One Chapter Ends

Chapter Sixteen

it is possible to lose someone

in more ways than one

they can be here

and a hundred miles away

at the same time

November 2nd. How had that happened so quickly?

Hazel stared in amazement at the date on her phone. October had come and gone – now there were only eight days between her and the open day.

"Eight days," she said aloud, shaking her head.

"Crazy, huh?" Charlotte commented from the floor, where she was writing out a list of things they still had to do. "We still have to organise the caterers – are we going with Subway? We can get a great deal there."

"Yeah, Subway's great," Hazel said, glancing at her. "We'll get four platters of subs and two platters of cookies. I'll get the drinks from Coles and we can set up a table for all the food inside the store. Speaking of, we still need to rearrange the store at some point. Could you add a reminder on that one that the arrangement I drew out is in my desk in my room?"

"Got it," Charlotte said, scribbling it on the list.

"Hey, Hazel?" Renée called, peering around a bookcase. "Mia wants to know if we have any Allan Pease."

"Which book?" Hazel asked, tilting back in her chair.

"The body language one."

"Um, I think we have one copy left? Could be in the storeroom."

"Awesome. Thanks."

Hazel let her chair fall back onto the floor, turning to face Charlotte. "What else did we need to organise?"

Charlotte ran her pencil down the list. "We've covered music, food, the number of people coming... um... we've confirmed the soloists performing outside, all the artists, the writers who are reading aloud... the Orange Suns are confirmed to play too..." Hazel watched her eyes scan the list. Suddenly, they brightened. "Actually, there was something I wanted to run by you."

"Yeah? What's that?"

"I had an idea for the reading aloud part," Charlotte told her, watching her with a shrewd look on her face. Hazel waited. "I was thinking you could read some of your work aloud."

"What?"

"Yeah!" Charlotte looked excited. "You're a writer and you own the bookstore. It'd be awesome if you participated, too."

"But I'm not really writing much at the moment. I'm not sure–" Hazel tried. Charlotte rolled her eyes.

"I saw you typing away there for the past month," she said, nodding towards the typewriter. "Theo told me that you're going to study writing next year. You should do this."

"What I was typing wasn't a story of mine," Hazel argued, crossing her arms over her chest. "It was a project for someone else. I don't have anything that's ready yet."

"So write something in the next few days," Charlotte shrugged. "All this just sounds like excuses."

Hazel sighed. "Charlotte–"

"Excuses!" she sang out, eyes glinting.

She gritted her teeth, glaring at the teenager, before relenting. "Fine. I'll write something."