*~*~* Cate *~*~*
I stare directly ahead and try to concentrate really hard on what the teacher is saying, but for the life of me, I don’t hear a word that passes her lips. It’s been like this for the last three periods, and I’m starting to give myself a headache. I’ve been walking around on autopilot throughout the morning and I’m on the verge of burning out.
I zone out again and my mind whirls back to yesterday. It had started out well enough, even if Sawyer and David woke me up far too early, and spending the day up in Napa with my family and TJ was pretty relaxing. It was just typical of me to go and ruin it all by having a panic attack.
I was used to having them in front of Anna and Sawyer had seen me break once or twice before, but having TJ around to see me fall apart… it’s no surprise that he’s been avoiding me all day. Did he seriously think that I hadn’t seen him turn around and run in the hallway?
“Cate?” The teacher’s voice calls out my name. I snap back to reality and focus my attention on the front of the class. “What’s the answer?”
“Uh, sixty-three?” I offer much to everyone’s amusement.
“Ok,” Miss Hardy says flightily. She claps her hands and smiles. “Someone else, then. Preferably someone who has been listening.”
I roll my eyes at her thinly veiled dig at me and went back to thinking about yesterday. The ride home had been awkward and TJ had sat as far away as possible from me until Sawyer dropped him home. Not once in the forty minutes’ drive after my panic attack had TJ spoken to me. I saw him check his cell nervously a few times, but he mainly sat there, biting on his nails while watching the scenery outside pass by.
He hadn’t even said goodbye when he got out of the car.
The bell for end of fourth period rang and I waited until the other students had left the class before I headed towards my locker. I punched in the combination, placed my books inside and took a deep breath before starting my way to the cafeteria. I didn’t have much of an appetite, but I knew that by the end of the day my stomach would be growling unless I gave it something to keep it occupied. There was nothing worse than sitting in class and have your stomach be so bored that it starts to sing off key.
I grab a small salad and an apple and pay for my lunch at the counter. The woman frowns down at me when she sees what I buy, but she rings up the total and points towards the swipe card machine. I take out my student ID and swipe it to pay, then pick up my food and scan the cafeteria.
As usual Georgie and Grey aren’t here, but TJ and his friends were sat at their table. Brewer and Zach were laughing at something Landon had said while Colton ate his pizza and studied a text book that was open in front of him. TJ, meanwhile, was leaning back in his chair and had his attention focused on nothing in particular. In fact, it looked as if he was staring off into space.
I contemplated heading over to join the boys but remembered how TJ had blanked me so easily yesterday when he realized that I was… what’s a good word? Defective? I sigh to myself and start to push my way through the crowd until I find my familiar table abandoned in the corner. I set myself in one of the chairs and pulled up another one so I could sit with my legs propped up. It was also a tactic that made it hard for others to come and sit next to me.
I flipped open the lid of the salad pot and pulled out a slice of green pepper and chewed on it slowly. I did the same with a leaf of lettuce, a cherry tomato and a piece of cucumber. I took almost fifteen minutes for me to chew down the very little I had eaten, and by the time I cast aside my salad in favor of the apple, I was already full.
Like every other day-after I had zero energy, but I insisted that I was well enough to come in to school. The only other option was to stay at home with Libby and Mom, and I think I preferred this hell to that hell. School, surprisingly, was the better of two evils.
“So, I did the research to go with the preliminary work,” a voice breaks through to me. I look up and see Liam Lexton sitting opposite me shuffling through several pieces of scrap paper. “Here, do you want to see my notes?”
He pushes a stack of the paper over to me and waits for me to scan through them. I pick up the first page and nod when it looks like his research is worthy of being included. I took the next piece and read that, frowning at one of the mathematical equations. I look over at Liam and see that he’s got a red marker pen in his hand. I reach over for it and start annotating the research, until I was finally happy with it. The next few pages were repetitive and I drew a red cross through them before coming to the preliminary work that Liam and I had done last period on Friday.
“Looks fine,” I say in a monotone voice and push the paperwork back to Liam.
“Oh, ok,” he says quietly. He places his work in the binder and shoves it haphazardly into his backpack before turning to face me. “You don’t look so good. You look a little pale.”
I wave my hand at him. “I’m fine.”
“If you say so, Red” he shrugs his shoulders to me and looks over to TJ’s table. The guys were all looking in this direction- all except him. TJ looked anywhere but at me. “Did you have an argument or something?”
I shake my head. “No. We’re-”
“Fine?” Liam offers with a slight hint of laughter in his voice. “Is that, like, every girl’s favorite word or something? You sure do use it a lot.”
“Why say ten words when one will suffice?” I ask him as I tilt my head thoughtfully to the side. “Girls can pretty much sum up everything in one word. Fine.”
Liam doesn’t look convinced but he doesn’t say anything more about it. He stands up to leave and promises that he’ll have all the work typed up neatly by our next revision session. He salutes me and starts to make his way through the crowd, fist bumping his best friend Sean Carpenter as he heads for the exit.
I take an unsatisfactory bit out of my apple and groan. On any other given day, I would have devoured this fruit, and the salad wouldn’t have stood a chance with me. Hell, I might have even gone back for a chocolate chip cookie if I’d been having a rough morning, but today I just couldn’t stomach anything. I drop the fruit on to the table, with just a small piece of it missing, and drop my head against the table. I should have stayed at home.
“This is yummy,” I heard someone mutter through a mouthful as the chair to my left scratched against the cafeteria floor. I look up to see Dean Brewer eating the apple that I had discarded. I gave him a disgusted look, but he just shrugged and offered the apple back to me. “Sorry. I thought you were done. Want it back?”
“No, thank you,” I move away from the offending fruit and scrunch my nose up. “What do you want, Dean?”
Dean Brewer laughed comically and almost chocked on the chunk of apple he was trying to eat. “Oh, that was hilarious,” he says as he pats my shoulder. “No one has called me Dean in years. That was a heck of a reality check, Cate. But in answer to your question, I’m here to make sure my adopted sister is ok.”
“Adopted sister?” I shake my head at his words. He made zero sense to me.
“Well, yeah,” he says shakily, like he’s not so sure about what he’s saying. “I thought TJ adopted you.”
I blush and turn away from Dean. I chance a quick peep at TJ’s table and see that he’s tapping something into his cell as he shakes his head at something Colton says. When Colton doesn’t get the response he wants, he points his finger aggressively at a stunned TJ and promptly storms from the table.
TJ looks in my direction with a confused face, but when he notices me watching him, his face becomes void of emotion and he lets his gaze drop to the table.
“I legally emancipated myself,” I tell Dean as I pick up my trash and deposit it in the nearest trash can. I made it all the way to the girl’s bathroom before I felt the familiar sting of tears. I look up at my reflection in the mirror and steady my nerves. “Just breathe, Catherine. Just breathe. And don’t cry.”
*~*~* TJ *~*~*
“You look like a girl doing that,” Elliott says from the door of my bedroom. He’s holding a bowl of cereal in his hand and slurps another spoonful of Cheerios into his mouth, the excess milk dribbling down his chin until he wipes it away with the back of his hand. “Why are you lying on the floor with your legs up against the wall anyway?”
“It’s caller the Viper Karate,” I tell Elliott who snorts and gives me a skeptical look. “Or something like that. I’m trying to relax and having you watch me is not relaxing.”
The truth is, since Sawyer and Anna dropped me home yesterday afternoon, all I’ve done is stupid relaxation exercises. The Viper Karate, deep breathing, the Death Position… I have tried them all a million and one times, but nothing seems to calm this whirling sensation inside me.
It’s like being on a never ending rollercoaster of emotions and it’s making me want to throw up.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Elliott offers kindly. I sigh and nod. “Well, call your sister because I’ve got zero girl advice for you, dude.”
I lift my head up and toss the pillow at Elliott who calmly takes a step back and manages to dodge the hit. He laughs at my feeble attempt at hitting him and takes another mouthful of his dinner. Not that Cheerios would ever be dinner… it was more like desert in this house.
I get in position against the wall and take in three deep breaths.
Ok, so Catherine is Cate. Or Cate is Catherine. Which way round should that go? Catherine came first, but it was Cate that I was in love with. Or was it? Was I in love with the girl, or just who the girl had been in the closet? Were my feelings for her manufactured still? Or was this real? Did I love Cate? Or was this simply me blurring the lines between friendship and relationship?
Elliott’s right. I need Genevieve.
I reach up onto the bed and pull my laptop down and place it on my stomach that is acting like a makeshift table. I prop myself up on to my elbows and open the Skype chat, clicking on Genevieve who is available. I press call and wait.
“What’s up, Buttercup?” Genevieve says down the microphone to me. I grunt at her cheery disposition and flop back down against the carpet. “Hello? Theo? Where’d you go?”
I lift my arm and wave to the camera. “I’m here.”
“Here, as in on the floor?” My sister asks with confusion. “Why am I looking at your bedroom door and the hallway outside? And more importantly, who is the medieval warrior standing in your doorway?”
I tilt my head to get a better look at Noah who was standing at the door brandishing his homemade sword at me. He told me to prepare for battle, and to prepare for death. I gave him an eye roll and let him run towards me, (pretend) stab me in the chest and call my slay a victory. I played dead until Noah had disappeared and then tilted the laptop’s camera up until Genevieve had a better look at my face.
“I’m meditating,” I tell her. She burst out laughing, but at least this time she doesn’t’ have a mouthful of soda to spit at me. “It isn’t funny, Gee.”
“You sure about that?” She quirks an eyebrow at me. When I let the laptop drop against my stomach again and let Genevieve see my bedroom door instead of me, her voice becomes concerned. “Ok, spill it Theodore. What’s going on?”
“I found Catherine,” I tell her.
“WHOOP!” She shouts down the line at me. A boy’s voice comes from my sister’s end and I hear her shushing the voice. “Be quiet, Cody. Theo has ears like a bat, which means… Uh, Theo? Did you by any chance hear this conversation?” I hold up a thumbs up gesture to the camera without making an effort to move the rest of my body. “Oh, ok. Well, yeah. I have a boyfriend. His name is Cody.”
“So I heard,” I say. “As much as I’d love to get all the necessary details that I require to hunt him down and kill him, could we focus a little more on me?”
“Totally,” Genevieve sighs in relief. “So, you found her? That’s great. Tell me everything. Did you tell her you love her? Did she fall at your feet? Is she there with you now? Oh, when can I meet her? This is brilliant, Theo.”
The line goes quiet. “Theo?” Genevieve asks worriedly.
“It’s Cate.”
More silence. “No, shit, Sherlock,” my sister curses. For some reason this makes me sit up and scold her. Finding out that my fourteen year old sister is dating was fine- for now- but she shouldn’t swear like that. “Sorry,” she holds her hands up in surrender. “But I called this.”
“Now is not the time for I told you so, Genevieve,” I tell her. I move back to my lying position with my palms flat at my side. “I haven’t told her yet. I’m not so sure that it’s a good idea. I mean… what if Catherine- Cate?- was right? What if my feelings for her aren’t real? Maybe what I felt for her on New Year’s Eve really was a product of being locked up with her and not real? And what if… what if now I only love her as a friend?”
“Theodore, I love you… really I do,” Genevieve says sympathetically. “But this is a little out of my league, bro. Did you talk to Peter about it?”
My family is a little messed up. Seeing as my parents share a kid- me- they’ve had to maintain this whole friendly relationship that has meant that the Prescott’s, the Rushing’s and the Allen’s are ridiculously close. We were all on first name basis, and weirdly Genevieve had always looked to my dad as a second father figure.
“I talked to Amanda about it,” I admit, temporarily nixing the idea of telling Dad about my predicament. “She wasn’t all that helpful.”
“That’s why I told you to talk to Peter.” I could hear the eye roll in my sister’s voice. “You need a man’s perspective on this. And that asshole standing behind you is not a man. If you’ve already taken on board any of his advice then I suggest you disregard it immediately.”
I turn to look at Elliott in the doorway and catch him flipping my sister the bird. “Don’t flip her off,” I tell him sternly before looking up into the camera and chastising my sister. “Don’t be mean to him.”
At least Genevieve had the decency to look a little ashamed as the dress down. “Fine. But, on a serious note? Go talk to Peter.”
Genevieve ends the call and I close my computer. I get to my feet and push Elliott out of the way as I head to the other side of the house where my father’s study is. Our place was big- not as big as my mother’s compound- but it was bigger than most other houses in Hastings. My father had designed and built it after he and Mom divorced, and it had two distinct sides to the place. There was the master bedroom to one side, a study and a smaller second bedroom that Noah occupied. On the other side were mine and Elliott’s bedrooms and the den that we used as a games room. Dividing the space was the open plan kitchen-dining-family area that opened out on to a large terrace.
I made the long walk over to the study, and paced the carpet outside until the door swung open and my father narrowed his eyes on me.
“Did you hit your car again?” He asks accusingly.
I gulp and shake my head. “No, sir.”
Dad frowns. “Calling me ‘sir’ is never a good sign,” he says as he ushers me inside. We both drop down onto the slouch sofa and sigh. “Is this to do with Cate?”
I choke on my own spit and turn with wide eyes to face my dad. “How…?”
“Women talk,” Dad shrugs. He smiles at me and nudges me with his shoulder. “So, what’s going on with you and Cate?”
“I think I’m in love with her,” I tell him with a groan. “Dad… it’s all just so… fucked up.”
Dad slaps me upside the head softly. “Because I want to hear this, I won’t kill you for cursing like a drunken sailor. Now… you’re in love with Cate?”
I feel the smile spread across my lips. “Yeah.”
*~*~*
It's getting easier to writte LoF. But where to go next? Time to put my brain into gear... Sarah, xx
p.s. it's unedited, like all the other chapters. If I start editing then you'll never get an update, because I'd have to have it perfect. So yeah... excuse the mistakes :)