She couldn't see. Why couldn't she see? It was so obvious. After so long of her not noticing me, not thinking of me as anything but an crazy little friend, I tried to make it clear. Without words, of course, because that would make me seem oh, so desperate. I thought she'd finally noticed after she kissed Daniel. When she'd dragged me into the janitor's closet by my feet...for a minute, I'd thought she had been about to kiss me. I'd felt her hands warm upon my shoulders, her light brown eyes meeting my darker ones.

But all she did was apologize. She had apologized for hurting me, but she never realized that she was causing me more pain than ever right then and there. I could get so lost in my thoughts about her...it had happened more than once. All of those times that I'd zoned out, she was what was on my mind. Most people probably assumed I had been imagining things about unicorns and kittens and butterflies and rainbows, and I let them believe that. I even encouraged it, mentioning that for my character at Sikowitz's house I wanted to be a unicorn, asking if mirrors worked in outer space.

I used to act like that for Andre, before Tori came to Hollywood Arts. We actually went out for a few weeks before I started driving him crazy. It's not that he doesn't like me; he just didn't like me like that. I guess I didn't, either. It was much better having him as just a friend. But ever since the big showcase last year...Tori was always on my mind. Always. Her singing set my heart to a faster tempo; her voice behind me made me feel giddy with pleasure. Jade...well, Jade used to be my best friend. But she was so mean to Tori when she didn't deserve it, and she was well aware that I loved her, yet she continued to torture Tori every chance she got.

Somehow, it seemed like Tori was crushing on everyone but me. Beck, Andre...even Jade. She was constantly flirting with the guys and tried as hard as she could to please Jade, to get just one hug out of her. She never knew how much I liked her, how I needed her. It was impulsive; it was hard to go more than twenty-four hours without seeing Tori, without hearing her voice. It sounds obsessive and stalkerish, but that was just how it was.

That's why tears splotched the paper that I wrote on, why they blurred the ink. I didn't try to make the note seem formal, I didn't make it sound perfect. I didn't care about my grammar or spelling; I just wanted to get it finished. I'd slip it into Tori's locker tomorrow after she leaves school, and I'd write individual ones for the rest of my friends, even Robbie. The only one of them that knew about my slightly obsessive crush was Jade, and she never tried to hurt me. Not really; she was just doing what she does best: being Jade. She couldn't help it that she was so rude to Tori; it was just her personality. They deserved to have a goodbye from me, even if it wasn't in person. I knew they would stop me if I told them in person, so I didn't. I couldn't.

Tori,

You've been a greeat friend.. I really wish you could have been somthing more, though. Tori, I love you. I loved you. By the time you find this at school tomorrow, I'll be dead. I know you can never feel the same way towards me if you havn't noticed yet. Since I first sow you on stage when you took Triena's place in the Big Showcase, I was hooked. I hope you won' miss me to much when I'm gon.

Cat.

The spelling and grammar was atrocious, with missing letters and such, but I didn't care. The handwriting was messy and hard to read, especially with the dots of water scattered through the letters, and it didn't faze me. I used to be such a grammar freak with my schoolwork and stuff, but I just couldn't bring myself to care now. Nothing would matter after tonight.

I folded the note and put it in my purse with the rest of the notes to my friends and lay it on the ground beside my bed. I whimpered in pain and clutched at the short beige threads of the carpet as I thought about how I would never see any of them again. That would be the hardest part of doing this. However, the urge to just end all of this was so much stronger than the fact that my friends would be waiting for me to come to school, even though I never would. I wondered how they would react when they found the notes in their lockers...

I can't do that. I can't leave notes for them. Not even Tori. I had to do this tonight. My parents were away and I was by myself in the house for the weekend, leaving all of the supplies in the house to me. I had a pair of scissors in my bedside drawer; I'd been cutting myself a little recently. Not anything terribly big, just some shallow slits across my wrists, on the inside of my thighs. I liked those scissors; the blades were shiny and the handle was red, like my hair. They wouldn't be shiny any more soon.

I took the scissors and twisted them as hard as I could, and to my surprise, the two blades separated from each other. Yeah, that's what I meant to do, but I didn't think it would actually work. I put one blade in my purse and gripped the other tight in my left hand. I knew my blood would stain this carpet forever, because I'd seen those murder mystery movies where they use special lights and you can see where the blood is on a pure white carpet. That way I'll always be a part of this house, even if it didn't want me. Nothing wanted me, or else I wouldn't be doing this.

I raised the blade and lay it on my flesh where I could see the pale blue on my wrist. I gritted my teeth and stabbed, dragging the sharp metal through my skin until I reached the crook of my elbow. It hurt, but it still wasn't equivalent to what I felt every day that I couldn't have Tori to myself. I watched with slight fascination as my blood welled up out of the deep crack and poured over the side of my arm. I was going to slice my other arm, too, but I couldn't pick up the scissors with my right hand. It was as if my fingers just wouldn't listen to me, wouldn't grab the blade. It didn't matter, though; I knew it was working, even with just one arm. My blood ran and ran and wouldn't stop, and every moment I got sleepier. It didn't even hurt anymore; it was just numb.

Far, far away, I thought I heard the squeak of my door opening, but I regarded it as a figment of my imagination. After all, I was barely conscious. I felt a dull aching in my heart when I heard a familiar voice shouting my name, and then everything was black.

Pain, pain, and more pain. I must be in Hell, because I wouldn't be feeling so much if I'd made it to Heaven. I tried to open my eyes, but they were all heavy. My arm and my chest ache and each gasping, shuddering breath I draw is in its own war with itself. Since when did you have to breathe when you died? It makes everything so much harder. Why? I attempted to figure out what Hell was like without sight. I drew in a deep breath, even though it hurt. I smelled...chemicals? And latex, and the overpowering stench of illness. I could hear murmuring voices all around me and a slow, rhythmic beeping sound in the background. What the hell? It seemed an awful lot like a hospital.

I forced my eyes open, not letting them stay closed any longer. This was a hospital. The glaring blue-white lights hurt my sensitive eyes but the odor didn't seem as strong now that I could see. How had I lived? I wasn't supposed to...this had all gone wrong.

I heard soft sobbing by my head, and I managed to turn my head so that I could see who it was. Tori. I saw her holding my hand in both of her own, but I hadn't been able to feel it. Behind her, I could see my purse, stained with my own blood, and a glass of water on a small table. Tori's head was hanging down as if she didn't care enough to keep it raised. I closed my eyes again, hoping she wouldn't notice I was awake, and hoped I would die. I wanted to escape this place; that's what I meant to do before. Why had she taken me here? Did she want me to suffer even more pain?

I heard her murmur my name over and over again, and I couldn't resist the pull of her voice. I turned my head to look at her, her soft brunette waves falling over her face as she shook, tears falling onto her lap. I try to move my left arm a little, and I found that it still worked. Weird; I hadn't cut that one, but I expected it to be limp and dead like my right. Tori looked up at me when she felt my hand move under hers. It hurt me even more to see the pain, the sadness in her eyes, the redness in her face from her crying. Did I really mean that much to her? Enough to make her sob that much, to where her face was twisted in pain?

She threw so much emotion into the one word that she whispered just then that it broke my heart into smaller pieces, as if it weren't already broken enough. "Why?" I could sense the desperation, the hurt, the sadness, but most of all...love. I couldn't answer. I shifted my gaze to my purse and wondered if she'd found the note. No, if she found it, she wouldn't be asking that question. I stared at it long enough for her to turn around and retrieve it, and I squeezed my eyes shut again as she opened it.

All of the miniscule sounds told me what she was doing, what was happening. It was like a symphony of sorrow. The button popping that signaled the purse being opened. The rustle of wrinkled paper as Tori found the tearstained notes and drew them out. The louder crinkling as she unfolded the first one, most likely the one addressed to her, knowing it was the last to be added to the bag. A little intake of breath as she read, and more soft, shuddering ones as she started crying again. Finally, the sound of the paper being ripped to shreds: the end of the concert, the last note of the last piece of music ending at a fortissimo.

"This is bullshit," Tori growled, and I knew she was talking directly to me. "Cat...if you really felt that way about me, you should have told me. This...this isn't what you do when things don't go the way you want. Do you know what this is like for me? I came over to your house last night to ask you if you wanted to do a scene together for Sikowitz's project. And then..." A long pause. I could hear her ragged breathing as she tried to calm down. "Cat, you don't know how I felt when I saw you, laying there in a pool of your own blood. It stained everything; your clothes, your skin, even your hair. Did you know blood isn't the same color as red velvet cupcakes?" Well, no. I never thought about it, actually. Wow, now I'm answering her in my head. I'm such a stupid, childish girl. I opened my eyes to look at her as she continued to speak. "My first thought...I thought you were dead. That tore me apart, it really did. We are so damn lucky you live close to this hospital..." she trailed off, trembling.

There was one thing I really wanted to ask her, but my lips wouldn't form the words. Why would you care? Do you feel the same way about me as I do you? It was almost as if she could read my mind. One minute, she was gazing at me with tears sparkling in the corners of her eyes, and the next, her lips were crushed against mine. I was stunned. Was this really Tori Vega kissing me? It couldn't be; Tori likes guys, and I'm just one of her bubbly little female friends. But it was her. I moved my lips to kiss her back and it was all too easy to gain entrance to her mouth. She tasted like coffee and cherries...not really what I expected her to taste like, but I'd take it anyway. I heard the beeping in the background speed up to keep pace with my heart, which seemed to be racing at a hundred miles an hour now. We broke apart with a tiny sucking sound, and realization took me over. I'd just kissed Tori. No, wrong, she'd kissed me.

"Please, promise never to scare me like that again," Tori whimpered. I gazed up at her in awe and nodded my head a little. A red velvet-colored lock of my hair flipped down onto my face, and Tori reached over to brush it away. "I love you," she whispered, and my heart skipped a beat. Tori stayed with me for the rest of the day and blew off class for most of the week to sit by me in the hospital. Jade, Beck, Andre, and Robbie visited a couple times, and by the time they got there they'd already found out Tori and I were a couple somehow. They congratulated us and told me to get well soon, then left. I never knew Tori liked me so much...she told me all about it. Ever since that first conversation we'd had at Hollywood Arts...

"Oh, my gosh, you're Tori, right?"

"Uh huh."

"You were so awesome in the Big Showcase!"

"Aww, thanks."

"My name's Cat!"

"Oh, like the animal!"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing! I-I love cats."

"Me too; they're so cute!"

Ever since...how had I not seen? How could I have been so blind?

Okay, my first attempt at a oneshot...do you love it? Hate it? Does it want to make you go puke in Trina's purse? And then puke again because you just saw what Trina keeps in there? Naw, just kidding. I had to upload SOMETHING because I felt like I haven't updated either of my stories in forever and it's only been a little over two days...I don't know what I'm going to do when school starts...

Anyway, I know I update a lot more often than most people and y'all are probably used to that by now, so I wrote this in my frustration over my writers block to show I hadn't forgotten you. In two hours. Yeah, so this just comes pouring out, yet I can't even get one paragraph written for The Escape or Opposites Attract. Bite me. Okay, so don't bite me. Reviews are welcome with open arms and a big bowl of pudding!