Michael Creagh. Charlie’s kid brother. And the reason Charlie was so screwed up. Two years ago, on Ari’s 16th birthday, Charlie had taken his parent’s SUV out to pick up his little brother from Little League. He was hurrying, trying to get Mike home so he could pick up Ari and take her out to celebrate. The cyclist came out of nowhere. Charlie had swerved into oncoming traffic and the passenger side took the full impact of the collision. When Charlie had come to, Mike was already dead. Everything changed that day. The happy Creaghs stopped being parents to Charlie and Charlie stopped being… Charlie. He blamed himself for his brother’s death and Ari wasn’t so sure his parents didn’t either.
Ari felt a rip of pain across her chest at the thought of how much agony her best friend was in. How did you live with that kind of guilt? Ari stopped hanging out at the Creagh’s because Charlie didn’t want her to. He told her his dad had started drinking and his mom had gotten her old job as a manager at FoodLand back to keep them afloat financially and to avoid her husband and the son who hadn’t died. Eventually, Charlie started hanging with a new crowd: slackers, potheads. He started skipping school, dropping grades. She’d even, occasionally, found him wasted in Vickers' Woods. She’d hoped he’d snap out of it eventually, that it was just his way of grieving. But it had been two years.
Before Mike’s death, Ari had been psyching herself up to talk to Charlie the night of her sixteenth. After confiding in Rachel, her new Chem lab partner, she had been persuaded it was time. She’d been moping after Charlie for three years. Ari didn’t know when her feelings for him stopped being platonic. There wasn’t a precise moment when everything shifted and suddenly she loved him. It was more that she turned thirteen and suddenly boys were cute and gave her butterflies. Charlie gave her butterflies. Not raging wasps like he did now. She’d been sixteen years old and in love.
And Ari still loved him.
Even though he wasn’t her Charlie anymore.
Ari’s skin cooled as she stepped into the trees, winding her way over the worn path that took her into the clearing that was popular with stoners. Surely the faculty knew about this place, but they were too lazy to do something about it or just didn’t care. Taking in the gathering, Ari saw mostly sophomores and juniors. She only knew a few people by name, and she nodded at them warily. They were lounging around on the grass, leaning against one another and on rocks, their pupils dilated, their features slack. Drifting through them, Ari walked toward a guy she recognized. He was tall, his long legs stretched out before him in dirty, ripped jeans, his Nirvana T-shirt wrinkled and worn. His expression was blank as he gazed up at her. He brushed his unkempt dark brown hair out of his deep brown eyes. He had a pleasant face, handsome in that boy next door kind of way. As she stopped before him, he tilted his head back and the corner of his mouth quirked up. A flash of emotion sparked in his eyes, transforming him from cute guy next door to sexy and dangerous ‘anything is possible with me’ guy. Before her was a boy who could hurt her more than anybody else.
“Charlie.” She nodded, trying to act casual, which was difficult considering the stares burning into her back.
“What’s up?” he asked, reaching for the joint Mel Rickman handed him. Ari kept her attention on Charlie. Mel was older than everyone else, in his early twenties. The guy gave her the creeps, and not because he was hanging out getting sophomores stoned, but because when he looked at her, it was as if he were imagining her naked. The lascivious sleaze made her uneasy.
She glanced around to make sure no one was paying attention, suddenly feeling foolish standing there in her washed, unripped jeans and plain T-shirt. The grass tickled her feet in her flip-flops and she looked down at the biker boots Mel wore. She fingered the tennis bracelet on her wrist, trying not to flush. Most of the kids Charlie hung out with came from the east, the low income side of Sandford Ridge. It was a medium-sized town in the southeast of Butler County, not small enough for everyone to know everyone’s business, but not big enough for people not to know if you lived on the east side or the west side. “I wondered if you’re still coming to my birthday party on Friday?”
Charlie gave her an inscrutable look, the silence between them stretching into irritating. Ari was very close to throwing the folder in her arms at him.