Dandelion Lorelia

As I leave the safety net of the Gloucester  I am hollering out her name. Daisy looks back and continues dragging her suitcase as if someone dead is burrowed inside. I am yelling after her. I raise my hand as if hailing a cab. I tell her to wait. The furthest I have been away from the group was when Harmony and I traipsed around the circumference of the hotel yesterday. I am venturing out into unknown territory. I pass several red phone booths that look like they could be used as air chambers in subaquatic military missions. I pass a group of tourists wearing euro Disney attire. 

I call out Daisy’s name as if I am identifying an unscrupulous vernal-fused specimen in a greenhouse at the end of time.  

 I call out Daisy’s name again. 

I run past a gated community called Stanhope gardens which looks like it should be in a children's book. Again I yell out her name.

 I cross Brompton road.

 I carol out Daisy's name again. 

I am on my own.

 Daisy still seems agitated.  The top of her visage is covered. She still looks like she is late headed to mosque on Ramadan. She is hurrying. Her suitcase looks like she is dragging a corpse.

“Daisy what the hell!?!"

I shout out her name several times as if it is a refrain in a round. She is still lugging her suitcase. Again I call out her name.

I am worried for Daisy’s safety. It suddenly occurs to me that she is running away.  Every three steps Daisy sets her suitcase down.

"Daisy!!!!"

I yell out her name again. Daisy swivels around and then walks even faster. I don’t know why that I feel the need to save her. 

For a moment I think that maybe it isn’t Daisy or any other girl from our group. For a moment I think that maybe I have chased down a stranger.

Three blocks from the Gloucester Daisy pulls a hard left at Queens  Gate Rd. I am worried that she is looking for a tube station. If she descends into the totalitarian Hades the is the Underground I could lose her forever.

 Again I think about Rita. I wonder who she was waiting for. I wonder if  she would have gone with me when we pulled a Mark and ditched the group somehow making it down to Sloan Square. 

I call Daisy's name in an almost accusatory fashion. 

It feels like I am trying to get a Collie to sit.  

Daisy is still not looking back. She is holding her suitcase with two hands coercing the left side of her body to awkwardly tilt. She passes Cromwell  road. For  second I think perhaps she murdered either Spencer or Jim Baker. It looks like she is dragging and anvil. For a moment I am unsure if it is actually Daisy. For a moment I am unsure why I feel the blistering need to race after this creature. I am sprinting, I am sprinting and I for some reason I am thinking about Mark who I now address solely by his first and middle name and I am telling him not to jump just in the way I told him not to jump when he was lounging at the back window at the dance in Stratford only this time it is somehow more imperative. I am running after Daisy and I see each individual module of sand abutting the pristine windex-colored skyline of Lake Michigan. I am running after her and for a second I reach down and try to feel the green felt of the perfunctory Gideon bible that is always in my front pocket only I realize that I hurled it against the wall when Jennifer Flood told me that I don't even know the syllables of my own name. For a minute it has nothing to do with the Big Ten. For a moment I am sprinting. I am running after her. I am sprinting. I see Renae Holiday in tears reflecting off the identity bracelet I feel compelled to wear at all times.  I am running after little Betsy from last summer who always pronounces my name with a lisp. I am stage left missing my cue lost in the variegated stagelight blinks asking Dawn Michelle if she would like to go out sometime and she is smiling while looking down into her lap before saying yes. 

I am looking in the back of the shuttle bus seeing Mark Andrew next to Longhorn and he is wearing the Suzanne Vega t-shirt and it feels like time is stopping.

I am lost in the snickering light of the dance floor when I am sure I see one half of the Italian duet only I find myself  in front of perfect bliss. In front of the most beautiful creature I have sever seen.

I am looking at Harmony.

I continue to run. The back of Dandelion's blonde tresses are now visible. I am running. I am sprinting. ItIt feels like the last 100 meters down the strip in the 1600 as I vie to brake the elusive 5 minute mile. From the side the building looks like a smaller variation of the House of Commons. Come five more meted steps I discern that it is the Natural History Museum. Daisy's makeshift hijab has completely fallen on her neck like a wreath. Without note she parks her suitcase at the bottom of the cement stairs and begins to take the stairs two at a time. At the side of her suitcase I can make out the standard YC '93 suitcase tag on the handle. Her sunglasses flip off to the side.  She looks like she is part of a torch relay as she is stomping up the front of the stairs to the museum. I grab the back of her elbow. She is still moving. The second endeavor I place my hand  around her waist and swivel her around.

I don't realize it but for a second I am lifting her up. For a second it is like I am the groom and I am ferrying her into the interior din of a honeymoon suite. My arms are buckled behind her lower legs and back of shoulder respectively.

"Dani." As her friends call her,  I say, in an accusatory manner.

She looks at me. 

Her makeshift hijab completely doffed. 

She is crying.

Her saltine cheeks and eyes are flooded with tears.

                                                                        **

It's just that, I really wanted this to work out. I wanted this to work out more than anything that I have ever had in my life.

                                                                         ***

Dandelion Lorelia  picks up her  sunglasses. She has been crying. It seems like every two seconds someone from Simone’s group is crying.

I have spoken with Dani all of once this entire trip.

I am not even sure if she knows my name. 

                                                                             ***



Dandelion is shaking. The first thing she tells me is that I shouldn't have followed her. The second thing she tells me is that she is trouble. 

I tug at her elbow again. I do not really know Dani. For some reason I am telling her that everything is going to be okay. For some reason I am telling her that everything will be fine. For some reason I find myself with my arms cradled around her. Before I know it she is weeping in a manner which might best be defined as uncontrollable. In a manner in what might be aptly defined as sobbing. I am holding her. Her head burrowed into the side of my neck so that it feels she is watering a plant.

I am holding her close on the steps of the British Museum.

Dandelion is shuffling tears. She states that anything is better than putting up with Spencer and Baker and the rest of the Big Ten. She says that she just can’t take it anymore. I ask Dani what she is doing.

She tells me she is running away.

Dandelion  reaches into her side pocket and begins smoking a cigarette. A Rothman. I have no idea how she got a hold of smokes. She holds it funny as if she is not used to smoking. She has a habit of tilting her head back and closing her eyes when she exhales even though every time she exhales she lets out a string of muffled coughs.

I ask her what happened. She says its Baker. I tell her here goes.

“Today before we left to go to ST. Pauls Baker snuck in my room and tacked a disgusting porno pic inside the bathroom door and put myself and Spencer’s name on the bottom of the page. It was just gross. I’ve never seen a genital like that before. I’ve never seen a genital do what that genital was doing before. It was just gross. I almost had to throwup.”

Dandelion continues tugging on her Rothman. I want to ask her if she told Simone only I refrain. 

“ Then, we were in Harrods and Baker and Spencer were going through the girls underwear and Baker found a training bra, I mean, it was like a lower case lower case a cup, that’s how small it was and held it up and said that finally, they had my size. And it seemed like, everyone just started laughing. My girlfriends in my group.”

Again I nod. Dandelion is holding her cigarette like a four year old and a crayon.

“The whole trip I’ve liked Spencer and the whole trip every time I feel we are getting close someone in your group has to place a dagger and say something that hurts me.”

I nod. Dani continues,

" After Harrods we were all hanging out together and Baker kept telling me that Spencer really wanted to kiss me, I mean really wanted to make-out which I have been secretly hoping for this entire trip. He invited me into Spencer’s room and Spencer sat down next to me and you, know, kept apologizing for how he was acting in Harrods. And the next thing you know Spencer is looking at me,  saying that he is sorry and everything and that he has really liked me from day one only being Mormon he has a hard time expressing it. I thought we were the only ones in the room. You know, his roommate just never talks.”

I nod. Banky is the mime of the Big Ten.

“Well then anyway Spencer started massaging the top of my head and kissing my forehead and, there was like this pause and I closed my eyes and feel him next to me and it is like we are going to kiss and the next thing I know Jim Baker has his bare ass in  my face and lets go of this fart.”

Dandelion is again biting tears.

“Then I hear all this laughter and I guess three members of the Big Ten were hiding in the bathroom and it was all set up and right at the moment I thought that Spencer was going to kiss me they changed places and Baker pulled his pants down. and stuck his ass right into my face and one of your fraternal-BIG TEN GIVE IT UP just started to laugh."”

Fucking Baker, I think to myself. He’s emotionally marring this child for life.

I want to ask Dandelion if she told her Counselor Simone only I refrain. 

Daisy takes another subtle drag off her Rothman. She then tells me that it gets worse.

"Then that one kid who is annoying and thinks he’s a Big Tenner—you know, the tall kid with the Prince Valiant haircut. Right at the moment I was about ready to have an impromptu make-out session with Baker’s bare ass I hear a click and see a spark and apparently this kid took a picture of the entire situation with his disposable camera as being some sort of initiation into the Big Ten and there was more laughter and I started crying and ran out of the room and down the hall and started  to pack.”

I want to ask Dandelion if anyone saw her pack or slink out of the Gloucester tottering her suitcase. She says no. She says she wears disguises pretty well.

Daisy is down to the corky dregs of her Rothman ye she continues to smoke while biting at it with an almost religious fervor. 

"It was at that moment that I decided that I''m fuckin' out of here. It was at that moment that I decided this whole Young Columbus contest can just shit on a twig. It was at that moment that  decided I hated everything about this trip. Hated the itineraries. Hated how we are all cooped up on a tour bus half the time. Hate that we seemingly have beef for dinner every night. Hate Jim Baker. Hate how every two seconds it seems like some girl in my group is having her period for the first time. Hate Hate Hate how I'm the celestial object of the Big Ten and their every waking ridicule."

Daisy then tells me that she is running away.

“I’m hittin the reset.” Daisy says, you can tell by the way she is blowing out smoke that she is not inhaling all the way if any.

“I’m starting over. I don’t want to go back home and deal with my step-father’s shit.  I don’t want to deal with any of the Big Ten’ Pull shit. I just want to start over. I just want to leave.”

Daisy reaches for another Rothman. She sounds like somehow who has seriously cursed only five or six times in her life. Every time she says the word Bullshit it sounds like pull shit.

"I mean, it's just Pull shit right? Everything is Pull shit."

We are five blocks away from the hotel. Briefly I want to inquire if perhaps Daisy would like to go shoe shopping with me. Instead I grab her Rothman from between her closet-hanger configured lips. I have never smoked before.  I have no desire ever to smoke. If I were to get caught smoking I would be expelled from the track team.  I place the cigarette between my lips and then hand it back to her. She asks me if I got a quality hit.

I nod.  I say the same thing to her that she just said to me only followed by an invisible question mark.

"So you're running away?"

Dandelion nods her head. She says no more Pull Shit from anyone ever again. 

I am trying to play along with her sans goading her to actually go through with it.

"I mean, but if you dump this bitch, what are you going to do?"

 Dandelion remains quiet, She tapers out an elongated ash on her Rothman. There are pigeons milling around near our feet. Dandelion is wearing jeans but no socks. There is something about the recalcitrant bulge in her ankles that is beautiful. That makes me want to lick it. There is a pause in a conversation. In front of us human beings continue to enter and exit the British Museum of Natural History. Several school children in uniforms are being reprimanded, addressed as ruffians, mandated to the back of the group by a supposed headmaster that looks like he could pass for tour guide John Major's long lost twin. 

The accelerated manner in which Daisy chain smokes Rothman cigarettes looks like she is countlessly blowing kisses with with two fingers on her left hand.

More traffic hustles pass.

I still can't get used to people driving on the assenting so-called right side of the road.

“What are you going to do? You are only thirteen. I mean, you are running away. How are you going to support yourself?”

"Probably work in modeling."  She says, in all seriousness Daisy says that she did a commercial for a Farm and Fleet catalog back home.

I ask her where home is. She says Plainwell, Michigan.

“Yeah, and this is London. There are more people underneath us right now in the tube than in your hometown. Hell, there are probably more people traversing on the tube right now than are in your home state of Michigan. This is London, Daisy. This is a gargantuan Metropolitan island of humanity. I mean, unless you resort to just some unseemly line of work, there's just no way you are going to be able to make ends meet."

Daisy tells me that she is really mature for her age.

 "I won the school Spelling Bee as a 7^th grader”

“Yeah? What word did you win on?”

“Yucca. Everyone else spelled it with one sea.”

“That may be but where are you going to live. I mean, what are you going to do?”

Dandelion gives me a look as if to say that you have a point. 

Dandelion pauses. She says that she still has two hundred dollars worth of travelers checks. I tell her that should be enough to cover one weeks rent in central London. She sniffles again. Several  men jog past wearing Everton soccer hats.   I will learn only when I come home that ironically the rugby team is called London Irish.

 Dandelion is still smoking her cigarette, tilting her head back every time she exhales.


"Not to mention what might happen to the Young Columbus program as a whole. I mean, can you imagine the newspaper headlines on what my occur if one of the so-called prestigious Young Columbusians somehow went missing. I mean, the trip would remain frozen. On lock down. Plus if you did runaway, I mean PARADE magazine would totally get the chaff once we return back home."

Daisy tells me that PARADE magazine is full of PULL shit. 

“Have you spoken with Simone? I mean, Simone is like your counselor. Don't you think you should probably somehow talk to her?”

For a second I feel sorry for Simone.  It seems she has spent this entire trip babysitting.  Since a member of her group always seems to be crying I can"t imagine what might perchance happen if Simone discerns that Daisy is missing.

"I tell you, I just can’t take it anymore. This whole trip has sucked. I wish I have never won the Young Columbus. I wish I was back in Michigan. I wish I had never won the Young Columbus.”

“Don’t say that,Hey."

Before I know it she begins to cry. Before I know it moisture from Dandelion's body is watering the side of my neck with tears. Before I know it I can almost taste her salt. Because her skin is so white the tears look like someone spilled 7-Up in a stack of saltine crackers.

"Daisy, I don’t blame you. The Big Ten has been nothing short of nefarious to you. I mean they have been vile and cruel. I can’t imagine what it must feel like to have this trip and get your expectation so high and then endure countless juvenile taunts. It’s just not fair.”

She is down to the cork of her Rothman. Dandelion stamps in out with her shoe on the steps. The afternoon sun is hitting her gold bangs.

Dandelion has stopped crying. She has ceased wailing. For a second I think she is going to grapple the suitcase and take off again. For a second I am not exactly sure what I think.

“The Big Ten is in love with you because you are beyond rapturous.  How can they not be??Just look at your name. Daisy. It connotes tithes of spring.”

Daisy again reaches in the box of Rothmans.

"I hate Daisy My mom had a friend named named Daisy who died. She named me after something that is already dead before the moment I came into this world."

I tell her no. 

"Dandelion is a beautiful, beautiful name."

"Dandelions gives life to the spring. When you are hunting for Eater eggs you spot a Daisies and Danedelions. When you are running or playing kickball in the old abandon baseball diamond at recess in grade school after it rains you always make note of a Daisy. You always make note of a Daisy and how it is smiling at you and how that pollen-swelled scent of the countenance just somehow compels you to run faster around the geometry of the bases."

Daisy continues to scarp her foot over the extinguished cement dash of the preciously smoked cigarette. 

She tells me that she hates that name.

"All you guys ever do is make fun of it. It has been the Daisy Train since day one. I hate my name. I hate Daisy."

"No, I mean The great Gatsby. Have you read the Great Gatsby."

Daisy shakes her head. She asks me what I am talking about. 

She asks me if that's by Hemingway. I lie. I tell her yes."

"Anyway, Gatsby was in love. He is obsessed with Daisy. I mean, everything is Daisy. That's whom he loves.

It is all about Daisy.

I pause as black taxis piss past.

Daisy. 

She is in eighth grade. Somehow she won this trip. She has the same light blonde burgundy-colored tresses as Karen Christmas. 

Light streams in diagonal sentences splashing the side of Daisy’s face. It looks like she has a sideways halo.

I say her name. I tell her that she is beautiful. Traffic sprints past us in a parp of horns.

"Daisy the thing is this. The Big Ten is sophomoric. The Big Ten is petty.  The Big Ten are a bunch of apish louts. The Big Ten would rather relive their first wet dream while counting the number of pubes on their nads then relive this trip. The Big Ten are Neanderthal. We’re all just freshman in high school. One second we are in the locker room, the next second we are in London.

I stop Daisy is nodding as if she is doing Karaoke following the bounce of the tempo dot.

“Daisy, you need to know is that the Big Ten is madly in love with you. Spencer, yeah, Spencer only has eyes for you. The reason Jim Baker acts the way he does is because he is envious—because the Big Ten as a whole are madly in love with you. Because you are Helen to our collective Troy. Because yours is the face that launched a thousand Open Jewels. “

Daisy is looking down again. When she goes to open her pack of smokes three cigarettes fall out out in I-ching fashion.

I can give two shits about Harmony and her fucking interview with Lynn Minton and British scholars of privilege.

A double-decker bus floats past flooded with tourists in shorts.

Her skin looks brand new. Her cheekbones look like spring linen dried by the overhead sun.

My palm skis down her cheekbone. The afternoon sun in London town is beaming off her body.

For a second all I want to do is kiss Daisy.

Instead I grab her hand.

“We got to get back. I mean, shit gonna hit the proverbial fan if we don't. We just have to get back to the Gloucester right now."

Daisy acts like she is looking for yet another smoke. 

“Listen, I've felt lonely too most of the trip too. I mean, I’ve been hung up on this girl and I can’t even really tell you why or what’s up with us only half the time I think she is madly in love with me and the other half I think she’s cold as the toilet eat in the Tower of London.”

Daisy giggles.

“The thing is, and what I’m gradually learning is that I didn’t have to traverse half-way across the world to fall madly in love and to become obsessed with someone. I didn't have to travel half-way across the planet to get my heart shredded. I could have done that back home. Hell I have done that back home. The thing is what I’m realizing is that this trip is somehow like life, You know, you find yourself in a strange place that for some reason you call home, surrounded by strangers, human beings who you fall in love with, whom you have detailed and intrinsic connections and then the next thing you know all of it is gone and you wake up back in that place you originally came from with people you have known all your life and it was more or less just a dream."

Daisy looks at me with a quizzical look in her lips. The sun is setting and is hitting the side of the museum. We have been gone for just over an hour.

I wonder if Rita ever hooked up with the person she got dressed up for.

I wonder if Rita is waiting just for me. 

"This whole trip ever since Stratford has felt kind of like that for me in ways I can’t explain and honestly Daisy, I just don’t know what it will be like come 36 hours on what will be Friday morning Central time when I wake up and all of this gone. I’ll miss London and the smell of the bus and the vivacity of the streets and the British accents and touring architectural masterpieces that are hundreds of years old, but the thing I will miss the most are the human beings. This family that we have found ourselves a part of for a very terse eternity of time that somehow, after tomorrow will be no more."

 I pause. Even though it is spring a few errant leaves scrape past.

I can’t imagine just how refulgent London must feel in the autumn.

Daisy is looking at me with her mouth slightly more perched open. She is looking at me as if I have just smoked something other than tobacco. For a second I am Tony off of Blossom. For a second I am the overtly-gelled hair post-alcoholic mentor giving advice to my younger sibling. For a second people are laughing as I am giving the heroine advice. I am telling her that she has her whole life in front of her. I am telling her that things will happen.

For a second I am smiling at Daisy and she is smiling back.

For a second she is something other than the eighth grader that is perennial part of the Daisy train.

I will never make it to Sloane Square.

I will not get a pair of Doc Martens.

Here, I say, picking up her suitcase. More Double Decker buses streamline past in the wrong lane. More middle age men exit the museum of Natural History in central London. Daisy is fingering with the top of the Rothman case and at first I am expecting her to extract another British cigarette when instead I find her pasty-white fingers locked in the lacunae bridge of my own hand.

She gives my hand a little squeeze.

“Where you being honest when you were talking with me and when you said that the Big Ten as a whole was madly in love with me?”

I look down.

I tell her that they are.

"Daisy we're here. We're not here long, but we're here. We are here. We're in London. We have this last night ahead of us and trust me, Spencer is madly in love with you and every time The so-called Big Ten feels compelled go make some sort of a sophomoric jest is just because you are beautiful. It's just because each of them are madly in love with you. There's only one Diana on bus number one and its you Daisy."

Daisy is still smiling. She is looking at her sneakers as if they were composed out of patent leather and she can see her reflection from the top.

“Listen, I tell you what. Come back with me and I promise the remainder of the trip I will have your back. I’ll talk with Spencer. I’ll get Baker to knock it off. Just come back and I promise you everything will be all good.”

Just come back. I''ll take care of you. 

She looks back at me Her lips look like the entrance to the underground as she taps her Rothman into the ground rubbing it back and fourth as if she is trying to erase something scribed in pencil. 

"You promise?" Daisy says.  I am seeing Daisy. I am seeing why the Big Ten are so madly in love with her that they piss on her. That they make her feel like shit.

I am seeing the creature that the Big Ten venerate. The goddess that they worship. I am seeing her as not some daffy blonde. I am seeing her as someone who is exactly like myself.

As someone who is lonely and yearns to be accepted.

Someone who feels exactly the same way I do when I board Bus #1 every morning. 

The elvish-nymph smile of the creature who takes the BIG TENS breath away. 

"Yes," I tell her very simply, grabbing her hand.

I promise. I promise I will take care of you.

Daisy baby come back home.