Thank you to all those who reviewed, and sorry for the long delay. Chapter 5 will be up soon.
Chapter 4
The moments after a fissure breaks are the most crucial. Every second of delays, the cracks grow deeper, covering distance and breadth so fast that before you know it, there's a canyon separating Caterina and Cat—a bottomless gap between her and her friends.
If she squints, she can still see them—Jade with her furious eyes and Tori with her confused smile and Robbie, whose head is tucked into his chest as he looks away. Andre has his hands over his mouth as if readying himself to call out to her—and Beck's hair is mussed as his dark eyes watch her move farther and farther away.
They hesitate, treating her change as an explosion and waiting for the aftershocks.
Tori hopes she will return, hopes that in time the younger girl will go back to being the adoring, adorable child who giggled and clapped and harmonized beside her in the rain. Robbie suspects the catalyst for her change and probably understands the most. He does nothing because he both doesn't know what to do and isn't sure he should do anything at all. While he is torn and Tori is hoping, the cracks deepen.
Jade stands in stony silence, the proud queen demanding in silent command that Cat return to her. She is brusque, angry, as if forcing Jade into Caterina will bring Cat back. They wind up competing for the same roles, and Jade tries harder than she's ever done—harder than she ever did with Tori—and wins the part.
A part of her is waiting for Cat to squeal and hug her in congratulations, another wants to see Cat angry, furious—anything that would show there was still some of that impulsive emotional child within the new stranger named Caterina Valentine. In the end, when the cast list is read, Caterina's eyes are harder than she's ever seen them, but her voice is polite when she says, "good job" and "congratulations."
It hurts more than it should.
Beck and Andre are caught between the sides. On one end, Tori and Robbie stand in indecision—on the other, Jade pursues Cat with all the stormy fury within her. They, on the other hand, stumble in the middle, trying to find a balance as the ground shifts beneath their feet.
After all, although Caterina's new refusal to open up to them burns, they are also caught off guard by the new muscles that stretch beneath her clothes—the tanned, toned abdomen that teases from beneath a shirt that's just a bit too small.
She's a thing of beauty when she dances, all dark curls and grace and eyes that shimmer beneath hard glass. She makes the others in their classes catch their breath, and Beck and Andre are no exception. They lift her, spin her, glide by her side, but more and more she blossoms from the child they loved to this strange new creature.
This young woman, ready and able to hold her own—more like the rain beating against their arms than a butterfly in need of a cage.
Caterina can feel her friends stumbling, drifting, unable or unwilling to bridge the expanse widening between them. She cannot bridge it either, cannot dump dirt back into the hole and pretend to be Cat again. She is afraid, terrified, even, of what this will lead to—and just as terrified that her friends will leap the gap and try to save her.
She doesn't even know if she wants them to jump anymore.
She doesn't remember when she started thinking that she needed saving.
Terry is worried for the girl sharing her apartment. A couple months ago, perhaps she would have let it go—after all, the teen helped pay the rent and stayed out of her way—but somehow, between that first song and the nights they spent curled up in front of the television, between the canned macaroni and the way they knew not to ask too many questions—Terry began to care for Caterina.
The girl was just so talented, so sweet, and so sad. When she smiled, it was brilliant as the moon on a lake, but she did it so rarely that Terry mostly pictured Caterina with those big, somber eyes and bittersweet twist to her delicate features.
So she's just a bit warmer than she might have been otherwise—just a bit kinder. She pushes for responses, emotions, immaturity that will show that deep down inside, there's still a little girl trying to escape. Caterina doesn't respond at first, and Terry knows better than to try to punch through her walls. Instead, she soothes, softly knocking and waiting for the door to open.
One night, they're at work and Terry's serving drinks when Caterina suddenly goes pale and her voice catches painfully in her throat. Terry's head snaps up almost painfully and she watches the girl flee from the stage, a staggering, drunken woman screaming her name.
A part of her is screaming for her to let things be, because she needsthis job and the Boss is a good man who actually treats her right. Then, the woman raises a hand and slaps Caterina across the face and Terry forgets that what she's about to do could get her fired.
She decks the woman.
The Boss let's them off with a warning.
That night, Caterina crawls into her bed and snuggles up beside her. Terry can feel the girl sobbing, her tears wetting the stained bedspread. There will be time for questions in the morning, time for explanations and more tears—but for now, there's just them, lying on the bed with their arms around each other.
Terry wraps her arm around the younger girl and hugs her tight.
"Why don't you invite your friends over?"
Caterina looks at Terry in surprise, and then not in surprise. She knows the older woman is worried about her, but really, who would she invite over? Perfect, brilliant Tori with her complaints about Trina and how she wishes she never had a sister? (Cat would have given anything for a sister.)
Or Jade, with her sharp tongue and sharper eyes who would insist that Caterina leave and move in with her. Or Beck and Andre—or Robbie, who'd cower and blush while Rex made rude comments.
She looks up with a hint a smile on her face but all the seriousness in the world in her voice when she tells Terry that it's probably not a good idea. For now, anyway.
She wonders who she's trying to give hope to.
They're trying to leap now—she can feel it in the way they treat her, how they're suddenly by her side or in her space or at her locker. Tori claims their Vocal Class as "their girl-time," and Caterina can't help but wonder why the brunette is trying so hard to make conversation.
(Before, it'd been her trying to edge in a word or two between ToriandAndre or ToriandJade or even ToriandBeck. And even when she did, usually it resulted in blank stares and raised eyebrows.)
She's snapped out of her memories by an insistent whisper. "Cat! Cat!" She almost doesn't turn around, but her body doesn't listen to her brain and moves anyway.
Tori's smiling her bright, friendly smile and scooting closer again, and Caterina's almost relieved when her teacher announces that class is beginning and "would people stop moving around?" Tori freezes, but somehow manages to cross the last couple seats and land in the one next to her.
"Hey, Cat."
Caterina's eyes don't leave the teacher as he begins lecturing on the importance of orange juice. "My name is Caterina."
She's really getting tired of repeating it, so perhaps that's why Robbie's company is suddenly the easiest to bear. He's the most awkward, and yet the least different. There's a distance between them now that's new, but she has a feeling that he's so used to being on the other side that her moving away isn't too much of a shocker.
He smiles awkwardly in the hall when they pass, and she gives him a small nod, because even though his voice cracks and he stumbles when he tries to pronounce the whole thing, Caterinais always what comes out of his mouth when he addresses her.
His puppet hangs limply on his arm, head faced away from her or hissing in Robbie's ear. She almost misses his crude jokes, the way he represented the other side of Robbie. The suave lines, the funny jokes—the times he called her beautiful.
Now, Rex doesn't speak to her at all.
She can't afford clothes that fit perfectly and most of it is Terry's hand-me-down's, so yes, some of the clothing are a bit tight, and others too loose. Yes, she does notice the eyes trailing the expanse of skin between her jeans and blouse, and she does realize that Andre and Beck haven't touched her since her return.
Then, they land in the same dance class and suddenly they're always at her elbow, and Caterina has to admit that it feels nice to lean into Andre's chest before spinning away—that relying on the strength of Beck's arms as she leaps isn't exactly unpleasant.
Still, while Cat gave her hugs and kisses away with the sweet innocence of a child, Caterina watches her two friends with a new awareness that she sees reflected in their eyes as well. She's relieved when the teacher decides to assign them all partners.
Chad is blonde, with blue eyes and a tan that makes him look like the perfect, all-American surfer-boy. He's also spent the last four years of his life attending the same Boot Camp she attended the past summer. In other words, he's very, very good.
His hands send fire racing along her hips and she doesn't protest when they linger just a little too long. She does reject his offer to help her with her choreography—word gets around, and Chad's got a reputation of stealing hearts and then leaving them out to dry.
He just winks and tells her that she'll come around.
Sometimes, lying on the ground after a vigorous workout, she runs her hands along her sweaty hair and remembers when it used to be scarlet. When she would spend her time trying to reach Jade or Tori or even Robbie because she needed an excuse to get out of the house.
Now, her phone is still in pieces in some gutter in the middle of the road.
She hasn't bothered getting a new one.
They crack before they heal, and sometimes, as they sing and dance and watch the rain fall, they wonder they'll ever outrun the spindly lines that threaten to burst them apart. Whether they'll be able to realign along the cosmos, or if, at the loss of their focal point, they will all float off into space.
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