Forever? Forever.

Charlotte

2 am. I breath a deep breath my beach blonde hair flows in the wind. Pink highlights mixed into my hair. My bed nothing more then a bundle of purple comforters that match my purple pillows. My window located on the second floor of my house is open wide letting the world seep in. The white blinds flow elegently. I pull the comfertor closer to my body. A neon green tanktop hangs at my shoulders along with cupcake patterned light blue pajama pants.

Don't sleep to late my mother always told me. I never really got to know my dad he's always away on buisness trips. I stare at my alarm clock. Red numbers glare at me from the darkness, 2:13 am. Not sure why I'm still up. In the distance, a train rides from one point to the next who knows where it's going no one really does. Trains are like people they just go where other poeple tell them to go. This tiny house I have lived in all my life. I walk over to the window. A platform stands just beneath my window. The little platform that's helped me with my escapes. I stare out at the tiny town of Denver, Calorado.

The streets empty in this tiny neighborhood that feels abandoned by people abandoned by sound even nature doesn't seem to want it back. I don't blame them I wouldn't want to live here after the things that's happened. Every year at least an ambulance shows up in this neighborhood. I point to the city lights in the distance. Everything seems so far away. Maybe it's closer then I realized. I close the window and lay back in my bed. I pull the covers to my chin. 2:40 am, I wait until I fall asleep a deep sleep that I somedays never want to wake up from.

I don't like it when I dream. Most of the time my dreams turn into nightmares. this time it's different. I dream about my 7 year old self would dream about. I didn't know my father then and I don't know him now.

I dream of a unicorn white as snow it's mane and tail the color of bubblegum and he texture of cotton candy. The trees giant lollipops of all colors. Rivers of milk chocolate runs through the valley filled with grass. The grass was my favorite part it was filled with jelly beans and the plants were gummy candy. it was a delicious land a land I never wanted to leave.

Sadly, my alarm wakes me up from my gumdrop filled dream of happiness. I stare out the window. A new dawn for a new day for a new beginning. 6:30 am the neighborhood is always as silent as a ghost town. I can't remember the last time someone moved in. Just all hose who moved out. I change into a pair of faded skinny jeans and a black tea shirt a pair of white wings on the front of it.

That shirt is my favorite and it always will be but then again I'm just a 16 year old nobody by the name of Charlotte Pumpkin. Pumpkin yeah it's a odd last name but my mother just had to marry a guy named Allen Pumpkin. I smile a forced smile it feels so naturally to force my lips to curve into a bright smile. I haven't smiled in years.

"Good morning." I say to no one in particular my father away on a buisness trip. Mother gone early in the morning to the courthouse. I wanted to be a lawyer just like her when I was younger but now I don't know what I want to do anymore.

School is the least of my problems sure I'm just a social outcast like everyone else and occationally people will come talk to me.

"Hey uh um you there do you go to our school?" some kid asked the other day a sophmore. I don't know anyone at my school. It's such a bore really. Everything is so normal in this empty town. Lunch a complete meal of barf with a side of hurl.

"Charlotte" the only person that I consider a friend comes and sit by me on the curb.

"Jesse" we usually great each other this way. I look at her smiling one of my all so genuine forced smiles. People say I'm depressed I really aren't there just isn't anything that makes me happy.

"You know Charlotte. We should go and hang out like right now" she smiles brightly. Her hand combing her long brown hair as straight as a horses tail. She always cheers me up when I feel like falling down.

"Okay Jesse" I stand up, she follows brushing dust off of her black dress. She hands me a bottle of coke. "Share a Coke of Carlos" the bottle reads. Jesses red fingernails clicks against the can.

"This is for you I know how much you like coke and I couldn't find your name and so this is the closest thing I could find" I laugh at the can.

"Yup thats me Carlos Pumpkin." I hold out my arm and she wraps her arm around mine like elemetary school girls do as they skip off into where ever. We looked at each other and nodded. We skipped and skipped until our legs got tired.

4:12 pm. A walmart looks at us beackoning Jesse and I to enter. We giggle like children and enter. I crush the can of my coke and throw it into a nearby trass can.

"She shoots she scores" Jesse says in her famous announcer voice. I laugh as we enter arm and arm into the Walmart.

"Now what were we going to buy?" I ask

"Uh um I think that to make it all clear we probably need a tube of sour cream"

"uh is it taco night or something?"

"nah my mom just has this weird fetish about sour cream"

"yeah that makes sense" I've only seen Jesse's mom about 2 times in my whole entire existance. Miss Limberman, yeah it's a weird name, has brown hair and blue eyes just like Jesse. Theres nothing unattractive with her she just for the life of her can't get a date no matter how hard she tries.

"anything you wanted to get? besides your weird fetish for oh lets say avacados"

"yes yes thats me Carlos as a weird fetish for avacados I just want to smear it all over my Mexican body, assuming Carlos is Mexican, and I will smear it all over my beautiful mustache and then all the ladies will be lining up for a little taste of that great gracamole stash of mine"

"Oh yes I'm sure every girl will want to get a little taste of Carlos, but let's just not have Carlos covered in avacados and wearing a speedo let's just no" I laugh thinking of a man in his mid 40's outside dancing in a black speedo rubbing avacados on his chest

"Oh god that would be a terrible decision." we walk around Walmart some more and we reach the paper towel aisle. Someone not me....okay it was me decided to have Jesse sit in the shopping cart and push her into a stack of paper towels. Down like a kingdom the paper towels tumble.

"God damn it Charlotte" she says laughing her words barely audible.

"We should probably clean that up huh?" I laugh crying tears of joy. We both look at each other.

"NAH!" we shout at the same time. We check out with a basket full of avacados and a tube of sour cream.

6 pm. It's dark out the Walmart parking lot not as full as when we arrived. Our clothes covered in avacados from which we had just thrown at each other and sour cream smeared under our eyes.

"The great Carlos Pumpkin shall live on." I said running off with Jesses hand in mine. Together to who knows where. No one know where they're going now adays, it's just a matter of following where your heart takes you.