Always You Will Have My Hand To Hold (Watty Awards 2012)

Chapter 6

 I'd like to say thank you to every single person who has read this far, to anyone who recently started reading. Usually I would go to each page and thank YOU for adding my story to your library, but I am unable to do so at the moment. Please accept my thank you this way :D

I hope you enjoy this chapter. 

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Chapter 6

Over the few days that followed, Lia had grown a shadow. Kate practically was everywhere, asking questions about everything. Lia was careful not to tell her anything important, but she didn’t seem like it would matter either way. Kate didn’t seem to really want answers, she just liked talking, and she probably asked questions just to keep the conversation going. Alek, Kate’s brother would come to the tree every now and then but he wasn’t as persistent as his sister. It was during those times that Lia started noticing a pattern. Every time she saw Alek, her heart would skip a bit then start beating faster as if it was trying to come out of her chest. Whenever Kate would mention her brother, Lia’s heart reacted the same way. Lia wasn’t sure what that was supposed to mean, but it only made her want to stay away from him. She definitely did not want to die of a heart attack.

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When the girl came to her rescue a few days ago, Kate was so frightened at the time that she thought nothing of it. On the way to the principal’s office, after she had lost it and just cried, the girl who didn’t even know her hugged her. Kate didn’t really understand why that simple gesture affected her so much, but it did and she couldn’t deny it. Very few people were nice to her, the ones who were nice to her besides her parents and her brother always wanted something from her. Because she was only fourteen, people thought that they could take advantage of her. She never led them to believe otherwise, but she usually knew what they were doing.

That was why Kate was so confused when a random girl stepped up and defended her against some guy who wanted to do who knew what to her. She found Lia at lunch later that day because she wanted to thank her and maybe find out the motive behind her act. People usually had a motive for doing things, she must have wanted something. Only, Kate found no motive for the actions, instead she found herself liking Lia almost instantly. Lia barely talked and since Kate was very inquisitive, she asked a lot of questions to which she got answers that still revealed nothing about the girl. Unlike all the other older girls who tried to befriend Kate because of her brother, Lia didn’t seem to even care about Alek. She didn’t even know him, even though they had a class together. Alek told her that Lia talked to no one in class and that intrigued him, so now he had charged her with figuring her out.

“Kate if anyone can figure her out, it’s going to be you.” Alek had said to her, but after a few days of following Lia around, she had nothing. Kate had found out that Lia didn’t have a facebook, a twitter, she didn’t have a cell phone or a car. She gathered from her clothes and the fact that she had to work, that Lia didn’t have money either. Lia did not look bad, she just didn’t look like she would wear the same expensive clothes that Kate wore. She always disappeared at the end of a school day and Kate had yet figured out how she did that.

Kate wanted to help out, or find a way to say thank you but she didn’t know what she could get Lia. Even though Lia didn’t have many things, she never asked for anything and when Kate offered to get her something she would always decline the offer. She wouldn’t even take some lunch from Kate.

Kate wasn’t used to people not caring about the way she looked or the fact that her parents were very well off. She liked that feeling, most of the time other people made her feel like something that belong in an exhibition. They were always gawking, pointing, smiling fake smiles at her and trying to befriend her. With Lia it was different; Lia treated her like she would have treated anyone and that made Kate want to spend more time with her. Since she wasn’t sure how to thank her, Kate decided that she would have to ask her parent’s opinion, surely they’ll be able to point her in the right direction.