Super Nobody (Alphas and Omegas Book 1) (5 page)

Disturbed by the way she made him forget what
he wanted to talk about, he started to explain.

“Listen, you know, your zoot suit...”

“Groovy isn't it?”

Groovy? He shook his head: one thing at a
time. “Groovy, right. Only, you don't know this school. The stuff
you're wearing, there's no way...you're not going to...nobody's
going to be okay with that.”

She smiled a little smile, but kept
quiet.

“People who are different, I mean, they tell
you to be different. They tell you different's okay, you know, but
they're the teachers, right, and they don't know really anything. I
mean they know science and English and whatever, but they don't
know anything else. Not about us.”

“Really?”

He nodded. “The girls were all whispering
about you today. I think, maybe, I mean, I don't know much about
this sort of thing, because I'm not a girl, but you might still
have a chance to, I don't know, do something. Make some friends.
Whatever it is girls do to make friends. Talk about makeup and boys
and whatever.”

She laughed. “Is that what you think girls do
to make friends?”

“Yeah I'm not exactly an expert.”

“I did notice,” she said, “You didn't have a
big fan club surrounding you.”

He laughed once. “Oh yeah, they all think I'm
crazy.”

“And it doesn't bother you?” She kept her
tone even. She wasn't making fun of him, or accusing him. Nothing
like that. Everybody else in his school would have made the
question into something else, a finger jab at least, a slap in the
face at most.

He shrugged. “I guess not.”

“How long?”

“Last year, the first day.” He told her a bit
about the Trent situation, but not about how he'd knocked Trent's
face about. Instead he told her that Trent had gone to Patterson,
the eighth grade building.

“Hmm.” she said at last, which wasn't much of
anything. He was expecting some kind of reaction. Like she would be
up in arms, like his mother, and want to go give Trent a thrashing.
But she didn't.

“So you haven't had any friends for what...a
year and a half.”

“Nope,” he said defiantly.

Her smile grew.

“Yeah, so, maybe I'm not a girl expert, or
even a friend expert, but I know one thing: you can't just go
around and show everyone you're totally weird. Anyway, here's
Bellemont,” he said. “Just think about it. The...the backpack and
the suit thing. If you want to have some friends.”

“If I want to have some friends.” There, that
was the tone that told him she was making fun of him. He didn't
know what the joke was, but he refused to feel the sting.

“Whatever,” he said, “I warned you.” And
without giving her another chance to make fun of him, he took that
running start, hopped on his bike and headed home.

He was three months to the day away from
witnessing a world class meltdown.

In the weeks that followed, he tried not to
watch Charlotte on her way towards rock bottom. It was like those
videos of train wrecks and car crashes though. Didn't matter how
much you tried to look away, you found yourself staring. She was
the only other person besides him who didn't get a single
valentine, and the only one who didn't get one of those shamrock
notes they did on St. Patrick's day. Somebody must have gotten in
good with Charlotte's homeroom teacher, or just stolen Charlotte's
locker com, because they started leaving pictures and little notes
in her locker, mostly four letter words Michael's mother refused to
say.

Mostly Michael was watching for the slow
progression of her soul leaking out. He had read about it, mostly,
about people could put up with so much at first, no problem, but it
started to wear after a while. And after a time their bright smiles
dimmed, the rose was bleached out of their cheeks, and the garbage
started to pile up. Usually, Stephen King said, it was under the
eyes. You could see it coming on slow and sure, darkening and
piling up in bags as they lost sleep or cried themselves there.

But Charlotte's resolve didn't waver in the
first month. In fact, it was like she completely transformed into a
different person. The zoot suits gave way to tight jeans with
flaring bottoms, sandals (during February, no less), and shirts
that were called tie-dye. They were like explosions of color all
over the place, with enormous peace signs and bands like Bob Marley
or the Beatles. She started wearing enormous aviator sunglasses and
putting beads in her hair and stuff.

He'd retreated into the e-reader and his
paper route, and really looking forward to dinner instead of really
looking forward to hanging out with his friends. He'd had his own
way of coping with the stupid people at his school, but he couldn't
figure out what Charlotte's malfunction was.

In a way, he was disappointed when she didn't
break down and start rushing through the hallways with her books
clutched to her chest. Then he felt guilty for wanting that.
Charlotte was pretty awesome, he decided. Pretty awesome, and
pretty too. And unlike Lily, she was his age.

So February melted into a cold, gray,
miserable March, and Charlotte's entire wardrobe changed up again.
Now she was wearing cargo pants and flannel jeans. He thought for a
second she had just given in over night, but then the way she was
wearing something new and bizarre everyday meant something. He just
couldn't figure out what, seeing as how he wasn't a girl.

But her behavior got him more and more
intrigued. He started to figure they ought to be friends, just
because neither of them had any friends. Plus, for some reason he
couldn't nail down, he wanted to see more of her. So one day, after
nearly three months of rocketing home on his bike after school, he
decided to go one day without his bike. It was sort of like a
knight going into battle without his horse. You didn't just strap
on a whole boatload of armor and totter around with no horse. If he
learned anything from Shepherd's history lessons, it was that if
you had more horses, you won more battles.

He felt sort of naked without his bike, not
standing apart from the others at the bike rack but in the middle
of everybody. Maybe this was a bad idea. Maybe she was going to
laugh in his face or just walk away without talking to him. He
didn't know what he would do with that sort of rejection. Icy
spikes of fear wormed through his belly.

The whole day went by through a sick film of
worry. He couldn't absorb anything any of his teachers said. They
called on him several times and the only thing to come of it was
red cheeks and quiet snickers from the braver kids in class. After
all, he was still the sixth grade psycho.

He waited by her locker after school, more
afraid of this than he ever had been of Trent. With Trent he hadn't
had a choice, but he'd never been terrified. He just paid up, and
that was that. Here he had nothing to give Charlotte, nothing she
required.

She came up to him silently, with her
backpack slung over one shoulder. She eyed him flatly, and opened
her locker. A big piece of paper tumbled out, taped to one of the
shelves. It loudly proclaimed:
C
annot
U
nderstand
N
ormal
T
hinking. Let's go with Slutzko!

“What a humorous bunch they are,” she said
pleasantly. “Oh ignorant sign of pointless and empty hate, I shall
enjoy burning you.”

“Hi Charlotte,” he said.

“Michael,” she said, just as pleasantly,
which made him feel bad.

“Um...do you want to...um...walk home
again?”

“Why Michael,” she said. “We haven't walked
together for maybe three months.”

“Okay,” he said, defeated. “If you don't want
to, that's cool.”

“Oh, I didn't say that,” she said. “But I
wonder. What kept you away?”

He kicked at the floor and wondered how his
shoes had gotten so dirty. They were stupid. He was stupid.
Everything in the whole world was stupid.

“That's alright,” she said. “It doesn't
matter. I would be happy to walk home with you.”

“Really?”

She laughed, but not unkindly. “Let's
go.”

Most of the way they went in silence. This
late in March, the weather was starting to go the way of the lamb
instead of the lion. Buds could be seen peaking out of branches,
but only if you looked really closely. There still weren't any
flowers out, since it wasn’t yet April. For now though, the snow
was still clinging to the world in a few places, and in a few more
it was just dirty black slush. The world would be alright soon, you
just had to try hard to remember that it wasn't going to be cold
and yucky every day.

“So anyway,” he finally said.

“Yeah?”

“What happened in February?” he asked. He
didn't want to tell her that he'd been curious about her clothes.
Or curious about how she'd been handling the stress of stupid
people acting just as everybody would expect.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Uh...the clothes. You were like the fourth
of July for a little while there. Your tie-dyed thing.”

“Oh!” she shouted. He could see he'd said
just the right thing there. She just about glowed a hundred
dazzling colors. “Right, oh man, yeah, there was this song...my
parents' friends are always on about Bobby McGee, but geez, when
you heard some of the stuff off the Big Brother and the Holding
Company album, Cheap Thrills, it's funky stuff. The hit one was
Piece of My Heart, you know, but I really dug on Flower in the Sun.
That big band out of the fifties, there's something fun about it,
but pretty rigid, you know? but Janis Joplin, she's a rebel. She's
groovadelic. She makes you close your eyes and everything turns
this floaty light green in your mind. Light green and summer sky
blue.”

Well, he'd asked. He should have anticipated
the answer.

“So that's what happened. My mom got some of
my great-gram's clothes out of the attic, and we went to some
vintage clothes stores. I had so much fun, especially with the
crummy weather, my mom said I blissed out. I think I did.”

He let her keep talking, and eventually she
got away from Janis Joplin and onto the Beatles. They, at least, he
knew. He knew the name at least. He couldn't tell the Beatles from
any of the big band she'd mentioned, if you downloaded it off the
cloud and listened to it on the surround sound at home. Old was
old. It sounded old. So really, not important. And this was stuff
that was so old that it fell off the face of the planet, and the
only people who talked about it were already older than old.

Which made Charlotte's bubbly speech about
this music really strange. She was clearly not a stupid girl, and
not so dorky as to be a complete loner. She could talk to him,
which meant she could probably talk to anybody.

Weird. Weird that she wasn't all that weird,
even though she was. But sort of not.

Michael didn't understand it much. He did,
however, snap out of his thoughts when he realized she wasn't
talking anymore.

“Huh?” he asked.

“I asked if you've ever heard the Jimi
Hendrix experience?”

“Uh...no. Sorry.”

She laughed. “You don't have to be sorry. So
what do you listen to?”

“I'm...uh...I mostly read. Books. Novels. A
lot of old fantasy.”

“Like Lord of the Rings and stuff? My mom
says that's the father of all fantasy.”

“Your mom's right,” he said. He was in awe.
Charlotte clearly knew everything about everything. “Wow. Have you
read it?”

“No...I read the Hobbit, it was fun. All the
funny little dwarves with their rhyming names.”

He realized they were already at her street.
“Oh, we're here.”

“I'll see you later then. Unless you want to
come over and listen to Hendrix and the Beatles, maybe some
Led.”

Michael's stomach did a complicated dive off
a high board, several flips and twists, and landed somewhere around
his feet. His head spun with terror and anxiousness and glee, but
also with something he couldn't identify. Alone with a girl. A
friend. A girlfriend? Seventh graders had girlfriends. Sometimes a
few sixth graders did. He understood the appeal now.

“I can't,” he said at last. “I've got my
paper route to do. Sorry.”

She laughed again, but not maliciously. “You
don't have to keep apologizing. Some other time.”

“Okay,” he said. His stomach lurched again,
this time with hope. He knew the next few hours were going to be
spent in conversation with himself, while his imaginary version of
Charlotte spoke directly to his mind.

When he walked away, watching her head down
Bellemont, he found himself humming a tune under his breath. He
didn't know what it was, and it would have astonished him to
discover it was 'Piece of My Heart' by Big Brother and the Holding
Company, circa 1968. It was also a tune he had never heard before
in his life.

The day was drawing close. Nobody at LADCEMS
knew, of course, or they would have stopped the Spring Ball and
saved all the hospital bills, the burn unit being overfull…and the
screaming. It could’ve saved on the screaming.

And to think, Michael wasn't even going to
go.

It was a month before the Ball, and his
mother was grumbling again. She'd forgiven dear old dad, for
mysterious reasons only parents could understand, but she'd
pestered Michael about what he was doing every single day
afterward, so when he started to head to school without his bike
she naturally became suspicious. He hadn't thought until later to
just take the bike to school, and walk it back home every day. The
damage was done on the first day, and by the end of that day she'd
found out about Charlotte. And that was that.

Of course, Charlotte's life, and her parents'
lives, and the lives of her two baby brothers were put under the
microscope, and scrutinized down to the tiniest detail. Susanna
Washington made gossip her stock in trade, since she could do
laundry, iron clothes, cook, clean and go shopping with a bluetooth
earpiece synced up with her phone attached to her at all times.