Altered

Chapter 23: Sour Patch Kids and Ketamine

Nothing changed for the next few months.

Katherine's birthday came at the end of September and the only thing she asked for was a house party with hot guys. Mia and I asked both Jace and Ian from the cruise to come and they did. Katherine and Jace fell back into their flirting as they had done so easily on the ship and Ian switched his focus between Mia and me all night long. Mia's mom was out of town so her apartment had been the perfect spot for our small get-together, but as the night passed on, more and more people showed up.

By midnight, there were around twenty people, both old and new in the small apartment. At two, Mia and I convinced some of them to leave and walked more than half of them out to their cars. The rest were standing in the parking lot smoking. The only ones missing were Katherine and Jace.

When Mia and I headed back into her apartment, we opened the door to find Katherine straddling Jace on the couch with her lips crashing into his over and over again.

"Huh," Mia mumbled, "guess they really are broken up."

I shrugged as I locked the door behind us and followed her through the apartment and into her room.

"Should we stay up to make sure she doesn't do anything stupid?" I asked.

"Nah. She's grown. She'll stop him if he gets too far," Mia shrugged.

I didn't sleep much that night. I was too worried about what kind of repercussions Katherine's make out session with the cruise boy would bring.

The next morning, the apartment was empty of everyone except Mia, Katherine, and me. When questioned, Katherine swore that all she and Jace did was make out on the couch and then she made him leave.

"You made him leave?" I laughed.

"Yeah, I wasn't going to sleep with him, much less on Mia's couch."

"Thanks for that," Mia laughed.

~ ~ ~

October had come with new friends at small group which Katherine and Jordan had both stopped coming to. One of the new friends, Blake, liked to party and soon he started inviting us to house parties at him and his brother's farmhouse. Katherine, Mia, and I started spending weekends with Blake and his wild friends at the farm. Ava started dating a boy named Josh that she had met at work. Gabbi and Adrian had somehow started dating and weren't hanging out with anyone but each other. And Miles was too focused on his senior year of college and had his head buried too deep in his books to even know a fraction of what was going on.

As November came, Katherine began slowly pulling away from us once again. I knew something was going on when I stayed too late at church one Wednesday night and saw Jordan loading up a duffle bag and a backpack into the back of a church van. He hugged Keegan and made eye contact with me and smiled before he closed the door to the van. I had seen Jordan's name flash across Katherine's screen on more than one occasion when we were together. I knew they still talked; I just didn't know if she would know what was going on.

Indie: What's going on with Jordan?

It took a few minutes for her to reply but I watched as the bubbles danced along the bottom of my screen.

Katherine: I don't know. What are you talking about?

Indie: Kat, I know you still talk to him. I'm not stupid. What's happening? I just saw him actually hug Keegan in the church parking lot before he threw a few bags in the van and left. He smiled at me... And doesn't he hate Keegan?