(Untitled)

[teenagerenegade]

Normally, though Charlie loves snow. He grew up in Upstate New York, so he figures that it's kind of a requirement. He worries about Edmund, though. He knows what he went hrough. He does his best to keep him warm. Today, he built a snowman outside their hut (he spends less and less time at his own hut), stayed out in the snow until his cheeks

Comments

[aly_brighteyes]

She'd nearly forgotten what it was like to be cold, in the way one forgets an unpleasant feeling the moment one no longer has to acknowledge it, but when she saw Charlie, Aly felt another kind of cold and she was immediately at his side. She paid no mind to the wet cold that seeped through her breeches and looked at him for a good long moment, preserving her voice for when she could find the words. Sarai was good at this, at comforting and warming people. Her speech was a more brusque thing, chipper or sweet, but rarely made for comfort.

"Charlie," she finally said, a hand curled around his forearm. "Charlie," she said it twice, like she was trying to call him back from somewhere. "What's wrong."

[teenagerenegade]

She's one of his best friends in the world, now he's here, and that's a strange feeling for a kid like Charlie Bartlett, who more or less dragged himself through all of the shit in his life. He's not used to having anyone to lean on.

He holds the note out numbly to her.

"Kip," he says.

[aly_brighteyes]

It took her brief seconds to read and digest the note and then she looked up at him, expression markedly softer, touched with sympathy. It seemed the island delighted in these cruel gifts, for what else could this be?

"Who was he?" she asked.

[teenagerenegade]

"A friend of mine," says Charlie, pointedly not looking her in the face. "No, I mean...He needed help, you know? Nobody really liked him. Nobody even spoke to him, and all he needed was someone who wanted to listen."

[aly_brighteyes]

Those weren't words to describe a friend, nor was his expression one she would attach to friendship. So she sat there and look at him, lip caught between her teeth as she waited for the rest of the story.

[teenagerenegade]

"He came to me and asked for help," he says, looking down at his numb fingers. "He was having panic attacks, you know? So I looked it up, and I found out all about it, and then I went to my psychiatrist and got the dugs. I helped him, Ally. Nobody else was listening to him."

[aly_brighteyes]

The words weren't quite familiar to her, but Aly could read into it. "So you went and got him something to fix what was hurting him." Judging by the empty bottle and the note, the line between medicine and poison was a thin one in his world. "Perhaps it would have been better to forgo the..'drugs," she suggested lamely, though little could be done now, "and just listened."

[teenagerenegade]

"You know how many drugs I've been on in my life?" he asks her, glancing up at her. "That's what they do where I'm from, Ally. They fix you with pills." He rubs the back of his neck. "I was taking this thing called Ritalin before I got here. It was...pretty fucking weird."

[aly_brighteyes]

She bit her lip before looking at him. "It hardly seems like a good substitute for anyone," she said. "Replacing human contact with little pills."

[teenagerenegade]

"I wasn't doing that, though," he says, quietly. "I was there for him, you know. I listened to him. I don't think anybody else ever had before, you know? And I knew how he felt...I always...I just always wanted to figure out ho to get people to lie me."

[aly_brighteyes]

She wanted to point out that if Charlie had been listening enough, the boy in question wouldn't have needed to seek alternative means, but it was cruel to her friend and distasteful to the memory of the dead. Instead she put a hand on his shoulder. "Why's that?"

[teenagerenegade]

"I couldn't ever really figure it out, you know?" he says, quietly, voice all but gone. "Even at Western Summit, most of them were just in it for what I could give them. Except Susan."

[aly_brighteyes]

"That doesn't seem much like friendship," she said, cruel thoughts pushed away. "Not at all."

[teenagerenegade]

"Kids are kind of stupid most of the time," he says, wiping his nose on the back of his handgain. "And you don't have to loo at me like that, Ally. I've got friends now."

[aly_brighteyes]

"And you'd best not forget," Aly said gravely, though her lips furled with a warm smile. She squeezed his shoulder, looking at the note and bottle. "I don't know what to tell you, other than the island is cruel, but we both know that."

[teenagerenegade]

On impulse, Charlie turns his face and kisses Ally's cheek. She's warm against tingling lips.

"You know the really shitty thing?" he asks her, quietly. "I knew his name. I remembered. And he sitll thought nobody cared."