Page 52 of Every Almost

Amy told someone, and that someone told someone else, and, eventually, the whole school knew. The words were the words that small towns in Indiana had ready for girls like Charlie, words she'd heard adults use about people on television,words that had never been pointed at her until the afternoon she reached for someone's hand and that person flinched.

The afternoon it happened, Charlie had gone home and sat on the back porch. She didn't move, didn't speak, just stared at the yard. That was until Katie came out with two popsicles and sat next to her in silence. She didn't ask what happened. She just stayed. And Charlie loved her for it. Because of her seven-year-old sister, she wasn't alone.

Later that same night, after Katie had gone to bed, Charlie went out to the garage. She didn't have anything to work on with her hands. So she sat on the concrete, turned on the radio, and let the music fill the space where Amy's words were still echoing.

After a few moments, a song came on the radio, and lyrics spoke to Charlie in a way she didn't know was possible. The song put words to how it feels to be lost inside yourself, not knowing how to ask someone to see the real you before it's too late. She felt as though the song was made for her, for that day, for her emotions that she couldn't explain. But the song did for her.

Her heart swelled, the tips of her fingers tingled, and goosebumps spread across her arms. A connection was born from sounds and words, but it was one Charlie couldn't describe, and would never forget.

The song had been “Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me” by Elton John, one of the top hits of fall 1974. When she'd learned the name later on, she used some of her repair money to purchase blank cassettes. She spent the first Saturday she had sitting in the garage with the radio on until the song played again. When it did, she quickly hit the record button to capture that song, forever memorialized in her heart as a life-changing song for a life-changing moment.

She played that cassette until the tape was battered and worn thin. But luckily, Charlie was good at fixing things, and she was always able to make it keep playing. Whenever she sat in thegarage after that, the radio wasn't background noise anymore. It was the first thing she turned on, and the last thing she turned off, whether she was discovering new songs or playing her cassettes with the ones that already spoke to her. From that point forward, Charlie always made sure she was surrounded by music.

Charlie took and kept a simple but cruel experience from that afternoon. Worse than any of the words. She realized that reaching for someone was what got you hurt. So, Charlie Wickett decided to stop reaching. She got good at flannel and ponytails and being the smartest one in the room, but she let the rest of it go quiet, the same way you learn to stop touching fire.

Charlie built a wall after that, a wall around the entire question she didn't know how to ask.

Did she only like girls?

Charlie stopped raising her hand in class and ate lunch alone for two weeks. Eventually, the story faded and something newer replaced it. She never told anyone about it. Instead, she filed it under the same category as everything else the Wickett house didn't mention. Through high school, boys noticed her and she felt nothing, but she let the wall stand, assuming she was just focused on other things. The gap was there, shapeless and unnamed, and she let it stay that way because the alternative was walking through a hallway that wouldn't stop whispering.

Diane, meanwhile, had found a new project. As Charlie grew older and her appearance became harder to ignore, Diane began trying to shape her into the daughter she'd always wanted on display. She bought Charlie dresses that Charlie wore once and never touched again. She left makeup on Charlie's dresser that included things like foundation, mascara, and a shade of lipstick Charlie would never choose. She booked hair appointments that Charlie attended out of obligation and kept out of respect for the money Diane spent, but Charlie never cared for the styles theway Diane expected. Within a few days, the curls would loosen and the volume would flatten, and Charlie would be back to pulling it all into a ponytail with a rubber band from the garage.

Charlie didn't refuse her mother outright. It just didn'ttake.She'd come downstairs in the dress and it would hang on her like a costume, and she'd change into jeans as soon as she could. She'd try the lipstick and wipe it off with the back of her hand once it was no longer needed. It wasn't rebellion. It was the simple incompatibility of trying to fit a wrench into a jewelry box.

Diane was at the end of her patience with it when Katie began to grow up. And Katie, to everyone's surprise, actually liked some of it. She liked the dresses. Not necessarily the formal ones Diane picked, but the ones she chose herself, fabrics that moved when she walked and colors that caught the light. She liked experimenting with her hair and she didn't mind the makeup, though she used it differently than Diane intended, less about presentation and more about play.

Instead, Diane turned her full attention to Katie. The shopping trips, the hair appointments, the fashion advice, all of it redirected to Katie. And Katie let it happen, partly because she enjoyed some of it and partly because she understood what it meant for Charlie.

They talked about it once in the garage.

"You know it's okay to like that stuff, right?" Charlie said, not looking up from the carburetor in her lap.

"I know," Katie said. "I just don't want you to think I'm... like her."

Charlie set down the wrench and looked at Katie. "Kit-Kat, you liking dresses doesn't make you Mom. Me being stubborn doesn't make me Dad." Katie let out a quiet laugh, and Charlie smiled. "We get to be whoever we choose to be. It's up to us, not genetics."

Katie was quiet. Then she nodded. And after that, she stopped apologizing for the parts of herself that were like Diane, because Charlie had provided her the permission she didn't know she needed to keep them without it meaning her choices didn't matter.

The arrangement suited everyone. Diane had a daughter who would wear the dresses. Charlie had breathing room. And Katie absorbed it all with the quiet understanding that sometimes the best thing you can do for your sister is stand between her and what's wearing her down. Because Charlie also knew this gave Katie the chance to play.

Katie, already Charlie's fiercest champion, fought back in ways that made Charlie believe she would always be seen by her sister.

When a boy at Katie's school said his brother called Charlie "just a pretty face," Katie told him his brother was "just a mean face," and it made the boy cry. Katie got sent to the principal's office over it.

Katie defended Charlie to anyone who reduced her to her looks, whether at school, at church, or even at the grocery store. Mrs. Patterson once said 'your sister is going to make some young man very happy one day.' Katie had replied, flatly, 'She's going to make rockets, actually.' And that summer, Katie took her saved allowance to the library book sale and came home with a used astronomy textbook, the cover creased and the spine cracked and left it on Charlie's pillow without a note.

Charlie found it that evening. She went to Katie's room, gave her the biggest hug, and then opened to the first page right on Katie's floor and read until Katie fell fast asleep, her own book left open by her side. Charlie grabbed Katie's bookmark and left it where her hand lay on the page, put the book on Katie's nightstand, and tucked her in. She kissed Katie on the forehead,whispered good night, and crept to her own room, where she opened up the textbook again and read until midnight.

That winter,when Katie and Charlie were sitting on the living room floor together looking through magazines in the Beckman's home, Frank came back from Pesche's Electronics in Greencastle with a record under his arm. He had a look on his face that Helen recognized immediately, and walked right on his heels on his way through the kitchen and into the living room.

"What did you buy?" Helen asked.

"An investment in culture, my dear Mrs. Beckman," he said, turning sharply to face her with Helen almost colliding straight into Frank. He pecked a quick kiss on the tip of her nose, turned back around, and walked to the record player in the middle of the room. He pulled the record out from under his arm, and showed Helen the white album cover with five people on it, the women wearing draping, flowing fabric, and the men in various states of studied indifference.Rumoursby Fleetwood Mac.

"Oh, Frank. Did they make another record?" Helen asked with excitement. In their home, Fleetwood Mac was always worth the money.

"This one's different, even for them," he said. "Trust me." Frank pulled the vinyl out of the case and played it on the turntable. "Charlie, come here, kid."