The Fingertips of Duncan Dorfman (20 page)

“I can’t move on,” said Wendell, and he removed his dark glasses. Behind them, he had been crying.

Nate was relieved when his mother and Dr. Steve and Eloise came over to say supportive things to him. “I am lucky to have you in the family,” said Dr. Steve. “You’re the best.”

He and Nate’s mother both put their arms around him. Nate impulsively lifted Eloise onto his shoulders, and she pulled at his long hair and screamed with happiness. Duncan and April joined them, too; those two still had so much adrenaline from having both made it to the finals that they didn’t know what to do with themselves.

“I thought we had a real shot at winning,” Nate explained to his mother and his stepfather. “Duncan here played PANOSIS, which was no good. But then, a turn later, Carl turned it into PASSION. It was amazing.”

Dr. Steve wrinkled up his face. “Panosis?” he said. “That sounds like maybe you thought it was a disease of some kind, Duncan. You probably know that -osis—and -itis, too—is the suffix for certain diseases.”

“It
is
a disease,” Duncan said. “I’m positive.”

“How do you spell it?” Dr. Steve asked, and Duncan spelled it out for him.

“No, Duncan, that’s not a real disease,” said Nate’s stepfather. “I’m a doctor. I’ve memorized every disease from beriberi to elephantiasis. Let me put it this way: diseases are my two-letter words. I need to know them all in order to be good at what I do.”

So now it was confirmed by an expert that panosis was definitely not real. Duncan wanted to ask his mother if she was positive she’d gotten the name of his father’s disease right all these years, but he didn’t have a chance to, because Lucy Woolery grabbed his arm. “Emergency meeting on the beach in five minutes,” she said. “Be there.”

“What do you mean?” Duncan asked. “A meeting about what?”

“I’ll just say this: I saw how destroyed Nate’s dad was after Nate and Maxie lost,” Lucy said. “And I figured out a way I might be able to help them.”

“Okay, I’ll be there,” said Duncan, though he had no idea what Lucy was talking about. Everything was puzzling today; nothing added up.

 

 

Five minutes later, when Duncan arrived at the beach, he took off his shoes and socks and walked in the sand. Soon his feet were coated, and they felt like breaded cutlets. But they felt good, too; they’d been sweating all day inside thick socks and sneakers. April waved to him, and Duncan walked over into the shade of a big striped beach umbrella, where several players had now gathered.

“What’s this, an exorcism?” Carl Slater joked.

Duncan looked down at the sand. A big beach blanket had been laid out, and on top of it, Nate’s father and his former Scrabble partner, Wendell Bruno, lay flat on their backs, side by side, both of them smiling self-consciously.

“Okay, let’s get started,” Lucy said. “We don’t have a lot of time before the final round.” She stood at the foot of the blanket, holding an electric toothbrush with a spinning, buzzing head.

Duncan turned to April to ask what was going on, but she shushed him. “Just watch,” April said.

“Larry Saviano and Wendell Bruno,” said Lucy in a voice both serious and calm. “I want you to relax, and to keep your eyes on the spinning head of my toothbrush. Watch the bristles, watch the bristles. You are getting very sleepy . . .”

Larry and Wendell watched the toothbrush, which just seemed to vibrate. Duncan noticed that their eyes grew heavy; both grown men began to blink like two babies being rocked in a cradle.

Lucy was hypnotizing them.

Duncan remembered Lucy mentioning that she was an amateur hypnotist, but he’d had no idea that he would see her skill in action this weekend.

“Now you are both asleep,” Lucy said to the men in that same strangely calm voice. “And you will stay asleep until I say you can wake up. While you sleep, I am going to tell you a story. You will listen to it, and you will experience the story as though it really took place exactly the way I tell it. And when you wake up, you will think about my story, and it will fill you with happiness. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” murmured Wendell, though Larry said nothing.

“Okay, then here we go,” said Lucy. “It’s the winter of seventh grade,
twenty-six years ago.
You are two very smart twelve-year-old boys, and you have come all the way across the country to attend the Scrabble tournament. You are both really good players, and you’re excited to be here. Aren’t you excited, boys?”

“Yes,” said Wendell in a voice that sounded different and young. “I am so excited I could burst my butt!”

“Yes, well,
that
wasn’t awkward at all,” Lucy said to the people watching. “How about you, Larry?” she asked. Nate’s father slowly sat up and opened his eyes.

“Sorry,” he said. “It’s not working for me, Lucy. I tried, but I’m afraid I just couldn’t fall into a trance.”

“Oh,” said Lucy, disappointed. “Too bad; I thought you were under. Just watch Wendell for now.” She turned back to Wendell Bruno. “As I was saying . . . the six rounds have gone really well,” she went on. “They’ve gone so well that you have made it all the way to the finals. The big game is thrilling. You are playing against two brainy girls, and you are beating them. The finals are almost over. You just need to hang on to your lead a little longer. The girls have picked the last tiles from the bag. Now they have seven on their rack, and they start moving them around, but it’s your move. You make a nice play. You make . . . oh, let’s say . . . FRONT. The F is on a double-letter square, and the whole word is on a double-
word
square. It’s worth twenty-four points. The girls keep moving their tiles around, searching for a bingo, for that’s the only way they can win.”

“Oh no,” murmured Wendell Bruno from his trance. “They’re going to make ZYGOTES.”

“Let’s take a look at the letters on the other players’ rack, okay?” said Lucy.

“Oh no, let’s not,” said Wendell. “I can’t bear to look.”

“Come on, it’s okay,” Lucy insisted gently. She began to say the letters aloud:

“G

T

Y

O

E

S . . .”

She paused here, and then she said the last letter:

“ M.”

“M?”
said Wendell. “No, not M. It’s Z. The other team has a Z on their rack.”

“No,” said Lucy in her hypnotist’s voice. “In
my
version of the story, they have an M. Now, what bingo could they possibly make with those letters?”

“They
can’t
make a bingo,” said Wendell in childish wonder. “They don’t have the Z for ZYGOTES. They would have to make . . .
MY
GOTES. But everyone knows that MYGOTES isn’t a word.”

Neither is PANOSIS, Duncan was reminded.

“You’re right, they
can’t
make anything good,” Lucy continued. “So for their turn, they put down . . .” She paused dramatically. “MOSEY. For fourteen points.”

“MOSEY?” said Wendell. “They only make MOSEY?”

“Yes. And now the game is just about over,” said Lucy Woolery. “It doesn’t really matter where you place your tiles. So lay them down anywhere. Go on, lay them down.”

Everyone watched as Wendell Bruno, a grown man lying on his back on a beach blanket, reached for invisible tiles and placed them on an invisible board in the air above him.

“That’s sixteen points,” said Wendell. “And we’re out.”

“Larry and Wendell,” said Lucy. “You have won the tournament. You are the big winners! Enjoy this moment. Soon, Wendell, I am going to wake you up again, and when I do, I want you to
hold onto
the happiness you felt at winning the tournament. Whenever you think about the real event, I want you to understand that yes, you actually
did
lose, but I still want you to remember the story I told you. To remember the wonderful pleasure of winning. I want you to absorb it and make it feel as good and as valuable as if it happened. Do you understand?”

Wendell nodded. Lucy woke him up, and he sat up on the blanket beside Larry, completely disoriented.

“Why are we here? It’s strange. I feel so relaxed,” said Wendell, stretching his arms.

“Think about what happened back when you and I lost,” said Nate’s father.

“Okay,” said Wendell. “I’m thinking about it.”

“And is it okay?” Larry asked anxiously. “Can you handle the memory?”

“Why wouldn’t I be able to handle it?” said Wendell. “It was a long time ago. We had a great time that weekend. It doesn’t matter how the finals ended up. It was very exciting.” Wendell looked happy; everyone could see that.

Moments later, Nate and his father stood at the shore together. “I wish Lucy had been able to hypnotize me, too,” Larry said. “But I guess I need to deal with this on my own. There’s no shortcut for me.” He looked hard at Nate and said, “When I was your age, I wasn’t half as brave.”

“I’m not brave.”

“Oh, yes, you are,” said his father. “I watch you navigate the city—the streets, and all the people in them. I watch you navigate all this
technology
that you kids use; every day there’s a new device, a new thing to learn, and yet you do it like it was nothing. I watch you navigate having two families, going back and forth all the time. And, of course, I watch you navigate having
me
as a dad.” His voice broke slightly. “That can’t be easy,” Larry said. “Not easy at all. But I want it to be easier now, Nate. A lot easier.” He paused. “I think it’s great that you and Maxie played so well. And that you made new friends here. But I think we’re done with Scrabble studying for a while, don’t you? It’s a terrific game. But there are other things you probably want to do, too.”

“Yes,” said Nate, “there are.”

“From now on, I want you to do them, kid. All of them. Whatever you like.”

Nate quietly began to cry. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d cried; it wasn’t what he
did
. His father had given up his obsession at last. “Dad,” he said softly. “I think you’re going to be okay.” And so am I, he thought. He and his father hugged, and then his father released him, and they walked back to join the others.

A little later, before the finals began, Wendell and Larry said good-bye to each other, probably for good. Wendell wasn’t planning on sticking around to see who won the big game that afternoon. He said he didn’t need to know. He was going back to his surfside cottage in Yakamee, where he planned to take a long nap, and then a walk by the ocean, and then maybe later he would invite someone to dinner. Cuddly the Iguana from Funswamp was nice, he told Larry. He’d always wanted to invite her over, but had never worked up the courage. Maybe today he finally would.

“Good-bye, Larry. Take it easy,” said Wendell.

“Oh, I will. Good-bye, Wendell,” said his former partner.

 

 

The crew from
Thwap!
TV had set up their cameras in the small room off the hotel ballroom where the final round would be filmed for live television. Tiny microphones were clipped to the four players’ collars. Bill Prescott, the sports announcer who gave blow-by-blows of the games that April’s family often watched, paced the room, rehearsing what he was going to say on air.

“Scrabble,” he said in his deep, syrupy voice. “One of America’s best-loved board games. But did you know that this mild-mannered indoor game can be as fast-paced as soccer, as elegant as polo, or as brutal and bloody as football? Today we bring you live coverage from the Youth Scrabble Tournament in Yakamee, Florida, where two teams will be fighting to the finish for the national title . . . and
ten thousand dollars.
”

Duncan sat in the corner by himself. He was so nervous that his whole body was quaking. The game would start in ten minutes, and he still didn’t know how he would handle the problem of his fingertips. He realized that it would have been nice if he could tell himself he didn’t care about winning. If he could tell himself he came here just to play.

But even though Duncan had come so far in a short period of time, and even though he knew how much fun it was to play your heart out, it would still feel interesting—no, it would still feel
great
—to win
.
He’d been thrilled each time he and Carl had won a game. He could barely imagine how it would feel to win the championship.

It would really be something to walk into Drilling Falls Middle School and hear people say, “Dorfman, you rock!”

It would really be something to give his mother the three thousand dollars.

And it would also really be something to know that Carl Slater didn’t hate him anymore—and would never hate him again.

But if Duncan didn’t use his fingertips when it mattered during the finals—and if Drilling Falls lost—Duncan would retreat back into himself. School would be agony again. Life would be, too.

The only way to guarantee a win would be for Duncan to simply give in and use his power, just as he had originally promised he would. Duncan told himself that April had already achieved what she’d hoped to here in Yakamee. In just a few minutes her whole family would watch her on
Thwap!
TV, and maybe it would finally sink into their brains that Scrabble was really a sport, and that April Blunt was amazing at it.

April didn’t need to win in order to get that, Duncan thought as he sat in the corner. She had a lot less riding on winning than he did. He could use his fingertips in the finals, and April and Lucy would never know. Lucy, too, would be fine if they lost; Lucy was good at everything, so what did it really matter? She’d probably turn around and become the U.S. kid champion in Ping-Pong. April and Lucy would both be fine; he shouldn’t have to feel guilty about them.

Everyone would go home tomorrow morning feeling happy. So it was settled; he would put his hand into the bag and bring on the heat.

That’s it,
he told himself.
I’ve decided.
But the decision immediately made Duncan anxious. It unnerved him, and it felt wrong.