Book Dragon: "Thank god. Someone reviewed."
Book Dragon: "Yeah, I suppose that's a good question. I'm still setting up the beginning, so far it is talking about Bakura's three children coming back to him after so many years. I swear it's going to get better, I was trying to make it interesting for when TombRobber showed up, when I wrote it…in the other story, I wrote that a young girl was pulled into the YGO world who had some weird powers and at the end of the story…sort of took control of TombRobber at the end…it will explain."
Book Dragon: "I feel pretty lame now…but I've worked on this for nearly an entire year and I'm going to post it no matter what."
Book Dragon: "Thank you SO much for paying attention and reviewing! you don't know what it means!"
Chapter 3: School Troubles and Black Cat
And so time passed. Aunt Marie would make sure they had something to eat before going out to venture, even if it was something like a candy bar. Food was food after all, and she didn't try to push her luck by giving them any nutritional.
Christa was in and out of a relationship every two weeks, confusing the hell out of everyone by talking about some guy called Tom to Sean to some other poor guy. She would go shopping on a regular bases, varying from if she had cash she would buy crap and if not she'd window shop, and put it on a list to buy it later, but that would never happen because a month later it is 'out of date'.
Mat was disappearing more and more into his room, it turned out that he had gotten a new guitar on his angry spree down the street that day, and was always playing it, creating annoying twanging that smoothed out slowly into a recognizable tune. Christa was always shrieking for him to just stop, or that it sounded like a trapped cat, or some insult worse than that. He'd always turn up the horrible tune to irritate her. Kaede bought ear plugs a week into his first guitar.
With the fighting and the regular hazards of daily life, Dad looked older and older, as if aging faster than possible. He sometimes had huge purple bags under his eyes, and, out of pure exhaustion, sometimes fell out of his chair and flat onto the floor, snoring. At those times Mat would pick him up, saying he was dangerously light for a man his age and put him on the couch in the family room. Aunt Marie assumed it to be stress. Kaede would often go looking for him, whether it was someone at the door, or the plants needed watering, or something just as trivial, and wouldn't be able to find him. She'd look all over the house and find him gone. When she would give up and tell the man sorry or water the plants herself and watch TV for a few hours, she'd go into the kitchen for munchies and find Dad just sitting at the kitchen table. When she'd ask where he was he'd say, "In the bedroom", or "Outside." or "In here." Sometimes he'd say he was where places she looked thoroughly.
A month into their stay Aunt Marie finally moved out, saying we were comfortable enough and she would visit over weekends. Kaede felt a little sad she was leaving; she was the only women that she remembered as a mother to her. It was a little emptier with out her in the building, and the mess of daily living started to take over rooms with out her work. After it got bad enough, Dad organized them to do daily chores. Kaede didn't mind; she had plant duty.
She didn't visit Mr. Mutou's game shop for a long time. She had told her father about him, and he had just smiled and nodded, saying yes he was a very good friend and he would call him later, which he would do every Saturday, but never actually visit. When she finally did, he invited her for tea and would tell her interesting stories, from comics to Egypt. She loved to hear about Egypt. He had said his grandfather had brought back the artifact and gave it to him as a child, and treasured it to and beyond the day he died. Mr. Mutou explained he was not entirely alone, he had his brother which Kaede never actually did see and never knew the name of, a son in college, and his wife, unfortunately, divorced him. He wouldn't get into details, and she dare not pursue the conversation. She compared the feeling to be having someone ask about her mother's death, and he looked far away when he said they had been separated. In the end, it was best not to go into it.
She filled most of her free time hanging around the house, watching TV, or reading a book. Or even, when she felt bold enough, went looking for the way to the roof of the building. The large tree had got her curious. She could hear soft whispers in the night that had kept her awake at night in the first few weeks of living there. She had asked if anyone else if they had heard it at breakfast once, and worried look from Mat and never asked again. After thinking and racking her brain she came to the conclusion it was the tree growing on the roof, it had to be. For a while after that she tried to make out the whispers into words, but found it impossible. Shortly after that, about a week or so, she gave up looking for the tree completely.
Another month later school began. Life became increasingly harder once that happened, with the bullying due to the color of her hair, or the fact she was weak and brainy. By that time Aunt Marie was visiting once a month instead of once a week, and Marie was dedicated to her new boyfriend. At least she had her brother. When she walked into school he would be behind her, a hand clasped to her shoulder and glaring off anyone that even looked at them the wrong way. By that time she was dead frightened of a certain group of much older girls who were the local women's gang, and they really didn't like her. She didn't know what it was that made them hate her, they just started stuffing her into lockers the third week into school. Mat had only found out about it when she was missing one Sunday and went out looking for her. He found her three hours later limping the way home and with scratches. They had long nails.
They had kept it a secret from Dad. He seemed to have enough on his mind, being always weary and worried about Christa for obvious reasons, and didn't need the extra fact she was getting beat up on a regular bases. So, Mat would accompany her to and from school, on Saturdays and Sundays when he could. When he couldn't, she'd stay home. And one morning when he was sick and she had to go on her own that made her really frightened.
She ended up throwing up from pure fear twice and covered it up and went to school, just because she needed to take a term test. On the way to school, walking slow, and watching the sun, she noticed that a black cat had joined her. It walked her to school and darted into the bushes on the left corner of the school as she walked in the front doors nervously. Taking her test later, she saw it watching her keenly on the widow on the far side of the school window, making her a little self-conscious and curious, but she aced the test anyway. When she left, it was placidly sitting on its haunches, flicking its tail patiently and started to walk back to the house, and much to her surprise, no one laid a hand on her. In fact, no one even glanced at her. This made her every happy when she had gotten home, and chatted up a storm with the plants, and boldly telling the roses not to act so stuck up all the time.
Mat had been sick for a week, and everyday in his absence she was accompanied, to her puzzlement, by the night-colored feline, sometimes in the open, sometimes lurking in the trees or behind the hedges, to and from school, and everyday she would come home unharmed. By the end of the week she was quite fond of the animal, and her father would curiously ask the family every morning why he kept finding a half-full bowl of milk on the doorstep.
Of course, Mat noticed her progress and left her on her own more and more often, and very soon, despite the once lucky cat, she started to get beaten again. She made no move to tell anyone, for they had warned her they knew people, and asked what she'd do if he ended up in the hospital. She never told him, and he became unaware, and locked more and more into his room when she'd come home with sores and scarlet red marks. They weren't stupid. They'd claw her where she could hide it and slap her as not to leave marks. It would be then, while she was strapping on bandages, and taking off the knee-pads she had hidden under her baggy pants, the cat scratch at her window and she'd let it in, giving it some fish she had bought and some 2 fat milk in a small bowl as she pulled out a fantasy book from her book bag to submerge herself in. She never really decided to give him a name, he was always just 'Cat', and often she would just start talking to it without addressing it. After a while, she accepted it to actually be a him, after some yowling and just the way it walked, and…well the visible sign. She'd talk through the music pounding through her wall, read aloud sections of good books her imagination was devouring, and do her math homework while keeping a one-sided conversation. The hell unleashed into her life was going mundane; soon it was something she forced herself not to think about as the day began and when it was all over to forget it. She swam through oceans of pages of books, keeping the pain at bay and her mind occupied, never knowing that her mind was taking in the wisdom, or that the world she knew was starting to change. She was starting to change in ways no one could imagine possible. But she was already impossible
She had been born impossible.
It was one of those double whammy days that she actually did look like something the cat dragged in, and the cat, not caring for the window but simply climbing the stairs, led her to her room. Dad was asleep in the other room, beyond reach in his slumber, and therefore not a problem with the limping up the stairs and the soft thumps of paws, padding up into her room, where when arrived, gently shut it, threw her bag onto the bed, took out the first aid kit hidden in a floor board under the bed, and started fixing herself up, while taking to the feline sitting comfortably on her single bed.
"You know, I don't have a clue why they do this to me. They must have some serious problems. If it wasn't fore their punk boyfriends Mat could take them out just by intimidation. I know he's strong, but they'd pound him to the ground. Besides, if it's just me, then only one person it getting hurt and not all of us." She glanced up at the cat, flicking his tail, and licking his paws uncaring. She sighed.
"I thought you'd do that…I think Tom hates me. He's getting really paranoid and won't let me in his room anymore. You've seen him; he's always in there listening to his music. Maybe he just doesn't care about me anymore…I mean, this does happen when we start to grow up, we separate, and aren't as close as before. Like Mr. Mutou's friends are now." She winced as she placed some iodine on a deep nail mark on her shoulder, yelping quietly at the burning pain, and put some cream on it, dulling the throbbing, where she then slapped a bandage on the worst of it, the rest could scab up without one.
"But still…It's hard, going through day to day, knowing they'll be pain every sunlight hours. You've got to wonder, is it worth it?" She paused, looking the panther-like animal straight in the eye.
"Do you think I should…maybe…kill myself?" She asked. The watched carefully, as if trying to read the answer off of the animal. He yawned; showing pointed white teeth, and unexpectedly jumped off the bed and out of the room. Confused and suddenly aware that he Dad was snoring downstairs, she stalked out of the room quietly, down the stairs, and saw the cat sitting in the middle of the room, staring at her, about three feet away from her sleeping father. Panicked, she tried to lure the cat back, making silent motions and very quite mewing sounds. The feline looked thoroughly amused, and suddenly bolted up the stairs in silence, causing her to cart around fast and try to follow just as quietly. Increasingly swore, she glared at the animal, mockingly staring at her with amusement flickering in his brown orbs and darted into the room at the end of the hall; her father's room.
Book Dragon: "It's picking up now. Please review."