CHAPTER ONE

Why do we always agree to meet at the Rosebud? Is it because Ness has a secret crush on Logan? There he is, wiping the counters. You'd think a guy gets tired of working the same job for six years, but no. 19 and the guy still wipes counters. In the summer, at least. When he comes back from college. I wonder what he does. Probably football scholarship or something. The guy's never exactly been a light bulb. He was a pain when he used to baby-sit me.

"Still writing in that stupid journal?"

I looked up from my writing – that's a Thomas Hardy poem, by the way – as Vanessa Pike slid into the booth, on the opposing bench. She was grinning, the fine metal of her braces gleaming in the artificial light of the Rosebud.

Vanessa is a poet, and yet, she always calls my journal stupid.

"I'm analyzing the pros and cons of your possible crush on Logan Bruno," I replied.

Vanessa's face fell. She hid her eyes with her hands – her squarish, pale hands. The Pikes' skin is so weird. Creamy and white, like a multitude of beads of grease glued together by freckles.

"What does it say? Do you think he might take-me-out-to-the-ball-game?"

Vanessa is my best friend, but she does have a horrible singing voice.

"I'm saying that your singing is the perfect match for his 40-watt intelligence."

My voice drones. It always does. When I'm not whispering, it's like a monotonous, uniform sound. Like the sound of a cardiac monitor after someone dies.

Vanessa giggled as Logan approached our table to take her order. I had already ordered: a chicken burger with fries was resting in front of me, half-eaten. The creamy white – which bore an odd resemblance to the mayonnaise in my burger – turned to bright red, and Logan wrote down "gr-gr-illed ch-ch-eese a-and a ah-ah va-vanilla milkshake" on his notepad.

Vanessa isn't usually shy around guys. Maybe Logan makes her nervous because he used to baby-sit for us. Maybe Logan makes her nervous because she does have a crush on him.

Or maybe she thinks he's an idiot and she was pretending to be intimidated because that's how girls usually act around him.

Yeah, I think that's it.

As Logan left, Vanessa leaned forward over the table and started whispering:

"Look, Haley is there."

Haley Braddock was sitting at the counter, fiddling with the straw of her milkshake. Her long blonde hair was curling on her shoulders - exit, the rat-tail - and her heart-shaped lips were the exact color of the cherry still resting on the top of her milkshake. She crossed her legs as Logan walked by, the movement revealing the skin of her thighs. He gave Vanessa's order to the cook and resumed his wiping, just in front of Haley.

"Does he know he's been wiping that part of the counter for five minutes?" Vanessa asked.

"Well, he's also been drooling on the counter for five minutes, so I guess it's a fair trade."

Logan leaned on the counter, flexing his muscles. Vanessa hid her eyes again.

"Oh my God! He didn't actually do that, did he?"

"I'm afraid he did," I said.

"I want to die," Vanessa moaned.

"I hate Haley."

"You hate everything."

Vanessa smiled proudly. I laughed. A short, dry laugh that sounds more like a cough than an indication of amusement. This is how I laugh.

"You hate everything!" Vanessa knows. She knows everything about me. She's my best friend. She knows I'm seeing Dr. Reese because my mom doesn't understand that I am not sweet, but cynical, and that I am not depressed, but realist, and that blind optimism is not an option. I'm seeing Dr. Reese because I don't want to become a cheerleader, because my life doesn't revolve around who's going to take me to Homecoming and because I'd rather play guitar than go out with friends.

She sent me to Dr. Reese because she thinks I hate everything.

That's not true.

I don't hate everything. I don't hate music; I don't hate literature; I don't hate Vanessa; I don't hate my father.

I hate pretty much everything else, though.

"I still have to see Dr. Reese this year," I said.

"Why?"

"I haven't been able to tell her what she wants to hear. 'Charlotte hasn't made a lot of progress in six months', she told my mother. 'She's a very intelligent child, but she doesn't…"

Logan and his sense of tact interrupted me. I'm sure they teach waiters how to interrupt conversations when they have their training. He cheerfully dumped Vanessa's food in front of her and said:

"You're seeing Dr. Reese, Charlotte? Mary Anne went to see her a couple times, back when we were dating. I think she's good."

"Is that why Mary Anne dumped you?" I asked casually.

"What do you mean?" Logan blinked his eyes.

"Hey, Ness, isn't it bright in here?"

Vanessa nodded her head.

"Awfully bright. I wonder what happened. They're normal neons, up there."

"Oh, I know!" I said. I turned to Logan, my hand shielding my eyes like a visor. "Logan is blinding me!"

"He's too bright!"

"What?" Logan blinked his eyes again.

We burst out laughing.

"You guys are crazy," Logan said, shaking his head. "Typical fifteen year-old girls."

Actually, I'm fourteen. Vanessa is a year older than me, but, starting tomorrow, we're both Sophomores. That's because I skipped half a grade when I was seven. I'm still grateful for that.

Logan still talks about us with great fondness. He doesn't realize we've been mocking him, that we don't care about him, and that we think he's stupid. To him, we're still those cute girls he used to sit for. To us, he's the guy who saw us cry and throw tantrums and get hurt. We can't possibly have fond memories of him.

"So, school starts tomorrow," I droned, twirling a frie in my mayonnaise.

"Yesh," Vanessa said. Her mouth was full of grilled cheese.

Highly unattractive. Bits of orange industrial cheese on her thin lip. I don't know that we can call Vanessa a pretty girl. Most of the guys in our grade certainly wouldn't say so. Vanessa is sturdy. You can guess just by looking in her eyes when she eats. Even when she's chewing on this chemical waste they call cheese, she looks like she is in heaven. Heaven behind glasses – those are Vanessa's blue eyes when she eats. And her hair is an odd color, hesitating between light brown and bland red, too thin and curly only at the tips. She didn't really grow up since elementary school. Her breasts are huge – not like mine – and they rest on the table while she eats. They're not sexy like Haley's, though. They're breasts that wouldn't be so huge if she lost twenty pounds and grew up five inches. They stick out under her red t-shirt, but somehow, you would rather be looking at something else.

I'm not a guy, though.

But Vanessa doesn't care about guys. She cares about writing, school, and poetry.

And yet, I spent a paragraph describing her breasts.

Something is wrong in our society.

I hate our society.

"We'll be in English together for sure," I said. We reviewed the classes we would have together about a hundred times.

"Yep. Honor's English, here we are. What do you think we'll be reading?"

Vanessa finally swallowed her cheese. Her hand dovee into her plate for another bite.

"No idea. Hopefully something I haven't read."

Last year I had read everything on the reading list. I was bored. The questions were stupid. Vanessa and I kept passing notes about the teacher's wig, and I still managed to get an A+ for the class.

"I'm wishing for some Emily Dickinson."

"Emily Dickinson would be nice. Did you know that her meter is such that most of her poems fit the melody of "Yellow Rose of Texas"?"

My dad taught me that. All my dad talks about is literature.

"Robert Frost would be nice, too. Or Eliot."

Vanessa frowned.

"Eliot is hard."

I shrugged.

We're fourteen and fifteen, and discussing literature. Right now, Haley is probably talking about the car her parents are going to offer her once she turns sixteen. Or about the cheerleading tryouts. Or about Paris Hilton. And Logan looks interested. He wouldn't be interested in talking about Eliot. He probably doesn't even know who Eliot is.

No wonder we don't have any friends.

I checked my watch.

"I should probably get going."

"It's only six-thirty," Vanessa pointed out.

"I know, but you know my mom."

Vanessa rolled her eyes. She knows my mom. She pulled a fresh twenty dollar bill out of her pocket.

"Dinner's on me."

Vanessa baby-sits. I admire her patience. Even if my biggest dream, when I was eight, was to be a member of the Baby-sitters Club, I realize now that baby-sitting is possibly the worst job you can ever wish for. I wouldn't carry Eleanor Marshall on my back if my life depended on it.

I hate kids.

Vanessa left a penny on the table as a tip, and we left the Rosebud, giggling. Logan didn't even notice; he was still talking to Haley.

Why do college guys go for high school girls? If I were in college, I wouldn't be thinking about anything high school.

I hate high school.

Vanessa and I parted on the corner of Rosedale and Spring, making faces about the prospect of going back to school, though we both knew that high school hell was better than staying at home hell.

At home, Vanessa has no privacy. She and Nicky got lucky when their parents decided to renovate the rec room into two very small bedrooms. What they didn't tell them was that the walls were actually going to be thinner than cardboard. We always hear Nicky masturbate. Somehow, he seems to always be masturbating when I'm there.

Vanessa can't come over to my house when my mom is there. Not that my mom dislikes Vanessa. She just thinks that I should rather go out with other friends, rather than spending all my time with one best friend. So when Vanessa is home, she bugs me even more, and we can't have a private conversation. Plus, when my mom and Mrs. Braddock meet at the grocery store, she always begs Mrs. Braddock to invite me over so I can be with Haley. I don't want to be with Haley.

I hate Stoneybrook. The town is way too small.

xxx

My guitar is my baby. I started playing when I was eight. The first thing I learned for real was "Stairway to Heaven". Then, I proceeded to more recent stuff. When I turned 12, my parents offered me an electric guitar. I think they still regret it to this day.

My father taught me the bases, but I took classes too. Now, I'm outplaying my dad by far, and I dropped out of classical guitar classes two years ago. I have long fingers, and the tips are rough and hard. I avoid soaking my fingers for too long. I take care of my nails.

I'm a guitar player.

When I hit the strings, the entire world fades away. Reading has the same effect, but the difference with music is that my entire body feels it. I love the pressure of the instrument on my knee, the warmth of it on my stomach, the strong, yet fragile presence of the strings under my fingers. When my guitar howls, my entire body resonates.

I could play guitar all night.

"Charlotte, dear, are you busy?"

A pencil between my teeth, I was trying to write a new song. I was bent over my acoustic guitar, trying to work my way through an opening that was so far pretty bland. My mother walked in without knocking. She made me jump, and I dropped my guitar pick.

"What does it look like?" I retorted, setting the guitar aside to pick up my plectrum.

Big mistake. My mother, Dr. Peggy Johanssen, sat down next to me on my bed. She stroked my hair while I sighed.

"What did you do today?"

"I went to the Rosebud with Ness."

"That was an hour ago. What did you do before that?"

I think my mom secretly attends conversation classes. Or she took journalism in high school. She thinks that asking questions will eventually inspire me to confide in her. She thinks that, by looking interested, she actually becomes interesting.

She's not. She's busy, stressed out, awkward. She wants to care, but she doesn't know how.

I don't need her.

"I hung out."

"I wish you'd go out more."

"I wish you'd go out more." "I wish you wouldn't be so antisocial." "Why don't you try to make a few more friends, Charlotte?" "What happened to your friend, Haley?" "Charlotte, isn't there some kind of social event at your school tonight? Why aren't you going?"

Six hundred versions of the same question, and she never gets tired of it.

"Mom, I was working on a song."

My mother's face closed up. Literally. Her lips became a thin line, her brows knitted together, and her eyes were shut. Probably in despair.

"I came to tell you that Becca called."

"I'll call her back sometime."

I was already reaching for my guitar. My mom stopped me by getting hold of my arm.

"I think you should go over to the Ramseys' and spend some time with Becca. She's your best friend."

"Vanessa Pike is my best friend."

"Still, one should never give up on a good friend."

I know where this is going. My mom thinks Becca is made of gold.

"Becca isn't my friend anymore."

The phone rang before mom could add anything. I have a phone in my room. It's pretty useless, since the only person who calls me is Ness, and she prefers email. So do I.

I hate the telephone.

"Hello? Oh, hi, Becca! Sure, she's here. So, you're starting high school tomorrow? How are you feeling about it?"

Sometimes, I wonder whether my mom is a doctor or a psychiatrist.

"Absolutely, she'll be there in a minute. Say hi to your mom for me."

She hung up and looked at me with an expression that looked like trouble. Trouble for me.

"Becca wants you to come over so you can help her with her clothes."

It's a good thing I love sarcasm, because my mom offers so many opportunities for it. It would be a waste if I didn't.

"And because this is a free country, you decided I'd go over without asking me?"

My mother sighed and her hands dropped into her lap.

"How many times will I have to tell you, Charlotte, that Becca is one of the best friends that you'll ever have and she needs you right now."

A sensation of déjà vu overwhelmed me. I was eight. My favorite baby-sitter had just moved away, and a new family had come to live in her house. My mother had baked something for them. I can't remember what it was. She took twenty minutes of her precious time to convince me that going over to Stacey's house wasn't going to kill me. She promised me I would get a friend for life if I went.

Come to think of it, my mother has always been pushy.

"I don't get a choice, do I?"

"I'm afraid not."

Soon enough, I was making my way through the cedar hedge with a torchlight. September was just around the corner, and the dark was rising even though it was still early. The Ramseys' backyard was quiet. I ran to the backdoor, hoping to be out of this torture as soon as possible.

Jessi opened the door. She was all smile and hugs. Jessi is a very touchy person. Maybe it's the dance background, but she always hugging, smiling and embracing people. She loves everybody. She is a Senior, now.

I think Jessi pretends to be happy all the time because she doesn't really have close friends. She feels lonely. Ever since Mallory left for boarding school, she's been trying to find someone to cling to.

Unfortunately for me, tonight, she has decided that she should cling to Charlotte Johanssen.

"Charlotte! Come in, come in! It's been a while since you came over… Becca is so nervous, I can hear her pacing in her room." (She put her arm around my shoulder, guiding me to the living room.) "She said she didn't want my help… She thinks I'm not cool enough or something. You're cool, though. I like your sweater. Where did you get it?"

"Um, Jessi? I'm here to see Becca."

Or no one at all.

"Sure, sure… Well, she said I should stay out of her room. You know the way. I'll be in the living room if you need me. Mama and Daddy are out, and Aunt Cecelia is downstairs folding laundry."

She looked at me with puppy-dog eyes, but I didn't invite her to Becca's room. I knew better than finding myself with both Becca and Jessi.

"Char!" Becca screeched when I walked in her room. Just like her sister, she tried to hug me. I was quick enough to escape her embrace.

Every time I see Becca and Jessi, I'm struck by the difference between the two. Maybe it's the dancing, but they're so different. Jessi has long limbs, while Becca is squarish. Neither of them have breasts, but Jessi's torso is gracious. Becca looks like a gnome. She is in the awkward teenager phase: her jaw is covered with acne, her hair is greasy, and her arms are too long. Sometimes, I pity her. High school won't be easy.

"Tell me, how is high school? Are there lots of cute guys? Do you think I can be part of a team?"

"High school is fine," I said, sitting down on her bed. "As long as you don't try too hard."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Becca was rummaging through her wardrobe, throwing blouses and pants out. She finally came up with a short blue skirt. A very short blue skirt.

"Nothing." I smirked.

Becca is officially part of the same category as Logan: clueless.

"I'm thinking of wearing this. What do you think? I want to impress Derek Masters. Maybe this year he'll notice me."

I think Derek Masters is a jerk. But I'm not saying anything. Who cares if Becca is too dumb to get a clue?

"Will you introduce me to your friends, Char? I want to hang out with cool Sophomores. Maybe Haley will let me in the cheerleading team?"

"Um. Haley and I aren't exactly friends."

"No?" Becca's eyes were huge. Surprised.

"Actually, come to think of it, I'm not sure you should get advice from me. I'm not Miss Popularity at Stoneybrook High."

That's probably all I can say to make her feel better.

"No?"

Becca thinks I'm cool?

"No."

"But Haley and you were friends. We were all friends."

"That was in elementary school. People change. Haley, especially, changed."

"Well, she's head of the cheerleading squad. She can't be that bad. I'm sure she'll talk to me. And then I can really blend in."

On account of an old friendship? Ah-ah. Think again. Queen Haley Braddock, speaking to a lowly Freshman?

And if all Becca wants is to blend in, I'm outta here.

"I'd better get going. I'm sure the blue skirt is perfect for what you're aiming at."

"Thanks, Char."

xxx

When I got home, my father was sitting in the living room, with the radio turned on, and a book in his hands. If I were allowed only a picture to describe my dad, that would be the one. He was always neglecting our comfortable sofa for the straight chair in a corner, and always put his book open on the table. A mug of coffee was next to his right hand.

I love my dad.

"Hey, dad," I said, walking in the living room.

My dad doesn't love me, though.

"Hello, Charlotte."

I kissed the top of his head, and he immediately froze. Not only is dad not the most affectionate person in the world, but lately, it feels like he doesn't even want to look at me anymore.

"What are you reading?"

He turned to look at me, but not directly, so that my eyes only met the dark frame of his glasses. My father and I look nothing alike. He has thin, blonde hair and blue eyes. I look like my mother: thick, dark hair and dark hazel eyes. I don't even wear glasses.

" Mrs. Dalloway ."

"For the thirteenth time, at least."

"Sense of proportion, Charlotte."

Almost everything that comes out of my father's mouth is from a book. He's an engineer, but, really, he should have been a professional reader. We never hear anything about his work. It's all about books, books, books.

My father doesn't have feelings.

"Well, I should go to bed."

"Mmmmm."

He won't even say goodnight to me.

I managed to avoid my mother as I climbed up to my room. I put on my P.Js, brushed my teeth and headed to bed. I was tired, and tomorrow was the first day of school.

But as I slid under the covers, I remembered something. I flicked the ceiling lamp on, reached for my guitar and for the sheet on which I had written the song. I strummed the chords ever so slightly, and quickly wrote a set of notes. Then, satisfied, I shut the lights, and went to sleep.