CHAPTER 3: RAMIFICATIONS

Back in Sparkyville, Lucy was in a sour mood. But it wasn't her usual crabbiness the kids were used to; it was something entirely different. It was more sad and mopey then outright anger like she would usually show. All of the kids took notice to her demeanor. Violet and Patty (Swanson) in particular.

"You notice Lucy isn't her usual crabby self?" asked Violet to her best friend.

"From what Linus told me, she's been looking for the next Charlie Brown to tear down," Patty replied. "I think she's staring to realize what the rest of us already figured out. Charlie Brown was one of a kind. No one else would ever put up with the mess we put him through. Who else do you know that takes our insults like Charlie Brown did? Pig Pen is probably second to him only because of how dirty he is, but he doesn't get depressed or upset about it like how we insulted Charlie Brown."

"We tore down his self-esteem only to build ours up, Patty. What was wrong with us?"

"I don't know, Vi. Now that he's gone, we're now seeing the ramifications of our behavior. Excluding him from our parties, calling him hurtful names just to make him more depressed. I'm actually surprised he didn't commit-"

"DON'T SAY THAT, PATTY! Don't even THINK it!"

"Well it's true. We drove him to despair at times. Let's face it, Vi. Schroeder was right. We were awful to him."

"Yeah, we were. Well let's make a promise to each other. If, by chance, Charlie Brown ever does move back here, or we see him out in the wild in the future, we apologize to him first thing. Even if he never forgives us, we still apologize. Deal?"

"Deal!" And Violet and Patty shook hands on it.

In another part of town, Lucy was walking by herself. She tried in vain to find a replacement for Charlie Brown, and failed big time. She was staring to see that she probably ruined any chance of a lasting friendship with him, despite him keeping in contact with Linus. Whenever he Zoom-chats with her brother, Charlie Brown never asked for her, aside from telling her that he actually made friends who respect him. Other than that, he had nothing to do with her since moving to Kansas City, and probably didn't want anything to do with her. The sad part about all of that was that she still didn't know why he didn't want anything to do with her.

For as far as anyone can remember, Lucy always thought she wasn't being cruel to Charlie Brown, even though she was. At least Violet and Patty knew what they were doing and knew they were being mean to him, but Lucy always thought she was trying to show him how cruel the world could be and she was just presenting cold-hard facts. But telling someone no one could ever love a wishy-washy loser was anything but facts. Cold and hard definitely, but not facts. And pulling a football away from someone trying to kick it was nothing short of demented and cruel. So when Charlie Brown moved to Kansas City, he made it clear that while he wouldn't miss Violet and Patty in the slightest, he'd miss Lucy even less.

Lucy had just gotten home, and her brothers were watching TV together. They didn't even look in her direction, as they were enjoying their program. So she went straight to her room and closed the door. Once she felt like no one was following or even looking in her direction, she collapsed on the bed and started sobbing uncontrollably.

"Please come home, Charlie Brown!" she wept.

NEXT CHAPTER: CHECKING THE COMPETITION