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Lola is ten when she sees Charlie and Marv in the back garden. They are looking up at the stars, the telescope beside them forgotten as they lean against each other, back to back, heads touching as they stare at the night sky.
Lola wants them to come inside; she's planning to beg them to play a just one only-a-little-long-and-complicated game of build-a-fort with her, because she's been so lonely since Soren Lorenson went away. Just a few months ago, he left for good, off to where ever it is imaginary friends go when you've grown too old to play with them. And, to make her life even more extremely unfair, Lotta has been sent to spend winter holiday with her grandmother, far, far away in Edinburgh, farther away than Lola has ever yet been. And so she gathers her breath to say all of this to Charlie and his best friend, Marv, but instead Lola stops with her hand on the knob.
Out of the window cut into the back door, through the square little panes, she sees something really quite interesting. She sees that Marv's arm is thrust ever so slightly behind him, and Charlie's arm is twisted just a little, tiny bit, and that because of these little movements their hands are touching. No, not touching, but absolutely, positively clasped together, fingers entwined like Lola's with Charlie's when she was still too small to cross the road alone. But not the same as that at all, actually. No really, quite entirely different. Because Marv's thumb is stroking Charlie's hand, and they both stand so very still, like statues, holding hands in the back garden, staring up at the sky. Like they are maybe too afraid to move.
Lola stands for a moment longer and then bangs open the door, saying loudly, "Charlie! Please, won't you come inside and play with me, Charlie? Please, please, please? Just a little game? A teensy-tiny little game? It's just that I'm ever so lonely. Please Marv? Please Charlie?"
Charlie and Marv jerk apart, and both shuffle their feet, chuckling and looking at the ground as Lola pleads. They look at each other only out of the corner of their eyes, until Charlie says, "Sure, Lola. We'll play with you, but only until your bedtime."
Walking into the house, with Marv following along, Charlie goes on, "And you must go to bed without any fuss tonight, Lola."
Marv adds, "Yes, Lola, because Charlie and I have to watch the meteor shower for our science class."
"And it should start right around 10:00, so you must absolutely be settled by then." Charlie draws off his gloves and scarf, and hangs his coat on the rack by the door. Marv does the same. "And remember," Charlie continues. "Mum and Dad promised to take you to the theater tomorrow if you were brave and good while they were away tonight."
Lola tucks her hand into Charlie's cold one, and says, "All right, Charlie. Besides, I absolutely do not need your help at bedtime. I am completely grown up."
"Of course you are, Lola," Charlie says, smiling and looking at Marv, who holds Charlie's gaze and then smiles back.
Lola skips on ahead of them to grab the pillows and the blankets to start building the best, most superior fort of all time.
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Lola is twelve when she can't find the notebook of pretend spells that she and Lotta are keeping. They just know that if they keep track of their mistakes, they will somehow magically create a spell that actually, completely works. Perhaps a love spell for the boy at school that Lotta likes to look at, or something that will make fairies appear, or maybe something horrible like turning Marv's old Daschund, Sizzles, into a zombie-dog that eats brains! There was simply no telling what they might manage to do if they were completely focused and extremely magic.
But Lola cannot find the notebook in the basket of magic supplies. So, she leaves Lotta at the kitchen table sorting through the spice rack, looking for just the right thing to make their next spell especially powerful and enormously good.
Lola sees that the door to the room she shares with Charlie is closed. She sighs and rolls her eyes. He's grown so bothersome lately, complaining when Lola opens the door to their room without knocking, and demanding privacy at absolutely all times. Lola's mum and dad, though, tell her to let him have his space, saying that he's growing up, and needs time alone.
"I'm growing up, too," Lola whispers and crosses her arms, but she puts her ear to the door of room, listening to see if Charlie is busy being private inside. "There," she says under her breath. "Everything is completely silent. He must have gone out with Marv after all."
But, opening the door, she sees that she is absolutely and completely wrong.
Marv and Charlie are sitting on his bed, hands pushed up under the other's shirt. They kiss with open mouths and wet noises; their eyes are closed and their socked feet twine together, dangling over the edge of the bed.
Lola backs out of the door, shutting it as quietly as possible, and tip-toes to the kitchen.
"No eye of newt," Lotta mourns, as she picks through the last of Lola's mother's spice rack.
"I'll ask her to buy some at the supermarket," Lola says, as she sits down in her chair at the table.
"You can't buy eye of newt at the store, Lola," Lotta scoffs, and then looks at Lola expectantly.
"What?" Lola asks, pulling a piece of her hair toward her mouth to chew, bouncing her foot against the table leg, making the entire thing shake.
"Where's the notebook?" Lotta asks, giggling and rolling her eyes.
"Actually, I absolutely couldn't find it," Lola says, waving her hand dismissively.
"Oh, no!" Lotta mourns. "Whatever will we do? We can't do magic without our spell book!"
Lola says, "Let's just start a new one." She hops down from the chair and grabs Charlie's backpack from the kitchen floor. "I know, we'll just use one of Charlie's from school." She tears out his pages of notes, stuffs them back into his bag, and cheerfully slaps the yellow spiral bound notebook on the kitchen table. "I'm quite absolutely, positively, completely sure that he won't mind."
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Lola is fifteen when Charlie returns from uni and sits morosely at the kitchen table, drumming his fingers on the wood, and sometimes rubbing a fist against his suspiciously red eyes. Lola makes him some hot cocoa with extra marshmallows and bites her lip. He is silent for an extraordinarily long time while she sits beside him, and it is only when she rests her head against his arm, and gazes up into his wonderful Charlie-face with sad eyes, that he finally sighs, puts his arm around her, and says, "It's all right, Lola. You'll see."
And Lola says nothing, which is usually very hard for her to do, but for once she doesn't know what to say, because Charlie is so incredibly sad, and she can hardly bear to see him this way.
She calls Marv the next day, when Charlie is hiding in his bed, the covers up over his head, and his muttered refusal to come to breakfast still ringing hollow and endlessly miserable in her ears.
"But, Marv...he's ever so sad. Can you please come to see him? I know it would cheer him up. You are his best, best, best, best, bestest, best friend."
But Marv won't come, and Lola is surprised when Marv tells her that he and Charlie will never be best friends again, and hangs up without saying goodbye.
"It's not like Marv," Lola says to Lotta later as they sit on the bench by the bus stop. She buries her face in her hands, saying tearfully, "He's always so very nice, and so entirely friendly, and so wonderfully warm. Oh, Lotta, he is usually just so Marv-like! What can have happened, Lotta? What can have gone so very, absolutely wrong?"
Lotta shakes her head and puts her arms around Lola's shoulders. "No matter what, Lola, I will always be your best friend. I promise. Nothing can come between us."
Lola wraps her arms around Lotta's neck and holds her tight. "No, nothing, Lotta. Not ever, ever, ever. Not in a million years of ever."
And Lotta agrees as the bus pulls up. They board it, holding hands, and laughing, on their way to the frilly-dress store to look for the most perfect dresses to wear to the school dance, and if they don't have dates, then they'll just go completely alone. Together.
::::
Lola is fifteen and a half when Marv shows up at their front door with his hands in his pockets and his head low. "Is Charlie home?" he asks, shuffling his feet and clearing his throat.
"Charlie!" Lola calls and when Charlie comes he stands quite still for a long time, before he finally says, "Hullo, Marv," and steps up to the doorway.
Lola looks between them, the hurt on Charlie's face brings her temper up, and then the regret in Marv's eyes deflates her anger, and she wants to hug them both.
"Can you give us some privacy, Lola?" Charlie asks, his voice sounding husky and strange.
"Absolutely, I can completely do that," Lola says, and then tucks herself behind the doorway to the kitchen, pressing her eye to the crack and listening hard.
"What do you want, Marv?" Charlie asks and steps back from the door, letting Marv inside.
Marv opens his hands and drops them to his side, and says, "I was scared, Charlie. But I know now, what I...well, how I feel and what I want. And I'm sorry. Can you ever forgive me?"
Charlie stares at Marv, his eyes wide and nervous, and when he finally moves he crushes Marv to him. Lola peeks around the edge of the door, trying to get a better look, and, yes, they are clutched together kissing now; Marv's dark head moving with Charlie's blond one, and Charlie's hands grip Marv's coat as though they will never let go.
Lola sighs and sinks to the floor before crawling over to her purse and drawing out her cell phone. "Lotta," she murmurs wistfully after pressing the familiar number. "Do you think anyone will ever love me the way that Charlie loves Marv?"
Lotta giggles and says, "Have they finally made up then?"
"Oh, yes," Lola whispers. "If the absolute and complete endless kissing they are doing in our front hallway is any indication."
Lotta sighs then, too. "Oh, Lola, will anyone ever love us the way that Charlie loves Marv?"
"And Marv loves Charlie?" Lola adds.
The girls sigh and giggle, and finally agree that someday, surely, somewhere, there is someone who is bound to fall absolutely, completely in love with them, if they only could find him. "Or her," Lotta throws in.
"Or her," Lola agrees.