The Scars She Hides

Part 8 - Past Late

HOLDEN

It was nice to see my family again.

The fall break couldn't have come soon enough. With midterms taking up most of my energy, and the Junior proposal paper hanging over my head like some kind of guillotine, I was ready to get away from school for a while.

Being at home with my parents and my kid sister, it reminded me what I was working towards. Why I was putting up with poncy rich kids at school, why I was sweating over my grades, and this damn project. It was all for them.

Thanksgiving was a major event like it always was. All of Dad's extended family crammed into one kitchen, making every traditional Thanksgiving food you could imagine. Kids causing chaos, running up and down and around every and anything.

It was ridiculous.

But it was tradition.

After all the commotion and family time I could tolerate, I headed back to campus a day early. I wanted to have my paper ready for Charlotte to read over when she got back.

Charlotte... was worrying. To say the least. My irrational anger flared a bit at the thought of her.

The fact that she couldn't- or wouldn't- take care of herself was maddening. You couldn't live off of coffee. It wasn't possible, and yet there she was. Since day one I had noticed she was small. Not small in a -vertically challenged- way, but small everywhere else. Slim. Which was fine. Girls could be slim. Guys could be slim. I didn't care, I didn't give two shits about someone's weight.

But then she collapsed. And I saw that scar carved into her face and neck. I was caught up in curiosity, and started to notice everything else.

Her eyes were the first thing that worried me, dull and red rimmed. Tired eyes that seemed to track me, marking my whereabouts at all times. For being just a kid, her eyes showed a cautiousness that far exceeded her age.

Her hands were next. They were always moving, always self soothing. Whether that was in the form of twisting, rubbing, or pulling on her hair, her nimble fingers were never still. Her fingers are what alerted me to the possible caffeine addiction run rampant. Charlotte's smooth and flawless handwriting had become wracked with wobbles and inconsistencies in the past weeks, her hands too jittery to hold her pen calmly.

I lost it the day I poured her drink down the drain. I had accidentally seen her earlier during her lunch hour. I was turning in her "progress reports" for the tutoring sessions, when I happened to notice her through the window of an empty classroom. The high school kids were let out for lunch at 12:30. All the University students knew this. They crowded the nearby lunch stops and made it impossible to get a bite to eat between 12:30 and 1:15.

But there she was, sitting in an empty classroom, with nothing but a cup of coffee and some crackers. Obviously skipping lunch.

I tried to play it off as a big brother urge. She was a timid girl, who seemingly had trouble making friends. She reminded me of my kid sister. I was just a responsible guy, making sure my student was taking care of herself. Any reasonable guy would do the same in my situation. That's what I had convinced myself of at first.

When she hopped on the back of my bike the first time, I knew that was a bold faced lie. She definitely wasn't my sister. And she for sure wasn't my student. If anything, she was the one tutoring me, with the amount of work she was putting into my paper. She was an attractive girl, above the age of 18, who was wrapped up in some kind of mystery. Definitely not a little sister figure.

No matter how I put it, whether it be plain curiosity or attraction, I couldn't seem to get her off my mind.

The little bird was flighty.