Charlotte

By Sabrina Chesters

Charlotte is written in a stream of conscious format. This allows for the abstraction of her random thoughts to be revealed to the reader as the plot develops. Generally, the plot focuses on Charlotte’s internal struggles with herself after experiencing a traumatic event generated by her, now, ex boyfriend. A boy named Drew comes into Charlotte’s life at this time of mourning and confusion. They both have devastating pasts and through this they begin their friendship. Charlotte covers topics such as domestic violence, sexual assault, mental health, and a few others.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 29, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796062809

Book preview

Prologue

She looks in the mirror, her hair straightened and black. If you look close enough, you’ll see the scars on her wrist from the necklace he gave her three months ago. Three months ago, her life wasn’t a mirror. It wasn’t shaded black from the shadows of November. Instead, she had believed in rainbows and monkey bars when the sunset kissed the horizon. She had believed in catching butterflies through another’s charcoal-colored lips. She didn’t believe that charcoal bleached the earth with its paste or could burn the bare to her skin. She had believed in Santa Claus and silverware with napkins. She had believed in ghosts and dreams, but sadly night had fallen in despair for what wasn’t beside of what was. She had left him just three months prior, before her life was sheltered by this mirror, in front of her drooping eyelashes and half-bit lipstick. I wish he knew, was all she could mouth before her lip trembled and eyes dotted with tiny puddles. She thought back to the way he laughed at her as she chased a butterfly with her bare toes when they went on a two-day hike. She thought back to the hike when it rained and they slept beneath the weeping stars in blankets together. She thought back to how he smelt when they saw their first rainbow. He smelt of dried rust and half-eaten nuts from a can. She thought back to the days when he’d look at her and smile because she had become the dream he had woken to when his ghosts ran away. She thought back to the day he had given her this necklace that now hangs above the toilet in her stall. It was mid-December during a snowfall. She was dressed in pearls and rotten brown. She had cried the night before after watching Winnie the Pooh, realizing how young she used to be. She didn’t tell him that though. There were just some instances when he’d laugh at her tears that she could no longer bear. He had dressed in a tux with bloody roses in his palm. It was supposed to be a surprise. It was. She walked up to him with her mouth stitched tight, arms wrapped around her tattered shirt and eyes frowning as she saw what was in his hand. They had only been together for six days and two extra nights that happened in September. She didn’t want this. She saw her age flashing by her eyes, her skin crawling beneath her fingertips. She thought back to Pooh and his honey, how innocence had felt that sweet on her tongue just a decade before. Before rainbows began coming out before the sun arose in the early-morning air and chimneys stopped smelling of Christmas cooking when she turned five.

Chapter 1

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10:45 AM

I don’t like the color blue. On sad days it makes me frown. On happy days it’s too bright. On December days it reminds me of late October. In October it reminds me of the cold coming in November. You know what I also can’t stand? The fact that people will call your name and you won’t get the chance to turn around without them racing down the hallway like imbeciles. Like total idiots laughing at a girl with no clue of their names or any intention to view their faces beyond these walls. I’m walking to biology for the first time without a teddy bear in my pocket for comfort. In biology the popular girls twirl their hair and stare at my eyelashes in frenzy because they aren’t coated with thick ink from a bottle. To them it’s as though I’m an alien or just plain ugly. Then there’s the one guy that messes around with the teacher. I’m pretty positive that if she was only twenty years younger and much less experienced with guys hitting her up because of her plastic balls she calls boobs and underwear as thin as a pierced line to a piece of paper, then he would’ve definitely hit her up by now. At the left side of the room past the cheerleaders that wear sparkles beneath their eyes is the stereotypical nerds that twist their wrist in their palms whenever they even smell that a girl is twenty miles away from their proximity.

3:00 PM

You know something else I can’t stand? It’s that no matter what day it is, the sun insists on lifting its thick head up in the sky past each cloud just to attempt to blind the tiny insects that walk the earth each day. Also, how people consider themselves not insects or animals by the habitual theory that humans carry dominion on the earth. I heard that nonsense in church the other day. I could’ve sworn he was talking about butterflies eating ice cream by how much he was smiling, talking about how Jesus was hung with nails in his wrists and legs. Like I get it. It’s a gruesome story of love that saved us all from death. However, what’s the moral of the story when there’s all this corruption in the world? I’m sitting in history class looking out the window. I just saw a ladybug crawl past the window. Instead of listening to the teacher, I decided to collect my own data on how fast a ladybug crawls from one section of a window to the other; it detours my thoughts as my teacher rambles about George Washington and his stallion. Honestly, who gives a fuck? I don’t even like math either; numbers get too complicated once you add more than two together. Digits aren’t my thing. I got asked by a guy with blond hair and long lashes if I’d give him my digits, and I responded with a wink and a wave as I walked in the other direction.

4:00 PM

My family is small. I’d say if you compared the size of my family to the size of my kitchen table, you’d find that they’re basically the same. We don’t talk as much as we used to when butterflies were the topic that came out of my mouth. These days I like to contemplate the discipline of days compared to nights and animals compared to insects. My mom thinks I’ve lost my marbles, but she never bought me marbles, so how could I have lost them? I think they’re all just scattered around my bedroom floor waiting to be replaced.

7:00 PM

We have a rose garden outside my window. In mid-December there’s still a single rose that stands tall in the snow. I watch it every morning before the sky turns blue. It looks innocently at peace before the world gets loud again. My mother always awakes in a frenzy. I watch it shiver in the sound.

8:00 PM

My paper is due in the morning. I have my pencil between my index finger and thumb. It wobbles as I touch the paper for the first time. It’s some dumb report about how this girl in this book meets this guy that’s actually not a dick at the beginning of the story then asks for sex. The girl says no, but it happens anyway. Dumb, right? Well, I suppose these days it’s just how it goes. Guys are dicks.

10:48 PM

I don’t know why I’m still up. I don’t recall the last few hours. I only remember seeing the moon shimmer on my tears as they crawl slowly to my pillowcase. My mom can’t hear me. The door to my bedroom is closed. The blankets twisted, my sheets wrinkled up in a pile near my feet. I’m upside down, staring at my ceiling, wondering what the stars are thinking. Wondering why’d they’d urge a girl with shallow hair and eyeliner to spend her nights sobbing. Three months ago my nights were comforted by texts from him. I believed in wishing on shooting stars about love. I believed in gold at the end of a rainbow. Turns out that when a rainbow fades, there is no gold. Just coal left open to set fire to passion in a heart that’s weeping.

1:00 AM

It was December. I remember each detail. The smell of the wood burning. The touch of his hand as I squeezed both of mine in his palm. We sat at the campfire with other couples and tiny children that held on to their mother’s legs for warmth. I wore my puffy jacket that reflected the shade of the snow in the moonlight above our heads. He would grin. I would blush in the frigid air. We ran inside once the fire dimmed to an amber. He looked over at me and took my hands. We sat on a wooden bench in the gift shop of the place where we were. We talked about the weeks ahead, emphasizing the agony of separation we’d have to face in just a few days.

1:05 AM

I’m gripping my sides. Gasping for air. Drowning in the glow of the fire that night. Sinking in the smell of his black coat that made his shaggy brown hair stand out in the icy chill of winter’s curse. Tears glide down my cheeks like children dressed in snow gear as they slide down a snow-covered hill. He promised to take us sledding. He promised to stay. I feel my fingers pierce my skin again. My breath is becoming more jagged. I close my eyes, gripping the darkness of reality as I allow myself to breathe under the weight of the water surrounding my lungs.

Chapter 2

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1:00 PM

I’m in English. My teacher has a screw for a nose and hay for hair. He reminds me of the scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz. Apparently it’s some classic that put red heels back to being hot on the market for some time before people at schools realized that they can’t actually send you back home. It’s a real shame, isn’t it? I wouldn’t have to be sitting in class listening to the scarecrow talk about how rape is bad and guys need protection so that we don’t end up pregnant. I’ve always wondered when teachers found out that we knew about this stuff. Is it when we are thirteen that our hormones tell us we need babies or something? Personally I think it’s a bunch of bullcrap. Sex is a three-letter word. Two people hook up, and that’s the end of that. Next morning they leave because their dick is finally happy after a long hard winter in lonely penus town.

1:02 PM

I’m listening to Mr. Scarecrow.

I’m listening to the boy behind me whisper that I’m beautiful.

I’m listening to the snow fall while raindrops mark the windowsill.

I play with bowing arrows, tracing the outlines of hearts on a Valentine’s card that some kid threw at me from the back of the room.

I guess this is what they call loss—loss of love, loss of sanity, loss of snow when the sun comes out and the sky turns blue and Mr. Scarecrow draws a skeleton on the board and all that’s seen is the lack of clothes as the boys laugh and all there is, is the snowfall as the fire grows and kisses the skin of every tear that has surfaced since that night he called me beautiful before the snow fell before it ended, before he looked the other way and the tear fell from a distance on my skin.

1:20 P.M

The bell rings. Everyone stands. I sit, staring into space. There’s no color here. No dark or gray bruises on my skin to mark the touch of his hands as he takes off his shoes and leaves them on the floor. The floor next to his sox. His sox were purple. Or