I'd managed to fall asleep at some point. I woke up Tuesday morning surprised that I wasn't exhausted. I told Mom I was staying after school again, with Ethan, and she didn't have any shopping for me to do—thankfully.
I was already halfway over to Charlie's when I remembered I was going to tell her everything, including the pool activities I'd found myself involved in.
But I didn't want to talk about!
This was the part of friendships I started to suck at when my parents were divorcing. The last thing I wanted to do was talk about it. I hung out with my friends to avoid talking about my problems—but they wanted to talk about it all the time. Did they secretly enjoy hearing my problems because they didn't have any of their own?
I shook that all away. This was different—life and death, actually. And this was Charlie Jones I was thinking about. She didn't think like the other Cheshire girls. I actually trusted Charlie.
Thinking of which, she was sitting on her porch by the time I pulled up. Charlie rushed down and into the car. "Mind if I turn up the heater?" she said between her chattering teeth.
"Go for it. Why didn't you wait inside?"
"Everybody's gone. My parents went first, and then Celia took Ian to school since I'm riding with you. I rushed out because I thought you were coming an hour early, but when I locked the door I remembered you said only half an hour early. And my keys are on the kitchen table."
"So you locked yourself out?"
Charlie sighed. "Yeah…. I hate when that happens in cold weather. Anyway," she rummaged through her backpack. "I finished the diary—neglecting history homework, but, oh well. Boring throughout. I bet all the good stuff was in those last pages. There's no other diary?"
I took the diary and put it in my backpack. "Not that I've found, no." I never actually looked, but… what were the odds?
"So," said Charlie as I pulled away from her house. "How'd yesterday with Ethan go?"
"I almost drowned."
She laughed. When I didn't, she immediately turned serious. "What?"
That first statement was a weird way to start, but I managed to keep going and tell her all that happened—including what I'd seen with Beatrice and the pages. Charlie's eyes widened when I recalled what Celia had seen for me the day I met her.
Because I was still embarrassed, I left out all the stuff Ethan and I had talked about while he'd helped me. I figured that was 'Ethan and I' business, and maybe he wouldn't like it if I just… I don't know, gossiped everything to someone else. Besides, most of it had been about me. Today was definitely going to be about him.
Anyway, I also included Beatrice's second(?) visit last night, and what I'd found behind the painting. I went ahead and assumed that I was right, that Ethan had the thirteen pages somewhere in his house.
It wasn't until I found a space in the school parking lot (near the Cheshire Foxes sign, actually) that Charlie finally made a sound:
"Holy shit."
"That's what he said." I turned Todd off. We sat there in silence, everyone else walking around the parking lot, hanging out. We were earlier than usual, so we were surrounded by other students, probably talking about normal things like school and homework… not ghosts and unsolved murders.
"If they're at his house," said Charlie, "how're you going to look for them? Are you going to bring him in on this?"
I scoffed. "No way. He'll think I'm crazy. What I could probably do is get him to invite me over, and then maybe I can snoop around. What?"
Charlie's eyebrows went pretty high. "I don't know…. No one really sees his parents. I doubt they're very welcoming."
"That's probably when it comes to everyone else in Cheshire, but I'm not like everyone else. Besides, Ethan and I are project partners. Maybe if I invite him to my house, he'll invite me to his. What?"
Charlie was smiling a knowing smiling. "Bella… do you like Ethan?"
I was prepared for that. "No, not the way you're implying. I just need to get into his house, and B & E is definitely not the way I want to do it."
*
I went through the same routine… just a little differently. I guessed almost dying would affect me somehow. It was all mundane and childish… or at least the kids were in my classes. I felt a little lifeless. I hoped I didn't get depression or anything. No matter what I did or what was happening, the very last thing I ever wanted to do was worry my mother.
With that in mind, I forced myself to get back on track. During lunch, Charlie and I used the computers to see if we could find any newspaper articles about any murders in Cheshire… but there weren't any! All the deaths mentioned were of natural causes, an illness, or proven accidents. None were about a teenage girl murdered in my house.
"This is starting to look like a cover-up," said Charlie, looking discouraged.
"Which could only mean this goes far up," I said, "all the way to a founding family, or someone up on the social ladder. Wasn't one of the Wyatts mayor at the time?"
Charlie was manning the computer, so she scrolled around. "It was… Eric Wyatt. However, we have to assume that was when Charlotte and her mother were working for them. If that's true, then we can assume the worst happened." That left a sour cloud hanging over us.
"Well," I said suddenly, "we won't know anything until we find those missing pages. I'm meeting Ethan here after school, so I'll see what I can do."
Charlie nodded, exiting the page we were on and opening a new tab. "You know what I was thinking about in English today?" I nodded for her to continue. "First, we talked about The Scarlet Letter since we read it last year. That made me think about Easy A—my mom rented it and I saw it last night. It's really good, but what I thought about was what Olive said, how the books we study in class have something to do with what we're going through in real life?"
"Is there a point to all this?"
"When I thought that, I thought about a certain book I read… and you."
"Me? How?"
She cleared her throat, and then held up seven fingers as she went through her list. "Your name's Bella, and my name's Charlie. You moved to a small town mid-January. You have a parent who's from here—and you live in a single-parent household. You're interacting with a boy outside the social norm whose name starts with an E. And, then, this boy saved your life in a freak accident."
"… No…."
Charlie laughed out loud. "You're in Twilight!" The librarian poked her head out of her office and shushed at us. When she looked away, Charlie made a face at her and turned back to me, a wide smile on her face. "Your life is following a very Twilight-like pattern."
"Shut up," I said, my voice pitching high at the end for some reason. "My life is not like Twilight. I'd kill myself before I let that happen."
"The pattern's totally there, Bella. I predict you're going to be with Ethan Walker before we solve this. That's generally how it works out, right?"
"Yeah, right. At the rate we're going, we won't solve this thing until we graduate." However, I didn't mind the idea of being with Ethan. "So… why did you feel the need to point this out to me? It's depressing."
She laughed. "I thought it was hilarious. I laughed in class and Cynthia looked at me with a weird look on her face." The bell rang. "Oh, yeah—and you share biology with Edward—I mean, Ethan, right after lunch."
Charlie let me punch her arm before we went separate ways.
*
It was just like how Ethan said it would be (and Charlie too?)
He totally ignored me! The entire time! I was too stunned to do anything about it, though, mostly since the lecture stuff was going to be on the midterm (which was scheduled the day before our project-presentations). As far as I could tell, I wasn't doing very well in biology.
In your face, Charlie. Bella was good at science—I'm not.
…
Was that a good thing?
Anyway, it wasn't awkward sitting next to Ethan without any interaction. It was better, like we were playing roles.
Crap—if he was Edward, then I was stuck being Bella. Swan.
I spent the rest of class trying to compare us to other characters from books, preferably ones where the girl wasn't like Bella Swan.
Choir had been one of those routine classes where nothing really notable happened. I sometimes forgot that I was in that class.
Mr. C decided to change that with the announcement that we were to start choosing songs to sing in the Spring Concert, which would be in March, just before spring break.
The whole class groaned.
He frowned. "Come on, it's not going to be that bad. We'll be singing three songs together, and then you can audition for a solo or duets or ensembles or anything. It's your time to shine!"
"But no one showed up for the Winter Concert," said one girl.
"Or last year's Spring Concert either," a boy chimed in.
Mr. C waved their comments away. "That's irrelevant. And, on the off-chance no one does show up, then what do you have to worry about? You can sing in front of an empty auditorium, and then we could leave early."
"Do we have to?" asked Charlie.
"It's part of your grade, so… yes. Now, everybody stand up. Stretch out a little bit, chillax, and then we'll start with 'Danny Boy', do that one twice, and then…." He looked through his music book. "Then we'll run through 'Seasons of Love' and—oh, no third one. We'll choose a third one in the second half of class. To your feet!"
We sang through 'Danny Boy'. Mr. C then demanded that the sopranos be a little louder; there were only seven of us, and neither of us wanted to be loud enough to be heard. We went through it again, and I became the loudest about halfway through. 'Seasons of Love' went well, since the sopranos didn't have to be very loud. The altos shone through more.
We chose 'If We Hold On Together' after we heard Mr. C play the whole song. Mostly the girls liked that one, and since we outnumbered the boys… well…. The altos also started us off, and Cynthia looked happy about that. She didn't like how Mr. C mentioned that the altos weren't so much as backup to the sopranos in this song.
Once we were done singing as a group, Mr. C brought out a small box of songs for solos, duets, trios, quartets, ensembles, all-girls, and all-boys. He set it on the piano as we took our seats. No one stood up to get one.
He frowned, crossing his arms. "I expected a little more bravery from the seniors." Three girls went up, pulling the box across the piano so they didn't face the rest of us. "No men?" Mr. C commented. None of the guys moved. Everyone avoided Mr. C's gaze; he even managed eye-contact between me and Charlie. "If I don't get seven songs chosen by any kind of grouping or solo, I'll assign songs and put you in groups. I didn't get this much reluctance last year."
"There were more seniors last year," said Charlie as she got to her feet. She turned to me. "Come on."
"What? You're kidding." I noticed Ethan go up to the piano (everyone moving out of his way) and I wanted to go even less.
"Come on. I can be an alto—we can duet. Get it?"
"I got it—I just don't want it." Ethan was back in his seat when Mr. C called for attention.
"If there aren't any songs you like in the box, you can always suggest a song to me in the next month. It must be scholarly appropriate, and I must be able to find sheet music for it. Or, if you find an instrumental track, that would be acceptable too. Please keep in mind that the music we learn here is classical and contemporary… so, no pop songs or songs that sound like robots made them."
***********
Happy Valentine's Day to the few awesome people reading this!!!
So... this one seemed like a filler. I was assuming that, even in a mystery, there have to be other things going on too. I also felt that I had to circle back to a few things, so it doesn't seem like I wrote stuff and then completely forgot about them. Thank goodness for editing and rewriting.
Do you know any songs two girls could sing together? I don't want one being backup to the other.
**March 3, 2014
I noticed an error I made with names, but now I fixed it. The change was Aaron Wyat to ERIC Wyatt. That is all.
Thank you for your time. :)