A Note A Day

27 | in her health folder

| 27 |

❝ God, I want to tell you so bad. ❞

WHERE TO BEGIN with Spencer Lawrence.

Spencer and Skylar went way back. Basically, he was so in love with her that he sort of stalked her, entering the bookstore every day and watching her do nothing, for the most part. Then one summer he gathers the courage (if you could even say that) to talk to her. He knocks over a bookcase, kisses her, and they just get closer and closer. He became a brotherly figure to Charlie; she was always able to go to him for anything, from advice to math homework. And things with Skylar and him just went up from there.

Until he enrolled into the army.

When Spencer announced he was leaving soon, Charlotte could still remember the stunned silence. The screech of the chair, Skylar's footsteps running, running. Tears from around the table. Everyone looked to Skylar, knowing she was crushed. No one asked how Charlotte felt, however.

She could remember her salty tears crawling over her pale, cracked lips, tears, tracing her skin like a pencil on paper.

"I'll be back," he promised with a whisper. "I promise."

"Stay in touch," she'd whispered back.

The nightmares, the horrible nightmares, guns, gunshots, bombs, to the head, to the heart, always. BAM! Slicing through skin. Falling, falling, BANG! Blood, blood, seeping, so real, so real, drowning, suffocating, every night, choking, crying-

Every night.

Soon the nightmares turned into much more than that, car crashes, other family members under the bullet, plane malfunctions, drowning, dead, dying, dead.

Soon, she veered away from the phone and ignored the mail, camping in her room and writing letters she would never send.

His name became a swear word, almost, avoiding it at all costs.

Things fell apart.

Skylar, putting on a brave, red-lipped, tear-stained smile, even in the pain. Hazel running away. Charlotte having nightmares. Skylar's sobs and cries. Her letters. Charlie's letters. Hazel's letters. Hands cramped from writing so often, so much, so long.

They had been better.

He was here. Home.

Skylar heard them, waltzing in, giving Charlie a surprised look, blinking at the new-and-improved glasses perched on Charlotte's nose. Skylar them walked towards Spencer, before staggering, as if she hit an invisible forcefield, her smile dropping. Her face transformed into one of a stolid robot's.

"Uh, Char, could I..." she began, her eyes unblinking and looking at the ground. "Could I talk to you in the hall for a sec?"

"Yeah, 'course," she replied, shooting a look to Spencer saying she'd be right back.

"Hey, what's up?" Charlotte whispered, closing her bedroom door behind them.

"I- he's back, we're engaged, we kissed, I cried," she mumbled, all too fast. "Back. He's back. Engaged, yet I have no idea how to act around him. Also, I'm really glad the glasses are back."

Skylar's fingers were frantically combing through her chin-length, blonde curls, her breathing hectic, violent, crumbling, her lips quivering, wavering, body trembling.

"Whoa, whoa," Charlotte repeated. "Whoa. Take a deep breath. He loves you, has always loved you, and will always love you, just look at the right on your finger for proof.  He's the same dork we all know and love, trust me."