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Chapter 10
"What the hell."
"I don't know—"
"Why would you even—"
"It's not that big of a deal!"
"Screw that, you're coming home with me tonight."
"No."
They lock wills, Caterina's sleep tousled hair framing her small face, her eyes stubborn and fierce despite the weariness still tugging at their corners. Her breaths come shallowly, but her voice, when it comes, is firm. "You're not in charge of me."
It hurts most because up until then, Andre had honestly thought that he was. She was Little Red, his to protect, his to wrap his arms around and tousle and joke around with. Watching Caterina reaffirm the distance between them ached like hell, but he pushed it away because damnit, this was important.
How had things unraveled so quickly?
She hadn't woken up until Andre pulled up into her old driveway and she heard the sound of breaking glass. It was instinct more than anything that made her duck, and when her seatbelt restrained her, she snapped it open and tried again, curling up as small as she could.
Mrs. Valentine's face was ugly and very drunk as she screamed expletives from outside the window, but Caterina refused to look at her. Instead, she stares at the spidery window where her mother had smashed a beer bottle, and wonders dully who is going to pay for it.
Andre is the first of the boys to break out of his surprise. "Cat—what—" In his surprise, he slips on her name, but right now she doesn't care, because he's pulling out of her driveway—her ex-driveway—and back onto the road, leaving the screaming woman behind like a nightmare.
Beck is usually the more self-possessed one, but Jade had broken him and the park had barely managed to sew together the pieces. His head is reeling, and right now he can't react, even though his mind is putting the pieces together faster than he wants it to, because oblivion is just so simple. So nice.
He feels a jolt of absolute self-loathing the moment he realizes what he just thought.
Andre simmers, but doesn't speak until they're a good couple blocks away, nevermind that he has no idea where he is or how to get back home. Beck's eyes are cloudy, but slowly gathering power, like the air right before a storm. Caterina sits, small but proud, daring them to make the first move. She grips the window pane, feeling the small shards of glass dancing delicately at her skin. When she pulls her hand away, there are dots of blood sprinkling her palm, and she blows, wincing as some break free and drift to the ground.
From the corner of her eye she can see the white scar under her cheekbone flashing in Andre's mirror. It looks like war paint, or the shadow of a memory.
She remembers when her mom started acting strange, started coming home without her paychecks because she'd spent it all on bottles of things Cat herself was forbidden to touch. She'd tried it one night—too thirsty and hungry to care that the concoction smelled awful, but the sour taste had gone straight to her head.
When her mother found her sprawled on the ground and throwing up, she'd very calmly taken what was left of the beer and retreated back to her room. Cat would learn to prefer that reaction over the sometimes violent alternatives.
She'd hoped that Jason—big brother, college-bound Jason who always bought her lollipops when he could afford them—would step in, would save her like a fairy-tale prince or at least James Bond, but he'd never been quite been strong enough to refuse his friends, and them she'd hated with a passion. It was Jason's friends who passed out in her house and dragged Jason off to weird places in the middle of the night, Jason's friends who called her mean names and poked fun at the way she looked, the way she talked and the way she smiled.
She stopped smiling when Jason stopped defending her.
And then, when Andre asked her absently whether something was wrong, she'd started smiling too brightly at school.
"We're not here to judge you," Beck's voice is quiet, even. A shadow of the strength he would have normally displayed, but they're broken now, and this will have to do. He wonders belatedly if that was why Jade was always so strong, if she'd sucked the steel out of his back and made it her own ferocity, leaving him with nothing but compromise.
"Like hell we aren't," Andre's still furious. He parks and turns, eyes almost glowing in the fading light. "We're your friends. Why would you not trust us with something like this?"
It's an excellent question. She only wished she knew the answer.