Hey, guys. Long time, no see. Sorry about the wait on this, I really am. I was incredibly happy with the amount of feedback this story brought in. Thanks so much to all who reviewed, favorited, alerted, or just simply read.

Part 2. Enjoy.

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The night of the departure.

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Clare doesn't talk to him when she gets home.

His little sister rubs at her eyes a lot and stares into space all through dinner, but she doesn't cry, and she doesn't talk. And so Jake follows her lead.

The flight attendant keeps offering her a coke. As if carbon dioxide, fructose, and phosphoric acid mixed together is the drink of the gods. Katie's not thirsty, but part of her wants to snap her head over and say, "Actually, I want a Sprite." The thing is, ordering a different flavor soda than the one the flight attendant keeps suggesting isn't all that ironic. Because, for one: Katie's pretty sure the lady hasn't offered nearly as many times as her irritable brain, suffering through a cyclone right now, has imagined it to be. And second: even if she were to say it, Katie doesn't think she'll be able to pull off the emphasis or the sarcasm needed to make it sound even a little sardonic.

So, she just shakes her head and looks out the window and waits for the woman behind the cart to stop looking at her with those pity-filled eyes. She clenches her hands and waits, because she's seen that look before, seen it in the eyes of her teachers after The Addiction, seen it in the shallow, fakes eyes of the girl who used to be her best-friend, seen it in the deep, philosophical eyes of the girl that used to be her next best-friend.

And Katie's found that, no matter where that look comes from, she hates it. That's something not to be said about most things in life. But for The Look, it's true.

She hopes to God that this is a one-time thing, this stranger burning a whole in her back with that gaze, seeming to see right inside of her, because Katie really doesn't think she'll be able to take it if The Look follows her here.

The last time he woke up screaming, he was seven, and Mom was dead.

Jake doesn't really remember much; there are just a few fuzzy memories of the funeral, standing on his tip-toes to peer into the coffin where his corpse of a mother lie with her cold, drained face. And he remembers, for a split second, being scared of the body, and then going into the bathroom to cry, because you shouldn't be scared of your mother at her own funeral.

But waking up in the middle of that night, yelling at the top of his lungs – for some reason he's never figured out, that's a memory that he can still feel sometimes, relive if he wants to (which, of course, he's never wanted to).

The thing about waking yourself up is that your voice, like anything when you first open your eyes, seems so surreal. And so there he was, a little seven year old whose freckles looked strange in the darkness, screaming with everything he had at an empty, shadowy room, and all that was really running through his cloudy, endlessly disoriented mind was that there was this extremely loud noise around him.

And not until after his father ran in and held him did it occur to seven-year-old Jake that the noise was coming from himself.

But tonight, Glen Martin is out with another woman – who's nice and funny and doesn't try to be his mom ever, but still. And Jake doesn't hate his dad for moving on, remarrying even, because that's just what you do in life.

However, right now, right in this moment, as he yells into the darkness and stares at the moonlight like light, itself, is something foreign, Jake Martin can't help but hate his dad for not being here.

Back before everything, before the falling in love and falling out of it, before the ring on Bianca DeSousa's finger, before Clare started to work her sense-and-reason magic against Katie – but not before The Addiction or The Disorder or The Virginlessness – she would lay awake at night and imagine what it would be like to arrive here for the first time. To step onto the sand and look at the endless plane of waves that would forever separate her from the ghosts. To look around and realize that no one knows her and no one really cares to know her.

Instead, the plane lands when it is dark, and there is no sun. Not even the metaphorical kind.

Instead, it's Clare who comes stumbling into his doorway tonight. Jake's stepsister's curls are disheveled with sleep, the tossing and turning kind, he thinks, and her blue eyes are wide and dark. Her hand gropes the side of the wall for a long time, trying to find a light switch, but in the end, she just lets it drop and rushes to his side.

"What'swrong?Areyouokay?ShouldIcallourparents?" When Clare is scared, she doesn't breath between words.

Jake turns to her, and for a moment, he just looks at Clare like he did the moonlight a few seconds ago. Because last time he woke up screaming, Clare was tiny and four-eyed and fun to throw dead frogs at. And, though he knows she's here and scared and completely unaware of his state of mind, Jake can't help but want her to leave.

"Jake?" She finally huffs.

He looks into her eyes for a minute, looks until she's familiar again, and then he glances back at the moonlight – only to realize that it's still foreign. And even though his concerned stepsister is still waiting for an answer, Jake has to stop for a moment and try to remember when Clare Edwards became more natural than the moonlight.

He shakes his head, and she moves so that it rests on her bare shoulder blade. "I feel like she died," Jake whispers into her skin.

Clare's chuckles – a half-hearted, shaky sound. "But that's the thing, isn't it?" She murmurs, resting her head over his now, "She's living her life. That's why she's gone."

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Three months pass.

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They're rushing out the door when He calls.

Jake has the screen propped open with his boot, his hand moving blindly over the keys rack around the corner. (He's determined not to let that damn door shut. If he does, even for a moment, it will stay like that all night.)

"We don't have time for that," he groans when he hears the phone ring, "Mall closes at six on Sundays." He says it even though he knows Clare won't listen. No matter how many times that phone disappoints her, she's still at her feet every time it calls.

"Don't care. Shut up, shut up! It's Him."

God forbid Jake talk over Him.

"It's your Homecoming," he mutters, "I don't care if you don't have a dress."

The thing is, though, he does sort of care. Not only because Jake might just care about his new sister more than any big brother should – might just know enough about her to know that she'll say wearing last year's dress doesn't bother her, even though it does to no end – but also because he likes to visit the mall where Drew Torres works.

He's never actually spoken to the boy, not since high school, and even then it was never a direct conversation. Once or twice, Jake had found himself surrounded by a group of Mo's friends, and Drew Torres – the QB1, the former-womanizer-turned-steady-man, the kid who killed a thug last year – had been a part of it. See, Drew was a plenty interesting guy, but none of the things that made him that way were what one would call ideal conversation-starters.

Drew was also the boy whom Katie had lost her virginity to. Jake thinks he ought to hate Drew for it, but it's awfully hard, as you watch every friend you've ever had move on, to hate the only other person who's stuck around. In fact, Jake's too tired to hate anybody these days.

Clare walks into the kitchen then. Jake's foot is still in the door, and it's when she looks at him with a half-hearted smirk on her lips, that he knows something is wrong.

"That was quick."

"Yeah," Clare murmurs, looking at her shoes, "he only had time for a short call." The girl swallows.

"Is everything okay?"

Clare smiles then – only it's not a happy smile. It's the kind that people make when they're about to cry, without the amount of control to pull off a frown. A crumpling sort of smile. "Eli can't make it up here for Homecoming."

There's silence.

"I'm sorry, Clare." And he is. He really, truly is. Because Jake knows Eli, knows Clare, knows Eli and Clare together – and this isn't something to be taken lightly. Even if both will try to.

"It's okay. No big deal." She swallows again.

"Do you still want to go to the dance? I can take you to get a dress right now if you want."

There's another crumpling smile from his stepsister, and she just shrugs and shakes her head. "I think I'll skip out on Homecoming this year."

"You mean, your senior year?"

She winces a little at that, but in the end just nods. "It wouldn't be the same without him," she decides, and even though her voice is shaking, it is with conviction.

He doesn't ask her any more questions, because he knows what it's like to be interrogated when all you want to do is be alone. So, he tells her it's okay and let's her go up to her room and tries really hard not to think about her crying up there.

And he pulls his boot away, drops his hand from the key rack, and let's the door close.

They called it Hell Week.

It wasn't really an official name, only because Coach Barrett couldn't say it whenever an administrative worker was around. Like H-E-double-hockey-sticks is bound to start a community high school religious outbreak or something. (The Bakers weren't around back then.) Anyway, it was the week before soccer practices officially started, a series of morning practices dedicated strictly to conditioning. You didn't even have to wear cleats.

The athletic director said it wasn't mandatory, that it was against the rules to force girls to come out before the season officially kicked off, but anyone who planned on being anyone was there. And God, it was hell.

The weight-lifting wasn't half-bad, only because a coach can't exactly push you too close to your limits when you've got a eighty-pound barbell over your head. One step too far there, and you had a snapped neck.

But the running – God, the running. For some reason, Coach Barrett decided that collapsing from a stroke after ten laps around that fucking track was a much kinder death than dropping a too-heavy weight on your head. And so the team ran until a minimum of four girls puked (Katie's pretty sure that's how he determined when it was time to stop, even if he claimed to have a pre-practice plan).

"Notice," he used to say, "how no one has fainted. And no one will, I can promise you. Because, believe it or not, your mind gives up way before your body has to."

And Katie believed that. It made complete sense. What she didn't understand, however, was why her Coach made out the body to be more important than the mind. As far as she had always seen it, when it came to endurance, the weakest part of you was the only one that really mattered.

At any rate, back then she hated to run. She was fast, and often times, she led the pack, but nevertheless, she hated it. When you're running, you think of nothing but the pain.

But now everything is different. She hasn't spoken to Coach Barrett in more than the year. She hasn't spoken to anyone, actually. Not even Clare. (She should, she knows. Clare is the best person she's ever known; she at least deserves a phone call. But what if he picks up the phone? What if his voice sounds in the background?)

Everything is different, and now she runs.

The pier, the boardwalk, the campus sidewalks – wherever people don't stare at a runner. She clips her iPod shuffle to her tank-top, and she takes off for miles, sometimes hours of running. Christine, her boy-obsessed roommate, tells her she ought to compete in marathons. Last time her friend told her that, Katie said she'd think about it, even though she hasn't and probably won't.

Maybe she will one day. For now, though, she just runs, and she thinks of nothing but the pain.

"It might be fun, you know."

They're in Jake's room. He's laying horizontally across his bed, back to the mattress, head dangling over the side with a backward glance at Clare who's perched on a bean bag chair in the corner, playing with a wooden figurine.

She snickers without looking up. "Wouldn't that be sort of weird? Going to Homecoming with your stepbrother?"

"It never stopped us before."

She chuckles then, finally looking up to him with an arch of one eyebrow. "Touché."

"I mean, the whole world knows you're dating Eli. If anyone asks, just say he couldn't make it, and you didn't want to go alone."

She smiles a little. "The thing is, though, the whole world also knows that I dated you last year, and if I showed up at Homecoming with you . . . you know, with the slow dances . . . Well, it's just – you know how kids talk."

"Why does it matter what they say?"

Clare shrugs, falling silent, and he waits for a long time before realizing she has no intentions of speaking up again.

"Okay, fine," he amends, "We don't have to go together together. But I'm not going let you miss Homecoming your senior year and listen to you whine about how you should have gone for the rest of our lives." – at that, she laughs – "Just get me a visitor's pass, and I'll come as company. I won't slow-dance with you. I won't get pictures with you. I won't even walk in with you if you're that worried of someone getting the wrong impression. In fact, maybe I'll even grab my own date once I get there."

Clare shoots up laughing. "And there lies the mastermind's motive!"

"I was joking."

"Sure, you were."

He was though. Even if he wishes he hadn't been.

Katie first meets the man outside of her English class. He's yelling over his shoulder to a friend down the hall, walking in the opposite direction he's looking, and when Katie turns the corner out of her classroom, the two collide.

Her binder drops to the floor, papers scattering everywhere, and in an instant, the man is on his knees to gather them. She starts to lean over too, but by that time, he's nearly done.

He's a tall man with short curly hair, dark brown and shiny, defined cheekbones, and dark green eyes like the ocean, and he seems to have a soft face, even though, right now, he's apologizing profusely. "I'm so sorry! I wasn't watching where I was going, and I just barreled right into you!"

Katie shrugs and shakes her head. "Gosh, no. You're fine. It's no problem, really." She ducks her head then and begins to turn away, but the man catches up with her.

"I see you running around campus sometimes, usually really intense. Are you some kind of track star or something?"

For a moment, Katie just stares at him, dumbfounded that he's still here. "Um, no actually. I just like to run." She looks down at her books and walks faster, but it doesn't seem to faze him; he merely picks up the pace.

"Well, why not join? Not a competition-kind-of-girl or something?"

"I used to be," she mumbles, "I played soccer, but then I tore my ACL."

That seems to take him off guard, and there's the slightest part of Katie that is smiling at this, even though she can't even remember what flirting feels like. "Wow. That sucks. I'm sorry."

"Don't be," she says, Sports are pointless anyway. I know that now.

He nods, and they look at each other for a moment until finally, Katie holds out a hand, because there's nothing else to say. "Katie Matlin." Her voice comes out rather raspy.

"Austin," he smiles, "Austin Mikalison."

He keeps his grip for a long moment after Katie loosens her. "Well, I guess I'll see you around, Katie Matlin With the Torn ACL."

She smirks. "Maybe, you will, Austin Mikalison With . . . ?"

He laughs. "Wouldn't you like to know." And then he's gone.

For some reason, Katie's stomach is sinking.

Days later, Clare finally agrees to go to Homecoming ("technically" with him). So, they drive down to the mall, and Jake takes his usual seat at a table in the food court while Clare walks off in the direction of Deb.

"Jake Martin."

He's only on the second page of his magazine (and his first order of French fries) when the voice sounds above him. Surprised, Jake looks up to see Drew Torres standing on the other side of the table, a Subway hoagie tucked under his wrist.

"Drew," Jake greets.

And the boy smiles down at him and takes a seat and soon, they're deep in conversation about school and headquarters and jobs. And Jake feels like an idiot for never approaching the boy before.

About half-way through Drew's footlong and Jake's diet Pepsi (the French fries are long-gone), Drew halts his continuous cycle of hauling food into his mouth and stares at the table with rather distant eyes. "So, are you and Katie still . . .?"

"No." Jake doesn't mean to answer so stiffly, but he does.

Drew, however, doesn't seem to notice. He just nods, what looks to be almost painfully. "You guys don't keep in touch or anything, do you?"

"No."

"Right. Yeah. I wouldn't think so."

They eat and drink in silence for a few more minutes before Drew speaks up again. "I just – I just wish I had said something to her, you know? Before she left. I mean, it is pretty much my fault she hates it here."

"No," Jake assures, much more sympathetically than he ever thought he would when talking to the boy who drunkenly took the virginity of the girl he loves. "No, she had a lot of other things going on with her."

Drew purses his lips solemnly. "Yeah, I know. With the bulimia and the drugs and all that shit."

For some stupid reason, hearing Drew say this – as if it's common knowledge or something – makes Jake's chest quiver. Katie's drug addiction and eating disorder had been two topics that it took her months of dating to even touch on with Jake, let alone truly open up about.

"Yeah," is all he can manage.

"Still," Drew sighs, "what I did was so stupid. And now, I'll probably never see her again. I just wish I had apologized, you know?"

Before Jake can think about it, he nods and whispers, "Thank you."

And Drew just gives him a sad look and waits for him to realize his mistake.

Austin is a chemistry major. When he first says it, Katie feels her face drop a little. She's quick to make up for it, but not quite quick enough.

"Okay, okay," he chuckles, "I know chemistry is considered boring by the majority of the human race."

They're walking along the campus sidewalk, Austin on the road-side.

"I didn't say that," Katie protests.

"Your face did. And besides, it's okay; I'm not offended."

Katie looks down at her feet rather sheepishly and tries to amend. "Well, it's just that I wouldn't have pegged you for a science-kind-of-guy."

Austin arches an eyebrow. "Do elaborate, Katie Matlin Who Used to be Competitive."

She rolls her eyes. "I don't know. You just seemed . . ." – Katie's mind grapples for the right word – ". . . charismatic." No, no – that's not right.

Austin chuckles. "Oh, I see. You were expecting the stereotypical science geek who spends Saturday nights reading articles about break-throughs in nuclear fusion."

"Nuclear what?"

"Never mind."

She laughs. "But that's not what I meant at all. I just . . . I mean, science people are supposed to like numbers and formulas and lab-steps – solid, definite stuff, you know? I just didn't really get that vibe from you."

He seems to consider this for a moment. And then suddenly, Austin is turning toward her with smoldering, emerald eyes, and the air is uncomfortably heavy. "There's nothing definite about chemistry," he breathes. "It's like life."

She takes an involuntary step back, and Austin's face falls just the slightest – and so does Katie's heart. Aside from Christine, this boy is about the only bearable person here.

"Well, unfortunately, I'm not all that good at either of those" – he smirks – "so maybe, if you have the time, of course, you could fit in tutoring sessions to your schedule . . . ?"

Austin's face lights up for a slip-second – and then closes down into a mischievous countenance. "And what would I be getting in return?" (Before Katie can be startled, he's continuing.) "English lessons, perhaps? I sort of suck at figuring out what dead people meant."

"Actually, I suck at that, too," Katie sighs, but Austin perks up as if she's given him a favorable answer.

"Okay, well then I guess it's settled. I'll tutor you, and we can bask together in the suckiness that is English I."

Katie guffaws.

"Oh, and I meant tutor you in chemistry – not life. I need help with that one, myself."

The Homecoming theme is "Light Up the Night." It's really not ingenious (surely, Eli would have scoffed), but it's not entirely corny either. And if art has ever actually existed on this planet, it's the decorations in the gym. The walls are papered down by navy blue banners, speckled by some type of glitter that, with the flashing white lights, is nothing short of blinding, and silver ropes starting at the ceiling corners and leading to the middle are strung with golden star ornaments. Where they all meet, a paper-mache crescent moon dangles down.

When Jake actually went here, he was never much for dances, especially because he spent half his time at Degrassi a new student whose only friends were the handful of Vo-tech kids from Woodshop, and they never went to these events. But now that he's here – and feeling possibly a little nostalgic – he can't help but appreciate it all.

Clare is marveling at the decorations. She doesn't greet many people around her – not like she did last year – and that worries Jake. With Katie having dropped off the face of the Earth and Alli off at MIT, without a moment to spare, nowadays, life, Jake knows, is hard for Clare. It's unfair to her, he thinks. The girl shouldn't feel left behind during her senior year of high school. That feeling ought to be saved for anyone who sticks around afterwards.

She made him promise not to dance with her, and that's how it is for the first hour or so. Jake sits at a table in the back with a plate of food that's never empty and watches lights dance off the glittery walls, listens to unfamiliar music, tries to decide who's high and who's just faking it. A group of girls in the corner nearest him keep looking at him and giggling, until, from the corner of his eyes (as he pretends not to notice), they push one girl out towards him, and she laughs and shakes her head. But they nod at her and giggle some more.

She's a long-legged girl with a short, black dress and too-tall high heels. Her blonde side-bang hides most of her right, dark-lined eye. "Don't you like to dance?" She asks him and then giggles like her friends. At that, he groans a little inside.

"I could ask you the same question," he murmurs, smoothly, "I mean, you and your friends haven't been doing much of it yourselves over in that corner."

The girl turns a bright shade of red. "Um, yeah, yeah I guess you're right."

She's waiting for Jake to ask her to the dance floor, he can tell, but he's silent, and so she just tosses him an awkward goodbye and flees back to her friends, beyond themselves with laughter.

"Not your type?"

Jake looks up to see Clare smirking above him, one eyebrow arched.

"Something like that."

She chuckles and extends a hand down to him, proceeding to lead them out onto the dance floor, a jungle of sweaty limbs and fabric and a minefield of bare feet, as most of the girls have left their heels back at their tables.

He didn't go to his own Homecoming. No one wanted to be asked by him. But now, looking at the lights flashing over teary, shiny faces of strangers, Jake can't help but try to picture what it must have looked like last year. He thinks of Alli Bhandari, the only girl wearing her high heels out on the dance floor, unaware that this would be her last Homecoming. And Jake wonders if there's something about the night she would have changed had she known. He thinks of Mo, dying of exhaustion and drowning himself and anyone around him in sweat, and Marisol, completely oblivious, raging on as she always has.

And then, for a split second, he thinks of Katie. Fresh out of rehab, ready to balance out her life for the first time ever, ready to believe in herself – and in love with the boy beside her. Jake bets that Drew Torres partied like never before at his senior Homecoming.

"She was Homecoming Queen, you know?" It takes him a moment to realize he's said it out loud. It doesn't matter, though; the music is too loud, and Clare isn't looking at his lips – just his eyes.

It's hard to imagine someone changing so fast. A place turning from a safe haven to a room full of ghosts in a moment. Years from now, at high school reunions, people will talk about her, he thinks – the Homecoming Queen who didn't go to Prom.

And with that, the ache is there with him, stronger than it was even those few days after she left. Those days when the numbness died away and left only the pain.

Everything is blurry, and Clare's still staring at his eyes – not his lips – and God, why can't she be here right now?

It's then that he does it. And it's short, and he's not in the right mind – but it still happens.

And Adam Torres is still right beside them.

All in one flash of light, Jake leans down and captures Clare's lips with his own, and it's familiar in a twisted, misplaced kind of way – not at all the comfort he was looking for. His stepsister shrieks and stumbles back into a boy behind her, staring up at him with wide eyes that seem luminescent under the glitter.

"Jake!" She screams, and an apology is instantly quivering at his lips, but he can't seem to force it tumbling out.

"I – I didn't – Clare" –

Clare shakes her head once, flustered beyond orientation, and disappears into the sea of sweaty limbs and bare feet.

Adam shoves past him and follows her.

Austin is not a bad runner. But the thing is, he talks far too much.

They're running the beach in bare feet, an idea suggested by, of course, Austin – because Katie only runs where people won't stare at her. And when you run side by side with a good-looking man like Austin, laughing when the freezing water licks at your toes, people look at you.

And the good-hearted, wistful, romatics smile. And the pretentious douchebags rolls their eyes. (At least, they're not carving their names into the sand or something.) And some people just watch you with a blank, empty expression. Katie wonders if maybe they're more complex than all the others.

"So, Katie Matlin With the B- in English, how am I doing so far?"

She smirks. "Well, considering that's the best grade in English I've gotten since junior year, I'd say you're doing A-okay."

But Austin's shoulders fall. "Junior year? That's not that long ago, though."

A whole lot longer than anyone can imagine. Junior year was a world ago. "I'll take what I can get," Katie laughs. She doesn't want to get into this, not now and not ever.

He shrugs. "Well, anyway, that's not what I meant. I meant, how am I doing?"

"What?"

"How am I doing at getting you to like me?" Katie pretends not to notice, that Austin's steps are edging closer to her than the sea now. The salty air is so heavy, just like the day of the chemistry-life analogy weeks ago.

"Way better than I thought you would do," she admits and immediately feels guilty when his face lights up. Katie wants to tell him that her expectations were at rock-bottom to begin with, that hitting just a little bit farther up means nothing, but the words are caught in her throat.

"And about how close am I to getting you to go on a date with me?"

Her heart sinks, but she manages out a semi-playful, "Guess, you'll have to catch me first."

And she takes off in a full-out sprint. Because it's all coming back to her in one moment's time – all the pain and the guilt and the exasperation that should have spanned itself out in a month of healthy grieving. And damnit, why didn't she call Clare? Why didn't she ever say she was sorry to Bianca DeSousa? Why did she leave her sister alone to make all the same mistakes?

Why didn't she try harder to love him?

And already, she's made a mess of things here. There's a boy, running behind her, panting out her name, who could be everything to her if only Katie wasn't such a complete and utter wreck. If only she wasn't still in love with a boy who couldn't care less about this world and everything in it. If only she wasn't pretending to think he's stupid for living like that.

And in only a matter of minutes, her sight is blurring away, her breath getting caught in what seems every nook of her throat except the one leading to her lungs. Austin is so far behind her that his call is like a distant city siren. They're all staring at her now, the little kids with their colorful sand-shovels and the three-quarters-of-the-way naked women with their narrow sunglasses. The Look is everywhere.

But she keeps running.

She sprints until her legs give out from under her, and Katie hits the sand with a knocking-force. Her vision dims away with the view of an ocean, stretching far out to the horizon, and the tide sweeps in just enough to brush over her right fingertips. She wants it to sweep over all of her, to swoop out and swallow her whole, wrench her into the waves where she can stay for the rest of her life.

Because, contrary to everything Katie has hoped, everything she has allowed herself to believe, ghosts can, indeed, swim.

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Three years pass.

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Bianca L. DeSousa

Andrew M. Torres

Your presence is requested.

Katie holds her breath. At the bottom of the invitation, there is a note, scrawled in messy, familiar cursive.

I bet you thought I forgot about you, Matlin. I bet you thought we all did.