Sweet Charlotte

「 five: known exchanges 」

Willow sat in the middle of her row for math the next day — it wasn't like anybody was going to be sitting beside her, anyway. Besides, the class, as usual, was half-barren. Seth ditching was proof of that.

She absentmindedly scribbled down notes and breezed through the assigned practice questions, tossing her assignment into the "inbox" for work sitting on Browning's desk. Then, blankly, she sat down at her desk and fiddled with her pen.

Once upon a time, she used to care about people seeing her finish first. Her fear of being made fun of for being smart rapidly dissipated when she not only realized just how good she was at math — and how proud she was of it — but also how short life was. The thoughts of irrelevant teenagers in her grade 12 calculus class meant nothing in the grand scheme of her fragile life.

All she could think about though, what had been plaguing her mind since the moment she sat down, was Charlotte.

Finally, she'd found her way in despite it being through gruesome tutoring. Mrs. Evans had been so excited when she swung by before class to say she'd taken the job.

'You are!' She'd squealed, her black turtleneck bouncing as she moved. 'That's amazing, Willow! You'll have a great reference from me if you need it. This will look amazing on a resume.'

Willow had forgotten about resumes — about jobs and about her future. Those thoughts were laid to rest a long time ago when day in and day out she was draped in thin, cold hospital attire, and tucked into a stiff piece of cardboard they called a bed.

Opening her notebook, Willow scribbled 'Willow, tutor' onto the corner of one of her pages and scrawled her cell number underneath it. She ripped the small piece out of her book and stuffed it in her pocket. The goal was to put it in Seth's locker — that way she'd be able to deal with him as little as possible.

She had nothing against Seth. He was a perfectly fine guy and, from what she had heard, one hell of a football player. There was just something about his demeanour — his cocky 'nobody can touch me' attitude — that threw her off. He wasn't as powerful as he thought he was. Nobody was. All it took was one little thing, a thing out of your control, and your life and strength could be gone.

The bell rang, and the death-grip Willow hadn't realized she had on the slip of paper released. She waited patiently, taking her time packing her book bag, giving everyone else time to leave first, before she left. This wasn't about anxiousness. It was about a disinterest in needing to talk to anybody, especially the people who faked their care regarding her health to her face. Many of them claimed she was actually just an 'anorexic dropout' behind her back.

As she was on her way to her locker, ready to swap her math books and grab her lunch, Willow spotted a huddle she was interested in.

Mara and Sunni were propped up against a locker, chatting and texting as they normally did. Someone dipped in, kissed Mara on the cheek, then vanished. Willow assumed it was Mara's boyfriend, but those days, who knew. She was so far out of the loop it could've been anybody.

Willow swallowed as she surveyed them, a single hand against her own locker — her banana peanut butter sandwich so close to her touch.

She knew that if she had any hopes of finding the truth about what happened to Charlotte, she needed to talk with them. If they were really Charlotte's best friends as everyone claimed they were, there was no way they had no idea of what was going on with her. They needed to have, at the very least, something for her to go on.

Rather, something for her and Seth to go on.

The sentence felt wrong to think about. Swallowing hard again, Willow detached her palm from her locker and started toward the two of them. If she seemed approachable, maybe they would talk to her. She buried her neck deeper into her sweater and fluffed her hair, and tugged the sleeves of her jacket so they covered more of her palms. Did cute equal approachable? For Willow, she hoped so.