Five Nights at Freddy's: The Silver Eyes(4)
There above her was Ella, staring down at her, silent and uninvited, her glassy eyes almost appearing to see. The teacup and saucer were held out before her with a military stiffness, and Charlie got up cautiously, taking care not to disturb the doll. She went out of the room, stepping carefully to avoid accidentally activating any other toys, and as she went Ella almost matched her pace, retreating to her closet.
Charlie hurried down the stairs, seized by an urgency to get away. In the car she fumbled the key three times before sliding it into place. She backed too fast down the driveway, running recklessly over the grass of the front yard, and sped away. After about a mile, Charlie pulled over on the shoulder and turned the car off, staring straight ahead through the windshield, her eyes focused on nothing. She forced herself to breathe slowly. She reached up and adjusted the rearview mirror so she could see herself.
She always expected to see pain, anger, sorrow written on her face, but they never were. Her cheeks were pink, and her round face looked almost cheerful, like always. Her first weeks living with Aunt Jen, being introduced to Jen’s friends, she heard the same things over and over: “what a pretty child. What a happy-looking child she is.” Charlie always looked like she was about to smile, her brown eyes wide and sparkling, her thin mouth ready to curve up, even when she wanted to sob, the incongruity a mild betrayal. She ran her fingers through her light-brown hair, as though that would magically fix its slight frizziness, and put the mirror back into position.
She turned the car back on, and searched for a radio station, hoping music might bring her fully back to reality. She flipped from station to station, not really hearing what any of them were playing, and finally settled on an AM broadcast with a host who seemed to be yelling condescendingly at his audience. She had no idea what he was talking about, but the brash and annoying sound was enough to jar her back into the present. The clock in the car was always wrong, but she checked her watch. It was almost time to meet her friends at the diner they had chosen, near the center of town.
Charlie pulled back onto the road and drove, letting the sound of the angry talk radio host soothe her mind.
When she reached the restaurant, Charlie pulled into the lot and stopped, but did not park. The front of the diner had a long picture window all across it, and she could see right inside. Though she had not seen them for years, it took her only a moment to spot her friends through the window.
Jessica was easiest to pick out from the crowd. She always enclosed pictures with her letters, and right now she looked exactly like her last photo. Even seated, she was clearly taller than either of the boys, and very thin. Though Charlie could not see her whole outfit, she was wearing a loose white shirt with an embroidered vest, and had a brimmed hat perched on her glossy, shoulder-length brown hair, an enormous flower threatening to tip it off her head. She was talking, gesturing excitedly about something as she spoke.
The two boys were sitting next to each other, facing her. Carlton looked like an older version of his red-headed childhood self. He still had a bit of a baby face, but his features had refined, and his hair was carefully tousled and held in place by some alchemical hair product. He was almost pretty, for a boy, and wore a black workout shirt, though she doubted he’d ever worked out a day in his life. He was slouched forward on the table, resting his chin in his hands. Beside him was John, sitting closest to the window. John had been the kind of child who got dirty before he even went outside: there would be paint on his shirt before the teacher handed out the watercolors, grass stains on his knees before they came near a playground, and dirt under his fingernails just after he washed his hands. Charlie knew it was him, because it had to be, but he looked completely different. The grubbiness of childhood had been replaced by something crisp and clean. He was wearing a neatly pressed, light green button-down shirt, the sleeves rolled up and the collar open, preventing him from looking too uptight, and he was leaned back confidently in the booth, nodding enthusiastically, apparently absorbed in whatever Jessica was saying. The only concession to his former self was his hair, sticking up all over his head, and a 5 o’clock shadow, a smug, adult version of the dirt he was always covered in as a kid.
Charlie smiled to herself. John had been something like her childhood crush, before either of them really understood what that meant. He gave her cookies from his Transformers’ lunchbox and once in kindergarten took the blame when she broke the glass jar that held colored beads for arts-and-crafts. She remembered the moment, when it slipped from her hands, and she watched it fall. She could not have moved fast enough to catch it, but she would not have tried. She wanted to see it break. The glass hit the wood floor and shattered into a thousand pieces, and the beads scattered, many-colored, among the shards, and she thought it was beautiful, and then she started to cry. John had a note sent home to his parents, and when she told him “thank you,” he had winked at her with an irony beyond his years, and simply said, “for what?”
After that, John was allowed to come to her room. She let him play with Stanley and Theodore, watching anxiously the first time as he learned to press the buttons and make them move. She would be crushed if he didn’t like them, knowing instinctively that if he did not, she would think less of him. They were her family. But John was fascinated as soon as he saw them; he loved her mechanical toys, and so she loved him. Two years later, behind a tree beside her father’s workshop, she almost let him kiss her. And then it happened, and everything ended, at least for Charlie.