DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN VICTORiOUS. POV's when mentioned.
Chapter 11
Pain and Error
Andre's POV
Bus ride home after school. Wednesday, January 19th. 3 P.M.
I'm sitting next to Caterina on the bus to her house. She has been upset the whole day. This thing with her brother has really got to her. She hasn't said a word to me since we got on the bus. She is sitting at the window and I got the aisle seat. She's just been sitting there, gazing outside the window.
"Do you want to talk?" I ask her. She moans a little bit. I watch her, waiting for her to answer. She finally shakes her head. "Come on, Caterina, you can't let this sty I you. You gotta talk." I push her. She shakes her head again. I sigh. "Alright. This will be a weird afternoon." I say to myself. Again, she doesn't answer me.
After a while, we get off the bus at the stop down her street. I didn't know it was hers until she got up and climbed over me and quickly walked down the aisle. I had to run after her to catch up to her on the bus. She leaped off the bus and started walking up the street very quickly. I jogged to catch up to her again. I walked with her and she didn't seem to notice, or care, that I was with her.
We walked for a few minutes before she suddenly turned right and went up a driveway to a house. I follow her. I guess this is her place. It's pretty nice. I think it's slightly larger than my house. There are no cars in the driveway, but I don't know about the garage. Caterina said that her parents were taking her brother to see all kinds of doctors today. I have no idea if they're home now.
Caterina and I walk up to the front door, where she pulls out her key and unlocks the door. She opens it and walks inside. She nearly closes it on me and I had to raise my hand to prevent it from hitting my face. I closed the door behind me and looked around.
It's a nice place. A lot of decorations and beautiful furniture. I walk into the living room a little uncomfortably. I'm not sure why. I guess it's because I haven't been in anyone else's house before. Plus, it's really quiet here. I can't hear anything other than my faint breathing and some clocks ticking. Caterina is nowhere to be seen. She disappeared after I walked inside her house. She left her bag on the table in the living room. I put mine down next to hers and look around some more. I hate to be rude and walk around the house without her.
I turn around and Caterina is right there. I jump a little from surprise. Where'd she come from? She doesn't seem bothered by the fact that I almost screamed like a little girl. She ignores me.
"Are your folk's home?" I ask her. She ignores me again. She looks around the living room like she's never seen it before. Then she looks at me and walks up to me. Before I can say anything, she wraps her arms around me and pulls me in for a tight hug. Before I can tell her to loosen up a bit, she starts crying. I can feel the warm tears on my clothes. Her little body is shaking from her sobbing. I rub her back slowly to calm her down, but it doesn't work. "It'll be ok, Caterina." I say to her in a low voice.
"N-n-no i-it w-w-w-wo-n-n't b-be." She sobs into my shoulder.
"Yes it will-"
"No it won't!" she shouts as she pushes me away. I raise my hands in defense. "My brother is sick and there's nothing I can do about it."
"He can be helped." I try.
"Can he? Can he be helped? From what I've been told, there's no cure for it."
"Maybe not, but he can treated for it. He can be helped." I say.
"I don't know. I just feel so helpless." She moans and sits down in the chair near her. I walk to the sofa which is next to the chair and sit down. She brings her knees up to her chest and buries her face there. She sits there for a long time and I sit in the sofa, watching her and waiting for her to speak again. She's quiet for a very long time.
"Caterina?" I say after a long time.
"What?" she mutters from her knees.
"Uh, where's your bathroom?" I ask her.
"Hall next to stairs, first door on left." She replies. I thank her and get up to go. I come back a few moments later and she is now sitting on the sofa where I was sitting. I go over and sit down next to her. She doesn't notice. She's staring at the TV in front of the sofa. I look at it too. It's turned off, but she's probably playing something in her mind.
"Do you want to talk some more?" I ask her, still looking at the TV.
"No." she mutters.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
"You gotta talk you know." I try again.
"Stop it! I'll talk! What do you wanna know Andre?!" She shouts all of the sudden, causing me to jump. I move over on the sofa so that I'm a safe distance from her if she tries anything.
"I just want you to say what you're feeling." I answer innocently.
"What are you, a doctor?" she shouts again.
"Well, no but-"
"But nothing, Andre. I don't want your help."
"Then why did you invite me over?" I ask her, confused. She goes silent for a while. I raise my eyebrows.
"Cause I like you." She whispers.
"Well, yeah. We have crushes on each other." I answer, stating the obvious.
"No, stupid. I actually like you." She says.
"Hey!" I gasp in annoyance.
"What?" she asks in an innocent tone.
"You just called me stupid." I point out. She rolls her eyes.
"Well, you are if you think I like you because of a stupid crush." She answers. I roll my eyes.
"I thought that was why we liked each other in the first place." I say.
"Well yeah, but we are now friends." Caterina says. Yeah that makes more sense now. "Now come back over here." She says. I move over to where I was originally. The moment I do, Caterina puts her arm around me and lays her head on my shoulder. I was taken by surprise, but I don't move when she starts crying again.
"Hey, come here." I say and I hug her. She hugs me back tightly. She once again cries into my shoulder. "Don't cry. It'll be alright."
"I don't know if it will be alright. I'm so worried about Joey." She mumbles into my shoulder, which is now more wet than it was when she first cried on me a few minutes ago.
"Of course you're worried about him. He's you're brother after all."
"I know; it's just that I feel so useless now. He's helped me a lot, and what have I done in return? Nothing!" she wails. Oh boy, this is worse than I thought.
"I know what you can do for him." I say. She looks up at me with big, red, watery eyes.
"What?" she asks, sniffling.
"You can be brave and strong for him and the rest will come to you." I reply. She looks at me confused for a minute.
"You think I can do all that? I mean, mommy and daddy freaked out when they were told he has ADHD." She replies.
"Well, they feel useless because he's their son and firstborn and they don't know what to do." I reply. She shrugs a little. "If they can do it, Caterina. Then so can you." She looks at me.
"You think I can?" she asks.
"I know you can." I reply, smiling at her. She smiles back and hugs me again. I hug her back and rub her tiny back to keep her calm.
"Thank you, Andre. I don't know what I would do without you." She says.
"Anytime, Caterina. Anytime." I reply.
"Are you hungry?" she asks.
"Starving." I reply, rubbing my stomach. It's growled a few times since I got here. Why does a stomach growl in the first place? It's something I never understood. Whatever.
Caterina and I get up and go into the kitchen. It's located behind the living room. In there, I take a seat at the table and she opens the fridge door.
"What do you want?" she asks, looking over at me. I shrug.
"What do you got that's veggie free?" I ask.
"Cereal, pop tarts, and ice cream, basically." She replies. Ice cream? She has ice cream?!
"What flavor ice cream do you have?" I ask her, jumping up and running to her. She looks a little surprised.
"Uh…" she replies, closing the fridge and opening the freezer. She takes out a couple of tubs of ice cream. "Vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, and mint chocolate chip."
"Oooh, I don't know. Hard to choose. Uh…strawberry." I reply.
"Ooh yay, me too!" she says as she puts the other tubs of ice cream away and puts the strawberry on the table. She goes to a cabinet and opens it. She tries to reach for the bowls up there. I'm slightly taller than her and I wouldn't be able to reach them. I walk up to here and bring a chair with me.
"Here." I say and I put the chair up to the countertop.
"Thanks." She says as she climbs up the chair. She then reaches for the bowls and grabs a couple of them. She hands them to me and I help her get back down. She puts the chair back and goes to a drawer and hands me a couple of spoons. I open the tub of ice cream and try to put a spoon in it, but it's still frozen solid.
"We need something a little bigger and we need to let this warm up a bit." I tell her. She nods and goes back to the drawer and pulls out an ice cream scooper. I smile at the size of the thing. Nice. She smiles back and sits down at the table. We wait for a few minutes before Caterina attacks the ice cream with the large spoon. The spoon goes in easily and she scoops out ice cream for the both of us. I start sucking mine down instantly and get brain freeze. I look up and notice Caterina staring at me. "What?" I ask.
"Why are you so excited about ice cream? Do your parents not give you any?" she asks.
"Yeah, I get ice cream. My parents are dentists and I have to have sugar-free ice cream, which sucks." I reply.
"Ooh, that does suck." She replies. I nod sadly and continue to eat my ice cream. This time, I decide to enjoy every bite of it. How often do I get a chance to have sugared ice cream? Not many.
After we finish our ice cream, we go into the living room again and work on our homework. We have different teachers, so we can't really help each other out on some parts. There are some stuff that I have learned that she hasn't yet that I can help her with. The same goes the other way around. We spend at least an hour on doing it. Afterwards we go outside and play catch with a little ball that's hard to see. It's hard to see because it's bright pink and the sun is very high at the moment. We've both been hit in the face or body by the ball and we have to shield our eyes with one hand and try to catch with the other. Not really easy. Or fun. We stop after a while and go back inside.
"My face is sore." Caterina moans when we go into the living room again.
"Mine too; that ball is hard." I groan, rubbing my face.
"How do I look?" she asks me. I turn to her and her face is a little red where she got hit by the ball, but other than that, she seems fine.
"You look fine; your face is just a little red where the ball hit you." I reply.
"Cool. The same is with you." She replies. I nod.
"Is there anything good on right about now?" I ask her. She shrugs and is about to grab the TV remote when we hear the sound of a garage door opening and a car engine.
"They're home!" She squeaks and stands up.
Caterina's POV
Bus ride home after school. Wednesday, January 19th. 3 P.M.
This has been the slowest day of my life. The entire day I've been thinking about Joey and what's happened and what will happen to him. I asked Andre over to stay with me because I don't want to be alone today. That's not the only reason though. I like him a lot and I don't know what to do.
I'm sitting on the bus right now. Andre is sitting next to me quietly. I'm sitting at the window and gazing outside of it. I haven't said much to him or much of today actually. I've also been trying hard not to cry too and that is not an easy thing to do, let me tell you.
"Do you want to talk?" Andre asks me all of the sudden. I stir and moan a little bit before shaking my head slowly. "Come on, Caterina, you can't let this sty I you. You gotta talk." He says, trying to push me to talk. I shake my head again. I sigh. "Alright. This will be a weird afternoon." I hear him say to himself. I don't know what to say to that, so I stay silent.
Eventually, the bus arrives at the stop at the beginning of my street. I barely wait for the driver to stop before I leap up and climb over Andre and walk quickly down the aisle. The quicker I get off this bus, the sooner I can get home. I just can't stand being in public anymore today. I leap off the bus and walk up my street towards my house. I hear Andre running up to me to catch me and him following me to my house. I don't even notice or really care for that matter. I'm not sure why.
We walked for a few more minutes before we approach my house. I turn right and walk up the driveway, following the path to the front door. I fish out my key and unlock the door and open it for us.
I walk inside and nearly close the door on Andre's face. But again, I don't seem to care. Whatever. I drop my backpack on the coffee table and go upstairs to look for my family. No one was downstairs, so I figured that if they're here, they're probably in their rooms. Not the case.
I walk back downstairs and go to Andre, whose looking around the living room. He turns around and jumps a little from surprise. I ignore him and the fact that he almost jumped out of his skin.
"Are your folk's home?" he asks. Once again, I ignore him. I look around the living room for some reason. Then I look at Andre and walk up to him. Before he gets the chance to say anything, I wrap my arms around him and pull him in for a tight hug and I start crying into his shoulder. His warm body warms me up, but it's not helping. My body is shaking from sobbing. Andre rubs my back slowly to calm me down, but it still doesn't work. "It'll be ok, Caterina." He says to me in a low voice.
"N-n-no i-it w-w-w-wo-n-n't b-be." I choke out into his shoulder as I sob some more.
"Yes it will-"
"No it won't!" I shout, breaking off from him and I push him away. He raises his hands in defense. "My brother is sick and there's nothing I can do about it."
"He can be helped." He replies.
"Can he? Can he be helped? From what I've been told, there's no cure for it."
"Maybe not, but he can treated for it. He can be helped." he says.
"I don't know. I just feel so helpless." I moan and sit down in the chair nearby. Andre walks up to the sofa which is next to the chair and sits down. I bring my knees up to my chest and I bury my face in the little crook in between my knees. I feel Andre looking at me. I think he wants me to talk some more, but I'm not in the mood at the moment. So I stay silent.
"Caterina?" Andre says after a very long time without sound.
"What?" I mutter from my knees.
"Uh, where's your bathroom?" He asks me. Not what I was expecting, but he hasn't gone yet.
"Hall next to stairs, first door on left." I explain to him without raising my head. He thanks me and gets up to go. I raise my head when I hear the bathroom door close in the distance. I get off the chair and go over to where Andre was sitting a few moments ago. It's nice and warm. He comes back a few moments later.
"Do you want to talk some more?" I ask her, still looking at the TV.
"No." she mutters.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
"You gotta talk you know." He tries again.
"Stop it! I'll talk! What do you wanna know Andre?!" I shot, causing him to move over on the sofa so that he's a safe distance from me. Like I'm gonna do anything to him.
"I just want you to say what you're feeling." He answers innocently.
"What are you, a doctor?" I shout again.
"Well, no but-"
"But nothing, Andre. I don't want your help."
"Then why did you invite me over?" He asks, confused. I raise my eyebrows.
"Cause I like you." I whisper.
"Well, yeah. We have crushes on each other." He answers, stating the obvious.
"No, stupid. I actually like you." I say.
"Hey!" He gasps, annoyed.
"What?" I ask in an innocent tone.
"You just called me stupid." He points out. I roll my eyes.
"Well, you are if you think I like you because of a stupid crush." I answer. He rolls his eyes.
"I thought that was why we liked each other in the first place." He says.
"Well yeah, but we are now friends." I say. "Now come back over here." He moves over to where he was originally. The moment he does, I put my arm around him and lay my head on his shoulder. He seems a little surprised. That's when I start crying again.
"Hey, come here." I hear him say and he hugs me. I hug him back tightly. I continue to cry into his shoulder. "Don't cry. It'll be alright."
"I don't know if it will be alright. I'm so worried about Joey." I mumble into his shoulder, which is practically soaking wet from my crying on it.
"Of course you're worried about him. He's you're brother after all."
"I know; it's just that I feel so useless now. He's helped me a lot, and what have I done in return? Nothing!" I wail.
"I know what you can do for him." Andre says. I look up at him through watery eyes.
"What?" I ask, sniffling.
"You can be brave and strong for him and the rest will come to you." He replies. I give him a confused look. Uh…
"You think I can do all that? I mean, mommy and daddy freaked out when they were told he has ADHD." I inform him. It was scary seeing them upset about all this. Especially daddy.
"Well, they feel useless because he's their son and firstborn and they don't know what to do." He replies. I shrug. "If they can do it, Caterina. Then so can you." I then look at him.
"You think I can?" I ask.
"I know you can." He replies with a big smile on his face. I smile back and hug him yet again. He hugs me back and rubs my back a little and it feels nice.
"Thank you, Andre. I don't know what I would do without you." I tell him.
"Anytime, Caterina. Anytime." He answers.
"Are you hungry?" I ask.
"Starving." He replies, rubbing his stomach. His stomach has been growling since we got here.
Andre and I go behind the living room into the kitchen. Andre takes a seat at the table while I open the fridge door and look inside. Pretty much all we got are leftovers. I don't think he'll want any of that.
"What do you want?" I ask, looking at him and he shrugs.
"What do you got that's veggie free?" He asks. Well, that helps narrow it down a bit. Almost everything we got has those nasty veggies in them.
"Cereal, pop tarts, and ice cream, basically." I reply. That's pretty much the only thing we got.
"What flavor ice cream do you have?" He asks excitedly. He jumps up and runs up to me. I look at him confused. I like ice cream as much as the next person, but what's his deal?
"Uh…" I reply, closing the fridge and opening the freezer. I look for them and I find them. I take out a couple of tubs of ice cream. "Vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, and mint chocolate chip."
"Oooh, I don't know. Hard to choose. Uh…strawberry." He replies.
"Ooh yay, me too!" I reply and I put the other tubs of ice cream away and puts the strawberry on the table. I walk to the cabinet where the dishes are and open it. I try to reach for the bowls up there, but I can't reach. I hear something behind me and I turn to see Andre walking to me with a chair.
"Here." He says as he puts the chair up to the countertop.
"Thanks." I say and I climb up the chair. I'm high enough to reach for the bowls and I grab a couple. I turn around to hand them to Andre and he helps me get back down. I put the chair back and goes to the utensil drawer and hand him a couple of spoons. He opens the tub of ice cream and tries to put a spoon in it, but it's still frozen solid.
"We need something a little bigger and we need to let this warm up a bit." He informs me. I nod and go back to the drawer and I look around and pull out the ice cream scooper. I show it to Andre, who smiles at the size of the thing. I smile back and sit down at the table. We wait for a few minutes before I attack the ice cream with the large spoon. The spoon goes in easily and I happily scoop out ice cream for the both of us. I hand Andre his bowl and he immediately starts to suck it down. I watch him as he eats his ice cream and he looks up at me after a while. "What?" He asks.
"Why are you so excited about ice cream? Do your parents not give you any?" I ask him. How can anyone eat ice cream that fast without getting brain freeze.
"Yeah, I get ice cream. My parents are dentists and I have to have sugar-free ice cream, which sucks." He replies. Dentists!? That's BAD. I hate dentists. They're so mean to my mouth!
"Ooh, that does suck." I reply. He sadly nods and continues to eat his ice cream. That must suck to have sugar-free ice cream. I wonder how bad it tastes. It must be pretty bad if he's eating this ice cream that fast.
After eating, we go into the living room and work on our homework. We can't really help each other out since we have different teachers. But, we have learned stuff that the other hasn't learned yet. So there's that. After that, we decide to go outside and play catch with one of my balls. It's a bright pink and kinda small. Also, it's bright outside, so it's hard for us to play catch with one hand shielding our eyes and attempting to catch with the other. We get hit in the face several times. It doesn't really hurt, but it's annoying. We lose interest and go inside after a while.
"My face is sore." I moan when we go into the living room again.
"Mine too; that ball is hard." He groans, rubbing his face.
"How do I look?" I ask him. He looks at me and studies my face while I study his. His face has a little red, but it's hard to see because of his dark skin.
"You look fine; your face is just a little red where the ball hit you." He tells me.
"Cool. The same is with you." I reply. He nods.
"Is there anything good on right about now?" Andre asks. I shrug and I'm about to grab the TV remote when we hear the sound of a garage door opening and a car engine.
"They're home!" I squeak, standing up.
Chapter 11. Comment or review plz or whatever. I'm gonna shoot for 10,000 plus words for the next chapter. It'll take a while.