Chapter 2

That evening, Charlie was placing her few things in the guests' room, when Kurt came in, with a sketchbook in his hands.
"Is everything all right?" he asked the girl.
That morning, it seemed that Charlie was going to tell him something, but it didn't know exactly what.
"Yeah, of course, everything's alright," Charlie answered. "Why?"
"You seemed a little strange to me, this morning... As if you were forced to accept something you don't like..."
Charlie sat on the bed and thought back to that morning.
"Look, I'm not bothered about the fact that you're dating a guy who has the same name of Barbie's lover and the sharpness of a dead sloth," the girl explained. "It's just that seeing again a person to whom I was basically invisible is not a great feeling..."
Kurt sat on the bed, in front of her.
"So you're not... jealous?" he asked her.
Actually she felt like her mind was split into two sides: on one hand she was determined to get Kurt back, at all costs, while on the other hand she just wanted to forget everything, start over and stop thinking about falling in love with someone.
"Jealous? Absolutely not!" the girl said, partly lying. "I told you: I want to stop falling in love with all the wrong people!"
"Is that the reason for the sheets you ripped off?"
Kurt placed the sketchbook in front of Charlie. The girl recognized it.
"I found it a few days after you left, last year," the boy explained. "I know I shouldn't have, but I saw your drawings!"
Charlie didn't mind. She didn't know why, but Kurt having seen her drawings didn't bother her at all.
"You draw very well, you know?" Kurt continued. "I never met anyone who would draw a picture of my face so many times! You must have done it with all the other boys you had fallen in love with…"
"Yeah, and every time I would rip off their pictures and burn them," Charlie said.
"And the boy on a wheelchair is your brother, isn't he? There are so many pictures of him..."
"Yeah, he's my little brother... I'm so sorry I left him all alone..."
"But he knows you will always come back to him, right?"
"Yes, I will always be there for him..."
He was the only member of Charlie's family for whom she would have done literally everything. She would have even sold her soul to the devil if that would have let her go back in time to prevent the car accident that had made for her brother impossible to walk again.

It was the Homecoming Assembly day. The gym was filled with students and teachers. In the middle of the gym a sort of stage was built, where the Glee club members would perform. In front of the closed curtain, the principal was giving his usual speech, to which no one ever paid too much attention. Charlie was nervous like the other club members, as they had gently asked her to perform with them. After a few infinite minutes, the curtain opened, and the music started.
Rachel Berry was playing the role of a perfect schoolgirl, while Charlie and the other Glee club members sang the song.

"Hey, look at her:
Perfect schoolgirl with enormous brain.
Tell me what you see:
A girl getting the best mark again!
Hey, look at me:
Unpretty girl that's living in a dream.
What can you see?
That perfect girl is far better than me!"

It felt like that song had been written just for her. She perfectly understood what her favorite singer must have gone through in that particular situation.

"You've been complaining all the time about me,
Telling me what I have to be!"

That song had been written for all the students who felt sick and tired of being always compared to someone smarter or cleverer than them. It was exactly what Charlie was feeling: she never felt perfect enough.

"Do you really want a robot instead of a jerk?
Cause it's not a stupid princess that you deserve.
You try to turn her into a robot, don't you want?
You hope she'll change, but she won't...
You've been complaining all the time about me,
Telling me what I have to be!"

Maybe she had always been compared to perfect people because someone hoped to change her, someday… But something had gone wrong: instead of changing in a good way, she had taken a whole different turn...

"I'm not that girl with curly hair,
Not that 'Einstein' sitting there.
Sorry, I'm not that perfect girl,
Not that genius, not at all!"

It was pointless to explain that she was totally different from any other person. She would have never become like anyone else, and it seemed that no one would ever accept that.
The applause that followed the performance made the guys understand that they had been very successful. Everyone looked at Charlie: during the song she had been strange, as if she had not been just singing some song, but trying to say something instead, through that song.

Hi readers!
In this chapter we discovered a bit more about Charlie's past. First, we know that she had been to school with Blaine, and that she had had a crush on him, and now here we have a hint that makes us guess that maybe her friendship with someone has been compromised because she had always been compared to them... I guess we'll know more about it in the next chapter...
Besides, the song in this chapter is mine, as you probably guessed. It's called "I'm Not", and I wrote it after a personal experience: basically I was constantly compared to a friend of mine who always did good at school, and now we're not friends anymore. A bit sad, but it's true.
I hope you enjoyed the chapter anyway! If so, I would really appreciate it if you wrote me a comment, a message, something. You would truly make a writer happy! :)