Kaitlyn Greenidge - We Love You, Charlie Freeman

I took my hand out of hers, pulled on my jeans, and left her room. I walked through the heat of Marie’s dark studio, out the door, and onto the cold street and into the night.

I called my mother from the only pay phone on Main Street.

“Where are you?”

“Just in town. Please come get me.”

“I can’t. I can’t leave Charlie with Callie, you know that.”

“Come get me, please. Please do it. I need you.”

“Can you call your father?”

“No.”

“Charlotte—”

“You aren’t hearing me,” I said. “You aren’t listening.” I began to cry and I heard her breathe in. She had decided something.

“All right,” she said. “I’m coming.”

I walked to the cemetery in the middle of the town green. In the dark, I balanced myself on the low iron chain that bounded the graveyard and swung back and forth, shivering off the cold.

When she came, it was just her in the car. I slid into the front seat and she reached across and held me.

“Don’t say I never did anything for you.” She laughed, gruffly into my hair. “Don’t say I didn’t listen.”

We sat like that for a long time in the car, not moving, not speaking, my face pressed hard into her shoulder to keep from shouting.

“Help me get Charlie together,” her mother said. “We have to go get Charlotte.”

But Charlie was stubborn. He wouldn’t go. He sat down on his hands and whined when Callie tried to get him up.

“We don’t have time for this.” It was the first time Callie ever heard her snap at Charlie. And Callie knew this was her chance.

“I can watch him,” she said.

Her mother was skeptical.

“I can. I’m old enough. You can trust me.”

Charlie was hunching over, whining louder.

“You won’t even be gone that long, right?”

Her mother nodded, uneasy. “Okay,” she said. “All right.” And then she was gone.

All day long she’d been waiting for a sign and here, provided by the hand of the universe, like the book said, was one.

She sat down beside Charlie because her heart was racing. She was so close. To calm herself, she scratched at the collar of her shirt, pulled a single, bristling Charlie hair from the weave on the front of her sweater.

Callie felt her fingers begin to cramp: this happened sometimes, when she was nervous. The very tips of her fingers would want to curl down to her palms. She took her hands out from under the blanket and pressed her right fingers down on her left wrist, feeling for a pulse. They’d been learning to do that at school. She pressed down on the flesh, felt the indentation on her skin but nothing else. Charlie’s pulse, when he let Callie take it, was fleet and stuttering and strong. Maybe that was what it meant to be a familiar. He was her better self. He was alive to the world and she was, well, not dead, exactly. Just insulated. As if she were speaking to people and watching people from very, very far away. That was what it meant, she decided. That was what would change. What she was going to do would make it better. She was sure of it.

If she backed down now, it would mean she had the bitter little soul of someone who got the steps wrong, of a coward. Her soul, she was certain, was more expansive than that. It had to be, or else what would be the purpose of her being so lonely all the time? It would be very unfair of the universe to be all those things and a shallow, artificial soul, too. To be all those things and not strong. They had to balance each other out.

Beside her, Charlie straightened himself out and busied himself with her hair. She held out her arms and he settled on her hip and she staggered with him to the kitchen. Even though she knew they were the only ones in the apartment, she still was careful not to make any noise. She spooned leftover spaghetti from the pot on the stove into a plastic sandwich bag. She poured chocolate milk into a plastic travel mug, printed with the Toneybee logo. Then she walked just as carefully to the bathroom, Charlie still on her hip, and climbed on to the edge of the bathtub to reach behind the towel-covered mirror for the medicine chest, where the cold medicine was kept.

Then she took Charlie and the bottle back to the living room, where she gathered together her school backpack and the spoils from the kitchen. She snapped on the cape with a flourish. Then she emptied her backpack onto the floor, a scatter of balled-up notebook paper and eraser dust, and she put the magic book in the front pocket and slung the bag over her shoulders.

Before they left, the two of them spent a few companionable minutes eating from the plastic bag of spaghetti with their fingers. Callie let him have the last bite. In gratitude, he allowed himself to lie up against her, and for the first time in a while, they were quiet together. Maybe, maybe, this was all the book meant, Callie thought. Maybe her true self was two stomachs made gassy from too much starch. Maybe this was how the world was saved.

But no, that did not seem right. And anyway, she needed her familiar to help her with the task. Purification, the book said, had everything to do with nature. It also was dependent on the purity and courage of the purifier. But Callie was strong. She was stronger than everyone she knew.

So she put her arms around Charlie and hugged him closer, just for a minute. Then she slipped her arms out from underneath him and reached for the knapsack again. He got excited at the chocolate milk and began clamoring for the travel mug. He kept trying to turn her toward him, and she kept having to shrug him off. She poured one capful of cough syrup into the mug, and the chocolate milk turned a sharp purple and grew a greasy sheen. Charlie was getting annoyed now, slapping her back. He would get more forceful in a minute if she didn’t give it to him. She decided she’d better pour the whole bottle in, and she just managed to empty it before Charlie reached for the mug himself and brought it up to his mouth with his own hands.

He drank fast. She could hear every swallow. When he was finished, he let the empty mug fall aside and then slumped up against her again. He burrowed closer into her arms.

She waited a few minutes, felt his belly rise and fall. He wasn’t asleep yet, but his eyes were heavy-lidded and his breathing was deep. She sat still for a bit, and then she heaved him again, as gently as she could, onto her hip.

For once, Callie was grateful for her weight. She only staggered a little bit underneath him. If she was as skinny as Charlotte, she wouldn’t have been able to carry him so far. Once she got her balance, she had enough heft to hold on to him comfortably. She forced his legs to clasp her waist, and he held the pose, slightly confused. It was as if he had forgotten the measures of the world. This gave Callie confidence.

She stooped to pick up one of his blankets: she didn’t want him getting cold outside. She stuffed another blanket into her backpack for good measure, even though it meant she couldn’t zip the bag closed. She carried everything — the bag, the blankets, and Charlie — to the living room, where she nudged open the front door and made her way into the hall.

She passed the laboratory wing, heard her shoes hit first soft on the velvet carpet, then loud and clacking on linoleum. The heavy double doors swung open so easily, she took it as another sign. She hitched Charlie up on her hip as best she could, took a deep breath, and led them both out into the cold night.

In the security guard’s outpost, down at the front gate, a flashing light and shrill, sharp bell went off where Lester Potter sat drowsily reading his newspaper.

It was the most excitement Lester had ever had at the Toneybee Institute. He began scanning the television monitor in front of him for some kind of clue. He saw the double doors open, no sign of who had moved them.