Bren was already snoring.
I hated to think that there was not one part of him I liked anymore.
Not one.
Suddenly, the walls of my small apartment felt suffocating to me, and I needed some sort of escape. The choking, overwhelming feeling of hopelessness clamped its knotted claws around my heart; was there any waythat we could ever fix the indifference, resentments, and silence that had become our relationship?
I didn't want to look at him any longer. He disgusted me.
Withmy messenger bag slung over my shoulder, I walked out of the apartment, down the street, and into the crowded coffee shop. Tapping my foot impatiently, I waited in line for ten minutes to order my crack.I mean my coffee. Oh, all right,hello…my name is Charlotte Stone and I’m a coffeeholic. It absolutely is my crack, just like my books.
God, I wished my life were more like my books.
I was practically frothing at the mouth when I got up to the register, so I ordered two. And right about now is the time where you think that Mr. Right swooped in from behind the counter, the gazillionaire who owned the store, no,the chain of stores, and I was his new infatuation. He yanked me into the back of the café and licked every spot on my body while promising me enough free caramel lattes that I could bathe in them, right? Just like in one of my romance novels.
Ah, no.
A pierced up, pink-haired teenager theatrically told me how much I owed her and smiled her perky, wide smile, while bouncing around extremely way too happy to serve me that early in the morning. I waited for the rays of sunshine to burst forth from her ass cheeks as she handed me my coffees.
Yeah, that didn’t happen either.
I walked away from the counter a little more depressed than when I got there. My books were so much better than my reality.
A huge, yellow, neon sign boasting free Wifi service hung over the front doors. Smiling at my own foresight to bring my bag with my iPad inside, I decided to sit at a table and read. Sipping at my coffee, I tried blending in with the everyday working people frantically ordering coffees and the moms with the SUV sizedstrollers wearing giant mom bags that matched in size to the ones under their tired eyes. I was an expert in blending in. People didn’t look at me anymore; they just lookedthroughme. Complete invisibility. Some people suffered in their lack of being noticed; me, I knew the worth of people NOT weighing and measuring you and forming their opinions of you the minute they saw you.
After a few chapters of my book, and one whole coffee devoured, my phone buzzed softly in my pocket. I opened the text and smiled.
J: Hey you. How’s life?
Me: Can’t complain. How are you?
J: Crap night at work, just got in. Needed to see your little smiley face on my phone.
Me: Well then…
And just like that, my mind went back and stood right over the ledge ofwhat ifsthat have attached themselves like heavy chains around my thoughts through all the years. Someone sitting at the table next to me was eating a blueberry scone and I’m nine again, walking to the first day of school with my best friend Joey, each of us chewing on three pieces of blueberry bubble gum—even though my mom said that it would make us choke.
Fourth grade, room 404, Mr. F. Krueger’s classroom (we called him Freddie Krueger, and it might have been his real name. We never did find out).
For the first day, all the classes lined up in the schoolyard, behind smiling teachers holding up their class numbers—all except for Mr. Krueger, who was frowning, probably because he hadn’t eaten enough kids for breakfast that morning.
As we made our way through the crowds of screaming and crying students, Joey yanked on my school bag, hard, and I stumbled back, arms flailing. Turning my head quickly, I saw Joey’s eyes were wide with fear, “It’s that kid, look!”
He was right. A few steps away from us stood my evil alien neighbor, right next to our new teacher.Great. This was going to be the worst school year EVER! I think I may have stomped my foot on the ground for emphasis, but I still looked cool, because nobody noticed me anyway.
“Come on, Joey. Let’s just get in line and ignore him.”
Smiling at Mr. Krueger, I lined up behind Ava Marie Trebisky. The alien boy narrowed his laser beams at me and stared. It wasn’t a normal stare either, because he didn’t look away at all. He just looked straight into my eyes. So I stared right back at him until the first bell rang, and we had to follow Mr. Krueger into our new classroom. Where, to myhorror, Mr. Krueger assigned the alien (whose name was Jase Delaney, probably from the planet Uranus) to the seatACROSSfrom me. That meant that we wouldHAVE TOwork together in reading groups, math teams, and all the other team building sharing/caring/Kum-ba-ya-la-de-da stuff they had us do.
The whole first day of school, whenever I looked at him, his eyes squinted at mine, and his mouth did this mean, twisty thing. I hated him.I hated him so bad. I hated this class, this teacher, and even dumb Rachel Jenson who sat next to me digging up her nose, collecting her little yellow-green treasures, and sticking them lovingly on her gold-glittered star pencil.
Even worse, Joey had to sit next to Slate Marshall, theworstandMEANESTkid in the whole school, no,the whole state of New York.I DID NOTunderstand either, because every year that Slate Marshall had been in my class (since kindergarten), our teachers pulled his seat to sit next to the teacher’s desk, far away from the other kids. He wasTHATbad. I heard his father was in prison or something. I guessed Mr. Krueger didn’t know that—yet.
By the end of that first day, Slate managed to “accidently” put gum in Joey’s hair, steal all of the girl’s snacks (it had to be him even though no one saw him do it. He went to the bathroom, like five billion times, and every time he came back with a ring of cheese around his mouth!), and Jase Delaney and I got stuck being partners in relay races in gym.
Are you there, God? It’s me, Charlotte.Do you hate me?
Yes, I think you do!
