"I never understood why Clark Kent was so hell bent on keeping Lois Lane in the dark." ~ Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife
***
(Charliegh)
Charliegh hated town days.
Two of her least favorite things – Purposeless, Pushy People and Endless Entertainment surged around her like a flood. Everyone had ventured out of their rabbit holes for a quick day along Main Street, toting strollers and handbags from booth to booth. If she closed her eyes, she could imagine it was a harvest festival – air tinged with cinnamon, kettle corn, and melting chocolate. Yet she could hear the cars, engines groaning in protest as they inched the long way around Main Street, the tap-tap of shoes upon sidewalks. It was a circus, a city circus, filled with white tents, free junk, and terrible renditions of popular music.
The music stage was located in the biggest tent, which stretched its ribbed fingers down the length of the library parking lot. People sat clustered around folding tables inside, hands folded around cups of steaming beverages, children with sugared lips bouncing up and down in their seats.
When her eyes fluttered open, the world was momentarily fragmented by the jagged black strokes of her eyelashes. She opened her eyes, wider, and took a deep breath. She was still here, standing in line at the coffee kiosk near the hair salon, trying to shrug deeper into her puffy coat for warmth. More than a few pitying glances were thrown her way, parents hustling sticky-fingered children in a long, rapid circle around her. The whole community knew about Earnest. How when he left his family, he had left her as well. Most of them – all of them – knew about That Day. She should have felt sorrow, a riptide of Compassion tugging her into churning, murky blackness. But what she really felt was the Condemnation, little whispered words, the cusp of a glare. How dare you, they said. How dare you.
Lord, is friendship such a crime, that I must be reprimanded? She lowered her head, shrugging her shoulders higher. Her hair fell over her line of sight, dry and crunchy with gel as it rubbed against her forehead and cheeks.
Today was terrible.
She had met Earnest and his family at Town Days. Mercy – the head of the children’s ministry for Redemption Community – had recruited her to work the “duck pond” for the church booth. She sat and shivered on an overturned bucket for hours, watching four years olds dip wooden rods into an inflatable swimming pool. Her job was to smile, hand out candy. Mercy had been engrossed in conversation with the family – pausing occasionally to beam at the youngest, a little girl with golden curls, who had a bag of blue cotton candy gripped tightly in her fist.
“Charliegh.” She had looked up, and there they were – a tall, smiling man, holding hands with his wife, a petite, brown-haired waitress that Charliegh recognized from the downtown café. A boy of about her own age, with silent, brooding eyes had been loitering behind them, trying to keep his sister still. “This is the Olsens.”
And somehow, after that day, Charliegh had ended up tangled in their lives. She became like the wrinkles in the corners of your eyes – you knew they existed, and that they always had, but you couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment when you noticed that they had appeared to accompany your smile.
She fought tears. Just like she couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment of becoming, she couldn’t mark the exact moment of unraveling. She knew all about ending, how unexpected changes made the world shocking and impossible and unfamiliar. She knew about starting, full of cotton candy and saccharine smiles. So why couldn’t she find the middle, territory trekked the longest, the kind that faded when you turned to see how far you had come?
“Miss?” The man behind the counter, apron pulling tightly over the bulge of his stomach, was drumming his fingers on the counter of the kiosk. Waiting. “May I take your order?”
Charliegh’s face turned bright red. “Yes. Sorry. Thank you.” She ordered a latte, two blueberry muffins, and a medium decaf, sugar please, no cream. As she was taking out change, quarters and dimes jingling cold in her fingers, a pair of hands wrapped around her eyes. She blinked, eyelashes sweeping against warm, sweaty palms. The edge of a gummy bracelet brushed her cheek, and she heard the crackle of new clothing as the person behind her shifted.
“Guess who?”
She reached up and pulled the hands down, blinking at the cashier. He was staring in annoyance, hands still outstretched. “Florence…” Charliegh sighed in annoyance. She counted out her fifty cents and dropped them onto the counter. Florence, her sometimes friend, moved around her to collect their coffee cups.
“Charliegh!” Florence paused a beat longer than necessary as they began to walk away, taking in the sleepy eyes and downcast features. “You look tired.”
“I am.” Charliegh said, a tinge of defense in her voice. She took her latte from Florence and popped the lid off. Steam drifted into the air, the smell of freshly ground coffee permeating her senses. She took a small, careful sip. It tasted like pumpkin, sweet and creamy on her tongue.
As she drank, she studied Florence. The crackling had been from her jacket, puffy sleeves shiny with newness. It look like something out of a magazine – almost too bright, too strikingly red to be real. She was in knee-high leather boots, the edges of her woolen socks peeking over the top. Dishwasher blonde hair was confined by a thin black headband. She was always this way – a median between messy and impeccable, stray hairs slipping over her ears, lipstick smudged in her cupid’s bow.
Sometimes friend meant that when she needed a story for the school newspaper, she was nice to Charliegh. When she had friends, she was gone, leaving ink stains and crumpled paper trails in her wake. Today, the student newspaper staff was scattered through the crowd, intermingling to renew neglected friendships, forgotten romance. And, in the spirit of the holidays, Florence attached herself to Charliegh’s side.
“See anything interesting?” Florence was gesturing towards the crowd, smiling occasionally as she spotted people she knew. Her hands were still firmly clenched around her untouched coffee, red mouth pursed.
“No.” The words stuck in Charliegh’s throat. All she had seen were the stares, dancing around her, sliding over, sizing her up and down.
“Oh. What a pity.” Florence followed Charliegh across the street to the hair salon. It was the first in a building of stores, fronted by a wide sidewalk. It opened into a parking lot, located directly across from the library. Charliegh lowered herself down onto the steps, setting her latte and the muffin bag down next to her.
Florence was still standing, hands on her hips. A smug half-smile curved on her lips, looking like a red slash on her pale face. “Guess what?”
Charliegh ripped open the paper bag. She didn’t want to guess. She didn’t want to know. Yet this was Florence, an eternal gossip, coming to life upon the brink of a good story. She thrived upon fresh blood, circling the town with an objective eye. A shark, Charliegh thought, teeth poised and ready to strike. The Cheshire cat, dropping hints, knowing everything, strategically fading into the background.
“Well, guess!” Florence said impatiently. “It’s good news.”
Charliegh sighed. “What?”
“Guess, stupid. Guess.”
“You decided to pay me back for the coffee?”
“Funny, but no.” Florence replied. “It’s about a boy.”
“Um…” Charliegh pulled her muffin out of the bag, staring at it absentmindedly. “You got a boyfriend?”
“No. No, no, no. You’re so dense.”
Charliegh tucked her hair behind her ears, trying to push the green away. Dense. Florence said things like this because she wasn’t, because she was quick and sharp-witted, tongue like a razor, words like knives. That was the aggravating thing about her: when she knew something, she reigned in a smug, supreme world of always being right. She decided popular bracelets were out of style when she had the newest one, stories were rich when they involved a lost friend, an enemy, or an old boyfriend. A tidbit was worth sharing because it had Charliegh attached to it, an unwelcome tag with stark black letters. Abandoned Girl.
“You know who Nolan Endell is, right?”
“Yeah.” Everyone at the church did – he had been The One Who Went Crazy, who was currently riding around town with his posse of redneck friends, passing joints away beneath cover of cinched sweatshirt hoods.
“He told me you were cute.” Florence was still standing there, still smirking as Charliegh jerked up from the steps. He told me you were cute. She couldn’t breathe. Her heart was beating rapidly, drumming into the air around her. That Boy from That Day.
“I need to use the restroom.” She grabbed her latte, the bag of muffins, and the remnants of her dignity. She could hear Florence calling after her as she practically ran for the bathroom trailer, amusement thick in her voice.
“It was an offhand comment, Charliegh. Charliegh!”
People were staring again, eyes burning a hole into her back as she chucked her food in the trash. Without an appetite, eating was pointless. She made her way across the parking lot, up the rickety metal steps, and into the trailer. It was empty – the stalls were short and squat, revealing the lack of occupants. She leaned over the sink, gripping the edge of the peeling laminate counter. The world was spinning. She felt violently, irreversibly, ill.
She waited a few agonizing minutes, holding her breath, expecting her sometimes friend to come stomping up the steps and into the trailer with a gust of wind. But Florence hadn’t bothered to follow her. She had probably slipped away, sidling up to another sometimes friend with a new piece of gossip clenched tightly between her teeth.
He said you were cute.
She was alone. She latched the door of the trailer and went back to the counter, afraid if that if she didn’t hold onto something, she would collapse.
Nolan Endell was That Boy from That Day. He was not just a boy who rode bikes around town with his redneck friends. He was Viv’s son. Another boy in Redemption with a missing parent. Together, they were like a chess set, missing a queen and a pawn and a bishop. Every so often a piece, here or there, would go missing. It wasn’t quite as simple as disappearing – the missing was messy and painful, a confusing sort of pain, like falling off a bike.
Except, when her mother ran away, it hadn’t been the same gradual, growing pain.
It had been a visceral force, a monster with jagged teeth, piercing claws, one who had reached into the pulsating heart of Charliegh’s worst nightmares and ripped it right out of her chest.
He said you were cute.
Charliegh felt goose bumps prickle over her skin, panic seizing hold of her thoughts. He wanted something – a favor, information about Earnest. His voice would join the chorus of Why’s beneath Charliegh’s bedroom window, unanswered laments that she could not afford to respond to. Why would he have told Florence, a notorious gossip, that sentence if he didn’t? She felt the panic again, rising up to match the pain, sweeping over her body like a tidal wave. Secret after secrets was gradually pulling her into the undertow.
He told me you were cute.
She leaned over the counter further, a screaming in her temples, a blackness in her brain, heart thumping, and vomited into the sink.
***
It had been two hours. Only a few people had been brave enough to venture into the bathroom trailer, quickly going about their business, ignoring Charliegh. She had folded herself into a corner, back tucked against the wall, forehead on her knees. After vomiting once, twice, thrice, she had held her hands over her mouth until she stopped. The smell still clung to her clothes and her hair, lingering on the cuffs of her sweatshirt as she brought up her hands to wipe her tears away.
She kept trying to stand, leave, but she couldn’t muster the energy. The trailer felt like it was rocking around her, a boat tossed by the waves. Rain drummed on the metal roof. Everyone was probably packing by now, getting ready to abandon booths and buckets of candy for the warmth of their homes. She heard shouting, high-pitched laughter. Footsteps all around, and then the sound of tires whooshing over the gravel lot.
Maybe it was only a sentence, an offhand comment by a boy who spent his days drowning in drug-induced clouds of hope and resentment. But a sentence, only a little, tiny sentence, had the power to make or break. That Day. That Day. Charliegh breathed through her nose, trying desperately not to vomit again. She felt so weak.
“C?” The door swung open, banging against the wall. Light gleamed off a head of dishwater hair, throwing shadows on Florence’s tiny face. “I know you’re still in here.”
Mortified, Charliegh huddled further in the corner. If Florence saw her, covered in vomit, eyes red and swollen, it would be plastered all over the Monday edition of Redemption Senior Gazette. She heard hair swishing as Florence looked to the right, and then the left.
She should been spotted. But the corner was dark, and she was cramped between the edge of the sink and the wall. The only thing visible was the tips of her black sneakers. She curled her fingers across her stomach. Please, Lord. Please, don’t let her find me.
The door slammed shut. Charliegh let out her breath slowly. Relief rose up inside her, a choking warmth that settled heavy on her shoulders. She sat there for a while more, trying to breathe deeply, trying to calm herself. When darkness melted through the windowsill, the moon casting white stripes upon the dingy interior of the trailer, Charliegh stood.
Her jacket was crusty, and her hair smelled putrid. She twisted it away from her face, tucking it inside her hood. Every moment felt numb, mechanical. Outside, the air felt fresh on her face, gently brushing away the shards of her emotional outburst. Her foot got caught on one of the trailer steps, and suddenly she was airborne, arms flailing. The ground rushed towards her face, black and unforgiving, and a burst of pain exploded in her cheek. She rolled onto the gravel, lying on her side. Everything was cold – her head, her heart, her body. Pebbles prickled against her hands. She pulled her knees up to her chest again, forming a cocoon of Charliegh, bunched and twisted and afraid. Her tears tasted salty on her lips. They dripped off her chin, unfurling onto her throat.
“That looked fun.” Crunch. Charliegh tensed at the sound of voice – a boy’s voice, deep and raspy. She willed her heart to speed up, adrenaline kick-starting her body, but all she felt was a heavy, disquieting numbness. Crunch. There was a hand on her forearm, big enough to encircle her arm. It pulled her into a sitting position, feet locked painfully underneath her.
He told me you were cute. It was Nolan. A baseball cap was pushed back on his head, revealing a rounded jaw and a shock of hair that fell across his eyebrows. He retraced his arm, crossing it over his chest. “Charliegh?” His voice was quieter this time, inquiring.
“Please leave.” She murmured. “Please.”
“Since you asked nicely…” She heard a soft, mocking laugh. He let out a soft grunt as he lowered himself to the ground beside her. His legs were long, narrow as he stretched them out in front of him. He was so thin, he barely cast a shadow.
“What…” Charliegh unfolded herself. She stared at him. “What are you doing here?”
“Waiting.” He was looking straight ahead, profile highlighted by the moonlight. Soft, white light spilled over his eyes, making his lashes seem long and unusually dark. She could make out a few blemishes, scattered over his cheeks.
“Was this about Florence?”
He laughed again. She hated his laugh – tone deep, quietly laced with cynicism. “It’s possible. Especially considering what she told you.”
Using Florence had been purposeful. Charliegh clenched her teeth. “I don’t know anything.”
Surprising her, he glanced over and met her eyes. “I didn’t ask.”
“No.” Not Asking was Sylas’s job – sweet, dependable Sylas. She wondered where he was right now. He had rescued her from everything. Almost everything. Today would make two. “Do you want something, Nolan?”
He started drawing circles on the pavement with his fingertips. “You wanna hear something crazy?”
“Sure.” As long as you don’t ask me questions. As long as it doesn’t have anything to do with Earnest.
“My mother didn’t have a problem with substance abuse.” He drew a swoop, finger almost bumping her leg. “And yet…” His eyes pierced hers suddenly. They seemed to burn in the dark, pupils light with pale blue fire. “I came home from school last year, the day after graduation, and all my bags were lined up on the front porch.”
Charliegh fidgeted. Each curve of his fingers drew closer to her, beckoning her, enticing her into his story. His fingernail touched the tip of her shoe.
This wasn’t news. A rumor mill existed for a reason, and by now most kids knew that Nolan Endell had been ousted for being a pothead. He lived with his employer now, a blueberry farmer whose son, Maxx, was Florence’s long standing crush.
“You know why she kicked me out?”
“Substance abuse.” They murmured it at the same time. Nolan smiled, teeth gleaming. It reminded her of a predator. Charliegh felt a tinge of fear, a prickle at the back of her neck.
“Irony at its finest.” Nolan said. His finger skated towards her thigh, skated away.
That Day. That Day. That Day. Charliegh couldn’t breathe. Her lungs felt dry, constricted. “What do you want from me, Nolan?”
“I just want to talk.” He touched her ankle, light and delicate as the brush of a moth wing. “Florence told me you were in the trailer.”
“You waited for me?” For some inexplicable reason, Charliegh was grateful. Here was a boy who understand things – about Earnest, about her past. Who, unlike Sylas, was not afraid to move towards her and smile, tipping his head towards hers.
“Sure I did.” Nolan replied easily. It sounded like a lie, but it was a believable one. Maybe he was a dropout. Maybe he had no future, no plans, because he was a pothead. But he was familiar. He was enticing. And Charliegh was lonely, feeling the pain of abandonment as she slowly realized that no one, not even Sylas, had bothered to check up on her. To them, she was a filament. A girl who made mistakes and wallowed in the shame of them.
The Girl Who Couldn’t Remember to Forget.
He said you were cute. She tried to tell herself that was why, when he slid his hand slowly up her calf, she didn’t push his hand away. His face came towards her and his palm was on her thigh, fingers spread, warmth seeping into her skin. He stopped just short of her mouth, his breath hot on her tongue, mingling with her slow, sad sigh.
“Do you wanna go somewhere?” He asked.
Charliegh closed her eyes. She wanted to be different, the weight of her past, of her sins, dropping off her shoulders likes millstones. She wanted to watch them tumble into the landslide of Things Forever Gone, and start living a life free of this suffocating guilt.
The Girl Who Forgot.
She rose to her feet, pulling him up alongside her. His bike lay discarded by the trailer, handlebars glittering silver in the moonlight. The smile she gave him was wistful, empty. She felt drained – from today and her dreams and the feel of his fingers burning through her jeans.
“Sure.” She whispered. “Take me anywhere.”
***