C H A R L O T T E

The flowers died on Monday.

After staying up three nights in a row, studying the growth rates and living conditions of the 'Helianthus Annuus' plant, better known as the sunflower, the ample amount I had planted in my front yard straight up gave up on me and wilted faster than my hope in ever becoming a phytochemist.

In hindsight, however, I probably should have actually checked on the plants instead of just observing them and making plant jokes (ie , how is a flower similar to the letter A, a bee goes after it. Bazinga!) from the windowsill of my heavily decorated monochrome-ish bedroom, mitski playing on repeat in the background.

This was my average weekend experience.

Initially, I would always tell myself it would be different this weekend, and that I'd actually leave my house, go to over-rated parties, drink seven bottles of booze and sleep with every being of the xx chromosome like the obscure, needed-to-be-validated seventeen year old everyone expects me to be.

Of course, twelve minutes after thinking like that, I berated myself for ever even considering that and trudge my way up the stairs to go watch a rerun of 'friends' for the seventieth time that month.

Then after that, my over achiever-esque mother would barge into my room and berate me in turn, expressing her 'utmost concern' and 'genuine worry' over me because I hadn't picked up a book in five minutes. Literally her words.

Big whoop.

For the most part of my stick-to-schedule-or-die weekend, my father wasn't involved, due to him and my mother's divorce a couple of years back, but when he did come over though, it was either the best experience of my life or something that would traumatize me for the rest of my short life, and there were no in-betweens.

Safe to say, he was a good father.

When he was sober.

Sobriety was a strange thing to me, honestly. I never drank, given that I had actually being alive when my parents had just escaped their honeymoon era, and my father had discovered that drinking is an easier thing to do than giving any attention to his wife and child, but most of the times, I feel like I'm never sober. It's a Charlotte thing.

That sounds like something my best friend, Sydney would say. She's an enigma.

Most of the time during my bore-inducing weekends were spent on the phone, ranting endlessly to her about topics that ranged from the twilight zone to the distinct causes of hypothermia (she fell asleep during both), and she narrated her terrifying experience living with a twin sister and compared it to people who think the earth is flat.

Occasionally, she'd tell me about this guy I think she's seeing, and how he's sort of a lovable oaf kind of guy, except that he was barely lovable, so he was just...kinda dumb.

She'd also try to convince me to change the decor of my bedroom, which for some reason was such a big deal to her, she got one of those airplane messages to spell out 'add a little more color, Char, you're not Marie Curie!'

I found myself very offended by that.

And here she was, now, lounged over the pile of black and white mismatched bean bags I dumped in the corner of my room, never to be touched again after my tabby cat, Star , took a fat dump on one of them two weeks ago and I had to throw it out. Now, I'm too traumatized to even go near them.

Sydney would definitely not want to hear that though.

"When are you actually going to stop staring into the distance like some estranged Jedi and listen to me for once?" She whines, interrupting her previous unwarranted rant about how my room looked like it was trying to be a minimalistic emo but failed in both departments.

I spare her an amused half smile, eyes glued to the poor drooping annuuses that had perished the day before. "I'll listen to you when you can bring back my annuuses, Syd." I call out after a beat, my voice laced with amusement.

"Is this a cry for help over your basically non-existent dating life?"

"I don't have a dating life."

"I know. That's what I said. But what would your future husband and three kids say about your decision to never try for them, hm?"

"I'm not going to have a husband and three kids."

"Your wife and three kids, perhaps?"

"Star shat on that beanbag you're sitting in." I deadpan, and she sits there, looking all smug, before her expression falters. "You're joking, right?"

I shrug, letting out a loud snicker when she ambushes me, pushing me off my windowsill and wrestling me to the ground, tickling my sides till I give out. "Okay, okay not really! I threw out the one she shat on, leave me the fuck alone!" I giggle, pushing her off me and breathing heavily, hearing her irritated mumble as she laid on the floor next to me, tugging the sleeve of my sweater.

"Would you look at that." She says wistfully, taking my hand to point at the ceiling. "that little blotch on the ceiling you've refused to paint? looks just like the beanbag your dumbass cat shat on."

I slap her hand away and she laughs, sighing. "When will you ever listen to me though? Your room looks like the opposite of what would happen if a rainbow rampaged this place. Add some color, y'know?"

"No. I don't know. Just haven't found a reason to do it yet, I guess." I shrug, raising up my left leg, my black shorts falling down to my thigh. "When I do though, you'll be the first to know."

"Or else I'll kill you."

"Or else you'll kill me."

We lay there in comfortable silence for the next three minutes, my troubling thoughts about dead flowers getting drowned out by Steve Lacy sifting into my ears, along with my aloof brown hair.

Until my phone rings.

My phone almost never rings. The only peple that actually bother calling me frequently were right here in my house with me, so this either had to be someone trying to sell me real estate or ghostface.

I didn't bother picking it up, because I was not getting brutally slaughtered in the next rendition of scream or buying real estate from a shady businessman who probably beats his wife or something , so I would just let it go to voicemail. No harm done, right?

Wrong. Because Sydney picked up the phone.

There are the times when I wonder why she even is my friend. She's literally my complete opposite.

Blond hair. Pale skin. Extroverted. Doesn't look like a pick-me even though all her friends except me are boys. Daredevil. Hates school. Can actually fight. It's like she was supposed to be my doppelganger but God got bored of creating people that are too alike and decided to do everything in reverse.

I love her, I really do, but in times like these, I want to strangle her harder than I want to strangle Leonard after he universally fucks up with Penny again.

Oh yeah, and I'm obsessed with 'The Big Bang Theory.' Sydney is not.

I should make a list of these.

"I'm going to fucking strangle you-" I whisper-yell into her ear, but she puts a finger on my lips and mouths a 'shh.'

I snatch the phone out of her grasp before she could say something dumb, and put the speaker to my mouth, deciding to just go along with it.

"..Hello?"

Silence. Sidney Prescott would be outraged by me not hanging up immediately.

"Hello. Is this a err..Charlotte?" More silence. "Charlotte Timson?" A confused feminine voice beams over the phone, and Sydney furrowed her eyebrows at me and mouthed, "what the fuck?"

I shrugged.

"Um, who's asking?"

"Oh, pardon me, oh my days!" The woman rushes out in one short breath, another voice behind her seemingly egging her on. "I'm Mrs Hartley, I.. don't know if you may know my son, I mean you probably should because he's literally the star of your school's local basketball team, but I'm just tooting my own horn aren't I?" She chuckles, and I just barely manage not to fake an indigenous british accent and pretend I'm secretly Queen Elizabeth risen from the dead.

Y'know, like you do.

"I..don't get your point-"

"James. James Hartley. Ring a bell?"

Oh.

Him.

"OhmyGod," Sidney shifted closer to my side, making strange gestures with her hand which I'm guessing was supposed to come off as 'put it on hold' but ended up looking like she was in that one movie 'in time' and was about to die as dramatically as Cilian Murphy.

Sigh. Cilian Murphy.

"Yes. Yes, I do know him. I don't think I know you though-"

"Yes, I'm his mother." She iterates slowly, like you would to a toddler.

"Yeah. I got that." Silence again. "Is there any reason for this or is prank calling teenagers something on your bucket list or.."

More agonizing silence. This was definitely ghostface. I'm all but waiting for the voice modulator at this point.

"Oh. I already thought...already thought my son had called you, I-you should already be here by now."

What the everloving fuck?

"I'm terribly sorry, what?" Was the only thing that squeaked out of my mouth, my eyes following Sid as she stood up, pacing around my linoleum floors, her eyes narrowed. "Come again?"

"I said..James. He should've told you by now. That we hired you?"

Sidney's whispered 'Oh my God.' was the only thing that broke the absolutely flummoxing silence that carried on, the woman over the phone discussing with someone.

Hired me?

As what? A cook? A stripper? A multilingual indigenous Brazilian lap dancer?

Okay, so maybe the last one was a bit overreacting. How would I be multilingual if I could only speak English and..more English?

"I'm sorry, ma'am, but you must be mistaken. I never heard from anyone concerning hiring me..hell what are you even hiring me for? I don't think it's very professional to just call someone in the middle of the evening and ask why they're not at your house when you didn't tell them anything prior to-"

"Charlotte. We hired you as James's tutor." She says in that agonizingly slow toddler talk again, and yeah, I think I'm having a fever dream.

I'm hallucinating. There's a gas leak somewhere. Miguel O' Hara discovered an anomaly in my life and decided to kill anyone else that could become his tutor.

James Hartley. There was no way. Asshole extraordinare, absolute dunce, stereotypical jock of the year award winner in my self-made annual yearbook. I mean, he literally got a D on a pre-algebra test.

Who even still takes pre-algebra?

Plus, he hates me. More than I hate Ross Geller. And that's saying something.

It all really started in tenth grade, when my social anxiety was through the roof and I could barely manage asking my teacher for an extra pencil from my spot at the front of the class than I singing "Thick of it" by ksi in front of millions of revolting fans.

James was always an asshole. He was the oh-i'm-a-locally-renowned-basketball-player-and-i-have-tons-of-girls-begging-at-my-feet-because-i'm-so-hot-so-why-would-i-talk-to-someone-like-you type of behavior, and at first, of course, I genuinely expected it, because yes. I do judge the book by the cover.

But it just got increasingly irritating. He would always stare bullets at me through the side of my face like I was the ugliest thing on the planet whenever we were paired together in chemistry, which was unfortunately a lot, and then he'd always be rude and unwelcoming to me when I had barely even talked to him whatsoever.

And don't get me started on the gossiping. Whoever said boys don't gossip needs to be hit in the head by a forty-tonne trailer being driven by Dominic Toretto.

I'd always catch him talking to his close-knit group of three friends during lunch and pretend not to notice because that's just who I am. I don't like drama.

So I tried my very best to avoid him for the past two years. Once in a while we'd bump into each other in the hallway and he'd glare at me and I'd sneer at him back, and that? That was comfortable. Comfortable nemesis behaviour.

This, however? This would mean me getting all up close and personal to the one person who was the opposite of me but in the worst way possible.

This is going to be a trainwreck. A tragedy. A fiasco. A debacle. A catastrophe. A disaster. And many other words I couldn't be assed to remember.

"Miss Charlotte? Are you still on?" The giddy voice snaps me out of my spiraling thoughts, and I look at Sydney for courage to flat out say no and end the call, but the look on her face made me consider if I was just being selfish.

"Ma'am, I..I don't know about this. I was never told and I-"

"Did we tell you we'd pay you seven hundred dollars by the day before the end of the month if you went through with this?"

Now I was standing. Seven hundred dollars for just about almost a month of after-school lessons? Who even were these people?

And why am I considering this offer?

Okay, sure, they hadn't made an actual application for tutors and talked to me about this before. Okay sure, I did not know James very well or his parents. My only clue was that for some reason, James requested for me to be his private tutor to his parents, which makes positively zero sense to me, so I guess they called the principal and asked for a bright student?

And also, I really needed the money. As previously mentioned, my tabby cat, Star, may or may not have serious gastro-intestinal issues that I haven't had enough money to visit a doctor to get it checked. My mom hates my cat, so that's a definite no-no to asking her, and my dad lives in a trailer halfway across town.

In summary, I couldn't ask my parents for money about this.

So, what's the harm in just..saying yes. Teach James the asshole, or better yet Jasshole, everything you know about everything without getting into a fight for 29 days. What's the harm?

"Why the day before the end of the month though, if I may ask? Why not just..the end of the month?"

"Oh, right. Our son is transferring schools at the end of the month." She sighs. "Says he hates the teachers and thinks they suck ass' or something on the lines of that." Were these people real? "So, we're changing him. We just need someone to get him up to at least basic level knowledge before starting at a completely different school, so..do we have a deal?"

I don't know these people. No formal introduction, or discussion, or even information before this in any way, and I hated the person they were talking about in question. There was no logical reason as to why I would say yes-

"Yes. When do I start?"

"Tomorrow. Actually it was supposed to be today, but..well, y'know, no one told you, apparently. So tomorrow's perfect then! I'll send you the address and his reading schedule! Thank you so much!"

The phone went silent.

I'm going to hate myself ten minutes from now. Just like I always do. I'll probably call back two hours from now and tell them I was heavily intoxicated and had no idea what I was saying.

For now though, I don't see how bad of an idea it is. I just see a way to help my adorable helpless feline and probably maybe assist James before he boots straight out of my life to some other school where he could annoy some other girl that wants nothing to do with him.

It's a win-win, right?

Right?

heeeeeelllllloooooo!

FIRST CHAPTER!!

comment how you liked it!!

um i love charlotte chat she's literally me. like literally just me.

sydney is kinda like my irl best friend but blonde i love her.

chapters may come out weekly or sometime within the week idrk my schedule is dogshit 😍😍😍

please don't forget to vote and comment!

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