Chapter Three

Calling

Nothing to do. I was bored senseless, and it didn't help at all that Dinah had been on my mind all night. I lay on my bed listening to Tegan and Sara, letting my mind go crazy with worry. Millions of 'what ifs' were going from bad to worse in point five seconds. Just when the worst thought entered my mind ('What if she got so depressed she commits suicide?') came to me unexpectedly, I walked quickly to the window of my room and looked outside.

I looked up at the star that could be seen from my window (or maybe that was a satellite...) and closed my eyes tightly. I imagined Dinah sitting on a couch, and thought of myself thinking to her, 'Please Dinah... call me.' I felt my head slightly pound, and I opened my eyes as the humming stopped for a second, and in my mind, an echo of my thoughts sounded. Right away, the humming returned, and I was able to tune it out quickly. I felt odd, weak almost. I leaned against the window for a calculated three or four minutes and then slowly went back to my bed. Before I could sit down, however, I heard the familiar chorus line to Seal's 'Crazy', which I thought was perfect timing considering the direction my thoughts had gone at that moment. I picked my cell phone off of my desk, where it was charging, and pressed the talk button. "Hello?"

I said tentatively, since it was well after midnight, and the phone number display said 'Private Number'.

"Uh- Gabby?" I knew immediately who it was, even though her voice was slightly lower, and it sounded shaky, as if she was keeping some sort of emotion in check.

"Yes?"

"This is Dinah. Barbara gave me your cell number, and I meant to call you earlier, but I had to pick up my sister, and we didn't get home until about twenty minutes ago. I hope I didn't wake you up." I looked at my Betty Boop alarm clock even though I knew already what time it was. I turned my stereo down then went to lie back on my bed.

"No, you didn't wake me. I couldn't sleep, so I'm glad you decided to call me now." Understatement of the century.

"I didn't' think you would be asleep. I remember you saying once that your bed time is around one or two in the morning. Besides that... This may sound weird, but I was going to call you tomorrow, but just now, I had this feeling that I had to call you tonight instead… that it was important I call you now instead of tomorrow." I felt my body freeze. Had I somehow done that?

"That doesn't sound weird at all," I said. 'Considering who I'm talking to and the week I've been having.' I thought. "So, why did you have to go pick up your sister? I didn't even know you had a sister."

"I don't. Not really. She sort of adopted me when Barbara took me in. Reluctantly, but yeah. She went to a party downtown, and since she doesn't like to drive, she called Barbara to go get her when it started to suck, and because she figured I needed some fresh air, Barbara sent me," she explained.

"Oh," was all I could think to say at first. There was an awkward silence after that. 'How do I ask her where she's been?' "How are you?" 'I guess that's the way to start.' There was a short silence and I was almost certain she wasn't going to talk to me about this past week, but after about a twenty second wait, she sighed sadly.

"Well, worse than Sunday afternoon," 'Worse?' I thought, remembering the force she'd used to hold on to me. 'What could possibly be worse than that?' "but better than early Monday morning." Which led to my only conclusion that whatever happened to Dinah occurred Sunday night.

"I'm sure Ms. Gordon is at the point where she wouldn't want to see me after school hours. She wouldn't tell me what happened, but she told me that it's been a really rough week," I told my new friend.

"I'm surprised she's told you that much." Dinah replied, which made me frown.

There was more silence. I didn't know what to say, since I was too afraid to ask what happened on Sunday night, or worse, ask and be left with a lot of riddles in place of answers I'd been originally looking for, so I stayed on the phone, silent. I knew I was just burning my cell phone minutes, but that didn't matter to me then. This may sound weird, but just the sound of her breathing on the other end soothed me. At least I knew she was there and I didn't need to worry, but I still wouldn't be satisfied until I saw her at school or-

"Hey, you wanna go see a movie tomorrow? I think that romantic comedy you were talking about came out today, so we can catch a matinee of that." I said, staring at the wall. I figured if she liked movies so much, then maybe going to one might help cheer her up.

"I don't know. I'll ask Barbara."

"You do that. I think it'll be fun. Whatever you want to see- popcorn, candy... It's on me."

"You don't have to-" I cut her off.

"I want to," I said, and it was the absolute truth. "Look, maybe going out for an afternoon will cheer you up a little. It's not going to reverse whatever happened, but maybe it will somehow help you get through it. And-" I wasn't sure if I should have said this, but thinking back, it may have been what hooked her into going with me to begin with. "And to be honest with you, this would be just as much for my benefit as it would be for yours."

Silence, oh how I hate thee. Let me count thy ways...

"Okay. I'll ask Barbara, but I'm sure she'll say yes. Only on one condition though." She paused, and I was ready to defend myself and tell her I wouldn't say a word about Sunday night, but she spoke again before I could. "I pay for lunch either before or after the movie." I couldn't keep the grin off of my face.

"Deal."

I stood in front of the high school's flagpole, where Dinah and I had agreed she'd meet me. My mother was going to drive us to the movie theater on her way to run errands, and I was to call her after the movie with further plans. Not long after I got there, I saw Dinah running towards me.

"I'm not late, am I?" she called from the other side of the school's parking lot. I shook my head.

"No, you're right on time!" I yelled back. Dinah seemed almost excited about hanging out with me, and that made me feel even better about the outing. Both of us walked over to the black Sedan when I gestured towards it, and got inside. My mother looked back at us, giving me a look I knew all too well. She was waiting expectantly for an introduction. "Dinah, this is my mother, Mom, this is Dinah." They shook hands briefly.

"So you're Dinah. It is a pleasure to meet you." My mother started the car and drove us to the movie theater. She waved quickly before backing out of the parking lot. As we stood in line, I asked, "So did you want to see On the Bus, or Underworld?"

"Uh, On the Bus, I think." Dinah replied, then, "I guess we can go see that, since Helena wants to see Underworld, and I sorta want to see it with her." I nodded and paid for the tickets, some popcorn, and two small drinks. I must say, I felt very butch then.

The movie started out average enough. All the main characters were introduced in the beginning, then each person's dilemma, and thus creating the perfect reasoning for the man and woman to meet up, but from there, I don't know what happened. Oh, I'm sure they found out each other's secrets, fell in love anyway, got together somehow, lived happily ever after and had beautiful Hollywood children with perfect teeth, but my mind had stopped focusing on the movie by that point. You see, at about the half hour mark, Dinah had reached into the popcorn bucket which I had settled on my right knee, and her palm brushed against my knuckles, which were curled around the lid. I suppose it would have been the perfect cliché moment if my whole body hadn't tingled slightly in a nonsexual way, or if the humming- that damn humming!- hadn't gone up a notch in volume, drowning out the indecipherable whispering and making it almost impossible to concentrate on anything else. I kept my eyes on the screen as Dinah quickly took her hand completely from the popcorn bucket. In the corner of my eye, I saw her looking at me, but I couldn't tell in the dark theater what her expression was.

I pretended to be engrossed in the movie. If I freaked out and she found me weird, she would never open up to me and trust me with her secrets. Something else: I felt that it wasn't Dinah that needed this friendship, it was me. It was then I remembered Ms. Gordon's words, hearing them very faintly within the humming. It felt as if Ms. Gordon knew something that neither Dinah or I would dare to figure out, but what could that be?

Dinah's shoe nudged mine, and I was startled out of my thoughts. I noticed that the movie was over then, and the credits rolled as some female with a beautiful singing voice went on about unexpected love. I looked over at her.

"You okay?" she asked me. I nodded with a weak smile, doing a very good impression, if I'm not mistaken, of her.

"Yeah I'm fine." She didn't believe me, but let it slide. Hell, I doubt the village idiot would've believed me then. Dinah must have gotten a glimpse of what it was like talking to her.

"Come one, you've got to call your mom and tell her I'm treating you to lunch." She looked at her watch as the lights were fully coming on. "Or and early dinner for me." I nodded and called my mother, who wasn't at her phone, and left a message. We walked about four blocks to an old fifties and sixties style burger joint you'd see on Happy Days.

"Ooh, I want a broiled chunk of a cows ass surrounded by carbohydrates, tortured spuds dipped in grease, and carbonated caffeine with a slight lime flavor added to it," I said as Dinah and I found a booth to sit at. Dinah looked as if she was trying to figure out what I had just said.

"So... You want a burger, fries and Sprite?" I nodded.

"Yes'm."

"Why couldn't you just say that?"

"S'not as fun."

"Also not as gross sounding," Dinah retorted. I only grinned at her slightly disgusted look, and to my surprise, she smiled back at me with a look that said 'You're weird'. Instead, she said, "I'm glad you drug me out of the house. I think... I think it was what I needed to start the healing process- and god, I sound like Barbara." My grin lessened into a sad, sympathetic smile. She watched me for a second as if she debated on saying the next sentence to me.

"I've been thinking a lot about my mother lately. She brought me to my foster parents when I was six, but I remember so much about her, most of all, the day she left me with the Redmonds. I- I guess some memories came back when... she did, only to leave me again." Her eyes locked onto mine as she spoke, and I was intent on hearing her story, humming be damned. "She came back on Sunday, and she wanted me to go with her. I was so hurt; I couldn't stand to be there. I just left. The only place I knew to go was to you... Your house. Thank you, by the way, for that."

"You're welcome anytime," I said earnestly. Dinah looked down then at the table as she tucked hair behind her right ear, and the bat/bird earring showed.

"I left when you had fallen asleep and went back to my mother. I told her that as unconventional as it may seem, everything I've gained here in New Gotham was what I'd always wanted. I had friends- or a friend, who truly cared for me, as you'd proved this last week, and Barbara and even Helena loved me in their own ways... It was so hard to tell her no, that she'd missed out on us being a family when she gave me up ten years ago. So, she left again on Sunday night, and I know I will never see her again." She was silent after that, and I was almost too afraid to ask her my next question for fear of her clamming up again. Almost.

"Do you know why she gave you up? Did you ask her before she left?" It probably wasn't the best time to ask, or even the best way to word it, but with this sort of thing, what/when is? Dinah nodded.

"She said that I'd showed no signs of being..." If I had seen her lips move at all at that point after the word 'being', I would have sworn to every higher power that she'd said the word(?) 'metahuman', but Dinah didn't move her lips. Still, I heard the term 'metahuman' from somewhere, and it lingered in my mind. No matter what it may mean, it made me shiver with the unexpected cold sensation that traveled up and down my spine. "Like her," Dinah finished. I watched as Dinah fought so hard to keep tears from falling, but blast them, they fell anyway. I reached over towards the jukebox shaped napkin holder and grabbed a napkin before handing it to her. She took it with slight gratitude before wiping her tears. "I can't help but wonder if- If I had done something- anything... If I had only shown some sign that I was like her after all, maybe she wouldn't have left me with- with... them." Tears fell slowly, one by one, and despite her sadness, I couldn't help but look at her and think 'You're so beautiful, Dinah'. And she was- is. Heartbreakingly so. I watched her as she wiped more tears away. "I'm sorry I-"

"We are not supposed to become our parents, Dinah. We are to grow and learn with their guidance and advice, but in the long run, we become our own person. You mother must have had a far greater reason to leave you somewhere else, or she would have kept a close watch on you and never gave you up at all." More tears fell and Dinah nodded.

"Thank you." She let out a small, almost forced laugh as our food came.

"There's your chunk of cow ass." I clapped my hands in mock excitement.

"Yay!"