A/N – "Thoughts"

Chapter 2 – Phone Calls

Larry was laying on his bed, flipping through some comics when he heard the phone ringing. Ignoring it, figuring it was for his grandmother or father, he continued reading.

A minute later, his grandmother walked into his room. "Its for you Lawrence." she said handing Larry the phone and then leaving.

"Hello?"

"He, Hey Larry," a female voice on the other end said nervously.

Larry's eyes widened in surprise, "Kate?"

"Yea."

"Something wrong?"

"No. Everything's fine. I, uh, just want to, uh, talk."

Larry grinned a little as he remembered Kate asking him if she could call him if she needed someone to talk to. "Anything in particular? Your parents have another fight?"

"Not really, well, nothing out of the ordinary for them. Can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

Kate paused for a moment and then asked, "Do you think I'm shallow?" Nearly chocking on his words, he wasn't exactly sure how to answer. Hearing him, Kate sighed a little, "I want the truth Larry."

Taking a deep breath, "Yea, you are, most of the time. Why? What brought this up?"

"I was in the locker room after cheerleading practice and you should've hear some of the stuff they were talking about."

"That an invitation?" Larry joked and he grinned when he heard Kate chuckling on the other end.

"You wish. Anyway, its like the biggest topic was this girl's entire outfit didn't match or something and they were ragging on her. I'm sitting there, thinking who cares."

"I remember a time when you would."

"Yea. But its like, now, I'm seeing things from a different perspective. Things that seemed to be so important, just aren't anymore. I thought I could be happy being popular and having all these things but that's just what they are, things." Kate sighed and rubbed her forehead. "You wanna know something else? I miss Lizzie and Miranda. Who cares if they're not the coolest girls in the school, they were my friends because they wanted to be my friends and weren't like, what could I do for them."

"Why did you stop being their friend?" Larry asked as he laid down on his bed.

"Remember I told you about the miscarriage. Well right before that happened, the summer after fifth grade, my parents sent me to cheerleading camp. My mom had some stupid grand design on me following in her footsteps and being a cheerleader. So I went and I met Kelly Reigns, at the time she was head cheerleader at the high school and one of the counselors at the camp. I thought her and her friends were so cool. They were everything I thought I wanted to be; cool, funny, gorgeous. She took an interest in me and taught me everything. Then when I came back everything was normal at first, then my mom had her miscarriage. Everything went to hell after that. My parents started fighting and I just didn't know what to do. It was easier for me to hide behind being popular. I thought being popular would take away everything and it did for awhile. But the things I gave up, it was high price to pay for a temporary fix. I gave up my truest friends just because they weren't consider cool. I lost my virginity when I was fifteen. I screwed up my life so badly and now I'm scared that I'll end up even worse than my parents."

Larry laid on his bed, thinking about what she just told him. "Kate."

"Yea?"

"You won't end up worse then your parents," he told her matter of factly.

"How do you know?" she asked.

"Cause you realize what your doing and your trying to do something about it. Think about it, would the popular Kate even bother to think about this kinda of stuff, much less talk about it with me."

Kate laughed softly, "I guess your right."

"So anything good happen to you today?"

"You just wanna know how I did on my math test?" she teased.

"That too."

"Well, I got an 75," she told him. "It's a start. It better than the Ds and Fs I've been getting. Speaking of math, instead of you coming here tomorrow, why don't I come over there. It'll get me out of the line of fire and I won't have to listen to them."

"Okay. You know my address right?"

"Yea."

"I gotta go, I'm supposed to meet Claire at the Digital Bean around six," Kate said reluctantly, "I guess I'll talk to ya later."

"You know the number," Larry said sarcastically.

Before she hung up, "Hey Larry."

"Mm."

"Thanks for listening," she said very softly, a little embarrassed.

Chuckling softly on the other end, "No problem Kate. If you need to talk, just call. Bye."

"Bye."

It had been a few weeks since that day at the Sanders and slowly and quietly Kate was opening up more and more to Larry. What had started as one call a week had developed into almost nightly conversations. While Kate asked him to keep their conversations a secret, the results were slowly becoming visible. She was starting to scale back on the verbal attacks on people and the superior attitude was slowly starting to disappear.

Saturday afternoon, Larry and Gordo were sitting in the Digital Bean talking about a video game when Lizzie and Kate walked in. Walking over to them, Lizzie grinned at them. "Hey guys."

"Hey Lizzie," Larry responded.

"What's up?" Gordo asked. He had this sinking feeling that Lizzie was up to something but he just wasn't sure what.

"Well, the spring dance is in danger of being cancelled because the dance fund is low. The student council came up with a way to make some money to pull off the dance," Lizzie told them with a small smile. Lizzie and Kate were the eleventh grade representatives on the council.

"Do we really want to know how?" Gordo asked sarcastically.

Lizzie smirked at him, "We decided to hold an auction. We get the single guys in the school and have the girls bid on them to be their dates to the dance. The money we make goes to fund the dance. We figure if we get about forty, fifty guys and they each pull in say twenty, we'll have enough for the dance and then some."

Larry glanced at Gordo as if to say, you know what's coming next. Gordo rolled his eyes and they both snickered. "Good luck finding your guys."

"We gotta go," Larry said quickly and he and Gordo started to get up to make a fast get away.

"Not so fast," Lizzie said with a grin as she quickly grabbed their wrists. "Since you two are single," she said as her grin widened.

"Knew we should've left as soon as they started," Gordo muttered. "Why would we want to do something where Ethan and the rest of those guys will get these ridiculous high bids and the rest of us will get embarrassed?"

"Come on Gordo. Its for a good cause and you won't be embarrassed, neither of you will. Plus Gordo, I'm sure Parker would pay at least a hundred to go out with you," Lizzie said with a smirk.

"If Gordo does it I will," Larry said. When Gordo glared across the table at him, he just smirked and shrugged, "If I'm going to humiliate myself, I'm taking you down with me."

Lizzie turned to him, "Please Gordo," she said as she gave him the puppy dog look.

"We're not dating anymore, that look isn't going to work on me," he told her with a grin.

"What about me Gordo?" Kate teased as she pouted at him while bating her eyelashes. As he watched her, Larry started feeling a little funny, it was almost as if he was a little jealous of how Kate was acting towards Gordo. He knew she was just kidding around but he couldn't shake the feeling.

Gordo snickered and shook his head, "Fine. I'll do the stupid auction."

Lizzie wrapped an arm around Gordo's shoulders, "Thank you and I promise you'll get more than a decent bid." she told him and Gordo just rolled his eyes. She laughed softly and then got up, "Me and Kate have gotta go talk to some more guys. I'll call you later Gordo. Bye Larry."

"Bye guys," Kate said as she followed Lizzie.

"Bye," the guys said as they remained at their table.

"Oh yea this outta be fun," Gordo mumbled.

Larry smirked at him, "Hey, you never know what could happen."

"That's what I'm afraid of."