A Study in Charlotte

“The game is Texas Hold’em,” it said, hoarse, but with a bizarre, wild precision, like a drunk Greek philosopher orating at a bacchanal. “And the buy-in tonight is fifty dollars.”

“Or your soul,” chirped another voice, a normal one, and the girls in front of us laughed.

Tom turned to grin at me. “That one’s Lena. And that one’s Charlotte Holmes.”

The first I saw of her was her hair, black and glossy and straight down to her shoulders. She was leaning forward over a card table to pull in a handful of chips, and I couldn’t see her face. This wasn’t important, I told myself. It wasn’t a big deal if she didn’t like me. So what if somewhere, back a hundred years and change and across the Atlantic Ocean, some other Watson made best friends with some other Holmes. People became best friends all the time. There were, surely, best friends at this school. Dozens. Hundreds.

Even if I didn’t have one.

She sat up, all at once, with a wicked smile. Her brows were startling dark lines on her pale face, and they framed her gray eyes, her straight nose. She was altogether colorless and severe, and still she managed to be beautiful. Not the way that girls are generally beautiful, but more like the way a knife catches the light, makes you want to take it in your hands.

“Dealer goes to Lena,” she said, turning away from me, and it was only then that I placed her accent. I was forcibly reminded that she was from London, like me. For a moment, I felt so homesick I thought that I’d make an even worse show of myself and throw myself at her feet, beg her to read me the phone book in that extravagant voice that had no business coming out of such a thin, angular girl.

Tom sat down, flung five chips on the table (on closer inspection, they were the brass buttons from his blazer), and rubbed his hands together theatrically.

I should have had something witty to say. Something strange and funny and just a little bit morbid, something I could say under my breath as I dropped down on the seat beside her. Something to make her look up sharply and think, I want to know him.

I had nothing.

I turned tail and fled.

TOM ARRIVED HOME HOURS LATER, CHEERFULLY EMPTY-HANDED. “She cleaned me out,” he laughed. “I’ll win it back next time.” That’s when I learned that Holmes’s poker game had been running weekly since she showed up the year before. They’d just gotten more popular since Lena started bringing vodka. “And probably more lucrative for Charlotte too,” Tom added.

For the next weeks, I hit snooze over and over in some wild hope that the morning would just pack up and leave me alone. The worst of it was first-period French, taught by the autocratic, red-suspendered Monsieur Cann, whose waxed mustache looked like it belonged on a taxidermist’s wall. Almost every other Sherringford student had been there since freshman year, and that early in the morning all anyone wanted to do was sit by their oldest friends and catch up on the night before. I was no one’s oldest friend. So I took an empty double desk for myself and tried not to fall asleep before the bell rang.

“I heard she made, like, five hundred dollars last night,” the girl in front of me said, pulling her red hair into a ponytail. “She probably practices online. It’s not fair. It’s not like she needs money. Her family has to be loaded.”

“Close your eyes,” her seatmate said, and blew lightly on her friend’s face. “Eyelash. Yeah, I’ve heard that too. Her mom is like, a duchess. But whatever. It’s probably just going up her nose.”

The redhead perked up at that. “I heard it was going into her arm.”

“I wonder if she’d introduce me to her dealer.”

The bell rang, and Monsieur Cann shouted, “Bonjour, mes petites,” and I realized that, for the first time in weeks, I was completely awake.

I spent the rest of the morning thinking about that conversation and what it meant for her. Charlotte Holmes. Because they couldn’t have been talking about anyone else. I was still mulling it all over as I walked across the quad at lunch, dodging people left and right. The green was choked with students, and so in a way, it wasn’t a surprise when the girl I was thinking about stepped out from what seemed to be an invisible door and directly into my path.

I didn’t run into her; I’m not that clumsy. But we both froze, and began doing that awful left-right-you-go-first shuffle. Finally, I gave up. Screw all of this, I thought mulishly, it’s a small campus and I can’t hide forever, I might as well go ahead and—

I stuck out my hand. “Sorry, I don’t think we’ve met. I’m James. I’m new here.”

She looked down at it, eyebrows knitted, like I was offering her a fish, or a grenade. It was sunny and hot that day, early October’s last gasp of summer, and most everyone had slung their uniform blazer over one shoulder or was carrying it under their arm. Mine was in my bag, and I’d loosened my tie, walking down the path, but Charlotte Holmes was as fastidiously put together as if she were about to give a speech on etiquette. She had on slim navy pants instead of the pleated skirt most of the girls wore. Her white oxford shirt was buttoned up to her neck and her ribbon tie looked as if it’d been steamed. I was close enough to tell that she smelled like soap, not perfume, and that her face was as bare as if she’d just washed it.

I might’ve just stared at her for hours—this girl that I’d wondered about off and on my whole life—had her colorless eyes not narrowed at me suspiciously. I started, as if I’d done something wrong.