Spoiler
Austin, Charlie Black's friend, is responsible for accidentally stabbing and killing Aimee Cardle. A few weeks had passed after the stabbing when the boys met Zoey and her friend, Beth. Aimee Cardle was Zoey's sister. They all met up again some time later, and it was organised that Charlie would be homeschooled by Zoey's mum, Sophie. Throughout this, Charlie and Zoey began getting to know each other better.
After Charlie kissed Zoey for the first time, she told him about her sister's death, and Charlie realised that she was the girl Austin killed. Charlie then upset Zoey because of what he discovered, but afterwards, he managed to get her to forgive him. The day ended with them kissing.
Charlie, Austin and Zoey were on the cliff where Charlie and Zoey first kissed when Jax and Lee (two of the boys who witnessed the stabbing) arrived. Because of this, Charlie and Zoey decided to leave, so they're currently wandering around Zoey's neighbourhood.
After Charlie kissed Zoey for the first time, she told him about her sister's death, and Charlie realised that she was the girl Austin killed. Charlie then upset Zoey because of what he discovered, but afterwards, he managed to get her to forgive him. The day ended with them kissing.
Charlie, Austin and Zoey were on the cliff where Charlie and Zoey first kissed when Jax and Lee (two of the boys who witnessed the stabbing) arrived. Because of this, Charlie and Zoey decided to leave, so they're currently wandering around Zoey's neighbourhood.
Stop and Stare ~ Part Twenty-Three
Zoey
Our conversation had moved on from Will by the time we reached the park that was a few streets away from my house. Considering we had nothing better to do, Charlie and I decided to go in there for a while. While I nudged the bright red gate open with the tip of my shoe, Charlie jumped over the fence that surrounded the playground, then landed with a thud onto the tarmac. The park itself was full of children, none of them any older than ten years old. The climbing frame and slide was overrun by them, so we had no choice but to make our way over to the swing set.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been here, and my only real memories of spending time in this place are when I was with my older siblings. Luke used to practically live on the climbing frames, and I used to think he was a genius at conquering the monkey bars. Gosh, and Aimee. Even though she was my older sister, she was always more or less the same height as me, yet she could accomplish any kind of climbing frame that was put in front of her. She could shoot up the rock wall within the blink of an eye.
“This place is pretty neat,” Charlie said as he placed the pile of stuff in his hands onto the floor beside one of the swings. “Much nicer than the parks in my neighbourhood. Nothing’s burnt down. Weird.” He jumped onto the swing as I stood rather awkwardly beside one of the red poles. “Don’t tell me you have a phobia of swings too, Zo.”
My cheeks flushed red. If I was wearing some jeans, I wouldn’t have been so hesitant, but I was wearing a pair of denim shorts so if I sat down on the swing next to Charlie, my skin would have been in full contact with the grimy plastic. It was just that I’d never seen anyone clean the climbing frames or the swings before, so I had no idea what kind of bacteria could have been lurking on them.
“I’ll sit down now. Can I have the blanket though?” I asked, stepping forward.
“C’mon, Zo, at least try to sit on it without breaking into a frenzy. Please?”
I gazed at the unmoving swing. “I can’t...”
“How do you know that? You ain’t even tried.” His voice had a stable tone to it. “Just trust me. You’ll be fine. What’s the worst that could happen?”
Well, the swing could have been drowning in all kinds of horrible germs and bugs, and if my leg were to come into contact with them, I could develop something bad and become ill. I looked back up at Charlie to see a warm smile on his face. He asked me again to give it a try, and the mellow tone in his voice seeped right through me. I didn’t think I’d ever felt calmer so suddenly in my life. I turned back to the swing. It didn't look dangerous... Charlie would have been able to keep me safe as well, wouldn't he? He wouldn't have let anything bad happen to me.
As I glanced between Charlie’s subtle but powerful smile, and the empty swing, my worries wobbled in the slightest. Nothing I could catch from a swing could result in killing me or anything, could it? So long as I didn’t put my fingers anywhere near my mouth after touching the unclean plastic, no harm would be done. Besides, how did I know that these swings weren’t cleaned? Just because I never saw anyone doing so, it didn’t mean that it didn’t happen. Charlie was still concentrated on me when I looked up.
“Just give it a try.”
I took one hesitant step forward, then swallowed. It only took another four steps until I reached the swing itself. For something so small, it was surprisingly daunting. I must have remained standing beside the swing for over two minutes. Throughout those two minutes, I noticed that some of the parents of the children around us were staring at me. In the end, I decided that it was best to get it over with. Without even a second having passed, I dropped myself onto the black swing beneath me. I shot myself downwards before I could even think about it. And then I felt something hard underneath me. Something cold. Even faster than I'd sat down on it, I'd leaped back up. The plastic had felt way too cold on my bare legs.
“Zo! C’mon, you almost did it. Try again.” Charlie nodded at the swing.
He wasn’t going to give up, was he? By now, I could feel people’s stares on me, and I had to admit that it was rather unnerving. Making a big deal out of sitting on a blooming swing wasn’t helping. Come on, Zoey. You knew it was going to be cold. Just do it. I locked my gaze onto the swing that was now swaying lightly next to me. I tried to push myself downwards, but I wasn't going anywhere.
“I really can’t. Can I please just have the blanket?” For some reason, my eyes were welling up. “People are staring at me.”
“Ignore it all. I’m the one who’s practically dressed like a tramp compared to them.” He was smiling at me. “C’mon, you can do it. Take it easy, don’t think about it, and sit.” Charlie paused. “Trust me.”
I tried thinking of it like that. I wasn’t attempting to sit on some bare swing, or trying to overcome some ridiculous fear of mine. I was proving to myself that I could trust Charlie. Nothing more, nothing less. With that thought lodged into my brain, I hardly noticed it when my leg touched the plastic. Every angle of my emotions were trying to force my body up, but I remained as still as possible. Oh, my God... I was doing it. Was I actually doing this right now? My skin rubbed against the swing. I was! I was actually on this swing without any kind of cover, and not only that, but my skin was touching it. Literally touching it!A swarm of bacteria hadn’t started eating my flesh, I didn’t feel ill, and I was alive.
“See? That wasn’t too bad, was it?” Charlie winked at me.
“Hang on, I thought you liked my quirky behaviour. What happened to that?” I tried sounding accusing, but the enormous smile on my face didn’t support it very well.
“It seems to bother you, so I thought I’d give you a nudge to help you out, even if it does risk you losing some of your weird habits.”
“Well, thanks,” I replied as I began to swing lightly. “Really, thanks.”
I moved my bum a little, and when I felt the rubber underneath me again, I cringed, but I made sure not to stand up. After a couple more minutes had passed, I was swinging at a slow, but steady pace. God, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d done this, if I ever had done it. The last memory I had of a swing was crying my eyes out when Aimee tried sitting me on one as a little girl. It felt wonderful though. As I swung back and forth, the soft wind was flowing through my hair. It smelt, tasted and felt so fresh.
“C'mon, you can go a bit faster than that,” Charlie said, interrupting my newly found feeling of freedom. “You may as well just be standing on the tarmac, swaying back and forth.”
“I’m good thanks,” I replied instantly.
After I’d answered him, Charlie jumped off his swing which had been moving at a far quicker pace than mine. I eyed him suspiciously as he began wiping himself down. Since when did he care about the dirt that latched itself onto him?
“What are you doing?” I asked slowly.
“Nothing.” He shrugged. “I’m just gonna get my hoodie ‘cause it’s getting a little cold,” he said as he went around his swing. He slowed down when he was about to pass the back of mine.
I should have seen it coming really.
“Don’t push me!”
I yelled at the top of my lungs the moment I felt Charlie’s hands touch my back. I made a break for it, but before I could leave the swing, he’d wrapped his arms around my waist. At first, I was intensely horrified. I was doing everything I could, from kicking my legs to jittering my body, just to loosen Charlie’s grip on me. He was laughing as I squirmed in his arms, but a short while after I started elbowing his stomach, I was struggling not to laugh myself. Every single person in the park must have been staring at us as though we were a pair of mentally deranged lunatics, but as laughter burst through my lips, I couldn’t have cared less.
“You’re horrible to me!” I finally yelled as I tried to hide my giggles.
“Let me push you and I’ll let go.” I could hardly understand him through his laughter.
“No!” I replied loudly. That was when Charlie resorted to tickling me. From that moment onwards, I had no choice but to give in. “Okay, okay! Fine!” I tried catching my breath. “But I hope you understand that you’ve achieved this through intense bullying and emotional abuse.”
I stopped fidgeting completely, and soon enough, Charlie had removed his arms from around my waist. I was shocked when I realised that I was tightly gripping onto the metal bars of the swing. I had no idea who’d touched them before me, yet I’d literally just grasped onto them without even thinking about it. My thoughts couldn’t process any further because before too long, Charlie was pushing me at a far faster pace than before.
At first, my stomach rolled every time I went high, but as I got into the momentum of the swinging, my grasp on the metal bars loosened, and my chest was rising up and down far slower than I thought it ever could. Forwards, backwards, forwards, backwards. I inhaled a deep breath of air. When I shut my eyes, the breeze that was shooting past me became all that I could concentrate on. It was absurd to think that I’d feared this so much a short time ago. It felt exhilarating.
As we were leaving the swings, there was an impossibly large grin on my face. It was as though I could still feel the gust of wind blowing through my hair. I still couldn't believe I’d done it, and it was even harder to believe that all it took for me to be able to go on that swing was Charlie. If he could make me do something like that, then I didn’t know what he couldn’t do. I’d never felt so close to him in my life.
Charlie had picked up his things, and we were now heading over towards where there was a wooden bench leaning against the fence of the park. While I sat on the bench itself, resisting to ask Charlie for the blanket in the meantime, Charlie plonked himself onto the ground in front of it.
“You do realise there’s a bench right here, don’t you? It’s the one I’m sitting on, in case you can’t see it,” I said to him.
“Oh, shit... and there is! Fricking hell, now that’ just blown my mind.”
“No need to be so sarcastic. It just seems weird to me.”
“Nah, the floor’s fine by me. I guess it’s what I’m used to.”
Sitting on a swing was one thing, but sitting on the unkempt ground was another. It would be one step at a time for me, that was for sure. I still couldn’t believe I’d done that. The amount of times Luke and Aimee had made fun of me for not even being able to sit on the grass of our back garden was unreal, and the amount of times people had stared at me for refusing to sit anywhere without some kind of cover was even more unbelievable. That wasn’t true now though because I’d just sat on a bare swing. It was incredible.
Charlie was now watching the children that were around us. With a sigh, I leaned back and let my eyes also wander around my surroundings. All of the children here were either laughing or running about like maniacs. Some of them were girls, some were boys, some had dark hair, some had red hair, some were dark skinned, others were paler than white marble, and some were noticeably rich, while others clearly weren’t, but they all seemed to be so similar right now. They didn’t care that the other kids had a different hair, eye or skin colour because they were too busy having fun. Social status meant nothing to them, and the judgemental attitude and dangers of the world hadn’t swallowed them up yet. I kind of wished I had that. Maybe that way, I wouldn’t have been afraid of so many things.
“I was a kid once.” Charlie’s voice snapped my eyes to him. He smiled, but it was filled with something distant. “You know, a proper kid: one that ran about the place, that laughed all of the time, that spent hours on end outside. I was really happy and everything. Happy all of the time.” He lowered his voice and turned to the floor. “Seems weird now.”
It always baffled me how one second, Charlie could have been acting like he was having the time of his life, and then the next, everything about him would seem so distant and... fragile. When he looked back up at me, I remembered the discussion I’d had with my mum at the beginning of the day. I really did wish I knew more about his home life.
____________________
Click here to read STOP AND STARE (PART TWENTY-FOUR)
I would've thought it might get a bit annoying by now, but it makes her just seem so much more unique and interesting. It also helps evolve the dynamic of her and Charlie's relationship really well. Like he's filling in the weaker parts of her personality and strengthening her as a person. Same with Zoey on Charlie. She's sort of yanking out his softer side in my eyes, giving him that outlet he needs to be himself and care for someone the way no one could ever do for him. It's like you have such a smooth way of bringing everything full circle like that. It mirrors the overall style of how things will soon go down in the story with the ending. (Which still unnerves me some D: )
I makes them seem so close and I love that their relationship is really blossoming. It makes me sad though, 'cause I know that it's all going to come crashing down. Zoey's going to find out the truth soon and I'm so going to cry when she does. I just want them to be happy together!