It's the night of our game against Riverwalk High School and I am definitely still uneasy about not being in Swellview. An attack can happen at any moment. Charlotte and Dawn have been working hard to track the bomber and so far we're ridiculously close to getting the guy. We have evidence stacked up high and we know who he is, we just can't find him at least not in his civilian character.

The guy Ray suspected it to be wasn't too far off. Apparently his enemy had a brother who was more violent and who didn't care for anything other than hurting people. He killed his brother and his niece which is who Ray warned us about previously. We discovered this information after seeing our Bomber set off a bomb in their house, his first attack.

Focus Henry.

I zone back into the task at hand. We're in the locker room about to decide what to do. We got here pretty early so to kill time we did some quick drills but our game got pushed back so we got more free time on our hands. The guys are preparing to go get food. I left the locker room to go find Piper.

Coach has been pretty understanding and has allowed me to bring Piper with us and let her stay during practices since the incident. Jasper is hanging back with the coaches for a bit to talk over some more plays.

I find Piper on the bleachers with Charlotte and Dawna. She prefers Dawn, get it together! I hear Charlotte's voice yelling at me and I smile.

"Well if it isn't some of my favorite people." I greet them all.

"If it isn't only the best Wide Receiver in all of our state." Charlotte replies which strokes my pride a bit.

"Since when?" I ask eagerly. Last year they refused to recognize me as the best because I wasn't a senior even though my stats proved that I was indeed the best.

"Since 2 weeks ago. Congrats big bro!" Piper exclaims.

"No one has tried to get a statement or an interview or anything?Hm, how do we know this is really true?" Dawn teases, the girl can never just be happy for me.

"If they have, the coaches probably turned them down. We've really been focused on this game. We almost lost our winning streak last game and I think that put the fear in everyone's hearts. The good thing is win or lose we still make regionals but it'll be good to go with an undefeated streak still in tact." I explain and she just nods, seeming to be satisfied.

"Jasper still doing his QB stuff?" Piper asks and I nod.

"Yeah he'll be a while. Mom and Dad are gonna be leaving home soon. We got time to drop our stuff off at the house and eat if you want." I soften my tone just slightly. Piper while having made significant progress still suffers more than anyone looking in would notice.

"Yeah, sounds cool. See ya later Dawn." She immediately pops up and heads to the car. Charlotte follows and I just sigh.

"Still haven't talked to her?" I'm curious what's so different about this little hiccup.

"I'm trying. She won't let me get past small talk! I want to just pinch her right on a pressure point and make her listen!" Dawn growls out. I look around frantically and briefly to make sure nobody heard that.

"Okay one, keep it down. And two she'll come around eventually. I'll see what I can do to help, alright ?" Dawn just groans and nods.

"I'm such a sucky best friend. How did I not notice I was distancing myself from her? She's been there for me through everything! How could I just forget about her so easily?" Dawn talks aloud.

"Listen Dee, this is Charlotte we're talking about. She would've never mentioned anything about it that night if she wasn't already feeling off. You know she doesn't like to open up about this stuff and I'm willing to bet she's embarrassed she even brought this up. She most likely realizes that this was a good thing for you and probably feels bad that she is trying to make it about her when she always puts your happiness first." I explain.

"Henry, she's my best friend. I know all this already." Dawn bites at me.

"Sorry for trying to help you out. If she's your best friend then act like you know her and get her to talk to you instead of complaining about it. Have you tried telling her that you want to talk directly about what happened?" I bite right back. I can play this game all day.

"Well no, I've been working my way up to it." Dawn blushes.

"So that's your problem. Char's straightforward. Cut right to the chase and don't give her the chance to evade the problem. Otherwise you know she'll just think that she overreacted and will brush it off because she thinks you are too." I talk from experience.

"Ugh, I never thought I'd be getting advice from someone else about my best friend." Dawn groans again. She can be a fat drama queen.

"Alright you big baby. Go somewhere. I gotta get to the car. Laters." I ruffle her hair and she sticks her tongue out at me. I laugh and head to my car. I find the two princesses seated in the back seat.

"What am I ? Your escort ? One of you wackos sit in the front." I glare at them through my rear view mirror.

"Henry, no offense but your driving can be a little wild. We just want to be as safe as possible." Piper explains and tries to slyly tighten her seatbelt.

"I can see you Piper and I see you too Charlotte. I'm actually in a good mood today and I will prove it with some stellar driving." I pull out of my parking spot smoothly and head on to good ole Charbear's house.

"Have you talked to Dawn yet?" I bring up knowing she'll be forced to answer politely in front of Piper.

"No, I don't really think it's worth talking about." Charlotte replies simply but I can only imagine her tensing up all over.

"Something happened with you and Dawn?" Piper interjects and I try not to smile too widely. Brilliant plan.

"Yeah, it was my fault. I got mad at her for something stupid. It was uncalled for. Little misunderstanding really." Charlotte tries to brush it off.

"Then why don't you just talk to her and clear it up? I thought you two seemed a little weird. How long has it been like this?" Piper fires off.

"Just a few months."

"So about the same amount of time that her and Jasper started being all over each other. Let me guess, she spends more time with him and doesn't notice she's neglecting you." A silence ensues which I can only guess is Charlotte giving Piper one of her "and how do you know that" faces.

"It happens to me all the time." Piper laughs which is really good considering she used to cry about it when it happened.

"Oh well yeah that's pretty much it. But like I said, it's silly stuff. Not worth talking about." Charlotte brushes off.

"Except for the fact that Dawn is the only thing that keeps people from thinking bad things about Charlotte at school so pretty much, her decreasing the time she spends with her inadvertently decreased everyone's opinion of Charlotte. So valid reasons to feel neglected when literally everyone is reminding you that you owe social status safety to someone else and when said someone else is trying to fix things but a certain blockhead won't allow it, it leaves me to wonder what's really up." I cut to the chase. Charlotte will only keep trying to beat around the bush.

"Char! That's not something that can just go away! You have to talk about this immediately or else that gap between you two will get bigger and bigger." Piper scolds Charlotte. Imagine that, a preteen scolding an almost legal adult.

"Ughhhh, I know. But I just get so angry when I think of talking to her! How the hell did she not realize she's been blowing me off for months ! Canceling our plans left and right, texting me days after I texted her, and even having lunch at home everyday to FaceTime Jasper! Sure, I get wanting to spend time with someone but did she stop wanting to spend time with me too? I mean we're practically neighbors ! I'm not that far off if she would have just thought about me! I just, feel very selfish and jealous when I think about everything." Char rants, finally. For a while I got worried because of how she was acting so nonchalant about everything.

" I don't know. I can't speak for her and no matter what it still sounds bad but I guess she just prioritized getting to know Jasper better over you because she already knows you like a book. I don't think she realized how much of an influence she had over your social status - which I just wanna say people are so shallow but that's a whole other point I'm not going to get into right now" Piper speaks from experience.

"Basically, Piper is trying to say that Dawn didn't deliberately stop hanging out with you. She was unaware of the lack of time you two were spending together because she was focused on Jasper being the person she spent every free second with. This is someone special coming into her life after a while and she just didn't know how to balance it all out. That doesn't in any way mean that you are expected to just sit back and watch your friendship die, that also doesn't mean that you have to sacrifice all the things you want to do for her to spend time with Jasper. She needs to learn more balance and definitely should apologize for just dropping the ball on your friendship but try to be a little easy on her." I throw in. I rarely give advice but damn when I do, it always sounds goood.

" I see your point but I just wish I could get over myself. I know all that and I really wanted to be happy for her but soon we were always talking about Jasper, she would ask me for advice to help make plans with things that I told her about for her and Jasper to go do, oh and she can't come to study group because Jasper is only free to FaceTime now and just ugh. Then when everyone else noticed how little time we were spending together  people started coming up with all types of stupid crappy rumors. Even stuff like I hooked up with Jack and Dawn found out about it. I just hated being the focus of negative attention especially when I'm trying to figure out why my parents want to move now to Georgia and can't just wait a few more months til after I graduate, why I don't have any type of plan for after high school and just why do I procrastinate and how did I end up alone again?" Charlotte rants and her voice becomes so soft that I already know she's crying. My poor girl is under so much stress and strain.

Silence is in the car and me parking in the driveway finally breaks it. I get out the car and let Piper and Charlotte have a moment. I walk inside to find Charlotte's parents running around like crazy.

"Hello Mr and Mrs-"

" Aht Aht, i know I done told you about calling us that. Ma and Pops to you." Charlotte's mom instantly corrects me. Both of her parents stop in their tracks and glare at me, playfully.

"I know I know, it's gonna take some getting used to. Hey Ma, hey Pops. What're you guys doing?" I try again with a smile once the two of them release their glare.

"Well we were setting up the guest room for you. But then we just decided to clean everything since your parents are stopping by. I'm too lazy to cook dinner so I'm just going to pick up Chinese later on." Pops answers.

"We're also going through to see what things we want to take with us on the move and what we can sell. We'll be getting a more modest house." Ma explains.

"Can I help in any way?" I offer and they both look at each other and seem to have a small conversation.

"If we don't ask now then when?" Ma's tone becomes more serious and Pops face drops into a frown.

"Let's go to my study." Pops mutters. I just follow them, curious to see what's going on.

"We know Charlotte isn't the happiest about the move. We also know she asked to stay with Dawn but she can't stay with them. I'm not sure why but their parents made it clear that our daughter could never 'mooch' off of their goods. We want to avoid putting further strain on a relationship that any of the Dixon's might want to strengthen later on." Pops explains.

"We also know she really wants to go to Columbia. I'm not sure if she applied yet but the deadline is soon and she really should do it if she wants. This brings us to why you're here." Ma pauses and I know my face is confused. "What are your plans?"

"Oh I've applied to a handful of schools and I'm waiting to see if I get accepted to my dream school and then I'll go there if I do but if not, one of the others is fine." I try not to give too much away. I don't want them thinking I'm influencing Charlotte in any way.

" Anything out of state?" Pops asks.

"Mhm 3 are. I know this is going to sound suspect as heck but I'm really hoping to get into Columbia so I can go to New York." Cat is out the bag!

"Does Charlotte know?" Ma asks and I shake my head.

"That makes things a lot easier, we initially just wanted to ask if you wouldn't mind checking up on her monthly for us if she goes somewhere else. But if you guys end up at the same school then that's even better. Charlotte can be very reserved at times and I don't want her to break that by getting caught up in the wrong things and wrong people." Ma doesn't even give Pops the chance to speak.

"We've made some mistakes ourselves in college and we went to schools that were so far away from all our family and friends that it really felt like we were going at it alone so we scrambled to fit in somewhere and make a support system no matter how shady it was. We just don't want her to have to feel that same way." Pops expresses with sincerity and regret coming through.

"Wow, you guys are so cool to put yourselves in her footsteps. I have so much more respect for you guys thinking of her like that. Don't worry, I would gladly agree to help make sure Char doesn't ever feel alone and that she knows we're never too far apart to still be there for her." I promise them. They break out into smiles.

"Thank you so much. It really means a lot to us." Ma says and Pops puts his hand out for a shake which I do and by looking into his eyes I can see the pride in them.

"And don't worry much, Char is stronger than you think." I assure them once we part ways after leaving the office.