"Insane people are always sure that they are fine. It is only the sane people who are willing to admit that they are crazy." - Nora Ephron

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Jade moaned as she drifted out of sleeps and out of her medicated stupor. Her vision was stifled but she could make out a ruby-colored blur. She needed no convincing. Jade knew exactly what it was. Or who.

"cat…" her voice a faint blip on the sleeping redhead's radar. "cat…where…"

Jade unwittingly knocked over the nurse call remote attached by a cable to the bed. It had enough slack to crash to the floor. The sound surprised Cat and she nearly fell onto the floor herself.

"Jade?" she turned to see her friend's head moving side to side, confused.

"Cat?"

"It's me Jade," intertwining their fingers together. Her eyesight was improving mildly but having her this close helped a great deal.

"Oh, Cat. Where are we?"

"Jade you're in a hospital." She looked around for anyone coming in. "Do you remember anything?"

She looked down at her heavily bandaged hands and despite this went on to scratch the back of her head. A weird sensation made her stop immediately.

"Cat," gesturing toward the back of her head. "What is this?"

"Stitches."

Jade was thrown by all of this. She had these serious injuries and she could barely recall the night before. Slowly bits were creeping into Jade's mind. She remembered her mother standing over her menacingly. She remembered a struggle. She remembered a fire. She remembered the pain.

"My book!" Jade gasped, not fully on the mend to shout like her usual self.

Cat's lip quivered before giving her the bad news. "It's gone. It was lost in the fire. You tried to get it but it was too late," pointing at her bandaged hands.

Tears tumbled down the steep slope of the brunette's face. She closed her eyes in vain to halt an oncoming avalanche.

Jade was soon in the loving arms of her friend. She sobbed a lament for her book. To others it was just some pages held with steel rings but to her it was her life. Everything she had learned and been inspired by films were in this book. Her first script. It was going to be her first real movie and it was gone. She was nowhere near done but the thought of potentially starting over again depressed her.

I don't have anything now, Jade thought to herself.

"You still have us, Jade" Cat said with her eyes closed, still hugging her friend.

Did I say that out loud? Did she sense what I was thinking? Jade felt guilty about harboring such a feeling back there.

The rest of the Valentine clan came to visit and showered their virtual second daughter with flowers and cards and kind words and above all, their company. Jade's own mother never made the time for her and when she did, it was far from pleasant.

Sometime after the others left to get something to eat, Lydia stayed behind to have a talk with Jade.

"Jade," her hand placed lovingly on the injured girl's visage. "You don't have to worry about your mother. Believe me."

"How do you know that?" Jade asked.

"She may be troubled but she's not stupid. We have enough evidence to put her away."

Jade shook her head. "I can't have my own mom arrested but at the same time I don't want to see her."

"And we completely understand and respect that."

She hugged Jade, comforting the girl as she sniffed and moistened her shoulder. What Lydia didn't tell her was that she found out that when Renee West had heard about her husband's death, she soon discovered that as a divorcee she was not entitled to his brand new life insurance policy. It was assigned to his only child and would sit in a trust fund until she became of age. Renee only wanted her daughter close so that she could control the money once Jade was old enough.

The important thing was that Jade was not going to have that money taken away from her; the last good thing her father could offer from beyond the grave, and she was out of that abusive home. What good was further damaging her opinion of her mother going to do?

"Oh," Lydia gleamed trying to change the subject. "I have something for you." She went over to her big purse and pulled out a stack of mail wrapped in a bow like the strangest present. "Here"

Jade adjusted her bed to sit up a little better and took the post. She leafed through the stack and stopped dead cold at one from Hollywood Arts. She was tempted to open it put set it aside.

"You sure you don't want to open that one?" Lydia asked.

"Not really," Jade shrugged.

"Sure? It might be important."

"Open it? I…can't…"

Lydia obliged and tore into the envelope and produced a single tri-folded sheet. It bore official HA heading and was a brief letter.

"Oh," Lydia holding her hand over her mouth. "Jade, I'm so sorry."

Jade gasped, holding back newly forming tears. She could feel her heart blowing apart like her binder.

"I'm sorry that once you finally get out of here you have to go to school," she grinned as wide as a human could possibly do.

"I got in?"

She nodded, absolutely glowing with pride. Now I have two girls who are going to be famous one day. I can feel it.

Some scars healed, others would in time. And a few others would never go away. However, this is the kind of hospital that concerns itself with the superficial type of pain than the latter so Jade West was primed for release.

Cat and her mother took the pale girl shopping for school. They had a discussion with the principal and luckily Hollywood Arts have a floating admittance policy whereby once you're accepted it is never void. As long as there is room you can enroll at any time. Seeing the circumstances, the principal decided to let Jade into the ninth grade.

Jade made a point to be in as many classes with Cat as possible. Unfortunately it only boiled down to two. The rest of the time, she had to fly solo.

She found the classes fascinating. Her English class did a shot by shot analysis of Casablanca where they discussed the screenplay's merits. It was one of Jade's favorite courses, taught by Toni Warren, a former student of Robert McKee the famous screenwriting teacher.

Another one she enjoyed was history. Jade easily memorized dates and figures and people by thinking of history as a colossal story. Things motivated others; it was a progressive sequence of events just like in fiction.

Things like physical education and math were pretty standard. Jade couldn't wait for geometry where she knew a lot of it would come in handy when she would do setups whilst filming.

In Jade's graphic design class, the students were sitting rather bored listening to the teacher discuss the substance of visual advertising. She drifted off to sleep, knocking over her notebook. Reaching for it, a hand graced upon hers. Looking up to see where that hand belonged to sat a long-haired olive skinned boy. He looked back at her and smiled awkwardly.

"Hey," the handsome guy said, smiling.

"Thanks," Jade pulling a strand of hair back. "For trying to pick up my book."

"It's cool."

"You're new here, aren't ya?"

"Yeah," Jade nodded.

"You wouldn't happen to know Cat, would you?"

"You know her?" Jade asked genuinely.

"I have a couple classes with her and she talks about her girlfriend Jade."

"Oh, that's me" Jade chuckled. "But she's not my girlfriend. I mean she's my friend but we're not like that. Not that there's anything wrong with that…."

"Good to know," the boy smiled showing teeth.

"Jade," extending her hand. "You know my name. how about yours?"

"Beck."

"Beck?" Jade thinks about it in her head. It went quite well with her name. "I like it."

"Well now I can finish my day," he grinned madly.

A sense of humor, too. Go easy girl.

"Hey, do you wanna hang out?" Jade attempting poorly to make the nervousness in her voice.

"And do what?"

"Maybe get a cup of coffee?"

Beck rolled his eyes. "What a cliché."

"No it's not! You obviously haven't been paying attention to Cat if you don't know about my love affair with coffee."

"Okay," he says. "I'd like that. "