He just didn't understand what was going on. Sitting on his couch watching the latest episode of Celebrities Under Water, he was only half paying attention to, he kept finding his thoughts drift to his best friend. Charlotte had been acting really strange these last few weeks, and Henry wasn't exactly sure what was up with her. He had mentioned it to Jasper, but he didn't really think anything was going on. Jasper wasn't exactly the most observant so it was of no surprise that he hadn't noticed Charlotte's unusual behavior.

Maybe it was a girl thing? Henry didn't really know much about girl issues, having only a younger sister who had yet to go through any big girl changes. He was pretty sure however that whatever girl issues she would have wouldn't have lasted this long. But what did he know about those things, hormones and stuff. He understood though that being a girl surrounded by a bunch of guys, it was hard for her to talk to them about some of her problems. So maybe that was it?

But no matter what it was, Henry was concerned. Charlotte wasn't giving any clues as to what was going on and he wasn't sure how much longer he could let this strange behavior continue before he asked her about it.

As he was zoning out, he heard the doorbell ring. He wasn't expecting anyone and the rest of his family were out for the evening, Piper being at a friends house and his parents had gone to see a movie. Looking out of the window, Henry saw his ex-girlfriend Bianca at the door. Sighing slightly, he decided not to be rude and stepped out onto the porch to speak with her.

"Bianca, what are you doing here?"

Henry and Bianca hadn't really chatted too much recently, since they had broken up last year. They agreed to still be friends, both knowing that their relationship wasn't going to work out, but just weren't very comfortable hanging out now that they weren't a couple.

"Hey, Henry. Sorry to just show up like this without calling. I hope I'm not coming here at a bad time."

"No. It's alright." Henry sighed. "But Bianca, if you are coming here to get back together with me, I'm not sure if that's such a great idea."

"Oh no! That's not why I'm here. I totally agree with you on that."

"Well okay then. Um, why are you here exactly?"

"Actually, I'm here because of Charlotte."

"Charlotte?"

"Yeah. I promised her I wouldn't say anything to anyone, but she's my friend and I want to help her and the only way I know how is to get your help."

"Do you know why she's been acting so weird lately?"

"Henry, she's being bullied."

"What? By who?"

"That new girl, Heather, in Charlotte and I's gym class. I don't know everything, and Charlotte wouldn't have told me about it except I saw them in the locker room the other day and it was pretty clear what was happening. When I confronted Charlotte about it, she told me it had been going on for about almost two weeks now and has steadily gotten worse."

"So that's why she's been acting strange, making excuses about things, it all makes sense. But why wouldn't she tell me? I'm her best friend."

"I'm not exactly sure. She was pretty adamant about me not telling anyone. If I had to guess, Heather is probably threatening her. Charlotte may be scared that if she tells it will get even worse."

"I can't believe I didn't realize what's been going on with her. She's my best friend, we're together all of the time. I knew something was up, based on how she's been acting recently but I haven't really tried to figure out what it is. I'm a horrible best friend."

"I came here to tell you about it because you are a great best friend. If anyone can help Charlotte it's you. I know it."

"Problem is I'm not sure what to do. If Charlotte doesn't want anyone to know, me telling her that I do know might just scare her away from me."

"Let her know that you aren't going to back down. Let her know that you want to help her. She will come around."

Henry sighed. "I really appreciate you telling me this Bianca. That was really nice of you to have Charlotte's back."

"Of course. I hope you can help her."

Bianca soon left Henry's porch and Henry himself had returned inside to the sanctuary of his room. Sitting on his bed he started to think about the past few weeks and all of the red flags that had occurred with Charlotte that should have tipped him off to something being seriously wrong.

Henry was in his room, waiting for Charlotte to arrive. He had texted her earlier to come by, and he was going to finally confront her. Now that he knew from Bianca what had been bothering Charlotte for the past few weeks, he wasn't going to let the problem continue.

"Hey, what did you need me here for?" Charlotte asked as she climbed through Henry's bedroom window.

"Hey. Come sit down." Henry patted the space next to him.

"I don't really have time to stay, I was just walking home from the library when I got your text to come here. I need to get home so I can finish some homework."

"I thought you finished your homework today during study hall." Henry accused.

"Well I did finish some, but I have more to do."

"You can't possibly have that much homework."

"Well, I do." Charlotte raised her voice at him. "Now tell me what you wanted to tell me, because I have to get going."

"I want you to tell me why you've been so weird these past few weeks. What's been going on with you?" Henry pressed.

"It's nothing. I really have to go."

Henry moved to block the window so she couldn't leave. He was going to get her to talk to him about this.

"Charlotte, I know something has been going on with Heather."

"You don't know anything."

"I know that she's been bullying you."

"What? Who told you that?" Charlotte asked.

Henry ignored her question. "That's why you've been acting the way you have recently, this girl is bullying you?"

Charlotte sighed. "Okay, yes. That's what's happening. But it's not a big deal, I can handle it okay?"

She made to move past him again, but he reached out and placed a hand on her shoulder to stop her. "Charlotte, why wouldn't you tell me about this?"

"I don't know, okay. I didn't think it was a problem at first."

"Some girl bullying you isn't a problem? You should have told me. I can help you. I'm Kid Danger. More importantly, I'm your best friend."

"I'm sorry okay? I just thought I could handle it on my own, and after a while she would stop. Get tired and move on."

"You need to tell me what's happening."

"I don't know. If I tell you and she finds out, she's just going to bully me more."

"I can help you Charlotte, trust me, I won't let her hurt you anymore but you have to tell me what's going on."

So that night, Charlotte and Henry sat on his bed as she explained to him what had been happening with Heather. How she started out just by making fun of her during gym class, calling her names and laughing at her, but then it escalated to actually trying to hurt her during kick ball games or volleyball matches. Just being attacked in gym class wasn't so bad, but then Heather started doing it elsewhere. She would sometimes threaten her in the locker room, slam her against the lockers. Then she started to throw her down in the hallways if no one else was looking. Occasionally Heather would wait for Charlotte in the parking lot and if she was alone, she would assault her. The physical attacks are how she was threatening Charlotte. She would make Charlotte do all of her homework and if Charlotte didn't comply, or didn't complete it she said she would continue to hurt her. Charlotte had been nearly killing herself for the past week trying to keep up with both her schoolwork and Heather's.

"Char. I can't believe this girl is really hurting you."

"I guess I'm an easy target for her. I'm smart so she wants me to do her homework, but I'm also small so how am I supposed to defend myself against her physical attacks. It's a win-win for her."

"Well this isn't going to fly with me. I'm not going to allow somebody to assault you."

"I appreciate that Henry, but I don't know what to do here. I'm not big enough to threaten her back, and if she finds out that you know it will only get worse for me." Charlotte stood up and grabbed her back pack. "Thanks for the concern, but I have to get home. I still have some of Heather's homework to finish up before school tomorrow."

"Wait. Didn't your parents go out of town for the weekend today?"

"Yeah. They'll be back Sunday night. Why?"

Henry reached into his dresser drawer and grabbed a t-shirt and a pair of pajama pants and tossed them on the bed in front of her. "You can stay here tonight. We aren't going to school tomorrow."

"We have to go to school tomorrow. I have to give Heather the homework or she's going to be mad."

"We aren't going to school tomorrow, Charlotte. It's Friday, and that means it gives us a three day weekend to head to the man cave and figure out what to do about this whole ordeal. Plus, you deserve a few days to not have to watch your back 24/7. I'll be with you the whole time."

"I don't know."

Henry moved forward and hugged her. "Trust me, Char. It's going to be okay, I promise."

As Henry lay on his blow up mattress that night, he looked over to Charlotte who was currently asleep on the bed. She was a girl, his friend, and was getting beaten up and threatened by someone twice her size; of course he was going to let her have his bed. He saw that she was actually sleeping pretty peacefully, which was surprising to him. He had half expected her to have some trouble falling asleep on a count of how her last few weeks had been, but he just assumed she felt comforted knowing she had a friend with her. Looking back up at the ceiling he started to think back to the previous week and all of the red flags that he should have picked up on.

Red Flag #1: Charlotte made excuses not to eat lunch in the lunchroom.

Flashback:

Packing up his books after math class, Henry looked towards Charlotte who sat behind him. "Man, I'm starving. That bell couldn't have taken any longer to ring. Let's head to lunch quick, we want to be close to the front of the line so they don't run out of tacos like the last time."

"Yeah tacos are quite a hot commodity. But I'm not going to the lunch room today, sorry." Charlotte apologized.

"Where are you going?"

"Um, I have to go to the computer lab and work on some stuff for yearbook committee." This was usually Charlotte's go to excuse as neither Henry nor Jasper were on the yearbook committee and it was usually easy to get away with saying that was where she was.

"You missed lunch yesterday to do that."

"Yeah well I didn't finish. So I have to go again today." Another lie.

"Okay, but finish up so you can eat lunch tomorrow. I'm getting really sick of just eating with Jasper. Yesterday when you weren't there, he tried to get me to sniff his lunchmeat to see if it was expired."

"Gross. Was it?"

"Yes!" He shouted.

Charlotte giggled. "I promise. Tomorrow I'll be at lunch.

"You're so busy all of a sudden."

"I know. I'm sorry. I just have a lot on my plate right now. I'm not trying to ditch you on purpose."

Seeing the look on her face that she was truly sorry, Henry decided not to push it. "I understand. See ya later."

"Better hurry. You wouldn't want to miss out on the tacos."

Looking back on the situation, he knew she was just trying to avoid Heather. He wasn't exactly sure where she went during lunch period, maybe it actually was the computer lab, but Henry doubted it.

Red Flag #2: Charlotte kept blowing him off after school because she had a lot of schoolwork.

Flashback:

"Hey, you want to get some frozen yogurt after school today? I hear Yotally Togurt is having a half off sale on strawberry yogurt because it's going to expire next week."

"No thanks. I'm not very fond of strawberry yogurt."

"Who cares, we've gotta get it while the gettin's good!"

"I don't think so."

"Well you don't have to get the strawberry, you can get whatever you want. I'll even buy. We haven't hung out in a while outside of work. I miss my best friend."

"I'm sorry, but I have a lot of homework to do. Maybe some other time."

"Yeah. Okay then. Some other time."

"I'll see you later."

In hindsight, he should have realized she could never have had that much homework. He was in half of her classes himself.

Red Flag #3: She had been tired and physically weak.

Flashback:

Walking into the mancave, Henry sighed. Today he and Charlotte had to help Ray clean up the man cave. Ray had ordered a new shirt online, and there was some form of mix-up and somehow the company delivered a few thousand of them. Charlotte has insisted that he must have accidentally hit the quantity button on the order form and ordered a few thousand of them by mistake, but Ray kept insisting that it was a company clerical error. However Henry realized that Ray wouldn't let any of them actually see the order form, so he assumed Charlotte was right on this one.

As they entered the man cave, Charlotte went to sit down on the couch and Henry went to yell for Ray.

"Hey Ray, we are here to help move the boxes of t-shirts that you mistakenly ordered."

"I told you already!" Ray yelled from his room. "It wasn't my fault. It was a clerical error!"

"Yeah, yeah. Just come out okay, let's get started so we can finish." Henry walked back to the couch to see Charlotte laying down on it, eyes closed, seemingly asleep. He nugged her. "Hey Char? Are you sleeping?"

"Hm? No." She sat up. "Just resting my eyes."

As the night went on and they were moving the boxes, Henry noticed that Charlotte could barely lift them. Of course, she was small. He knew that out of all three of them, Charlotte could lift the least amount of weight. However, he saw that when she would lift a box, she would wince. And when she sat the box down she would rub the small of her back.

"You alright?" Henry asked her.

"Oh yeah, I think I just pulled a muscle lifting the box."

Now that he knew what had been going on, he knew that was just one more thing she had lied about. She didn't pull a muscle lifting the box. She had already been injured by Heather. The back pain was probably from being shoved into the lockers in the gym locker room. How could he not have seen through the lie? Because Charlotte never lied to him, until now.

Taking a final glance at his best friend sleeping, he silently vowed that he would do anything in his power to keep her safe.

Friday morning Charlotte woke up to the sun in her eyes. Opening them, she saw that she was not in her own room. It only took her a few seconds to remember that she was at Henry's house, but as she looked around the room, he was nowhere to be found. However she saw the blowup mattress on the floor with disheveled blankets and knew he must already be up. Looking at the alarm clock she saw that it was almost 11am.

"Oh my gosh, I've slept way late."

"Oh you're awake."

Charlotte looked up into the doorway to see Henry coming into the room.

"Yeah, sorry I slept so late."

"It's alright. I expected it, you've had a rough few weeks."

"I really appreciate you letting me stay here Henry, you didn't have to do that. Especially since you could get in trouble if your parents knew you missed school today."

"Don't worry about it, I woke up early and pretended like I went to school. Then when they left for work I came back."

"You're a good friend Henry."

"Now let's think about what we are going to do about Heather."

Charlotte sighed. "Do we have to talk about that? Can't we just pretend like she doesn't exist?"

"How's that been working out for you?"

"Not good."

"That's what I thought. Now Charlotte, I know this is rough for you to talk about but we have to talk about it or I can't help you." Henry sat down on the bed next to her.

"I know, I'm just scared." Charlotte confessed. "I don't know what's going to happen."

Henry put his hand on her shoulder. "Do you trust me?" He saw Charlotte nod her head. "Then you know that I'll protect you. I won't let you get hurt. I promise."

It had been two days, and Henry and Charlotte still didn't have much of a plan on what to do about Heather. There had been a disaster in Swellview Park and Captain Man and Kid Danger were needed to help. It took up the whole of their Saturday, and now they were into Sunday without a plan. Sitting in the man cave, Henry, Charlotte, Ray, and Schwoz were eating lunch. She hadn't wanted Ray and Schwoz to figure out what was going on but then decided the more ideas the better.

"Have you thought about just going to the principal? Telling them about what Heather is doing?" Ray suggested. "I mean, isn't there supposed to be a zero tolerance policy on bullying in school?"

Charlotte sighed. "I think so, but going to the principal means I'll never hear the end of it from her about being a tattle tale. And it doesn't guarantee that it will even stop. She may just keep hurting me in private, maybe even outside of school."

Schwoz put down his burrito. "What about just having Henry be your body guard?"

"I'm totally willing to be by her side as much as I can, but I just can't be there all of the time." Henry took another bite of his sandwich. "We only have half of our classes together, and it's not like I can follow her into the bathroom or the girl's locker room."

"Yeah, and I don't expect Henry to be there 24/7 anyways. He can't spend the next 5 years following me around the school." Charlotte agreed.

"How long has this been going on again?" Ray asked.

"A little more than 2 weeks for the actually bullying, but she's been picking on me ever since she started going to our school over a month ago."

"Where did she live before?" Ray asked.

"I'm not sure. Her dad is in the military and she moves around a lot I guess."

"Hmm, you would think with a military father she would be better disciplined."

Charlotte sighed. "Well my guess is because she moves around a lot, she could never make friends and that is what makes her so angry and she channeled that into being the bully that she is today."

Henry scoffed at her. "I know you like to see the good in everyone, but don't try to justify what she is doing to you Charlotte. There is no excuse. Nobody gets to just bully and assault someone because she's having a tough time with her emotions."

"I'm not saying what she is doing is okay, I'm just saying I've seen this pattern before."

Schwoz chimed in. "What if we talk to her parents. Maybe tell them what she has been doing and they can try to help her?"

Ray shook his head. "Man, you must have been the biggest tattler as a kid."

"What is wrong with tattling?!

"We are trying to get this girl to STOP bullying Charlotte, not to give her more ammunition and reason to."

"Guys, thanks for the help, but I just don't see what we can do." Charlotte sighed and stabbed her salad. "I'm going to go home now."

As Charlotte stood up, Henry reached for her arm. "I'll walk you home, just wait for me upstairs okay? Don't go alone."

"Okay. I'll see you in a few minutes."

They watched as she walked out of the room. Henry turned back to the other two guys. "Ray, your friend in the air force, Sergeant Davis, doesn't he owe Captain Man a favor?"

"Yeah, I got his kitten down from a tree one time. He said anything he could do for me, just name it."

"Really?!" said Schwoz. "Just for getting his little kitten down from a tree? Hardly seems like an act worthy of an "anything" reward."

"Doesn't matter what he did to get it, Schwoz. What matters is Sergeant Davis owes him one. So, are you thinking what I'm thinking Ray?" Henry smiled.

"We ask Sergeant Davis to help us get rid of all of those t-shirts I received in the mail! Yes, Henry what a great idea. I bet he knows so many people in the air force, I can get rid of those shirts in no time!"

"No! Not the t-shirts! Okay, here's what I'm thinking…"

"Are you sure we can't just stay home for another day?" Charlotte asked as she and Henry walked into the school.

"I'll be with you anytime you aren't in class. And Bianca promised to stay with you the whole time during gym." Henry reassured her. "I promise you will be alright."

"But I didn't come to school on Friday so Heather never got her homework and I didn't do hers for today either."

"I don't really think that matters now."

"What do you mean?" Charlotte asked him.

"Don't worry about it. Let's get to English before we are late."

Later that day, Henry and Charlotte walked into their art class and set up their easels. They had been working on a piece all week that was to be displayed at the schools annual art exhibit downtown. Before they could resume their paintings however, Jasper came into the class and called out to them.

"Hey Henry, Charlotte! Guess what?"

"What?" Henry replied.

"You know that girl Heather who moved here a few months ago?"

Henry noticed Charlotte visibly tense from the corner of his eye. He replied, "Yeah Jasper. What about her?"

"Well when I was in the office this morning, the principal called her in. I overheard something about sending her transcripts to her new school. Looks like she's leaving already. This must be the record for the shortest time spent at one school."

With that Jasper went to set up his easel. Instead of having a study hall, Jasper spent his fifth period in the office helping the principal and vice principal. Usually he filed papers, delivered messages to teachers, etc. Sometimes he would tell Charlotte and Henry about the newest gossip going on, but most of the time it was just about the secretary's latest blind date. Obviously not a lot goes on in the office of a middle/high school.

Charlotte turned to Henry. "Did you hear what he just said? Why is Heather going to a new school? Did you tell the principal? I thought we said that would only make things worse!"

"Slow down Char. I didn't tell the principal anything. I promise no one else knows about what's been happening."

"Well then why would Heather be moving schools?"

"Her dad is in the Air Force. It just so happens that Sergeant Davis, of the Air Force, owed Captain Man a favor."

"So what did Kid Danger and Captain Man do exactly?" Charlotte asked.

"They may have asked Sergeant Davis to give Heather's dad a new assignment, in a new city, far away from here. Also they may have asked for him to make it urgent. The new assignment starts in a few days so they have to head there ASAP."

Charlotte reached forward and pulled Henry into a hug. "Thanks for having my back. You're the greatest."

"You're welcome. I would do anything for you, you know that." They pulled back from the hug. "No one messes with my best friend. I love you, Char."

"I love you too, Henry."

Let me know what you guys think of this story! I have had it mostly finished for ages but never got around to actually completing it.