Disclaimer: I own nothing.

CHAPTER THREE

I couldn't sleep. Every time I closed my eyes my stomach felt sick. I could hear whispers inside my mind but the words were tangled and so low I couldn't make out any syllables or meanings. I chose to remain awake instead of trying to sleep, but I couldn't sleep even when I tried. My efforts were getting me nowhere fast and I wasn't in the mood for nightmares. My body was begging me for sleep but my mind refused to take the risk of it just yet.

I'd arrived home too late to speak to, or even see, Katie. The lights had been out, the house completely silent and every door closed, including my own. Behind each one I knew lay people I loved who were dreaming peacefully, or hopefully so. I paused for just a few seconds outside Katie's door, debating waking her and apologizing for having been so rude.

Rational thought caused me to keep on my way. I entered my room quietly, careful not to drop things loudly, or close my door with a bang. I didn't want to wake anyone. I just remained as silent as possible through my evening routine of readying for bed. When I was finally finished I noticed that during the mundane tasks my mind had slipped to Max. I just couldn't get his face, his eyes out of my head.

It was thoughts of him that helped push the whispers and the sick feeling in my stomach away. It was the memory of his smile, and the way his hands seemed to accidentally brush mine when reaching for something. I could almost feel his touch. I smiled and finally let my eyes close. Instead of sickness and fear, a wave of warmth and excitement passed over me. My dreams held only laughter.

"Hermione, dear, you've got to wake up" Someone was shaking me slightly. I groaned and batted them away with one hand before rolling over and shoving my face into my pillow. I couldn't breathe and decided perhaps it was time to wake up. I lifted my head and saw my aunt watching me with a slight smile on her face. "Come on dear, we've got to go see James." This time when I groaned and shoved my face into the pillow she laughed.

James was Katie's older brother. He and I had never got along and only fought whenever we saw each other. Any engagement involving the two of us was bound to turn out a disaster. I heard my aunt leave the room and once the door clicked closed, I sat up abruptly. "Damn it!" I muttered. I wasn't looking forward to this.

It didn't take me long to get ready at all. I emerged from my room to find Katie sitting quietly near her father. Both her parents exchanged glances when Katie threw me a sullen look and I looked away, unsure of how to react. I assumed her parents didn't know about her drug use and were wondering about the coldness between us. I didn't know what to do. I had decided to stop pushing Katie away, but my distress over her lies and substance abuse caused me to hesitate.

"Come on girls, it's time to go." My uncle said suddenly, rising to his feet. Katie glanced at me and when I refused to look at her she huffed, crossing her arms and storming out of the room. My uncle gave me a look that questioned what had just happened. "What is it with you two?"

"We just had a misunderstanding…I'm going to talk to her about it tonight." I said softly. My aunt and uncle just looked at me for a second, as though trying to figure out what exactly the misunderstanding has been. My uncle just shook his head and left. My aunt however lingered behind.

"When we moved here, Katie changed. She stopped telling me things that were going on in her life. She started staying out late. She stopped coming home for days on end. She's changed a lot. Sometimes when I look at her, I don't even know who she is…it wasn't a misunderstanding, was it?" Her eyes were searching my face and I didn't know what to say. I had no idea that the changes in Katie had been that severe that her mother would say she didn't even know her at some points. I didn't know if I could pretend it was something small.

"I…she…it was nothing." I finally managed to say. I was lying. It was everything. I saw a look of disappointment shadow my aunt's eyes. She shook her head sadly. She knew that I was trying to hide the real issue.

"You don't have to protect her." She said turning to go. She hesitated and looked at me. "Don't end up like her, it's not the kind of like you want to live, dear." And she too walked from the room, leaving me alone.

Why had no one told me what Katie had become? Why had no one warned me before I came here? I was only becoming more and more homesick. I just felt more alone with each moment that passed in this place. The only time I even felt remotely ok was when I was with Max. But even then, I hardly knew him. What if he was hiding some dark secret from me too?

I realized I was afraid.

Katie and I sat side by side in the backseat of her parents' car. We didn't say a word to each other the entire ride. Where her thoughts were I didn't know. I didn't even care. All I could think about was the fact that I was numbingly afraid of what my cousin was doing with her life. I hadn't noticed just how much we'd grown apart at first. Now I saw it clearly.

She was not the same girl who used to see me every day and share my passions. She was not the same girl that I had loved so tenderly and dearly. She was not the girl who I once held in my heart as a sister. She was a stranger who just seemed to mimic the girl I knew. She was just a ghost of that girl. A shadow of the person I used to know.

Even if I could find the words to speak, I'm not sure I would have wanted to. I knew that I wanted to help Katie. I was just afraid to find out just how much she had changed inside. Her mother's words had made me think there was much more to this change to Katie than met the eye. Did I really want to explore that?

I hadn't even really noticed that the car had stopped. My aunt and uncle had both exited the car, and Katie had as well, only she was lingering by the door, watching me quietly. "Hermione?" Her voice broke my thoughts with a shattering effect. I winced and looked at her with cautious eyes.

I closed the door behind me once I exited and noticed she was still looking at me. Her face was blank, and I couldn't read her eyes. I wanted to say something, I wanted to say anything, the silence fallen between us was killing me. But I didn't know if what she had to say in return would hurt me more or make me feel ok.

"We need to talk." She said. Her voice sounded rehearsed like she'd sat before a mirror saying that same phrase over and over until she could say it with the tone she wanted. I looked into her eyes. I just looked into them and didn't say a word.

"What is there to talk about?" I whispered finally. She frowned slightly.

"I want you to understand." And with that she walked away. I was left in confusion. I didn't understand. I didn't understand anything. Did she want me to understand why she had changed? Maybe if I knew it would be easier to be less afraid of all of this. Maybe it would be good for me to listen, just to listen to her and try to understand.

So I followed her inside promising myself that no matter how scared I was at what I might hear, I needed to just listen. I wanted to understand.

"Well if it isn't little Miss Mischief." James said, smiling at Katie when we walked in the door. Katie embraced him in a hug before sitting down on the couch. James' house was very nice. The furniture looked expensive and the walls were decorated in beautiful pictures. I couldn't even begin to fully describe the ornate moldings that surrounding me, or the brilliant staircase leading upstairs. You would have to see it to understand the beauty.

James looked at me without hatred in his eyes, something I was surprised to note. There was an odd curiosity within them though. I couldn't figure out for the life of me why he wasn't glaring at me or saying rude things yet. That was how it has always been. I longed for the familiarity of it. I wanted him to call me something nasty.

"Well, we really do need to go, but Katie and Annie are going to stay here." I heard my uncle say. What was this? I was staying here with Katie and James? I prayed that this wasn't really happening. If I was stuck here with the both of them, I would have to listen to what Katie had to say, and I just wasn't ready for that yet. I wanted to wait until night fell, until we were back at Katie's house. I wanted to just wait.

They left within five minutes and I stared at them imploringly, my gaze utterly begging. But neither seemed to notice and I let out a disgruntled sigh when the door closed leaving me on a couch, alone, facing a grinning James and a blank faced Katie.

"Katie, why the long face?" James said with a slight laugh. Katie's expression didn't change but her eyes did flicker to my face before again settling on the spot she'd been staring at on the wall. "And Hermione, why the distressed pain in your eyes?" This time, there was no laugh; there was no smile as he looked from his sister to me.

"It's nothing Jamie, don't worry yourself about it. She doesn't understand a few things." Katie said. James nodded. He looked at Katie long and hard before standing up. There was a look on his face that I couldn't name. I don't know if I've ever seen him look at her that way. It almost held disgust.

"Neither do I Katie."

Her face snapped towards him, her eyes widening slightly. She opened her mouth as if to speak but he just shook his head. He held up a hand, his way of telling her not to bother talking. I just watched them, wondering why I was stuck in this place. Why hadn't I just spent my vacation at home?

James looked towards me, smiled slightly, which shocked me, and then left us alone. People seemed to like doing that. I felt sick.

"Do you want to understand or not?" Katie demanded, her eyes shadowed, her voice low. I looked at her, swallowed and nodded. I really did want to understand. "We left and came here because Jamie got in trouble. He owed someone money and needed to start over once he'd paid it off. We chose to come with him so he wouldn't be that far away."

I knew that much but decided not to interrupt and just let her tell this however she needed to tell it. I wondered how long this would take. I started wondering if by the time she had finished I would really understand. I was afraid that I wouldn't.

"When we first came here, I didn't know anyone. I was an outsider. The kids couldn't understand me half the time and they thought I dressed funny. I didn't have one to talk to. You weren't here with me." Katie's eyes were fixed on my face. I found that I couldn't look at her. "I just wanted someone to listen to me, to talk to me. And one day a boy came and sat with me at lunch. He started talking to me and invited me to come spend some time at his friend's house."

Katie's voice had gotten very low. I looked at her to see that her head was lowered, her hands nervously picking at the hem of her sleeve. "Everyone there was drinking. I hadn't ever touched the stuff before then…he said it'd be fine if I just had a cup. He said no one got drunk off just a cup." Her voice was wavering slightly when she lifted her head to look at me. There were tears in her eyes.

"What happened?" I asked, very, very softly. I don't even think she heard me, but she saw my lips form the words. I already had an idea forming and I hoped to God that I was wrong.

"I don't know what the hell was in that cup, but everything gets kind of hazy after that. I don't really remember much except laughing, I remember hands touching me and then I remember waking up in a room with three guys. My clothes were off and I couldn't move because I was tied up." Katie stopped. Her eyes turned cold. "Do you really want me to finish that portion of the story?"

I emphatically shook my head no. I understood the gist. I didn't want to hear the details.

"After that, as you can imagine, I became even more withdrawn. People were saying I was a slut. That's how my image came across because they bragged about the sex. They just failed to mention that I wasn't willing." Her voice was angry. Her voice sounded cold and vicious, like the blade of a knife.

She continued, "apparently someone knew the true story, and that got out too. I was too ashamed to actually ever say anything. I felt like I had done something wrong. You know, maybe that was punishment? Well, one of the guys in one of my classes got pretty pissed about it all. He ended up sending one of the guys to the hospital. After that, he and his friends started talking to me, getting to know me."

She stopped, looked at me and shook her head. "If I hadn't met them none of this would have happened." She rubbed her forehead and sighed. "One of the girls he knew told me the same thing had happened to her a few years back. She promised that she knew about something that could just make it all feel so much better."

Her eyes were begging me to understand when she turned them on me. I could hardly look at them. They seemed so sad, so vulnerable that I wanted to cry. I didn't even notice when I actually did begin to cry. She didn't say anything for a moment, but then reached out grabbed my hand before speaking again.

"It was just drinking at first. When I drank the pain went away. I felt elated, I was happier, stupider and I didn't think about the hurt. One night when I was drunk someone offered me a pill…I wasn't thinking and I took it. It made me feel so amazing that I couldn't say no the next time I took one."

She stopped again, took a deep breath and said, "It makes you forget every hurt you've ever felt, Annie. It makes you feel alive." Her eyes were bright and a smile was on her face. It was such a change from how she'd looked when talking about what those boys had done to her. It made me wonder if something that could make her that happy could be so bad.

She continued to explain about how it helped her forget her pain, how it helped her smile, laugh; forget the troubles of her mind. She explained how it made her mind go blank, how it made her slip into a whole new world. My mind started straying to my own world. My mind started wondering if maybe that didn't sound like such a bad thing. But I shook my head.

"Why though? You could have talked to someone! You know this isn't the right way to deal with things!" I said quickly, trying to convince myself of the same thing as my mind mulled over the possibilities.

"If I talked to someone I would have had to deal with it…why deal with it when you can get rid of it?" Katie asked me. She sounded almost hungry. I didn't know what to say. The question caught me off guard. How many times had I wished that I could just forget my pain and problems instead of deal with them? "It's so much easier, it feels so much better to just…forget."

I didn't want to listen to this anymore. She was wrong. It wasn't better to just forget. But then what was I doing? Hadn't I said I wanted a new life here, no matter how temporary? That I wanted to try the things she did? Didn't I say it didn't matter what I did here because no one back home would know?

But the things she did, they weren't right. I knew that, she had to know that. I didn't think I could just blatantly do them without having my conscience feel guilty. Or could I?

NO. I didn't want to. I didn't want to be like Katie. I felt that initial disgust and disappointment well up inside, this time directed towards myself. What was I thinking?

"No…it's not better to just forget." I whispered. Katie rolled her eyes at me. She leaned forward, dropping my hand and touching my cheek with it.

"You don't even understand what it means to forget. You think that wondering if your dad's forced your mom into debt yet is good for you? You think that wondering if your mom is still even getting a paycheck is good for you? You think that anything that makes you sad is good for you? You think struggling to put it from your mind is forgetting? I'm talking about real blankness, real captivation of your thoughts that just leaves all that shit behind you." Katie sat back in her chair. She sighed and shook her head again.

"I think you're wrong." I said adamantly, not wanting to admit how alluring her little speech was making her new way of life seem. She just looked at me. She really looked at me. I wondered if she could hear my thoughts. The way she was staring me down made it seem like it. She turned her head slightly and smiled.

"Am I?" she asked me softly. She was getting this weird little glint in her eye that I really didn't like. She had this little smile on her face that made me kind of nervous. "You don't really believe I'm wrong, do you?" she demanded.

I opened my mouth to say something, anything, but nothing came out. I narrowed my eyes and crossed my arms, finally spitting out, "You know it's wrong too." Which sounded so lame, even to my own ears. She just smirked. I hadn't said that I believed her. Did she know I was trying to avoid a concrete "yes or no" answer?

"I think you're lying."

"I'm not." I said wishing she would stop looking at me like that, like she knew me inside and out. But then again, she did, didn't she? She knew everything about how I worked. She knew how to tell when I was lying. She always had been able to, ever since we were little. And now I got even more nervous. I didn't want her to be able to tell what I was thinking, or how I would react. Afterall, I wasn't the one who had changed. I was still the same person I had always been. It was her was different. I couldn't even tell what she was thinking.

From somewhere in the other room we heard a door open and close. I looked at her and she just smirked back at me. I knew that smirk. I knew that smirk well, but where had I seen it before? And then it hit me. With that little smirk, Katie was looking at me almost exactly how Draco Malfoy would if he would have been sitting there instead of her. The thought made me feel a little sick. My own cousin reminding me of a boy who lived just to see my friends and I humiliated.