As soon as Charlotte shut the door, she knew her parents would recognise something was wrong. She was too subdued. Still, after a terrible day, she wasn't in the mood to act like everything was fine. Too tired to even drag her bag and jacket upstairs, she dumped them over the banister and traipsed into the flat.

"Bad day." Sherlock commented.

"Awful." She agreed.

John looked up. "What happened?"

"Nothing. It was just one of those days," she lied. "Can someone get me a drink whilst I get changed?" she asked, skipping away from the subject.

"Sure." John stood and went to the kitchen as Charlotte headed through to her room. Sherlock caught her wrist as she went past. She held his gaze for a moment, knowing that she wasn't going to be able to pass this off as nothing. She nodded, agreeing to explain later.

"I'll take it." Sherlock said when John came out of the kitchen with a mug.

John narrowed his eyes in suspicion. "You're voluntarily moving for something as "unimportant" as a drink?"

"I'm moving for Charlotte, not the drink. She is important."

John held up his hands in surrender as he passed the cup over. Sherlock knocked on Charlotte's door quietly. No answer. He tried to open it but there was something in the way.

"Charlotte?"

There was a shuffling from the other side and a minute later Sherlock was able to open the door enough to slip through. He nearly fell over Charlotte, who was had clearly been sat against the door when he tried to open it earlier. Sherlock sat down next to her, giving her time to wipe away the tears that she had been trying to control. He put the mug in front of her and Charlotte reached out for it gratefully. It only took a moment for her to compose herself again and hide all trace of the internal turmoil she was fighting.

"What happened?" Sherlock asked quietly.

"I don't know," she answered in a broken voice. "I don't want to be alone."

"You're telling the story backwards…"

"Sorry," she smiled weakly. "Dad's habits. But I really don't understand what I've done. I'm not a good person so I obviously don't have many friends, which makes the few that do put up with me, more special."

"Over the past week or so, they've been pulling away though. I'm probably over-reacting but I haven't heard from them outside of school for a few days now. It makes you feel so alone, knowing that none of them care enough to talk to me any more than they have to."

"You didn't text them instead?"

"I did once or twice but they obviously didn't want to talk. I'd write long messages and it'd take them twenty minutes for them to send a one-word reply. I stopped trying after that, I didn't want to keep annoying them."

"Anyway, this morning they all disappeared."

"What do you mean?" Sherlock interrupted.

"They were right behind me but when I got outside, they weren't there. All of them had decided to leave me without mentioning where they were going or why. I spent all of break wondering what I'd done wrong. I'd only been with them for half an hour; there wasn't enough time for me to have messed up again."

"Again." Sherlock repeated softly.

"When they arrived for the next lesson, I asked them where they'd been, explaining that they'd been right behind me," Charlotte continued. "Somehow Kayleigh managed to make it sound like I was the one to blame. I didn't know what to do. My best friend was turning against me. She hated me."

"She actually said that?"

Charlotte nodded. "My only thought was to disconnect from them. Kayleigh and Jazz clearly wanted nothing to do with me so I went borderline sociopath. Not the easiest time to have a project deadline of one hour and zero work already done. They were gone at lunch too. They just left within ten minutes of me getting there. What did I do wrong? At the start I mean, not when I shut them out to protect myself."

"Honestly? I don't know," Sherlock said. "Sorry."

Charlotte shook her head. "It's not your fault I can't keep friends."

"Do you want to explain everything to John or shall I?"

"I'll do it. Just give me a few minutes."

"You can't kill them, you know." Charlotte said as she was about to go to bed.

"Who? Your supposed friends that acted like you were nothing?" John asked.

"Yes, them."

"Of course we can kill them. We're perfectly capable." Sherlock said.

"Why do you ask?"

"You let me watch Thoroughly Modern Millie on a decent TV. Things have to be pretty bad if you're not making me watch movies in my room."

"You had a rough week. You needed it."

"I need to sleep for a couple of thousand millennia. Night."

Charlotte woke to the persistent buzzing of the doorbell. Sherlock never answered the door and it wasn't a client so John probably wouldn't go either. With a sigh Charlotte trudged downstairs, mostly out of curiosity, to see who was disturbing her sleep at eight in the morning.

"Kayleigh?"

"Hey. Mind if I come in?" She said, pushing past Charlotte. "It's upstairs right?"

"Why are you here?" Charlotte asked, following her into the living room.

"Look, I'm sorry about yesterday. I was having a bad day and I took it out on you when I shouldn't have."

"You think you were having a bad day? I had to go through it wondering why my best friend suddenly hated me! I had to come home and act as if everything was fine because I didn't want to bother my family with something like this."

"I said I'm sorry, what more do you want?"

"I want to stop being hurt. You promised that you'd never hurt me but I seem to cry more for you than anyone else. I love you more than anything but you always leave me so confused. And for some reason, I always seem to come running the second you call."

"Yesterday was a mistake…"

"Yeah, I get it."

"You're still my friend?"

"I'll always be your friend, as long as you want me."

When John and Sherlock got up it was hard to tell which of them was more surprised to see Charlotte and Kayleigh lolling over the sofa as if nothing had ever happened between them.

"We're us," Charlotte explained. "I need her too much to fight with her for any longer than necessary."

"So yesterday she hated you and today she's practically sat on you?"

Charlotte shrugged. "You kind of get used to it around Kayleigh."

"You have some really weird friends." John said.

"Understatement of the century."