Charlotte Is Dead

Chapter 5

Zaire | After

We sit in Room Seven, an empty classroom. It’s not a room I particularly like to be in. It was our Year Seven and Eight Maths classroom, so immediately associated with bad memories. Usually, I strangely love Maths. But the teacher I had those two years made me want to drive a knife through the subject. I have similar feelings towards Shakespeare. Only, I want to resurrect him with Charlotte’s coven of witchcraft practicing highlighters just to kill him all over again.

“How did you become friends?” he asks. “If you remember.”

“Dad thought I was lonely. Her mum thought she was lonely. They brought us together for a play date and we were stuck with each other, I guess.”

“Just best friends?” Davidson raises an eyebrow.

“Boys and girls can be friends, you know,” I snap. “It’s the twenty-first century.”

“Did she have a boyfriend?”

“As far as I know, she didn’t.”

“Did she want to have one?” he questions. “Anyone she was interested in?”

“Leo Forrest. He’s in our class.” I pause. “She talked to him a lot after exam week. He was in her frequently contacted list.”

“Did she ever mention him to you?”

I shrug. “Probably. Said he was fit a couple times. They were doing GCSE PE together.”

“Zaire, what can you tell me about this photo?”

He holds up his phone and my throat goes dry. There are four people alive in this picture. The fifth is Charlotte. She’s in her coffin which had been nailed shut for the burial after everyone had one last look at her. Raffiel, Hawk, Leo and I are carrying the coffin from the tiny church in school we never use to the freshly dug grave.

“We were pallbearers,” I say blankly. “Why?”

“The other three guys have clearly been crying. But you haven’t. I want to know why.”

“I’m a boarding school—”

“Don’t give me that crap,” he says sharply. “There’s another reason.”

“I don’t cry,” I say bluntly. “Not in front of people. And anyway, Charlotte would’ve laughed at all those saps crying at her funeral.”

“Her father didn’t cry either.”

“He’s a boarding school kid too. And he’s Nick fucking Cezanne. What did you expect?” I reply. “He’s not the kind of guy who cries.”

Nick Cezanne is— like Dad told me— heartless as one can be. They’ve been best mates since they were kids. So it’s fine for him to say that, I guess. Just like it’s fine for Raffiel to tease me about my weird eye colour. Just like it’s fine for Natalia and Hawk to joke around about being shorter than most with us. So Dad laughs about Mr Cezanne being heartless and Mr Cezanne laughs about him becoming a dancer instead of a doctor like he was planning to be.

“Can I go now?” I ask after a long pause. “I’m missing Chemistry.”

“You can go,” he agrees. “I’ll call you back if I have any follow-up questions. Leo, right?”

“Leo.”

I can’t get out of that room fast enough. I go to Chemistry and after apologising for being late, I sit through the lesson without taking anything in. Ms Keller’s dyed her mousy brown hair a deep red and— just like in Year Eight— she’s acting like she doesn’t think anyone will notice. God, teachers treat us like such idiots sometimes. We have eyes, you know. As she turns to write something on the whiteboard, I whip my phone out and type out a message at lightening fast speed to Leo.

Zaire

Threw you under the bus with Davidson. Charlotte had a crush on you and thought you were fit.

Leo

Just fucking great.

And he’s calling me in NOW!

I’m throwing you under this bus too bastard

Zaire

Just tell him that we didn’t like each other because we almost failed Year 8 music together

Leo

My stand by me was a masterpiece. You just can’t play in time.

I’ll tell you how it goes later in Artemis Tower.

I switch to the group chat to see everyone’s replies once again. I press clear chat and the messages disappear, leaving the background of a Hunger Games poster like it’s a new chat. They would’ve done the same, I just know it.

“You wanna put that away?” the person next to me hisses.

I lift my head to see Brooklyn Kendall glaring at me. It makes me hate Ms Keller even more. Of all people taking GCSE Chemistry in Year Eleven, why do I have to be sitting next to her? As usual, her pale hair falls to her shoulders in a perfect sheet of blonde. Her green eyes are cold and narrowed and I wish I could say this was the first time she looked at me like this.

“You have a problem?” I grumble, shoving it into my blazer. “Everyone knows you and Viv just send Snaps to each other during lessons.”

“At least we aren’t being suspected for murder,” she whispers.

I freeze. “Davidson just wanted to know what Charlotte was like. And if you haven’t noticed because I know how hard it is for you to notice something other than yourself, I was Charlotte’s best friend.”

“Oh, really? Then why did she spend more time with Leo in the last half term than you?” Brooklyn’s voice and her smirk makes my skin crawl.

It’s true. It’s fucking true and Brooklyn knows it.

“Shut up, Brooklyn.”

“You scared, Denzel?” Her voice is sneering. “Scared they’ll find out about the fight? They will. They’ll find out about Alton Towers. They’ll even find out about Raelynn.”

“And you think they won’t find out about the dining hall that morning?” I whisper. “Come on, Brooklyn. We all have secrets. And mine are all about who threw up on Oblivion and who didn’t. Yours are about motive.”

“I didn’t kill her.”

“Tell it to Davidson,” I hiss.

The bell clangs above us and Ms Keller gives the sign to pack up. I throw my books into my bag and walk to Maths, my head spinning. God. Everything Brooklyn said was true. They will find out about the fight Charlotte and I had. They will find out about Alton Towers the half term after exam week. They’ll find out about Raelynn too.

After we’ve been given the searing plan in Maths and I’m thanking God for being put at the back next to Natalia.

“How was it?” she asks.

“Fine,” I answer. “But Brooklyn’s being a bitch.”

Natalia rolls her eyes. “God. Can’t she keep her nose out of it? Everyone knows she started the cat fight with Charlotte.”

“But she’s right about some stuff.” I lower my voice. “We have a lot of secrets. And clearing chats won’t hide all of them.”

“I’ll try to find her scrapbook,” she replies. “It can’t be that hard, right? She took it to school with her all last year.”

“When you do, just cover it all with Chris Hemsworth.”

She makes a face. “Why? Would she had written something scandalous in it? It’s not like there’s going to be anything important.”

“You never know.” I write down the first equation. “She might’ve written something. It’s not like she ever let us look at it.”

We don’t talk about it anymore. We sit through the lesson and listen to Mr Farley go on about how important this year is. He’s also expecting us all to take A-Level Maths which, let’s be honest, less than half of us will do.

“I need to go meet Leo,” I tell Natalia as the bell rings.

“I’ll come,” she says immediately. “I need to talk to him.”

“Why?” I ask suspiciously.

“You threw him under the bus with the crush thing, so he’s going to throw someone else under the bus. We need to find out who. And I like to have my story straight, Maxie.”

In Artemis Tower, Leo is on edge. He’s chewing on his nails while pacing anxiously and he flinches as I close the door behind us.

“How’d it go?” I ask.

“He knows something’s wrong,” Leo says, tearing at a hangnail. “He wants to know about the party. Who threw it, who invited us, why we went.”

“Shit!” Natalia groans. “How can we explain this bloody school tradition without ratting everyone out?”

“No one’s stupid enough to say what happens,” I assure them. “And even if they do, what can happen? About twenty teenagers dancing on the beach on the last night of school isn’t something they can arrest us for.”

“The alcohol,” Leo points out.

“A half empty bottle of vodka that Henley shouldn’t have had anyway.” I glance towards Natalia, seeing her warm to my idea. “Come on, guys. We’re clean. The only thing he has on us is that we weren’t telling the truth about why Charlotte and I were fighting. Or hell, that we were fighting in the first place.”

“We do look pretty okay,” Natalia admits. “I’ll spread the word.”

“But they’ll find out about why Charlotte turned that way,” Leo whispers when Natalia shoes are clattering down the stairwell. “Her change.”

“That’s for someone else to worry about.”

But the look in his eyes says that it’s our problem. The look in his eyes says that he knows what I don’t. He knows why Charlotte turned the way she did and why someone could’ve killed her for it because there’s no damn way this was an accident. Leo knows more than any of us.

Leo might be next.