A year after losing her older sister in a tragic accident, Charlie's Mom marries the father of the most popular boys in school. Still grieving, Charlie struggles to accept her new family and gets involved with her stepbrothers worst enemy, the capta...
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I spent the rest of Saturday night in my bedroom. My stepbrothers told me they were going to have some friends round and I didn't want to be involved in their social life. I felt like I was a fly on the wall half of the time. Constantly, I was overhearing conversations that I wouldn't have heard if I wasn't their stepsister.
I gave Joe a call and he told me he would stop by on his way from work. He had decided to walk home, seeing as though his car was still abandoned at school. Joe's house wasn't too far from my house. It was about a thirty-minute walk from mine and it was even further away Taylor's.
I couldn't shake off the guilty feeling that had made itself home inside of me. Joe was dependent on his car for everything. It was also the only thing that his Dad had ever given to him. Mr Hudson had the thing stashed away in his garage for years. It was just rotting away. When Joe passed his test, he did the one selfless thing he had ever done for Joe. He gave it to him without a price. It was a rare occasion that Mr Hudson did anything without getting anything in return.
I was convinced that Mr Hudson was the sort of police officer that would turn a blind eye at something if you wrote a check with enough zeros, but I couldn't really blame the man. He was paying the bills on his own and you don't earn loads of money being a police officer. Instead, you get the bonus of bags under your eyes and rude awakening's at night. Nevertheless, it was the life that Mr Hudson had chosen for himself.
The sound of music playing streamed under my bedroom door. I was lying on the wooden floor of my bedroom, staring up at the ceiling and listening to my own music whilst I waited for Joe to arrive. Lying on my bedroom floor and staring at the ceiling had become a new habit of mine. Initially, I was doing it out of laziness and boredom, yet now I was starting to realise that I was doing it when I needed some time to think.
Tonight, I was thinking about my mother. In her lecture this morning — for the first time — she called me Charlie. The way she said my name may have had a pleading tone to it, but my Mom had called me Charlie. It meant a lot to me.
Deep down, I knew she blatantly refused to call me by my nickname because my Dad had given it to me. When I was growing up, I was never girly. I liked wearing pretty dresses, but I hated keeping them neat and tidy. I would never not play a game because I feared that it would ruin my appearance and my Dad loved that about me. My Dad wasn't very uptight. My Dad's my Mom's opposite.
My Dad was pleased his youngest hadn't inherited the rigid personality traits my Mom modelled. My Dad would always play about with my name. He would switch from calling me Charl, Lottie, Char and Charlie. It was only when he realised that I suited Charlie the best that he stuck with it. I loved it because it just felt more me.
Perhaps that was why my Mom always refused to call me Charlie. The one thing my Mom hated about my Dad was how unconventional and nonchalant he was. He was never one to stick to anything. Not only that, but he had gone back on the agreement that my parents made after Alice was born. When Alice was born, my Dad got to name her after his Mom. My Mom, however, liked the name, but despised his Mom. They came to the agreement that my Mom would get the final say on the next child's name. When they had me, my Mom named me. However, my Dad still made it his own by referring to me as Charlie — the nickname that he had given me and not my Mom and much to my Mother's dislike it was the name that I preferred.
