Title: Another Brick in the Wall

Author: Lea of Mirkwood

Disclaimer: See previous seventeen chapters.

Author's Note: Omigod, I am soooo sorry I haven't updated, but for one, I had no idea how to follow that up and then I had so much homework it really wasn't funny at all. I should have kept those chapters hidden and posted them intermittently so I could work on the next chapter at the same time. Besides, it's really hard to write this fic with a mother leaning over your shoulder going "What are you doing? What's that? Tell me about it. Scroll up and let me read. Honey, I don't like that, that's inappropriate. I don't like that part. That's nice sweetie but it's a little inappropriate. I don't like all this." IT DRIVES ME INSANE AND GIVES ME WRITERS BLOCK! Even now I'm in my room with the laptop pretending I'm practicing voice. Anyway. On with the fic. (P.S. Becky, I have a new thing you can call Boromir or Sean Bean: Bobobean. I read it somewhere. ANYWAY. On with the fic.)

--- --- --- (too lazy to type out all the asterisks.)

Monday, December 14, 1998

Casey leaned over to Kit, who was focussing unusually hard on Mr. Tate's lecture.

"Are you okay?" he whispered. Kit shook her head like she was waking up.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine."

Casey inclined his head nervously. "Well, I just thought, what with Rob… cheating on you and all-"

"Don't say it!" snapped Kit. "Just…don't say a single thing. Not a word."

Casey nodded and leaned back over to his seat and pulled out his copy of Frank Herbert's Dune (which I WILL read. Sometime.). He didn't see Delilah lean back in her seat after hearing the entire conversation. Casey glanced back at Kit worriedly. She really didn't look good. Her hair was pulled back in two braids and she was wearing a baby tee and baggy painters pants, but what really showed was the way her shoulders were slumped in defeat, the way her fingers weren't reaching for her sketchbook. Even worse was the look of misery on her face, like her heart was completely shattered and she could barely function.

--- --- ---

Nell glanced at her computer screen. Two new messages, both from Kit. No subject. She clicked on the first one and up popped another window that showed the email.

Rob cheated on me. Send chocolate.

Nell's jaw dropped. The next email spilled out the whole sordid story. As her eyes scanned the page, Nell's lips grew thinner and thinner and her jaw clenched more and more.

Rob was going to pay.

--- --- ---

Casey climbed the bleachers to where Kit was sitting eating her lunch. Or actually picking at her lunch and dropping peas down between the slats.

"Kit?" he tried weakly, then realized the quiet noise he'd been hearing was Kit's little CD player with attached speaker playing Andrew Lloyd Webber music. Don't Cry For Me Argentina. (Translation: Imagine the whole scene to that song.) Not the best choice for cheering up music. Kit looked up.

"Oh, hi, Casey," she said softly.

Casey sat down next to her, trying to articulate words. It occurred to him that she could very easily blame him for the situation, and thanked providence that she hadn't. After all, their relationship had been perfect until he came along and aroused suspicion. But maybe it was true. His heart thudded at the thought, with terror and nervousness and a strange tickling feeling he couldn't identify. What if she had been considering him…like that? Casey tried to imagine it, and he felt his stomach fly up into his throat like he was on a roller coaster. Not true. Couldn't be true. But, said his inner voice, it might be. Might be. He hoped not. But hoped so. That was the feeling. A little bubbling feeling of desire. But the terror beat it down, until the want was only a little part of his emotions, a battered, twisted emotion.

"Casey."

He looked up. Kit was studying her hands intently, like she didn't want to look at him. She looked back up and fixed her gaze on something in the distance.

"I wanted to thank you."

Casey bit his lip. "For what?"

Kit looked back down, like she was reluctant to say anything. "For…helping me. I…don't think I would have been able to…handle it if you weren't…there."

Was she going to say something else? It sounded like it. Her speech was halting, slow, like she wanted to say something different but replaced it with a similar word. Now she was looking at him like she wanted him to understand some secret message she couldn't say out loud. What? What? What?

"Thank you," she said quietly. She put down her lunch tray on the seat in front of her and looked up, out in the distance, down at her lap and finally at Casey. She scooted closer to him and repeated, "Thank you."

She slowly reached over and stroked his cheek with the backs of her fingers, then leaned over and lightly kissed his lips.

"And I'm sorry I used you last night."

Casey felt so relieved. The unspoken communication had read correctly. Friends. Just friends. Nothing more.

It won't be easy,

You'll think it's strange.

When I try to explain how I feel.

That I still need your love

After all that I've done.

You won't believe me.

All you will see is a girl you once knew…

--- --- ---

After school, that same day.

Kit walked down the halls of the school, empty. Empty. Her heart was wrenched in two. Stupid, stupid, stupid. After everything she'd done, she still never learned. Never use Casey, she berated herself. But she had. She'd used him before, and she'd done it again. That night she felt so guilty about, feeling that all he had been to her was someone to take out her emotions on. She barely remembered anything she'd done, just remembered swearing wildly and banging the phone on the desk. And of course, just her luck, the one thing she remembered with perfect clarity was her one slip. She would have been fine with just the temper tantrum. She knew Casey had trained himself to let anger and verbal abuse wash over him. Just swearing she knew he could handle. But then she got personal. She remembered that perfectly. He had been stoic, letting her yell, just standing back. But then she'd kissed him. Even thinking about how stupid that had been made her face flush. She should have known better. Even in that state, she should have known better. That despite her anger and temper, there should have been some little voice of reason that should have prevented her from taking away his defenses. She guessed he'd never kissed any girl before. Maybe on the lips, chastely, sweetly, like in middle school. But it was doubtful that he'd ever french kissed. Much less been french kissed. And at lunch time she'd only exacerbated (English III vocabulary word.) the situation. Kissed him again! Idiot.

Rob. Rob, Rob, Rob. Where had it gone wrong? What had she done? She'd paid attention to him at her party. She had loved him. Loved him so much her heart hurt to remember it. She had been willing to give up everything for him. Anything. Everything. If Rob had asked her to marry him she would have said…well, she would have said "in five years", but it would have been a yes. A yes, yes, yes. Kit felt her eyes begin to sting with tears as she headed towards the parking lot. She walked past the unused busses and glanced up momentarily towards her car, at the other end of the parking lot. Casey was leaning against the passenger door. Apparently he'd missed the bus again. She started across the parking lot, but was waylaid when she heard a voice call her name from her left. Kit turned and spotted Delilah and two other cheerleaders walked quickly towards her. Kit stopped, exasperated.

"What do you want, Delilah?" she sighed.

Delilah smiled. "Kit, that's not being neighborly."

Kit clenched her jaw and shut her eyes tightly. "Look," she snapped. "I've had a really bad day and I'm really not in the mood, okay?"

She opened her eyes and glared at the beautiful Delilah, who tilted her head.

"Kit," said Delilah. "I heard about your boyfriend. That must be hard for you. I guess he just woke up one morning and realized what he was doing. Really. What did you expect? But gosh, to cheat on you. He must have really been sick of you. How sad."

Kit started to shake with fury, almost imperceptibly.

"So how bad was it? Were you that close? Oh my, you didn't sleep with him, did you? You can't imagine anyone would want anything but sex from someone like you, would you?"

Suddenly before Delilah could say anything else, Kit punched her. Her fist flew back and slammed into Delilah's nose so fast the other girls didn't see it. One minute it looked like Kit was ready to wilt, the next Delilah was wailing with her hand over her nose as blood flowed from between her fingers and Kit was screaming at Delilah in a rage. Delilah's knees were bent as she tried in vain to stop the flow of blood, hiccuping and sobbing as the blood made a brighter, gaudier lipstick for her than any Estee Lauder product could. Kit whirled around and ran away to her car, tears blurring her vision to the point that she fell against a car, scraping her hands on the ground as she scrambled back up. She collapsed in Casey's arms, out of sight of Delilah and her cronies, her arms wrapped around his thin shoulders, sobbing hopelessly. Casey was shocked. Kit had never shown lack of violent tendencies towards the males of the school, but somehow to Casey it seemed worse that Kit had struck Delilah. Delilah, who Casey loved still. Casey wondered bleakly if Kit would ever be the same, if he would ever get back his carefree best friend who could endure far more than he. This Kit was a damaged, vulnerable person that Casey didn't know. It was like a total stranger. Which one was Kit? The strong, cynical outcast or this broken, weeping soul? Was everything he had befriended been a front for this sensitive, temperamental girl?