Rose Red
When Beck fails to kiss his true love at midnight, her fairy godmother takes a vengeance.
01.
"Do you think you're ready for this?" Tori asks, a smile growing on her face. She shakes her hips, arms wriggling in the air. Her dress, a deep red with spaghetti straps, a plunging neckline, and ruffled layers of fabric, was beautiful and expensive, her black wig swept up into an intricate bun, wispy wavy pieces falling around her face.
The wigs had been all her idea. "This is a masquerade, after all. You can still tell who people are with a mask on."
The whole dance, in fact, was all hers, and it had been the nonstop talk of HA for months.
Too bad Cat wasn't going.
Cat, red hair falling over her shoulders, in cut off shorts and an old Lakers tee leans against the door frame, her usual dreamy, but cheery, smile nowhere to be found.
Tori's face drops. "You're not going?"
She shakes her head. "My dad, well, he needs me to stay home to take care of the kid."
"The kid?" Tori laughs, rolling her eyes. "Isn't your brother, like, twenty-five?"
Cat shrugs. "And, there's about a billion other things I need to get done before they get home."
"What time's that?"
"A little after midnight, I'm guessing. Him and my stepmom are going to some show in the Valley."
Tori sighs, glancing back at the limo full of their friends. "First Jade, now you. This is our junior prom."
"Jade's not going?"
"Her and Beck are on a break. Again," Tori shakes her head.
Their relationship was legendary for the fights, the break ups, the make ups; this one was different, though, Beck had told Cat the week before when he'd taken a seat next to her at lunch. He was picking at his spaghetti and shaking his head.
"Is it a disappointing lunch?" Cat asked him, studying him carefully.
Beck looked back at her, curiously, before bursting into laugher. "Oh, no, Cat, not at all."
"So, what's the matter?"
"Its Jade. She was all set on spending the summer at her dad's summerhouse in Mexico but my parents are on me about my grades from this semester."
"You're not doing well?" Cat asks.
"Well, between the new band and Jade, I don't really get a lot of time for studying, you know? And, its only the classes that are important to them, like Math and Science, that I'm really failing at."
"That's awful."
He nodded. "They're not even taking me on our annual family vacation. I'm stuck here all summer."
"If it makes you feel better, so am I."
Cat, who was at Hollywood Arts on scholarship, was used to all of her friends going off on month long vacations, having nice clothes and new cars.
Beck smiled up at Cat. "Yes, in fact, it does. We'll have to hang out this summer."
"I would really-"
"Move over, Riding Hood," Jade always enters, full force, into any conversation between her boyfriend and another girl, even if that girl is her closest friend. She squeezes right into the middle of Beck and Cat, kissing her boyfriend long and hard before giving Cat a long, hard look.
"Right," Cat smiles. "Well, I'm going to find Andre. He told me he had a new song to show me for our project."
And, now that she knew Jade wouldn't be at the prom to make Beck stand around and look bored with her, Cat was even more disappointed she wouldn't be there.
Tori leans in and gives Cat a long hug. "I'm sorry, I am."
"I know. Take lots of pictures for me."
Cat watches the limo pull away, sadly. She looks out onto the beautiful night sky with a pang in her heart, and closing her eyes thinks to herself,
I would give anything for just one dance with Beck.
Cat suddenly feels herself flying backwards into the small living room, her back hitting the wall.
