Book: New Moon
Charlie's Point of View

I making breakfast for Alice and I. “How bad was it, Charlie?” Alice asked softly. I sighed. “Real bad.” Tell me about it. I want to know exactly what happened when we left.” It was a little difficult for me to talk about it, because it had been a terrible time in my life. “I’ve never felt so helpless,” I began slowly. “I didn’t know what to do. The first week–I thought I was going to have to hospitalize her. She wouldn’t eat or drink, she wouldn’t move. Dr. Gerandy was throwing around words like ‘catatonic,’ but I didn’t let him up to see her. I was afraid it would scare her.”

“She snapped out of it though?”

I remembered everything that happened clear in my mind. I had been trying to make the thoughts of that terrible time go away, and I had been successful, but now they were all coming back. “I had Renee come to take her to Florida. I just didn’t want to be the one…if she had to go to a hospital or something. I hoped being with her mother in Florida would help. But when we started packing her clothes, she woke up with a vengeance. I’ve never seen Bella throw a fit like that. She was never one for tantrums, but, boy, did she fly into fury. She threw her clothes everywhere and screamed that we couldn’t make her leave–and then she finally started crying. I thought that would be the turning point. I didn’t argue when she insisted on staying here…and she did seem to get better at first….”

I didn’t do anything to help. Nothing at all. But I couldn’t do anything. No, I could’ve done something to help, I thought.

“But?” Alice prompted. “She went back to school and work, she ate and slept and did her homework. She answered when someone asked her a direct question. But she was…empty. Her eyes were blank. There were lots of little things–she wouldn’t listen to music anymore; I found a bunch of CDs broken in the trash. She didn’t read; she wouldn’t be in the same room when the TV was on, not that she watched it so much before. I finally figured out–she was avoiding everything that might remind her of…him.