A/N: I will finish this story. I will not abandon it after two or three chapters. This is mainly continuing to set up the subplot, though lo and behold, main plot is introduced. I did nothing with the "write for ten minutes" part, and included dialogue as the main storytelling technique for this chapter. Robbie still angsts, though. What type of story of mine would it be without Robbie angsting? Anyway, enjoy. Expect chapter four out sometime within the next few months. It will probably be around chapter two's length, though I am trying to slowly increase the length of each chapter.

chapter three

write for ten minutes. dialogue. the color of the ocean.

When he arrived home, he realized he'd only been gone for not even an hour. He had also developed a wretched headache. He rubbed his eyes and stumbled blindly into his house, avoiding the bright lights of the kitchen that he had, apparently, left on. He and Rex were home alone.

He didn't really want to do anything, so he swallowed two painkillers with a spoonful of mayonnaise and laid down in bed, lights off, fan on and air conditioner lowered to just 70. He wore nothing but boxers and felt a nice chill, knowing that he would soon be warm underneath his blankets.

Rex woke up.

"Hey, loser," he said, voice groggy from sleep. "Dress me, why don't you?"

"I can't," Robbie muttered. "I have a headache."

"Haven't been drinking, have you? I know you wouldn't take shots without your old buddy Rex."

"No. Of course not. I had a fight with Beck."

"About what?"

"He went out yesterday and had a lot of fun without me. Everybody was there. Cat, Tori…"

"Of course they didn't invite you. You're no fun."

Robbie sighed. The damp washcloth over his eyes shifted slightly. "I know."

(...)

In the morning, nobody was home. Of course, this didn't shock Robbie. His parents left early and came home late. His sister was away on a fieldtrip wasn't due back until Wednesday, at least.

Robbie slid out of bed and found that he was shivering, throat aching lightly. Now is not the time to get sick, he told himself. You just feel this way because you slept in the cold last night. He maneuvered through the house, flicking on lights and turning up the thermostat. He still had his blankets wrapped around his shoulders.

He considered very briefly taking the day off of school, excusing himself as sick, but the ache in his throat was already lifting. Spirits dampened, he prepared himself an entirely gluten-free breakfast, eating alone in his large dining room. The blankets were still around his shoulders, his hair mussed, and he had not yet brushed his teeth.

When he went back into his room to get dressed, he found his phone beeping on his bedside table. Four call from Tori and three texts.

call me when you see this ! smiley face !

I really need to talk to somebody!

jade's so mean!

He did not respond to any of them, leaving the phone by the table and looking through his closet. The closet bought back the cardigan, which in turn bought back the fight with Beck, which had Robbie on his knees in no time flat. He clutched a pair of jeans to his chest and gracefully rocked forward. Rex told him he was weak.

It was just a couple of seconds before he straightened himself up and pulled on the jeans but that was still enough time to remind himself that he was pathetic. He wrapped a belt through his belt loops and went, shirtless and shoeless, over to dress Rex. He had long since given up dressing them identically; people had begun to tell him it was creepy. Today, he put Rex in his usual pair of jeans, shirts, and a nice flannel shirt. He ignored Rex's "What do you think I am, a doll? Weren't you going to ask me what I wanted to wear for once?" and shifted through his drawers, looking for a shirt. Eventually he found a suitable one and pulled it over his head.

Lastly, he tugged on his shoes, tied the laces, and remembered Tori's texts. He decided to call her while he packed his backpack for the day.

She picked up on the second ring. "Robbie! I have so much to tell you. Did you know-" and he listened to her ramble through the same story that Beck had told him while he sorted his binders and put new paper in his History folder. She had more details than Beck's simplistic, by-the-facts explanation had. For example, Cat had followed Jade everywhere, and Beck's lips tasted-unsurprisingly-like lemonade.

"Not like lemonade, really," she was saying, "but like lemon-flavored lip-gloss. Beck's lips are too chapped, he's such a typical boy…I bet Jade wears it for him, but Jade mostly wears lipstick, right? Maybe it was just lemonade after all. So then André…"

He was sitting on his bed with his backpack in his lap and Rex still on his dresser when Tori finally finished. She sounded exhausted. "André had to go to the hospital."

"Like that time that Cat hit you? You know, when we were sick with the Pooka fish poisoning-" and while Tori was saying, "Yeah, like that, except that André's nose is broken, that's serious-" Robbie suddenly remembered, very violently and fiercely, Trina and her coffee and her smile.

"Tori, has Trina said anything about me, lately?" Robbie asked, cutting her off. He tried to sound casual, but there was a nervousness in his voice, a sort of anticipation.

"What? No, while would she? Robbie, don't tell me you like her again. She's not worth that, really!" Tori squawked on the other end of the line.

"Oh, no," Robbie mumbled, trying to sound suave and coming off more awkward. "I just-she came into the place that I work and I made her coffee. I wanted to know if she liked it."

He knew that if Rex wasn't mad at him for not asking his opinion, he would've said something along the lines of nice save, though not with a comforting tone.

"Oh, well, I don't know. I like your coffee! But, anyway, so André's bill was like really high so I told him to get Beck to pay it for him, but André didn't say anything back. He just kind of went away and I had to call Trina for a ride home."

This was a very unsatisfactory conversation, for several reasons. Though Tori definitely painted a very different picture of that night than Beck had-Beck's sounded more cool and relaxed, while Tori's conveyed hectic drama-it still reminded him that he could've been in that mess somewhere. That maybe he could've been the one who punched André in the face, or confessed his love to someone, although he didn't have anybody to confess too.

"Wait," Robbie said, as if he had just been struck by a great idea, "what did André do?"

"He told me we were friends and that he didn't want a relationship in his life right now. Because of his music," Tori sighed. "He can make out with his piano for all I care."

"Um, Tori, I gotta go-" Robbie said, and she hung up before he even finished his sentence. He got the feeling that she was mad at him, but if he didn't leave within the next five minutes, he would've been late for school.

He slung his backpack over his shoulder and grabbed Rex. He ran down the stairs, through the kitchen, grabbed the keys by the door, and slammed the door shut behind him. He hastily turned the key to lock it before rushing to his car, slamming that door, and buckling himself and Rex in. He threw his backpack into his backseat and then he was off.

Robbie drove carefully, the radio on low and turned to a station that played only soft, gentle music, that Robbie did not feel a compelling urge to sing along with. Turns and stops, red lights and pedestrians. The route to school was painstakingly familiar and did not take as long as usual today. Once there, he pulled into his spot, turned the car off, and gathered his things. Rex was placed firmly on Robbie's arms, his backpack around his shoulder, and next thing he knew he was in the hallway of Hollywood Arts, surrounded by students.

He was just to his locker, ready to grab things he hadn't needed over the weekend, when Cat appeared by his shoulders. She was particularly short today, and he noticed she was wearing flats, her hair pulled up into a hastily-made ponytail. She had not bothered to straighten it today. Red curls fell down her back. She looked very pretty in a disheveled kind of way.

"Robbie!" She shrieked, grabbing his elbow. "Have you heard?" And she proceeded to tell him everything that he had heard before. Her version painted Jade almost saint like, as if punching Beck was completely right-"I wouldn't like it if my boyfriend kissed Tori…again…"- and she did not bother to mention the fact that she had been hit in the face, simply saying, "then Jade acted all weird.." instead.

"I have heard, in fact," he said, closing his locker door (he had been exchanging binders and whatnot while she told him her version of the story.)

"Well…" she said, grabbing his elbow again. She bit her lip and looked at him with her wide eyes. Cat had the best puppy dog face out of anybody he knew, ever. "Are you going to help me?"

"Help you do what?" Robbie asked.

"Make Jade loved me…?" And with this, Cat looked downward to the floor.

Robbie sighed. Luckily, he was spared this task by the convenience of the bell ringing. Cat and Robbie did not have the same first period-he had math, while she had her make-up class. They went their separate ways and Robbie slid into his desk, surrounded by people that were not his friends. The only familiar face was Sinjin and his group of strange people, but they were a different kind of strange than Robbie.

Math was easy enough, even if the formulas made Robbie nervous, and they were doing a recap day. He found himself mentally wandering from the classroom.

He had always known Cat to be above and beyond sexuality, if one could say that. When Cat fell in love, she fell in love. Though as long as Robbie had known her, Cat mostly fell in love with boys. He knew there was something in their friendship that most girls-most people-did not have, Cat and Jade's underlying bonds, but Robbie didn't really care. He had given up on Cat(and Jade) a long, long time ago.

(...)

At lunch he found himself eating with André. Beck was not speaking to him, Cat was nowhere to be found, Tori was reportedly sobbing in the girls' bathroom, Jade was out of town, and Trina was supposedly comforting Tori in the bathroom. So, Robbie sat across from André, Rex next to him, a salad in front of him, and watched as André doused everything he ate in ketchup. Including his mashed potatoes, which was making Robbie feel slightly ill as he gazed at the colors of his salad. He picked out all of the tomatoes.

"I just don't have time, man," André said, lifting a forkful of chicken-and-ketchup to his mouth. "That record company wants me to write a song for this up-and-coming artist. I barely have time to do my homework now, I can't have a girlfriend."

Robbie sighed and gestured to where André was now pouring ketchup on top of a chocolate-chip cookie. "You only do that when you're upset," Robbie noted.

"At least ketchup tastes good, unlike that Mayonnaise you keep in your drawer-" Robbie clapped a hand over Rex's mouth, and the puppet struggled to get his now-muffled words out. (André shot an amused look when Robbie exclaimed, "Ouch! You bit me!" and pulled his hand away from Rex's mouth, leaving Rex to leave a single word hanging, upset.)

"I don't like seeing my friends fight," Andre said by way of explanation, and took a large bite of his ketchup cookie.

(...)

Robbie drove out to the beach that night. He didn't have any homework for once, and his parents were both gone again. That part didn't bother him-he'd gone a week and a half before he caught a glimpse of his mother in a business suit with a doughnut hanging out of mouth, rushing to get out the door. His father only had Saturdays off, and even then, sometimes he would choose to go in to work instead of stay home.

He wore very old jeans and no shirt, driving and walking barefoot. The temperature was decent. He was neither cold nor hot. He sighed as he sat down just outside the slightly darker line in the sand that indicated where the tide would rise to; he stuck his feet just beyond that line.

He wrapped his arms around his knees. This was not a foreign practice, late night drives out to the beach. There were still some people on it, mostly couples who decided that Monday wouldn't be that crowded of a day, some retired elders walking hand-in-hand. Robbie felt very alone and very small, but that wasn't anything new.

He thought about how Rex hated the beach. Rex told him the water was dirty and that, unlike the movies, there really weren't that many chicks in bikinis playing volleyball. Rex told him it was a waste of his time to sit on the sand for a few hours and just be, just exist, that he could be doing something productive with his time. Robbie told him that all Robbie really did w as just exist and there wasn't a difference.

He rested his chin on his knees and looked out at the water. Shockingly, it was a very dark shade of blue. What looked inviting by daytime looked downright dangerous at night. He closed his eyes.

He sat there for quite some time, until he heard somebody sitting beside him. He opened his eyes, thoroughly confused, and started to sputter profusely when he saw familiar brown hair falling around a familiar tan face with those familiar brown eyes, wearing a familiar pink shirtdress. The figure mimicked his position, knees drawn to its chest, arms around its knees, chin on its knees, head turned towards Robbie.

"Hey," Trina said.