"I need to see it one more time," Artie said, lowering his video camera and tucking it into space between the side of his leg and the edge of the chair. "I'm thinking you need to do a back-tuck at the end, instead of a back-handspring. Think you can pull that off?"
"I can after a break," Kitty said, stopping to grab her water bottle. "And if we stop after this and go for that night swim you promised me. The sun's going down."
It had been Artie's suggestion that they go back to his place after lunch and begin working on Kitty's routine for try-outs together, in his driveway. They'd now worked for hours, stopping only to raid Artie's kitchen for dinner.
Artie was surprisingly good at coming up with choreography, even if he had to describe what he was envisioning without the ability to demonstrate most of it. He was going to send the video of the first practice to Amy, to get her feedback, as a former head cheerleader.
"Of course," he said, checking his phone and frowning. "I texted Blaine, Sam, and Tina to see if they wanted to swim and none of them are getting back to me. Guess it's just us."
"Artie, I think Tina's a little mad at you," Kitty pointed out, as she sat, cross-legged on the driveway by Artie's feet, and took a swig of her water.
Artie frowned. "Mad at me?" he echoed. "Why?"
Kitty exhaled loudly. Guys, particularly Artie, could be really clueless about girls and their feelings sometimes. Artie was lucky that Kitty wasn't the type to play games and would nearly always come right out and say it if he upset her.
"I just get the sense that she's mad about having been left out of your wheelchair decision," she informed him. "And you also didn't tell her you were having second thoughts about Brooklyn. Those are both pretty big things for you."
Artie shrugged. "Tina's been choosing those two guys over me all year," he said. "What, you haven't noticed? Remember when they sang their little 'trio' numbers in the choir room." He ticked them off on his fingers. "They did Don't You Forget About Me and Jumpin' Jumpin' without me, and I didn't say a thing. I mean, other than just reminding them that a trio is twenty-five percent weaker than a quartet."
"Maybe she just figured you were busy," Kitty said, shrugging and tracing a crack on the driveway with her finger. "With, um, with me. I think she started choosing them over you after you and I got together."
Artie fell uncharacteristically quiet just then. Kitty let the subject drop. She did her routine one last time as the sun started to go down, casting what Artie commented, was a nice backdrop for the recording. They'd watch and critique it together later, though. For now, they had a night swim to enjoy.
Kitty almost always wore her bathing suit under her clothes when she and Artie got together over the summer, as it almost always ended in them swimming. But they'd never gone out for a swim at night before, and certainly not alone. Mrs. Abrams was out with a friend that evening, Artie's dad was traveling for work, as usual, and Amy was on her own post-college graduation trip. She was kind of glad he hadn't found anyone to join them...
By the time Artie finally got out there, wearing his trunks, it really had gotten dark. The lights in the pool changed colors. As Artie lowered himself into the water, his body visibly relaxed. Kitty hung back and watched his fluid strokes, admiring how effortless he managed swimming without the use of his legs. He glided across the pool so smoothly that the casual observer almost wouldn't even notice he was only using his arms to propel himself forward.
"Maybe you do have a shot at Rio," Kitty commented, from where she sat on the edge and dangled her feet in the water. She stopped herself from saying anything else, though, remembering how she'd committed to not trying to influence Artie's decision, one way or the other.
Sam, however, had made no such commitment.
"You have to say you'll come," Sam had begged him, earlier that day, when they'd run into the trio at lunch. "You and I could be roommates in the dorms! C'mon, dude, remember back in junior year when I lived with your family? That was so fun. We could relive those days!"
"I've been thinking about what Sam said," Artie commented, paddling over to the side and grabbing hold of the edge. "The idea of doing college with him is tempting. It would be fun to be roommates. And I mean, I'd need a swimming coach, and honestly, he might need a tutor. School was hard for him."
"Artie, you're not doing this for Sam, either," Kitty said. "What do you want?"
"I want..." Artie turned onto his back and drifted across the pool, this time doing a lazy backstroke. He circled around the pool until he was back at her feet, and reached up, giving them a tug. "... I want you to come swim with me."
So, she swam with him. Something else might have happened, too, if the garage hadn't opened the exact moment that Kitty had climbed on top of him on the steps in the shallow end, signaling that Nancy Abrams had come home. And, like any good mother would do, she was sure to come and check on them, under the guise of bringing them sodas. Kitty hopped off in a hurry.
After nearly two hours in the pool, Kitty remembered curfew. Unlike Artie, she was only fifteen — at least, for a few more days — and she still had an eleven o'clock curfew. When she'd casually mentioned that she needed to be home in the next thirty minutes, or her dad and Hunter would both be pissed, that got Artie out of the pool in a hurry.
They managed to pull into the driveway, with fifteen minutes to spare, and Artie didn't even have to speed. On the way, his phone had been going off non-stop, but dedicated to his steadfast commitment to not driving while distracted, Artie ignored it until they arrived. As Kitty unbuckled her seat belt, she noticed him staring at something on his phone, his brow furrowed deeply.
"I don't believe this..." he said, gasping slightly.
"Something wrong?" she asked him.
"Well, I just figured out why none of them would text me back tonight," Artie said, dryly, rolling his eyes and thrusting his phone into Kitty's hands.
"'REVENGE OF THE CLASS OF '13!'" read Tina's comment, which accompanied several pictures she'd just sent to Artie.
Some were selfies of Tina, Blaine, and Sam together. Some were shots taken of just one or two of them by one of the three. The interesting thing about these pictures was that they seemed to have been taken in the school building, at night, presumably tonight. The first shot showed Tina standing on Sam's shoulders, as she climbed into a high window. There were more of them messing around in the choir room. Blaine had donned a mask and cape in some of them. In one, Blaine and Tina were wearing rollerblades and Cheerios uniforms and skating around the teacher's lounge. A few were even taken in Coach Sylvester's office. If this picture of Tina lying across Sue's desk ever got out, graduated or not, she'd be toast.
Kitty quickly pulled up a text message.
"Wh-what are you doing?" Artie stammered, his eyes widening.
"Sending these to myself," Kitty answered, giving Artie his phone back once she had done so. "Tina Cohen-Jealous Bitch doesn't get to leave you out like that, shove it in your face, and get away with it."
"Kitty, don't," Artie said, firmly. "And don't, like, post those online or anything. It would just give her another reason to be mad, and it would make it harder for me to justify being mad at them."
"Oh, you have every right to be mad!" Kitty rages on. "I know I am. What, did they just exclude you because you can't climb through an open window?"
"Even if that's why they did it, I—"
Kitty held up a hand to silence him. "Artie, don't," she said. "Don't try to excuse what they did. She's not getting away with it." She flung open the car door and stepped out. Before shutting it again, she leaned inside the car and said, "Artie, I had a lovely time. Your new chair is perfect. I'll see you tomorrow."
Slamming the door before he could say another word, Kitty marched down the driveway, scrolling through the pictures she'd just received in the text from Artie's phone. The more she looked at them, the angrier she got at all three of them.
"Don't do anything with those pictures!" Artie called, rolling down the window to yell after her as she went inside. "Please, I'm begging you!"
Kitty whipped around. "Don't worry," she assured him. "I'm not posting these anywhere. I'm not a life ruiner—" Okay, well, not anymore... "I just want to make her squirm a little. Goodnight, Artie."
After a moment's hesistation, he said, "Goodnight." With that, he drove off.
Kitty marched inside to tell her dad and Hunter that she was home on time. She let them know she was just going to sit outside on the porch swing for a little while. After checking in, she went back out and sat on the swing, clenching and unclenching her fists, trying to get her emotions under control before she did anything.
She composed a text: I need to you come over to my house, so we can talk. I'd come to you but I have a curfew and can't leave. Need my address?
Twenty minutes later, Tina showed up, to find Kitty rocking herself back and forth in the porch swing. Kitty invited her to sit, but Tina asserted that she'd rather stand, still sending clear signals that she was intimidated by Kitty's invitation, or rather, insistence that she come by.
"Just tell me what this is about," Tina said, folding her arms across her chest.
Kitty shrugged and simply held out her phone. As Tina's jaw dropped, Kitty hurried to explain. "No, he didn't send them to me," she said. "He showed them to me when you sent them, though, and I sent them to myself from his phone. What I want to understand is why you sent him these, when you were deliberately leaving him out."
"Wh-what?" Tina, who didn't stutter, stuttered.
"Pretty vindictive for someone who claims to be his best friend," Kitty said, reverting to a tone she hadn't used in awhile. "Was it just too much trouble? With the chair? Or was it more than that? Did you want him to feel left out?"
"He-he was with you!" Tina stammered on. "He said he'd be helping you with your Cheerios routine, so we just figured he'd be busy..."
Kitty shook her head, not buying it. "We could have done that another time," she said. "We would have rearranged our plans, and since it was a senior thing, I wouldn't have expected to go along." She fixed the other girl with a tight smile. "Would you just admit that you didn't want him there?"
Tina looked upset. "Except I did want him there," she said, in a small voice. "When we got there and we were just about to go in, I almost called him. I only excluded him because I was mad at him."
Tina stopped talking when Kitty's phone went off, displaying Artie's name as the caller. She nodded towards the phone. "Aren't you going to get that?"
Kitty sent it to voicemail. "I'll talk to him later," she said. "I want to know more about why you're mad at him. Was it because he took me along to get the new chair?"
"Well, I'll admit, that stings," she confessed. "Considering I went with him when he got the red one. When I saw you two at lunch today, and he hadn't even said a word to me about getting a new chair, well, yeah, it hurt."
There was an uncomfortable silence that passed just then. Despite having very little in common, they had the concern for all things Artie in common. Giving the other girl a tight smile, Kitty scooted over and patted the space beside her on the swing. After a moment's hesistation, Tina sat.
"But before today, it was the college thing," Kitty said, laying it all out. It wasn't her style, to have all of this unspoken angst. She preferred to confront issues head on.
"Well, it's not like I'm going to follow Mike to Chicago," Tina reasoned. "Though, believe me, a part of me considered it. I don't want Artie to make a major life decision because of some relationship that may or may not work out."
"Didn't you and Mike break up though?" Kitty caught a sharp look from the other girl. "Nevermind, it's not important. The bottom line is, I'm not going to let Artie base any major decision on being with me. I promise you that."
"Well, and I think he's smart enough not to do that," Tina said, at which point Kitty forced a smile on her face and nodded emphatically. "If he goes to OSU instead of Brooklyn, it'll be because he wants to."
"You have to admit," Kitty said. "He'd be awesome in paralympics. I'm surprised he never thought about it before. I mean, what with his past life of being an athlete..."
Kitty experience a momentary panic when it occurred to her that Tina might not even know about that. Artie was awfully private about these kind of things. But luckily, it seemed that Tina did know, because she merely nodded, as Kitty let out a breath.
"Oh, speaking of," Tina said, as her phone buzzed and she held it up to show Kitty that Artie was now calling her.
"Pick it up," Kitty said. "And put it on speaker." Tina did so, and Kitty was first to speak. "Hi, Artie."
The was silence on the other end of the line. "I'm sorry... I, uh, I thought I called Tina..."
"You did," Tina said, resisting the urge to giggle as she caught Kitty's eye.
More silence. "Is this why my ears were burning earlier?"
"Who says we were talking about you?" Kitty enjoyed her taunting. Tina's giggle escaped.
Artie chuckled. "Yeah, okay," he said. "So, what am I being left out of this time?"
He did that thing where he tried to sound like he was joking, except that he wasn't. It seemed Tina was just as familiar with this tactic of his as Kitty.
"Artie, I'm really sorry," Tina hurried to say. "We should have invited you to come with us."
He paused. "Well, in all fairness, I should have called you to come with us to pick up my new chair." He paused again, maybe because he felt weird saying the next part with Kitty there, but he went ahead and said it. "That was a big moment, and you should have been part of it. You're still my best friend. I'm sorry."
"I do love the new chair," Tina added. "Definitely a nice change for college. Wherever you end up going."
Kitty was kind of hoping he'd put them out of their misery and announce a decision right then and there. But no such luck. Artie, being a typical guy in every other way possible, had a one-track mind.
"So, Tina, what are you doing at Kitty's tonight?"
"Oh, she's here for a sleepover," Kitty said, putting a finger to her lips as Tina muffled her giggles. "Anyway, Artie, we have to go. Sweet dreams!"
After hanging up without giving him a chance to say a word, Kitty looked at Tina and shrugged. "You actually can sleep over, if you want," she told the other girl. "I have a stash of unopened toothbrushes and you can borrow some pajamas."
Kitty was just as surprised by her own offer as she was by Tina's immediate acceptance of the idea. She supposed it would make Artie's life a little simpler, if his girlfriend and his best friend could call a truce. The other girl seemed to be thinking the same thing.