Tales from the Intermediate (gxg)

Chapter 4

The trees were in full bright orange bloom, their browning hands having fallen from their many arms and blanketing the edges of the neighborhood street. Every morning, old Mr. Lewis across the street went out with his leaf-blower and tried to scare them all away from his lawn, but every night they found themselves crowding back around his mailbox.

Charlie loved this time of year. Things felt fresh in the fall—not only the air but also her feelings. The change of season was an antioxidant for her emotions, flushing them all out and leaving her renewed for whatever the new season would fill her up with. This year, she didn't quite feel that way.

She had found that journaling helped. Sitting at the beat-up wooden desk in her room wallpapered with yellow and orange plaid and her bedsheets that were still Harry Potter themed, Charlie scribbled away in her journal, talking about all the things she could never say to her friends. It wasn't that she didn't feel comfortable venting to them—she trusted Dani and Matt with her life. They had been through the worst of their lives together. The problem was that they weren't there during Charlie's absolute worst a few months ago, and since there was no one there for her to talk to, she had stuffed the event deep down inside herself to try and suffocate it since there was no safe place to regurgitate it to. In the soil of her heart, watered by her tears, something terrible was growing from that little seedling she had tucked away so many months ago. It was something poisonous, something terminal that she was sure would be the end of her. It was too far gone to talk to Dani and Matt about, but journaling helped to clip those overgrown, thorny leaves that were threatening to poke through her skin from the inside.

As she sat there at her desk in front of the window, an orange tree leaning over the window as if trying to peer into her black moleskin journal to nosily see all her secrets, Charlie saw something in the corner of her eye through the window. Glancing up, she saw a moving truck pulling into the biggest house on the street diagonal to hers—Farren's.

The last thing Charlie wanted to do was go over there and talk to Farren again. The fears of her teenager self were still very present in the back of her mind—the fear of Farren. After watching two men step out of the truck and Farren appear in the doorway of her house and go out to the truck, Charlie decided the last thing she needed was another F in her life for fear.

The dead leaves crunched under Charlie's old off-brand Timberlands as she nervously made her way across the street. A pack of children zoomed past on their bicycles dangerously close to her, but other than that there weren't many perils in her way. She'd honestly hoped a car would smack right into her in the middle of the road so she wouldn't have to step foot on Farren's lawn.

Alas, her foot was on the lawn. She walked up the driveway where the truck was parked, having lost sight of where Farren was when the group of kids nearly amputated her foot with their bike wheels. A chilly wind blew and caused her to shiver, wrapping her knitted grey cardigan closer around her torso. Finally, she saw Farren stepping elegantly out of the truck, carrying a large cardboard box. She waited for Farren to see her and say hello, to put her to work with some boxes, but Farren's eyes seemed to completely avoid Charlie standing there as Farren turned and went towards the house. She was wearing orange pants with pointy black flats, matched with a black turtleneck tucked in. Farren was always very fit in high school since she was a cheerleader, but she was even fitter now as an adult. Her hair was slinking down her back in blonde and brown waves, not a single tendril out of place, as per usual. Even on the bleak day, whatever light in the air was crowding around Farren's silhouette.

"F-Farren," Charlie blurted as Farren started to walk away, not knowing how else to notify her of her presence.

Farren stopped and turned around, and Charlie felt like she turned to stone under her green gaze. Farren glanced over her as if she struggled to recognize her again, before her perfectly trimmed eyebrows rose in surprised recognition.