Find Me

Chapter 8

Charlotte

            I am annoyed that Laura would even try making me tell Liam what happened with Trevor. She knows what thinking about it does to me let alone talking about it. And since when did she switch sides. Before break she had been all, ‘don’t get too close’ and ‘take your time getting to know him.’ Now she’s telling me to throw everything at him all at once. What the hell?

            I feel bad for not talking to Liam. He was fun to hang out with and he keeps driving me. I just don’t know what to say and I am super nervous about talking to him tonight. I told him I would tonight, because that way if my intruding mother scares him off, he wouldn’t know anything and I wouldn’t have to share. Plus I wouldn’t feel as bad, I don’t think. To be honest I think I am really falling for him. He laughed along with Laura and I and it sounded wonderful. He smiles a lot, which is also nice.

            By the time we pull into my driveway it was 6:34. He helped grab bags for me and I had him follow me up to my room, so no one would see what I got them. Mom had tried to talk to me, but I used my shopping bags as an excuse and told her not to come up because I was wrapping stuff. That should hold off the questions for a little bit longer.

            “You can sit on my bed,” I tell Liam as he stands awkwardly in my room.

            “Alright,” he says, flopping down on my comforter. I sit on the ground and pull out the wrapping paper, scissors, and tape I was using earlier to wrap Laura’s present. We make small talk as I wrap the few things I got, and Laura comes in not to long after and we all chat waiting for dinner to be ready. At 7, we all go downstairs to find my mom asleep on the couch. I am about to go looking for Nick when the smoke alarms go off, and I hear yelling from the kitchen.

            We all run in there, mom following us, to find Nick standing there with the fire extinguisher and the stove covered in white foam.

            “I didn’t realize you fell asleep and when I did, I didn’t want to wake you so I thought I would finish up dinner, but when I looked in the oven, the chicken was on fire and the water started boiling over the pan. I turned everything off and I didn’t know what to do, I am so sorry,” he said frantically, looking at my mom the whole time.

Liam

            I watched as Nick tried explaining what happened, honestly, its kinda funny. If it were my house, my mom would have screamed at him and left the room already, claiming to have a headache. Charlotte’s mom however, looks calmly at the mess, then at Nick, Charlotte, and lastly at Laura and all four of them break out in laughter, such laughter I don’t think I have ever heard. Charlotte fell to the ground gripping her side while Laura is holding on the chair in front of her for dear life. Riley and Nick are holding each other up and everyone has tears in their eyes, I can’t help but join in. I don’t know how long we laughed for, but I cannot remember ever feeling this happy and free. After a while, Laura sits in the chair and puts her head on the table, still laughing, and Riley and Nick giggle while trying to clean up the mess. Charlotte, still laying on the floor, keeps wiping her eyes and breaking out in hard laughs every few seconds. Once everyone is calmed down we all look around the room, not really sure what to do.

            “So, uh, pizza?” Nick says, making everyone laugh again.

            It was close to 8 by the time Nick brought back the pizza and we all ate. He mom asked Laura and Charlotte a lot of questions at first, but after a while she turned her attention towards me. It was fun having a family dinner, especially one where everyone talked, I have never experienced anything like this. When we were done Laura excused herself, saying she needed to be up early in the morning. Nick grabbed the dishes while Riley grabbed the food. Charlotte offered to help, but her mom told us to go relax.

            Charlotte reaches for my hand then stops, shakes her head and blinks a few times. She looks at me with her eyebrows knit together and starts to lead the way out of the room asking “do you want to go or….” Leaving off the rest of the question.

            “I would like to stay, if that’s alright with you” I say, and taking advantage of her facing me, I grab her hand. At first she tries to pull away, but I keep holding it, and eventually she gives up, shrugs her shoulders and leads me up the stairs. On the way up, I see her mom and Nick standing in the kitchen doorway. Her mom smiles at me, and when she sees our hands together, her expression changed to awe and she nudges Nick to look too. 

            We walk into her room, she lets go of my hand and shuts the door. “Want me to put on a movie or do you want to do something else?” She asks, nervously, not looking at me.

            I move to be next to her and lift her chin up so she has to look me in the eyes. “I really enjoyed dinner, and I don’t care what we do, as long as you sit next to me.”

            She looks around her room and nods her chin towards her bed. I sit down in the middle and watch as she gets the remote for the TV on her bureau.  At first she sits at the far end of her bed so I say, “that is not next to me.”

            She begins to scoot closer, and when she is in arms reach, I gently pull her closer, so we are almost toughing but not quite. I know that she needs to be the one who decides if our legs and bodies touch. Based on what Laura has said and how she has acted around me, touching seems to be hard for her. I would out money down to bet that guy is what caused her to be like that and I want to knock him out.

She turns on the TV and we decide on what to watch. After a few minutes, she says, “ you don’t need to pretend to have liked dinner, it was just pizza and my mom attacked you the whole time.”

            “I did enjoy it though. My parents don’t really do family dinner and the few times we have sat together, it has been in complete silence. I really had fun today, between you, Laura, and your family, I think I am liking being around others, something I haven’t really felt before.”

            “If you say so,” she says, continuing to watch the show. I periodically look over at her, and occasionally I catch her looking at me too. After a while though, I see her eyes being to flutter and her head nod slightly.

            “If you are tired, I can go,” I say to her, hoping that she doesn’t actually make me. I want to stay with her, plus she hasn’t told me whatever her and Laura were talking about. I’m not going to pressure her though, if she doesn’t want to tell me or if she forgot, I will try to forget about it too.

            “I am tired, but I want to keep hanging out with you… sorry if I am boring you, you can leave if you want.”

            “I think I’ll stay,” I say, and watch as a small smile appears on her face.

            “You haven’t asked about what it was I was going to tell you” she says unexpectedly.

            “I figured you would tell me when you wanted to. I wouldn’t push you into doing something you don’t want to do.” She looks at me, then reaches across my lap and pulls the blankets down towards her. I have to shift my weight so they reach her, and when she is done, our bodies are touching and I break out in a nervous sweat. How embarrassing is that. I want to tell her that I am hot, not from the blanket but from touching her, but I don’t want her to move away from me. I also don’t want her to think I’m some sweaty pig though.

            “When I was a sophomore in high school, a senior guy started showing interest in me.” She started, picking at her blanket. I knew whatever she was about to tell me had to go with that guy from the store and her telling me was a big deal for her. “He started to hang out by my locker, leave me notes, and eat lunch with me. I had never had a serious boyfriend, especially not one older than me. A lot of the girls in my grade started to make fun of me and called me names, and I hadn’t even kissed the guy. But because he showed me attention and not them, they saw me as a threat or something, and I became their targets. Laura was there for me the whole time and I thought Grace was too, but I distanced myself from them because I didn’t want them to get bullied too.”

            I reach out to her hand that keeps picking at her blanket and place mine on top of it. Slowly, she turns it over and entwines her fingers with mine. She looked at me, took a deep breath and continued.

            “For a while, that’s all it was. Trevor would meet me at my locker, leave me notes, walk me to class, and eat lunch with me. One day he offered to drive me home, and I agreed. He asked me to be his girlfriend on the way and obviously I said yes. He tried to kiss me goodbye, but I wasn’t really ready for it so I turned my head and he caught my cheek. He called me a tease but laughed about it, so I did too. He began to drive me home every day and soon, I let him kiss me. My mom was usually home, and he never went inside. After a few weeks, he began talking about doing s****l stuff and I told him I wasn’t ready. He manipulated me until I began to question my own beliefs about it, and eventually, he convinced me to touch him. It wasn’t too bad, so I kept doing it, he would just pull over in a secluded place on the way home from school, and I knew what it meant. I wore a dress one day and he told me how nice I looked and that I should wear them more often so I did.” She took a shaky breath. “Then one day, when I was leaning over to touch him, he shoved my head down and shoved himself into my mouth. Mortified, I tried to get up, but he held me there. He lifted up my dress, pulled my underwear aside, and forced his fingers inside of me. I cried, but he told me that was what love was and that he loved me. Stupidly, I believed him.”

I reach up and wipe a tear that had fallen from her eye. Letting go of her hand, I wrap it around her and pull her closer to me. “You don’t need to continue, I think I get the rest.”

            “That’s the thing, I was so stupid, that I allowed for more than what you would think to happen to me. He would occasionally ask me to give him a blow job, but he continued to touch me, without ever asking. When my head was… down there” she said with a shiver, “I didn’t know that he had been taking pictures, of my mouth on him, of my privates. Everything he could. One day when my mom wasn’t home, he asked if he could come in. We had been dating for about half a year at this point. Without thinking about it I agreed. We went up to my room and started fooling around. I told him multiple times I didn’t want to have s*x, and I even told him that day that I didn’t want to, but he still tried. He called me a bunch of names and then stormed out of the house. After that, things at school got a lot worse. People would snicker when they saw me and the name calling intensified. Random guys would come up to me and make rude comments and jokingly as me for s****l favors. I didn’t understand what was happening until Laura showed me the pictures that Trevor had sent to almost everyone in the school. I was humiliated. I pretended to be sick and went home and was there for almost a week when on Tuesday morning, I heard a knock at the door. I looked out the window,” she said nodding towards it, “and I saw Trevor’s truck. I hadn’t talked to him since Laura showed me what he did, but for some reason I thought he would apologize. So I let him in, and he did, he said he was sorry and instantly tried to do stuff. I told him no, that I didn’t want to, but he didn’t listen. He laid on top of me and r***d me.”

            Her tears were falling faster now and I hug her close to me, trying my best to comfort her, while anger builds up inside of me. Why would someone do that to another human? She takes another deep breath and pulls away from me.

            “When he was done, he told me that if I told anyone, that he would share all of the pictures he took, including the video he had just took on his phone. I missed almost a month of school, returning only when the school sent someone to make me go. I didn’t speak to anyone. I would stay in class late and arrive late just to avoid being in the halls at the same time as other people. I picked up spring soccer because it gave me an excuse not to ride the bus and I used the exercise as a way to cope. I still was bullied, but I kept my head down and to myself. No one knew what he did until two months later, when I realized I still hadn’t gotten my period. I talked to Laura and Grace about it, and told them everything, begging them not to tell anyone. Laura got a pregnancy test for me and when it came back positive, I had to tell my mom what happened. That’s when everything got even worse. First, I had to go see a doctor and the pregnancy was confirmed, my mom went to the school administration about it which got the police got involved and Trevor got suspended from baseball, his senior year so he was essentially never to play again. He was also suspended from school for two weeks because of the pictures. Everyone was told to delete the pictures, and I know some did when they found out what happened, but most didn’t. A few people ganged up on me and started to leave threatening notes in my locker and sent me them online, saying that I was a liar and that I wanted it and everything. I got super depressed, and I guess that, along with me not really eating, led to a miscarriage at 12 weeks.”

            “Oh my god,” I whisper.

            “Sorry, it’s a lot. Its okay if you want to leave.”

            “No, keep going Char, please, let it all out.” I realize I gave her a pet name once she looked at me. She had stopped crying, but you could tell she was still upset.

            “Did you just call me Char?”

            “Um, yeah, sorry, it slipped, I don’t know..” I said, scratching my head. She thought about it for a second then looked back at me.

            “I think I like it.”

            “Keep going,” I urge her.

            “Okay, well, after the miscarriage I lost a lot of weight and had some pretty dark thoughts. I started seeing a therapist, there was a court case for Trevor and he actually had sent the video to a couple of people which was used against him. Me being a minor put him on the list of s****l offenders, and I thought things were getting better. That summer I got a job and my mom got me the car out in the driveway, doesn’t work now, but it did then. I got home from work on a Friday afternoon in June and I saw a car in the driveway I didn’t recognize. Thinking it was mom’s new boyfriend she had been talking about, I didn’t think much of it and went inside. I called out and no one answered so I thought I was alone. I immediately got in the shower, and when I went into my room, Grace and Trevor were laying naked on my bed, having s*x. I screamed and turned around, about to run when another girl Melissa, my worst bully at school, blocked me and shoved me into my room. She shut the door and ripped my towel from my body. I saw the camera set up and tried to hide but the three of them attacked me and forced me on my bed. They all took their turns. Melissa sat on my face and I could barely breathe while Trevor r***d me again. I tried to ask Grace for help but it was no use. She sat on my stomach and either made out with Melissa or Trevor, I couldn’t see. I don’t really remember what happened after that because I passed out, the doctors think it was from suffocation, my mom found me though, naked, covered in white liquids, my room destroyed. Luckily, she thought to save some of the stuff, and it was used in DNA tests that proved each one of them guilty. The only problem, it has f****d me up ever since. Grace was one of my best friends, and I had been telling her everything, and she was just relaying it back to the others. Aside from Laura, I have never fully trusted anyone since. I’m close with Becca, but that’s more through association with Laura.”

            “Are they all still in jail?” I ask, half already knowing the answer.

            “I honestly don’t know. I try not to think about it because it sends me into a panic attack. I have restraining orders against them all, renewed last year. If they are out and try to contact me in anyway, violating that order will send them right back. I saw them a couple times before they were found guilty, and each time I was lucky enough to have Laura with me to help me. If it weren’t for her, I probably would have turned to drugs or something worse to be honest,” she said, finishing.

            “I am so sorry that you had to go through that, and I want to beat living daylight out of each of them. I can’t imagine your pain, but I promise I will do everything I can to make sure you are safe and comfortable when you are with me.”

            “That’s the thing, I do feel safe when I am with you. It scares me so much, but I want to try because it feels right, if that makes any sense.”

            “No, I get it. I feel comfortable with you too, which is not something I have really ever felt with anyone, ever,” I tell her.

            “Well, I guess we both are trying something new here.” Charlotte said, finishing with a big yawn. “I am so sorry. I didn’t sleep well last night” she said, covering her mouth to hide another one and I check my phone. Its just past midnight.

            “Wow, sorry for making you stay up so late!” I said, getting up from the bed and stretching. “I should probably head out so you can get some sleep.” She stands up too and walks to the window.

            “I would agree with you, but the snow looks like it came down pretty heavy and it is still coming.” I look out the window over her shoulder and look down at my car, which is about a foot under snow.

            “I can go sleep on the couch so you can get some sleep” I tell her, not feeling like driving through back roads with that much snow.

            “Do you have anything to do early in the morning?” Char asks.

            “Nope, you?”

            “Nothing here either. Wanna watch some more?” She says, tilting her head toward the tv. I nod and follow her back to her bed.

We sit there in silence while TV drones in the background. It's nice, sitting next to her and soon I hear her breathing get deeper. I don't want to scare her by staying in her bed, but I don't want to leave either. I tell myself it's cause I don't want to wake her, but really it feels good to be near her. After about an hour I have to go to the bathroom so bad. I try to get off the bed without waking her but I fail.

“What, where are you going” she asks half asleep. 

“It's late, I was going to go to the couch” I tell her, running my hand through her hair, getting it off her face.

“Don't go,” she whispers. 

“I need to go to the bathroom Char,” I say, using the nickname I gave her. 

“Okay, but come back” she says closing her eyes again. 

I get up and quietly open and shut the door. I don't know where the bathroom is, so I'm tiptoeing around the hall, using my phone as a flashlight when the door at the end of the hall opens. Nick walked out and nodded his head to me. I whispered, “I'm not sure where the bathroom is, sorry.”

“It's all good, it's right here” he said, pointing to the door next to him. I walk over to him and he stops me before I go in. “You seem like a nice guy, but Charlotte has had a rough start and if you're not serious about her, don't string her along. She needs a nice guy who loves all of her. I may not be her father and she may not even like me, but I've been dating her mom for the past 4 years and she has become part of my family. I will do everything I can to protect her.”

“I'm not trying to screw with her. I have good intentions and have honest feelings for her. I appreciate you sticking up for her, and it's nice to know she has people who are there for her.”

“I'll trust you on this, I don’t feel it is my place to tell you that you cannot stay the night tonight, but no funny business” he said moving his arm. “Have a good night.”

I go into the bathroom and when I come out he is coming up the stairs. “Night Nick.”

I open the door and see Charlotte asleep peacefully. I get the remote and turn of the TV, then go over to her bed and try to move her to lay correctly in the bed. I put one arm under her knees and the other under her head and lifted her. She woke up long enough to wrap her arms around me and I never wanted to let her go. But I do, and I place her head on the pillow and lower her body to the bed. 

“Please don't leave me” she murmured.

“I'm not going anywhere, I promise,” in more ways than one, I add to myself. 

I turn off the light, and crawl into bed with her. I made sure the covers were on her, and fell into a peaceful night of sleep.