The Charlotte Plan

The Charlotte Plan (Ch. 1)

Chapter One

Charlotte Baker had been exceptionally mysterious that day.

It was eleventh grade lunch at Melvin High and I was sitting at a lunch table alone, waiting for my friends to get out of the hot tray line. I was nudging the limp string beans on my tray with a spork as I waited, and I casually looked up and around as the rest of the eleventh grade class found their spots.

Charlotte Baker was watching me.

She was poised at her table in the corner of the cafeteria, a pen in her hand, and she was looking straight at me. I had immediately looked away and back down at my food, too disturbed to do anything. After a minute, I cautiously peeked up again to see her scribbling things in her black marble composition book she always carried with her, her straight black hair falling down around her shoulders.

I looked away again. Charlotte Baker didn't watch people. Ever. It was unusual and...disturbing. Usually, it was the other way around--people watched Charlotte.

She was a girl that no one understood, or maybe the girl that everyone understood but no one wanted to speak up about it. She was someone who kept to herself, and it didn't drive her crazy. She wrote all the time in that composition book of hers (of which some students called "the Charlotte journal") and she didn't care where she was or who was around. She was positively strange, and everyone accepted it. At the same time, no one did.

Everything associated with Charlotte Baker began with "the", because both Charlotte and everything belonging or associated to her was the one and only, and stood out above the rest. The Charlotte locker, the Charlotte pen, the Charlotte hair, and the Charlotte messenger bag were a few of the examples conjured by the eleventh grade class.

Basically, Charlotte was different.

"Sabrina!" I heard my friend Aubree Hempton call out to me, and I turned around to see her striding towards me with her lunch tray, her green eyes bright and her auburn hair swishing behind her.

She clearly saw the expression on my face as she sat down next to me, and she raised one eyebrow. "What's wrong?"

"Um...I think I just got the Charlotte stare." I said, widening my eyes at her. Her eyes widened, also.

"But...Sabrina, the Charlotte stare never happens unless something bad is going on...you better watch your back. She might hit you in the head with that composition of hers." Aubree joked, taking a swig of her milk. I rolled my eyes and continued to poke my food, digging patterns in the mashed potatoes.

"Hey Aubree, Brina. Want your potatoes?" I heard my best friend Sofie ask as she came up behind us, walking around the round table and sitting in front of us. She absent mindedly pushed some raven-black hair out of her face as she scooted forward in her chair.

"Nah," Aubree said, and I watched her shovel up her mashed potatoes and plop them on to Sofie's tray, "So, Brina, tell Sofie what you saw a few minutes ago."

I rolled my eyes with a smirk at her suggestion, but willingly dove in to tell the tale.

"The Charlotte stare. At me." I said quietly, and Sofie gave me a blank look, calculating my words. One eyebrow raised, and she immediately launched in to a rant.

"What? The Charlotte stare? That stare only goes to people who do bad things and the bad time, and for bad reasons! She's a calculating little thing, and if she gives you the stare, it's not going anywhere solid. I truly think you have something to watch out for with that chick, because she is bad news straight off the top. I mean, think about it, if she's watching you--was it like a watchful stare or an evil glare?--she's definitely got something on her mind that none of us probably want to know. No one knows. That's Charlotte. Now, if we just remain calm and stay quiet about all of this, I think we can produce a reasonable reason as to why Charlotte baker was watching you, but I really don't understand why such a blasphemy to the school unity would stare at--"

"Yes, Sofie, I understand!" I said, cutting her off, "It doesn't make me comfortable, but we're probably just overreacting. Calm down, and don't get all caught up in something that's way smaller than we make it to be. It's insignificant, end of story." I told them, truly believing it.

"Alright, but when you get jumped by a gang of black-clad bandits, don't come crying to me." Aubree said, and I rolled my eyes once more.

"That's not going to happen. Nothing bad is going to happen. I'm nothing special to Charlotte, and she's not even that intimidating." I told them, tiring of the subject because I knew it wasn't important.

"Actually, she's very intimidating. She probably only has connections about everywhere. She's hiding something beneath all that mysterious outer layer, and you should watch what you do." Sofie told me, leaning in, suggesting that the subject was more serious than I brought it up to be.

"I never should've even mentioned this in the first place! Okay, so Charlotte's strange. Who doesn't know that? And I bet half of the school body has gotten that stare. I...am nothing...special. Especially not to Charlotte Baker, and I will not be intimidated by her. I refuse to be scared of this, it's nothing! Move on!" I said, slapping the table for effect. Aubree shrugged, and Sofie just nodded. They didn't want to believe it. But I had trouble understanding their reason. What was such a big deal about Charlotte's stare? It didn't even sound that important anymore. The entire eleventh grade had gotten worked up about her for over a year, and I thought that it was time that frenzy ended.

But I missed something obvious that day. A subtle change, a quick movement, the scrawl of a pen...Anything could have and should have tipped me off to who was playing the ropes at that moment. I didn't want to see what was right in front of me...But it was too late.