A/N: Trigger warning for self-harm in this chapter. So sorry for the long update! I was at overnight camp for a week and had no Internet or computer. The chapters are taking shorter timeframes now and I'm not sure why except for that's the way the story's going. Hope you like it!
On the first day of junior year, Nepeta brought a laptop to school for the first time. It was required this year, a special kind of laptop that was cheap and small. Everyone had one, and they were no good. They were annoying to use, the keyboards were too small, and the Internet connections were lousy at best. But hey, at least they weren't cat-killer textbooks.
The main problem was that Nepeta's didn't work.
She tried to set it up at home with her wifi network at home, but for some reason the connection in her room was utter shit, and she needed the Internet to log onto the stupid thing. So she couldn't set up the computer she needed for junior year. So she was in deep trouble.
In her third class, Calculus, she decided to speak up. Plus, she hated her teacher. So she raised her hand and said sweetly, "Excuse me, Mrs. Jenners? My computer doesn't connect to my home Internet. How can I utilize these wonderful resources if I can't access them with a frankly mediocre at best computer that doesn't connect to the Internet?"
The teacher shot her a look that said quite clearly, "Not again." These computers were shit.
"You'll have to be creative," Mrs. Jenners replied. "Or use the computer in school at the textbooks at home."
"Thank you, Mrs. Jenners," Nepeta said sweetly, just enough that her voice was saccharine but not so disgusting that the teacher would mark her as a bad kid. Everyone thought that since she was small and looked younger than she was, she was innocent. She would admit that she was relatively innocent, but she was not above using her innocent appearance and sweet voice to manipulate people. She often purposefully got her teachers to like her, and if she really hated them, she would argue in such a way that it sounded like she was truly confused and/or suggesting a solution. She raised her hand so much that teachers stopped calling on her so if she missed her homework, no one would notice. She knew enough trivia to make it sound like she knew what she was talking about.
Except in bio. She was actually good at bio. She was constantly torn between acting and biology (her more recently discovered passion). She had two events in Science Olympiad: Anatomy & Physiology and Disease Detectives. She also had school play and Variety Show to worry about, not to mention stuff like the insane amount of junior-year homework and SATs and ACTs and every single other thing in junior year.
They said junior was the worst, but she had no idea it would be this crazy.
It wasn't helping that she'd gone for honors physics on a whim and now that she was in the class, she was royally screwed. She barely even had time for shipping anymore, what with honors physics and AP US history and Calculus and honors year 4 French and the rest of everything else.
The one good thing was that she'd chosen yoga for her PE class, so she got fifty minutes of yoga every day. She was a big believer in yoga, because it had always worked for her.
But she was still in deep trouble when it came to physics.
So she went to Equius.
She was better than him in French, English, history, and bio. But he was far better in all the other sciences, math, and of course PE. She had him tutor her in physics so she could get a passing grade.
"One over the focus length is equal to one over the object distance plus one over the image distance," Equius explained, punching some numbers into his calculator. "You see?"
She nodded, scribbling some notes down and trying to repeat his results. "The reciprocal button," he reminded her.
She finished the problem and triumphantly circled the answer, passing the paper to Equius. "Negative thirty point five six centimeters," she pronounced.
"No," he said simply. "Negative fifteen point two eight."
"Shit," she muttered. He gave her a reproving look.
"I'm going to swear if I want to," she told him, starting to get frustrated with the work.
"Try again," he replied. "Redo step three."
She nodded and took a yoga breath, trying to expel the tension from her body. "Okay. Trying again."
She brought home a D on her first physics quiz.
On the second one, after Equius tutored her, she got a B+.
It wasn't much to most honors physics kids, especially Terezi, who had an A in physics from the start. The irony in the fact that Terezi's bet grade was in optics wasn't lost on anyone, especially Dave. Nepeta, from watching her friends at lunch, knew that Dave was starting to crush on Terezi, who reciprocated on some level, and that Karkat was deeply jealous of Dave. So when Terezi and Karkat broke up, it was no surprise. But still, her heart soared and she was secretly hoping that he would ask her out next.
Then her friends took over her job.
"Hey, Nepeta," Aradia said, sidling up to Nepeta.
"What is it?" Nepeta asked. She had school play auditions that afternoon, plus SAT prep classes and piles of homework. And her sister was gone at college. Couldn't forget that the house was unnaturally empty with only two at the table and no one shouting over the phone and an empty bedroom.
"Soooo Terezi and I decided that you needed a break from matchmaking and we set you up with someone for Winter Formal!"
"Wait WHAT?" Nepeta shouted. She wasn't sure what she'd been expecting, but it sure as hell wasn't that! "What the fuck?"
"This guy called James," Aradia said. "You've got French with him."
"The tall guy with brown hair?" Nepeta asked. He was attractive enough, but she wanted to go with Karkat. Which was why the next thing Aradia said nearly made her pass out.
"Look, I know you'd prefer to go with Karkat, but he asked Terezi again and she said yes."
"HOW DID YOU KNOW ABOUT THAT?" Nepeta screamed, drawing several odd looks from other people in the hallway.
"That's not important. Terezi doesn't know, so don't worry. What is important is that you and him will have a great night and you get a break from matchmaking."
Nepeta sighed. "Fine, whatever," she said. "See you at lunch?"
Aradia nodded, smiling widely. "See you!"
Nepeta trudged to her next class. She hardly knew this James guy, and now her friends expected her to go to the dance with him? It wasn't anything like an actual date (she'd probably just wander away and dance with her friends the whole night), but still! She was still fuming internally when she sat down, throwing her backpack on the ground and slamming her textbook on the table. Just her luck that this was her French class, in which she sat in between James and Terezi. Terezi smiled her devious smile and poked Nepeta.
"I know," Nepeta said, before Terezi could explain a second time. Terezi smiled wider. "Well?"
"Well, what the hell?" Nepeta shot back. She normally wasn't this snappish, but she was under a lot of stress already.
"Oh, come on! You two will meet up at the dance and…you know, dance! He doesn't know it's you, though."
"Aren't you going with Karkat?" Nepeta asked, desperate to change the subject.
Terezi nodded. "He apologized for the fight and asked me so I said yes!" she grinned, practically swooning.
"Aw, that's so cute! I'm so happy for you two!" Nepeta lied, plastering a picture-day fake smile on her face.
"Thanks," Terezi smirked. "Oh, here he is!"
James walked into the classroom and sat next to Nepeta. She'd been helping him out for a while in French, because he was horrendous at the language. That was probably the reason they'd set her up with him. Aradia must know him from another class. He offered her a small smile and asked, "Can you help me with the conjugation of être?"
She nodded, doing the you're-sort-of-an-idiot-but-it's-okay-because-you' re-my-friend smile. "Sure," she said aloud. She guessed he was cute enough. His hair and eyes were brown, but his eyes were dark and his hair was light. He was much taller than her, almost as tall as Sollux (who was gangly and looked like he grew a foot overnight), but not in a bad way. He wasn't skinny, but he wasn't especially large either. The main thing about him was that he wasn't Karkat. "Look, you start with the imparfait form, right?" she began. Her mouth went on autopilot as she scanned the classroom for the couple she was convinced was a couple, even if no one else could see it. No one else could ever see things the way she did. It was like when she looked at the way two people interacted, even the tiniest of things. She had once discerned a relationship from a glance the two exchanged in the hallway.
No one else saw the way she did, so she already had a sense of the sort of relationship she and James would share. They'd go to the dance together, have a good time, go on a few dates, kiss a bit, then have a quiet, we-both-know-we're-not-right-for-each-other breakup. Her friends were probably convinced that the two would make an excellent couple, but Nepeta wasn't sure. She might trust this whole thing a bit more if Aradia was the only one. Terezi was her very good friend, but also not a great perceiver of relationships.
Class started and Nepeta could only worry. That her friends were wrong, that they were right, that this would all go wrong, that it would all go right.
And about other things. Every day since junior began, she would go to Karkat's house irregularly (but before Terezi came over) to check on him. He'd been acting withdrawn and angry lately, that is, more than before. It worried her badly. Equius was the same as ever; she mostly worried for his grades and ambitions and general state of being the way she worried for her own. When it came to Karkat, she worried about something different. She worried about the way he never wore short sleeves anymore, the way he'd dropped school play and his other clubs, the way he refused to come over to do homework together anymore, and especially the way he'd stopped doing acting classes on Saturdays, something they'd done together since they were little.
It was a cold Thursday in December when her suspicions were confirmed.
She'd made sure his father wasn't around, and of course his brother was at college. Terezi came most days, but not until six or seven. So she ran to his house and, using the spare key, she snuck up to his room. Most people would consider that creepy or weird, but having a best friend like that made just about everything okay. Including slamming open their bedroom door at 3:30 in the afternoon to see them holding a craft knife, a bloodstained rag, and a first-aid kit.
She screamed and shoved him off the chair. He shouted and instinctively shoved her back. "What the FUCK, Nepeta? What are you DOING here?"
She was sobbing, inconsolable. Up until this moment it hadn't seemed real. It felt like a crazy dream, a delusion from teenage stress. She'd needed the proof, and here it was. Here was real, proper proof that one of her very best friends very much wasn't okay. "Karkitty," she pleaded. "Why are you doing this?"
"I don't want to talk about it," he snapped. But she wasn't going to let that dissuade her.
"I don't care that you don't want to, tell me anyways!" she insisted. "You can't carry on like this!"
"Whatever," he said, crossing his arms sulkily.
"I will sit here until you start talking," Nepeta insisted, sitting across from him, crosslegged on the floor.
There was silence for a long moment, but as usual, Karkat was the first to relent. "It's just…Kankri's gone. And I hated him, but at least he understood me. My dad is great and all, but it's like he's not even fucking there half the time. He's got no fucking clue what high school's like. And Terezi…okay. She's all like, 'I love you, Karkles,' and it's all great, but then some days she's just like, 'What the fuck ever, go away, I hate you.' And… uh…alright, we've gone farther than first, and now it's like that doesn't even count for anything. She's always talking about how Dave is so hot and perfect, but she never talks about me anymore. I asked Vriska and her other friends and they said she doesn't even care about me anymore. It's like…no one cares anymore. Since Gamzee's in rehab all the time, I never see him, like, ever, plus he's in sixth lunch and we have no classes together…it's like no one cares anymore."
I care! she wanted to scream. I've been coming over after school every day, not when your precious girlfriend comes, just to make sure you're okay. Because I care so much about you! Because I fucking love you! But she didn't. Instead, she went for reassurance, her basic grasp of human emotion coming through for her.
"You know you're supposed to hate your dad," she began. "If that makes you feel any better. It's part of being a teenager. It's normal. And as for Terezi…maybe you two just need to sit down and talk to each other about stuff. She probably doesn't realize she's doing it. Just…be honest with her. Have at talk with her and make sure you're honest. Try to get her to be honest. A Saturday would be good, and try for a neutral location, like, neither of your houses. I'm sure you two will work things out." And she was. Much as it hurt to admit, she knew they would work it out. "Okay, Gamzee is a bummer. We all miss him. He was a great friend. But he needs to focus on himself for a while, like you do. You've got to focus on making you feel better, okay?" She looked at him in the most maternal way she could manage, her hands on her hips and looking at him as if over a pair of glasses. She did this sometimes, took on a vaguely protective role, whenever he seemed especially depressed or otherwise emotionally not okay.
"What d'you mean?" he asked grumpily, still using that closed body language. She took his wrists in her hands to force him to open up.
"I mean, remember that people care. Try this. Every night, right before you go to sleep, think of every person who cares about you or loves you or both. I can think of at least seventeen."
"Yeah right," he scoffed.
"Your dad. Kankri. Terezi. Gamzee. Kanaya. John. Jade. Sollux. Rose. Dave. Eridan. Feferi. Vriska. Tavros. Aradia. Equius. Me. And don't forget people in your classes, your other family, your mom, even though she's…dead. Your brother's girlfriend. People love you, Karkitty," she said affectionately. "You know it makes me sad when I see you sad. And also…tell you dad. I know it seems hard, but please, tell him." She did her puppy-dog eyes and finally, he relented again.
"Fine," he said. "I will."
"And I'm taking these all home and burning them," she said, picking up the rag and the blades. "First aid kit goes back in your medicine cabinet."
"What?" he asked angrily.
"No way I'm letting you do this again," she said. "These are all going away."
He crossed his arms again and sighed angrily. "You're such a freak sometimes," he grumped, but there was no real venom behind the insult, just sadness.
"Hold on a sec," she said. She went to the kitchen, made a plate of peanut butter and crackers, poured a glass of water, and gave them to him. "I'll be right back," she said. She walked into the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet. Placing the first-aid kit inside, she also took out every bottle of pills and emptied them down the sink so the amount left wasn't enough to even make him sick. She didn't even want to acknowledge the possibility, but it wasn't just a paranoid thing anymore. It was real.
Back in his room, Karkat was picking at the crackers and peanut butter. The glass of water was half-emptied. Nepeta's phone buzzed in her pocket, and it was a text from her mother calling her home for dinner. "I've got to go, Karkitty, but promise me you'll talk with Terezi and your dad."
"I promise," he said.
"Pinky promise?" she asked, half-joking and half-serious. It was a reference to the way they used to promise the most serious things when they were little, when the most serious thing was who was first in the lunch line.
He rolled his eyes, but complied. She left his house and locked the door behind her, a little of the weight lifting off her shoulders.
She was one of the few people who knew that his dad made him see a therapist every Thursday after school. Gamzee started coming home more, and Terezi and Karkat repaired their relationship. And over the next year, he started to recover. It made her entire being glow when he started smiling, no matter how scarce it was.
Meanwhile, she was dancing with this guy called James at the Winter Formal. Who was nice enough, quite cute, and maybe the sort of person she could be in a relationship with. So when he asked her if she wanted to go on a date to the movies, she of course said yes. Maybe her friends had been right; maybe this would work out better than expected.
"So," she said, once the movie (Catching Fire) was over. "What'd you think?"
"It was pretty good," he said. "I liked the actor they picked to play Finnick."
She smiled goofily. "Peeta or Gale?" she asked.
He looked confused. "I'm not gay," he answered.
She rolled her eyes. "I mean, who do you want to end up with Katniss?" Why was everyone so damn obsessed with sexual orientation? She sighed and added, "I think Peeta."
He shrugged. "Whatever," he said. "It's not really all that important to the story."
This wasn't going to work out, was it.
She knew the second he told her how little he cared from anything even remotely to do with romance. He'd never even heard of most of her favorite movies or books. He didn't know the plot of Love Actually or The Hunger Games. She wasn't much for Twilight, as she found Bella to flat of a character, but she'd read it and knew the plot. He hadn't even heard of it.
And she didn't share his interests either. She barely knew the rules of football or baseball, and she was by no means interested in car racing. She was able to feign interest, to even try to learn the rules, but it was all he talked about. It was starting to drive her nuts.
It was around Turnabout when she ended it, about three weeks before. "Hey, James," she said one day in French. "We have to talk."
"Sure, when?" he asked
"After school, my locker," she stated. Hopefully this would be quick and easy and she could get home and finish studying for the SATs in just a few days.
After school, at her locker, she had planned out just what she would say. "James," she said. "This isn't working out, and I think we both know it."
He looked shocked. "But…I thought you liked me."
"I do," she said. "But we're not really compatible and I think we'd be better with other people." Please don't drag this out, she silently prayed. It's been, what, two months max.
He just had to drag it out, didn't he. "But I still like you! A lot! I still love you!" Those three words, the infamous "I love you", had never been exchanged in their relationship. So why the hell was he bringing it up now?
"Look, I just don't think we can keep getting along like this," she said. "We don't share any interests, at all. We're not in the same circles, and I just feel like this isn't working out."
Just as he was about to say something else, she pretended her phone had just rung. "I've got to go," she said, feigning that she wanted to stay. "My mom needs me home. I'm sorry, but this just isn't working."
He sighed. "I'll call you?" he half-asked.
She didn't answer.
Oh gog, she felt like such a bed person now. She'd just left him like that, without a real answer. But did he really have to drag it out? She was still spacing out as she walked to the car with her stuff and sat in the driver's seat. She was waiting for Equius, just like every other day, when Karkat knocked on the car window. She rolled it down. "What is it?" she asked, nowhere near her normally chipper self.
"Jeez, angry much?" he asked antagonistically. "I need a ride."
"Why not catch a ride with Terezi?" she asked, only a tiny drop of resentment creeping into her angry voice.
"Why are you so fucking pissed?" he asked. "She fucking broke up with me, happy?"
"Oh my gog, what happened?" she asked, properly concerned. "Yeah, you can have a ride, get in the back."
He climbed in the car and started talking, not questioning her directive not to get in the front. Best friendship like that was nice. "Well…she was saying how we aren't working and she doesn't think we'll work out and I…I got pissed and started fucking shouting and so she got angry back and we had this huge shouting match…and it might be over for good this time."
He said that every time.
He always thought it was over for good. Every time. And every time, a couple weeks later, he called, or she called, and they got back together for another few months. It was killing her to watch, this cycle of his sadness and hopelessness and then sudden hope and happiness, then back to despair. And it wasn't easy watching that happen to Terezi either. Nepeta was close with Terezi, too, so as an observer, it was devastating her.
Just then, Equius walked over to the car and clambered into the front seat, saving her from again supporting his and Terezi's dysfunctional relationship. "Hi, Equius!" she chirped. "We're dropping off Karkitty today, too."
Equius nodded. He didn't much like Karkat, but Nepeta had talked him out of truly hating their angry friend. She backed out of the school lot and drove her two best friends home.
At home, her mother was cooking dinner. "Hey, Mom," Nepeta said. "I'm home."
"Hello, dear," Nepeta's mother said. "How are you?"
"I'm good," she answered. "Broke up with James, finally."
Nepeta's mother nodded. "Don't forget you've got SATs soon."
"I won't," Nepeta groaned, rolling her eyes. She walked up to her room and pulled out her study stuff.
On the day of the SATs (considered the most important at her school), she woke up on time for once and made sure to eat breakfast, something she often forgot. She was driving there, and Equius was driving back in her family car. Since her mother rarely went anywhere outside of walking range, Nepeta drove to school every day. Equius only had their family car on Wednesdays and sometimes Thursdays. When he had the car, he would call her and he would drive. But for today, a Tuesday, she would drive.
"Quadratics formula," Equius said.
"Easy, that's eighth grade math," she responded. "X equals negative b plus or minus the square root of b squared minus four A C, all over two A. Okay. Quintic formula."
"A X to the fifth plus B X to the fourth plus C X to the third plus D X squared plus E X plus F. World War II, basic facts."
"Usually cited at 1939 to 1945. Hitler led Germany…" she recited, getting more detailed as she went on. "And the Allies won in Japan when they dropped nukes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki."
"Good job," Equius complimented, still stony-faced. He must've been terrified.
"Alright, your turn. Impact of Shakespeare on writing."
And so they quizzed each other until they arrived at the other high school in their district, Brook River West, the testing center.
Nepeta was shaking as she opened the test booklet and started to bubble in answers. She didn't speak when they had the snack break; she barely ate. She felt like she was about to explode when she went back for the second portion of the test.
But in the end, she made it back to the car and thank goodness Equius was driving.
"So?" she asked him.
"I believe I received respectable grades," Equius responded stiffly. "And you?"
"I guess I did alright," she acknowledged. "There were a few questions I wasn't sure on, but I think I did alright overall."
"Good," Equius said.
The rest of the drive was silent.
But Nepeta was used to that. Equius was often quiet; the two of them could hold conversations in complete silence. She smiled and relaxed. School didn't start till noon the next day; at least she'd be well-rested, and likely less stressed.
She still checked on Karkat, but not as often. She was irregular in her timing, to the point where she'd go once a day for a week then not at all for a while. She'd never caught him at it except once, right before testing week, with a pair of scissors. He was getting so much better and it made her so happy to see.
Of course, there was AP testing too. For AP US History and AP English and Composition or something. But that wasn't quite as stressful, for whatever reason.
College was the truly scary prospect. She was going on a college road trip with her mother that weekend, to the colleges in the area. Northwestern, UIC, U of I Champaign, and a few others. She wasn't really considering any colleges close by, but maybe U of I Champaign. Maybe.
In the car that Saturday, with her mother driving, she felt the wish anklets she'd made back in seventh grade. Looking back, it had probably been a coping mechanism, the wishing. But there was one that hadn't fallen off; the one she'd made between eighth and ninth grades. She'd wished that someday she'd marry Karkat. It seemed exceptionally childish now, but she still had the anklet on.
The colleges were nice enough; U of I Champaign's foreign language building was horrendous, and Northwestern was huge. Other than that, both made not much impression on her. She had more trips that summer, anyways.
Junior year ended as every year before; knowing she'd done something, unsure of what was ahead, scared of the huge future ahead of her, and hopeful that maybe next year would finally be the year.