Chapter One
"... so then, I was telling him that I was there before him, I mean, you've seen me in the morning, I'm first in line for coffee, only Lukas and his brother beat me to it, you've seen me."
Kat nodded, turning her bottle of water over and over in her hands, enjoying the cool weight of it.
"And then, he said that he was there first, and called me sweetheart!"
Kat smiled at Liz's indignant facial expression.
"So what did you do?"
Liz huffed and flipped her long brown hair over her shoulder. Some got caught on the flower-shaped clip she wore in it, and she continued her story as Kat reached across and untucked it.
"Well, I told him not to call me that, so he called me Tittenfrau, which isn't even real German, so I may have elbowed him in the gut."
Lili burst laughing, earning a frown from Vash. "You hit him?"
Liz grinned widely, eyes glittering. "No, I elbowed him. If you aim for around about here"- she gestured to her solar plexus- "it'll knock the wind out of them for long enough to get away. Or get your coffee." She drained the last of her current beverage, a sports drink of some sort, and grabbed her backpack. "Anyway, I've got to go. I've got swimming later, so if I want to see you-know-who, it should probably be now."
"You should probably stop calling him that" suggested Matthew with a smile. "It kind of makes it sound like you're dating Voldemort."
Liz ruffled his hair in response, and squeezed Kat's shoulder. "Call me about Vargas' homework later, OK?" Kat nodded, and Liz jogged off to the entrance of the cafeteria.
Kat didn't realise that she'd been staring after her until her eyes felt uncomfortably dry, feeling as though they might give off sparks when they returned to the view in front of her. Lili was daintily nibbling on a sandwich. While she was two years younger, she and Vash tended to come as a package, and she was such a sweet girl that no-one could really take any issue with her being there. Vash himself was effortlessly scribbling his way through some last minute economics homework, stern expression being the only thing really differentiating him from his younger sister. Matthew appeared to be trying to signal for help, until Kat realised that he was waving his hands in her face. She shook her head and smiled brightly.
"You alright?"
"Sorry, just spaced out for a minute there." Kat noticed the unusual abundance of pizza on Matthew's plate.
"Aren't you hungry?"
Matthew finished off one of the five pieces. "It's not all for me. Alfred wanted as much pizza as I could get, and said he'd meet me here, but I guess something came up."
Kat laughed. Alfred was Matthew's younger brother, in the grade below them. The awkward teenage phase seemed to have completely passed him by; in fact, he was confident and boisterous to a fault, and was highly unlikely to shy away from conflict (in fact, he was usually the one causing it). Unfortunately, his main source of conflict happened to be Ivan, Kat's equally confident and boisterous younger brother.
"Maybe he and Ivan are fighting again?" Kat meant it as a joke but secretly hoped not.
"I hope not, Dad is going to freak out if Alfred gets detention again." Matthew pushed his glasses up his nose. He was a lanky, soft-spoken boy with a mass of dark blond hair and a kind smile. From what Kat had gathered, he wasn't exactly used to being showered with attention, and seemed to be overlooked altogether by various teachers and even his own father. He was like her, really, she decided; sort of like white noise. You'd notice his absence, but wouldn't know what was missing.
Matthew shrugged. "So anyway, since Alfred's probably being yelled at by Vargas again, help me eat this pizza?"
And that was when Kat's stomach clenched protectively. It helped slightly; sometimes, the gnawing empty ache of hunger could be muted by the rigidity of her abdominal muscles. She'd been so good today; she'd considered an apple for breakfast, feeling its smooth weight in the palm of her hand before returning it to the fruit bowl unscathed, reminding herself that this was about willpower as much as anything. She couldn't risk a repeat of last night. How many of those little cakes again, twelve? How many were in a packet? She shuddered.
"Kat? Pizzaaaa…."
She noticed that Matthew was holding a piece in front of her face. It's grease, she told herself. Nothing but visceral, shiny grease.
It looked wonderful.
The shame didn't hit her until her inevitable trip to the bathroom. The act itself was not a problem. It had become almost a clinical, emotionless procedure; lock the stall door, fingers down the throat. She wiggled them slightly, feeling the lead weight in her stomach gather into one mass.
Not long to wait now, she thought, as her mouth filled with spit. Some of it spilled down her fingers and swung, rope-like, over the water below.
Soon enough, as they always did, someone used the hand drier. Up and out. The water in her stomach helped slightly to soften it, as her fingers scrabbled at the back of her throat, pushing out more and more of it, as much as she could before the hand drier fell silent.
When her final retch failed to produce any evidence of food, and the bathroom was vacated, she sat on the toilet seat, hunched over. She rested her face in her folded arms and felt the familiar burning shame spread from her aching stomach to her raw throat, to her pulsating fingertips.
Two slices. Matthew had just witnessed her eat two slices of pizza. And she knew that it can't have been a pleasant sight; she must have looked grotesque, cramming it into her mouth, lips and fingers slick with oil. Greedy girl. Greedy, pungent, revolting child.
Her waist band was digging into her stomach. With the usual juddering sigh, she flushed the toilet, and made her way to the mirror, Still a faint sheen of grease around her mouth, she noticed, scrubbing at it hard with tissue paper. None of the tell-tale red dots around her eyes, thankfully. Her face still looked slightly puffy, but, as she frequently reminded herself, no-one would notice. She resolutely walked out of the bathroom, and towards her next class.
"Ivan got detention again?" asked Liz, as Kat followed her in the direction of the gym. Kat shook her head.
"No. Well, he might. Anyway, I'm walking Natalya home once she's done with gymnastics."
They were approaching the large, block-like gym building. Liz nodded.
"Cool, well, I'll call you later, OK?" She gave Kat a quick hug and jogged off. Kat headed to the gym.
Unsurprisingly, Natalya was not even close to getting changed to go home. In fact, a couple of girls exited the gym as she was still performing a series of handsprings, one bitterly muttering "Yeah, we get it, you're good, no need to hog the beam for an hour."
Kat leaned against the wall and observed her younger sister for a moment. Little Natalya, as cold and beautiful as a snowflake, barely making a sound as she spun through the air. She wasn't a bad child; she was intelligent, confident and so talented, almost to a fault.
Kat had fit in like she'd always been there; from the first day of teachers calling "Yekaterina Braginskaya" on the register (with varying levels of success in terms of pronunciation), she had smiled brightly and said "It's just Kat". She had worked to tone down her accent, despite being far from the only foreign student at the school. Over time, she changed her clothes, particularly after Mei in her Geography class had clapped her hands and squealed "You look so eighties, is that really how you dress in Eastern Europe?" She had meant it as a compliment, it turned out, but it stung. Kat worked hard; she was an adequate student (not exceptional), as far as she was aware, no-one seemed to dislike her, in fact, her bright smile and pet names for people and eagerness to help ensured that, at worst, people merely considered her to be a sweet, possibly quite vapid girl, and nothing more.
Her siblings, however, had not made any effort to modify their behaviour, appearance, or anything else. Natalya knew perfectly well how the other girls in her grade saw her; it would be impossible not to overhear whispers of "Stuck up bitch" and "Thinks she's better than everyone". At thirteen, Kat would have been destroyed if people saw her like that. Natalya, however, not only seemed to know about her image, but revelled in it. She had no interest in befriending anyone, fitting in, or returning the affections of the awkward adolescent boys who stared at her in awe. She almost never smiled, but had always been blessed in the looks department; dark blue, almost violet eyes, and long blonde hair as soft as whispers. At her age, she remained resolutely slender, and, sometimes, to her eternal shame, Kat found herself wishing that she too had the body of an athletic pubescent girl.
Natalya was strange alright; she kept to herself (unless she was following Ivan around like a shadow), talked about her ghost friends ("Strong imagination", their father would say with a smile), and Kat had caught her, on numerous occasions, whispering what she assumed were secrets to a pretty, ornate knife she had saved up her allowance to buy. Natalya, Kat thought, would probably grow up to be a remarkable achievement in and of herself, or a serial killer. Possibly both.
Ivan, like Natalya, didn't see much need to change anything about himself to fit in; Kat couldn't tell sometimes if he was genuinely oblivious, or just didn't care that everyone was either afraid of him or regarded him with scorn. He was a huge boy, and, at fifteen, towered over her. Strong as well, possibly due to their father showing him how to box, and his quite frankly heroic food intake. Unlike his little sister, he smiled almost constantly; he would be running around in gym class, chattering to that Chinese boy in his year, antagonising Matthew's brother, or even simply staring into space, content with his own thoughts (another trait shared with Natalya, who claimed to find TV static relaxing), and that smile would rarely shift.
Kat realised with a jolt that her sister was standing in front of her, looking deeply unimpressed.
"How did it go?" she asked. Natalya's expression remained sullen.
"You were just watching, you should know." She turned to walk to the changing rooms. "I'll meet you outside."
Kat stared up at the clouds outside, her insides feeling sad, and empty, and fizzy, and sore, and wondered if maybe Natalya's self-imposed exile from her classmates might have been the best option.