Hello!
I'm back with another chapter. This is such a fun story for me. I hope to keep writing ahead so that I can update regularly. We shall see how that goes! Feel free to favourite or follow so that you'll know when I update, and comment to let me know what you like, what you don't like, any typos you spot, ideas for other chapters, etc..
Thank you to Boris Yeltsin who commented on the last chapter. :) It's great to know that someone else enjoyed. :)
!Edit!: I wanted to say that although this chapter is based on episode 3 "Stage Fighting", a great "Mommy Jade" moment idea that I had was of her rescuing Cat from the railing in episode 2 "The Bird Scene" when Tori handcuffs her there in hopes of gaining information about the "Bird Scene". I covered that episode in "I Only Need One Shot", which is why I am skipping from episode 1 to 3, but you can read that idea in the other story. :)
...
Jade glared at her reflection in the girls bathroom. Thanks to some dumb water fight that happened at the table behind them at lunch, her carefully created "black eye" was now nothing more than a mess of running makeup trickling down her cheeks. Her face was flushed with both embarrassment and anger at being caught by Andre. She had tried to intimidate him but he had immediately ran off, yelling for Tori. Jade had tried to chase him down and stop him, but he escaped and she had dashed for the bathroom before the entire school could see the results of her subterfuge.
Jade had locked the door as she went into the bathroom. She had to decide how to play this. Could she convince everyone that Andre was lying and that she truly did have a black eye? Probably not, she acknowledged peevishly. With Tori's initial insistence that she had not hit her and Andre's good reputation, she knew that people were going to believe him.
Someone rattled the doorknob.
"Hey! It's locked!"
"It's out of order!" Jade hollered back harshly.
Either the girl recognized Jade's voice and no longer wanted in, or she truly bought that the room was locked for legitimate reasons. There was no more rattling.
At least there wasn't from the door. Jade heard a toilet flush and held a piece of paper towel up to her eye to hide the mess as she heard the rattle of someone opening the latch in one of the stalls. She had apparently missed that someone was still in the room when she stormed in. If she channeled all her remaining patience for the week, she could handle being in proximity to someone for about thirty seconds tops. Hopefully the person would wash their hands quickly.
Her heart sank as she saw Cat skip toward the sinks.
Of all the kids at the school, it just has to be her in here.
Cat paused and looked at Jade. It was inevitable. "Ooh, Jade!"
"Not in the mood to talk, Cat," Jade grumbled between gritted teeth.
Cat helped herself to far more foamy soap than was necessary, just to blow on it and have the bubbles fly everywhere - including onto Jade's face. While anyone else might have started begging for Jade's forgiveness - just as the girl had earlier who had accidentally thrown water into Jade's face - Cat gigged.
"Now you look like a snowman! Or a snowgirl, 'cause you're a girl!" Cat beamed.
"Shut up and wash your hands properly," Jade grumbled, without much animosity. She was desperate to get Cat out of the bathroom.
Cat washed her hands - helping herself to two more squirts of soap through the process - and then slowly dried her hands, meticulously dabbing every square inch of her hands.
"Hurrrry upppp, Caaat!" Jade dragged out the words in desperation.
Cat looked up at her, confused.
"Why are you upset, Jade?"
"No reason," Jade lied, impatiently gesturing to the door. "OUT, Cat."
Cat bit her lip. "But I want to keep you company!"
"I don't need company. I am ..."
"Your eye! It got hurt more and now it's bleeding purple blood, Jade!"
Jade hesitated. She could just go with it and let Cat think that she was hurt again. It would be easy to come up with a story that the little redhead would believe.
But then ... she was bound to hear about it at some point. From the way her phone was insistently buzzing in her back pocket, she figured that Beck had heard now and was trying to get in touch with her to scold her for yet another lapse into minor sociopathy. It would be better to tell Cat herself, rather than have her learn about it elsewhere and then come to her with big brown puppy dog eyes filled with broken trust.
"It's makeup," she admitted quietly.
"Where?"
Jade set down the piece of paper towel. Cat's mouth turned into a small "o" as she stared at Jade's eye that was now clearly not bruised.
"I ... lied about it. It was all acting," she admitted.
She expected a look of innocent censure and so Jade was surprised when Cat giggled and eagerly examined her eye.
"That looks fun! I want to try too. Um ... I'll say ... Robbie hit me with ... a can of soda!" Cat giggled, pulling out her makeup pouch and beaming at herself in the mirror.
"Cat!" Jade gasped. "You can't ... that's ..."
"What?" Cat asked, pulling out a small palette of purple eye shadows.
"Cat, you can't pretend to be hit by Robbie. That could get him into a lot of trouble!"
"But if you did it with pretending to be hit by Tori, then I can do it! It's got to be fun! I love fun things," Cat said eagerly.
"But, Cat, Robbie's one of your best friends! If you say he hit you, you could get in a TON of trouble!" Jade repeated, trying to get her point across.
"But you did it to Tori."
"I don't like Tori. We're not friends so it's not the same," Jade said.
"So... I can say someone who isn't my friend hit me?" Cat asked.
"Noooo," Jade groaned. She took Cat by the shoulders and turned her toward her and made her look her in the eyes. "Cat, you ... can't copy me in this, okay?"
"Why..."
"Because ..." Jade ducked her face away and looked down at the tips of her boots. "Itwaswrong."
Cat tilted her head to the side, adorably confused.
"It was wrong, okay?! I shouldn't have done it and I shouldn't have gotten Tori in trouble and so you can't copy me."
The words were said with great personal sacrifice of Jade's pride, but if there was anyone worth sacrificing it for, it was Cat. She had so little common sense that anything that could potentially hamper what she did have could not be tolerated.
"Are you going to say sorry to her?" Cat asked curiously.
"Um..."
"'Cause when you do something wrong, you're supposed to say 'sorry'. That's what my mom always says and she's really smart! And also, Beck told me that one time when I hurt Robbie's feelings by accident, and you care what Beck says," Cat said.
Jade grimaced a little at the mention of her boyfriend. Yeah, he wasn't going to be too happy about this. She ignored her vibrating phone. She would be trying to avoid Beck as much as humanly possible today. Because as annoying as it was to admit it, Cat was right - she did care about what he said, and what he was going to say about this was not going to be nice.
"You should probably say sorry to Tori," Cat settled on, beaming proudly at having figured out the situation.
Jade looked around the restroom, making sure that no one else was going to emerge from the stalls before she reluctantly said, "I suppose ... I could try to make things ... 'right' with Tori. But you've got to promise me that you won't give yourself a makeup black eye and say that someone else did it. Promise me that, Cat!"
"Kay kay!" Cat said sweetly, putting her makeup back in her bag. She wandered to the bathroom door happily.
Jade finished wiping off the trickling makeup and followed a lot less happily. She was not pleased with being conscientious, but she had to do it - for Cat's sake more than for her own.
Now, to avoid Beck until he had a brain injury that removed all memory of this debacle from his brain...
...
