The thing is sex always makes her think of placentas, well at least some of the time, and it kind of weirds her out. Not that she's about to have sex. Currently Kat is on top of her covers reading something for school which bores her, unsurprisingly, and every now and then her thoughts turn to sex. She's not sure whether that should surprise her or not.

Putting the book down, Kat pads downstairs and is pleased to see the front room empty. Her father seems to be out in the garden, and Bianca had some kind of social event she was at. If she cared, she could check her father's meticulous logs for the details of Bianca's whereabouts, but she has better things to do.

Or not. There's really nothing on tv, except some movie with Julia Stiles that's completely more Bianca's style than hers. Kat flips off the television and grabs her purse. She doesn't know where she's going, but she knows that the house will be boring, so she'll… find a coffee shop? Nah, too liberal trendy for her. A park? Too family-oriented.

She ends up in a music shop. It's not just a shop that sells CDs, though it has those. There are also various instruments, most prominently the guitars hanging on the wall. She goes over and picks up a Fender reverently, hands carefully gauging the weight. With the smooth feel of it in her fingers, she feels like she's stepped out of her body and into some other place where she owns a Fender, and she can maybe do that screaming chick music thing she fantasizes about when she needs to take herself mentally away from her boring day to day existence. And she grudgingly admits, very grudgingly, that if it weren't for Patrick, she might as well be a robot spitting out route test answers as she takes her sister to and from wherever she needs to go.

Though he doesn't bear thinking about. Not while a Fender is in her hands. Not even placentas and sex have their place here. This space is sacred. For a moment, she forgets that there is anything she'll ever have to trudge through, anything left to regret. She finds herself smiling.

Then she stops smiling. Like some kind of literary demonic antagonist, she notices Patrick enter the store as if beckoned by her merely thinking his name. Kat tries to ignore him, but the moment is completely ruined. "So you're stalking me now?" he asks with a raised eyebrow and a smirk.

Her frown deepens. "What do you mean? I was here first."

"Depends on how you look at it. I've been coming here for years." He lifts the Fender from her hands, and she grieves its loss. "You play?" he asks, and he has the audacity to put the strap around his shoulder.

She gaps, offended that he would even think he was worthy enough to handle that guitar like that. Mixed with that is a little envy. She closes her mouth, crosses her arms, then answers, "I want to. You?"

"I guess you could say that." He puts the guitar back where it belongs, moves over to the CDs. Kat follows, despite herself. She watches him skim through the titles, pausing at one before moving on again.

She looks at the CDs herself. There are things she wants, but she doesn't have much cash on her.

"Want to get out of here?" he asks.

"Excuse me?" she asks, looking over at him.

"Come on, we can go somewhere more interesting," he says, this time motioning towards the door with his head.

"What makes you think I would go anywhere with you?" Her hands are on her hips, and she's more intrigued and excited than she's been all morning, placenta sex thoughts aside.

"Fine, don't." He shrugs and turns towards the door. She runs to get in front of him and holds out a hand.

"At least give me time to think about it," she says. She has to push stray strands of hair back away from her face. "What kind of place is it?"

"It's a secret," he says, and she doesn't miss the mocking tone underneath his words.

"Secret is usually a euphemism for illegal," she tells him.

"And if it was?" She doesn't miss the challenge in that question. It runs up her spine and makes her feel less like a robot more like… well, more like an actual teenager, she supposes. Which is dangerous territory.

"Are drugs involved?" she asks.

He looks taken off guard by that. "No."

"Will I possibly be taken home in a police car?" she asks.

He's laughing at her under his breath. "It's not that interesting, I promise."

She lets out her breath before she gives in. "Alright. Let's go, but in my car. I'm not getting on your bike so we can be all pressed together and then I'll get my head busted open on the cement when you get distracted by the road."

"Have you always been this cynical?" he asks.

She meets his eyes. "You haven't seen anything yet," Kat swears as she turns back towards the door, he's still laughing under his breath at her.

---

"Paintball." It isn't a question, though her voice is very incredulous. "You're taking me to play paintball."

He's on his bike, having led her here because he was unwilling to leave it back at the shop. Patrick takes off his helmet, squinting as he looks at her because the sun is behind her back. "Why not?" he asks.

"It just seems so… normal." She gets out of the car and shuts the door. She's underwhelmed, sure, but there are guns, and there is Patrick, and those two things technically fulfill a fantasy she had about him once. Not the kind of fantasy that would inevitably lead her to thinking about placentas, mind you. The other kind, where she hurts people, and she thinks it is okay to have those fantasies, because she doesn't act on them… most of the time.

"You can go if you want. There are usually enough people around who want to play." He says it so matter of factly, like it doesn't matter if she's there or not. Kat crosses her arms.

"And give you the pleasure of maiming innocent people? I don't think so." She stomps off in front of him, knowing she's being dramatic. He's scoffing as he follows behind her. She's sure he wants to underestimate her because she's a girl. Luckily for her, those armed self-defense classes her father was willing to pay for are about to pay off.

For the record, she doesn't believe he's capable of maiming anyone. Patrick is, Kat's pretty sure, a sheep in wolf's clothing. Knowing this somehow doesn't detract from the bad boy appeal, because riding a motorcycle is still pretty edgy for high school, and she's willing to bet even though he's not violent, his personal life is chock-full of deviant behavior. He did recommend the fake ID, didn't he?

She wonders if he drinks alcohol while he goes to pay. She'd offered him the two dollars in change she found in her car, but he'd refused. Chivalry, as sweet as it can seem, is really just a chauvinistic way for males to say that they expect women to not be able to take care of themselves, like open a door for example, so they would are going to be kind enough to lend a hand. She supposes she should be flattered. She's not.

Not too long after that, Kat finds herself crawling on her stomach, gun in hand, through the leaves, behind a barrier. She keeps her ears open for the sound of footsteps, but all she hears is a woodpecker thumping at a nearby tree. After a quick glare at it, she continues until she can see around the edge. Nothing. He hasn't found her yet then.

She takes the opportunity to strategize. His flag is about fifteen yards away, though they are mostly open yards with little to shelter her. Like her, it seems he left his teammate as the guard and had gone after her flag himself. Unless he's lying in wait to eliminate her before going after the flag, which is a strategy she considers briefly before determining it to be too passive.

There's a tree, and if she gets in the branches and aims right, she could take out the guard, jump down, and be back behind the barrier before anyone has time to react. Kat crawls over to the tree, sliding up it on the side where she can't be seen. It's been awhile since she went tree climbing, but she eventually finds a good perch in the branches. Aiming is easy, firing easier than that.

The kid physically goes down when he's hit, like an actor on a stage, and before Kat knows it, paintballs are flying at her. She looks around to see where they were coming from, but she doesn't see anyone as she starts trying to scramble higher. "Damn it," she says, looking around the tree at the clearing. There's no one. It's coming from the trees.

Cursing under her breath again, Kat looks for a way down. If she can only get to the tree beside her, then she can make a quick exit back to the barrier. She experimentally wobbles the branch that she's planning on climbing out on. It seems steady enough. Kat slides carefully along it, careful to keep herself hidden in the branches. The paintballs have stopped, that seems to be a good sign.

She's midway out onto the branch when she hears his voice. "Nobody beats me at paintball." It is immediately followed by a hit to her leg, which takes her off guard. She winces as she looks up at the branch that used to be the spot where she was sitting.

Soon Patrick's face is over hers. "You alright?" he asks, offering a hand.

She pushes it away. "I'm fine, expect for the mild concussion I probably sustained." Kat glares at him. She knows logically he hadn't broken the rules of the game or done anything she wouldn't have done herself, but it just seems so petty. He could have at least waited until she was in a more secure position.

Pain sears across her skull. Explaining this to her dad's not going to be easy. As afraid as he is of her graduating with a baby in her arms, though arguably he's more afraid of Bianca doing it, he's also afraid of normal things, like car accidents and appendicitis and, more recently, the swine flu. "Just help me up," she tells him, holding out her hand, which he grabs with an exasperated expression.

She hands him her keys. "Here, you're going to have to drive my car home."

Patrick takes them, looking her over. "You're sure you're alright."

"Look, I plan on making an appointment with my PCP when I get home, but for right now, I'd like to get home, okay?" She says it slowly so that he'll understand, but more so that he'll take the hint and stop asking after her. It works on both accounts, and he seems frustrated as he turns and gathers her gun, heading towards the rental building. Kat unzips her suit, dismayed at the streak of yellow in her hair from an earlier game. She should have just read her book.

---

As they start on the way home, it's oddly quiet. "So what, are you like a paintball fanatic?" she asks him. "This isn't some morbid recreation of teenage murder fantasies, is it?"

There's that look. That look that tells her, You've got to be kidding me, right? "My dad used to take me." He uses the same tone that she does when she didn't want to discuss something further, so she leaves it alone.

Kat turns around to face him. "Do you like snow cones?"

That look again. "I guess. Why?"

"I kind of want one. Mind if we stop?" Being annoying is only an added bonus. She means it about wanting one. It was kind of hot out in the woods they played paintball in, and she hasn't had a snow cone since a couple of summers ago.

He shrugs. "Why not?" She hates that he makes her feel like an annoying little sister or something. Her eyes narrow. Did he think of her that way? It makes an eerie kind of sense considering the way he treats her, not quite interested but not quite disinterested either. Was it… brotherly?

The thought disturbs her more than it should. Not that she's going to try to verify any of this. That would involve making sure his feelings were non-brotherly, and she isn't sure she wants to know. She just doesn't want to be patronized. She hates being patronized. Her "pater" is already a little overwhelming as it is.

She makes him get a gummy bear put in the middle of her cherry snow cone. He hands it to her with a disgusted, "here", and she takes it with just a smile. It feels sort of like she has the upperhand, and she likes it.

He doesn't get one himself, so she eats hers in silence. "You should drive with both hands on the wheel," she tells him when she notices his right hand is casually draped over the top of the steering wheel.

Patrick drapes his other hand through the bottom hole of the steering wheel. "I only have liability," she adds.

He glances over at her in a not too friendly but possibly brotherly way and sits up before putting both hands on the wheel. When she thinks about it, it does remind her of her relationship with Bianca, but it feels creepy, so she leaves off that train of thought. This only leads to her cherry snow cone making her think about placentas again, which isn't too pleasant. She's never going to let her dad make her watch that video again. Ever. She'll have to find it and burn it, along with the copies he probably has stashed away. Her father has thorough down to an art form.

They're at her house before she knows it, and it's only then she realizes he has no good way to get back to his bike. "Do you need money for the bus?" she asks.

"I'm fine," he says. They get out of the car and look at each other over the hood.

"Thank you, for… you know, everything," she says, trying to be casual. Kat's pretty sure she pulls it off.

"You're welcome," Patrick says, tossing her the keys. "Next time, though, we take the bike."

The thought of next time makes her feel tinglier than she wants to feel, so she pushes that feeling down as far as she can. "Let's see if there is a next time first," she says, turning to the house. She stops after a few steps. "And if there is, I pay."

He smiles at her, like he finds her amusing. It still might be brotherly, but this time she doesn't think so.

Her dad's in the kitchen drinking lemonade when she gets back inside. "Where have you been?" he demands.

"There was a study group at the library. I thought I told you?" She waits to see if he buys it, and she's not quite sure as indecision flickers over his face.

"Next time I want a twenty-four hour notice about study groups," he tells her. His eyes narrow. "Is that paint in your hair?"

"Yeah, part of the class project is some art thing we had to do," Kat starts up the stairs. "By the way, I tripped and hit my head pretty hard on one of the book shelves. Mind if I get it checked out?"

He goes into overly concerned mode. "Do you know what day it is? Who's the president?"

She rolls her eyes. "I need to go study." His protests follow her up the stairs, but he stays on the bottom step like usual. Inside her room the book is exactly where she'd placed it before she went out.

One hundred more pages to go. Her fingers slide over her yellow paint-covered hair, and she smiles despite herself.