Charlotte Is Dead

Chapter 8

Serenity | After

The days begin to become more bearable. A routine is established and I follow it like everyone else. Wake up, get ready for school, eat breakfast, go to school, eat lunch, finish school, do homework, do some kind of activity, go to bed, do it all again.

So it’s a shock when Saturday comes and the alarm stays silent. Natalia is awake too, on her phone in bed. Her dark hair is fanned out across the pillow, black against the white and pink of the pillowcase.

“Cool,” I answer. “Um, I kind of wanted to ask you something.”

“Shoot.” She shuts up and runs a hand through her hair like a comb.

“Remember that girl you told me about? Your old roommate? Was her name Charlotte?” The words tumble out quickly.

“Yeah,” she says. “Her name was Charlotte. Why?”

“Just wondering. She’s very popular online.”

Natalia doesn’t reply for a minute. “Serenity, I kind of don’t want to talk about this anymore. Can you ask someone else if you want to know more?”

“Of course,” I say quickly. “Anyone who I shouldn’t ask?”

“Zaire. Ask literally anyone in the school except him if you value your life.”

Her expression says she isn’t joking at all. But it turns upwards in a smile after a second as she begins to show me a bunch of photos of her and Hawk that summer. Something tells me that Saturdays may be a whole lot better than the rest of the week.

• * *

I’m wrong. Of course.

The second I step out of the bathroom, Charlotte becomes my second shadow. She doesn’t say anything, she doesn’t even do much. All she does is follow me around, silent and formidable. She perches on the windowsill at lunch— tacos with a scoop of nachos— and on the arm of the chair when I head to the Rec to watch something on the TV that we’re allowed to watch once a week. One episode every week. Apparently, my class had started Friends in Year Seven and have reached Season Seven in those four years.

“It’s depressing, right?” a dark haired girl asks me. “Four years of watching this and we still ain’t done.”

“It’s iconic,” I say, shrugging.

“You’re the new girl right?” She pats the place on the couch next to her. “I’m Raelynn. Pretty sure we’re in Maths together. You have Ken Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, right?”

“I have Mr Kendanski,” I correct.

“Yeah, we call him Ken. All the teachers have nicknames.”

“How’d you figure out one for Mr Gilbert?”

He’s the first teacher that comes to mind. He’s one of the teachers who supervise House and he’s also a form tutor. My form tutor. As he told me on the first day when Natalia had to half drag an unwilling Serenity into the classroom, he’s basically the guy I’m supposed to go to with problems about school.

“Anything from the lunches aren’t your cup of tea to you stressing about exams,” he said. “But if someone’s hogging the good shower with the hot water, that’s Mrs Pearson’s business.”

“Oh, he’s Gil. Zaire came up with that one like five years ago. He had Gil for Year Six.”

“Right, the ten year olds.” I pause. “Can’t believe someone would send a ten year old to boarding school.”

“There’s one where the youngest kids are four,” Raelynn answers. “Me and my twin brother were almost sent there. But the grandad threw a fit for the books and Dad relented.”

“Who’s your brother?” I ask.

“Hey, yo!” Hawk yells out. “We’re putting in the DVD, so turn the brightness down on your phones and text someone if you really want to keep talking. But you kids look at your phones way too much to be heathy and——”

“Or you can just talk quietly away from the TV,” Zaire adds next to him. “And somehow I’m the drastic, insane one.”

“Leo,” Raelynn says. “He’s the one who barely talks. There’s a running joke in our house that he has to pay if he speaks more than a specified number of words every day.”

I let out a laugh. “Is he here right now?”

“Nope, he bailed.” She rolls her dark eyes. “Typical Tris. Since our fifteenth, he’s become even more of a loner. I think losing Charlotte hit him hard. They were really close in our last half term.”

On the arm of the sofa, Charlotte is frozen. She looks almost scared, her blue eyes wide but her face expressionless. The words are on my lips, ready to come out. Are you okay? What happened to you? Why is this freaking you out? But they don’t come. I stay, chatting to Raelynn as Rachel freaks out about turning thirty and ignoring Charlotte.

It feels like the episode is over too quick. Raelynn and I are knee deep in a conversation about smoothies strangely enough, but she seems to actually want to be my friend.

“I’m in Room Sixteen,” she tells me. “Come over anytime. And get Natalia to give you my number, I haven’t memorised my new one yet.”

She runs off after a girl with pale blonde curls before I can say anything. Charlotte is still behind me, silent as ever. She’s still there as Raffiel approaches me, backpack over his left shoulder.

“Hey.”

“Hi. It’s the weekend, you know. You don’t have to carry your bag around.”

“It’s for the tutoring session,” he replies. “I said Saturday, remember? Before dinner is perfect, I’m doing the Year Six film night today and that’s after dinner. Is now good for you?”

“Now’s good,” I agree.

“Let’s go to the library and get started then,” he says. “You can grab your pencil case and notes before we go.”

I let him lead me to the library after heading back to the dorm to throw a sweater over my shirt and grab the stuff he mentioned. Pencil case and notes. Claire splits Math into two books of different colours and sizes depending on your year. We gave A4 books, orange for work and red for notes. Natalia has a whole stack of red books on our shared desk, starting in A5 and getting to A4.

“What do you struggle with the most?” Raffiel asks as we sit down on an empty table in the library. “Any specific area or topic?”

“Um.” I glance down at my notes; half of them don’t even make sense to me. “The stuff we’re doing now.”

“Have you done this sort of thing before?” he questions. “The foundation stuff that allows you to understand this?”

“I missed a lot of school last year,” I mumble. “I think my class did it then.”

“Then we go back. Luckily, I prepared.”

He begins to slide red books over to me from his backpack and they aren’t stopping. When he is done, I have nine in front of me.

“Please tell me all of this isn’t foundation,” I say.

“Naw, you can probably skip the Year Seven ones,” he answers. “Start at Year Eight Geometry. Those have titles highlighted in blue. Put a post-it on something you don’t get.”

I begin flicking through the book with his class labelled as 8WGI with a tiny number one circled in the top right corner. The first thing I notice is that his handwriting is atrocious. It slopes up and down the lines like the words are climbing a mountain in a messy scrawl, half of it smudged.

“My handwriting isn’t the best,” he says suddenly like he’s reading my mind. “And I didn’t figure out how to stop the pen from smudging since I’m left handed until Year Nine. Just ask if you need to know what something says.”

I read through the books and find myself understanding some of what we’re doing now with all of the notes. Charlotte is still here too, perched on the table and swinging her legs. Her gaze is focused on two things: Raffiel, softer than it’s been all day and something on the wall behind him which earns a glare. Out of curiosity, I glance up to see the portrait Mrs Elliot unveiled in assembly staring down at us.

“Raffiel, did you know her?” I ask, pointing up towards the painting. “I heard someone mention the name Charlotte today during Friends and assumed she was in your class.”

“She was,” he replies. “She was in my class since Year Six actually. She was my best friend.”

The word was clearly pains him since he bites down on his bottom lip hard, blinking back tears. And that’s when Charlotte says the first thing since the night she asked me to solve her murder.

“Don’t cry,” she whispers. “Please don’t cry, or you’ll make me cry too.”

Suddenly, she takes off and runs through shelves to get away from us. I’m pretty sure I saw tears glistening in her icy blue eyes as she looked at Raffiel.

“What was she like?” I ask softly. “If you don’t mind me asking.”

“My first thought was that she was a Disney Princess in the flesh,” he says with a small laugh. “We were ten, at the train station. Zaire was there too. When we got here, we were best friends.”

I can imagine that, three little kids on a train becoming best friends for life.

“She became even prettier as she got older. She was funny and kind and amazing.” He pauses. “But Charlotte was also impatient and impulsive and selfish when she wanted to be. She wasn’t kind to everyone. She didn’t like a lot of people. I think that’s why someone killed her.”

“You think she was murdered? Natalia said she drowned. Wouldn’t that be an accident?”

“A star swimmer doesn’t just drown, Serenity. She would’ve known what to do. She wouldn’t even have gone swimming if the sea didn’t look safe.”

“So someone made her drown,” I say quietly.

“Anyway, I’m going to go. We can do this again next week, just let me know if you want to meet up earlier,” he says.

He shives all his books into his bag before walking briskly out of the library. I gather my things and begin to make my way towards the exit when someone grabs my arm tight.

“What the——” I lift my head to see a boy with dark curls and eyes exactly like Zaire.

“Stay out of Charlotte Cezanne’s death,” he hisses into my ear. “Stay out of it, or I’ll make sure you will.”

He walks in the opposite direction and when I turn, still shaking, I see that he has completely disappeared. There isn’t anyone else in the library anymore except the librarian. But my brain can only register one coherent thought about the boy.

He looked like Zaire.