Battered

The First Day

"Charlie! Charlie, god dammit! Get up and get ready for school," Charlie's mother exclaimed, throwing something heavy and metal up the stairs she no longer had the strength to climb. Her issues had, in recent months, become far more prominent than it had been since her diagnosis, and her ability to remember what was going on, and the shortness of her temper were all due to the chaos that was constantly moving around her head. 

"Yeah mom, I'm up." In all honesty Charlie had been awake far longer than his mother probably thought. In fact a more honest way of phrasing it would be that he didn't go to sleep last night. 

Charlie's life ran on a cycle, lasting a month. Three out of four weeks of the month he was well fed and slept around seven hours every night. This week, however, was the fourth week of the cycle. Because of her condition, Charlie's mom was granted early retirement and allowed to draw from her pension immediately. Because his mother was so young, however, the amount she was allowed to draw was smaller than that of the normal retired state nurse, meaning that the family could not afford to keep both Charlie and his mother fully medicated every month. 

Charlie's mother required a number of pills that any sane individual would find ludicrous, and Charlie himself was on Xanax during the three good weeks of the month, but due to the families finances, they could only afford a three week dosage at a time, and so come the fourth week of every month Charlie would suffer through nights of sleeplessness and days of panic attacks and shakiness, coupled with the crippling pain of withdraw. 

Not only was today the last day of hell week, but it was also the start of Charlie's senior year of high school, a year which would be mostly fun for the rest of his classmates, but for him, every moment of school was miserable. Due to the fact that he was, in all honesty, quite small and innocent looking, Charlie had become a keen target for many of the schools bullies, most of all Daniel, and Goliath of a young man standing six foot three. 

Charlie was miserable. He quickly slid his shoes on, noticing that the soles had started to develop a hole in the bottom, and pulled his blue jumper on before heading down the stairs. Giving his mom, who was now once again docile a hug before going out the door and down the street and towards Frost Creek High. 

The bell rang as he entered the building. 'Well timed' he thought to himself, noting that by this time most of the kids were already inside where he would be mostly safe from harm. Frost Creek didn't have lockers, so Charlie didn't have to waste time in the hallways and darted around people and corners until he got to his homeroom class. Unfortunately, Charlie suffered from another disability, the last name Miller, which stuck him in a home room with Daniel Morris, his greatest fear. Thankfully Mr. Adams, the art teacher, who served as Charlie's home room adviser was kind to him and put him as far away from Daniel as possible. 

After homeroom came chemistry. Charlie had always been a good student, and was happy that he had been aloud to be a part of the honors chem program at his school. When he got into the room he did as he always did and made his way to the front leftmost seat, keeping his head down as he walked. The fact that he was almost a week through withdrawal made concentrating difficult, and as he attempted to pull a binder out of his backpack, his shaky hands slipped and papers flew around the room. 

Laughter. Charlie despised laughter. How could others be so at ease as to laugh? Maybe it was fun to see people who seemed worse off than you, but to be honest, if someone in his class lived worse than he did, he wouldn't have seen it. He was always to preoccupied with thinking about whether tonight his mother was going to be able to remember to turn the stove off, or if she could even recall his name. While lost in thought he began to pick up his paper off the floor.

Just then, as he was wallowing in his own hatred, a voice cut through the giggling. A strange voice. A TV voice, or at least a way of talking he had only heard a few times on TV, something his family no longer had. Looking up, Charlie was met by deep brown eyes and a wide smile, which made him stumble backwards onto his butt. 

"Oh come on now, I'm not that much of a dumpster fire, am I?" the boy laughed, stretching out his hand to help Charlie onto his feet. 

Charlie, unsure of what the motives of this new face, got to his feet by his own strength. Once back on his feet he bent back down to get his papers, still not having replied to the boy who had startled him. Looking towards the other boy, he noticed that the stranger was also picking up papers, which honestly made Charlie anxious. 

Once the papers were off the floor Charlie sat back down, not asking for the blank notebook paper back from the other boy. Conflict was something that he would try to avoid by any means necessary. 

Coming uncomfortably close, the new kid squatted down so that he was at face level with Charlie, put the papers on his desk in a neat stack, and stared at him. It wasn't a mean stare, but more of a curious gaze, forcing Charlie to look at the taller boy. 

"W-w-what?" Charlie mumbled, the fact that he had a problem talking with others painfully clear. 

"My name's Tom, what about yours?" the boy said smiling. 

"Ch-Charlie!" he said, accidentally being louder than he had wanted to be. 

"Alright alright, everyone find a seat. I'm Mr. Troy," the teacher cut in. Tom then sat in the desk right next to Charlie. Charlie tried to be discreet about his displeasure, but he was clearly avoiding talking to the boy. Charlie found it difficult to talk to others, especially when, well, when they were really cute. 

The first day of Chemistry went by quickly as most of the work was simply meant to keep students busy. Soon class one was over and he was on to Calculus, another advanced class. He fidgeted the whole way there, as a certain someone was following close behind him.

Speeding up he darted around corners getting to the math hall as fast as he could. Unfortunately it was to no avail, as when he took his seat, right next to him sat Tom. 

The rest of the day went much like this. Moving from one place to another, only to find that Tom was always uncomfortably close, even if it wasn't too close for normal people. At the end of the day, Tom ended up outside of the school, walking with Charlie. 

"So, you're not much of a talker, are you Char-Char."

The nickname caused Charlie to go bright red. "N-n-no, it's t-the cycle," Charlie mumbled. Tom made a face that showed he clearly didn't understand what was going on. 

"Ne-never mind"

"Hey, I was just wondering. Tomorrow my dads are making lamb curry, do you want to come over and have some?" he asked, rubbing the back of his head with one hand. 

"Sure!" Charlie said a little too quickly. 

"Okay okay. I'll see you tomorrow at five."