January 7th-July 15th, 2011.
I flip through the pages and see that it's a journal. In the box beneath this one, there are at least five more.
She must love to write.
I look around, lifting pillows and blankets, searching for something to put the journals in. If I want to find this girl, I need to know where she frequents. Places she might be, people she might know. Journals are the perfect way to find out that information.
I find an empty, worn backpack on the floor a few feet away, so I grab it and stuff all the journals inside. I begin pushing things aside, shaking out books, looking around for anything and everything that might help me. I find several letters in various places, a few stacks of pictures, random sticky notes. I take everything I can fit into the backpack and make my way back to the attic opening. I know there are also a few things in the bedroom at my own house, so I'll go there next and sort through it all as fast as I can.
When I reach the opening, I drop the backpack through the attic hole first. It hits the ground with a loud thud and I flinch, knowing I should be quieter. I begin to descend the shelves one by one, trying to imagine Charlie making the journey up and down these makeshift stairs every night. Her life must be pretty bad if she escapes to the attic by choice. When I make it to the bottom, I grab the backpack and stand up straight. I pull it over my shoulder and start toward the door.
I freeze.
I'm not sure what to do, because the officer who tapped on my window earlier is now staring straight at me.
Is being inside my girlfriend's house illegal?
A woman appears in the doorway behind the officer. Her eyes are frantic and they're lined with mascara--like she just woke up. Her hair is wild, and even from several feet away, the scent of alcohol finds its way across the room.
"I told you he was up there!" she yells, pointing at me. "I warned him just this morning to stay off my property, and he's back again!"
This morning?
Great. Wish I had informed myself of that fact in the letter.
"Silas," the officer says. "You mind coming outside with me?"
I nod and proceed cautiously toward them. It doesn't seem like I've done anything wrong, since he's only asking me to speak with him. If I did anything wrong, he would have immediately read me my rights.
"He knows he's not supposed to be here, Grant!" the woman yells, walking backward down the hall, toward the living room. "He knows this, but he keeps coming back! He's just trying to get a rise out of me!"
This woman hates me. A lot. And not knowing why makes it hard not to just apologize for whatever the hell I did to her.
"Laura," he says. "I'll have a talk with Silas outside, but you need to calm down and move aside so that I can do that."
She steps to the side and glares at me as we pass her. "You get away with everything, just like your daddy," she says. I look away from her so she won't see the confusion on my face, and I follow Officer Grant outside, clutching the backpack over my shoulder.
Luckily the rain has let up. We keep walking until we're standing next to my car. He turns to face me, and I have no idea if I'll be able to answer the questions he's about to throw at me, but hopefully they aren't too specific.
"Why are you not at school, Silas?"
I purse my lips together and think about the answer to that. "I, um..." I look over his shoulder at a passing car. "I'm looking for Charlie."
I don't know if I should have said that. Surely if the cops weren't supposed to know she was missing, I would have clarified that in the letter. But the letter only stated that I needed to do whatever I could to find her, and reporting her missing seems like it would be the first step.
"What do you mean you're looking for her? Why isn't she at school?"
I shrug. "I don't know. She hasn't called, her sister hasn't heard from her, she didn't show up for school today." I throw a hand behind me in the direction of the house. "Her own mother is obviously too drunk to notice she's missing, so I thought I'd try to find her myself."
He tilts his head, more out of curiosity than concern. "Who was the last person to see her? And when?"
I swallow as I shift uncomfortably on my feet, trying to recall what was written about last night in the letter. "Me. Last night. We got into an argument and she refused to ride home with me."
Officer Grant motions for someone behind me to come toward us. I turn around, and Charlie's mother is standing in the open doorway. She crosses the threshold and makes her way out to the yard.
"Laura, do you know where your daughter is?"
She rolls her eyes. "She's at school where she's supposed to be."
"She is not," I interject.
Officer Grant keeps his eyes trained on Laura. "Did Charlie come home last night?"
Laura glances at me and then looks back at the officer. "Of course she did," she says. Her voice tapers off at the end like she's not sure.
"She's lying," I blurt out.
Officer Grant holds up a hand to hush me, still directing his questions at Laura. "What time did she come home?"
I can see the confusion wash over Laura's face. She shrugs. "I grounded her for skipping school this week. So she was up in her attic, I guess."
I roll my eyes. "She wasn't even home!" I say, raising my voice. "This woman was obviously too drunk to know if her own daughter was even inside the house!"
She closes the distance between us and begins pounding her fists against my arms and chest. "Get off my property, you son of a bitch!" she screams.
The officer grabs her by the arms and motions his eyes to my truck. "For the last time, Nash. Go back to school."
Laura is thrashing in his arms, trying to break free. She's not even fazing him as he keeps her in a tight grip. This seems so normal to him; it makes me wonder if she's called the cops on me before.
"But...what about Charlie?" I'm confused as to why no one else seems to be concerned about her. Especially her own mother.
"Like her mother said, she's probably at school," he says. "At any rate, she'll show up to the game tonight. We'll talk there."
I nod, but I know good and well I'm not going back to the school. I'm taking my bag of Charlie's secrets and I'm going straight to my house to find more.
The first thing I do when I walk through the door to my home is pause. None of it looks familiar, not even the pictures on the walls. I wait for a few seconds, letting everything sink in. I could search the house or browse the pictures, but I've probably already done that. I'm on a time crunch, and if I want to figure out what happened to Charlie--what happened to us--I need to keep focused on the things we haven't wasted time doing before.
I find my bedroom and walk straight to the closet--to the shelf that contains all the other stuff we've collected. I dump everything out onto my bed, including the contents of the duffel bag. Sifting through it all, I try to figure out where to begin. There's so much stuff. I grab a pen so I can make notes of anything I find that might be of use if I end up forgetting this all over again.
I know a lot of things about my relationship with Charlie as of late, but that seems to be it. I know almost nothing about how we got together or how our families were torn apart. I don't know if any of that is even a factor in what's happened to us, but I feel like the best place to start is from the beginning.
I grab one of the older-looking notes addressed to Charlie--something I wrote myself. It's dated over four years ago and is just one of the many letters I grabbed from her attic. Maybe reading something from my point of view will help me figure out what type of person I am, even if this letter is over four years old.
I sit down on the bed and lean against my headboard, and I begin to read.
Charlie,
Can you recall a single time we went on vacation without each other? I've been thinking about that today. About how it's never just my immediate family and me. It's always both sets of our parents, Landon, Janette, you, and me.
One big happy family.
<
br /> I'm not sure we've ever spent a holiday apart, either. Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving. We've always shared them together, either at our house or yours. Maybe that's why I've never felt like it's just been my little brother and me. I've always felt like I had a brother and two sisters. And I can't imagine not feeling that way--like you're part of my family.
But I'm scared that I've ruined that. And I don't even know what to say to you, because I don't want to apologize for kissing you last night. I know I should regret it, and I know I should be doing whatever I can to make up for the fact that I might have officially ruined our friendship, but I don't regret it. I've wanted to make that mistake for a long time now.
I've been trying to figure out when my feelings for you changed, but I realized tonight that they haven't changed. My feelings for you as my best friend haven't changed at all--they've just evolved.
Yes, I love you, but now I'm in love with you. And instead of looking at you like you're just my best friend, now you're my best friend who I want to kiss.
And yes, I've loved you like a brother loves his sister. But now I love you like a guy loves a girl.
So despite that kiss, I promise nothing has changed between us. It's just become something more. Something so much better.
Last night, when you were lying next to me on this bed, looking up at me in breathless laughter, I couldn't help myself. So many times you've taken my breath away or made it feel like my heart was trapped inside my stomach. But last night was more than any fourteen-year-old boy could handle. So I took your face in my hands and I kissed you, just like I've been dreaming of doing for over a year now.
Lately, when I'm around you, I feel too drunk to speak to you. And I've never even tasted alcohol before, but I'm sure kissing you is what being drunk feels like. If that's the case, I'm already worried for my sobriety because I can see myself becoming addicted to kissing you.
I haven't heard from you since the moment you pulled yourself out from under me and walked straight out of my bedroom last night, so I'm beginning to worry that you don't remember that kiss like I do. You haven't answered your phone. You haven't responded to my texts. So I'm writing you this letter in case you need to be reminded of how you really feel about me. Because it seems like you're trying to forget.
Please don't forget, Charlie.
Never allow your stubbornness to talk you into believing that our kiss was wrong.
Never forget how right it felt when my lips finally touched yours.
Never stop needing me to kiss you like that again.
Never forget the way you pulled closer--wanting it to feel like my heart was beating inside your chest.
Never stop me from kissing you in the future when one of your laughs makes me wish I could be a part of you again.
Never stop wanting me to hold you like I finally got to hold you last night.
Never forget that I was your first real kiss. Never forget that you'll be my last.
And never stop loving me between all of them.
Never stop, Charlie.
Never forget.
~Silas
I don't know how long I stare at the letter. Long enough to grow confused as to how it makes me feel. How even though I don't know this girl at all, I somehow believe every word of this letter. And maybe even feel it a little. My pulse begins to quicken, because I've done all I know how to do in the past hour to find her, and the need to know she's okay is imminent.
I'm worried about her.
I need to find her.
I grab another letter for more clues when my phone rings. I pick it up and answer it without looking at the caller ID. There's no point in screening the calls, since I don't know any of the people who would even be calling me.
"Hello?"
"You do realize tonight is one of the most important games of your football career, right? Why in the hell are you not at school?"
The voice is heavy and angry.
Must be my father.
I pull the phone away from my ear and look down at it. I have no idea what to say. I need to read more of these letters before I would know how Silas would normally respond to his father. I need to find out more about these people who seem to know everything about me.
"Hello?" I repeat.
"Silas, I don't know what's gotten--"
"I can't hear you," I say louder. "Hello?"
Before he can speak again, I end the call and drop the phone onto the bed. I grab all of the letters and journals that will fit into the backpack. I rush to leave because I shouldn't be here. Someone might show up who I'm not prepared to interact with yet.
Someone like my father.
Where am I?
That's the first question. Then, Who am I?
I shake my head from side to side, like this simple act could jar my brain back into working order. People normally wake up and know who they are...right? My heart aches, it's pounding so fast. I'm scared to sit up, afraid of what I'll see when I do.
I'm confused...overwhelmed, so I start to cry. Is it weird to not know who you are, but to understand that you're not a crier? I am so mad at myself for crying that I swipe hard at my tears and sit up, banging my head pretty hard on the metal bars of a bed in the process. I flinch, rubbing my head.
I'm alone. That's good.
I don't know how I'd explain to someone that I have no clue who or where I am. I'm on a bed. In a room. It's hard to tell what kind of room, because it's so dark. No windows. A bulb flickers on the ceiling in a struggling Morse code. It's not strong enough to really illuminate the small room, but I can tell that the floor is made of shiny white tile, and the walls are painted white, bare except for a small television bolted to the wall.
There is a door. I stand up to go to it, but there is a heavy feeling in my stomach as I place my feet one in front of the other. It's going to be locked, it's going to be locked...
It's locked.
I feel panic, but I calm myself, tell myself to breathe. I'm shaking as I press my back against the door and look down at my body. I'm wearing a hospital gown, socks. I run my hands over my legs to check how hairy they are--not very. Which means I shaved recently? I have black hair. I pull a piece of it in front of my face to examine it. I don't even know my name. This is crazy. Or maybe I'm crazy. Yes. Oh my god. I'm in a mental hospital. That's the only thing that makes sense. I turn around and pound on the door.
"Hello?"
I press my ear against the door and listen for a noise. I can hear the soft humming of something. A generator? An air conditioner? It's some kind of machinery. I get chills.
I run for the bed and fold myself in the corner so I can see the door. I pull my knees up to my chest, breathing hard. I'm scared, but there's nothing I can do but wait.
The strap of my backpack digs into my shoulder as I push myself through the swarm of students in the hallway. I pretend I know what I'm doing--where I'm going--but I know nothing. As far as I'm concerned, this is the first time I've ever stepped foot in this school. The first time I'm seeing these people's faces. They smile at me, bob their heads in greeting. I reciprocate the best I can.
I glance up at the numbers on the lockers, navigating my way through the halls until I find mine. According to everything I wrote, I was here just this morning, searching through this locker, hours ago. I obviously didn't find anything then, so I'm sure I won't find anything now.
When I'm finally facing my locker, I feel the hope that I didn't even know I had evaporate. I guess a part of me was hoping I would find Charlie standing there, laughing at this genius prank she pulled off. I was hopeful that this mess would be over with.
I'm not that lucky, obviously.
I enter the combination on Charlie's locker first and open it in an attempt to find something we missed earlier. As I'm digging through her locker, I can feel someone approach me from behind. I don't want to turn around and have to interact with an unfamiliar face, so I pretend I don't notice they're standing here in hopes that they'll walk awa
y.
"What are you looking for?"
It's a girl's voice. Since I have no idea what Charlie sounds like, I turn around, hoping it's her. Instead, I find someone who isn't Charlie staring back at me. Based on her looks, I assume this is Annika. She fits the description Charlie wrote of our friends in the notes.
Big eyes, dark curly hair, looks at you like she's bored.
"I'm just looking for something," I mutter, turning back to face Charlie's locker. I find no clues whatsoever, so I close the locker and begin to enter the combination on my own lock.
"Amy said Charlie wasn't home this morning when she went to pick her up. Janette didn't even know where she was," Annika says. "Where is she?"
I shrug and pull open my locker, trying to make it inconspicuous that I'm reading the combination from a sheet of paper in my hand. "I don't know. Still haven't heard from her."
Annika stands silently behind me until I'm finished searching my own locker. My phone begins to ring in my pocket. My father is calling again.
"Silas!" someone yells as he passes by. I look up to see a reflection of myself, only younger and not as...intense. Landon. "Dad wants you to call him!" he yells, walking backward in the opposite direction.
I hold up my phone, screen facing him, so he knows I'm already aware. He shakes his head with a laugh and disappears down the hall. I want to tell him to come back. I have so many questions I want to ask him, but I know how crazy all of it would sound.
I press a button to ignore the call and I slide it back into my pocket. Annika is still standing here, and I have no idea how to shake her. The old Silas seemed to have an issue with commitment, so I'm hoping Annika wasn't one of his conquests.
The old me is sure making things difficult for the current me.
Right when I begin to tell her I need to get to my last period class, I catch sight of a girl over Annika's shoulder. My eyes lock with hers, and she quickly looks in the other direction. I can tell by the way she slinks away that she must be the girl Charlie referred to as The Shrimp in our notes. Because she really does kind of resemble a shrimp: pinkish skin, light hair, and dark, beady eyes.
"Hey!" I yell.
She keeps moving in the other direction.