Chapter 1: First messages

Lottie groaned and hit the screen of the black alarm clock on her bedside table, making it shut down after the two rings. She tugged her duvet over her head some more and kept her eyes closed, ignoring the stray of light shining into her room through the blinds, right on her bare feet. The brunette could perfectly hear her name being called from downstairs, but not the way she would’ve liked it. Charlotte. She had never understood the need to name your kid something long and fancy. She never understood her being named after her father’s grandmother. She hated the name.

“Charlotte! Rise and shine!” Eleanor Brown came marching into her daughter’s bedroom, pulling the blinds off her windows. Lottie let out a quiet groan, feeling the soft sun on her skin, but kept her head hidden under the blanket, too tired to even argue her mom about the fact that she didn’t knock before entering. “Charlotte,” a sterner voice came from her door, her mom having already walked back there. “You don’t need to be late on the first day of school.”

Lottie mentally rolled her eyes and flicked them open under the duvet. “I’ll be up in a minute, mom. Can you close the door so that I could get dressed?” she murmured, her left fist coming up to rub her eyes gently.

“Don’t forget to take a shower, we don’t want you smelling of sweat,” her mother lectured, closing the door with a quiet thump behind her.

Lottie sighed and pushed the covers down to her chest. She glared at her short grey pajamas, feeling the odor of sweat. Of course, she had sweat during the night—her room was overheated, which she very much hated. The teenager checked her phone at first and then ten minutes later, having looked through all her social media and gotten no content from her favorite actors once again, she dragged herself up and into the bathroom, grabbing the towel from the bathroom door and then pulling it shut.

The girl loved books. She had read so many about love, adventures, fantasy, crime, mystery, and the list could go on and on. One thing always mentioned in the books was taking a hot shower but turning the water on before stepping under it. If she had done that even once in her life, her mother would’ve killed her for making the whole tiled bathroom floor wet and dirty. So, she got into the shower after stripping herself naked, turned the water on, and shivered under it. She loved cold showers. Only in the summers though.

#

“Good morning, honey,” Howard smiled from the table, looking up briefly from the Newspaper he was reading.

“Morning,” Lottie sighed quietly and sat down next to her sister, giving her a small tired smile. Pauline raised her eyebrows a little and nodded her head towards their parents, Lottie’s brown eyes following the direction. Mom was sitting a bit away from their dad, glaring at his happy face. Lottie gulped down the sip of juice she had taken and observed their positions. Eleanor’s ankles were crossed, knees turning away from her husband, her hands on the table delightfully; the way she had always taught her daughters to sit like. Howard was holding a newspaper, reading some article and sipping his coffee, his plate still empty.

“Howard,” Eleanor said sternly, making the man raise his eyebrows and look at her wife next to him. “Breakfast.” Eleanor said with a fake smile.

“Right,” the middle-aged blond guy said, placing the newspaper down. “Are you girls excited for school?”

Lottie frowned. They must have had a fight again during the night, she wonders, having watched a movie with her earbuds in and stayed up late, she hadn’t heard it though. “No,” she answered immediately with a weak voice. It was going to be her Sophomore year, starting today. She barely had any friends, but she did have a girl she sat with during lunch and shared welcoming smiles with. At least she had had her last year. Now she wasn’t so sure anymore, having spent the whole summer at home, mostly in her room, reading books, writing and watching movies and series.

(Eleanor Brown wasn’t happy about that.)

“I’m excited,” Pauline nodded with a smile, her chin up proudly, beaming as a ray of sun brightened her face, shining through the window of their childhood home. “Junior year, can you imagine? I can’t wait for college.”

Lottie raised her eyebrows at the way her sister was suddenly so excited about that. “Polls… I hate to break it to you, but you still need to pass these two years to get through,” she said.

“Charlotte,” her mother said sternly. “Just because you’re moody and underslept, doesn’t mean your sister can’t be excited for school to start. You should be too; after all, we’re paying a lot to get you to a great private school like that.”

She pressed her hands flesh against her school skirt and murmured, “Underslept isn’t a word, mom.” That only earned a puff of air from her mother, so she bit her tongue before having the chance to add that journalists should know that.

“Eat. You don’t want to be late,” Eleanor just sighed, but looked extremely disappointed when Lottie chose a pancake over the breakfast salad and eggs she had also made and that Pauline and herself were eating. When she reached for the syrup though, Eleanor snatched her hand away from it and glared at her younger daughter’s face. “No. You need to keep that form.”

Lottie pulled her arms around her body self-consciously, tears pricking in her eyes as she stood up and walked out of the kitchen without taking a bite from anything. Accidentally, on her way out, she bumped against her younger sister and mumbled a small ‘sorry’ before walking outside. She heard her mother calling for her name when she closed the door behind her, backpack thrown over her right shoulder. She ignored it, plugging in her earbuds and putting on some love songs—her usual playlist when she was sad, wanted to be alone, or dreamed of her in the arms of a sweet boy who would kiss her wet cheek in these situations.

#

“Lottie,” Pauline breathed in relief when she found her little sister sitting on the bleachers alone, listening to some music and picking on the salad she had bought. Lottie arched her eyebrow at her, pulling her earbuds off for a moment and pausing the song. “Where did you go this morning?”

The younger brunette —hair in a tight ponytail, opposite to Pauline’s loose hair with a headband—frowned, shaking her head a little. “She knows I don’t like my body. Yet she still manages to keep making me feel worse. I just don’t understand why I couldn’t eat a pancake with syrup once.”

Pauline sighed. “I’m sorry about that, Lottie. Just listen to what she says. It’ll make it all a lot easier…” Lottie kept holding the eye contact, but didn’t reply anything to her, making sure her older sister felt uncomfortable. “Uh… Do you have anyone to sit with?” she asked finally.

Lottie raised her eyebrows at her sister again and looked around before looking back straight into her blue eyes. She wondered the empty space all around her would tell her enough. But before Pauline could ask her if she wanted to go and sit with her bitchy cheerleader friends, she spoke up again. “I’m fine, Polls, really. I’ll just keep listening to music now,” she murmured and got the earbuds in.

The older girl sighed. “Weirdo,” she murmured before walking away. Of course, she loved her little sister, but she never quite understood why she liked to be alone, writing some stories on her phone all the time. She had teased her when Lottie told her she was writing them on Wattpad, laughing at the fact that they were probably sex fanfictions. They weren’t. She liked to write poetry. The only thing that made her smile during the saddest days were the comments she got, telling her to become a writer or asking who was behind all of that. She felt powerful; she felt like she never had before.

#

Lottie was studying behind her table, her school uniform thrown into the dirty laundry basket in her small (but private) bathroom. Even though she was trying to write an essay that had to be done in a few weeks already, she was sitting on her phone, smiling at the messages she had gotten.

At first, she checked the comments. There were a few bad ones, but the others were amazing, funny and sweet. She replied to a few, not wanting to let out too much, but leaving some humble thank you-s and lmao-s in the comment section. She wasn’t popular on anything, but she did have a few hundred reads on every part.

She placed her phone down again with a smile and blankly stared at the laptop opened in front of her. She didn’t remember what the essay was supposed to be about. She didn’t have any ideas.

So naturally, when her phone buzzed against the table three times, she took it and frowned at the private message notification in from Wattpad, from someone called Forest346.

Forest346: Hey

Forest346: Just wanted to ask if you’re writing those poems yourself

Forest346: Because if you are, your vocabulary is even more beautiful than I thought

A smile crept on Lottie’s face as she answered.

Lottie: All me

She got an answer a minute later.

Forest346: I’m Forestlop

And just like that, the smile turned into a frown.

(She didn’t know yet how important that name was going to be for her in the future, however weird it might have been.)