Hey there all! So, here's the next chapter :) I won't ramble as much as I usually do, but I will say that I spotted a somewhat significant continuity failure in chapter 1, which I have now gone back and changed. Sorry about that! I felt a bit of a fool going back and finding it lol. Ah well ;P

Also, I didn't get much response to the last chapter (there was eventually one review, so a big thanks to D-Wadegurl for that! :D) so I'm not sure how this story is going down with you guys. I know that it's a massive cliché but reviews really do help me both to improve the story, and to give motivation to actually write it, so they're very much appreciated if you have the chance. Any comment, good or bad, is taken on board, even if it's just to let me know that there are people still reading :) Thanks to everyone who has favourited or followed!

And finally… HAPPY NEW YEAR! :D Hope that you all had a great Christmas and have an awesome 2013 :) Enjoy!


Oh, hell to the no!

Kitty was vaguely aware that the inside of her head sounded like that Jones girl from last year's glee club – believe it or not, she had bothered to look up their Nationals-winning performances on YouTube, because she actually kinda liked singing – but right now she didn't care.

What did bother her was the fact that one of the freshman Cheerios had just alerted her to the fact that Marley… no, the Rose girl (since when was she on a first-name basis with her prey?) was wearing Jake Puckerman's jacket.

Once again, she initially was unsure of why this outraged her so much, before quickly assuring herself that it was because she'd decided that Jake was hers. It couldn't be anything to do with the fact that her Cheerios jacket would look ten times better around the brunette's shoulders than the oversized cloak of black leather which she presently was showcasing…

Shut it, Wilde, and focus.

She'd been buttering Jake up as best as she could earlier as if readying a lamb for the slaughter, so she'd be damned if she was going to lose him to Mar…the Rose girl now. She and Jake had practically agreed to go on a date, if agreeing to meet 'somewhere' after school 'sometime' counted as such (and in this case, it did in Kitty's mind), so the taller girl had no claim to the jock, aside from being unbearably cute.

Unbearably what!? I think that the lesbifest express just pulled into town…

Kitty shut her thoughts up for the umpteenth time that day alone and stormed towards her locker, only to see the culprits of her rambling thoughts standing just ahead of it. Oh, it's on, sweet cheeks. Um… I mean, fat cheeks, she corrected herself.

"I just realised, I'm still wearing your jacket…" Marley was laughing nervously in her innocently sweet way, as if she didn't know. She's as much of a scheming bitch as I am, Kitty tried to convince herself, but her attempts proved frustratingly futile.

Now Jake was scanning his eyes over that body and Kitty nearly saw red. How dare he…

Don't get too carried away Kitty; why should you care anyway?

"It looks pretty good on you," he slurred in reply, and a response formed itself in Kitty's head before she even had time to blink.

"Bet it looks better on me," she cut-in smoothly, a fake smile plastered across her face. It was fake, she justified internally, because she had absolutely no desire to don the Puckerman boy's… no, Jake's no doubt sweaty and over-heavy jacket. But she couldn't let Marley wear it either, that was for sure.

She was pissed off with Jake for obviously turning on the charm with Marley after their 'date agreement' –

Oh, so that's what you're calling it now?

Shut up.

– so she focused her eyes on the taken aback girl to her left.

"We're dating now. Didn't Jake tell you?" She layered the second sentence with as much patronising fake-innocence as she could, at the same time wincing internally as she saw the disappointment in Marley's eyes. Those beautifully blue, wide and innocent orbs which she just might fall into if she wasn't…

FOCUS!

She turned her gaze expectantly on Jake as Marley stuttered out an answer in the negative, finding it much easier to fix the jock with her accusing glare than it had been to try to break down Marley without suffering a lapse in the concentration which kept up her own fragile façade.

Fragile is not a word to be used in relation to a Wilde! her mental instincts scolded her, especially not in relation to her! Why the hell would she make you fragile?

That was another thing which annoyed her about Marley; the girl had the ability to jolt Kitty's otherwise stable front of bitchiness and indifference which she put up to protect herself, and she hated it. The idea of being vulnerable to another person was an alien concept to Kitty, not least to someone who had so much to gain from her downfall, like Marley.

She'd never do that, though. She's too nice, the voice in her head told her, and Kitty found herself increasingly annoyed that even her own thoughts seemed to be waging war against one another.

She looked down as Marley handed her the jacket, not prepared to look the other girl in the eyes (which were no doubt filled with tears on her account yet again), and slung it around her shoulders. Immediately its muskiness and the general smell of male odour made her want to retch, but she smiled sickeningly sweetly at Jake instead to hide her discomfort as Marley walked away, still looking infuriatingly adorable.

First cute, now adorable…

I thought I'd told you to shut it, random voice.

Except… what was that other smell? It certainly wasn't what she'd describe as masculine; not in terms of someone like Jake, anyway. It was light, gently scented and all the things that he wasn't; breathing in quietly she quickly deduced that the smell was also coming from the jacket.

It must be Marley's perfume…

Linking arms with Jake without really registering it (as if by default), she set her thoughts elsewhere on more important matters. That scent… reaching into the jacket pocket, her hand circled itself around a small glass bottle.

Bingo.


Well, that was probably one of the most humiliating moments of her life so far, right up there with being made to sing in front of several hundred distant relatives at her aunt's birthday party with a faulty mic and being slushied by seven Cheerios at once.

Marley walked briskly with her head down through McKinley's corridors, avoiding the most crowded areas and making her way to the bleachers, where she'd sang with Jake just hours earlier. She had thought of going to the auditorium or even the choir room, but right now she preferred the fresh air – it might help her to clear her madly confused thoughts.

Exiting through a back door, Marley stopped and her shoulders slumped even further than they already had done (she must cut a dejected figure indeed) as she remembered that she'd left her perfume in Jake's jacket. Marley wasn't one for luxuries – she couldn't be, in her situation – but the small bottle had been a summer treat from her mother, who had noted how much Marley complained of smelling like her previous school's kitchens all the time.

Exhaling sadly, she resumed her short journey to the bleachers, picking one of her favourite spots nearer the top of the structure. As she sank into the surprisingly chilled metal seat, Marley squirmed uncomfortably, both at the sensation of cold sinking into her behind and at the thoughts she was having. How come she could never figure out her own life enough so that it at least made some sense to her?

She had established that she didn't blame Kitty for the way she acted, and while she knew that most people in her situation would (and would have good reason to), she felt absolutely no malice towards the shorter girl for this latest incident. She just felt humiliation and dejection, and the biting sensation that this was all somehow her fault.

She thought that Jake had liked her, so she'd gone for it – that's what people do, right? They date, they exchange jackets, they have conversations that actually mean something… but now Marley was wondering if the disappointment she was feeling mixed in with the loneliness and hurt stemmed from disappointment that she had once again failed to do what normal people – successful people – are supposed to do, rather than disappointment specifically concerning the fact that she couldn't be with Jake.

So maybe the slight discomfort you were feeling earlier wasn't those romantic butterflies then…

"No duh," she said aloud, frowning at her thoughts. She'd honestly been happy and flattered just because someone had actually showed an interest in her - because it suggested that perhaps she wasn't as much of an ugly screw-up as people told her she was… no such luck.

Marley sighed again. High school sucked.

Not to mention that Kitty Wilde now had her perfume. While she didn't hate Kitty, she was pretty damned sure that the blonde would find some way to make her regret ever daring to wear it to school – to try and feel just a little bit better about herself.

She wished that she could stop Kitty from having to lash out like that…

Once again, Marley found herself worrying more about Kitty than anything else in her life. Feeling even more confused and annoyed at herself, she began to weep quietly.


Kitty set the bottle down on her desk and squinted at it; it was very small, and the contortions in the glass made it very difficult to figure out if there was anything legible inscribed into it. After a few minutes of study, she decided that there wasn't, and there was no label either. Stumped, Kitty let herself fall backwards onto her bed in frustration.

Glancing up slightly, she winced as something piercingly reflected the light from her desk lamp into her eyes. Pushing herself up, she realised that it was a small protrusion on the underside of the perfume bottle.

Why are you doing this anyway?

Because… it smells awesome, k?

You're saying that Marley smells awesome?

Moving back to her desk, she picked the bottle up again and tilted it slightly; as she did so she realised that there was indeed a small inscription just above its base. It was pretty miniscule, though; holding it back up to the light, she was able to make out the mark 6 0 9, Fl. & Co.


Half an hour and a considerable amount of internet-based detective work later, Kitty knew that Fl. & Co. was a small floral-centric shop in downtown Lima, and that 6 0 9 was an identification code for the scent in the bottle.

Don't you dare, Wilde. Why the hell would you? You could be doing homework, or ten times more worthy things…

Ignoring what she'd come to see as her conscience (whereas she was beginning to realise that it was quite the opposite), Kitty grabbed her Cheerios jacket and the small glass phial and left her room, swinging her door closed as she went.

Her destination: downtown Lima.


Two days later

Marley's day was already shaping up to be a bad one. She'd been slushied twice, her change of clothes had another old stain on them and she was running five minutes late for class – which consisted of two periods of dissection in biology. Marley didn't usually mind science, but she'd always been a little squeamish.

Arriving at her locker huffily, her fingers (still sticky with corn syrup) fumbled with the combination as she struggled to hold her books in her other hand; her bag had become so drenched in slushie that she'd had to ditch it, because her work was getting damaged even when it was supposedly dry because of all the syrup it had absorbed.

Hers was a doomed cause, and the stack of textbooks slid from her grasp just as she entered the final digit of her combination, eliciting a groan and she tried as quickly as possible to gather them back up again.

She was seriously beginning to doubt her own philosophy of not letting everything get to her - for tolerating it all in the name of some better day in the future, because right now her life sucked, and she couldn't see it getting any better. She didn't even have her perfume to quell the overly sweet stench of cherry syrup.

Straightening up, Marley reached out to grab her notes from her locker when she noticed something glinting tucked away in the corner. She certainly didn't remember keeping glass in her locker – heck, she didn't even drink so it couldn't be a liquor bottle – so she had no idea what it could be, aside from…

Frowning, she reached in and her fingers circled around the patterned bottle, pulling it out into the light; Marley's eyes widened as she realised what it was.

This definitely wasn't hers. She'd only ever owned the one bottle, and it was about four times smaller (and much less expensive) than this one. Turning it around it her hand, she realised there was a post-it note stuck onto the back.

X was all it said; a large, loopy letter signifying a kiss (as one might type in a text) with a small smiley in the corner. She peeled the note off carefully to search for any more clues as to the identity of its purchaser, and revealed an intricate silver label, reading The Flower Botique & Co. Since 1907; finest flora, fauna and botanical scents

There was a gap and a black-and-white illustration of a flower, but Marley's eyes were drawn to the name of the perfume.

L'essence de Rose.