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Chapter 3

Daisy, he quickly discovered, had not come for a casual chat. She made him pull up his assignments, resulting in an intense look of dread. Regardless, she led him through organizing what needed to be done first, and they made a general plan of what he was going to do before their final geography test.

Once again, Charlie felt ashamed, yet Daisy stayed with him, and helped him work. Soon they'd gotten one of his late assignments done. Then another. Then outlined a paper. Somehow, Charlie began to feel like he might actually pull through this.

Finally, she decided at around 7:30 that they should take a break, and they went to the kitchen to get some pretzels as snacks.

"So is he mostly on track now?" Charlie's mom asked them.

"More or less," Daisy said, thankfully being vague. If his mom knew the full extent of how behind he was... well, that would not have been fun.

Daisy accidentally dropped a few of the pretzels she was snacking on, and they broke apart on the hardwood floor. She reached down to pick them up.

"Oh don't worry Daisy, it's not problem," Charlie's mom said. She whistled.

Roxie trotted over to them, and Mom pointed down at the pretzels. Roxie drew closer, sniffed at the fallen food for a moment... and didn't eat them off the floor.

"Huh," Mom said. "Normally she loves pretzels, tries to get up on the table and snatch them when I've brought everything inside after going to the grocery store."

"Roxie's been acting weird in general," the past day or so," Charlie added. Like... I don't know. She seems more attentive to what's going on."

As if to confirm what he said, Roxie glanced to him, and let out a small bark.

"She also is just seeming less... cheerful," his mom said. "She's normally smiling everywhere she goes, and she's not unhappy, she just seems... like she's thinking or something. Makes no sense."

Mom was right. It didn't make much sense. Daisy and Charlie's mom talked some more, getting to know each other a bit. His mom had been a bit stunned to see a girl show up at their door without much warning asking for Charlie, but they appeared to get along rather well. Charlie probably should've been listening closer to what Daisy was saying, but he kept looking back to Roxie. The dog followed the conversation, looking to each person that was speaking, alert and listening.

Did she... understand? That didn't make sense. Dogs could hardly understand a yes or no question, let alone follow a whole conversation. Yet that's what Roxie appeared to be doing. Daisy thankfully distracted him away from his strange observations, and they got back to work on the studying.

At 9 o' clock, Daisy looked at her watch, as Charlie finished labeling a map of Africa.

"Well, I think you're in a much better position now," Daisy said as he submitted the assignment.

"Yeah," he scratched his arm, "thanks."

"You can legitimately be a smart person Charlie."

"I guess."

"No," she leaned forward on the table, "I mean it. You do seem like you care about learning, you just have a hard time with organizing all that, doing it with rigid assignment stuff."

"Well that sucks," he sighed, "cause I've got like ten more years of dealing with assignments."

"You can learn," she smiled. "You maybe just need some help."

Charlie felt a smile coming to his own face. An invigorating feeling spreading through him prompted a sudden impulse.

"Do you... maybe want to stay and watch a movie or something?"

She smiled. "Oh, maybe another time. It's kind of late, and I've got a math test tomorrow. But yeah, I'd love to do that sometime."

Charlie tried to maintain his smile as Daisy packed up. Once again there was that twist of emotions. Disappointment that she had decided to stay. Was she making up excuses and wasn't actually into him? Then further stress - what if she was into him? What if she really did want to watch a movie sometime, and now he had to focus on actually helping her have a good time?

Gosh he hated this. He hated that this came naturally to people like Cooper, and not to him. He walked to the front door with her.

"Well," she said, opening the door, "good luck. If you need anymore help, especially with studying for the final, I'm always working on stuff after school."

"A-alright."

Awkward silence. Oh no. Should he give her a hug? A kiss? Both of those seemed too much. He slowly extended a fist forward. She stared at him. Oh gosh....

Finally she gave him an uncertain fist bump, a forced smile, and then closed the door behind her. He was an idiot.


****

Charlie sighed while brushing his teeth, as he lamented his poor social skills earlier. He knew that he was overthinking this way too hard, but it was in his nature to be over anxious about everything. He envied those who could just naturally be carefree, go with the flow and all that. They took life as it came, and just enjoyed it, without worrying too much about their mistakes. He wished that could be him.

After he finished up getting ready for bed, he went to change into his pajamas - a nice soft shirt with blue plaid bottoms - and was shocked by a discovery.

When he took off his shirt, he saw that for the first time, he had chest hair. And not just a couple stray ones, but dozens. More than dozens even. Not only that, but they were thick and the same dark black as the hair on his head. And... the hair growing on his arms.

Okay, this was getting way too weird. Tomorrow, he needed to find some sort of skin cream to help with this. Daisy was probably right. Maybe there was a gas leak or some sort of thing near that dog house, and they were getting weird reactions from it.

That had to be it.

He pulled on his pajama shirt, turned out the lights, and got in bed. The new hairs on his chest and arms rubbed against the fabric very noticeably.

This was weird, but it had a natural explanation.

He was certain of it.

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