Charlie

from Wish, A Musical by Paul Lewis

Genre: Drama

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Charlie, an eleven-year-old girl who has been sent to live with distant relatives, unloads her troubles on a neighbor boy.

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CHARLIE

That's a good one, Howard, 'cause I can't think of anybody with worse troubles than me. My father Scrappy and I used to spend our Sundays watching Wheel of Fortune and eating macaroni and cheese for breakfast, and now he's in the Wake County Jail. Last time I saw my mama, she was crying into her pillow in her dark bedroom, not caring one little bit whether I had clean clothes or even went to school. Mama and Scrappy would holler at each other all the livelong day while me and my sister Jackie sat on her bed with the radio turned up so we didn't have to hear them. And then Scrappy would drive off with tires screeching and gravel flying every which way while Mama yelled, "Good riddance to bad rubbish" from the front porch. And Jackie and I knew the words to nearly every song on the radio, and she would French braid my hair and share her nail polish with me, and I miss her every single day, even though her life is a thousand times better than mine and she's going to the beach today—the Atlantic Ocean! And then I go on and yell at Bertha and say the most awful things to her, when I know deep down that she and Gus are only trying to be good to me. So try hanging those troubles on a clothesline.