Hey hey. I've been talking about this oneshot for forever, only I had to fit four papers into my writing time this month, which seriously hindered my ability to get this out when I'd planned. My apologies to any of you who have had to listen to me obsess over this one. I hope you enjoy it. :)
FRIDAY NIGHT – 10:29 PM
It was getting unbearably hot in Tori Vega's second floor bedroom, and if the discomfort hadn't already woken her up, the sound of something across the room crashing to the ground would have. Tori threw her sweaty blankets off of her but laid still as the fan whirred above her, trying to decide whether or not she wanted to get up and see what the disturbance was, or just leave it until the morning.
Something collided with her bed, causing a surprising jolt which nearly stopped her heart. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, Tori could see the outline of a person at the end of her bed. There was just enough light from the streetlamp outside streaming in through the blinds to just barely create the distinction between person and wall, but it was still dark enough to hide the identity of the visitor. She couldn't move, out of the temporary fear she felt from not knowing who was in her room or what their intentions were.
"Jade?" Tori guessed correctly after a moment of pure silence, and the bed bowed slightly as the other girl sat down by her feet. "What are you- Why are you- Wait…How did you get in here?"
"I need somewhere to sleep tonight." Jade replied, ignoring the latter – and arguably more important – question.
"Why? What happened?" Tori asked her, getting forced over a few inches as Jade crawled across the bed. She was far too tired to realize how strange this was.
"It's a long story." Jade answered, lying down beside Tori and covering herself with the blankets the youngest Vega had discarded a few minutes earlier. "I was just going to sleep in the park by my house until I could figure out somewhere else to go, but then it started pouring, and I just…"
"In the park? Are you crazy? Do you have any idea what could have happened to you alone in the park at night?" She paused, knowing she wouldn't get any answers to questions like that. "…Why were you there anyway?"
"I sort of got kicked out, I guess." She took a deep breath and then abruptly changed the subject. "Why is it so cold in here?"
"You guess? What do you mean you guess?" Jade just shook her head and pulled the blankets up to cover her face. Tori peeled her hair off of her sweaty neck, and then slipped her hand under the sheets to grab Jade's arm and test her temperature.
"God, you're freezing." She whispered, sounding surprised, despite Jade having already said that she was cold. "And you're soaked."
"I already told you it's raining. Were you listening to a single thing I said?" Jade responded spitefully as she turned onto her side and curled into a ball.
"Fine, you can stay here." Tori caved, reaching over to turn on the lamp on her bedside table. "I'll get you some dry clothes."
"Good." Jade mumbled, rather than thank her. The top half of her head popped out from under the covers, and she watched Tori pull out the second drawer of her dresser and dig through it. It took her a moment to get through her summer pajamas and find something that Jade wouldn't freeze in, so the uninvited guest was getting rather cranky by the time Tori tossed a dark purple top and some black sweat pants at her.
Tori shoved the drawer shut again, but when she turned around, it was just in time to see Jade peel off her soaked clothes off right in front of her, letting them fall to the ground while she tranquilly grabbed Tori's shirt off of the bed. Tori found herself staring at Jade's lacy, dark blue undergarments, before she uncomfortably turned away to find some blankets, just as Jade looked back up.
"Wow, you're even more flat-chested than I thought." She muttered, grinning at Tori when she turned around with an offended look covering her face, just as Jade had wanted.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"I barely fit in your clothes. Where do you shop? Victoria's Secret For Boys?"
"You're such a gank." Tori responded, giving up on the blankets since the only one in her closet was on the top shelf, which she couldn't quite reach. "And really ungrateful." She added a second later. Jade only laughed and crawled back into Tori's bed, unfazed by the girl's response.
"You're sleeping in my bed, okay..." The words came out of Tori's mouth at a hundred miles an hour, but somehow Jade managed to understand her.
"Don't act like it bothers you." She laughed, smoothing the sheets she'd pulled up over herself. "I know you're in love with me."
"What? I-I'm not-why would you think I'm in love with you? I…" Jade snorted and rolled onto her side, putting her back to Tori as if nothing had happened.
"Just go to back to sleep, Vega." Jade's accusation and her reaction to Tori's stammering, sputtering, far-from-believable denial of said accusation had the girl frozen in place for a moment, until she forced herself to return to her bed and shut off the lamp, reverting the room to its pre-Jade state of darkness. A moment passed in what was basically silence, excluding the sound of Jade's rather noisy breathing. Both of them lay completely still, but neither had closed their eyes yet.
"I umm…I already know what your answer's gonna be, but I'm still gonna ask if you… Do you want to talk about it?" Tori waited for the verbal slap she was sure to get for asking such a question.
"No, I uh…" Jade mumbled softly a moment later. "No, I do. I do want to talk about it. I should, you know? I need to, or I'll…I'll just… Yes. Yes I do want to talk about it."
"Okay." Tori responded calmly, despite the colossal amount of shock she felt. "Why don't you start with why you're not sleeping in your own bed tonight?"
"I can't believe I'm talking to you about this." Jade started with a disgusted tone of voice, which Tori immediately took offense to.
"No one said you had to." She responded, annoyed.
"Fine." Jade sighed loudly in defeat and pulled the little section of the sheet that Tori had away from her, tucking it under her hip. "But just to make things clear… I'm going to spill my guts and we're gonna have our little heart-to-heart and we'll pretend that we're friends for a few minutes, but we're not friends, okay? You're just all I've got right now, and if I don't talk about it soon, I'm going to go completely insane. That's the only reason this is about to happen, alright? Tomorrow everything will go back to normal and we'll both forget that this happened at all. Got that?"
"Y-yeah. Sure. Of course. Got it." Tori answered, one piece at a time.
"So…you know my parents are divorced, right?"
"Mmhmm." Tori hummed, as she looked up at the light flickering on the ceiling as the leaves blew around outside, casting shadows inside her room.
"And I live with my mom most of the time since I don't get along with my dad, but I'm forced to spend certain holidays with him or he'll have to pay more child support or something like that." She said it as if this were only background information, but Tori knew the second that Jade mentioned her father that he was a big part of the problem.
"I'm sorry." Tori said when Jade's pause ran too long.
"Doesn't matter." She replied. "Anyway, my mom's been dating this guy the past few months. His name's Jason and he's a total skeeze. I mean, the first time I met him he hit on me the second mom left the room. She really likes him though so I didn't tell her, but he moved in last month and he just… It got worse."
"What do you mean 'worse?'" Tori rolled onto her side, facing Jade even though it was dark and she was no more visible that way.
"Well, ummm…when he drinks, I pretty much have to lock myself in my room, or he'll keep trying to touch me. He even does it in front of other people, but Mom uses his drinking as an excuse. He's not an alcoholic or anything but he drinks on the weekends so it's not exactly rare."
"That's disgusting. Your mom doesn't stop him?"
"I know it is." There was a slight rustling sound and then Tori could feel Jade's warm breath in her face, signaling that she too had turned to face her hostess. "She used to tell him to knock it off but now she just rolls her eyes and laughs about it." Tori could tell by the sound of Jade's voice that this really bothered her, but she didn't know what she could say to comfort her, so she stayed quiet. "And I'm here because last week after school I got home and I realized I'd left my key in my room, so I called my mom and she sent Jason home with her key because she was at work... He let me in, but before I could go upstairs, he grabbed me and he told me that I owed him for bringing the key. He said that since Mom was at work I could repay him in the bedroom."
"Oh my God." Tori responded before Jade could finish.
"So I refused, but he said I didn't have a choice, and he, umm…he put his hand up my skirt." She tried to take a deep breath the second the words came out of her mouth, but it caught in her throat and she started to cough.
"Oh God. Jade…" Tori started to sit up as Jade's confession started to turn darker than she'd expect it, but Jade reached out and pulled her back down.
"Relax, I'm fine. I got away from him and locked myself in my room until he left. The problem though, is that when I told my mom she didn't believe me. She said I'm making up stories like that to get rid of him because I'm mad I don't get all her attention anymore. She thinks I'm lying to get attention. Can you believe that?" Tori wouldn't have been able to say anything even if Jade had given her time to. "So I told her I didn't feel safe at home anymore and I was moving in with Dad. She didn't think I would, so she was really mad about it when she realized I was gone."
"She hasn't apologized?"
"No. She still thinks I'm a liar and she hasn't kicked Jason out yet. I'm not going back until she gets rid of him."
"You shouldn't have to. She's your mother, she should always chose you over a guy." Tori told her, resisting the urge to grab her and give her a hug.
"Yeah, well she didn't." Jade replied, finally sounding like herself again.
"Have you talked to Beck about any of this?"
"Sort of. I didn't tell him about the last part but he knows that Jason has been bothering me. Not that I've even had a chance to talk to him. He's always in fucking Canada all the fucking time." Tori awkwardly put her hand on Jade's shoulder in an attempt to comfort her as she grew more agitated, but Jade swatted it off, to no surprise. "If he's gone it's always safe to assume that's where he is. God only knows how he'll ever graduate, with as much school as he misses because of those stupid little trips. You know, if he wasn't an actor – If he didn't need this city, I'm sure he'd move back permanently. Without me."
"So what happened with your dad? Why aren't you still there?" Tori changed the subject when she couldn't figure out what to say in response to Jade's little rant.
"I don't know, it was like…living in a crappy motel. He let me sleep on the couch, but I was responsible for feeding myself or getting to school… If they went out to dinner they never invited me. On the rare occasion that his moron of a wife made dinner, she'd offer food to the dog before she'd offer it to me. That mutt has my old bedroom, and I had to sleep on the couch. I have hardly any clothes, and I wasn't allowed to use their washing machine without paying them. I packed what I could fit in my bag when I left, so all of my stuff is still at mom's house, if she hasn't got rid of it yet." She rolled over onto her back, sighed, and didn't say another word, but Tori could tell by her breathing that she was starting to cry.
"I'm so sorry Jade. You don't deserve that."
"No, maybe I do. There's something seriously wrong with me. It's just too much for my parents to handle, I guess. Big surprise there."
"There's nothing…seriously…wrong with you." Tori put extra emphasis on the word, since it was obvious to everyone that had ever met her that there was something wrong with Jade.
"No, Tori, there is. I'm more upset by my dad not inviting me when he goes out for Chinese than I am by the fact that my mom's boyfriend basically molested me. That's not right at all."
"Well, no, but none of that should have happened to you. Your parents don't realize how lucky they are to have a daughter like you." Tori knew Jade was rolling her eyes at that statement, but she continued anyway, "Seriously. You're extremely talented and you're…you're ambitious, and you're brilliant, you really are. You're smart, Jade, and you're absolutely beautiful, and if your parents can't look past the bad things, then…then they have no idea what they're missing and I feel sorry for them." Jade didn't respond right away. Tori felt fingers brush against her hand, grasping it for a moment before Jade pulled away. A few seconds passed in silence before the girl finally responded to the series of compliments she'd just received.
"Is this the part where you tell me I smell like pine needles and have a face like sunshine?"
"…What?" Tori asked, confused. She felt Jade's foot touch hers for a split second before she flinched and moved away.
"Haven't you seen Bridesmaids?"
"No, not yet…" Tori answered her hesitantly, as the air conditioning kicked on and the vent below the bed started to hum. Jade shivered beside her.
"There's something wrong with the fact that I have and you haven't."
"I'm…sorry?"
"I'm going to sleep now." Jade stated, pulling the covers up over her head as she settled further into her section of Tori's bed.
"No, no wait. You didn't tell me why you're not at your dad's house. You have to finish the story."
"No, Tori, I don't want to talk anymore, I just want to sleep. I need to sleep." Jade's voice gave away her tears once again. "This is so stupid. This isn't right. I screwed up."
"Jade…"
"No, Tori. You know what? You wanna know what? You are the only person I cry in front of. You really are. I don't even like you that much, but for whatever reason, I feel more comfortable crying in front of you than in front of my boyfriend. He's only seen me cry like, twice, as long as I've known him, and I've done it around you, what, four times now? It's because you care, you know that? You care too fucking much and I'm not used to that. You know I don't like you but you still try to be my friend anyway, and for some reason that makes me feel like a weak little girl, and because of that, shit like this happens. I end up here. I hate this." She paused for a second, but Tori was too afraid to say anything. "I shouldn't be here, but I really just need to sleep. I want to sleep so bad, and not have to wonder if I locked my bedroom door, or worry about how I'm going to get breakfast, or think about whether or not I have any clean clothes left to wear tomorrow. I just want to sleep. I wanna sleep." By this point, Jade was crying so hard that the bed was shaking. The headboard rattled a little, and Tori found herself hoping that it wouldn't wake her parents before she'd even started to think of what to say.
"I know we're not friends, but that doesn't mean I have to be mean to you. That's how I am, Jade. I'll always be a friend to you, even if really I'm not... And you know, there's nothing wrong with us being friends. Calling me your friend doesn't mean that you have to change a thing about yourself. It doesn't make you any different." Tori's voiced faded away for a moment. "I'm going to offer to let you sleep here if you need to, and I'm going to tell you that you can totally use our washing machine…because that's what a friend does. But because I'm not your friend, I'm also going to ask you to tell me the rest of the story. You can sleep in a minute. Just tell me what happened with your dad." There was a long moment of silence, and Tori wondered if Jade was even still awake, but then there was another loud sigh.
"Fine. We got in a big fight and he kicked me out, okay?" Jade answered her in one breath.
"What did you fight about?"
"Who are you, my therapist? Are you gonna ask me how it made me feel?"
"No, Jade. I just want to help. I can't give you advice if you don't tell me everything."
"This is stupid." The cranky one remarked, giving in a moment later. "He went through my chat logs on my computer and he found something that…made him really mad." Before Tori could ask what, Jade hiccupped and started crying twice as hard as before. For another few minutes, she kept crying, before she took a few more deep breaths, calmed down, and whispered one last thing.
"My life sucks. Now you know. I'm going to sleep."
"Okay. Thanks for telling me." Tori said softly. "We can talk about it in the morning if you want." Jade didn't say another word, so Tori rolled onto her back and moved over, putting some space between herself and her guest so that her heart could go back to beating at a normal rate and let her sleep.
The problem was, she couldn't. It seemed like hours were passing, but Tori kept checking the clock, only to see that a mere five minutes had gone by. She lay frozen in her bed, flat on her back with her eyes closed and her head full of thoughts about what kind of advice she could possibly give Jade. She had no idea how to handle a situation like this. Tori was no therapist, that's for sure. She wasn't certain that the police could even do anything about what Jason was doing to her, so she didn't want to suggest that. If she told Jade to just talk to her mother, she knew what kind of response she would get. Beck's parents didn't like Jade, and Tori knew enough about them to know that they would never in a million years allow Jade to move into Beck's RV with him, if Beck were even up for it, so that was a no. She would offer to let Jade live with her for a while – her parents weren't all that fond of Jade, having heard many of Tori's complaints about her, but they would let her stay if she absolutely had nowhere else to go – although honestly, Tori wasn't so sure that she could handle that.
And so she had nothing - absolutely no advice to give to Jade, although she really wanted to. She felt completely defeated. This was her area. This was her thing. Tori liked to help people with their problems – it didn't always turn out well, but she almost always had some sort of suggestion, at the very least.
"Tori? You still awake?" Jade whispered out of nowhere after nearly an hour of the two of them trying to fall asleep.
"You can't sleep either?"
"No. I've hardly got any sleep all month, but my back hurts too much from trying to sleep on my dad's couch to relax." She explained, sighing loudly.
"Do you want some Nyquil? I think we've got some downstairs."
"No…" Jade mumbled in response. "Nyquil makes my stomach hurt."
"Okay, well, umm…do you want to watch a movie? Get your mind off things?"
"Why not?" Jade answered rather apathetically.
"Okay. My dad's got some in his office that you'd probably like, but if you're in the mood for something a little, umm…lighter, we've got a few downstairs too." Tori pulled the cord on her lamp once again and climbed out of bed, directing Jade down the hallway to her dad's office/play room. She turned on the light, slowly closing the squeaky door once they were both inside.
"Wow, that's a lot of movies." Jade remarked once she saw the movie-filled wall-to-wall bookshelves lining one of the shorter walls in the room.
"Yeah, my dad's a huge horror movie fan. He's been collecting them pretty much all of his life. He's still in the process of transferring these" she pointed at the two shelves on the left which held dozens of VHS tapes "to DVD, but he replaced a lot of his old ones last year."
"Have you seen any of these?" Jade asked, running her fingers along the dusty shelf in front of her.
"Most of them." Tori answered.
"You don't strike me as the horror movie type," Jade commented, pulling a DVD off the shelf to look at the synopsis on the back, "but I guess with a dad this obsessed, you probably didn't have much of a choice."
"Not really…but I didn't mind. I kind of like them. I'm not a big fan of gore or anything, and I'd choose romantic comedies over these, but they're kind of cool, you know? With a good one, you never really know what to expect."
"Yeah…" A second later, Tori found herself looking at the creepy face of Jack Nicholson, displayed on the cover of the classic 1980s horror film, The Shining. "Please tell me you've seen this one."
"Not the whole thing…and it's been a while." She got a dramatic eye roll in response, coupled with a demand.
"Then we're watching this."
"Okay." Tori agreed, a little wary about the nightmares that watching a movie like that right before bed would surely give her.
"Okay?"
"Okay."
"Alright." They both stood frozen in place for a moment, before Tori realized that Jade was waiting for her to lead the way. She took the DVD from Jade's hands and immediately made her way through the door, reaching behind her to flip the light switch once they were both out in the hallway. While she was there, Tori adjusted the thermostat, since she was still too warm and Jade was now dry. Back in her bedroom, she flipped the light switch by the door and made her way across the room to the DVD player. Turning it on, she stuck the DVD in before she realized that Jade hadn't come back with her. She looked around the room, confused, and grabbed the remote, turning her small flat screen TV on just as Jade walked in. She looked at Tori, yawned, and climbed back into Tori's bed without a sound.
"Sit up." Tori ordered, crawling onto her bed next to Jade.
"No."
"Sit up. Just for a minute. You'll like it, I promise. Everyone tells me I'm really good at this."
"No, what are you-" Tori forced her hands under Jade's back and pushed her up, wedging herself in the space between Jade and her headboard. "Tori, seriously, now is not the time to try living out your little fantasies."
"Chill out, I'm just giving you a back rub." Tori responded, hitting the play button on the DVD player remote before she started rubbing circles along the top of Jade's spine.
"No, I don't want a- Oh that feels good."
"Told you you'd like it." Tori bragged in a near-whisper.
"...That feels really good. Keep doing that." She mumbled, gluing her eyes to the TV, which Tori could now hardly see from her position behind Jade. She moved over a couple inches so that she could view the TV over Jade's shoulder, all the while continuing to massage the girl's back. She ran her fingers down Jade's spine, slowly rubbing small circles through her shirt as the previews played.
Tori's hands had moved up and down Jade's back twice before she realized what she wasn't feeling. She tried to keep massaging the other girl's warm, bra-less back without acting differently, but she found it increasingly more difficult not to tip Jade off as every fantasy she'd ever had about the girl played through her head like a montage from a movie. If Jade had the ability to read minds, she would be so dead in two seconds flat. If anybody at all knew about the little scenes that her brain had been creating over the past year, she'd never live it down. Her breath was caught in her throat and she didn't realize she wasn't breathing until Jade interrupted her thoughts.
"Are you gonna hit play?" Tori gasped loudly, surprised by Jade's voice in the relatively silent bedroom.
"Uhh…uhhh…umm, yeah. Yeah." She stammered, fumbling with the remote until she could finally direct her thumb to the play button.
"What's your problem?" Jade asked. Her voice came out rather nastily, but Tori knew that she'd meant it in a more friendly, 'what's wrong?' kind of way.
"Nothing." Tori answered almost instantaneously. "I-I mean…nothing. I'm just tired. Which is why I went to bed early tonight, only…well, you know."
"Let's just watch the movie." Jade replied, gesturing toward the television where Jack Nicholson's character was starting a job interview. "Turn it up." Tori grabbed the remote again and hit the volume button, raising it only a little, since she didn't want to wake her family.
"That didn't mean you could quit rubbing my back…" Tori hesitantly placed her hands on Jade's lower back once again, and tried to concentrate on the movie, rather than on Jade.
The room stayed silent for a good portion of the movie, with both of them watching intently. Tori only tried to comment on it once, earning her a noise that sounded like a cat hissing in response, which she assumed meant to shut up. At some point, she had ended up squashed between Jade and the wooden headboard, since Tori's visitor had leaned against her once she deemed her back massage good enough. She hadn't moved since then, and Tori was starting to wonder if Jade was even still awake. The only part of Tori that was asleep was the lower half of her body, due to the teenage girl lying on top of it. Her eyelids were getting heavier and heavier, and while it felt like the movie should have finished twice already, Tori looked at the clock just to see that it was barely even 1 AM. She wasn't sure that they were even halfway through the movie.
If Jade was asleep, Tori didn't know how she was going to get out from under her. She didn't want to wake her – Tori knew from experience that waking Jade from her sleep was both difficult and a bad idea – but staying in this position and even thinking about falling asleep was laughably impossible. They were in the center of the bed, so if Tori somehow managed to squeeze out from under Jade, there'd be no room left for her to sleep, and moving Jade was out of the question – she didn't just sleep like a rock, she slept like a boulder. Dead weight was the only way to describe any attempt to roll her over.
Tori decided to just wait and watch the rest of the movie – maybe Jade would get off on her own by the time it ended. She wasn't entirely sure what was going on in the movie at this point, as she'd been only partially been paying attention the whole time, but for some reason, Jack was in one of the hotel rooms. She struggled to keep her eyes open as he crossed the room and entered the bathroom, heading to his doom, if the creepy music were any indication. Inside the bathroom, a woman was in the bath tub. Tori hadn't exactly studied the first half of the movie, but she was pretty sure that the only woman in the hotel was Wendy, Jack's wife, and this definitely wasn't her. The woman in the bathtub stood up and climbed out extremely slowly, calmly walking toward Jack even though she was 100%, totally, and completely buck naked.
What made this scene even more awkward was the fact that Jade had actually been awake the entire time, and had noticed when Tori's body had tensed up behind her.
"What's the matter, Tori? You never see a naked lady before?" Jade teased, just as the nude woman turned into a disgusting, rotting, old one. She looked up into Tori's face, grinning from ear to ear at the youngest Vega's obvious discomfort.
"I, uh…don't really make it a habit of it." Tori answered, unsure if it would be more awkward to look at Jade or the TV.
"What, you don't even look in the mirror before you get in the shower?"
"…Do you?" Jade just laughed in response – a laugh that Tori was getting awfully used to hearing, despite Jade's unfortunate reason for being there.
"You can open your eyes now." She taunted, finally sitting up and moving over, which turned Tori's attention to the legs that she might possibly have to get amputated.
"You're not actually as innocent as you seem, are you?" Jade asked, crossing her legs once she'd turned toward Tori. Neither of them was really paying attention to the movie anymore, but it continued to play in the background.
"Guess not." Tori mumbled without thinking. She'd thought that it was starting to get cold in her room, but it was obvious to her that Jade was colder than she was. Even in the small amount of light coming from the TV, Tori could tell that her shirt really was pretty tight across Jade's chest. Tori still happened to be wearing her bra, but she pulled the blanket up over her chest anyway, partially hoping that Jade would follow her lead so she could force herself to stop staring.
"What?" Jade asked, obviously noticing how awkward and uncomfortable Tori was feeling. She caught on right away and looked down, discovering what Tori had just been looking at. "Jesus, Vega, they're just nipples. I have them, the lady in the movie obviously had them…you have them. Well, I hope you have them. I wouldn't know. Especially since you're just sitting there like…hugging yourself. What are you even doing?" She reached out and grabbed one of the arms that Tori had crossed over her chest.
"I-I know. I'm sorry." Tori whispered, barely audible over the sound of the movie playing in the background.
"What's wrong? Do you not want me here? I can sleep somewhere else. Maybe if I stay at Cat's I won't wake up to her brother pouring maple syrup on me this time…" Tori knew that Jade wasn't actually offering to leave, but she fell for her pity trap anyway.
"No, you can stay. I'm just, umm…I'm really tired, and I haven't had anyone stay the night in a while, so I'm not really…"
"Yeah. Right." Jade rolled her eyes and lay back down, pulling the blankets up over her chin. "You can just turn the movie off." Tori obeyed her command and settled into her side of the bed. She closed her eyes tightly and started wondering why she'd chosen to torture herself. Jade had offered to leave. Tori hadn't had to let her stay in the first place. If this situation were flip-flopped, Jade surely wouldn't have allowed Tori to sleep at her house. She wasn't obligated to let Jade sleep in her home. She should have said no. She could have said no. She'd had a chance to! Who cares if Cat's weird brother confused guests with stacks of pancakes? Cat wasn't in the middle of an agonizing, one-sided love affair with Jade. Cat could lie on a bed with her and not have a heart attack. Cat would be asleep by now.
"Tori." Jade whispered again. "Remember…tonight didn't happen. If you repeat anything I told you, you'll pay for it."
"I have no idea what you're talking about." Tori responded.
SATURDAY MORNING – 10:14 am
Morning came and somehow Tori had survived the night. She got out of bed at 10, still tired, but she wasn't about to stay another minute longer. Quickly, she got dressed and then went downstairs to make herself some breakfast. She poured a bowl of Frosted Flakes and, as an afterthought, put on a pot of coffee. As the coffee filtered, Tori sat down at the kitchen table with her bowl of cereal and a spoon and started to eat. She had only taken two bites before her sister stormed down the stairs, making a beeline for the freezer. She ripped it open, grabbed a bag of frozen peas, pressed it to the side of her face, and then turned to Tori.
"Why is Jade in your bed?" She asked grumpily.
"Uhh…because she spent the night." Tori answered slowly, trying to predict Trina's reaction. "What happened to your face?"
"Well, I went in your room to borrow your brown boots, and Jade threw your alarm clock at my face!"
"Oh my God. Are you alright?" Tori abandoned her cereal and ran to her sister's side.
"Yeah, I'm fine. It didn't hit me very hard. She's got pretty bad aim." Tori laughed at her sister's last statement. If anyone had bad aim, it was Trina.
"I'm sorry she did that…but that's what you get for waking her up."
"You could have warned me." Trina huffed, sitting down in the chair Tori had previously occupied. Tori sat down beside her, slowly sliding her bowl of cereal across the table so that she could finish it.
"When? She showed up after everybody was already asleep. I didn't have a chance."
"Why would Jade want to stay the night here anyway? No offense, but she doesn't like you." Trina set the bag of peas down in front of her. "And why did you let her stay? …No offense," she repeated, "but she's kind of horrible."
"She was going to sleep on a park bench, Trina. She had nowhere else to go."
"Nowhere?" Trina questioned skeptically, returning the peas to the puffy and red side of her face again. "Why couldn't she stay with, I don't know, her boyfriend?"
"He's in Canada again, I guess." Tori answered.
"Canada? What's in Canada?" Trina spit out, reacting to the word Canada much the same way that Jade always did.
"I don't know…his place of birth?"
"What about Cat?" Trina questioned, adjusting her makeshift ice pack.
"You've met her brother, haven't you?"
"Oh…good point. What about Andrew?" Trina still sometimes got his name confused, even though he was her sister's best friend and had spent a lot of time in the Vega home over the past year.
"It's Andre, and he lives with his grandma full time now." Tori answered.
"So?"
"His grandma's weird…"
"Oh. Right. Well, what about Rob-Never mind. I don't even have to ask." Trina placed her free hand over top of Tori's in a semi-comforting way. "You're too nice, you know that? She doesn't deserve this."
"I know…" Tori mumbled in response, fighting off the urge to defend Jade. Trina was right, though. Jade had never done a single nice thing for her, yet she still treated her like a friend. Tori knew that she would never be able to make Jade like her, but that didn't stop her from trying.
When she finished the rest of her cereal, Tori realized that the coffee machine had shut off. She placed her bowl and spoon in the sink and poured some coffee into her favorite mug. She stirred in some creamer and raised the cup to her lips, blowing on it to cool it off.
Just then, the floorboards above her creaked, and she looked down into her cup, sighing before she went for the stairs. Her bedroom door was ajar, so she knocked and then pushed it open.
"Hey Jade, do you want some…coffee…"
The room was empty. The pajamas she'd let Jade borrow were folded neatly and sat on top of her unmade bed with a post-it note she recognized as one of many she kept in her desk stuck to the top. Setting her coffee down on her bedside table, Tori grabbed the note.
I'll pay you back someday.
Maybe.
Don't count on it.
She smiled at Jade's note and rolled her eyes. She'd never planned on being compensated for everything she'd done for Jade anyway.
MONDAY MORNING – 8:03 AM
Tori knew that she'd be expected to have completely wiped Friday night from her memory, but that didn't stop her from reliving the whole night for the rest of the weekend. Sunday had come and gone and she hadn't heard another word from Jade. She took that to mean that she'd either found somewhere else to stay, she'd made up with her mother, or she'd actually gone and slept on a park bench.
Monday morning Jade showed up for school early, proving that she hadn't been murdered by a hobo in the park. She of course didn't look too happy – not that she ever did – but Tori didn't dare go talk to her. Instead she stood by her locker like a good girl and pretended that everything was absolutely normal. She grabbed her books, checked the time on her cell phone, closed her locker, and slowly spun out her combination.
Across the hall, Tori saw Andre talking to Jade. She looked pretty upset about something, but Andre was completely calm. Tori admired that in him. He put up with a lot and got very little in return, but it never seemed to bother him too much.
She started to walk toward Andre and Jade, but as she got closer, the irritable girl noticed Tori coming and her eyes snapped back to Andre, before she turned to face her locker, hiding the distressed facial expression Tori had just barely caught a glimpse of. Andre looked at her and shrugged, so she kept walking, hearing one little bit of their conversation as she passed:
"We can talk about it online later. Do you still have your computer?"
"No. Dad wouldn't let me take it."
Partially relieved that her part in that situation was done with, Tori sped up and met Beck at his locker.
"Hey, Beck." She greeted cheerfully, putting on a giant fake smile.
"Oh, hey Tori." He mumbled, pushing a book into the tiny amount of space between all his others. "What do you think they're talking about?" He asked a moment later, without having to explain what he meant.
"I don't know." Tori lied, her eyes wandering back over to Jade and Andre. Jade looked up, her eyes fixed on Tori, although she didn't appear to really be looking.
Something had happened that night. Things with Jade were somehow different, but even if Tori could give a name to what had happened between them, she knew better than to say it out loud.
"They've been talking a lot lately." Beck commented nonchalantly, breaking Tori out of her little daydream.
"Is somebody jealous?" Tori teased halfheartedly. "Andre's a great friend. You know you don't have to worry about him."
"Yeah I know." He answered, pushing his hair out of his eyes. "I just have to wonder if she's talking to him because she doesn't think she can talk to me…"
"I'm sure she's not." Tori lied again. "So, umm…how was your weekend?"
"Pretty boring. Just sat around and watched TV."
"You went all the way to Canada just to sit around and watch TV? Tori asked, confused.
"No…I stayed home and sat around watching TV. Who told you I was in Canada?"
"Nobody. I just…I must have misunderstood someone…" She glanced across the hallway, her eyes landing on Jade, who was alone now. She saw Tori looking and cocked an eyebrow, tilting her head slightly as she slammed her locker shut.
"I have to get to class." She excused herself from Beck's presence and jogged down the hall to catch up with Jade, who was walking as fast as she possibly could toward her first class, even though they still had a few minutes before it started.
"You chose me over Beck." Tori said in awe, smiling at the girl, who just kept walking, eyes frozen to the ground.
"I have no idea what you're talking about."