𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐮𝐢𝐬𝐡𝐞𝐝 | 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐞 𝐝𝐚𝐥𝐭𝐨𝐧

𝚌𝚑𝚊𝚙𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚛𝚝𝚢-𝚏𝚘𝚞𝚛

I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. 
I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life! 
T

o put to rout all that was not life. 
And not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

Charlie had started out the meeting, his eyes transfixed on the notebook he had brought with him. Of course, we did not have the copy of Five Centuries of Verse that we did have when the boys attended Welton. It almost felt wrong to be in this sickly cold cave. Maybe we should've just left in the past. I wondered if the others thought that way as well.

I glanced over at Todd, who was wrapped up in his own notebook, hiding. I hadn't realized I had been staring at the boy until I was called on to read my poem. I took my eyes off of him and read. It was not my best poem, nor reading. Everything felt wrong, and I wanted to cry. The air was stale, we were freezing, and there was no laughter like before. Everyone was surrounded by this temptation to leave. 

The poems were read around the circle, weaving in and out, though no one was hearing what one another had to say. A dark though arose from us all. The meetings had died with the death of Neil. I curled up into myself, and Rhonda glanced at me, confused.

"So," She began, catching the faces of everyone in the group. Carla sat next to me, and though she had barely gone to the meetings, she still felt the weight of the end. "You guys came out here every Friday to read poetry."

Charlie nodded, his iconic beret slipping down over his forehead. He gently moved it, placing it back onto his head. 

"Why?" Rhonda continued, genuinely curious about the motives of the group. "I'm sorry, but a bunch of horny teenage boys gather here to read poetry? Isn't that kind of... weird?" I let out a laugh at Rhonda's thought process. She wasn't wrong. 

"Charlie was the only horny one." Knox said quickly, trying to tease the self-proclaimed charmer. This caused Charlie to snap his head in Knox's direction.

"Oh, did you finally get over, Chris?" He asked, a sly smile stuck on his face. 

"It wasn't about sex, Charlie." Knox responded, keeping his gaze soft. He wasn't looking for a fight, more of a... classic rivalry with one of his best friends. 

"Mhm, sure, sure. That's why you got beat up by Chet, huh? You were just swooning over her... personality." Charlie's voice turned into that causal arrogance that I hated so much. He knew he had the higher ground, and he knew how to get on someone's nerves. He loved it. 

"Shut up, you don't know what you're saying." Knox laughed, and I stared down Charlie. He was beginning to step over the line. At least it was distracting us from our melancholic thoughts. 

"Oh, I think I do, Mr. Overstreet." He chuckled, throwing his beret like a Frisbee onto Knox's lap. "How's the girls in England? Are you chasing them with flowers and sappy poems, too?"

Knox through the beret back at him, this time a lot harder. It hit Charlie with a soft thump. "You need to learn when to shut your mouth. Besides, I heard you got beat up at Yale. Had to change roommates, uh, three times?"

"Twice." Charlie corrected him like he was proud of that number.  "And none of it was my fault." He glanced to me, and I could feel every ounce of my body swoon. It was stupid. How did he have so much power over me?