Rainy Season by Adele Griffin Page A

sorry Lane, I didn’t mean it.” Charlie tries to help me, but his hands are damp and dirty from lifting the wet boards of the fort.
    “Stop—you’re making it worse.” I push off his help and then leave him standing alone as I run back to the house. When I’m far enough away from him, my anger slows me down until I’m walking and muttering under my breath like a bag lady. Charlie can get on my nerves more than anyone else I know. I can’t believe he made me come over here in the first place just to look at a little bit of stupid rain damage.
    Dinner has been ready. I slip into my seat and pick up a fork. Marita leans against the counter, holding her paperback square in front of her eyes.
    “Sorry I’m late,” I mumble and quickly shovel a forkful of ropa vieja in my mouth.
    “Where is Charlie?”
    “Coming. He’s outside.” I chew and swallow in silence, staring at my plate. I feel Marita’s eyes on me for a long minute, then she burrows back into her book.
    “Sorry I’m late.” Charlie speeds in from the kitchen door to his seat and smiles at me, but a worry wrinkle shows in his forehead. “How’s your dress?”
    “The same.” I look down the front of my blotched dress.
    “Sorry about that again, Lane. You know I didn’t mean to mess it up.”
    “Mmmm-hmmm.” I half-bow my head toward him, the way the Chinese people do after they sell you fruit or vegetables in the downtown market—distant-polite. Charlie apologizing twice for a dumb little thing like getting mud on my dress, but refusing to even acknowledge a big thing like practically trying to kill me is another snarled string of Charlie-logic; it makes me mad, knowing this is the best he can do.
    “I’m going to go beat up that kid after dinner,” he mutters behind his hand to me so that Marita can’t hear.
    “Which kid? Jason McCullough?”
    “Of course him. And if it wasn’t him throwing those mangoes”—Charlie pauses dramatically to pop a broccoli tree in his mouth—“then I’ll beat on him until he snitches.” He clenches his hand and raises it into the air. “Heigh-ho, Sil-ver!” he shouts. “The Lone Ranger” comes on TV at five o’clock every Sunday, and Charlie and I never miss it since it’s one of the only our-age programs aired.
    “That’s one of the advantages of living in this country,” Dad told us once. “Classic all-American programming.” He said this like outdated old “Lone Ranger” and “Flipper” and that annoying Zsa-Zsa in “Green Acres” are all some special treat. Charlie and I both think the Lone Ranger’s a dork and we always say “Heigh-ho, Silver!” as a joke to each other. But the military broadcast services believe in getting classic all-American programming out to everyone.
    “Oh what, you’re just going to walk up to his house and knock on his door and say, ‘Oh, hi, I’m Charlie Beck and if you’re Jason McCullough I’m here to beat you up?’ That sounds like a really smart idea, Charlie.”
    “No, cucaracha, tonight I’m going to go to their fort to hide.” He quirks his eyebrows up and down like Groucho Marx. “I’ll hang out in the tree and wait and then—a commando surprise attack on the wing.” He shapes his thumb and pointer finger into a gun and makes a clicking noise with his tongue. “Gotta love it,” he says.
    “You’re imitating Ted.”
    “So?” he lifts his chin. “Anyhow, tonight don’t tell Ted about my plan ’cause he’ll want to come with me.”
    “He will not—he’ll tell you not to be loco, climbing up trees late at night when you’ll get bug-bit to death plus you can’t see anything. Charlie, you’re making too much out of it.”
    I suddenly notice Marita’s listening. I drop my voice and lean in very close to Charlie’s ear. “I mean, building the fort’s really just for us, dummy. It’s not like we’re really going to kill those kids from the other side or they’re really planning to get us. It’s just good to have a