring.
With a smile that registered approximately a 9.5 on the Sweetness Scale, Beth turned and started walking away from me, walking toward the cafeteria door.
“Hey, Beth?” I said. I didn’t mean to say it. I didn’t even know I was going to say it until I heard the words coming out of my mouth. But somehow I couldn’t just let her walk away like that.
Beth stopped at the door. She turned back to me, waiting expectantly. She’d moved far enough away so that I had to take a few steps after her to catch up. That was good with me. It got me away from my table, from the staring eyes and flummoxed expressions of Josh and Miler and Rick.