Page 16 of The Charlie Method

“You are! Those cheeks reveal all.” She groans. “Oh no. Are you and Mitch back together?”

“I love how you prefaced the question withoh no.”

It’s no secret that Ava was not—and still isn’t—a fan of my ex. I suspect my parents didn’t love him either. They’d never say it to my face, but I used to catch them exchanging displeased looks whenever Mitch spent time with our family. Usually when he was being overly clingy, a behavior that manifested closer to the end of our relationship and that I also wasn’t thrilled about.

“He wasn’t right for you” is Ava’s response.

“I don’t disagree with that,” I say lightly. “Which is why, no, we’re not back together. I was texting with Faith.”

I tuck my phone in my pocket after closing the app. This conversation will just have to wait until later.

“How did they take it?”

Faith pounces the moment I walk through the door that night. She’s in a pair of pajama pants and a Delta Pi hoodie, her curls swept away from her face with a neon-yellow headband. Her dark-brown complexion, completely devoid of makeup, doesn’t boast a single blemish. I’d kill for her skin.

As I head for the staircase, Faith trails after me like an eager puppy.

“They were cool with it, right?” she pushes. “Just like I said they’d be.”

I stop on the second-floor landing, sighing. “I didn’t tell them.”

“Charlotte!”

“I know! But there wasn’t a right moment.”

I take off walking toward my bedroom, but Faith stays on my heels.

“You don’t need a right moment. You’re overthinking this. They’re not going to care that you want to track down biological relatives. Like, if Ava sent in a DNA sample to try to find some long-lost cousins, they wouldn’t even blink, right?”

We’re stalled at my bedroom door because I stick the key into the lock upside down. I make a mental note to reraise the issue of installing keypad locks at every door at the next exec meeting. Agatha and Sherise vetoed the idea last time because they felt it would give our house “penitentiary vibes.”

“What I’m doing feels ungrateful,” I confess once I finally get the door open. “Like I’m not happy with the life they’ve given me. Like there’s something missing.”

“Thereissomething missing,” Faith says bluntly.

She hops up on my bed and stretches out, reaching for my stuffed bunny. Yes, I brought Tiger to college with me. He travels everywhere with me.

“You want to know where you came from,” she continues, playing with Tiger’s floppy ears. “That doesn’t take away from the fact that your family is fantastic. They love you, and theyareyour parents. But there’s this whole other part of you, a piece of your history floating out there somewhere, that you need to find.”

She’s right. This is something I needed to do.

My phone chimes.

When I check it, I’m provided with real, indisputable evidence that our phones are listening to us.

“Oh my God,” I tell Faith. “I just got a notification from BioRoots.”

She sits up. “What does it say?”

“‘Search completed. See your results.’”

She gasps. “You have results! That means the site must’ve found a relative or two, right?”

“Well, the results could be ‘zero matches,’” I answer in a dry voice.

“Open it. Let’s look!”

“I was going to wait until I told my family before I logged back on.”

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