All Planned Out

Three (Alex)

I am used to being woken up by Charlotte on Saturday mornings, usually earlier than I would like. Her parents run marathons, and so they are always out on the weekends getting in a couple of miles around the neighborhood. As soon as they're down the block, she's sitting on the floor of my room with her nose buried in my laptop. My clock will read 7:30 at the latest. She says it's because friends are supposed to do things like this, but I know it really is because we have a much faster internet connection.

This morning, however, I wake up and it is almost ten. I'm only a little surprised neither of my parents has tried to wake me if for nothing else than to ask where she is.

When I call her, I do not get an answer. I peek out my window and crane my neck to try and survey her driveway.

It's empty.

She's not home.

"Her mom's probably got her running errands." I say to myself. "I'm sure I've got some I need to do, too."

Twenty minutes later I'm standing in the bathroom, half-dressed, when my phone rings. It's Charlotte.

"He's at work!" She yells, and I slam my hand on the screen to turn off the speakerphone.

"What?"

"Stuart. He's at work." Her voice is pitched up at least an octave above normal.

"Again I must ask...what?"

"He just pulled in a couple minutes ago. Probably starts his shift at 10:30."

I pinch the bridge of my nose and stare into my reflection. This is my fault. I had told her to think about Stuart and her and Montana. She must have really thought about it.

"Charlotte?"

"Yeah?"

"Where are you?"

Silence.

"I'm, uh, sitting in a parking lot. A parking lot that is, um, across the street from Valley Brew."

"Stuart works at Valley Brew." This is not something he or Montana had ever told me, but two things made it a pretty easy fact to gather. The first was that he occasionally wore his work visor around at school. The second is that getting anywhere from our neighborhood meant driving past it and its parking lot, and it was hard to miss seeing Stuart's metallic green Mini sitting with all the other employee vehicles. "Did you talk to Stuart?"

"No."

"Then—"

"—I've just been, like, waiting for him."

"Waiting? Since when?"

"Like 7 or so."

"Charlotte."

"Yeah?"

"You've been sitting in your car for over three hours waiting to see if Stuart worked today?"

"When you put it that way it sounds insane." She titters and then coughs. "I wasn't going to go to his house, Alex."

"I—"

"—Maybe we should wait until after the lunch rush to talk to him. He'll probably have earned a break by then."

"We?"

"If I'm going to out myself to Stuart Crane, I'm not doing it alone. You need to be here. He needs to know that this is serious."

"You mean your crush on Montana?" I asked. I was pretty sure I saw my reflection gag.

"We won't talk about you, okay? Not at all."

"That was not up for any sort of debate, Miss Monaghan." I heard her groan. "But please don't tell me you're going to stay in that parking lot for three more hours."