What Happened to Charli

Five

      I didn't sleep most of the night, I kept turning her pages and reading what she had to say. It started off good, back in Eighth grade. She mostly talked about cheerleading and Kirsten. I thought she met both Kirsten and Dana at the same time, but she didn't come 'til about freshman year. All three girls, cheerleading, Charli running track. Eventually if morphed into Daniel. The entries gushed over him at first, how he was so different from everyone else. I rolled my eyes a few times. In the middle of December, her parents started arguing. At first it was behind their bedroom door, when I got to July, it was out in the open. Sometimes it was over nothing. Other times it was over who wasn't carrying their weight. Most of the time it was over who was cheating. One night it got psychical. Her mom had been drinking too much and Charli had to hold her back so many times, when she woke up the next morning her arms were sore. Catheline, it would seem, developed a bad drinking problem. 

     One page had smeared ink, after deciphering most of what she wrote, I decided it was tears that did this. The page felt stiff, the ink ran into other words. It appears her mother tried to kill herself. She drank a half bottle jack whiskey straight, locked herself in the bathroom, blood streaked on the floor and walls. She thinks her mother cut herself on her thighs and maybe took pills the way she was begging to try and throw up. Charli eventually got her out of the bathroom and laid her on the living room floor, the same floor I walked on less than fifteen hours ago and coaxed her into throwing up and trying to get her to eat some leftover sausage. 

     I felt myself start to shake, anxiety, sadness, wanting to cry. Charli went through all of this by herself, her dad nowhere. Everything she could have possibly felt I was feeling only slightly. My dad was a drunk. Every night he spent his time at the bar until ten or eleven, sometimes even later depending on the day. The difference is, my dad was happier when drunk. Her mom just seemed belligerent and angry.

     I felt for her. The pain she felt all by herself. Did she tell her friends? Did they care? I flinched, my brain wanting to remember the night in the bathtub, the way she looked. I couldn't remember that now. I didn't want to. 

     Instead I focused on if Catheline got that drunk at her funeral. I sighed and used her attached ribbon to hold my spot. I put her journal under my bed, turning over and closing my eyes. My heart beat fast, my brain going a million miles a minute. Did she ever talk to someone? The school counselor? What would they do for her? Could they do anything for her besides put her in foster care?

     I tried to slow my heart rate down and breath in deeply through my nose, and out through my mouth. I was dreading reading the rest of her diary. In fact, I was scared. What would I read? Would I become an accomplice? I already was.

     I flinched and shook my head quickly, ridding myself of the thought. I had no idea. Zero. 

     I tossed and turned all night. Every hour I looked at my clock showed how close it was to my alarm going off. I was exhausted and pissed off. I had school in less than two hours and my brain won't cooperate with me. I sat up and looked over at my dresser, melatonin staring at me. It was too late to take any, not only that but melatonin rarely worked for me. It did a great job at making me tired, a worse job at letting me fall asleep. 

     Weird how that all works, right?

     I sighed and laid back down, staring at the ceiling. My fire alarms red blinking light putting me in a daze until my alarm woke me from dissociating. 

     I got around for school and left with a cereal bar, biking the streets and walking through the halls in a daze. In Spanish we have a pop quiz, I don't know if I passed or failed. I noticed Kirsten giving me a weird look twice throughout the day. I didn't let it bother me.