I don't know yet???

two

Summer was always Charlotte's favorite time of the year.

    Whenever something went wrong back at her old house (which it very often did) she could easily take her siblings back down the street to the beaten-down park at the edge of the highway, because it was warm out and they could forget whatever brought them there in the first place. Summer reminded her of how much fun Blake and Faith and Piper used to have playing out there together.

    Charlotte loved her siblings far more than she loved herself. They were the number one priority, always. But during the summer when they went outside and played games (mostly tag and hide-and-seek), Charlotte could finally take some time to relax all on her own.

    With Georgia and Chuck, this was all completely different. Blake and the twins were cared for without any reasonable need for Charlotte to interfere. It was odd and unfamiliar, but the unfamiliarity was mostly welcomed with open arms. (Sometimes it was a little lonely, but, then again, when didn't Charlotte feel lonely?)

    Charlotte could go outside and swing whenever she wanted. She could dip her toes in the warm, salty water along the edge of the beach. She could watch cheesy Disney Channel shows and bake chocolate chip cookies with Eleanor and play kid-edition board games. Her favorite thing to do was sitting at the metal table on the deck and reading. She had just started Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, even though it was a bit over her head.

    But then, it was August. Not the end yet, but the August none the less. And Charlotte knew what came after August, and that was another year of school. Nine months of being told she was a stupid (or, according to the more pretentious kids, vacuous and imbecilic) failure, which lead to nine months of loneliness and nine months of bad grades and nine months of absolutely no confidence in herself or the future. At least during the summer she could imagine everything turning out at least okay.

    The Murrays liked to bring the kids to do their school supply shopping extra early (they claimed that they wanted to get all the "good stuff" early, as if there was any when it came to school), which left an anxious monologue of soonsoonsoonsoonsoon constantly in the back of Charlotte's head in the days before they went out to the store.    

    They went to a Target about 20 minutes away from the house. Immediately upon entering Charlotte saw the big back-to-school sign hanging from the ceiling, and it made her stomach turn slightly. Now she couldn't skip like she always had when the kids were especially mean or the work was especially hard. Chuck and Georgia would be watching her every move, and with every mistake she'd lose a privilege or gain an allowance-less chore.

    While Chuck was arguing with Cole over which calculator to get (Cole thought graphing, because it was a better investment and he would need it in two years anyway; Chuck thought regular, because it was cheaper and Cole was only in Algebra I, not Pre-Calc) Georgia took them to go pick out folders.

    All of Charlotte's were grey. There were three: one for rotating classes (science, art, social studies, writing, music, which were easily pushed to the side), one for reading, and one for math. Georgia tried helping her to pick out fun patterned ones or ones with pictures, and after Charlotte refused those, ones in bright pink, yellow, and green, but Charlotte turned away from everything but the grey. She liked how grey blended in with just about anything, especially the khaki-colored walls of the typical elementary school classroom.

    Ever Eleanor commented on it, and she seemed to be in a world of her own, grabbing everything and anything she thought to be pretty from the shelves without restraint. "Don' you want somethin' a li'l more fun?" she asked, pointing towards a rack of notebooks featuring anything from the name of an overrated boy band to a stupid picture of a cookie jumping off a diving board into a glass of milk on the front.

    Charlotte shook her head. "No," she uttered. "I just want grey. Grey's my favorite color."

    A look of confusion spread across Eleanor's face. "Why not yellow or pink? It coul' even be blue, and Georgia says that's a boy color."

    Charlotte shrugged, not wanting to continue the conversation. "I just like it, okay?" That wasn't the entire truth, but Charlotte was guessing Eleanor wouldn't be able to tell.

    "Alright, then." Eleanor quickly turned her attention towards arguing with Georgia whether or not she needed to own a sparkly bright magenta protractor. Charlotte just picked up her RoseArt markers (the smallest pack possible), threw them in the cart, and moved on.

    Eleanor was definitely the most vocal and outspoken out of everyone (except maybe Cole, although the way he was vocal came more from memorability than frequency). Other than that, everyone was pretty quiet. Blake, Faith, and Piper were shy, just as Charlotte had always observed them to be, and Kassidy and Jude seemed to be terrified of everything. They'd jump even if the lights slightly flickered. Charlotte stopped to wonder what happened to them to be so...cowardly.

    Then again, she was cowardly too, though maybe not as obviously. Who was afraid of something like school?  Who on earth was so afraid of school that they actively avoided it, besides, of course, Charlotte Laughlin? She was just making herself dumber anyways, and deep down she knew it. Frankly, she hated herself for it. But in the end, what did Charlotte Laughlin matter to the world? She was just one single person, and at that, one who wasn't even smart or unselfish enough to properly care for her own flesh and blood without the help of some stupid government system that she didn't think would work out for them anyway.