Something tells me you will like this chapter a lot. I'm super excited to hear your thoughts!
Nushka - Todd has so much of my sympathy! If he didn't make such good friends, I would argue that he is the true tragic hero of the movie (honestly, you still could). I know I've kept everyone waiting so long for developments in Kat & Charlie's relationship, but I'm sure you'll happy with the few baby steps taken in this chapter :)
" Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires."
~ William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act I: Scene 4 (1606)
Chapter thirty-three - Stars, hide your fires, part I
"As much as I love the library, I don't want to spend all day in here," Kat scanned the shelves for a copy of On the Road.* "Are you sure the school has one?"
"Yes," he frowned, moving onto the next row, "Keating said he donated a copy, and told old man grumpy, that it was important for wider reading."
Whether 'old man grumpy' referred to the librarian or Nolan, Kathleen did not know nor care. Another glance at the clock told her they had been searching for twenty minutes. "I'll get you one for Christmas" she said, "now can we go? Todd got another letter from his brother. I want to hear the latest news about Jeffrey's haunted college dorm."
Charlie simply pointed towards the next aisle. Kat sighed dramatically but scanned the titles without further complaint. Anthony and Cleopatra, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Cymbeline, Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, Titus Andronicus, Venus and Adonis. "These are all Shakespeare," she called as loudly as she dared with Mr Smythe prowling the stacks for kids to intimidate on his Saturday. "Oh, Shakespeare's collected works!" She flipped the book open, tracing the illustrations with her finger, "it's illustrated," she said under her breath with awe.
A laugh made her look up.
Charlie had appeared in the aisle. He was leaning back against the shelves, a smirk playing across his lips. "I sometimes forget how nerdy you are."
"I'm just passionate," she defended with a grin, suddenly wondering what it would be like to kiss that adorable, smug look off his face.
Shakespeare's collected works slipped from her grasp, the heavy volume hit the floor with a resounding bang. It shocked her into action. "Sorry, I-I don't think I was holding that properly."
He gave her an odd look, thrown off by the blush spreading across her cheeks as she clumsily knelt to retrieve the encyclopaedia sized hardback. It was just a dropped book. "Right."
"Right," she repeated, staring at him like he had grown an extra head. He shrugged, turning to search another shelf for Jack Kerouac's novel. As he turned away, she took a deep breath to try and slow her heart rate because, holy hell, they had all been right. She did like Charlie as more than a friend, seemingly for longer than she'd known, and the butterflies in her stomach didn't seem to want to pack up and leave anytime soon.
This was very, very bad.
XXX
"Pick up, pick up, pick up," Kat mumbled into the receiver. Once again, she was ringing Nancy in a panic - at this point she had lost track of how many times she had put aside her dignity to beg for help like this. Who was she kidding? She didn't have any dignity left, the remaining shreds had been lost when she ditched Charlie with a weak excuse, and exited the library before he had chance to question it. Thinking back, she probably looked as out of sorts as she currently felt.
"Hello? Noel household."
"Chris? It's Kat, is Nancy around?"
"Hi! Yes, I'll let her know you're on line." Kat pulled the receiver away from her right ear just in time to hear a piercing yell echo down the line. "So, how are things at Welton? Is Knox doing okay?" Chris continued at a more reasonable volume.
"Oh-err, yeah. Yes, everything's normal here. It's quite boring actually," Kat lied, bouncing slightly on her toes. "Knox is great. He's been teaching me about law which is going well," she babbled, "if all else fails, I might have a shot as a legal secretary."
"The Danbury's would be pleased," laughed Chris, "and maybe Knox would hire you for a better position when he takes over his Father's firm."
"Maybe," she replied drumming her fingertips lightly on the receiver. She sighed in relief when she heard a familiar voice in the background. "It was lovely chatting to you Chris, us girls should meet up again soon."
"For sure, I'll contact Gin. Bye!"
There was a clatter, "Hey, Kitty."
"Hey, Nance. Would it be possible for you to meet me outside the gates?" She asked, taking care to slow her voice into a calmer tempo.
"Now?"
"Now would be ideal."
"Dare I ask why?" Kat, could envision the amused expression on Nancy's face.
"You get to revel in 'I told you so' while I pray for mercy," Kat said bitterly, leaning back against the wall with the telephone wire wrapped around her fingers.
Nancy gasped, "is this what I think it is!"
"Probably. I had an epiphany at a rather inconvenient time."
"You mean, in front of him," she guessed, biting back a smirk despite being across town and unable to be seen by Kat.
"Yes. Now can you make it or not? I'd rather sort my head out before Neil meddles," she replied, whispering the latter half of the comment, aware of the lack of privacy around the student telephones.
There was a slight pause - and knowing Nancy, she was rolling her eyes dramatically. "Give me ten minutes."
"Thank you," Kat breathed, hanging up the telephone and speeding upstairs to fetch her coat, before making the trek across the grounds and through the woodland, feeling unusually alone on familiar the route. It was the path taken at least one night a week for the meeting. Upon reaching the gap where the treeline met the wrought iron gates, she slipped through and lay her coat on the dirt beneath a balding, sugar maple tree, laying with her head on the soft fabric and stretching her legs out. She began to compose a bouquet of surviving wildflowers while she waited, tying the stems together with the pale yellow ribbon that had been securing her hair. She thought briefly about the irony of her situation, surrounded by flowers like the ones described on Prince Edward Island when she was in a situation not too dissimilar from Anne Shirley's.* The idea she had so vehemently denied only a week ago to Neil, was quickly becoming her reality.
Her thoughts were disrupted by a mechanical whir and the clatter of a bicycle falling to the ground.
"Hello, you." A yellow haired girl obscured by a bouncy, baby blue, poodle skirt flopped onto the ground beside Kat, pushing her gently to shuffle over so that they could share the make-shift blanket. "Do I have permission to say it yet?" She teased.
"Feel free," Kat groaned, hiding her face behind the bouquet like a shield from the verbal humiliation.
"I told you so," Nancy sang, "each and every one of us." Kat said nothing but elbowed her best friend lightly in the ribs, eliciting a giggle. "No! You know I'm ticklish!"
"I do," she cackled, continuing to poke Nancy's side, "and I'm too nerdy to disrespect Shakespeare, yet I threw a volume of all his works to the ground."
She gasped in mock horror, "No. You didn't! He'll be out of his grave to haunt you."
Kat rolled her eyes, "maybe he can further inspire my doomed romance."
"So, you finally admit it by throwing Romeo and Juliet at him? Or sonnets perhaps?" She propped herself up on an elbow to study her best friend. "Isn't that a little dramatic even for you?"
"I did not throw it at him," she clarified, "I merely lost my grip on reality for moment."
She let the explanation slip by with only a look of disbelief. "What did he do to make you realise?"
Kat's cheeks bloomed with colour, "Nothing. He just looked smug and I wanted to get rid of the smirk."
"With your mouth?" Nancy observed, her eyebrows raised. "Kitty Kat is growing up at last."
"Shove off," she grumbled, "it was a romantic novel cliché. I'm so ashamed."
"These things always are," Nancy mused, laying back down to watch the clouds above them, "Johnny showed up at the door with pink roses last night. He took me to the drive in because they were playing The Prince and the Showgirl.* That was when I realised I would marry him right then, if he asked. I still would," she admitted, taking Kat's hand. "As much as I love and admire any character Marilyn plays, I wanted that movie to end differently because it reminded me of you. It would be selfish of me to ask you to come back to school with me next term. I need you, but you and the boys need each other more. You need your story to end well. Is there a chance that you would be allowed to stay?"
Kathleen squeezed their interlocked hands, "the governors barely allowed one term," she whispered, her throat closing up, "and Nancy, I really, really don't want to go."
"I know," she whispered back, tears blurring her vision, "this is the happiest I have ever seen you."
Kat closed her eyelids tightly, "don't cry. You'll make me cry too."
"Sorry, honey," Nancy sniffed.
"No matter what, you'll always be my sister," she croaked, her eyes stinging with tears. "I might have gained several poets and one poetically stubborn, expulsion bound menace; but you will always be my sister no matter how many miles or oceans lie between us."
Nancy only nodded, too tearful to reply. She lay her head on her sister's shoulder, and Kat leaned her own head against Nancy's. Tears dripped down their cheeks as they lay in silence, watching the clouds float by, clinging to each other as if they themselves would float apart. Their exhausted silence slipped into soft snores.
Time crept by, measured by the deepening hue of the sky until Nancy awoke with shiver. She rubbed the goosebumps on her pale arms and shook the brunette next to her awake.
"Go put a sweater on and find the boys before you're missed," she instructed tenderly, leaving no room for arguments when she folded Kat into a quick hug, picked up her bicycle, and rode into the approaching twilight.
Kathleen picked up her bouquet and draped her coat over her shoulders like a cloak. Following orders, she headed back into the warmly lit, stone mansion. Upon entry, she divested her muddied coat in the cloakroom, before using the first-floor bathroom to wash her face, comb her fingers through her loose hair, and pinch the colour back into her cheeks. Once she was satisfied, Kat went up to the common room where she was greeted warmly by the gang.
"We were wondering where you disappeared to!" Neil called as she crossed the threshold of the common room, "Knox said he saw you outside earlier, and I guess he was right," he eyed the flowers in her hands.
"That's where you rushed off too," Nuwanda observed, faking her accent, "a spot of flower arranging."
Kathleen reposed on the rug next to Cameron who was as busy as always with school work. She rested against the radiator, "actually, I met Nancy outside the gate."
"Oh, you didn't mention it," Todd looked up from the book he was studying with Neil.
"It slipped my mind," she lied.
"Like that book slipped out of your hands," Charlie grinned, "poor Shakespeare did nothing to offend you, and that's how you treat him? God rest his soul."
Kat flushed, suddenly reminded of her heart to heart with Nancy. "Very funny," she said drily, turning to Cameron, "if you're not too busy, could you possibly help me practice for the geometry test?"
"At least one of you has the motivation to pass," he threw a scathing look at the group lazing around. "I would be delighted."
"Thanks," she said, taking the spare paper and pen he held out to her.
"Take this as well," Nuwanda threw the sweater that had been hanging on the back of his armchair at her, "you have goosebumps."
Kat glanced down, and sure enough, the hairs on her arms were raised. She was about to deny it, but before she could open her mouth her body betrayed her, and she shuddered. Slightly miffed by the treachery of her muscles, she pulled it on.
"This clashes horribly with my skirt," she said, thinking instead about the softness of the fabric and how easily it warmed her right through to her bones.
Cameron jabbed his pencil in her direction, "less concern about fashion, and more concentration on perpendicular lines."
"Jesus," Pitts muttered as Cameron upset the house of cards he and Meeks had been building with the force of his textbook cover hitting the floor. He had flung it open with an unnatural amount of enthusiasm.
"What have I done," Kat groaned above the laughter at her terror as she confronted the page of geometry questions.
"You'll be fine," Nuwanda reassured her. Kat shook her head in disbelief but said nothing, unable to lift her eyes from the ground. Suddenly, she felt uncomfortably warm under his casual gaze.
"No, no, no," Cameron, pulled her back to normality with his firm logic, "go back to the part A and try again." Kat complied with his demands, grateful for the distraction as she wished away the awkwardness that seemed to have taken over her entire being since the library fiasco. All she wanted was the ability to look her friend in eye again. The ability to speak in full sentences would be bonus.
Apparently, the new population of butterflies inhabiting her body had other, more irritating ideas.
XXX
Sunday morning truly seemed to be a day of rest as far as the butterflies were concerned, much to Kathleen's relief. Having regained the ability to function like a normal human being, she could acknowledge the shift in her emotions without the newfound knowledge being overwhelming. The fact was proven by the food fight she found herself caught up in at the breakfast table. Honestly, she thought, thinking back to various, similar, incidents; it was as if teenagers thought of nothing else in presence of food.
Clearly, Meeks agreed as he held his book up to shield his face from yet another attack. "I'm reading, Pittsie," he said as he picked a rice crispy out of the pages.
"Todd put his book down," he protested, "so did Kat!"
"No, Neil stole it," Todd corrected him, throwing a glare in Neil's direction.
Kathleen pushed her small pile of rice crispies towards him, "these would be more effective."
Todd smiled, swiftly sending the entire handful raining down upon his roommate before he could react. Neil stared at him open-mouthed, his expression darkening when Nuwanda high-fived Todd. "Oh, it's on."
Kat ducked, managing to avoid the next round of fire, shamelessly sliding away from Todd.
"Coward."
"Are you trying to start something, Nuwanda?"
He shrugged.
With a dramatic sigh, she threw a couple of rice crispies at him, laughing when he caught them in his mouth.
"HAGER!" Hissed Knox, interrupting the game. Immediately, they swept the evidence under the table and resumed what they hoped, was normal behaviour. Hager moved past the table without any comments, instead he approached the only staff member present to ask if he was alright. The group turned to see Mr McAllister choking on his morning coffee, with one eye fixed on the mess of crushed cereal beneath their table.
"Yes, yes," he waved Hager away, "I'm just getting old."
The wink in their direction when he left the dining hall said otherwise.
XXX
It was twenty to seven when Fraser flopped down into an armchair by the confused members of the society. It wasn't just their group whose eyebrows were raised. Most of the heads in the common room were turned, observing the usually loud, boisterous, peacock crumpled in an armchair, dressed in an immaculate dinner suit, half-drunk. Presumably, his inebriation was due to the silver flask in the hand which dangled over the arm of the chair.
"Are you alright?" Knox asked the boy tentatively, remembering his own unpleasant experience with drink.
"Just fucking fantastic," he snapped. Fraser tried to take another swig of whatever concoction was in his flask, but found his hand was empty. The flask was in Neil's hand and quickly shoved under the sofa.
"What are doing," he groaned, "I need that!"
"No, you don't," Charlie glared at him. "What the hell are you thinking?"
Fraser rolled his eyes, "I know for fact that you drink excessively at home in the summer. All of you losers would do the same if Mommy and Daddy showed up for dinner."
Charlie fell silent, his glare faltering enough for Neil to step in front of him. "Andrews, I know it's difficult, but you need to hold it together tonight. In a few hours you can do whatever you want, but right now you have a responsibility, not only to Kat and this school, but to yourself."
"I don't need some bullshit inspirational speech."
"Then prove it," Neil challenged him, "pull yourself together and prove it to us. You don't see Kat getting wasted, and she is arguably in a worse position than you."
Meeks made a 'cut it out' motion from behind Fraser, but it was too late, and Neil's eyes widened at the resentful expression that emerged in response to his words.
"I don't see the Welton Princess anywhere," he spat, "so how about we go, Perry. Or are you as weak as that mouse you seem so attached too?" He sneered in Todd's direction, causing Charlie to lay a hand on Neil's arm and hold him back for change.
"Kathleen went to get ready a while ago," voiced Knox in a nervous act of diplomacy, "she should be back any minute. How about you have some water?"
He held his own water bottle out to the boy who snatched it with a muttered "thanks" tacked on almost as an afterthought.
It was in the following silence that the click clack of high heels was heard, indicating Kat's return. She entered the common room, a look of surprise flittering across her face as her eyes landed on Fraser, surrounded by her friends.
"What's wrong with him?" She asked, wincing at the slight rise in the pitch of her voice. "Nolan will kill me if we're late, or if he's not there."
"Don't worry about me," he pushed himself up with only a slight wobble, "my Father's used to it."
"It's not your Father I have concerns about." The brunette eyed his otherwise immaculate appearance with suspicion. "Will you at least hold off on the wine?"
"If I must, but I will not be sober for this," he warned, crossing his arms. "If you have any sense then you'll be downing yours by the glass."
He made a move to leave the room but was stopped by Charlie suggesting he walk with them. Fraser turned his head to see Kathleen decline the offer. The exchange was somewhat amusing in tone, the tension palpable - unfortunately they didn't have time for him to mock it as much as he would have liked. "Leave her be, Nuwanda," he drawled, unable to stop the sarcasm dripping from his tongue. "I'm sure your hero complex can survive for a few hours without a maiden in sight. We are going to earn ourselves our own round with the cane if we're not careful."
Charlie relented but his expression was disdainful as he muttered something unsavoury. Kat gestured for Fraser to lead the way. He gladly began to distance himself from the nerds, pausing only to hold open the door. He snuck a quick glance back as she exited the room. To his amusement, most of the boys had turned their attention back to their previous tasks, except for two. Charlie's whole body language relaxed as he watched the girl, unaware of Fraser's eyes on him. The second boy, Todd, was also watching the scene with a faint smile gracing his lips.
Shaking his head, Fraser closed the door and fell into step with Kathleen, whose lacy, powder blue dress was a cheery sight in contrast to the dull halls. The sickly, yellow light from the wall lamps reflected off her patent, white heels and matching nails. For a moment, he could almost see why Charlie liked her.
As they approached the strangely intimidating door, their strides slowed to a halt. He watched her fuss over her appearance unseeingly.
"You look fine," he said lowly, not wanting to alert the men behind the door of their arrival. She looked at him with furrowed eyebrows. "I may be an asshole, but I'm an honest one," he continued, "besides, we're about to walk into hell. I figured we should at least be on civil terms."
"You've changed your tune," she whispered back, glancing cautiously at the door like one would watch a temperamental dog with a missing muzzle.
He shrugged, pulling at the collar of his shirt. "You're old news, Sweetheart. Sorry to disappoint."
Kat let the words wash over her, unbothered by his comment. "I guess we should go in."
"I guess," he replied, inching his fist closer to the door. With only a brief hesitation, he knocked.
The door opened to reveal Mr Nolan in a similar attire. Behind him, a man rose from his chair beside the roaring flames in the fireplace. A rusty hue bathed his features, but the tall man was unmistakably similar.
"Mr Nolan," Fraser greeted, shaking the headmaster's hand respectfully. "Father," he inclined his head, "may I introduce you to Mr Nolan's granddaughter, Miss Kathleen Murray."
* On the Road, Jack Kerouac (1957)
* Prince Edward Island & Anne Shirley - A reference to Lucy Maud Montgomery's 'Anne of Green Gables' book Series (1908-1939)
* The Prince and the Showgirl, dir. Laurence Olivier (1957) - About a Prince Regent who falls for an American performer (played by Marilyn Monroe). In the end, the Regent Prince has to wait 18 months to become a normal citizen and the Showgirl has to wait 18 months until her contract ends before they have any chance of being together.