Page 51 of Every Almost

"Well then why wouldn't you want to be a nurse?"

"It's not me."

Mr. Draper didn’t suggest a career for Charlie again after that.

Diane suggested teaching.

"I can't be a teacher, Mom," Charlie had explained one evening after Diane brought it up again.

"Why not, Charlotte? It's a wonderful career for a woman! At least, for women who want to work."

"I do want to work."

"Then become a teacher! It would look so good to an up-and-coming young man, seeing you teaching young children, dressing in outfits fit for showcasing your 'assets.'" Diane raised her eyebrows suggestively. Charlie stared directly at Diane.

"The last thing I want is a young man admiring me for my 'assets' instead of more important things."

"Oh for heaven's sake, Charlie. Such as what?" Diane asked, exasperated.

"Such as my brain, Mom."

"Oh honey," Diane said sweetly. "A young man will only notice that when he's ready." Charlie sighed.

Ed ended up suggesting nothing, which meant he hadn't thought about Charlie's future beyond the assumption that she'd get married to a well-to-do man that would take care of her and not require her to work.

"Why bother?" Ed had asked after Charlie talked about maybe finding work at the airstrip.

"For experience," Charlie explained. "To increase my skills, work on planes aside from Mr. Beckman's Cub. See if I could make this a real career." Katie nudged her with her shoulder at that moment, and Charlie looked over to smile at her sister.

"You don't need a career. Only a husband. Work on that skill. It's more important for your future." Ed hadn't even looked up from his newspaper when he said this. Which made it easier for Charlie to get away with the look of disgust that crossed her face at the thought.

At the end of the day, the problem was that Shelbyville saw the pretty girl first, and couldn't find a way to look past it.

Charlie knew what she looked like. She'd known since she was old enough to catch boys staring at her in class, watching her mouth move instead of listening to her answers. She was five-foot-ten with honey-gold hair that fell in natural waves with the kind of looks that made people forget she'd been talking.

So Charlie started dressing down around fifteen, wearing baggy flannels that swallowed her frame and hid parts of her she wanted to keep for herself. Charlie didn't dislike her looks or her body, but with what she wanted to do with her life, it didn't exactly help. The harder she tried to subdue it in order to be taken seriously, the more of a game it seemed for others to pursue her.

But hiding wasn't only about staring. She'd learned it at thirteen when it had nothing to do with being looked at too much and everything to do with being seen just once.

A girl. Amy Callahan.

Red hair, freckles across her nose, the only other person in eighth-grade science who raised her hand as often as Charlie did. They'd been lab partners for a semester and stayed after class to work on projects. They passed notes that weren't about science.

It had seemed mutual in a way that Charlie, at thirteen, didn't have the language to define. Amy was the one who started sitting closer, the one whose hand would brush Charlie's when they reached for the same beaker, and didn't pull away. Amy was the one who wrote “I like being your partner” on a note folded into a triangle and slid it across the lab bench with a smile that made Charlie's stomach do something she'd never felt before. Charlie kept that note in her textbook for weeks. She read it at night under her covers and the same warmth returned every time.

The warmth felt safe. It sat high in her chest, a tightening she had no name for and no reason yet to fear.

One afternoon, in the empty hallway outside the chemistry lab, Charlie had done something brave and small. She'd reached for Amy's hand, and held it, tracing circles across her skin while smiling at her when she did.

Charlie didn't think it would be rebuked. She had no way of being prepared for what happened next. It was just the impulse of a thirteen-year-old girl whose heart didn't know yet what it was reaching toward.

Amy pulled her hand back like she'd been burned.

The look on her face was what Charlie remembered most. It wasn't anger or confusion. It was disgust. Pure and immediate, the kind that comes from a place so deep it doesn't need to think before it arrives.

The words came after. Whispered at first, then louder. Words that became shouts echoing through the halls.

And to Charlie's horror, they didn't only come from Amy.