by Noe Dearden
“Don’t forget your timelines are due on Monday!” shouted Mr. Kakazu as Charlotte’s history class filed out of the lecture hall.
“It’s 3:30 on Friday,” Charlotte muttered under breath as she left the room. “Nobody sane is thinking about homework right now.”
Somebody snagged Charlotte’s backpack, causing her to stop short. It was Asher, the boy from Spitting Caves. He swung a casual arm across her shoulders and walked lock step beside her.
“What are you muttering about, Charlotte Banks?” he asked.
“Oh, you know, just talking to the voices in my head,” she said. His familiar tone surprised her. She had seen him a few times around campus, but he had always ignored her. Yet now he had his arm around her, and he was close enough that she could smell his laundry detergent and see the faint smattering of freckles across his cheekbones.
“I always had you pegged as the crazy type,” he said with a grin.
“We’ve had one encounter. You shouldn’t have me pegged as anything yet.”
“True,” he agreed. “But over the course of that one encounter, you almost got yourself killed, and then proceeded to destroy a vehicle acquired through grand theft auto. I think my assessment of your sanity is not entirely unwarranted.”
“Oh, so you know about the accident,” Charlotte said. Nobody at school had mentioned the car crash to her, so she’d assumed the news hadn't gotten out. Then again, what did she expect people to say? “Hey, you’re that crazy cousin who stole and crashed Mr. Kerrigan’s Honda”?
“There are no secrets at Staley,” Asher said. “Gossip spreads fast.”
“I haven’t heard any gossip about you.”
“That’s because I’m old news. You, on the other hand, are the enigmatic new girl.”
They walked across the quadrangle together. She was making her way to the administration building where she was meeting Aunt Sheena. Asher seemed to be following. She had fifteen minutes to spare, so she stopped by a shade tree and sat down.
“People have a lot to say about you, Charlotte Banks,” Asher said, dropping down next to her. “Do you want to hear what I’ve heard? We can fact-check.”
Charlotte had been a victim of in the past, and knew it was better to keep out of it.
“No thanks.”
He shot her a look loaded with skepticism.
“If people talk about me, that’s their prerogative,” she explained. “I can’t do anything about it.”
“You’re telling me you don’t care about anything that you’re powerless to control?” he asked. “What are you? A Zen master?”
“Maybe I am,” she joked. “My past is cloaked in mystery.”
He grinned slowly. “So if I spread slanderous lies about you, you won’t care?”
“Been there, done that.”
“Well, I’ve been there, too,” he said. “And I know it sucks. When your parents are both celebrities who regularly make fools of themselves in the news, and there are people at school constantly tearing you down, that’s not something so easily ignored.”
Charlotte almost wanted to tell him that his situation was not as bad as all that. It was nothing like going to middle school where everyone knew your mom sold her body on the streets for drug money. But she figured Asher couldn’t be trusted with that sort of information anyway, and what was she trying to prove to him anyway?
Instead, she said, “I’ve never heard of your so-called famous parents.”
“It’s better that way,” he sighed. “People judge me – even my teachers. They make snap judgments, just because my father’s Griffin Anderson.
She rolled her eyes at him. “I doubt people care that much.”
He smirked. “People care. I don’t know why, but they care. That’s why there are paparazzi. They get paid because people spend good money on those photos.”
“Photos of you?”
“Yeah, me too,” he said. “Like I said, I don’t know why.” There was something cocky about the way he held himself, and the crooked smile on his face didn’t help his smug-ness factor much.
“So you survived the first week of school,” he said, changing the subject.
“Apparently.”
“And?”
Charlotte looked past him at the sky. It was growing a little bit overcast. “There’s a lot of homework. And sometimes you spoiled rich kids are a little hard to be around.”
“Kiddo, you’re one of us now,” he said. “Your family’s got to be one of the richest at Staley.”
She forgot that he didn’t know about her real background. “I wasn’t rich growing up,” she said.
He nodded as if this confirmed something. “I heard you came here because your real parents are deadbeats.”
Charlotte turned on him with an incredulous expression. “Who told you that?”
“Ah-ha!” he said triumphantly. “So, you do care what people say after all! I told you, Staley’s too small for secrets. And you stick out, so people are curious.”
Charlotte crossed her arms defensively.
“Maybe it’s because you’re attractive,” Asher mused aloud. His dark eyes were searing into hers. “You intimidate people.”
“Do I intimidate you?” she asked.
“No. I’m the only person worthy of you.”
She marveled at his confidence.
“I have to go,” she said, rising to her feet.
He got up, too, and slung his backpack over his shoulder. “I would ask you out, but I have a girlfriend. I know you’re heartbroken that I’m off the market, but don’t worry, you’ll get through it somehow.”
He wiggled his fingers in a funny wave and walked away, leaving her standing there, a confused jumble of feelings.
Charlotte had a soft spot for boys. She always fell for their lies and flirtations, their sweet empty words. Most of all, she loved their attention, even when she knew it was misplaced. And she loved the power she had over them – the power to make them weak in the knees just by licking her lips and touching them the right way. It was the only time she felt in control.
Of course, ultimately her relationships never worked out. Boys wanted conquests. They never stuck around long.
As she walked the rest of the way to her aunt’s office, Charlotte mulled over the other part of the conversation, still fresh on her mind. The fact that she “stuck out” at Staley came as no revelation. During assembly or homeroom, she always sat by herself. Nobody struck up a conversation with her. She didn’t seem to know how to fit in. People in her classes already had friends, and she didn’t feel like butting in, so she mostly kept to herself.
That’s why she was so grateful to spend her lunch period with Mr. Kerrigan. It was a safe place where she didn’t have to worry about being judged by anyone. And Mr. K was an interesting person to be around. He talked about art and philosophy and life, without sounding pretentious about it. He loaned her things he liked: a CD called the Goldberg Variations, a book of poems by someone named Rumi, even that big book of lonely paintings she’d told him she didn’t like the other day. Mr. Kerrigan said that education was a process of living, that Charlotte should receive everything with an open mind, even if she didn’t like it at first.
Mr. K made her feel like she had a shot at belonging here – of fitting in.
It was a new feeling. Charlotte hadn’t belonged at her old school either. At her Philly school, she had been teased for being white. But white or not, back there, her problems had been on a par with everyone else’s. She hadn’t been the only one with a mom on welfare. Or the only one fighting to get through each year alive and in one piece.
At Staley, on the other hand, she couldn’t fit in because she was messed up, and the other kids weren’t. How could she possibly relate to this crowd? Asher was annoyed because his parents were famous TV celebrities. Charlotte was annoyed because every night, she woke up sweating and shaking from nightmares of murdering her mom’s pimp boyfriend. She and Asher were definitely not on the same page.
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Sometimes she felt like a house that had razed to its foundation a long time ago. She was a ruined, unfixable, no matter how much she wanted to believe otherwise, or how much she pretended that things could get better again. She could wish on stars or cry herself silly or pray to God. But this was her reality, and there was nothing she could do to change it.