As he had all of last week, her father drove her to school this morning. He continued to promise her that he was going to buy her a car this year, but with the move, and buying a house, Charlotte knew that immediately getting a car just wasn't in their budget. She wasn't bratty enough to complain about it, but every morning as she watched other teenagers drive into the student lot, she felt more and more embarrassed that her father was driving her to school. "I think you're going to like it here, Charlie. Really," he said as he gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. "And I know you've heard this too many times in the past, but this really is the last move. I want you to like this place. Open up, make friends, have fun." She tried her best to make the smile on her face genuine, but she knew she fell short. It was not only hard to believe that this really would be the last move, but even if it was, did it matter? She was going to go off to college next year anyway, so was it worth it to try to make friends anyway? She didn't know. It was something that had been on her mind since she and her father had flown across the country two weeks ago to start their new lives here. On one hand, it really didn't make sense to invest, once again, in people who already had friends and probably didn't need some random girl joining their friend group when in ten months, they would all be graduating. On the other hand, she did desperately want some sort of normality in her life. She wanted people to go to prom with, people to talk to in class, someone to sit with at lunch... and she had a lifetime worth of experience that told her that surface level friendships didn't give her all of that. "Yeah Dad, I know. I will." It was the only response that she could give him before getting out of the car and closing the door behind her. While her dad had been the reason for all of their moves in the past, this relocation could only be blamed on her mother, so she didn't want to seem cold towards her dad, when she knew that he was hurting too. Still, she didn't turn around to offer a wave as she walked into the school building, because this was it... She was going in and there was no turning back now.
This wasn't the first day of school at Beacon Hills but Charlotte still felt like she was walking into the jungle, even though she had spent the last week here too. Beacon Hills wasn't the largest school she had attended. It wasn't the most diverse or the most elite. Still, it intimidated her. She was seventeen years old, a senior, and more aware and insecure of the fact that she felt friendless in a school of people who all knew each other. The mornings might have been the time that proved this the most. At least Charlotte felt like that now, as she tried to navigate through the crowded halls to reach her locker. When lunch time came and she realized that she had no one to sit with, or when a teacher requested students pair up and she had no one to lock eyes with, she would think the same thing, that that was when she felt most alienated from the rest of her new classmates.
When she reached her locker, she spotted one of the few faces that she could actually match a name to, a few lockers away. It was Michaela Donovan, a girl who lived a few houses away from her. Charlotte really only knew her because her father couldn't stop talking about how great it was to be living near a cop. His reasoning wasn't necessarily for protection, since he was a retired military man and prided himself in being able to protect what was his on his own, but his reasoning was that with a cop just down the block, there would be someone to arrive on the scene of the murder quickly, if someone ever tried to break into their house and her father had to "teach them a lesson". Aside from knowing her from their street, Michaela had a look to her that wasn't one that was easily forgotten. She was pretty in a way that was unique, and yet hard to deny. It was sort of intimidating, really. Charlotte was a pretty girl too, but she felt like the way that she looked was average. The way that Michaela looked was anything but average, and topped with her bold personality, or at least the bits of it that Charlotte had seen so far, she kind of made Charlotte a little bit nervous. Those nerves kept her from trying to befriend the girl, even though her dad insisted that it would be convenient in terms of getting a ride to school every morning, and even though they had a few classes together. They made her keep her eyes on her locker as she unloaded some books from her backpack and picked out the ones that she would need for the day.