SCRABBLE TOURNAMENT – PART 1

ORLANDO, FLA. – JULY 21, 2008 – Ten minutes to eleven, Monday night, and it’s 98 degrees outside. Dakota Fanning has had a long, hot day. Up at 6:45 a.m. to catch a 9:50 flight out of Los Angeles, three-plus hours on the plane, landing in Orlando at a little past 4 p.m., registration at the Royal Pacific Resort (where the family is staying because the Marriott screwed up their reservations at the last minute), dealing with scads of fans, a dinner meeting with two Scrabble tournament officials, a little sight-seeing drive around the smoldering city, a fast game of Scrabble with the family in her parents’ suite four doors down (fast, because she won it in 38 minutes), room service ice cream for her and Elle in their private suite, a bath, 10 minutes to write in her journal, 15 minutes to talk to Elle about important things like Don’t pester me for the next eight days, and finally, while Elle is in the gigantic bathroom soaking in the gigantic tub, her CD player and headphones and her favorite record, The Best Damn Thing by Avril Lavigne.

Music is the only way she can relax these days. Tonight there are four black candles burning in the luxurious room that costs some large amount of money every day but which Dakota has forgotten. Music makes her forget. And it makes her remember. It’s how she keeps track of her life.

She pushes the button, and Avril starts right in: “Hey hey, you you, I don’t like your girlfriend . . .”

Dakota’s mind drifts to her friend Axl Rose. Just a friend, but a faithful one. She doesn’t know who his girlfriend is, because he hasn’t told her. He probably doesn’t think there’s any need to tell her. And, of course, there isn’t. But whoever she is, Dakota doesn’t like her. She sort of thinks Axl needs a new girlfriend. One who’s real and down-to-earth. One with a broken nose in a brace and a penchant for 7-letter words. She laughs at that idea. She can just see it.

“I think about you all the time, you’re so addictive,” Avril sings. Dakota finds herself thinking too much of the time about not just Axl but about all kinds of guys and whatever that missing piece is inside of her. But he is so addictive. Too bad she’s not a mother-bleeping princess, like Avril, because he would see her as something other than a little rich-girl actress.

She rolls over on her stomach and thinks a little more and moves to the beat of the song until it’s all finished.

Then Avril sings, “I couldn’t give a damn what you said to me, I don’t really care what you think of me . . .”

Abigail. The fat, no-talent actress who’s responsible for Dakota’s nose being in a brace. Dakota has replayed the fight over and over in her mind a million times, trying to figure out what went wrong. And it all comes down to this: Abigail is a cheater and can’t do anything on her own without outside assistance. Slash. God! And how Dakota trusted him. And he gave Abigail the roll of coins that broke Dakota’s nose.

“I hate you now, so go away from me, you’re gone, so long, I can do better . . .”

Quietly Dakota sings along with that part then says, “I am better. I’m better than both of you, because I still have some values left.”

Dakota gets a surprise

Suddenly, she feels like she needs to go to the bathroom. She pulls off her headphones, and the first thing she hears in the rushy silence is Elle softly crying in the bathroom. She runs to the door and knocks on it.

“Elle?”

“Where were you!” Elle yells over a thick voice.

“I was in bed. What’s wrong?”

Elle cries some more and sniffs and clears her throat and coughs. “I was yelling for you, but you didn’t answer.”

Dakota tries to open the door, but it’s locked. “I was listening to music. Why’s the door locked?”

“I don’t know, I just locked it – but I was yelling for you cause I’m stuck in the tub!”

The idea – so out-of-the-blue, so Elle – strikes Dakota as so funny. She laughs.

“Don’t laugh at me!” Elle shrieks. “You gotta help me get out of this tub!”

“Elle – how can you be stuck in a bathtub that’s as big as our Jacuzzi?”

“My toe’s stuck!”

“Your toe’s stuck in the tub? How?”

“It’s in the hole thingy that water drains out of.”

“The drain?” Dakota says and leans against the wall, trying to picture it.

“No – the hole on the side, in the front, the hole where water drains so the tub don’t overflow.”

“Okay, so I guess that means you can’t get out of the tub to come unlock the door, right?”

“Yeah, I’m laying here in the water and I’m trapped! Like in The Titanic. What floor are we on?”

“Well, what do you want me to do? You want me to go get Mom and Dad?”

“No!” Elle yells. “They were all tired and said don’t disturb them.”

“Well, what do you want me to do, then?”

“Break the door down!”

Dakota stares at the wooden door. It’s big – two feet taller than her and pretty wide across. She looks around the room for something to hit it with – like she saw on COPS that time when a junkie wouldn’t open his door and the police had to use a battering ram to get inside. But there’s nothing in the hotel room that looks like a battering ram.

“I’ll call the front desk,” Dakota says. “I’m sure somebody down there has–”

“No! I don’t want them to see me naked!”

“Elle, they’re just going to open the lock – they’re not going to go in there and scope you!”

Elle begins to cry. Dakota can hear water splashing around in there. Dakota knew from the very start that bringing Elle to the Scrabble tournament was going to be distracting. She thinks maybe she should get her own private room for the rest of the stay.

“Just try to run into the door with your shoulder,” Elle says over her tears. “Maybe it’s not locked that good and you can pop it open, like we did with our doll house that time.”

Dakota is no match for a wooden door

Even though she knows full well that the plastic door on a doll house and a huge wooden door on a hotel bathroom are two different things, Dakota retreats into the room and takes a few deep breaths.

“Okay, I’m going to try it,” she yells. Angling her shoulder toward the door, she takes off running. She hits the door hard, and the door doesn’t move, but her nose is jarred, and fresh pain courses through her face. “Damn!” she screams and bends over, holding her nose gingerly through the brace. Tears flood her eyes and she feels dizzy.

“Don’t say damn!” Elle yells.

“Elle, shut up! I hurt my stupid nose!”

Elle starts to cry again.

Fortunately the pain subsides, because her nose is mostly healed, anyway. Dakota stands up straight and looks around the room again. Ah-ha! The table over by the entertainment center has a leaf in it, just like the table in the kitchen at home.

“Hold on, I got an idea,” Dakota says.

“Hurry up – my skin’s turning purple!” Elle screams as if purple skin is going to kill her.

Dakota goes over to the table. “Let the water out of the tub, dummy!”

“I’m not going to sit naked in a tub with no water!”

Dakota jiggles the side of the table to make it separate enough so she can pull out the leaf. She holds it in her hands. It’s heavy. Probably almost as heavy as the battering ram on COPS.

“What are you doing?” Elle yells. “Did you leave?”

Dakota rolls her eyes. “Yeah, Elle, I left and went down to that café across the street.” Gripping and re-gripping the leaf, she turns toward the bathroom.

“Well, come back! I need you!”

Dakota used to think Elle was somewhat of a pain when Elle was six or seven years old. Apparently it wasn’t just a stage.

“Okay, shut up, I found something to hit the door with,” Dakota says. She moves her feet around and adjusts the leaf so that one narrow end is pointing forward and her back hand is around the other narrow end. She runs full-speed, and the leaf hits the door.

And busts right through the wood.

Glass shatters loudly on the other side. Elle begins screaming hysterically.

“What the heck was that?” Dakota says.

“The mirror on the back of the door! You broke it! Now you got seven years of bad luck!”

“We’re already three years past that,” Dakota says. “The door didn’t open, but I think I can get my arm through the hole I made in it and unlock it.”

Dakota shoves her arm through the broken wood and feels for the doorknob. She gets a finger on the little knob and pushes it and twists the outside doorknob, and the door opens.

“Thank God!” Elle says.

And now Dakota can’t get her arm out of the hole, because the broken, splintered wood has got it trapped. If she tries to pull out her arm, it will be speared.

One bathroom, one door, two sisters, both stuck

“So what are you doing?” Elle says. “Come get my toe loose!”

“I can’t,” Dakota says. “I can’t get my arm out of the door.”

“What!”

“I said I can’t get my arm out of the door.” She pulls gently, and even that causes pointy shafts of wood to press into her skin, threatening to pierce it. “Man! Now what are we going to do?”

“We’re going to die in here, and they’re going to come in the morning and find us like the Donner party!”

“Can you try to relax your toe and pull it out?” Dakota says, standing there and feeling possibly stupider than she ever has in her life, except for the time when she was 9 and accidentally whacked her dad between the legs with the garden hose she and Elle were playing with and he had to go to the hospital.

“I’ve been trying to,” Elle says. “but it won’t budge! Just open the door and come in and see if you can reach my toe with your other hand.”

“I can’t – I’m barefoot, and I’m not walking through that glass.”

“We’re going to die, I know it!”

“We’re not going to die, but we could be here all night, you realize that,” Dakota says. “Because now I can’t get to the phone. You wouldn’t happen to have a cell phone in there with you, would you?”

“You know I’m not allowed to have one till I’m fourteen.”

“Yeah, I know, but you don’t mind Mom half the time, anyway, so I thought maybe this was one of those times.”

“No, this was one of those times I obeyed, and I wish I didn’t. I’m never going to obey her again as long as I live!”

There’s a knock on the door. Elle starts screaming for no apparent reason.

“Elle, shut up!” Dakota yells. Turning her head toward the main door, she says, “Yes?”

“Uh . . . it’s the night manager,” comes a man’s voice. “A guest said they heard some screaming. Is everything all right?”

Dakota thinks how to respond. “Well, it kind of depends on how you define ‘everything.’

“I just wanted to see if you needed help,” the manager says.

To Elle, Dakota says, “It’s the night manager. He can help us.”

“He?”

“Yes, Elle, it’s a male. Half the planet is covered with them.”

“Does he have to see me naked?”

“No, he can get my arm out of the door, and then I’ll run in there and put some towels over you, then he can get your stupid toe out of the drain. I’m glad you decided to pull something like this tonight, instead of when the tournament starts, because I would just leave you in there and let you drown.”

“Dakota!”

Dakota yells toward the main door: “Do you have a key to get into the room?”

“I do,” the manager says.

“Okay, but just know that what you’re walking into isn’t like the normal stuff that goes on in your hotel.”

“Should I get security?”

“No, it’s not that kind of abnormal. Do you know who we are?”

“No, who are you? You sound like a kid. Are you parents there?”

“No on the parents, yes on the kid. I’m Dakota Fanning.”

“Really? The movie actress?”

“Yeah, and my sister Elle is with me.”

There is a pause. “Should I go find a priest?”

Dakota laughs out loud, because she was not expecting that. Elle shrieks, “Don’t laugh at me!”

“No, you should be enough by yourself,” Dakota says to the manager. “Just come on in.”

He does. He’s tall and has dark curly hair. “What are you doing . . . Jesus, what happened to the door? How come your arm’s in it?”

Dakota explains the situation, and the man, whose jacket has the name “Wesley” stitched over the pocket, says, “This would make a pretty good movie.”

“I’ll tell my agent,” Dakota says.

Wesley slides between Dakota and the door. Elle screams, “Don’t let him see me!”

“He’s not,” Dakota says. “Just stop yelling. If you wake up our neighbors and they come in here, I’m going to let them right into the bathroom.”

“Nu-uh.”

The manager is able to help Dakota and Elle

Wesley uses the end of a flashlight to knock broken pieces of wood from the door around Dakota’s arm and onto the bathroom floor. In just a few seconds, Dakota is able to pull her arm free.

“Okay, now I gotta cover her with towels, so hang on,” Dakota says. She runs over to the bed and puts on her sneakers so her feet won’t get cut by the glass on the floor and then goes in the bathroom. Elle is lying in the tub, and, just like she’d said, her right big toe is stuck in the overflow drain.

Dakota gets a stack of towels and begins covering Elle with them. “Okay, Wesley, you can come in.”

Wesley enters the room and takes one look at Elle and starts laughing.

Unhappy, Elle says, “That’s not very nice.”

“No, it’s not, sorry,” Wesley says. “But it’s the first time I ever saw a little girl in a tub with her toe stuck in the drain.”

Elle says, “Have you ever seen a little girl in a tub aside from being stuck?”

“Elle, be quiet,” Dakota says.

Wesley says, “In the cabinet under the sink out there, there’s a can of WD-40. Go get it, please.”

Dakota hurries and grabs the can and brings it back. Wesley sprays the foul-smelling stuff up around the drain hole and all over Elle’s toe and gently massages it. He gives Elle’s ankle a little yank, and out comes the toe.

“Too bad neither of us knew about WD-40 before we demolished the door,” Dakota says and gets a towel and starts pushing broken glass into a corner of the room, because the disarray is beginning to bother her.

Elle looks up at Wesley. Wesley looks down at Elle. “Hi,” Elle says.

“Okay,” Dakota says, leading Wesley out of the bathroom and to the door. “Now, it would be really cool if you could wait till morning to go talk to our parents so they can pay you for this.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” Wesley says. “We’ll just put it on your bill, and with any luck, they’ll never even notice it.”

“Our mom’s never been that lucky where spending money is concerned, but we’ll see how it goes,” Dakota says and shuts the door after Wesley.

Going to sleep on their first night

Twenty minutes later, both girls are in the humongous king-size bed. The air conditioner is humming, and the room is gloriously cool.

“Hey, Dakota?” Elle says.

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry about all that.”

“It’s okay.”

“And I’m sorry I’m such a distraction for you all the time.”

“You’re not a distraction.”

“I wish I could be like you.”

“You can’t. Nobody can.” Dakota laughs.

Elle elbows her gently and giggles herself. “We always have a lot of fun, don’t we.”

“Yeah, even when we destroy stuff. You’re a pretty good sister.”

“Yeah, so are you.”

“Goodnight, Mary.”

“Goodnight, Hannah.”

READ PART 2!

BONUS! Read an interview with Sarah about the Scrabble stories