Behind the Veil

a fanfiction by Emma

Chapter One

Summer
August

The wind blew softly at my hair, I pushed my hand threw it as I stepped out of my car. My new house was small, and cheap, I couldn't afford much now, since ... I "fell from the sky" as the newspapers said.

I took the key and pushed it through the key whole, stepping into the house I looked around. Boxes. All I saw were boxes. Great ... this was going to take awhile. Why did I have so much crap anyway? Ugh.

I decided I was too tired too tired to unpack anything today. So I put my bag down and walked out the front door and onto the sidewalk.

Scarlet Springs was a small, quiet town. That's why I had picked it. No one would care that I, Chad Dylan Cooper, fallen teen-heart-throb, had moved here. Though I was 26, and the kids who used to watch me were about 20 by now anyway, so they wouldn't care that much anyway. Though I still got surprised looks and gasps and whispers from some people on the streets.

My blonde haired had darkened over the years, and my blue eyes had lost that certain "sparkle" or "shimmer" but they were still blue. My hair was still that shaggy cut I've always had it.

I crossed the street to find a small building called "Charlotte's" I looked at it, it was a diner. There were people sitting at tables with cups of coffee, chatting away. Some people were even getting up and going behind the counter. A girl with red hair and big, black frame glasses taking a order as I walked in. I sat at the counter and waited until she came up to me.

"Hey, what can I get you?" the girl asked as she rounded the corner.

"Just come coffee please." I said.

The girl turned to me and the moment she laid eyes on my face, she dropped the coffee pot, her mouth hanging open. Everyone had turned to look at what had made the loud crash. I sat completely confused by her reaction to seeing me.

"Um ..." I said awkwardly, "Hi ..."

She stood there for a second, her mouth hanging open before she cleared her throat and then spoke, "Oh, um ... hi. Sorry, I just ... was surprised to ... see you."

"Clearly." I mumbled.

"I was ... just a huge fan of Mackenzie Falls growing up." she explained, "I'll just ... uh ... clean this up, and then get you your coffee." the girl then ran into the back room.

I twiddled my fingers as the girl walked and quickly bent down to clean up the mess. Soon she was pouring me my coffee.

"Sorry about that."

"It's fine."

"I'm Charlotte by the way, Charlotte Adams." she said, holding out her hand.

I now got a better look at her face, she wore thick, black framed glasses, which didn't - surprisingly - look that bad. She had red hair, but her eyebrows were brown, which told me that she dyed her hair, she had bangs, which were swept off to one side. She had brown eyes, that seemed large behind her glasses. She wore a plaid shirt that she had tucked into her jeans messily. She was wearing a baseball cap backwards, yet she was still quite attractive ... hot maybe. But that's just my old teenage-self coming out again. Though I hadn't been quite as attracted to anyone for almost eight years. Eight years ago ... I had ... Sonny had. I shook that thought out of my head.

"Charlotte ..." I murmured, "... I'm guessing you own this diner then?"

"Yep, this place is all mine." she said dreamily, looking around the small little diner.

"Well, it's nice. How long have you had it?" I asked, taking a small sip from my coffee.

"Eh, about six years now. Got it up and running when I was twenty." Charlotte said.

"You realize you just told me how old you were." I said with a smirk.

"Um, yeah. So? I don't care if people know how old I am," Charlotte said, giving me a confused look, she then stared up at her costumers, "Hey guys! I'm TWENTY SIX YEARS OLD!"

I suspected all the costumers to stare at her in shock, or confusion, but instead they just laughed and replied with things like, "Yeah, Charlotte!" "Good on ya!" "You're a babe!" and "WHOOOOOOO!!"

Charlotte looked down at me and laughed, "You're confused." she stated.

I cleared my throat, "Not at all." I lied.

"Yeah ... suure you're not." Charlotte said sarcastically as she left passed me to give a few people their orders and re-fill coffee mugs.

She soon returned to my side, re-filling my own coffee cup.

"So, now it's your turn." she said, leaning against the back of the wall.

"My turn for what?"

"For you to tell me your story," Charlotte said rolling her eyes, " What is Chad Dylan Cooper, 'the greatest actor of our generation', Mr. Heart-Throb himself doing here, in a little old town called 'Scarlet Springs', population '3, 870'"

Wow ... this girl can really talk.

"Okay, one: I used to be 'the greatest actor of our generation', two: no one ever called me 'Mr. Heart-Throb' and three: I'm not going to say how creepy it is that you memorized the population of the town."

Charlotte laughed, "Whatever, Cooper." she said with a smug look.

"'Cooper'? You're going to call me 'Cooper' now?" I asked, with a smirk of my own.

"Yeah, sure. Why not?" Charlotte said, grabbing a cloth and wiping the counter, "But you still haven't answered my question."

I sighed, "Hollywood just wasn't suiting me too well anymore," I said, "Why did you want to know that anyway?"

"You're a Hollywood sensation–"

"–Used to be a Hollywood sensation." I corrected her.

"You used to be a Hollywood sensation, and now you just show up here in my small diner. Scarlet Springs is in the middle of nowhere, I'm just surprised you chose here of all places."

"Well, I did. How did you end up here."

"I ... moved here when I was eighteen." Charlotte said, her gaze dropping back to the counter as she started wiping it down again.

I looked at her suspiciously, but shook that feeling off quickly. I finished my coffee in silence; I took out my wallet, but Charlotte stopped me quickly.

"No, no! First time customers are always on the house." she said, hovering her hand over mine, yet it wasn't touching, like she was afraid of touching my hand.

I smiled kindly at her, "No, it's fine. It's just two cups of coffee, not that expensive."

"Exactly, c'mon, I do this for all my first time costumers. Don't be the first to ruin my tradition." she said, starting to pout.

I looked at her face and it suddenly reminded me of something ...

*******

"Please Chad!" Sonny had cried in my face, gripping my hands tightly, "Please, I really, really want to go! And Tawni has already seen it with Nico! Grady and Zora aren't interested! You're the only one left!"

"No, Sonny. I really don't want to go see The First Kiss it's a chick flick! It'll be really gross!" I had argued with her.

"I went to go see Zombieland with you!"

"Oh yeaah, that was great wasn't it?" I laughed. Now I was just doing this to bug her.

"No, it was gross! I hated it, remember? Please Chad, please, please, PLEASE?!" then she started to pout. She pushed her bottom lip out and gave me these adorably cute eyes. And I just couldn't say no.

"Fine. Fine. I'll go."

*******

And as I stared at Charlotte at that moment, it struck me, she looked like ... like Sonny in some ways.

I couldn't say no to that face.

"Fine. It's on the house." I gave in.

"Good. Now see ya, Cooper ... and come again." Charlotte said, taking the coffee mug from the counter.

"See ya ... Adams." I said to her as I walked out the door.

There ... that's the last box. I thought as I put the last of my clothes into my small dresser.

I stared around my room. It was home-y, home-y enough for me. The walls were a cream-ish type, they were very bare though. With little holes were nails used to be, when the other family had lived in here.

I stared at myself in the mirror. Dark sleep lines were under my eyes. I hardly got any sleep anymore. Dreams tormented meall night long, it sometimes made me afraid to go to sleep. I would see her face. Sonny's face. Her screaming at me, "PLEASE, CHAD, PLEASE!" Sometimes they were happy dreams ... somewhat. Sometimes it was a dream of one of our dates, or our first kiss. Though, those ones tormented me too. So basically ... nothing in my life was actually "happy" now.

Don't think about her Cooper ... I thought to myself.

The very scary fact was, I was still infatuated with Sonny. Yep. Not going to lie about that. Though it was sad, that I was still in love with a girl I haven't spoken to, seen, or even heard of for almost a full decade. 8 years exactly.

Sonny Munroe had "disappeared" in some ways. A couple months after she moved to ... wherever she moved to, there were little articles about her in Tween Magazine, about where she went, and why she left.

Some blamed me for her departure. Which just cut me deeper. I hated it, everyone blamed me for everything. Maybe that was another reason I dropped down, people started to hate me. I knew it was because of my depression.

I wonder if Sonny knew that So Random! wasn't on anymore? It got canceled three years ago. Now they were all doing their separate things ... well, except for Grady and Nico, they were together. I knew what Tawni was doing, or I had a feeling at least. She was doing a movie, or modeling for some professional line, it's just the thing that Tawni would do. I wonder if Sonny was still in touch with her? Zora ... now I had no idea was Zora was doing ... probably something insane, that no one would have ever thought of before.

Tawni used to give me updates on Sonny, whenever she got a email. They always used to say, Say hi to Chad for me. but they stopped saying that when I turned 20. It seemed like from there she cut all contact with me there. Truthfully I didn't like how she used to say "hi" to me, it made forgetting her all that harder. Though who could forget Sonny?

I rubbed my temples and groaned, I changed my attention to the clock, almost six-thirty. I was hungry, but too lazy to cook anything.

Now see ya, Cooper ... and come again.

Charlotte ... why not go to Charlotte's again? She said I could, it's not like she'd kick me out of her own diner.

I pulled on my shoes and walked out my front door, in no time I was walking into the diner again, to have Charlotte smiling broadly at me.

"Hey."

"Hiya." I smiled sitting down at a table.

"What can I get you?"

Author's End Notes: Okay, there it is, the next chapter. I thought since I updated both of my other fanfictions, I could update this one too. :)

I just want to say THANK YOU SO SO MUCH! :) Just the first chapter and already it had about 11 reviews! So, thank you so much!

One more thing, on my profile there's a part called Fanfiction Covers there's one for Behind the Veil that HeCalledHerCass made, (THANK YYOOOOU!) HeCalledHerCass is really awesome, so check out her profile while you're on fanfiction!

Thanks again,
Emma