Electro [hs]

Eleven

Eleven♀

Technically I don't have to go in the trailer.Technically I don't have to face the music. I could just hide outside until the end of summer, or crawl underneath the gap between the slightly raised mobile home and the ground. Like a possum might do when it wants a dark, quiet spot to die.I get visions of weeds growing between my fingers, ants marching up my shins, getting dirtier and then just sinking into the dirt.

Or maybe I'm overreacting for no reason. The cop car might not be because of me. True enough that calling my dad hadn't occurred to me last night, not once. Nor did I spare a thought to my cellphone, still at the bottom of the trailer park pool for all I know and the possibility that Ben might have tried to call me. But maybe living out here in the Florida heat has chilled Ben out about these things and he doesn't see any problem with staying out past a curfew he technically never gave me to start with. Boys will be boys and all that.

Which reminds me.

I slide my hand into the front of my jeans and quickly castrate myself, shoving the tube sock into my pocket instead. It's a pretty shitty kind of magic talisman to be honest and I don't exactly switch back to Charlotte like the flipping of a coin.

How would Charlotte stand, I have to force myself to recall. Like Charming mostly- hunched up with boxy shoulders. Last night was never difficult, actually. Prom night and the dress and the rest of it had been far far worse. I think about overcompensating, trying to be how Charlotte should be; walking like Mercedes, dancing like Keelin- but I have no idea how long I could keep that up for.

Not for the whole of a five minute conversation with Ben, probably. Not for the rest of my goddamn life that's for sure.

The insides of my wrists start to feel itchy, I picture opening up the vein.

Don't think. Don't think, my brain urges me. Run away. And because a terrible ass kicking from my dad is apparently way less scary than spending precisely one second more in my own head, I push open the door to Ben's trailer.

Almost immediately, I find myself practically barrelling into somebody's chest. Pulling away, I find myself looking across at a dude who's maybe in his early twenties, a good few inches shorter than I am, but much stronger looking- just about straddling a fine line between muscular and doughy, like he can bench press an obscene amount of weight but also packs away an obscene amount of fried chicken on a day to day basis. His hair is a light gingery color, on his head and also his facial hair, making his beard look wispy and pathetic and his eyebrows look near enough invisible.

He folds his arms, about to question me when from behind him Ben comes into view, flanked by- I see to my horror- Pam and another redhead, his face a constellation of light brown freckles wearing police uniform.

Ben takes a step backwards as if he's just been whacked in the stomach, letting out a short, sharp Oh of relief, hand coming up to his face to rub at it.

"It's her!" he exclaims. "She's back."

I feel a gnawing, crushing kind of guilt. He must have been really worried and I didn't even give him a second thought. Sure, I'd thrown my old phone in the pool- but I'd already set up the one he'd given me, now loaded with the numbers of my new friends. 

Because I can't look at my dad, I find myself focusing back on the dude in front of me who's staring at me hard.

"You're Charlie?" he mutters with an unmistakable sneer. I watch his eyes take me in and I hate that what's he's thinking is all laid out there on his face right away. One look at my hair and my clothes and my whole me and he's come to a conclusion that makes his expression contort into disgust.