The Secret Diary of Charlie Dalton

Hiding

Charlie isn't sure what prompted the idea that running away would magically fix his life. But it intrigued him. The thought of taking his diploma and just leaving without an explanation. The thought of his parents and his friends wondering, worrying what happened to him.
The thought of them finally figuring out how bad he was doing, bad enough to feel the need to abandon them.

He dreamed of big citys, New York or Los Angeles. He dreamed of Europe and Africa and Australia and all the continents he could visit. He dreamed of people that loved the way he loved. He dreamed of Stanford University and California and the idea that he could be happy and understood and far away from his parents there. And sometimes he dared to dream about Knox going there with him. Which was foolish, because Knox was normal. He wasn't like him.
Charlie dreamed of freedom.
Of the possibility to stop feeling hurt.

When he was eleven he wanted to die. Staying up all night praying for life to get better, for his father to actually be a dad and to love him again. He used to be a dad, he used to take Charlie to the beach and sneak him a cookie before dinner and buy him a new football. Sure, he was never really the best father, but he was better and he wanted that back.

So Charlie didn't sleep until morning, picking out the most depressing vinyls he had and playing them for hours. Wondering how the hurt can be over, wondering what he did wrong to not be wanted by his father anymore. And Charlie contemplated if he should just kill himself. If it would be easier that way. He didn't, obviously, because he thought about his mom and about how much she tried to pick up the pieces left behind by his father. He felt guilty for even thinking about jumping off a bridge, or emptying his mother's sleeping pills at once.
He felt so guilty.
But it gave him something to hold onto, the knowledge that he could just end it should it actually become too unbearable.

When he was back at school the thoughts slipped to the back of his mind. He was eleven years old, and he like football and comic books and he hated the clarinet lessons his parents made him take and he asked for a saxophone on christmas, and because it was the only thing he asked for, he got it, and he loved playing that. It didn't matter that it sounded awful and that Neil begged him to stop whenever he got the instrument out. Charlie loved it.

He was eleven years old and he had two best friends, Neil and Knox, he wasn't alone and he was loved, not by his father but by his mother and his friends and that was enough to stay alive back then. And he loved too, he loved so hard that he sometimes couldn't breathe and felt like exploding and wanted to make them laugh and fix whatever problem they came to him with. He loved so much, that the last thing he wanted was to become a problem. Because they didn't deserve to be weighted with the things he thought and felt. Because they would leave him behind if they did.
He was eleven years old and he was a child.

And for a while that was enough to not want to die anymore. And for a while he was the prankster, the one with the jokes, the one that was always in a good mood and that didn't care if he failed trig. The one that the others could comfort in when they struggled.
He was okay with being all that. He liked being all that. He was going to be alright. Charlie was sure that he was going to be alright.

And then Knox, fresh out of the shower, with wet hair and that damn beautiful smile stood before him and the sun was illuminating his skin just the right way and Charlie realised right then and there that he wasn't going to be alright after all. That he was full of sin. That he was in love.

And then he realised that he wasn't okay with getting beat up whenever he went home, that he wasn't okay with failing trig or any class for that matter, that he wasn't okay with not being liked by anyone, that he wasn't okay with being ugly and unworthy and lazy, that he wasn't okay with loving boys. That something was fundamentally wrong with him that could never be fixed.