It had taken a while. First to get a hold of Charlie, and then to arrange a time to meet. In the time they'd been away it seemed to Sam he had lost almost all his phone etiquette. One time when she rung him the conversation had gone:
"Yeah?"
"Is this the Kelmeckis house?"
"Mhh-hmm." He sounded like he was doing something.
"Charlie?"
"Yep."
"It's Sam."
There was a pause. "Oh, hey."
Had he forgotten who she was for a minute? The thought made her feel like her throat had swollen shut.
"So, listen, do you want to get together sometime soon?"
"For what?"
"You know, to catch up."
Another pause. "Yeah... Okay. When did you have in mind?"
"Tonight?"
"Oh, sorry—" he said, but didn't sound like he meant it, "—can't tonight."
Click! That had been it. It took several conversations like that, and by the time Sam finally worked out a good day it had been almost a week past their initial encounter. And Sam had lost almost all hope. She thought maybe Charlie would shake out of whatever persona he was putting on after talking with her enough, but the trouble was she never could quite get him to talk. And not like the old days when he was just too busy thinking. Now it was like he wasn't thinking at all. His head seemed like a snail shell, and her Charlie had crawled out to find a new home a long time ago.
She didn't let herself think about it. She just adjusted her strategy a little bit. As much as she'd hated to admit it, Charlie was acting a lot like some of the guys Sam used to date. So she found an old, cheap getup, decked on the makeup, and jumped in her truck. She was going to meet Charlie outside his house. He had wanted to meet at King's, but Sam didn't want to run the risk of his newfound friends dropping by and spoiling her efforts.
"Be careful," Patrick had said, leaning against the door of the red truck.
"Patrick, it's Charlie."
"No," Patrick replied, sharply, "it's not Charlie. That's my problem."
Sam's heart had sunk, and Patrick saw it. He reached his arm in and placed his hand over hers as it sat idly on the steering wheel.
"Hey," he said with a forced smile, "But you're going to fix that, right?"
She smiled ruefully. "Yeah."
"Okay then. But... until he's listening to Asleep and speaking in short, profound blips—"
"Right. Be careful. Got it."
"Sam he's—"
"I know. Don't say it."
"He's acting just like—"
"Don't say it!"
He stopped. She could tell the words were halfway up his throat, and after a tense moment he swallowed them back down.
"Okay," he said, "Just be careful."
"I will."
"Okay."
"Okay."
She pulled out of the drive and headed for Charlie's. Her hands were shaking. She turned off the radio. Some terrible Top 40 song was playing. She fiddled with the stations for a few minutes, but gave up hope and punched it off. She tried not to be too melodramatic and take the bleak quality of the tunes as a sign of her successes to come.
"It's fine, Sam," she told herself, "This is Charlie. He's in there somewhere. He's got to be."
But some part of her wondered... When she had left he had seemed so flrail. He had gotten better that summer, but how much of a blow can somebody take before they just retreat? Run away? Hide someplace and throw away the key? She never did learn exactly what had happened to Charlie the beginning of last summer. She knew it was bad. She knew it had hit his whole family hard. She knew it had something to do with a family member. She'd worked out it was probably Charlie's aunt Helen, whom he used to speak of often. But just what had happened—what had been discovered—Sam didn't know. And though it might have made her job easier now, she wasn't sure she wanted to. It scared her. She wasn't sure she was ready for it. To hear about something that had torn down someone like Charlie, who despite everything was remarkably strong and special.
She shook her head for about the dozenth time. "You can't think like that, Sam," she said outloud, "You're on a resue mission here."
She pulled up to Charlie's house, threw the car into park, and honked her horn twice lightly, then waited and watched the door.