When Jade West walked into a room, a few people noticed.
When Cat Valentine walked into a room, everyone noticed.
….yesterday….
They met-or clashed,Jade supposes- in middle school, where Cat's red hair and cheery outlook were a standout and Jade's dark presence and holier-than-thou attitude were not.
"Hi,I'm Cat. You must be new!" The red velvet girl said. Jade nodded curtly. She hated being the new girl,because it meant someone there always trying to show you the damn ropes when you very well can figure them out for yourself.
But this girl didn't seem at all intrested in pointing her in the direction of 's class. More like she wanted to be her…friend.
"I'm not new. I've been alive for twelve and a half years. That's pretty old."
"That's not what I meant, silly!" Cat playfully swatted the girls arm. "And besides, twelve's not old."
"It is in dog years."
"Omigod, I have a dog! His name is Cobra, and I didn't name him, obviously,cause I think cobra's are scary, but he's soooo cute." Jade put a cool hand over the girl's overworked mouth.
"Save it."
"Kaykay!"
Jade hated that she could't bring this girl off whatever high she seemed to be on.
And,almost instantaneously, Jade realized that this Cat girl, wouldn't be changed. She could be poked and prodded and thrown around, and retain her rainbow-tainted shape.
"Hey, Jade. You wanna get a smoothie after school?" The redheads' brown eyes glittered to a golden sheen. Jade saw her reflection in them. She'd always wanted brown eyes, they seemed so warm and comforting compared to her icy blue stare.
She sighed. "Yeah. Sure."
Cat smiled. "Yay!"
That smoothie was the start of something beautiful.
…these days….
Cat was friends with every-effing-body. Jade didn't understand the hierarchy of Belvue Heights Middle, but she-and everyone else- knew very well that Cat was on the tippy-top of it.
Not that she seemed to notice. Every Facebook friend request, every flower she got on Valentine's day, Cat took with a grain of salt. She had her friends, and it didn't change.
Jade, André ,that easygoing dreadhead pianist, and Robbie, some geeky comedian with a puppet stuck on his hand that Cat had somehow taken a liking to.
They were friends. They weren't a clique, and they weren't a club. They were just friends, people who had conference calls (after Robbie got a phone), the people each other came to with problems.
Cat had the most problems, and Jade had the most answers.
Tight, red-and-black strings bound them together, and they were the top. Jade quickly rose to the top of the social tier too, and she watched as her friends list went from a measly 90-something to 500.
About 1/3 of Cat's. But so far,so great.
9th grade approached, and Cat and Jade were still best friends. Cat had gotten her period, and Jade had busted her lip open.
"Blood matches my hair." Cat stated simply, as if it were the cycle of life to compare your hair color to one of the most widespread fears in America.
They spent the countdown (two more weeks and we're freshmen, Jade!)poring over magazines Jade normally wouldn't be caught dead purchasing. But Cat showed her the pretty models and celebrities,and Jade noticed a pattern.
They all changed. Really, trends turned from month to month, and their hair cuts and colors changed.
Jade took a look at her split ends and their butter-brown color. She'd put in dark extenisions from time to time, but she'd never really considered full-out dyeing it.
"Hey,Cat?"
"Whattie?" Cat murmured into a glossy photo of a girl in bright tights and cutoff Sevens.
"Think I should dye my hair?" Jade sniffed, puckering her lips and placing a few inches of wheat-colored hair on them.
"Hehe! Maybe!" Cat said, laughing at Jade's makeshift mustache.
"What color?" Jade released the hair and let it fall back down to the sweetheart neckline of her brown sundress.
"I don't know! You look so pretty as it it is!" Cat twirled a red corkscrew curl around her finger.
"I'll dye it black." Jade decided firmly, pulling herself off her stomach and looking into Cat's door-length mirror.
"Won't your dad mind?" Cat rolled over onto her back and placed the Seventeen issue on her small chest.
"Nah. He doesn't care." Jade laughed at the thought of her dad taking notice of her. He didn't notice her lavish purchases of black clothing, and for all he knew, her hair could be lime green with blonde and purple streaks.
"Why wouldn't your dad care? My dad cared,but then he got over it." She said subtly,touched her thigh, and winced.
"I dunno, cause he's wrapped up in some Sandra girl and he's tryna buy another shitty company in Chicago." She typed" shades of black" into her iPhone's Goodgle search bar.
"Oh. Hey, Jade! You said shit!"
Jade whipped around to face her vivid best friend. "We're fourteen, grow up, Kitkat." Jade held her phone up to her face.
"And anyway..so did you." Jade notioned, cocking and eyebrow.
Cat smiled slyly. "Touché."
..
The air smells like chemicals. A mix of chlorine..and formaldehyde, Jade recalls from her 8th grade AP Biology experiment.
Great. Her hair smelled like dead frogs.
"Hey,Jade, this is,like, chestnut, not black." Cat noted, scrunching her nose up at the science-y smell.
"Yeah, I know." Jade says. "A couple articles said midnight black would wash me out, especially since I'm starting from dark blonde."
". God, why does it smell like this? My red dye smells like plastic. Not this crap."
Cat pulled a transparent capelet over her curly red locks and snapped matching gloves on. An hour later, the chemical smell was dissapating, brown-purple splotches stained the mirrors, and Jade's hair was dark. Splat!brand blue dye sat on the counter, waiting for Cat to paint it on Jade's hair.
The indigo popped against its new rich background. Cat rinsed the excess off and they watched as blue and black bubbles swirled down the drain.
Cat uploaded a webcam picture of her with straightened hair and Jade with dark hair on facebook.
It only got, like, 60 likes.
Everyone expected Cat Valentine and Beck Oliver to be together.
The vivacious popular girl and the denim, shaggy-haired Aladdin clone? Like, duh.
But neither Jade nor Beck were ones to stay mainstream.
So maybe along the path of near misses and coffee-stained kisses (y'know, that thing they call* love*),Jade forgot about Cat. Not totally, but enough to until the once-unbreakable strings.
As he found places of her body she'd never thought of, maybe she felt guilty.
"Hey,Cat, you wanna come over today? I'm getting a new piercing" Jade tittered,doing a happy dance with her wrists.
Cat took the coffee from Jade's hand and took a sip. "At your house?" The sarcasm was a foreign thing out of the girls' mouth.
"Yeah, I kinda stole a piercing gun from my uncle."
Cat raised her eyebrow and nodded suspiciously,noticing the studs and the leather cuff on Jade's wrist, engraved" BECK"
"What happened to our friendship bracelet?" Cat exclaimed.
"Oh, that's kid stuff, Kitty."
"I spent hours making those for us!" She'd taken needlenose pliers and linked chains of metal together and clamped charms that represented them on it. She wanted Jade to see how much she cared.
"Oh, whatever,Cat. You wanna come over or not?" Jade slipped the coffee from Cat's hand and took a long swig of it.
"Get your precious Beck to come. Hell, have him pierce your labia and tatoo your ass, I don't care."
Jade was puzzled by the innocence that had mysteriously left what had once been her best friend.
"Cat, what's wrong with you?"
Cat scoffed."Checked a mirror lately, Jadey?" She walked away, and sudden recollection of who she was and what she'd just done slammed back into her conscience.
And damn, Jade's coffee was bitter. How could anyone drink it black?
& In months, she saw herself slipping away. She wondered how long it'd take Jade to notice,if ever.
She merely became a doll, thrown on the shelf never to be played with and only remembered in times of nostalgia.
Cat remembers the last phone call she got from Jade. "Cat, I need you to get me a pregnancy test."
"Why?"
"Because, you dumbass, I've been sleeping with Beck and I missed my period and…God, how the fuck could this happen? He always pulled out…"
"Jade, I have no interest in your sex life. Get your own test. Or get Beck to go do it. He is the father." The line went dead.
She knocked on the stained glass door of Jade's house with three tests (despite the unapproving looks that came with them) and a box of cookies,and some scissors.
She prayed through the negative result, and helped Jade cut the sticks into a million tiny pieces.
There was about one time when Jade wondered why Cat wore so much makeup. She concluded it was just because she was prissy and thought nothing of it.
(She never really noticed the scars underneath)
Everyone thought Jade was the child abuse victim, because there* had* to be some reason for her bitchiness.
But truth be told, Jade never really had a problem. Sure, her dad didn't really show up that much and he turned down her dreams, but her mom was around, and it's not like they were neglecting or abusive.
She was just numb.
Cat, happy,sweet Cat who literally cried when Jade squashed a roach with her boot, was the one with bruises,the one with,scars, the one with secrets.
Jade had an air of mystery, but nothing to the title. She had no secrets. Nothing important,at least.
Cat was thought of as that insane,adorable little redhead with a powerhouse voice. No mystery. No question.
But she was the one with smacks and thrown objects and torn drawings and shattered broken dreams and tears to fill oceans with no love to her name.
Sometimes Jade went to bed crying for Cat, wondering if she were happy at the moment or cold and shivering. She wondered if she were a bad person, having Beck and masquerading as the broken one.
Cat's smiles were infectious, and they were real.
Jade almost felt guilty.
(The butterflies still danced, preoccupied in the center of the courtyard)
It was a unanimous decision that Cat was more talented. Jade just intimidated people too much to admit that.
Jade always felt this shame, deeply rooted. Maybe she wondered how the hell Cat didn't end up more like her. But it was just a reminder that people are good in the world, and Jade got to partake in it (Even though people like her didn't deserve people like Cat)
So why should she take the title from Cat? Didn't she deserve something?
(Do I deserve anything?)
At first glance, she'd tell you she dyed her hair to match red-velvet cupcakes. Befriend her and she'd tell you it was the blood.
(Kill the beast,strike it down, spill it's blood)
Ask her what it was from, and she'd simply tell you: "Daddy"
(Kill the beast,strike it down,spill it's blood)
It was the wrong person, the wrong person-the right person.
She came to school one day with a sling to match her hair.
Jade once-overed her friend, enveloped in Beck's everlasting warmth.
"I fell down the stairs." She mumbled.
Cerulean retinas burned into doe-brown ones.
"He pushed me down them."She mumbles into a frilled lace
Beck's eyes widened for his little friend, and grabs her into a hug.
Jade had that almost mechanic response to be washed-over with jealousy. It was sick, sick to feel that way. It was Cat, and she'd probably be doing the same thing, had she hugged anyone but Beck.
"Can one of you drive me to the doctor?" She whispers."I think it may be broken. I'm going to scrape up the money for it."
Beck and Jade glanced at each other. "No,Cat we'll pay."
Cat looked horribly frightened. "No, you can't. Daddy wouldn't like that." She shook her head frantically, and started bouncing one the balls of her feet in fear and panic.
Jade wanted to drop to the floor and sob. How could someone be in so much pain for so long, so paranoid and so sweet?
Jade gingerly reached for Cat's hand. "Let's go,Kitty."
On Cat's extended arm, Jade saw their fourth-grade friendship charm bracelets, lots of neon rubber bangles depicting acronyms and internet memes like" LOLZ" and" You've Been Trolled" And under the long layer of bracelets were three scars, long&thin&red& very obviously done by a razor.
"Hey, did you see Tori's locker!She put candy canes on it! Can I go get one!" She temporarily reverted back to Cat fashion until she noticed what Jade was staring at.
"Cat, what are those?" Jade said quietly,drawing out the words.
Cat frowned. "Phooey." She yanked her arms back and shook the bracelets to cover her forearm again. Her waxed eyebrows crinkled.
She looked at Jade.
"Just memories."
She said it with so much defiance, Jade almost believed her.
"So, here it is!" Beck took his hands off his little redheaded friends chocolate eyes to reveal his Silver Streak, mutatis mutandis.
A futon now stood in place of his orange couch. A suitcase of her things was beside it.
"Beck, we're in your RV. What's so special?"
"You're gonna live here now! My dad's totally cool with it. Jade's here too, duh."
Jade never thought she saw her best friend so happy.
Cat walked into the woman's bathroom at school to reapply makeup on her healing scars.
She heard small wretching sounds coming from the last stall, and,at first glance, combat boots opened the unlocked door slowly and indeed saw Jade, one black manicured hand in her mouth and one gripping the side of the toilet.
"Jade!"
Jade whipped up her head, the tips of her chocolate brown hair wet from falling into the toilet.
"Uh!" Cat grunted, demanding some sort of explanation.
Jade wiped the bile from the side of her mouth. "I wanted to see what it was like to be in pain, like you."
Cat shook her head,grabbing some cheap paper towels from the dispenser and handing them to Jade.
"You're so stupid sometimes, Jade." She slammed the door on the last,weathered black-and-red ties of their friendship.
…..today…..
The day Caterina Valentine goes home is her last.
Jade and Beck knock at the polished cherry wood door of the Valentine estate, hoping for some sort of answer as to why her suitcase was gone and there was a note on the futon, scribbled,loopy handwriting, almost illegible due to her use of her right-hand (she broke her dominant left arm) saying" I didn't want you guys to feel guilty."
& ..He killed her..
Not directly, but he was the pain that drove her to the wall, almost literally.
Her limp, cold body still slouched over the bathtub, and Jade was washed with guilt and anger at , standing behind her and Beck.
(If only he knew)
"I wanted you to find me" Another looped-script note floated at the surface,obviously meant for her father.
Beck lifted it out of the bathtub where Cat had inhaled too much water. A few spilled Tylenols scattered on the floor for insurance that she'd die, soon.
Beck handed it to Mr. Valentine and all three started crying.
"What did I do?" He whispered, picking up a piece of his dead daughters red hair.
Jade pulled her cold best friend out of the water gingerly, making sure her clothes stayed the way they were.
The expression on her face wasn't all that peaceful,like everyone said corpses (what an ugly word for a beautiful girl) looked like.
It was kind of distorted, her mouth slightly open, brown doe-eyes startling and open.
She didn't start crying until she saw her arms. The two long scars, the proper red cast, and their friendship bracelet from many moons ago.
Then it killed her,too.
….tomorrow…..
Morton's Funeral Home was dark and dim and nothing like Cat's personality. It's only benefit was it was large and grand and could fit the thousands of friends and the one family member she had.
Her brother sat in the first row, their father in jail. His verdict would come soon, and hopefully he would stay there-or in prison- for a while.
When the priest asked if someone-anyone?- wanted to say anything.
No one stood.
She felt the charm bracelet on her wrist was enough.
…..someday…
When Cat Valentine walked into that room, everyone noticed.
A/N I hope you got my whole" somedays"thing. Yesterday was the past, these days were memories, today was the end, tomorrow was when she was gone, someday was Cat in the Great Beyond.
It was kind of Cat reminiscing on her life (in the third person), and i was kinda trying to show how meeting Jade was the best thing she did, and the downfall,somewhat. It wasn't really supposed to turn into focusing on Cat abuse, but it did nontheless. I wanted to make this romance, but..I'm bad at femslash, I'm sorry. It was supposed to be drabbles and then she ended up dying. I'm a horrible person. A lot,lot,lot of the parentheses were from Lord of the Flies, 'cause it's epic and I was re-reading it.
I don't really like what it turned into. Meh. Review please- .-