Disclaimer: I don't own anything except my OC's.

Guess who just graduated high school?

Bam.

I watch as Anna runs a wet cloth over the kitten's fur.

"How come you can't just give it a bath?" I ask curiously, stroking the distressed kitten to calm it down.

"Kitten's don't like water," Anna explains, smoothing the cloth over the dusty fur. "We like to train our kittens to like baths. So we have to take it little by little. I can only maybe wash its feet today. Tomorrow I'll do its legs, the day after I'll do the lower half of its body, and so on and so forth."

I nod thoughtfully as Anna finishes cleaning the kitten. She stands up. "Could you please pick up the kitten and follow me? It's time to wash its feet."

I must look completely clueless, because Keith steps forward and demonstrates how to hold a kitten, using Microwave as an example. Soon I'm holding the cat awkwardly above a shallow container filled with very warm water.

"Just dunk her feet into the water," Anna instructs carefully. "No more than its feet. It'll get scared."

I obey, but the kitten seems to get scared anyway. She meows and starts to struggle.

"Hold her there for a few more seconds," Anna says firmly. Hearing the kitten meow like that breaks my heart, but I force myself to withstand it. Finally Anna gives me the okay to take the cat out and Anna dries the kitten's feet with a fluffy hand towel. The kitten is making distressed little mewls and I hug it.

"Keith!" Anna orders, placing the towel in the laundry hamper. "Go get the kitty treats!"

Keith runs to obey his mother. Anna sighs, pushing her hair out of her face.

"Now, the only question is what to do with this little one."

"What do you mean?" I ask fearfully. "You aren't sending it away, are you?"

"Grace, as long as I have breath in my body, I will never send a cat away from this house," Anna says firmly. "No, our problem is that this kitten seems to have gotten attached to you. It won't even let me hold it. Are you sure you can't adopt a cat?"

I shake my head. "No, I'm really sorry but I can't. Roxanne's apartment isn't allowed."

Anna sighs. "Well then I'm not sure what I can do. The kitten can stay here, of course, but it'll be awfully sad…"

"Mama," Jamie pipes up, startling me. "I have an idea. Grace can adopt the kitten, but the kitten can stay here. She can visit it every day, even stay over some days…"

"Jamie, that's a wonderful idea!" Anna exclaims, looking relieved. "Grace, how does that sound?"

I open my mouth to decline – I can't adopt a kitten, I don't even live in Metro City! – but my voice disappears when I stare at the kitten looking pitifully up at me. Its bright green eyes are so sad and big that I almost feel like crying. So when I open my moth to say no, I'm surprised when instead my voice says, "Definitely."

I try to get away with just a text to Roxanne, but she calls me immediately.

"Grace?"

"Er…the number you have called is unavailable," I say in my best imitation of an electronic voice. "Please leave a message after the beep. Beeeeeeeeeeeep."

"Grace!" Roxanne snaps. Her voice is angry and slightly hurt. "I know it's you."

Crap. I sigh. "What is it, Roxie?"

"Why aren't you coming home? Whose house are you sleeping over at?" It figures that what makes Roxanne suspicious is the fact that I might possibly know someone.

"It's Keith's," I answer unenthusiastically, accepting the pyjamas Stacey hands to me. I wait for her to leave so that I can change, but she sits on the bathtub edge and watches me. I turn around uncomfortably.

"Keith? You're staying over at a boy's house?"

Sudden pricks of pain in my leg catches my attention. I look down and see that the little kitten is trying to climb up my leg, sinking its needle-sharp kitten claws into my leg.

"Ow, ow, ow," I mumble, trying to unhook the kitten from my leg. "Get off, please…"

"What?" Roxanne asks, sounding confused.

"Roxanne, I have to go," I say, trying to sound regretful and probably failing miserably. "See you tomorrow."

"Grace-"

Click.

I finally succeed in detaching the kitten from me and set it on the floor again. It meows and rubs against my leg.

"If I had a famous sister, I'd be thrilled," Stacey says suddenly, staring at me with her large dark eyes. I grimace.

"Trust me, you don't want one. It's hell."

Stacey is still looking at me intently. "No, I don't think it would be."

Before I can say anything, Stacey stands and leaves the bathroom.

"I'm surprised your parents are okay with me staying in here," I tell Keith as I smooth out the blanket on my mattress. I don't know whose pyjamas I'm wearing, but they hang very loosely on me. I have to roll up the sleeves and pants several times just to function properly. Keith's room is almost as messy as the rest of the house. There are dirty clothes everywhere, and the ratio of cats to clothes is almost horrifically large.

Keith does a bellyflop onto his bed, sending several sleeping cats bouncing up and down. He grins at me. "It's because they know that no one in this house can try anything without the cats interrupting. Lynette tried to smuggle her boyfriend in once. The cats all piled on top of them before so much as a sock could be taken off."

I snort at the imagery. "Classy."

Keith peers over the edge of his bed at me. "Hey, what are you going to name that kitten?"

I look down at the sleeping ball of calico fur on my pillow. "I'm not sure…I've always been terrible with names. I named my pet rock Slipper once."

"What the hell?" Keith asks, looking at me oddly. "Slipper? Did you just look around and name it after the first thing you saw?"

"You can't talk, you named your cat Microwave!" I retort lamely. Keith and I bicker for a little while longer, then fall into a silence. He speaks again as I'm running a finger down the kitten's bony spine.

"How about something to do with history? You like that sort of stuff, right?"

I look at Keith in surprise. That's actually a good idea.

"You could name it…like…Cleopatra or Anastasia or something," Keith offers. I smirk at his limited historical knowledge and look down at my kitten.

"I think I'll call her…Bast."

Keith's brow furrows. "Like…short for bastard?"

"No!" I snap, throwing a bundled up t-shirt at him. "Like the Egyptian Goddess of cats, daughter of-"

"I'll take your word for it," Keith interrupts my tirade hurriedly, holding up his hands defensively. "It's a suitable cat name."

I touch the kitten – Bast – gingerly. She lets out a purr and curls into my finger.

"Yeah…" I whisper, awed at how small and insignificant Bast seems on my pillow. "Suitable…"

"Are you aware that your shirt is more cat fur than fibre?" Bernard asks tonelessly as he throws some money at me. It clatters noisily on the counter and I pick it up, shoving it in the cash register.

"Yeah, I stayed over at Keith's on the weekend and he's got an unhealthy amount of cats."

"Haters be hatin'," Keith says cheerfully as he prepares Bernard's drink for him.

"You stayed at his house all weekend," Bernard says flatly, cocking an eyebrow at me. Do people not do this in Metro City? Did I commit some sort of faux pas? Christ, I wouldn't know. Roxanne and our mother were the ones who visited Metro City all the time when we were younger. I stayed in my room while they were gone.

"Yeah," I answer, handing Bernard's drink to him. The boiling liquid burns my fingertips even through the cardboard cup and I withdraw my hand almost as soon as Bernard touches the cup. "We watched movies and played with the cats."

I see Bernard's lip curl. "Oh. Cats. Hm."

"What have you got against cats?" Keith asks indignantly, leaning on the counter with one arm. Bernard returns Keith's scowl with a bland look of his own.

"Oh, nothing. They just fail to amuse me."

"Everything fails to amuse you," Keith retorts and I smirk.

"Very true. What's wrong with cats? Did one traumatize you or something?"

Bernard hesitates a moment too long. My mouth drops open.

"It did! Omigod! Is that why you hate cats?"

"Cats are demonic," Bernard says so tonelessly that it sounds like he's reading it out of a textbook. However he still has a hint of defensiveness in his voice, which makes me smile.

"What happened?"

Another hesitation, but eventually Bernard answers. "When I was younger, my aunt called a family reunion. One of my cousins had a cat and he thought it would be funny to set the cat on me. I still have the scars from it."

My mouth drops open (again) and Keith looks surprised. "Well, damn. What a little brat. Did you clock him?"

Bernard sends him a withering look in return. "My cousin was five years older than me and twice my size. I did not 'clock him', as you say."

Keith holds up his hands defensively. "Just asking. Grace, I'm gonna…go over here for a moment. You two can chill for a while."

Ignoring the fact that we have customers to serve, Keith very graciously ducks behind into the storerooms. Speaking of which, where the hell is Richard? I can't imagine having one employee missing and one chatting to a customer would look very good for him. Ah well.

"How old were you when the cat attacked you?" I ask curiously, watching Bernard fiddle with the lid on his cup. He busies himself with drinking a long gulp of the black sludge, but eventually answers me.

"I believe I was about three."

I gape at him. "What the hell, Bernard? Why would your cousin do that to you?"

Bernard shrugs roughly. I think I've touched on one of his sore spots again. "I wouldn't know, I'm not my cousin. My lunchbreak is nearly over, I should get back to the museum."

"Wait, Bernard-" I begin, but Bernard is already heading out the door. I sigh and rest my elbow on the counter. Why are some men so hard to figure out?

"So your museum festival thingy is tomorrow, isn't it?" Keith asks brightly as we drive to his house after work (again). I nod, flipping absentmindedly through a manga I found wedged in between the seat and the door.

"Yuh-huh. You should go."

"Sounds tempting, but no. I tend to avoid frequenting places my sisters will be."

I glance at him. What a weird thing to say. Not that I'm not the same way, but I despise my sister in a way that Keith never will. "Why?"

"Because my social life and my family life are two lives I keep separate," Keith tells me, swinging hazardously into a street. "Just like my work life and my sex life."

I stare at him, hoping – wishing – I had misheard. "Uh, and now you are going to keep your social life and your sex life separate. Ew." Because I don't need any extra incentive to see Keith in a sexual way. I prefer to keep him strictly in the friend zone.

"What?" Keith asks, befuddled. He takes his gaze off the road to stare at me in confusion and only returns it when I screech at him to keep his eyes on the freaking road before he gets us killed. "Why? Don't you talk about your sex life with your friends?"

I return my gaze to the manga and flip through a few pages. I choose not to answer. There's a few moments of silence before Keith interprets it.

"No way. You're a…virgin?"

"What the hell, Keith?" I yowl, throwing my manga down and whipping around to glare at him. "Don't just blurt that out! God!"

Keith starts cracking up. "Ha! You're a unicorn!"

"What?" I ask coldly, because I'm no expert in Keith-talk but what the hell does that even mean?

"They say that teenage virgins are unicorns, because they're so rare," Keith elaborates, still giggling in a very manly way.

"I'm not a teenager, Keith."

"Then you must be a golden unicorn!" Keith says like it makes perfect sense. I stare at him for a while.

"Were you dropped on the head as a baby? Or did the midwife just try to catch you with a blender?"

"Ouch, Grace," Keith declares as he swings into the driveway of his house. "Cuts like a knife. Really does."

I just scowl at him and step out of the car. There's an unholy racket coming from the house – a mixture of demon-like noises and human shouts. Keith hurries past me and through the door, dodging several cats on his way in.

"Mom? Is everything okay?"

"Close the door!" someone screams back and I instinctively shut it with my foot. Not a moment later a colourful blur shoots past Keith and I and slams into the door. As it lays there, dazed, I finally see the source of all the commotion.

"Hey, Bast! You been a good kitty for Keith's family?"

Bast mews happily as I pick her up and nuzzle her in the way I see Keith do to all his cats. Running footsteps sound and Anna appears, her hair in flyaway strands around her face and her skin littered with shallow scratches. Her face breaks out into a tired smile when she sees me.

"Oh, Grace! I didn't know you were coming over today! How was work, dear?"

"It was fine," I answer as another one of Keith's sisters comes running in behind Anna. Unfortunately, due to both the sheer amount of cat fur on the slippery tiled floor and the fact that she's wearing socks, she ends up skidding and crashing into a table. She lets loose a string of unladylike curses that make me blush, Keith look amused and Anna look disapproving.

"Lynette! Now I know I didn't teach you that!"

"But it fucking – sorry, freaking – hurts like a b- like a sucker," Lynette mumbles, rubbing her curvy hip. Anna sends her one more disapproving stare, then bustles into the kitchen. Lynette waits until she's gone, then mutters another string of curses. These ones make Keith release a high-pitched giggle.

"Big sister. That's naughty."

Lynette fixes Keith with a glare. "I won't tell if you don't."

"Fair enough!" Keith says cheerfully, grabbing my wrist and bounding into the kitchen. Anna is putting away stacks of plates and cutlery. "Mom, do we have any ice cream left?"

"No, but if it's free time that you have, go feed Bast," Anna replies swiftly, waving a spatula at him. "She's been running around since you two left and she's probably tired."

I watch as Keith spreads a folded towel across his lap and places a wriggling Bast on it. A bottle of warm milk replacer sits by his side. I stroke Bast with one finger and she calms down slightly, curling into my finger.

"Don't distract her," Keith orders, lightly batting my finger away.

"But she's so cute," I protest, but obey him and sit back. Keith eases Bast's head into the palm of his hand and guides the bottle into Bast's mouth. Almost immediately Bast starts suckling on the bottle.

"There we go," Keith says, grinning as he strokes the back of Bast's head. Bast's eyes flutter shut and she begins kneading Keith's leg. As I watch Keith feed Bast and listen to the sound of Bast's rhythmic sucking, I feel my eyelids begin to shut.

When they open again, I'm curled up in the back of Keith's car and he's driving along the road back to Roxanne's apartment. Lynette is sitting in the passenger seat of the car, chatting to Keith in low tones.

"She's so different to her sister," Lynette is whispering, and I have to muffle a sigh when I realise they're talking about me. "I mean, when I first saw her I was like…shit. It's so fucking weird."

"Like we can all talk though," Keith replies, rolling his eyes. "Look at our siblings. We have little baby Sarah, Miss Bossy, and you. You're worse than a freaking sailor sometimes."

"I am not!" Lynette protests, her face flushing in the dark. "You're such a little shit, sometimes, Keith."

"Exhibit A," Keith says sarcastically, gesturing to her. Its silent for a little while before Lynette speaks again.

"Tomorrow after you come back from the cat litter factory, you wanna go out for an afternoon snack at the fattiest, greasiest place we can find? My treat."

"Hell, if it's your treat I can hardly say no, can I?" Keith grins, sparing her a quick smirk. And that's when I realise the difference between his sisters and mine. With Roxanne, we don't talk about each other. Simply because it has such little bearing in our lives so we don't bother. Maybe it's also a little bit of being not knowing how to ask. But with Keith and his sisters, they don't speak about each other not because they can't bother, but because they don't need to. They know each other so well that they don't need to confirm facts or second guess each other.

It's lonely, though, having a sister like Roxanne. Each of Keith's sisters are so lovely and kind, but each have a flaw or personality quirk that keeps them from tipping onto perfect. Why can't Roxanne be like that?

I turn over and rest my head on the window, staring gloomily at the lights passing me in a blur.

That night as I'm trying in vain to get to sleep, I listen to the soft sounds of Roxanne padding around the kitchen. I hear plates clink as she washes up. Eventually I hear the thump of the drawer being closed, but Roxanne doesn't head to her room. Instead a chair scrapes and I hear her sitting on it, letting out a sigh. It sounds a little empty and sad. What could Roxanne possibly be sad about? Why would she even be sad? Her life is perfect. She has everything – a glamorous job as a news reporter, a superhero best friend, parents who love her and a dorky younger sister who makes her look better. Why would she be sad? What else could she want?

I almost manage to get to sleep despite the aching lonely silence coming from the living room. But then I remember something which makes it even harder to sleep due to the excitement.

Tomorrow's the trivia carnival.

If anyone wanted to know how Grace went from Keith's house to work, Richard keeps spare uniforms around. She changed in the employee area while Keith stood guard and glowered at anyone who came too close.

So I wrote another story about Bernard's background...it'll have spoilers for this story, so I'm hesitant to post it. What do you guys think?