Balancing the Equation
By Jillian
(Author's notes: I wrote this for my sister. The mysteries on the island run a definite second to the ambiguities of the leading lady as Kate continues to pique my interest and confound my comprehensions of her character. I endeavored in this story to give Kate some introspective weight without limiting the depths of her personality. I hope you enjoy this Hilary.)
Kate had been given the lead role in the high school play during her senior year. Acting came naturally to her, and the theater club had been hounding her after discovering her during the Christmas season the year before. During the seasonal practices, she'd been lassoed into reading lines one evening as she haunted the hallways long after the classes had been dismissed. Subsequent to a 'hey you' and a few minutes on stage, the director admitted that none of the amateurs had quite the grasp of losing themselves into the character that Kate demonstrated. But when they'd asked her name, she disappeared shrugging away their questions and muttering something that had sounded like, "Alice."
The juniors from that year became seniors, and a small group of them had insisted on finding their "Alice" from among the hundreds of other students. It shouldn't have been such a hard task, except that "Alice" didn't exist. After several unsuccessful searches, the male lead had stumbled across her sitting in the corner of the hall, legs spread out, back against the lockers and a pencil balanced between her lips.
When he asked her to audition, she said yes.
When opening night came, Kate was halfway across the country: a passenger in a hair-brained scheme that her neighbor's son had propositioned to her.
Kate didn't care to play a character on stage. She didn't care to read about characters in a book.
Sawyer was reading again. He was taking extra care to stay out of the sun after the way his skin had first started to dry red like a lizard scales. The difference had only been on his cheekbones, and Kate was certain that no one had noticed or commented. No one particularly had time to care about appearances. Except the sister, Shannon, but even that was a superficial concern the girl wore to hide her insecurities.
He was wearing sunglasses and reclined in one of the airplane seats under the tent flaps. She could see where he had shifted to stay within the pattern of the shadows as time had passed. He'd been reading for several hours at least.
Books had no surprises. Everything that was written had been written before. Change around the characters names, mix up the order of events and one could build a perpetual bridge of limited imagination. True, she did understand the intellectual advantages for a well-read individual. But Kate found such solitary thrills anticlimactic. An unshared adventure.
The neighbor's son had been Richard, then Titus, then Bartholomew. He'd grown up passed from one foster family to the next, assuming new identities to keep things interesting, as he liked to say. When she'd met him, he was seventeen. He didn't particularly like her at first, except that she had a cute mouth. And when he was washing the foster family's car in the driveway, she attacked him with unexpected speed running heedlessly through a full-on spray of water from the hose and had him on the ground with his flesh torn from the gravel.
She remembered the way he had laughed and thrown her off him like she weighed nothing.
"Freckles?" Sawyer drawled the vowel using the time to gain her attention, "Staring at the ocean isn't going to cause a rescue ship to appear, no matter how grim you tighten those pretty brows of yours."
"How's the book?" Kate asked, leaving her arms crossed but released the tension from her forehead. She hadn't realized how tense she'd become during her reflection. Reminiscing about the past was a seldom had luxury. She'd used the farm work to indulge in some mindless labor, but her thoughts in the evening were all about possibilities. Would he have found the clues she'd left him at the hotel? Would he have understood why she had picked a fight with the cab driver? She was certain that the cab driver would remember her when he was questioned.
"… You're not listening to me, are you?" Sawyer interjected, letting the book fall into his lap and angled his head upward to see her better.
"No," Kate pushed her hair behind her ears anticipating the next breeze that was going to pull the loosed strands into her face if she didn't control them, "But, it certainly appears as if you're enjoying it."
"I bet you'd much rather be in on the action rather than sitting around reading about it," Sawyer turned his head away from her. In the oddest moments, he seemed rather bashful about her. He would toss out a barb, and then back away from it wondering what secrets he'd accidentally put bare with his careless words. If she were inclined to sit and pick through them all, she knew that Sawyer set himself out to be read as easily as a book.
But he was right; she'd rather see the action than sit around reading about fictional adventures. She answered, "You've seen right though me, Sawyer. Sayid is going to have something ready for us to do regarding the transceiver soon. I don't suppose you'd want to help out?"
"Me?" Sawyer asked with imitation innocence, like he knew he was trying to pass off powdered milk for the real thing, "I'm sure Sayid's wise plan is quite beyond this country boy. I'll stick to the book, thanks." And he dropped his head and went back to reading.
When she couldn't think of things to do, Kate slipped into her pattern of meandering, stopping to get her bearings, and then moving to the next stopping point. Earlier, after some of them had eaten breakfast, the group closest to her started to mention walking along the coast for a few hours to see if they could find a stream or river going into the thick of the island. While she'd hovered around the conversation, soon they'd been distracted with talking about other disaster vacations or disaster meals or disaster first dates.
Perhaps if Jack had been there, then he might have picked up on the idea and something would have happened instead of a digression into personal conversation and casual bonding.
She hesitated to bring the subject up with him; more so, when she saw Jack sorting through the medicine he'd sent Boone and Hurley to fetch for him. The younger men hovered at Jack's shoulders like eager sentries ready to be sent out with whatever purposes Jack could bestow upon them. She had taken to avoiding Jack altogether for the rest of the morning.
In her premonitions, she saw him turning his face up to her with a bottle of ibuprofen in one hand and his other buried up to the wrist in the duffle bag of miscellaneous medications yet to be categorized.
"I don't know, Kate," he would say, "I might be a little preoccupied with this at the moment, but if you want find a group of people to go with you. No fewer than five. That way you could send a couple back for help if you needed it. Charlie was looking for something to do."
The idea wasn't hers, and the appeal dissolved completely as if the aspirin of her enthusiasm had disappeared from the pit of her stomach and had anesthetized her entire body. She wasn't going to be a simple foot soldier. She wasn't going to let Jack define her purpose intentionally or unintentionally.
Kate ran away with Richard because she craved trying out a different sort of acting. One where people didn't pay extravagant amounts of money to watch her while they wore their finest clothes and chuckled when the dialogue prompted them. She wanted to be lost in the game of living. One where she could change her name, wear flannel or expensive jewels, and, while appearing demure, she could enjoy the cleverness of causing her audience to react however she wanted without their knowledge of her manipulations.
Of course, the key to the endgame was the ability to disappear.
On an island of limited beach space with a campsite no bigger than her old high school auditorium, the option of turning invisible was significantly crippled. Survival was a group effort. She might become transparent and meander for a morning while she waited for Sayid to finish meditating on his latest scheme. Nevertheless, when she peered into the potentials of the options left to her, Kate was trapped into a new game. With different rules she had yet to absolutely figure out. She had to weigh each alliance and each argument carefully.
In the airport, she had been left the freedom of her sight even though her hands had been bound. Enough years had passed, that realistically, Kate knew that Richard, Titus, Bartholomew had probably not chosen to follow her even as she sought glimpses of whatever faces she might during her unceremonious boarding. He had shown her how to play with reality, and returning to a previous point was not advantageous to true innovative living. Could he have followed her? Been on the plane himself?
How would he have done on the island? Kate felt a thrill of horrified excitement. The terror. The danger. The subterfuge.
Now, in such a setting, on such a stage, she could test herself completely.
No, Sawyer would never grasp her complete cravings. And Jack, he couldn't imagine past obvious and practical appearances.
The slight smile on Kate's face was the muted trumpeting of her harnessed enjoyment. The true test would be on her ability to remain patient. The curtain for this performance had no scheduled closure. She relied on the confidence of her abilities.
She heard the name called, Kate. Blinking, she found herself staring at the ocean again. Relaxing her shoulders, she felt like Kate felt and saw what Kate saw.
Down the beach, Sayid walked toward her.