'You all everybody, you all everybody, acting like…okay. I have no idea what the rest of the words to that song are.'
'I thought you were Driveshaft's biggest fan?'
'Okay, maybe not their biggest fan. But I certainly think the bass player is pretty hot.'
Being with Beth made Kate feel like she was fifteen again. Sitting here, in Beth's very pink bedroom, listening to awful music and talking about celebrities somehow made Kate forget everything that had happened. It was almost as though she was fifteen again, when hanging out with Beth like this had made her home life seem to slip away.
'I don't know,' Kate said as she opened a bottle of deep red nail polish. 'I think I prefer the lead singer, the bass player kind of reminds me of one of those little things with hairy feet out of The Lord of the Rings.'
Beth laughed appreciatively and brushed back her crimson hair. 'I have no idea what you're talking about, Katie. Just goes to show that people don't change, I guess!' She giggled a little, and then proceeded to warble along with a Driveshaft ballad, not noticing that Kate had quietened considerably. Kate knew she hadn't changed. Did she even want to change? It wasn't really a question that was worth answering right then, because she didn't have a choice. She had to just keep on running.
'Beth…will you give me a ride to the station in the morning?'
Beth looked up, and her green eyes seemed big and childlike. In that moment, Kate was reminded of the first time she had told Beth about Wayne, about the things he did. She was reminded of when she told Beth about what she had done to Wayne. All in all, she was reminded of all those times Beth had sat and listened, with a pity and sadness in her eyes that she never let Kate hear in her voice.
'Sure,' she replied, nodding and averting her gaze a little. 'Do you know where you're going to go?'
'I guess I'll decide when I get there.'
They continued painting their nails in silence, the vocals of Liam Pace filling the room and somehow making it feel like an unobtainable place for Kate. She couldn't escape like she once did. She wouldn't come back to Iowa again.
'Tom would never hear anything bad about you, you know,' Beth said, after a moment, and Kate looked up, questioningly. 'After you first took off the whole town was buzzing with stories about you, things you'd done before that should have given us all a clue that you were a bad apple. Wondering why you'd done it. Most assumed it was because of Diane, because she had often been seen with bruises or bandages, and then, after Wayne was gone, so were they. Anyway. There was a lot of people that said a lot of bad things. I was a coward, Katie; I let them say it. Sometimes I even agreed with them. But Tom stood up and defended you, always. Even after he married Rachel and he'd moved on. Course by that time most knew not to speak against you in front of him.'
Kate concentrated on painting her nails, refusing to look Beth in the eye. She couldn't break down, not now.
'Are you going to the funeral?'
'Of course I am, Katie. I have to say goodbye to him…he was – well, he was Tom, wasn't he?'
'Will you tell him goodbye from me?' Kate asked, and she looked up to meet her friends eyes at last. 'Will you tell him that I'm sorry?'
'I will,' she nodded. They looked at one another for a moment, remembering everything that they had shared, knowing they could never go back. Knowing that they would probably never see one another again.
Beth pulled Kate towards her, wrapped her arms around her, and held her tightly.
'I just can't believe that now I've lost both of you.'
Alex checked around a corner and motioned for Kate to follow her. She led her inside a dark closet. She shut the door lightly, and stood with her ear pressed to it, listening.
'Do you know where Jack and Sawyer are?' Kate asked, still unsure if she completely trusted the young girl. Alex pressed a finger to her lips and nodded. Kate lowered her voice to an impatient whisper and said, 'We need to get to them, before people come looking for us.'
'Trust me, it's better this way,' Alex assured her. 'The first place they'll look for you is with Shephard and Ford.'
Kate did a double take. Ford? She obviously meant Sawyer, and Kate questioned why she had never asked him what his real name was. Maybe back then, when she'd found out that Sawyer wasn't his name, it hadn't mattered. But now, somehow, it did. She resolved to ask him when she saw him again, that is, if the moment presented itself.
'So tell me about Claire…' Alex said quietly, her eyes intent on Kate, she seemed to be searching Kate's face for an answer before Kate even began to speak.
'She's fine. She had the baby – I delivered it for her actually.'
'Is it a girl or a boy?' Alex asked.
'A boy. She called him Aaron.'
Alex nodded, 'She thought it was a boy, since the first day you were here. Eth- someone told me.'
Kate deliberated on whether to tell Alex about Claire's quest for the medicine, about what they had found, but decided against it. Alex was trustworthy enough to get her out of here, but she might not be trustworthy enough to share such discoveries with.
'She told me that you helped her escape, even when she thought she didn't want to escape,' Kate said, and Alex looked away, her ear still pressed to the door.
'I had to help her. I knew what they were going to do. They would have killed her, just like they killed my mother. I couldn't let her baby have a life like mine.'
They fell into silence. Kate felt for Alex, thinking that her mother was dead, when in fact she was very much alive, and had spent every moment since her child was taken searching for her. It probably wasn't a good idea to disclose this piece of information with Alex at the present time. Selfish as it was, Kate didn't want to explain everything to Alex, she wanted to find her friends – to get them home. Or the closest place they had to it anyway.
A moment later, and Alex was opening the door and heading off, Kate followed obediently, silently wondering just what kind of upbringing the Others had given her in order to make her act this way. She was certainly different to any teenager Kate had ever encountered during her life.
They progressed down the corridor and up three flights of stairs. Then Alex motioned for Kate to stop. She checked her watch, nodded, and disappeared off around the corner, Kate on her heels.
They came to a large door and Kate recognised it as the same kind as was on the cell she was kept in. Alex began entering a code into a keypad, and Kate voiced a question that had been plaguing her mind ever since Alex had begun leading her here.
'Why was I kept separately from the others? I mean, is it because I'm a woman and-'
'It's because they think that you're the dangerous one,' Alex cut across her, hardly even paying attention to Kate, or the shocked look on her face, but instead completing the code.
Kate barely had any time to digest the information Alex had given her, as in a swift motion the cell door swung open, and she was face to face with Jack and Sawyer at last.
'Oh my god…' she uttered, as her eyes fell upon them, it was all she could say in that instant. Alex pushed passed her, but Kate remained still, staring inside at the two most important people in her life. She was terrified.