Book Covers

Chapter 23

Tyler Emery

Charlotte sat cross legged in an arm chair in her living room. A thick book sat in her lap, and her fingertips were skimming across the pages with a touch as light as a feather. The room was comfortable and open, with a large window by the front door. Through it you could see the perfectly kept lawn that was typical in a neighborhood like Charlotte's, and a young kid ride past on a bright pink bike. Inside the room, there was a couch, a couple of arm chairs, and against the back wall was one of those lounges that you see in therapists' offices. Of course there were more bookshelves, but a lot of these seemed to be filled with souvenirs, things like a miniature version of the big clock in London and a flag from Russia. There were also a lot of pictures of Charlie. I wondered what it must be like to sit there and pose for a picture that you will never see, but regardless, she was photogenic. Baby Charlie with dirty blonde curls and frosting covering a huge smile. Young Charlie with her now black hair in braids, hanging upside down on a swing set, her cheeks and forehead bright red. Charlie as she is now, sitting on her bed with her dad, obviously in a heated discussion by the way her eyebrows were knitted and her hands were waving. Charlie sitting on the front steps of a great building, her face held up to the sun. That one was my favorite, because it was my Charlie.

I paced the room, feeling anxious and pent up, full of emotion and irritation since the night before, the night when the Thing ruined a perfectly happy and joyous moment between me and Charlie in an attempt to touch her tonsils with his tongue. The mere thought of it made my blood boil, and I was seconds away from grabbing a globe paper weight and chucking it across the room. Last night, I saved Charlotte. For the first time, I actually felt like a guardian angel, like I had actually lived up to my given title. The moment their lips had connected, the world had turned into a red haze, with anger roaring through me like the Savannah River. I had rushed at the boy, seeing Emily Miller's stark white face take the place of Charlie's, and guilt and vengeance drove each of my movements as I threw Ric, and the man I was that night, against his bedframe.

The night was hazy after that. I was reliving that moment at the party over and over again, feeling the heat of the bodies pressed against me and the alcohol induced rage of seeing Alexis, but I was also envisioning Charlotte there. Charlotte joking about her cats. The beer seeping through Charlotte's sweater onto her breasts. But in this altered reality, my past that wasn't really my past, I didn't play the role of myself, the drunk jock that blatantly disregarded everything his best friend said. Oh no, that role was already taken by a creep with shaggy hair and a hoodie that was stained from years of wear and tear. This time, I took the role of the boy with the feelings for the girl in the white sweater. The boy that saved her.

I dimly remembered Charlotte running downstairs and grabbing her backpack at the door, and I could sort of recall how surprised her parents had been when she came home so early from her good ol' friend's house, and that had made my blood boil more.

But as my anger and frustration grew, Charlotte's seemed to shrink, so much so that it didn't look like she was feeling anything. She hadn't said a word since she stammered an excuse for being home so early last night. She had been silent that morning, picking at her breakfast without really eating it, and dutifully followed her dad to the car when he nervously told her it was time to go. At school, she obediently did her work, all of it, and even sat in a conference room during lunch in order to listen to a nerd named Donovan read her her notes so that she could be prepared for a test in the next period. When we got home, she immediately did her homework, then got a book from her room, and now we were here. By all accounts, it should have been a normal day, a day to be celebrated for Charlie, but I knew what happened last night. I had expected her to cry, to explain everything to her dad or at least her mom, and ask them for advice on what to do, but regardless of that, her silence said way more than she wanted it to.