She stood there on the balcony, barefoot on the dirty ground and sipping cranberry juice from a Dixie cup. It was 4:53 on a Wednesday morning, and the sky had already began to change color. “Not again...” she thought to herself. It’s the second time she stayed up all night in a row, just to watch True Blood. “Look at your life, Charlotte, look at your choices. It’s almost 5 in the morning, what are you doing awake? You stink. You haven’t washed your hair in over two weeks. What the fuck are you doing?” Maybe it was strange to talk to herself when nobody else was around, but she didn’t really care. Charlotte never really cared about what anyone thought of her, not after the constant tormenting from kids from school, and strangers as well.
Often times she thought about strange things, and had strange impulses to do, well, unconventional things. One of these things were the desire to walk around barefoot. She had always wondered what it would be like to walk through the forest without protection on her feet, and lo and behold, her father's house was in the middle of a forest. One day, while she was staying at her father's house in New Jersey, while the rest of her family went to Wal-Mart, she got up from the soft, red chair in the dimly lit den and walked over to the sun room. There was another door in the sun room, behind the ping pong table, that led straight into the forest.
Charlotte stood in front of the door for a while on the cold, gray concrete, contemplating the pros and cons of walking through the forest barefoot. She thought to herself, that perhaps this would help her become, “more in touch with nature,” or maybe, help her detach herself from society better, a prospect of life that one of her best friends dreamt of. In the end, she had no idea why she really wanted to try this. When faced with a decision to do something that wasn’t the most acceptable behavior by society's standards, she thought to herself, “You can’t judge something unless you’ve done it twice.”
Charlotte also had a terrible fear of insects. Whether they bit or not, she was always the one who nearly had a panic attack when a mere fly buzzed by her ear. Another minute or so passed, and she finally mustered up the courage to open the door. Slowly, yet steadily, she turned the knob and pulled the door open. She looked down, and immediately saw a dark beetle, about the size of a quarter, crawl towards her on the floor. Without a second thought, all the curiosity of the wandering through the forest barefoot left her mind. She screamed, began jumping up and down in child-like fear, slammed the door shut, and ran back to the safety of her seat in the den in front of the television.
