Max threw her sandwich onto her lap and handed Sophie hers. “You girls ready to go, then?”
“Yeah,” Sophie said. “I’ll drive.”
The two hours passed in comfortable silence. Charlotte knew from experience that long car rides at night had more therapeutic value than almost anything else. The radio played quietly in the background, and Charlotte let her eyes flutter closed when she tilted her head against the window. Before she drifted off, something reminded her of her unfinished conversation with Sophie. Charlotte made a mental note to ask her about it the next time they were alone.
However, the next week was back to school, and the weekend after that was the car rally…and the following weeks made everything else seem unimportant, and the conversation dropped from her mind entirely.
five
Unpacking didn’t take Charlotte very long. There wasn’t much to slide back into drawers or hang in closets or tuck away under her bed. When she left a year ago, she left most of her stuff behind. That way, she figured she’d have to come back for it. Her clothes were mostly second-hand—she and Sophie used to nag Sean to take them to the Frenchys in Truro where they’d spend hours rifling through the bins. Charlotte had her favourite things: a chunky Roots sweater she’d saved her birthday money for, and a pair of dark-wash Levi’s that were fading at the edges from so much wear. Some of her nicer pieces were from Sophie, actually, who’d pass them down to her without ever making Charlotte feel like it was charity. “It just looks better on you. Keep it.” She would shrug it off like it was nothing. Sophie had the extraordinary ability to only make you feel bad if she wanted to. Charlotte kept a few of her dad’s big T-shirts with Alexander Keith’s and other Canadian beer logos in her top drawer. She only wore them to sleep in, but it was nice to have them there.
Charlotte finished up and decided she should rediscover the town she had only glimpsed in the dark the night before. Better get it over with quick.
Charlotte sighed at herself in the mirror. She looked exhausted. Her skin was uneven and her eyebrows needed work. Sophie used to shape them for her when she was bored. “Sisters, not twins,” Sophie would always say. Frowning, Charlotte picked at an impending zit on her chin. Damnit.
Sean had turned the TV on by the time she was back in the living room.
“I’m going out,” she announced.
Sean managed to tear his eyes away from the Today Show, which was trying to teach him the mechanics of tiramisu. “You taking the car?”
“No, I’ll walk.”
Sean turned back to the screen. “Can you make tiramisu?”
“No, Sean. I can barely make Kraft Dinner.”
“Damn.” He sat up. “Hey, can you pick me up some smokes?”
“I thought you quit?” Sean quit smoking every couple of weeks.
He shot her a look and fished a crumpled twenty-dollar bill out of his pocket. “Just when I thought I missed you.”
She took the money and jammed it in her pocket.
“Bring back the change,” he told her as she slipped on her shoes.
Charlotte let the screen door slam closed behind her, pretending she hadn’t heard him. The change would make up for her bus money last night.
The walk to the Quik Mart convenience store was exactly seven and a half minutes. The Quik Mart, a.k.a. the only social establishment in walking distance, served as the halfway point between Sophie’s and Charlotte’s.
Living in a small town wasn’t all that different from boarding school, as it turned out. But at least at boarding school, people didn’t know—and often didn’t care—where you came from, or who your brother was, or how long your aunt and uncle had lived on the same plot of land. In River John, everyone knew everyone. Everyone was someone’s ex, someone’s little sister, or someone’s best friend. Everyone’s parents grew up together. There are no secrets in a small town.
At least, nothing stayed secret.
Charlotte was sixteen and Sean was eighteen when their dad had gotten sick. Everyone had acted like Charlotte was too young to understand, but that didn’t stop her from hearing things around town. It was like she was the last person to know, for real. But she knew something was wrong when she realized that Mr. Anderson, the guy who owned the Quik Mart, had been under-charging her for everything out of pity.
Charlotte crossed the Quik Mart parking lot. The building looked the same as she remembered: faded white bricks and garbage bins lined up out back, and the same old men smoking outside beside their trucks. She could picture Sean here, in the field behind the store, drinking with his friends. She realized then how fast her heart was beating. Things looked completely different in the daylight—things were different, she told herself—but all she could see was that night in the dark and the heat.
Someone came out of the store then. The person nodded to her in the River John way as they passed. Charlotte jumped a bit but didn’t think they noticed and pushed her way into the store, the air conditioning a sharp relief from the afternoon heat and her mind. The faint smell of egg rolls and honey garlic chicken wafted over from the Chinese restaurant next door. The door closed behind her and the little bell hanging above it announced her. The guy working the counter looked up and gave her a warm smile and a wave. He was Leo Hudson, a boy in her year who looked a bit like he had escaped from a boy band. Max’s best friend. The two were almost never apart. Kind of like her and Sophie. Used to be.
“Charlotte! Max told me you were back,” Leo said brightly as she approached the counter and he put down his phone. “What a text to wake up to. It’s been a while. I heard one rumour that you ran off for a shotgun wedding.”
“Close,” she said, “you should try and get your info from a more credible source next time.”
“Give me something.”
“Windsor. Boarding school,” Charlotte clarified.
“No wedding? Delilah Cooke owes me five bucks.”
Delilah Cooke was the girl in their grade who knew everything about everyone. And a whole lot more about people that wasn’t anywhere near true. If any gossip reached her, it would be out to the entire school within the hour.
“It wouldn’t be the first time she was wrong.” Charlotte smiled. “I’m just here for cigarettes for Sean.”
Leo rang them up as Charlotte dug around her pockets for her brother’s money.
“Her truth-to-bullshit ratio has gotten a lot better, though, to be fair. She’s gotten way into fact checking. I’m starting to think she might be a tiny bit prophetic. And that’s twelve bucks,” Leo told her.
Charlotte sighed and passed over the twenty. “What a waste of money.”
Leo handed back her change and the box of cigarettes. “I’m working here all summer, so please visit. I’ll let you help yourself to the slushies in exchange for the company.”
She smiled. “Might be illegal but still sounds like something I could get behind.” She waved goodbye and made her way to the back of the store, seeing if there was anything that struck her fancy in the hardware section that she could buy with the rest of Sean’s money.
“What are you doing?”
Charlotte didn’t need to look up to recognize the voice. She motioned to an electric drill that was on display beside the nails. “Just looking to save some money on dental work.”
Max was standing at the ancient pinball machine in the back of the store, looking at her over his shoulder. He had a cigarette tucked behind one ear and was wearing dark jeans with a black T-shirt, his hair all tossed back from his face. He didn’t look all that surprised to see her, and for half a second she felt like she hadn’t been gone at all. Max was back to being completely indifferent to her presence and it put her at ease.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Wasting my inheritance,” he muttered bitterly, turning back to the game, which was dinging and chiming frantically.
&n
bsp; She moved past him and leaned her shoulder against the top half of the machine that displayed Max’s apparently unsatisfactory score.
“Thanks again for the ride home last night,” she said.
“No problem. Happy to be of ser—shit!” Max slammed his hands against the sides of the machine. He looked at her. “You’re distracting me.”
“I can’t help how unfairly beautiful I am,” she said, batting her eyelashes at him sarcastically with her hands posed under her chin. “But I’ll try and be less disruptive next time I’m minding my own business in a convenience store.”
“If you came all this way to thank me for a lift, you could’ve sprung for a muffin basket.”
“Allow me to jot that down.”
“I’ve never received a muffin basket,” Max explained with a shrug. “I think it’s a nice idea.”
She rolled her eyes.
“So I stopped by Sophie’s this morning, to wish her a happy birthday,” he continued.
“Oh? How’d that go?”
“Well, the good news is everyone at that party was far too wasted to really care one way or the other that you showed up. I did receive a text message from Delilah last night, which just had your name and a bunch of smiley faces and exclamation points, so we can assume she saw your grand entrance. I think she likes you.” He looked up and caught her eye. “Not a bad alliance to have.”
Charlotte laughed. She had to give Delilah credit for her dedication to spreading gossip. “So, what’s the bad news?”
“I went to see Sophie.”
“Yes, I got that. Did she say anything about me?”
“Not until I brought it up.”
Charlotte pursed her lips. “So, shit disturber is just your job description, then?”
Max fiddled aggressively with the buttons on the sides of the machine. “I’m entitled to antagonize my ex-girlfriend. It’s in the rules.”
“Whatever. What did she say?”
Max cleared his throat and squared his shoulders in what Charlotte took to be an imitation of Sophie. “I don’t care if you saw her begging for change outside the Quik Mart, you’re blocking my light! Something like that. Then she started talking to Amy Chamberlain about whatever and I left.” He jammed a button. “I didn’t remind her that I am, in fact, her light.”
“Well, that’s not so bad—”
He cut her off with a sympathetic look. “I was paraphrasing. She really wanted me to promise to never speak to you again. I said, ‘Sophie, how am I supposed to seduce and spy on her if we can’t even talk?’ She didn’t like that.”
“So we shouldn’t be having this conversation right now?”
Max scoffed and pushed hair back from his face. “I’ll talk to whoever I want. I don’t care what Sophie thinks.”
“How’ve you guys been? Since you ended things?”
“I didn’t end anything,” Max said, hip-checking the machine.
Huh. Charlotte had figured the breakup had been mutual—that’s how Max made it sound last night. And if it hadn’t been mutual, at least pushed for from his end.
“I wasn’t really in a rush to break up with my girlfriend after a car accident put her in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. Jeeze.” Like he had read her mind. Max must have been ready for people to think he’d dumped her.
Charlotte shifted her weight and looked at the floor, not used to being honest and serious with him. “Right. I’m sorry.”
Max shrugged. “You didn’t do it.”
Charlotte didn’t know why she assumed Sophie wouldn’t have done the dumping. She thought Sophie might have needed Max, after everything. It’s not like Charlotte had been around. That meant Sophie had lost the two people she’d been closest with in a matter of months, and that was on top of all the damage the accident had done. If she were on better terms with Sophie, Charlotte knew she would have known every single detail about the breakup in advance—they would have role-played and practiced how Sophie was going to do it and Charlotte would have been standing by, waiting for it to be over. A well orchestrated operation that they’d pull off together. It was strange, being so cut off from Sophie’s life.
Charlotte folded her arms. Change the subject, Charlie. “So…don’t you have anything better to do than hang out in the back of a convenience store?”
“Not that it’s any of your business,” Max’s voice shot up several octaves as he struggled to maintain control of the pinball, “but if I had another option, that’s where I’d be. One that is less emotionally grating on my poor nerves—”
“Max! Would you SHUT UP?” Leo’s voice shot back from the front of the store.
“Anyway,” Max continued, “if you must know, I’m here because the air conditioning at my house is busted. My dad has people there fixing it and I don’t feel like socializing. And thirty degrees is too much for my weak constitution.”
“What about your truck? It’s summer vacation, wouldn’t cruising around with the AC and a Michael Bublé CD be right up your alley?”
“We both know you never returned that CD the last time you borrowed it,” he shot back. “And, I, uh….” Max apparently had no more quarters. She felt strangely like she had caught him off guard. “I don’t really—the truck is…. Even after they cleaned it and everything.” He scratched the back of his neck and avoided her eye. “I don’t even know why I bothered getting them to fix it up, it was so mangled after…. I kind of hate driving now.”
Charlotte’s stomach lurched. Of course Max wouldn’t enjoy hanging out in the steel death trap that had hurled him and his girlfriend into a ditch.
“I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “I’m an idiot, I wasn’t thinking—”
He held up a hand to stop her. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Max—”
“Charlotte. Honestly. It’s just a…thing. It’s for driving places that I can’t walk to and that’s it. I’m selling it when I leave for school in the fall. Forget about it,” he assured her.
“Right. I, uh, should probably get going, anyway….” she trailed off uncomfortably. Swing and a miss, Charlotte! Had she forgotten how to socialize without touching on every sensitive subject possible? Max pulled out the cigarette he had tucked behind his ear and held it between his teeth.
“Want a walk home?” he asked, digging around for his lighter.
She shook her head. “I’m okay.”
Baby steps. Too much old-life interaction all at once.
Max looked put out. “Oh-kay.”
She pulled out a quarter from the change in her pocket and placed it on the glass in front of him with two fingers. “Thanks again. I’ll see you around, Max.”
She marched out of the store, waving goodbye to Leo as she went. As she reached the door, she realized that this was probably one of the more meaningful conversations she and Max had ever shared, and it hinged on a muffin basket and a Michael Bublé CD. Perhaps she would have to reevaluate her passive-aggressive friendship with Max. In recent years, their only link had been Sophie. Sophie was where they overlapped. With Sophie removed from the equation, Charlotte didn’t know what they were to each other. Her options in the pool of people who wanted to hang out with her were scarce. They’d been friends before, right? Maybe they could be friends again.
She heard Max swear loudly from the back of the store, and in the reflection of the door caught Leo shaking his head at his phone.
six
The screen door banged shut behind her.
“Got your cigarettes!” Charlotte called as she waltzed into the main room. After the Quik Mart, Charlotte had ducked into the Chinese restaurant to say hello to the owners and then trekked home along the beach. The water was warm and she had scooped up a few pieces of beach glass for her collection. Sean, somewhat surprisingly, had moved off his place on the sofa. His face emerged from the kitchen doorway
. She wandered over and placed the pack of cigarettes on the counter. He was eating pizza out of a cardboard box.
“Thank you, kindly.” Sean flicked a chunk of pineapple off his slice. He apparently had more faith in their ancient refrigerator than she did. He pulled out a cigarette and lifted it to his lips. Charlotte watched him dig a lighter out of his pocket; it was covered in yellow smiley faces.
“How cute,” she said.
“It was a gift. To me. From me. Ah, romance.”
“Don’t smoke in the house.” Charlotte rolled her eyes as she passed him, knowing it was one hundred percent likely Sean would smoke in the house anyway.
Next item on her list of things to conquer was her bedroom. She shut the door behind her, though the open-rafter layout of the house cancelled out any kind of privacy. She could hear Sean singing a Taylor Swift song from the other room.
Charlotte got down on her hands and knees, inspecting under her bed.
Max + Sophie was scrawled in Sophie’s curly handwriting in the top corner of the English binder she dragged out. She contemplated this for a few moments before promptly tossing the binder over her shoulder. It hit the door and clattered to the ground with a crash. She heard Sean give a yelp of surprise from the kitchen.
That would be the garbage pile. She Frisbee-d the rest of her binders in the same direction as the first. A few minutes and several prayers of please don’t let that be a mouse later, she had withdrawn two unmatched socks, a balled-up T-shirt that belonged to Sophie, a shot glass Max had gotten her in Cuba, half a pint of vodka that Sean had given her for her birthday, and five dollars and eleven cents. She left the liquor where it was and placed the money and shot glass on her dresser. She unfolded the T-shirt.
It was hot pink and sequins embellished the front. She caught a whiff of Sophie’s familiar perfume. Flowery, but subtle. Charlotte threw the shirt in the corner; Sophie would never wear something that loud nowadays. They weren’t fourteen anymore, no matter how much a part of Charlotte wished they were.
By mid-afternoon, she was sitting on her bed, facing the products of her purge. In front of the door was a large pile of things she had decided to throw out. Beside that was the cardboard box she had finally relented and filled with Sophie’s belongings. Maybe she could convince Max to deliver it to the Thompsons’ house for her. Or she could hold it hostage until Sophie vowed to be her friend again.
The Last Time I Saw Her Page 5