Chapter Text
Normal POV
Charlie sat in his usual spot at the back of the class near the window when his teacher suddenly called out to him.
"Mister Watts."
The name landed in the middle of the room with the particular flatness Mrs. Higgins reserved specifically for him. Charlie looked up from the corner of his workbook he'd been idly doodling on to find her staring at him from the front of the classroom, chalk still in hand, and eyebrows raised in that gotcha sort of way she always wore right before she called on him.
She had an ugly face, Charlie privately thought with an inward look of disgust, like something that had been left out in the rain too long and then set near a radiator to dry unevenly. Her skin was pinched in all the wrong places and sagging in others, topped off with a blunt bob haircut.
He was fairly sure she didn't like him and if he was being completely honest with himself she was a downright miserable cunt of a woman who'd apparently decided sometime around September that Charlie would be her chosen target to bully for the year.
Of course he never let any of his true thoughts be spoken out loud and kept his face blank. Charlie had lots of experience in looking like he was thinking when he was in fact not. A prime example being when he was a professor sitting through department meetings that were just an utter waste of his time.
"Yes, Mrs. Higgins?" Charlie asked.
"Since you seem to have so much spare time for drawing," she said with the particular relish of someone who thought they'd caught him out, "perhaps you can tell the class what seven times eight is."
Charlie considered, for one brief and entertaining moment, giving a wrong answer just to watch what she'd do with it but decided against it. Wrong answers led to conversations with his parents and conversations with his parents these days were things he preferred to avoid on principle.
"Fifty-six," he answered in a hidden smug tone and watched her mouth thin out into a line that suggested she'd been rather hoping for a different outcome.
"Correct," she spat before turning back to the chalkboard with a snap of her cardigan.
Charlie watched her back for a moment, his boredom had quickly returned after the small drama resolved itself in his favor.
Suddenly he felt the familiar itch of mischief start up somewhere behind his brain. He glanced down at the little cup of pencils and dry-erase markers sitting on the ledge beneath the chalkboard. They were well within reach of Mrs. Higgins's swinging cardigan sleeve and he soon came up with an idea.
Concentrating on the magical bundle of energy that was located at the center of his stomach Charlie made one of the markers roll off the ledge and bounce gently against the back of her shoe.
She paused mid-sentence, glanced down, tutted at it as though it had personally offended her, and bent to pick it up.
The moment she straightened and resumed writing, a second marker followed the first smacking against her ankle before rolling away under the front row of desks. A few children giggled. Mrs. Higgins turned around sharply, scanning the room with narrow-eyed suspicion of a vulture.
Charlie kept his face in the same expression of polite and bored attention. She turned back to the board, muttering something about children these days, and this time made it so that a pencil smacked into her again.
“Alright which of you is doing this tell me now!” the teacher roared in fury. However this only made everyone burst into fits of loud laughter.
It was, Charlie reflected, always the small pleasures in life that could sometimes make someone's day better.
Perhaps he can dedicate some of his free time into developing some many advanced pranks for his teacher and a couple of the school bullies.
Yes…that would be perfect Charlie thought with an inner “mwahahahaha!”
.
.
.
By the time the final bell rang he'd been sent to sit at the front of the class for constantly "fidgeting," which Charlie considered an entirely reasonable trade for the past forty minutes of entertainment.
He walked home with his hands loosely in his pockets and had a satisfied gait to his step.
Charlie sang a familiar song as he went down the street mostly under his breath at first and then as the streets emptied out started singing out loud.
"The Road goes ever on and on,
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say."
His voice, he was pleased to note yet again had come out rather nicely in this body. It was clear and steady, better suited to holding a tune than anything he remembered managing in his first life. It had always been more of a terrible monotone and any music he sang back then was reserved for when he was either in the shower or out on a walk by himself.
Charlie had his new older sister Elizabeth to thank for it, in a roundabout and entirely unintentional way. She'd recently taken to dragging him into the church choir on the Sundays they were short a body. He’d been propped at the end of a pew forced to endure his sister’s hissing instructions and corrections. It was all merely convenient for her and made the section sound fuller.
Elizabeth of course never once thanked him once. She found the whole arrangement, he suspected a mild irritation disguised as a favor. One more small chore involving her odd little brother that she'd rather not have had to deal with at all.
Charlie was at the very least a bit thankful to her since he always wanted to sing but never could since no one in his past life taught him whilst he was young. Sometimes he had been envious of others who had good vocals since he often wrote his own music for his books but could never sing them in his terrible monotone voice.
He was still humming the last line under his breath when he came through the front door.
"Oh!..Charlie,” his mother appeared in the hallway with the startled, faintly put-upon expression she always wore when she came across him unexpectedly, “you're back."
"Yeah," Charlie flatly replied with nothing else to say.
There had been a time, not so very long ago, when moments like this one had genuinely stung. Had sent him, on more than one humiliating occasion, up to his room to cry into a pillow with great mortification as he, a technically grown up man was reduced to sobbing over a mother who couldn't be bothered to look at him properly. He wasn't proud of it but it did at least make him significantly more grateful to the mother of his previous life who raised him all by herself.
Now in the last several months he stopped expecting anything from his parents in this life along with his siblings "I'm heading to the park," he announced, already halfway toward the stairs, “won't be back for a few hours."
"Mm. Fine, dear,” she was already turning back toward the kitchen, her mind visibly elsewhere, probably on her book club or whatever else occupied that thing she called a brain "be sure to back before dark I don’t want to hear the neighbors talking."
"Right, right of course…wouldn’t want the neighbors to think your being a terrible mother,” Charlie incoherently mumbled under his breath.
“What was that?” his Mother asked not having heard him.
“It’s nothing,” he shook his head.
Charlie waited until he heard her retreat away towards the garden, the sliding of the door soon confirming it. He hurriedly went up to his room, grabbed one of his older backpacks, and came back down to raid the kitchen.
He took some many pieces of bread, a bit of the good cheese that she normally didn't let him have, some slices of tomatoes along with lettuce, a bit of the sliced chicken left over from Sunday, and to top it all off he spreaded guacamole with seasoning.
Just like that ten triangle shaped sandwiches were made. Carefully he wrapped them all up, tucked them into the battered lunchbox he'd started keeping specifically for this purpose, and slid the whole thing down into the bottom of his bag.
Then he was finally out the door again, this time he walked toward the corner shop two streets over, where he handed over some pounds he'd earned at his father's restaurant in exchange for two bottles of water and a couple of chocolate bars which went into the bag alongside the sandwiches.
With his self-appointed tasks completed Charlie then set off toward the park in Spinner's End to meet up with his friend.
He stopped for a bit once he spotted a long stick that had fallen off a tree and grinned as he took it into his grasp with an all too familiar cheerful tune leaving his lips.
“The Road goes ever on and on,Down from the door-”