Chapter 1

I must admit, I didn’t think much of Charlotte when I first saw her. At first, I was simply too jaded to think she would want anything to do with me. I was certain that she would just treat me like everybody else in my life did: an unwelcome oddity. But even though I figured she didn’t care about me, I couldn’t help but wonder about her whenever I saw her at school. Who was she? And why was she here, in what felt like the middle of nowhere, thousands of miles from her home country?

Eventually, however, I started to notice something. It seemed like people, especially other girls at school, were a lot more outwardly mean to her than they were to me. While my classmates were generally content to pretend like I didn’t exist, some of these girls were willing to say some awful things to Charlotte. I think part of it was that her dirty blonde hair made her stand out far more than me, with my dark brown (almost black) hair. But it wasn’t just that. I would often overhear people talking about her behind her back, calling her a slut or saying that she was “unfit for society.” I felt bad for her, but it wasn’t like I could do anything about it, I figured. It wasn’t like anybody ever listened to my opinions.

But one day, something changed. It was lunchtime, and I was sitting in the corner of the cafeteria listening to music on a vintage iPod that I had recently refurbished. On this particular day, I noticed something unusual. In the opposite corner of the room, a group of girls had gathered around something. When I got up to see what all the commotion was about, I heard them berating Charlotte for “talking like an alien” and asking her why she “would even bother speaking when she fucked it up so bad.” For some reason, this triggered something in me. It felt like complete bullshit that people just ignored me when I was struggling to learn Japanese, but when she struggled, it was treated like some affront to the language itself. And so, without thinking about it, I said the first thing that came to mind:

“What is your problem? She hasn't done anything to you! Did she really offend your precious ears so much that just had to do this to her? Or are your lives so fucking miserable that you just have to have someone that you treat like shit just so that you can feel something? God, I can't fucking stand you assholes! Go find something better to do with your time than hurting someone who DID. NOTHING. WRONG!”

The girls looked disturbed, as if they weren’t sure what to do with themselves except walk away awkwardly. As for Charlotte, she had a terrified look on her face which I have never been able to get out of my head. Seeing that look also left me unsure of what to do with myself, and so I did the only thing that I could think to do: I ran out of the cafeteria to find somewhere that I could be alone. I was scared too; I hate making people uncomfortable, and once I had time to think, I could see that running away was the wrong thing to do. After lunch, I went back to class and went home, all the while wondering how I could possibly fix this. At home, I tried to get some homework done, but the incident left me too scatterbrained to focus on anything else.

By the next morning, I had come to the conclusion that the only way for me to make things right was to find Charlotte at lunch and apologize. When I got to school that morning, I could sense a feeling of coldness from my classmates, as if they knew what had happened the previous day and were waiting to see what I would do next. That was just fine with me; by then, I had grown accustomed to people staying away from me, and the sense that they were somewhat afraid of me did little to change that. As lunchtime approached, I started to worry that I might just make Charlotte even more scared, and so I did what I always do when I have to do something that scares me: I force myself to do it. After all, if we don’t expose myself to our fears, how can we ever get over them?

Eventually, the time came, and I found Charlotte in the same place as the day before. To my astonishment, she told me that she was totally fine with what happened, and she even invited me to eat lunch with her. As we sat together, she explained to me that she hadn’t really been scared of me, but was instead surprised by all the yelling. Eventually, we got on the subject of our life circumstances. She told me that her great-grandparents had emigrated to Canada in the early 1900s, and that her family had lived in British Colombia ever since. But when Charlotte’s parents decided to get a divorce, her mother decided to move back to Japan so that her daughter would be able to “reconnect with her family heritage,” even though it was rather obvious that Ms. Anderson just wanted to get away from the realities of her life, which reminded me of my father. It felt amazing to have someone in my life who understood how it felt to be dragged halfway across the world by a parent who didn’t care to think about what their child actually wanted. But more than that, what I liked was the feeling of having someone that cared to do more than try to forget that I exist.

At the end of lunch, I offered to to help Charlotte with her Japanese after school at my house. That way, our classmates would have one less reason to make fun of her. She accepted, and it turned out to be a great opportunity for both of us. After helping her for a few hours after school most days, we would often try to find something to do together in a town where there wasn’t much for us to do. With that in mind, we spent most of our time sharing our hobbies with each other. I taught her how to solder, and I even bought a broken PlayStation 2 that we fixed together and which I let her keep along with a few of the games that I wasn’t playing anymore. She also lent me some of her supplies so that I could try my hand at painting (something which I never really got the hang of). Something which I ended up taking more of a shine to however, was writing, my love of which I discovered from proofreading the stories that she wrote. Over time, as her Japanese improved, we spent less time studying and more time hanging out, and I began to realize that Charlotte meant a great deal to me; more than anybody else in my life. It was then that I realized that something had happened to me that I had never even considered the possibility of: I had fallen in love.