Cat first spots Jade at the Valentine's Christmas party from across her living room and she's curious, curious, curious. With a huge smile plastered onto her 6 year old face, she marches over to the brunette through legs and legs of tall adults and introduces herself.
"What's your name?" Cat asks, watching the other girl play with the hem of her bright Red dress. Cat thinks the colour goes perfectly with the other girl's shoes and her earrings and her eyes and her everything.
"Jade," is the shy response told around her fingers.
"OK," Cat laughs, excitedly jumping on the spot, "You wanna come play with my Christmas present? It's only one doll, but I have more upstairs in my room."
Jade never removes her eyes from Cat and nods, a smile creeping onto her face.
"One sec, I have to tell my mom," Jade says and Cat follows her to where both of their mothers are chatting in the kitchen, both with glasses of wine in hand, both smiling down at their daughters.
Jade's mom has to crouch down so she can hear Jade quietly tell her of their plans. The woman nods and smiles at her daughter before Cat she pulls Jade away by the hand in the direction on the stairs. Neither girl hears the thankfulness in Mrs. West's voice when she tells Mrs. Valentine how worried she was that Jade would never make any friends.
And Cat draws Jade into her beautiful Candy and Lollipop world where nothing bad ever happens and they can play all day.
/
The West family moves in the next year to a bigger house, closer to the Valentine's, and the girls end up going to the same school, in the same class.
Then, quickly, Jade becomes an unavoidable factor in Cat's life. A factor that dictates how weekends and after school hours are spent. Always together.
/
When Cat's brother, Rubin, is only two years old and the girls are in the 7th grade, Cat's mom dies in a car accident.
Cat cries, cries, cries for a whole week until she almost drowns in her tears like Alice, but Jade throws open her bedroom door and saves her before she runs out of air. She hugs Cat and sleeps over for the two nights before the funeral.
At the funeral she holds Cat's hand and doesn't seem to mind when Cat can't cry anymore. Cat wishes she could. Really. But instead she looks at the ground through the ceremony.
Through the reception, she squeezes Jade's hand and doesn't let go when relatives hug her, awkward one armed hugs that force them to stare into Jade's sharp eyes over Cat's shoulder.
They eat paste-tasting sandwiches and sit holding Rubin for Cat's dad while he talks to cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents and coworkers and friends for a couple hours.
It's decided that Jade will spend a third night at the Valentine's when Cat starts sobbing over Rubin's little sleeping face at their table in the corner of the reception hall.
/
Cat's dad takes her to a Special Doctor who talks her to for an hour every Tuesday night at 8 o'clock. The Doctor is worried for Cat, so she puts her on medication that calm her during the night and makes the bad dreams stay away.
/
Cat's Candy and Lollipop world is without sunshine for the next year and a half until Jade slips a brochure onto her desk for Hollywood Arts High School.
They go together to auditions, Cat's Concerned Father dropping them off, staring after them as they walk towards the doors.
While waiting, they fill out applications and sit along a wall. Cat slowly ties, unties, ties, unties her shoelaces, feeling like a heavy rock under the ocean. Then Jade slips her right hand into Cat's left and she feels herself start to rise to the surface.
They go in one after the other and Cat is told she's amazing by a man with crazy hair in a cardigan and the curly haired principle. They tell Jade the same thing and Cat excitedly calls her father to pick them up.
He smiles at them in the rearview mirror as they talk to each other over Rubin in his car seat, and he takes them to get ice cream.
He takes them to get ice cream again when they get their acceptance letters.
/
The summer before the 9th grade Cat dyes her hair Red after spontaneously buying a dozen red velvet cupcakes one afternoon while out with Rubin on a walk and they pass a little cafe a couple streets over from their house.
Jade had helped her, the girls squealing in the Valentine's upstairs bathroom the entire afternoon. While they waited on the dye to set, Cat finds some of her mom's old makeup under the sink. They go quiet until Jade takes the makeup bag from Cat's trebling fingers, asking her, "Do you want me to put it on you?"
Cat scrunches together her eyebrows. "No," she says, her voice hoarse. She doesn't want Jade to see her cry and then have all that makeup run down her face like how it happens in movies. Shaking away the image, she says without thought, "Let me put it on you."
"Are you sure? It was your mom's..."
"Yeah," Cat says, smiling at her friend, ignoring the tiny voice that tells her it isn't a good idea, "What else are we going to do for the next 20 minutes? Sit here."
Twenty minutes later, Jade has dark eyeliner circling her eyes, lipstick two shades too bright on her lips and the perfect amount of blush gracing her cheeks, and Cat has towel dried Red hair. They look at themselves in the mirror for a while, a little perplexed, but generally happy with the results.
The next time Cat sees Jade, a couple days later, the brunette has on makeup coming out of her house. And she's pretty, pretty, beautiful, and Cat tells herself over and over and over not to stare.
/
When high school starts Cat's overwhelmed and Jade is the only constant. She becomes a shining beacon for the redhead.
And Cat Falls In Love with the other girl; easier than math tests and science quizzes and english essays. So easy that Cat wonders how she hadn't before the 9th grade. Cat figures it has something to do with how little time they get together during the school day that kicked her into realizing it.
Cat's happy, happier, happiest in her new knowledge. Her Candy and Lollipop world gets an injection of this new reality, the colours more vibrant and the sugar more sweet. The world inside her head projects onto sidewalks and into classrooms. And Cat smiles, smiles, smiles until Jade quirks her lips up in response.
Cat loves Jade. She's sure of it. And she starts to think maybe Jade could Fall In Love with her too, but then she meets Beck.
I'm trying a new style. I like it so far. This started out as a one shot that grew and grew until this happened. I like it so far.