“I know, I miss the egg rolls,” Charlotte said.
“Can I get you a table, or…?”
“No, no,” Charlotte cut her off, “not right now, thanks. I’m actually here because I’m looking for a job.”
“A job?” Laurie looked at her closely. “Here?”
“I have no experience,” Charlotte admitted. “But I’d take any and as many hours you could give me, and I’ll make it work, I swear. Washing dishes, or whatever. I have to help Sean out with the money thing.” Might as well tell her they were completely broke.
“Oh, Charlotte, bless your heart.” Laurie sighed. “We’ve already got about four girls here to serve…we really don’t have room for or need any more.”
It had been what Charlotte expected. “Okay. I completely understand. You don’t know anywhere else that’s hiring?”
“You could try the Quik Mart,” Laurie suggested.
Charlotte smiled politely, not bothering to explain the Quik Mart in River John wasn’t a haven for job opportunities. “All right. Thanks, though. I’ll come by for lunch sometime soon.” She fluttered her fingers at Sebastian. “See ya, Seb.”
“Mama, Mama, Char,” the toddler hummed.
Laurie looked at her son. Charlotte saw it in her eyes before she even spoke.
“The money from your dad is really all gone, isn’t it?” Laurie brushed back pieces of hair from her son’s eyes.
Charlotte’s father had smoked his entire life, so looking back it really shouldn’t have come as a surprise when he was diagnosed with lung cancer. He passed away six months after his diagnosis. Charlotte remembered spending as much free time as she could at the hospital, but it was hard. He was staying in the QEII hospital in Halifax, a near two-hour drive away. It was three years this past June that he died. Charlotte had been staying with Sophie’s family while Sean was spending nights at the hospital. When things had gotten bad, Sean called and Sophie’s parents had driven Charlotte to the hospital. They made it in enough time to share a few quiet minutes as a family.
It was hard after that; all of a sudden she and Sean were two kids with nothing but mortgage payments, electric bills, and strangers who didn’t know what to do with them.
“Nothing ever lasts as long as you think it will,” Charlotte said, smiling sadly.
Laurie pulled Sebastian into her arms, propping him against her hip as she gave up on the cash register. “I’ll see what I can do for you, Charlotte. I’ll check the schedule and see if any of my waitresses aren’t gonna be around for a bit, does that sound all right?”
Charlotte felt an unfamiliar stirring of optimism in her stomach. “Anything you can do, I really really appreciate it.” A smile broke on her face. “Thank you so much, Laurie.”
“And I’m gonna call you for a babysitting gig, Miss.” Laurie pointed at her warningly as Charlotte backed toward the door. “And I expect the supreme care package with a discount.”
“I’d do it for free!” Charlotte replied cheerily as she left the restaurant with a final wave, which both Laurie and Sebastian returned.
Well, maybe. Free was a strong word. She’d babysit for free when she and Sean could afford bread again.
“Charlie! You home?”
Charlotte was lying on her back, leafing through a year-old issue of Cosmo in her bedroom. She paused, studying a photo of Jennifer Lawrence’s hair. “Why?”
A tennis ball came flying over the top of the wall from the living room. Dropping her magazine, she caught it instinctively in one hand. They used to play this game all the time. If she was lying on her bed and Sean was lying on the sofa, it was an easy throw over the top of the wall.
She lobbed the ball back into the living room. “What do you want?”
“I’m bored.” She heard him sigh. “Let’s go out for lunch.”
Charlotte missed the second time, the ball rebounding off her ear. She massaged it. “We literally have no money. I spent what was left of it on groceries yesterday.”
Sean groaned. “What day is it?”
It took her a second. Summer Paralysis Syndrome. She tossed the ball back over the wall. “Wednesday?”
“I don’t get paid until Friday.”
“Well, we’ve survived on cereal for two days before.”
They completed a few more throws without speaking.
“I went job hunting today,” she said finally. “I’m gonna get a job as soon as I can.”
“Don’t worry about it. We’ll figure something out. We always do.”
She didn’t want to argue with him about it. She knew their lack of money was a touchy subject—not including the twenty thousand dollars Sean had acquired out of thin air, Charlotte figured.
She chucked the ball from her side with a little more force than was necessary. The ball didn’t come sailing back, and instead she heard Sean’s uneven footsteps on the wood floor. He appeared in her doorway.
“Hey, also,” he started, kind of nervous, “were you out in the shed?”
She closed her magazine and looked at him. “Dad’s workshop?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah, why?”
“Nothing, I just saw…you left the door a bit open. Was worried it was an animal,” he grunted.
“Oh.” Charlotte tilted her phone toward her to check for messages. None. “No. It was just me.”
“Might be unsafe,” he said quietly.
“What?” Charlotte was pretty sure there were way more unsafe things in River John than the workshop, but okay.
“Nothing. Nothing.”
fourteen
A buzzing on her bedside table eventually dragged Charlotte from an uneasy sleep. It was hot for July. Too hot to sleep for long. She peeked around the pillow and slid her alarm clock toward her. It was eight in the morning. She grabbed her vibrating phone from its spot on the side table and pressed it to her ear without checking the display.
“Mm?” she managed.
“Were you sleeping?”
Max.
“Sort of.” Charlotte pushed herself up onto an elbow. “What do you want?”
“Don’t sound so thrilled, jeeze,” Max said. “I need a favour.”
Charlotte rolled onto her back and focused on the stained wooden ceiling. “I baked you muffins, Max. My debts are paid.”
“Yeah, and then you yelled at me. And those muffins were bad. And—AND someone at the bank told my dad someone was accessing his server from home.”
Charlotte scooped a crusty bit of mascara out of the edge of her eye. “Shit. What’d your dad say?”
“Nothing major. I’ve been written out of my inheritance, but it’s fine. I’m gonna pick you up in an hour.”
“Wait, really?”
Her phone beeped. Max was finished with the conversation. About an hour later, she’d rounded up a pair of clean denim shorts and a T-shirt that was clean enough. Her hair couldn’t be helped—she’d always been jealous of Sophie’s blonde, pin-straight hair, while Charlotte’s tangled mane gave her a bride-of-Frankenstein look more often than not. She frowned at the mirror, tying it back into a ponytail. Whatever. It was only Max.
From the bathroom she could hear Max’s truck rumbling down the gravel lane. True gentleman that he was, the horn sounded from the driveway a few seconds later. A rudely awakened Sean was swearing in his bedroom by the time Charlotte slipped out the back door. She could tell it was going to be hot today, heat leaking from the ground even this early in the morning. It would be a scorcher once the sun was overhead.
Max wore a pleased smile as she pulled the passenger door open, which she did not return.
“Good morning to you too, sunshine,” he remarked.
“Sunshine?” She climbed into the truck. “You should’ve invited Sean.”
“Seat belt,” Max said as he swivelled around in his s
eat to back out of the driveway. Max was wearing a white T-shirt and the same faded Levi’s he always wore, with sunglasses pushed up into his dark hair. Charlotte hadn’t noticed before how long his hair had gotten, curling down below his ears. He looked so much healthier than when she’d left him last year, his skin all bronzed from the summer sun and his face filled out a bit—not as gaunt. She realized seeing him not completely miserable lifted her spirits a bit. Maybe there was more life, after everything.
“I saw Sean, actually,” Max said. “Eating at May’s. I waved. He ignored me and ripped open a soy sauce packet.”
“Oh, that means he likes you,” she said. “Are you going to tell me why you dragged me out of bed?”
“I figured you owed me one.” Max looked at her out of the corner of his eye.
It had been nearly a week since Nick 2.0, and she and Max hadn’t spoken. There was a pause.
“For Sean’s money thing,” he clarified.
Charlotte pressed her tongue to the back of her front teeth. “Where are we going?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Can I at least call Sean and tell him there are leftovers in the fridge before you murder me?”
“All right, please relax.” Max readjusted his sunglasses. She caught his eyes darting away when she’d shifted in her seat, exposing her banged-up knees.
“Are you…are you okay?” He started slow but blurted out the second half all in one breath.
Max had fallen asleep on her couch that night so she wouldn’t be alone. She’d barely heard him sneak out as the sun was coming up. She knew they weren’t exactly friends, but she had meant to get in touch with Max since that night outside the store. She kept finding herself purposefully distracted.
“Yes, I’m okay,” she said. He didn’t ask her about Nick again.
She flicked at a scratch on the door, wondering if it was from the accident, a tiny bit that’d gotten missed when they fixed and repainted the truck. Like a tiny scar. Charlotte snapped her hand away and avoided looking at the mark for the rest of the drive. They streaked down cracked pavement under the bright morning sun, and Charlotte caught glimpses of blue water between the trees. She didn’t know why she ever thought she could live away from the ocean.
They stopped at the Quik Mart for gas. Max ended up buying Popsicles for a couple of kids who were counting quarters in the parking lot while Charlotte pointed a lost family crowded around a Subaru vaguely in the direction of Tatamagouche. They’d taken the wrong exit. Charlotte could tell they were tourists because she didn’t recognize the kids. There weren’t a ton of people under twenty-five in and around River John. The ones who were there were stuck there, and usually left as soon as they got the chance. She, Max, Sophie, and the other hundred-odd high school students from North Colchester were a dying breed.
Charlotte heard Max smack the fuel door closed and he hopped back inside the truck. He wordlessly handed her a Popsicle. She pressed her thumb into the groove down the middle, splitting it in half, before she pulled the wrapper off. Charlotte handed Max half the frozen purple goodness and he smiled.
“Can I at least have a hint?” Charlotte asked after she had finished her Popsicle and they had been driving in silence for a while.
“Yeah,” Max said. “Hint: we’re here.”
She hadn’t realized where they were going. The words were barely out of his mouth before he pulled into the huge gravel lot that she simultaneously recognized and resented.
“No,” she groaned.
“Welcome home.”
North Colchester High School was an out-of-place-looking building tucked behind the main road. It was two storeys of white wood with tall windows, columns by the front doors, and a black roof. It looked more like an old plantation house than a high school. Just seeing the building made Charlotte feel sick, reminding her of a life she didn’t have anymore. Charlotte had thrived here. She had friends, and Sophie was her partner in pretty much everything. She could see jewel tones from her art class, and the lights from school dances, and the old creaky bleachers with their pale, peeling paint. And when the memories settled in her chest, she didn’t think she’d ever felt her own absence more.
“What are we doing here, Max?” she asked finally. He was already sliding out of the truck, circling around the hood, and pulling her door open.
“Important, official business,” he said. “I need to get into my old locker.”
She twisted at the waist and kicked her legs out of the truck. “And why do you need to do that?”
He closed the door after her. “I think my physics textbook is in there. I got charged fifty dollars because I never returned it. If I’m getting charged to keep it, I would like to actually keep it.”
“Excellent, let’s break into the school, then.” Charlotte jammed her hands into her back pockets and joined him at the front of the truck, where he had stopped short.
He turned away from her. “I think all we have to worry about is that janitor who hangs around and just says vaguely sinister things from a safe distance. Unlike my father, who is less vague. And closer.” He gave a little shudder.
Max led the way around the building to a side door. The latch on the gym door never caught properly, or at least hadn’t a year ago. Unsurprisingly, Max pulled the door open with ease.
“It’s like they want us to do this,” he said.
She followed him across the gym and down the familiar halls, which were lined with lockers on either side, punctuated by the occasional inspirational poster. Charlotte paused to study one poster tacked to a corkboard at the end of the hall. It showed a man in bike shorts with both hands raised in fists above his head. He was at the top of a mountain in front of a rising sun and the words above his head instructed her to Never Give Up. Original. Charlotte and Max passed classrooms, the principal’s office, the cafeteria. It was quiet.
“This is eerie,” Charlotte commented. “The last time I was here was…September twenty-ninth.” The date was burned on her brain. The night Nick attacked her had been a school night.
“Ages ago. I missed a lot of school that month,” Max admitted as they climbed the stairs. “And the next months. I couldn’t…it was too weird, without her. I worked from home a lot; whole units and extra credit essays to make up for stuff.” He shrugged. “I’m surprised I even managed to finish the year. I think the teachers just took pity on me, to be honest. On us.”
A brightly coloured bulletin board at the top of the stairs caught Charlotte’s attention. Photos were stapled to blue tissue paper and wrapped in a shiny cardboard border under the heading Class of 2017. In the bottom corner: a photo of Charlotte and Sophie on the first day of grade twelve, arms around each other at one of those back-to-school pep rally things. Sophie was laughing, her cheek pressed to Charlotte’s. Charlotte’s heart stopped for a second. That was the last photo of the two of them, ever. The accident had been just a few days after it was taken, and Charlotte had left town a few weeks after that. Charlotte had never seen the picture before. She didn’t even know who took it. Probably Max.
“God, I almost forgot what her smile was like,” Max said, following Charlotte’s gaze.
Charlotte stepped forward and pried the staples free with her fingernails. “I’d trade anything to be back there.”
“It’s hard to remember…I mean, most times it just doesn’t even feel real. Like there was anything before this,” Max said. Charlotte looked down at the photo for several seconds before she slid it into the back pocket of her shorts.
“You know we talk about her like she’s dead, sometimes, right?” Charlotte said.
Max grimaced. Charlotte knew she was dead to Sophie right now, so maybe she wasn’t that far off.
“I want to show you something,” he said.
Max ducked into the nearest classroom, where the desks were neatly aligned in rows of five.
Charlotte slid into the desk nearest her. “What happened?”
“She was screaming about the rights of seniors and this other girl was like ninety pounds—”
“With Sophie.”
“Oh. Not a thing. Sophie didn’t speak. Not to me, not to Delilah. Probably wouldn’t have even spoken to you. We went to class. Mr. Ingraham talked about Pride & Prejudice like he was…defusing a bomb. Basically just read aloud for an hour straight and I think that was the first time he ever forgot to assign us homework. After first period, Sophie asked me to take her home.”
Charlotte didn’t know what to say. She could picture Sophie, who was so good at pretending that sometimes it was even hard for Charlotte to tell what she was thinking. Charlotte wondered how it would have gone down had they been together on that first day of school. Usually it was up to Charlotte to detect any tiny cracks in Sophie’s mask and go from there. She hated thinking about Sophie, on top of everything, having to pretend that she was fine, for the sake of everyone else’s comfort.
“I know I’m not making you feel any better,” he said, taking his feet down. “But I’m just saying—it’s slow going. It still is. You think Sophie’s bitter now?” He gave Charlotte an incredulous look. “Imagine her when they announced the first swim meet of the year. Or at winter formal. Or just every day when the people who used to follow her down the halls couldn’t even look her in the face.”
The Last Time I Saw Her Page 12