CAROLINE CALLED CHARLIE AND TOLD HER TO MEET THEM at the graveyard, which made her very confused. It was the Forbes girl's birthday, and she had wished her an amazing birthday and came over in the morning to give her breakfast in bed. Charlie, Elena, and Bonnie had planned to decorate her locker with balloons and everything, but she assumed that she was not welcome anymore after what the Gilbert girl basically told her to get lost the other day.

"There it is!" Elena exclaimed as they trekked through the woods. She had not said a single word to the younger brunette girl, and she did not want her to.

Bonnie chuckled as they walked toward the crypt in the middle of the cemetery. "This is creepy, even for us."

"No, Caroline was right...technically, she's dead," the Gilbert girl pointed out, and Charlie recalled the rant that the blonde girl had given her about being stuck in a filler year and how depressing her birthday was. It was not making the hybrid look forward to her own. "Sorry, but you don't need a birthday. You need a funeral. You need to say goodbye to your old life, so that you can move on with your new one."

"Okay. Here lies Caroline Forbes," Caroline started with a smile, placing one of their lanterns down on the crypt.

Elena started putting candles on top of a cake that they had brought as she continued the speech. "Cheerleader, Miss Mystic Falls, third grade hopscotch champion..."

Bonnie: "Friend, daughter, overachiever..."

Charlie: "Passionate, beautiful, a little bossy..."

Matt: "Mean girl, sometimes, no offense."

Caroline giggled at his words since they were kind of true. She was grateful that her friends still loved her for it, even her ex-boyfriend did. She waved him off. "Ah, none taken."

"She was 17, and she had a really good life. So rest in peace, so that she can move forward. That's what you really need. What we all really need. Amen, or cheers or whatever. Bonnie?" Elena said as she brought the cake toward Caroline, and they all gathered around her. The Bennett girl lit the candles with her witch powers. "Nice! Okay, make a wish."

She made her wish, and they cut the cake as they sat around the crypt and talked. Charlie had been particularly quiet, not really wanting to be a part of the conversation since she was still upset with Elena. Matt took the bottle of tequila that Bonnie had, but Elena snatched it from him. "I need it more than you do, trust me. Caroline, what are you doing?"

"What? Nothing," the blonde responded. She had been texting someone, but now, she stopped and tried to hide the phone from her friends.

"Okay, you're a bad sober liar," the doppelganger told her with an eye roll, and the Lockwood girl wondered why the hell she cared so much. Let the girl text. "You're an even worse drunk liar."

The vampire sighed as she glanced between all of her friends before looking down in shame and admitting, "I might have texted Tyler."

"Caroline..." Elena scolded, and even though they were mad at Tyler, that did not mean that he could not wish his girlfriend a happy birthday. The mention of her brother made Charlie think about how the Gilbert had banned her from seeing her brother because of what Tyler did.

The blonde girl sighed and shrugged her shoulders, trying to defend herself because Elena seemed mad, and the last thing she wanted was someone to be mad on her birthday. "What? I'm delicate."

"Give her a break!" Bonnie shouted finally, and they all turned to her to see her glaring at Elena for getting upset at Caroline. "You can't control what everyone does all the time."

"Wow," the older brunette girl muttered after a very long moment of awkward silence. None of them knew how to react to the girl yelling at the person that she usually stood by no matter what.

Matt breathed out, "Ouch, Bon."

"Sorry, I know it's Caroline birthday, funeral or whatever but, I just feel it's really wrong that you compelled Jeremy to leave town," the witch informed Elena, and Charlie's eyes widened because she had not heard about that part.

She whipped around to face the girl in shock, and she was hurt that she had not been told about this. Sure, she was supposed to stay away, but she thought that her friend would at least tell her that Jeremy was going away. "You did what?"

"I'm doing it to protect him, Charlie," Elena defended, and she was speaking to both of the girls. The Lockwood scoffed in disbelief, wondering how the hell someone had the audacity to take away someone else's freedom like that. "I want to give him a chance to have a quiet normal life."

"He should be able to choose how he wants to live it. You're taking his choices away," the Bennett girl argued, and Charlie nodded along to what she was saying in agreement.

Elena seemed really worried for a second because she knew that if Jeremy found out, he would never forgive her. "Guys, you can't tell him."

"Why?" the hybrid jumped in. She believed that Jeremy should leave if he wanted to, and he should at least know why he was being forced to leave. She spat back, "Are you gonna compel us not to?"

"You know, you guys are ruining a perfect funeral," Matt informed them, and they all shot him a look telling him that now what not the time for that.

Bonnie stood up, holding her hands up in surrender and feeling bad that she was ruining Caroline's birthday. "I'm sorry. I'm just gonna go sleep it off or something." She shot Caroline one last look. "Happy birthday."

About ten minutes later, they were all silently passing around the bottle of tequila and eating cake. Caroline and Matt made conversation, but both girls only talked to them and refused to address each other.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to crash the party," a voice told them, and they looked up to see Tyler standing there with his hands in his pockets. He looked around at everyone nervously, wondering what their reaction would be.

Matt and Elena glared at him, and the Donovan responded coldly, "So don't."

"No, it's — it's okay," Caroline said to Matt as she climbed to her feet and smile at her boyfriend that had showed up. Charlie was scared that he was going to be a coward and keep away. They needed to make up, and he needed to say sorry. "Hi."

"Can I talk to you for a sec? It's kind of important," he asked the Forbes girl, and she nodded before following him out into the woods to talk. If all went well, they would probably do more than talk, but Charlie could not think about that for too long without wanting to throw up.

Once they were out of their eyesight, she spun around to face Elena with raised eyebrows. "Now that she's gone, can we talk about that bomb that Bonnie dropped?"

"Charlie..." Matt started, trying to prevent another fight from happening between them over the same thing.

"No, Matt. It's fine," the Gilbert girl assured him because she had seen the question coming, and she knew that she was going to have to answer it sooner or later. Might as well get it over with. "Charlie, I know you're upset, but I was doing it in his best interest."

The younger girl scoffed, and she was really curious as to why the girl treated her like someone their age but treated her brother like he was a toddler that had no clue how to make decisions. "You don't get to decide that, Elena. He's not your baby brother anymore."

"That doesn't mean I can't look our for him," the doppelganger defended.

"But you're not looking out for him," Charlie pointed out since she was not just giving Jeremy advice. She had gotten Damon to compel him to leave town. If anyone ever did that to her, she would hate them forever. "You took away his free will and sent him away."

Elena rolled her eyes slightly, not wanting a younger girl telling her how to deal with her little brother who, just a year ago, used to do drugs and drink irresponsibly. "He's just a kid."

"No, he's not. He's not a kind. I'm not a kid," the Lockwood told her because she and Jeremy were the same age, so if he was a little kid, then so was she.

The Gilbert sighed because the Lockwood could not possibly understand anything that was happening as much as she thought she did. "I know you may think that—"

"No, Elena. I know that. None of us are kids anymore. We've been through too much to just be kids. You, of all people, should understand that. You lost your parents and your aunt and your birth parents and so much more. Matt lost his sister. Bonnie's lost her Grams. Caroline lost her life," the hybrid shouted, and tears were forming in her eyes as she spoke, remembering everything bad that had happened to them. "I lost my life, as well as my dad and uncle. I know that means nothing to you because they were both assholes, but they were still my family. A vampire killed the girl that I loved more than anything, and I can't hate him for it! And you're sending away the only person I can talk about it with, and you didn't even let me say goodbye. So, don't you dare call me a kid after everything I've been through."

After that speech, she wiped a tear from her cheek before storming off into the woods. She pulled her jacket closer around her as she walked past trees, having no clue where she was going. That was until she heard some rustling in the bushes, and Caroline appeared with her hand on her neck as blood dripped down it.

"Oh, my God!" Charlie exclaimed. It must be something bad since she was still bleeding. What could have happened while she and Tyler were out there. "What happened?"

"Your sired asshole of a brother bit me," the blonde girl answered as she groaned and stumbled toward her friend. The Lockwood could see a little bit of the infected bite from under Caroline's hand.

Her eyes widened in shock. "What?"

"He's a werewolf, and he bit me. I'm gonna die," the Forbes girl breathed out, and it was clear that she was freaking out. A werewolf bite was one of the only things fatal to vampires.

"You're not going to die," the brunette assured her, racking her brain for answers as her friend fell into her arms, already feeling the effects of the bite. She dragged her through the woods. "Come on, let's get you home."

The vampire was close to tears as Charlie remembered what happened when Damon got bitten and what the only solution was. "What are we going to do?"

"I'm calling Klaus."