March 15th 2001
“And Charlotte and Keir, They do besties better than anyone”
The hallway outside the girls’ bathroom echoed with laughter—the sharp, glittery kind that always made Keir feel like she’d wandered into the wrong world. She clutched the straps of her backpack and took a breath, ready to ask Charlotte if she wanted to walk home together.
But when she pushed open the door, her steps froze.
Charlotte was there—leaning against the sink, surrounded by the girls she always swore she “couldn’t stand.” The popular girls with perfect hair and perfect nails and perfectly cruel smiles.
And Charlotte was laughing with them.
Not just laughing.
Talking.
Talking about her.
“…I swear, Keir is like a lost puppy,” Charlotte was saying, tossing her hair exactly the way Keir had always admired. “She follows me around everywhere. It’s kind of pathetic. Like what would she do without me”
The girls shrieked with laughter.
Keir’s heart stopped.
Her fingers went numb.
Something inside her slid downward, like the floor had caved in beneath her feet. She didn’t realize she’d dropped her notebook until it hit the tile with a small, humiliating slap.
Charlotte’s head snapped up first. Their eyes met.
Keir’s vision blurred instantly.
Panic and guilt crossed Charlotte’s eyes or maybe she was imagining it like how she often imagined things according to Charlotte. Hot tears pressed against Keir’s eyes and she couldn’t, she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. She spun and ran.
Lottie was supposed to be her best friend, her savior.
She was going to join the cheerleading team with Lottie, they promised each other to be friends for life.
“Keir! Keir, wait!”
Footsteps pounded behind her. Keir pushed through the double doors into the empty hallway, her cross necklace bouncing against her chest. Charlotte grabbed her arm.
“Let go—”
“Keir, stop, you’re totally overreacting.” Charlotte’s voice was urgent, soothing. She positioned herself in front of Keir, blocking her path. “Just listen to me for one second, okay?”
Keir yanked her arm back, sobbing.
“Overreacting? You—you said I was pathetic.”
“I know what it sounded like, but that’s not—” Charlotte squeezed Keir’s shoulders, ducking her head to force eye contact . “I was gathering information. Those girls have been talking about you for weeks and I needed to get them to trust me so they’d tell me what they’ve been saying. I was going to tell you everything, I swear. But I had to act like I was on their side first, you know? That’s how you get people to admit things.”
Keir wiped her face with shaking hands “But you said— i saw you, you were laughing, Charlotte, you looked happy”
“Happy? Now Keir, you know you’re innocent so you don’t really understand stuff like that.” There she goes again, Keir thought, with the ‘innocent’, she tended to do that, to call Keir that, innocent “But I was playing those girls for the fools they are, I had to make it believable.” She grabbed Keir’s hands and interlocked their fingers, " “You know me. You know I would never actually think those things about you. We’re best friends. I was literally doing this for you, and now you’re acting like I’m the bad guy?” Her voice was harsh at the end, but seeing Keir flinched, Charlotte softened her approach, “You said God brought me for you once didn’t you? Do you think God would send a demon to you?”
“I never said you were a demon.”
“You’re acting like it and it hurts,” she whispered, squeezing Keir’s hands tighter—as if pain could anchor her.
Keir swallowed hard, chest trembling.
“I’m… I’m not trying to hurt you.”
“Then stop running away from me.”
Charlotte brushed a strand of hair from Keir’s cheek. The gesture was gentle, but it landed like a command. “You didn’t even hear the whole conversation, and you jumped to conclusions—again. I was protecting you.”
Keir’s throat felt scraped raw.
“It didn’t sound like protecting.”
Charlotte sighed—dramatic, exasperated, the kind adults used on children.
“Keir, you’re so sensitive. You read too deeply into everything. You make things bigger than they are.”
Charlotte’s thumbs stroked the back of Keir’s hands, softening the edges of her words even as they cut deeper.
“If you cry every time someone says something about you, how am I supposed to help you?”
The hallway buzzed faintly with distant chatter—other girls heading home, the world moving on as if Keir wasn’t coming apart under fluorescent lights.
Keir said nothing for a while, because if she did, she would burst into tears or at least she thinks. She know Charlotte would never intentionally hurt her, it was Charlotte, she had asked God for many signs that Charlotte was an angel sent for her and God had given her so many signs. CHarlotte had protected her, Charlotte hanged out with her when everyone made fun of her for being too religious, too obsessed with spirituality and not ‘fun’ enough. Charlotte understood her.
Charlotte stroked her cheek again, gentler this time.
“Come on. Say something.”
Keir forced air into her shaking lungs.
“I just… it really hurt.”
Charlotte smiled like she’d won.
“I know. And I’m telling you you didn’t need to be hurt. So don’t cry anymore.”
She pulled Keir into a hug—tight, possessive, suffocating.
“Remember the promise, together”
Keir stood stiff for a moment, then melted into it because she didn’t know what else to do.
“Forever,” Keir finished it.
Because maybe Charlotte was right.
Maybe she shouldn’t have run.
Maybe she shouldn’t have felt what she felt.
Still, over Charlotte’s shoulder, her eyes stung again.
The laughter she’d heard in that bathroom wouldn’t leave her ears.