12. Will Confess for Cookies
WILL CONFESS FOR COOKIES
OWEN
I am working on a grant application when the room goes dark, and all electrical humming, including from my refrigerator, goes silent.
Is this related to the flooding issues? Or is this just a cursed townhome?
I go over to my patio door and move the curtains aside.
Okay, so the lights are out everywhere. That’s actually comforting.
I hear a muffled bang from Charlie’s place, followed almost immediately by an “Ow.” A couple more minor crashes and bangs.
I think I can hear her walking, maybe even toward the patio to check to see if the lights are out everywhere, then a louder bang followed by an even louder crashing sound and a grunt.
“Charlie? You okay over there?”
She sighs audibly. “Yes.” Then after a short pause, she says in a more frustrated tone, “No. It’s just really dark, and I left my phone on the coffee table when I went to the fridge, so I don’t have any light.
Which normally would’ve been fine, but I panicked and really needed to see if the power outage was just me, because that’s a whole different issue if it is, and there are cabinets in all the wrong places and, well, now at least one of them is on top of me. ”
I gasp. “Are you hurt?”
“No. Just trapped.”
“I’ve got a flashlight. Do you want me to come over and help?”
“Yes. I’ve got one in my safety kit, but it’s in a cupboard. I don’t even think it’s in one of the ones on me. Owen?”
“Yeah?”
“I give you my express permission to come through our door-shaped, fabric-thin plastic that’s held together by painter’s tape and a wish.”
I use my cell phone to find the flashlight in my toolbox.
And on the way to our shared wall, I grab the plate of cookies that Luis brought me today before pulling the tape back from the “door” and heading to Charlie’s side of the wall.
The light from my flashlight finds her next to her table, with a cabinet on top of her and a second one fallen onto it.
I set the cookies and my flashlight on the one cabinet that’s still in place so I can see what I’m doing.
I lift each of the cabinets and put them back where they should go, then I give Charlie a hand up and help her to the couch.
She’s moving like she’s a bit achy, but she says, “I’m okay. Really.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Is Reese here?”
Charlie shakes her head. “My brother is her best friend, and they’re both at a musical in Baltimore. She won’t be home until Elphaba defies gravity and Miles defies the traffic back from Baltimore.”
I remember that Charlie said she was passionate about safety, and I wonder if the power going out has triggered some safety fears for her. So, I ask, “Do you want me to check your door locks?”
“Yes,” comes out in almost a whimper.
I go to her front door, open it to take a look around, then shut and lock it before grabbing the cookies and my flashlight on the way back and checking the lock on her patio door. “Power’s out as far as I can see out the front door and the back.”
“Thank you,” she says very earnestly.
I stand my flashlight upright on her coffee table so it’s giving the room a dim glow.
“Cookies?” I ask, holding the plate out to her.
“One of the guys on my crew made them with his little girl last night. His wife suggested that he bring me some, since I haven’t had use of my kitchen and was probably craving something homemade.
I can’t say I’ve ever used my kitchen here for baking cookies, but I have definitely been craving something homemade. ”
“Oh my gosh, me, too.” She grabs one and takes a bite. “And these are so good.”
So we aren’t sitting in the dark and the silence, I ask, “What were you doing before the power went out?”
Charlie leans back into the couch. “Work has been exhausting lately, especially with how many extra hours I’ve been putting in, so I’ve been coming home and crashing.
I decided to read more of that book I had started when I overheard your phone call with your sister.
” She motions to the book on the coffee table as she talks, and I glance at it and smile to see that she’s using the bookmark I gave her. “How is she doing, by the way?”
“Great, actually. She got off with a warning from the school, and the leg is healing nicely.”
“Oh, good.”
“ And, I told her I was proud of her for showing so much independence, and that seemed to make her really happy. I don’t think I ever did thank you for that.”
Charlie holds up her cookie. “This is a great way to do it.”
I chuckle, remembering she was on her way to the fridge when the power went out. “Do you want to play a game or something? I’ve got a few.”
She still has about one-third of her cookie left, but she reaches out with her other hand and grabs a second one while shaking her head. “Can’t. My hands are busy with cookies right now. It’s vital.”
“Okay, then, nothing that will use hands. How about a Q and A?”
“As long as I can keep eating cookies,” she says, and takes a bite.
I try to think of a random question that might help me to know Charlie better. “I’ve got one. What’s your earliest memory?”
“Pass.”
“Pass?”
“Yep. It’s not pleasant.”
“Okay, then, how about any early memory? Your choice.”
“Playing hide and seek with my family. No, correction. Being the best at playing hide and seek with my family. One of the perks of being the littlest is that you can fit in so many great places. What’s yours?”
“Jingle bells.”
“The song, or the sound like when Santa is near?”
“The sound.”
Charlie nods. “That’s a good one. My turn.” She looks up, thinking, biting her lip as she does, and I’ve lost all ability to think. “Okay, tell me about a proud moment from your childhood.”
“That’s easy. Football. I started playing when I was little, and by the time I hit my teens, I realized that I was fairly decent at analyzing the strengths of the people on my team and knowing how to use them.
I was also good at being able to quickly scan the field and know how to adjust. It made me a good quarterback.
“My family came to every one of my games. I think they were the loudest ones in the stands every time. I loved it. Especially when I got to my senior year of high school, because I was on top of my game. My team did so well. We might not have started off that way, but by senior year, we all understood each other well and fully trusted each other on the field.”
Well, that was until Cordell broke that trust. My bum knee starts hurting just thinking about him, and I have to push my negative feelings away. “Okay, let’s hear one of your proud memories.”
She thinks for a bit. “Mine isn’t nearly as flashy, but it was a huge moment for me. When I was a kid, feeling safe was super important to me. I’m the one who always made sure all the doors were locked, that we had a first aid kit in the car whenever we went anywhere, stuff like that.
“I also hated being away from family. I wasn’t a fan of anything unknown, really.
So anytime I got invited to a sleepover, it was a hard pass for me.
But afterward, I would always hear my friends talking about how much fun they had and all the things they did, and I knew I was missing out on so much.
“I got invited to a sleepover when I was twelve, and I knew my friend’s family pretty well. So I decided that I was going to do it! I was going to say yes. And I even managed to stay there through the whole night.”
“Nice! That must’ve felt like quite the accomplishment.”
“It did. I never told anyone, but I waited until everyone was asleep, and then I got up and checked all the doors to make sure they were locked before I fell asleep.”
“You didn’t wait to be ready. You just acted. That’s courage.”
Charlie gives me a playful push for quoting exactly what she said to me when I tried to save her from an intruder.
“Okay, my turn.” I think for a moment, and then say, “Hmm, we covered the proudest moment. What was the scariest thing you did as a kid?”
“Attempting to read an essay.”
Her answer comes quickly. I raise an eyebrow. “Really? I have to know more of this story.”
“Okay, when I was thirteen, for my English class, I had to write an essay about something I learned when I was younger. So, I wrote it about a time when I was shopping for school clothes with my mom when I was eleven. We’d stopped for lunch in a café, and a man came in, very angry about something, and it looked like things might get a little scary.
Well, remember how I’m great at hide and seek?
I was also great at disappearing and keeping myself from being noticed.
“My mom? She’s great at diffusing tense situations.
Before she stepped forward to help, though, she put me behind a young couple and said to them, ‘Protect her.’ So, in the essay, I told about how I’d learned that being able to keep the focus off me wasn’t enough—when there was danger, I needed to be protected by someone bigger or stronger than me.
“What exactly the essay said wasn’t important. The important thing for you to remember is that the essay was about my fear of being seen.”
I nod. She’s telling the story with a big smile, so I’m smiling, too, just hearing her tell it.
“Anyway, I turned the essay in. I had really bared my soul in it, but it was just words on paper, you know? I didn’t think anyone would read it.
I didn’t even think the teacher would—I mean, she had a lot of students!
Who would want to read all those papers?
If I had thought it might get read, I probably wouldn’t have turned it in.
“But… I found out that my teacher did read it, thought it was great, and entered it in some district- wide writing contest without telling me. I didn’t even know that she had until she told me that I had won.”
“Oh, sweet! Why wasn’t this in your proudest moment story?”