You started reading Humor Me a while ago then stopped for whatever reason and now you’ve decided to come back but for the life of you can’t remember where you stopped and what the story was about? Fret not, this page is for you! (Unless you’d rather read the whole thing again, then by all means, knock yourself out!)
WARNING!
This page contains full summaries of the chapters, if you’re not up to date with the story, you might get spoiled, proceed with caution!
And if none of the names in this page ring a bell, go get a refresh on the characters page!
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Our main protagonist Charlie goes to school (after dropping her brother at daycare) to start her senior year at Hillgate, a prestigious high school and university where she’s a scholarship student. She doesn’t seem to be on good terms with her schoolmates and everyone there thinks she’s a boy (she wears the male uniform). She meets Louis, the friend of the school’s most famous student : James Hardford. Louis seems to take an instant interest in her but she doesn’t have time for him and slips away.
After her part time job at a local library, Charlie fetches her brother Lucian from daycare. Despite being a very intelligent kid way too articulate for his age, he seems to always forget that his sister is a girl. There also seems to be an issue with their suspiciously absent father, but the siblings apparently have a well oiled routine to take care of themselves. When Charlie puts Lucian to bed, he forces her to say goodnight to a poster of their dad who is a famous actor going by the name of “Jason Hides”.
The following Thursday, Charlie has a bit of time between school and her part time job so she decides to try “Isaacs’ butler café” a new coffee shop that just opened. There she meets Fitz, a friendly waiter who helps her identify James who’s trying to drink his coffee in peace but is bothered by some paparazzi. In her quest to find a seat, she tries to help James by acting like his cousin to get rid of the reporters. Her plan backfires and he reacts very badly, thinking she’s a fan trying to get closer to him. Fitz ends up helping her get away by using the café’s back door while James has to run to escape the reporters.
James manages to lose the reporters and ends up in front of Lucian’s daycare where he meets the little boy. They end up having a bit of a surreal conversation during which Lucian invites James to his birthday (an offer promptly shot down). The kid then goes back to his schoolmates and his apparent nemesis : Eugene, a little boy who likes to fight with Lucian and make fun of the fact that his mother is dead. Miss Penny separates them but doesn’t take Lucian’s side since she didn’t hear Eugene’s barb. Lucian is pretty happy when Charlie finally comes for him at 7pm.
Charlie has a bit of an argument with two of her pretty crude classmates who think she’s being too harsh even though they were trying to include her in their “joke”. She then meets professor Collins who “asks” her to bring a pile of books to the library in the University part of Hillgate. Once in the uni building, she meets Louis who starts asking questions and is soon joined by James who immediately thinks she’s doing this to meet him again. She manages to escape, fed up. James describes their first meeting to Louis on their way to the principal’s office (who also happens to be Louis’s dad).
Upon leaving the bakery after grocery shopping, Charlie stumbles upon a little girl named Amy who lost her brother. She decides to help her find him but soon realizes that said brother is none other than one James Hardford. He immediately thinks the worst of her, telling her he wouldn’t let anyone use Amy again to get to him, and pushes her against a wall where she hits her head. He then decides to follow her to see if she’s going to the police station but she’s just going to the pharmacy and then heads home (where James realizes who her brother is).
James is taking photos in a park when it starts raining. He takes shelter in Charlie’s library (by sheer dumb luck) and confronts her about what happened with his sister, still thinking she tried to use Amy to nefarious ends. He then denounces her to the school board (part-time jobs are forbidden at Hillgate until the end of high school) so she has to resign to be able to bluff the school about her situation. Sure of his victory, James confronts her at school in an isolated classroom to taunt her, but a mysterious girl watches them from afar and doesn’t seem too happy about their interaction.
Knowing Charlie has successfully escaped getting thrown out of school, James drags Louis into following her to gather some proof. They end up at Isaac’s and merely end up watching her use her acting skills to help a (pretty ungrateful) classmate who’s about to get scammed. Fitz tries to start a friendship with Charlie and invites her for a drink whenever she has time. James merely concludes that Charlie’s acting skills makes her even more suspicious than he thought.
Charlie is looking for a new job in the paper during class but soon has to stop to go to the infirmary, as someone put mirror shards in her desk and she hurt her hand. James and Louis are talking about her in another part of the school and Louis ends up confronting James about his appalling attitude towards Charlie. James hints at a similar situation two years prior which apparently ended badly but finally swears to lay off Charlie’s back and stop following her. He decides to go to the cemetery to visit his grand-mother’s grave but sees Charlie from afar and follows her to the grave she’s visiting. It’s her mum’s and she starts reminiscing mentally while watering the plants. She used to have a happy family with a level headed, slightly sarcastic mother, and a boisterous and playful father. The years go by and Charlie’s mother starts developing a sickness. By the time Lucian is born, she’s too weak to go back home so 13 y/o Charlie rolls up her sleeves to take care of Lucian and the house on top of school so that her dad can stay as much as he can with their mom at the hospital. The flashback ends when she tells her dad that she got the scholarship for Hillgate. Back to the present, James catches himself trying to photograph her and realizes he’s going a bit far.
Charlie and Lucian receive a letter from their dad (we also get a glimpse of their neighbour Mrs. Pence, an old lady who takes care of Lucian whenever Charlie can’t). Charlie improvises the content to make it look like he’s a great dad who knows all about Lucian but in truth his letter doesn’t say much, there’s no way for her to write back and she can only take whatever money he sends (he thinks she can access his bank account like she used to when she was the one in charge of the family’s finances but he has a new bank now which she doesn’t have access to.) At school, James wants to know why Louis hasn’t looked at Charlie’s file (thanks to his dad) but the principal cut Louis’s access until he agrees to study at Oxford. Louis then sees Charlie being bullied in the cafeteria and decides to intervene by throwing James under the bus as a diversion. He tries to help Charlie who refuses, especially when James manages to escape the other students and joins Louis. They let her go but Louis confirms that he really wants to get to know her more because it’s actually more fun without his dad’s files. James keeps thinking he has to keep an eye on her too, just in case.
At school, the caretaker (who seems to hate Charlie) starts an argument with her (after drenching her in water) but she’s saved by Prof. Collins who seems increasingly worried about her. While she walks away, some boys send a football right in her face and she faints. Louis (who has seen it all) immediately comes to her rescue and brings her to the infirmary.
The (worst) nurse (ever) immediately flees her responsibilities and asks Louis to change Charlie’s clothes before she gets sick (she thinks Charlie is a boy too). Alone with Charlie, Louis finally accept that he might have been wrong about Charlie’s gender (since he seemed to suspect that she was a girl since the beginning) and that she is indeed a boy. He starts undressing her and realizes that he was right all along. When Charlie wakes up, he wants to know why she’s masquerading as a boy. Charlie answers that she just lets people assume because it’s easier, that the male uniform was cheaper for her to mimic and that she cut her hair for personal reasons.
Flashback : 14 y/o Charlie just got her first part time job but her dad is opposed to it. They argue, especially since he’s not bringing back much money and Charlie is worried about their finances. Jason ends up accusing her of looking and acting too much like her mother. She storms out, telling him to get a grip or stop getting in her way. Dejected, he realizes how useless he is to her and leaves, not seeing that she just cut her hair to help him get over his wife’s death.
Back in the infirmary, Louis finally tells Charlie why James is reacting that way towards her. Two years prior, a fan of James (who looked a bit like Charlie) who used to be very nice and supportive, took a turn for the worst, actively being mean to other fans, stalking and harassing James, and finally ended up trying to use Amy to get closer to James. Charlie now understands his paranoia but asks Louis to clear things up with him so that he stops bothering her but he refuses. She finally gets mad at him and tells him she doesn’t need him and James to wreak havoc in her life and disregard her privacy. Louis apologizes for undressing her while she was unconscious but doesn’t seem to want to stop being nosy. He then tells Charlie that she should simply tell James that she is a girl but she retorts that he would probably find it even more suspicious and go berserk. Louis agrees to keep referring to her as a boy and then offers her a new uniform sweater and advises her to speak her mind more clearly when people bother her.
As James is leaving school to go home, he spots Charlie hiding behind a trash bin, obviously spying on something. He gets closer and sees she’s looking at Lisa being harassed by two guys. Then to his horror, she jumps in, and starts acting like a drunk to help her classmate. She manages to help Lisa run away but ends up in danger in her stead. Against his better judgement, James decides to jump in to try to help but is not really in his element so Charlie has to take care of the thugs as best as she can (while bickering with James). They end up running away, have to hide again (from paparazzi this time) but still manage to bicker despite their close position (they’re hiding behind a plant) before finally going their separate ways.
Charlie decides to take on Fitz’s offer to have a drink with him now that she has too much free time. She goes to Isaac’s cafe but it’s crowded so she ends up helping Fitz so that he can take a break to chat. Fitz and Isaac then offer her a job as a butler in the café, not noticing that her gender doesn’t exactly fit the job’s description. She accepts despite the fact that it ends at midnight and that she could easily be recognized by students potentially coming to the cafe. Right after donning her apron, James comes in and recognizes her right away but doesn’t immediately say that he’s gonna rat her out. Fitz then does Charlie’s makeover so that she’s not so recognizable (they also decide to call her “Oliver” when she’s at the café).
After taking a photo for blackmail, James decides to let her work there so that he can keep an eye on her until he can know for sure that she really isn’t a threat (he also takes her number for the same reason). When she goes to bed later that night, Charlie realises she might have to start binding her chest so that her gender isn’t revealed to her new co-workers (at the risk of costing her the job).
Her new rhythm is already starting to take its toll on Charlie and she falls asleep on her broom while working. Worried, Fitz decides to walk her home and reveals himself to be an attentive ear to Charlie’s problems (in a big-brother sort of way). Apparently, James is making Charlie run errands for him and she’s very tired of it (and tired in general).
The following weekend, Charlie and Lucian are chatting in the kitchen when the phone starts ringing. It’s professor Collins, who wants to drop by their house to see their dad and talk about Charlie’s problems at school. Charlie and Lucian manage to make the house look like their dad still lives in and tell Prof Collins that he’s out grocery shopping. While waiting, Collins confronts Charlie about her gender (he discovered it while looking at her school file) and while he regrets that she doesn’t feel like telling her classmates, he agrees to keep it secret. Lucian discreetly calls Charlie’s cell phone and she acts as if it was their dad calling, telling them that he wouldn’t be back before a couple of hours. Prof Collins ends up leaving but seems to buy it. He looes like he really appreciates Charlie who’s touched by his willingness to help her.
A few days later, Charlie comes to work completely sick so Fitz and Isaac force her to head home. On her way, she crosses path with James but at that point she’s feeling so terrible that she ends up fainting in front of him. Wanting to avoid the hospital and any questions it might raise, James carries Charlie to his place even though he doesn’t have the slightest idea on how to take care of a sick person. A few hours later, Charlie wakes up alone in an unknown guest-room. She quickly realises she missed the time to fetch Lucian and receives a message telling her he went looking for her alone in the city. She enters full panic mode and tries to get out of James’s house but he tries to stop her in his usual James way so Charlie finally snaps and starts chewing him out. Properly chastised, he offers to use his car to look for Lucian. Then end up finding him relatively quickly and Charlie discovers that they already knew each other while Lucian reiterates his invitation to his birthday to James who finally accepts just to spite Charlie.
The day after, Charlie runs into James and Louis at school. Their first somewhat civil conversation is promptly interrupted by a bag falling from the window right towards Charlie. Fortunately James’s unhoped for reflexes kick in and he saves her in extremis. The incident seems to shake him more than Charlie and he asks to know what’s going on, unhappy to hear she’s being bullied. But Charlie refuses his help and decides to confront Ellie (the girl who threw the bag) on her own. According to Ellie, that was all merely an unfortunate accident and she advises Charlie to confront Lisa who might be the instigator of the whole bullying situation.
Thanks to Louis’s help, Charlie is finally able to isolate Lisa and asks her about the situation. She learns that the whole things started because Lisa accidentally broke someone else’s mirror but shoved the shards into Charlie’s desk to make it look like it was on purpose instead of looking clumsy. Then everyone started copying her and bullying Charlie and she let them because she was jealous that Charlie seemed so close to James. Upon hearing that Charlie is not trying to woo James, Lisa decides to confess and uses Charlie as a soundboard. Fed up with Charlie’s lack of cooperation, she brutally confesses to James who bemusedly rejects her.
A day or so later, Charlie is going to the market to fetch her lunch when her phone rings. It’s James, asking her to bring him lunch from the cafeteria. She tells him he’ll have to wait but he decides to join her. They finally have a civil conversation where Charlie officially invites him to Lucian’s birthday.
Louis pops by with a giant picnic basket, informing them that Lisa followed him and is likely to join them for lunch. A moment later she arrives, pretending a long lasting friendship with Charlie that fools absolutely no one and the four of them eat lunch, talking about James’s veganism and Louis’s cat who’s-named-after-James’s-brother-just-to-rile-him-up.
James leaves to go take some photos and Charlie admits that she’s surprised he’s that serious about photography. Lisa and Louis give her a bit of insight on how little choice he has concerning his future career because of his position but when Lisa makes the parallel with Louis having to follow his father’s steps, Louis gets a bit upset and leaves. Finally remembering that she never intended to stay alone with Charlie, Lisa leaves in an awkward hurry.
It’s Lucian’s birthday, James is on time, with a gift and everyone looks happy! Charlie is in a good mood, James is open to their chaotic dynamic and things go surprisingly well. They have lunch together and end up nearly poisoning themselves with an experimental cake but all survive in the end.
Lucian and Charlie are out, terrorizing the neighborhood for Halloween. If you don’t remember what happened at the beginning of this chapter, you might as well start it over 🙂
