Chapter Text
The village of Adell - Wisconsin - was a frigid, life-filled corner in Sheboygan County. It was a grid of terraced houses perched in rows of trees, wedged between one wide sloping driveway and another.
One thing was certain - no one was going to vacation there. In short, Adell was beautiful in its own way, raw and sparkling as an immolated ice statue. Still, it was not a beauty that could have been appreciated by those who wanted rest. Too dark and isolated.
A dot surrounded by thickets. The streets were gray, the houses stood with ashen faces in small bricks smoothed with gray. The vegetation grew wild in the jagged edges of the walls and roses shone with frost in the courtyards.
The air recalled some expensive perfume, clotted in every abundant curve between the residences, almost an ocean breeze. Although the closest thing to a body of water around there was Lake Michigan.
A satellite shot would have captured only sloping roofs and busy heads on images - of a meager population of 512 inhabitants, who in a vicious and endless cycle went from killing for each other to killing each other.
The worst thing about Adell, however, was - passing over the very low ethnic diversity and the numerous occupational dislocations - the cold. The highest temperatures were those of August, which in any case rarely exceeded sixteen degrees Celsius.
This was no ordinary cold, but a constant, numbing chill that crackled through the branches of the evergreens. It was a pain in the back, a draft in the fabric of the coat. A chilling halo that seemed to come from beyond the grave.
All that ice congealed in the lumpy streets had somehow also taken root in the souls of the inhospitable people who populated that segment of land. Or, it was the lack of human warmth that made the city cold.
Everyone, in Adell, pursued the great and honest aim of their ends - to get rich, famous, respected and praised all over the city and never go out of the borders. If you had privilege or esteem in Adell - leaving, you would have been absorbed into the worldly jungle. Lost forever.
Among the population of 512 people squeezed into themselves like a large carcinogenic agglomeration, there were 210 families (strictly Adellish) - only 30% of them had children under the age of eighteen.
In that 30% we find the head cheerleader, daughter of the mayor, self-styled sixteen year old Charlotte Roberts. If normality had been a disease like Covid-19, Charlotte would have been frighteningly immune to it - or perhaps, a healthy carrier.
The school gymnasium lights were hateful - they put shadows in the wrong places, were too far apart and worked intermittently. Not a surprise. The gymnasium itself was a cluster of limestone mold in a tapering rectangle of cracked blue walls.
That would probably be another problem for her father to solve. She didn't particularly care. The girls' sneakers - who were arranged in a haphazard array in front of her - creaked on the waxed floor. She was getting a headache.
She tugged at the bright ash-blonde strands with her fingers, quickly pushing the hair into a loose, high bun. Soft, shorter strands fell around her face. She snorted them away. A black rubber band floated in her mouth - waiting to be used.
The pandemic had destroyed her team. It almost seemed that only the terror for her reaction —Charlotte, the snakehead of the high school girls' thiasus—made them move their legs in those awful totally erroneous twists.
She took the rubber band out of her mouth and quickly tucked it into her hair, twisting it with a snap. The tapered nails scratched the the skin. She breathed in, heavily. The first ones in the horizontal line in front of her moved their hands, staring at her with concern.
Charlotte tried to stay calm, really tried. For like- a hundredth of a second. Then, her mouth opened before her brain could stop it.
«Felicia» she hissed, giving her words an icy undertone like the window sill. «Squeeze those goddamn elbows before I break your arms - that's a stunted chicken not a Daggers».
Felicia—back of the line, doe brown eyes and knobby legs—slided onto her sneakers, squeaking like a rat caught in a trap, and crashed her arms into something more socially acceptable.
Charlotte wasn't done. «Keen, you can't make a goddamn Broken T if you don't have the goddamn T first.» There was a manic gleam in the blue eyes—they indeed looked like the overflowing shores of the Arctic.
She gestured violently throughout the workout. She was also pretty sure that her screaming lungs would never be the same again. Three and a half hours later, it was pitch dark behind the window. The cheerleaders’ shadow long on the blue, dump floor.
«The only thing you managed to do well this morning was wake up, crash your damn hair in those nice high ponytails,» she scolded them, sinking her hands into her hips. «And put on your training clothes» - shorts and tight black tank tops.
She threw her small hands into the air with an exasperated expression. The tail swung behind her head. The face was beautiful and bright as a ray of sunshine, despite the burning words. «Some of you were not even successful in that».
She shot a deep reproachful look at Rienna - front right, miles of legs and warm skin, on the verge of hysterical crying - which shrunk into the huge red football player jersey she was wearing - number 8, her boyfriend’s.
Charlotte rubbed her forehead, exhaling frustration between her teeth - perfectly set white rows, toothpaste commercial style - «Felicia, I'll thank you for the nightmares about your stunted chicken,» she huffed.
The girl looked at her confused, wondering whether to kneel at her feet and ask for forgiveness or start laughing. She nodded nervously, rubbing her wrists.
«And stop shaking,» her leader added, «Going through the pandemic with your ass on the couch made you forget we live in Adell and how does it feel to be cheerleading in the -7 grades of December?» She arched her blond eyebrows.
Even so, actually, Charlotte almost sweated. The cold had never been a big problem for her, at least not when there was training. Daily life was a whole other story, unfortunately.
The thin straps of the undershirt exposed the protruding expanse of diaphanous collarbones. If they hadn't known that her family had lived in Adell since the city's founding in 1848, the girls would have assumed she was from Alaska - or something along those lines.
Her skin was as smooth and thin as blown glass, her complexion extremely pale and firm as porcelain. Her cheeks always flared easily and there was nothing bluer than her eyes.
«I have something in mind to wake you from your pandemic slumber,» Charlotte finally said. The sixteen cheerleaders held their breath, her ideas always torture in disguise. «We’ll do new selections».
Instantly a disgruntled rumbling bubbled through the icy air. The narrow walls of the gymnasium made the sound uncomfortably reverberate like amplifiers. «We don't need new girls,» Lim—every curl, a whim—protested. «And tomorrow we have a game to attend».
Charlotte arched an eyebrow, taking silence in the room with a clap. «I didn't say I want new girls,» she ignored the attempts to protest, continuing. «Some days after the game, I will reform the team, still sixteen girls - but you may not be there».
They would have reacted better if she had just punched them in the stomach. Many eyes watered. Maddy brought her manicured hands to her mouth, «Char,» she gasped, worried, «This is – our last year, don't you want to win the nationals together one last time?».
Maddy - sweet Maddy. She and Charlotte had known each other since 4th grade, had been cheerleading teammates since freshman year — before that in the same dance troupe for two years and three years of gymnastics at a school thirty minutes away.
Maddy was that typical perfectly average kind of girl. Dirty blond - almost brown - hair shifty brown eyes, manicured peach pink nails. Average grades, average flexibility, average beauty. Perfect, in all the way.
However, Maddy had an unhealthy tendency to do everything Charlotte did and get sad when Charlotte excelled, while she fell behind - despite the effort. It made it difficult for Charlotte to be honest with her under certain circumstances.
The comment was brushed aside without a response, as many others piled on it. For example: «No, you can't do it». Lim whimpered, baring her sharp little teeth in an agonized gurgle, «I don't leave my place».
She was a cute little sophomore—essentially a leprechaun with a mop of brown curls and huge candy-colored eyes. Her hyperactivity the year before had gotten to Charlotte—she usually didn't accept freshmen.
The head cheerleader smiled, not at all reassuring - crude and provocative. «I can do what I want, but I’m giving you the opportunity to regain your place, if you can - if you deserve it,» she replied, as merciless as Adell's thick hail on her back in February. «Do you?».
Lim looked strangely revived. She threw back her narrow shoulders, putting a brave expression on her face. «Certainly, fuck» she snorted. crossing her arms over her small breasts. «There is no - and I mean no - bitch, who deserves it more than me».
Charlotte nodded in satisfaction, her hand buried in her side - above the sensual bulge of her hips squeezed into her black shorts. «Prove to me that you are the only bitch, then» she buzzed ironically, «the same goes for you all, I will inform you of the date tomorrow.»
She looked around, considering the waning twilight in the dimly lit gymnasium, the sliver of moon at the window. «You can go now,» she finally gave up.
In Adell the streets were tinged with black night at disarming hours - it could be at six in the afternoon as well as at four, or even dark just after lunch. It was unspoken law to go home in pairs with each other, or with someone else.
Charlotte shook her head, heading for her duffel bag - by the climbing wall. It was a rough, porous thing, but she was never going to replace it - despite her mother's urgings. Norah didn't understand, of course.
That bag had accompanied her to her first Cheerleading lesson, when she had entered through that enormous door in the guise of a disheveled one fourteen year old gnome.
She ran her fingers through the dull gray canvas - once white. Time went by really fast. She rummaged inside it, looking for her towel - immediately encountered the familiar soft lump.
Charlotte quickly wiped away the sweat. Now she was a senior, head cheerleader, primary student council representative. She would have turned eighteen in August, in nine months. She had a busy life and a repressed desire to scream in the street.
She took a sip from the mineral water bottle. The refreshing taste on her lips couldn't take away the burning in her stomach, but nothing stopped her from trying.
She slung the bag over her shoulder and squeezed the bottle between her fingers. Striding across the gym, she took off her coat and scarf from the coat hanger. She quickly slipped on her coat and tied the scarf nicely around her neck.
Then, the girl inhaled and forked through the door, leaving the cold and now empty room as the last one. Her hands were already shaking from the cold as she pressed the key into the lock. There was a mad current in the corridor.
The voice behind her didn't catch her off guard. «I still can't believe that Mr. Klein left you the keys to the gym», her boyfriend, Henry Anderson - son of a lawyer, classic idiotic nerd and a bit of a classist head - joked.
«Well, he was pretty malleable,» Charlotte conceded, «After the toupee incident». Henry laughed openly, wrapping her shoulders in a hug. His chapped lips brushed her temple. The heat spread through her rapidly - a natural comfortable response.
It was common for them to go home together after practice, unless he had plans with his father or his chess club, especially if she ended her practice really late. Henry had a car and Random Lake High School wasn't exactly around the corner.
It felt good to have his warm, muscular body draped around her – even through the thick layers of clothes, scarves and coats. «One day you'll have to tell me about this toupee thing», he begged her for the umpteenth time.
Charlotte giggled, blowing hot air on her hands as they slipped in the cold outside of the dark parking lot. Nowhere did the stars shine like in Adell. She had a visceral relationship with those milky specks.
The moon hadn't risen yet at the time, though. The stars were only a hint in the darkest shadows of the evening twilight. Within the confines of that sky falling over Adell lay all the things she needed to know - or should have known - and want.
Ethereal warmth glowed in the broad curve of Henry's shoulders, smoothing the dark coat and sweetening the Ralph Lauren perfume. The tuft of black hair was an ink stain on his forehead. Eyes so dark no one could tell what color they were.
He gallantly opened the door of the matt black BMW for her, with a theatrical gesture. A flash of white teeth in the evening and Charlotte sank into the front seat, already fiddling with the AC to turn on the heat, as he made his way to the driver seat.
During the journey, Charlotte amused herself by testing Henry's patience. She connected her cell phone to the car's bluetooth and shared her favorite playlist - a collection of all the songs that Henry hated - he actually used to say that he would have rather burst his eardrums, than listen to them.
About ten minutes later, they pulled into Charlotte's driveway. It was the kind of house you saw in old American movies. The purple peonies tended in the garden, blurring a sweet smell, the white fence and the tall gate.
The building stood out against the evening in a very high cocoon, like a mountain, in its three floors of beaten brick. The white ceiling faded into ash gray walls.
Henry tapped his fingers on the dashboard, Astronomy by Conan Gray was playing in the background. Charlotte was opening the door, her breath caught by the draft of air. æIs your father at home?» he asked, with apparent casualness.
Charlotte's blue eyes gleamed in the dark, focused on the front door of her house. One foot was already down on the asphalt. She didn't turn to the boy, limiting herself to turning her back to him. She felt the cold burn her bare legs, under the long coat.
And there he was again - smooth-talking Henry Anderson, the upstart son of Sheboygan County's most famous attorney, - willing to do anything to curry favor with Mayor Roberts in hopes of landing some juicy lawsuit.
She rolled her eyes, knowing she wasn't being seen. «No, you know he works a lot,» she snorted, disappointment embedded in the back of her dry throat, where it would have stayed. «I think he will spend the night in the office» for work, right.
The blondie, then, threw herself out of the passenger compartment, recovering the bag under her feet and smiled dryly, smacking her lips. She caught Henry's alarmed look. «Charlotte, I'm sorry I was-» he started to say. His dark eyes glittered in the shadows.
Charlotte slammed the door over his face and swayed towards the front door, already rocking the keys in the palm of her hand. Henry wouldn't have followed her, he predictably heard the engine roar. «Doing what his father wanted» she mumbled, under her breath.
Charlotte wasn't sure that she loved Henry - which, by default, meant that she didn't in fact love him, otherwise she would have known. She didn't even hate him, obviously, not that this was an achievement. She did not prevent energy in hate.
She thought she just was very close to loving him, however. She didn’t think she could really love someone, actually. But - the first time their parents had let them play together was when they were five. Henry's mother had died of cancer - the little boy was a confused mess - a month earlier and his father was filing the lawsuit against the city for dirty water pipes, that would have made him famous later on.
Charlotte's father - Oliver Roberts - and Henry's father had entered into an under-the-table deal. Oliver allegedly helped Lynn Anderson win the case with information about the board. In return, he would use Lynn's campaign to ascend to mayor and renovate the water pipes.
An intricate and Machiavellian arrangement as much as it was disgusting and morally unacceptable. So life was, in Adell. And there was nothing Charlotte would have loved more than leaving. Going somewhere else, forever.
Her only option was to get into an Ivy League school on a scholarship, so hopefully her parents would have let her go - even if just out of pride and the completion of her education. That senior year would have decided her entire existence.
So, yeah - maybe Charlotte loved Henry, in the little niche - cage - of their godforsaken city, but that crumbly love was nothing compared to the world outside that cage - that betrothal imposed by their fathers was a decoration.
Their relationship - first friendship - was an excuse, and alibi, to justify the proximity between the lawyer Lynn Anderson and the mayor Oliver Roberts. A misogynistic and very unrewarding thing, at least for her as a person.
When she entered the house, her mother was sitting at the mahogany table in the living room with a crooked stack of paperwork in front of her, her fifties bob gleaming in waves of gold behind her ears. The glasses were committed on the straight nose.
She lifted her blue eyes - terrifyingly frozen and paralyzing as distilled poison - as she heard the door slam. She was reminiscent of an old-fashioned American movie. «Good morning, Charlotte» she chirped, gulping down a sip of coffee, without smearing her lipstick.
Her shoulders were thin and her torso straight like a stiff corolla. A scarf hung around her diaphanous throat. «Olimpia left some stew in the oven, you just have to take it out,» she informed her daughter, «Practice?».
Charlotte unbuttoned the jacket slowly, controlling the trembling of her icy fingers, then released the coat on the hanger with a grimace. It was too cold in the living room - the beige walls, the waxed floor - an uncomfortable depth.
She made her way to the oven with her stomach growling, wrinkling her nose at the smell of air sanitizer that inhabited the cooking angle. «The girls suck, the pandemic grilled them,» she said candidly, «I threatened to replace them.»
Her voice rang out in the open plan corner kitchen, which was recessed into the living room itself without a dividing wall. She slipped her icy hands into the warm holders, pulling the stew out of the oven. «New selections,» she snorted, with fake enthusiasm.
A grunt of approval rang in Norah Roberts’ throat. «Right decision,» she said, furrowing her perfectly pinched eyebrows at something in the documents between her thin hands. «A stick works better with adolescents than a carrot».
Charlotte waggled her eyebrows in bewilderment at the stew, crashing two portions into the beige earthenware dishes. She'd been trying to convince herself forever that she wasn't snappy and pretentious like her mother—she hadn't done a good job.
Dishes clinked on the mahogany table. She strained silently on the chair, sitting to the left of her mother - who was at the head of the table - pushing a fork into each plate. «What poor soul will you afflict, next week?» asked.
Her mother was too sophisticated to roll her eyes, but the twitching of her red mouth probably meant the same. «I already told you, Charlotte,» she moaned. «I don't afflict anybody, The Sounder writes what is-».
«99.9% true and absolutely not aimed at any kind of aiding or abetting any individual and/or animal and/or object». Charlotte finished and stuck her fork into the stew.«Have you ever written about dad?» She challenged, rebellious.
Norah persisted in pursuing the ideal of journalism she embraced when she was young, the one that denounced the big monsters of the city - like that case about the extremely dangerous plumber thief of cinnamon. The monster, however, was the one she had married.
Predictably, the woman didn't answer. She just swung the papers aside with her arm and took a bite of the stew - their cook, Olimpia's signature dish.
Charlotte politely waited for her mother to finish chewing before speaking. «Henry wanted to know if Oliver was home,» she said finally, peering at the curve of her mother's high cheekbone out of the corner of her eye. Her pink lips closed around a piece of meat.
It might seem strange - looking at that mass of coldness and haughtiness that Norah represented - but her mother was really the only person to whom Charlotte told everything. She also told her about her escape plans.
Usually, the woman just told her that she had seen the world and still saw it every day, for work. According to her, it was nothing special - just a conglomeration of pieces of land, corruption and private property. Her exact words.
«Dad-». She corrected - sibyllin - dabbing her mouth with a napkin, leaving a lipstick stain on the cloth. «It's probably with Jess,» he said, scanning the hinged door at the other end of the room. «Or with Erika, or what was the new one - the one with the Russian name?».
«Sofiya,» Charlotte quickly provided. What was most disturbing was that her mother actually said such a thing as if she were talking about Adell's always stormy weather - with the same certainty and the same intent.
The woman nodded knowingly, «Right». She returned to staring at the documents in a fan on the table, a narrow and straight line of the back, almost punishing. «Get to those damned Nationals,» she commanded harshly, «so just the three of us will go where they’ll be taken.»
Certainly - that was how it worked. Her mother couldn't get Oliver's attention, so she asked her for difficult, almost impossible things to prove her progenitor's work was worth it. It was suffocating - that trust placed in her - to be able to.
Charlotte never understood - since she was a child - how her father could go seeking the company of other women when faced with the breathtaking beauty that was Norah. A cross between Marilyn Monroe and Rosalie from Twilight - Crazy Bride version.
Her leathery armor of coldness hadn't always been there, it had been painstakingly built over years of inaction in that wretched city. Although Norah said she hated the rest of the world too, Charlotte did not believe it. She had seen her mother's travel photos.
Her worst nightmare started like this - Charlotte in the role of her mother and Henry in that of her father, playing on a golden stage of suffering and vicious luxury.
She gave up on the last few chunks of the stew on her plate - decided to put it in the oven for later. Then, she moved up the flight of marble stairs. She had just climbed the first three steps when her mother spoke to her, without looking up from her papers.
«Do you want to smear another canvas, or worse - another wall?» she snorted, waving her hand in the air. The words were harsh, ringing in the cold cavern of the stairs. «You don't live on art - artists are all mad, don't let strange rumors circulate - Van Gogh, you know?».
Charlotte struggled to keep the smile on her lips, rolling her eyes on the slim form of Norah. «The other day I drew a field of sunflowers, okay - but this does not mean I will sever part of my left ear» she scoffed.
Her mother let out a soft snort. «It will be better, or I will sever your fair little head - and that would be a pity». She seemed really taken by those documents if she didn’t lift her head for menacing her, and it was starting to worry Charlotte a lot.
The girl swallowed, suppressing a shudder, and forced a dry laugh. «Van Gogh was a genius out of a million,» she defended, «and our city is famous for its large art collection, so it is thought that we as a family-signature should appreciate-».
Her mother cut it off with a single hard look into the glass of her rectangular glasses. «Okay, I didn't say I want to give a press conference against liberal forms of art» she reproached her, «spare me your rhetoric». At least, she looked up.
Charlotte shrugged thin shoulders apologetically and pushed a blonde strand behind her ear with a smile – before pirouetting up the stairs.
The second floor looked like a vampire's home and Charlotte's room like its nest. There hadn't been a day that Norah hadn't complained about the ash-colored curtains hanging over the blinds, the stacks of albums on the desk, or the books stacked on the sheets.
Charlotte did not let others - not even the maids - enter there. It was her refuge, her secret place - her angulus, as the poet Horace would say. Every inch of that room revealed something about her that no one knew.
The cocoon of sheets resting on the hollow square of the window sill chest - for example - hid and recounted sleepless nights looking at a sky studded with stars. A map of constellations attached to smoky grey plaster and some stars painted on the dark blue walls.
The wide black floor reflected - in the few places that were not covered with crumpled newspapers, maps and sketches - the flickering light of the ceiling chandelier. The AC was constantly set to a California temperature.
The amount of books - including Fantasy - on her shelves would have revealed a nerd streak that no one would have been able to identify in her. She threw herself on the bed, pulling off the thick hardback book of the first trilogy of The Mortal Instruments from under the back.
She had already read it five times, in full. However, each time was exactly like the first. While she had a slight dislike for the main protagonist, Clary and her best friend Simon, her love for Jace's character compensated extensively for all of this.
Although her favorite character was undoubtedly Alec - he was just too human and sweet. With these thoughts in mind she fell asleep, the huge book heavy on her chest.