This episode is based on "Tori Tortures Teacher".
Enjoy!
...
"Are you ready to go to the play, Cat?" Jade demanded snippily. She was in a bad mood. Cat knew that she was not always good at guessing things, but she thought that Jade's crankiness might be tied to the fact that she and Beck had been fighting since that morning.
"Don't snap at her like that!" Beck growled at Jade. His tone made Cat's tummy feel like it was curling into a fetal position. It felt icky and scary. She squeaked. Both Jade and Beck paused at looked over at her.
"You're upsetting Cat," Jade said flatly. "Feel good about yourself now, Oliver?"
"Me? Me?! I'm not the one who started this all!" Beck was unable to stop from rising to the bait.
"Loud," Cat muttered, putting her hands up over her ears. Sometimes one-word answers were all she could create when she was feeling upset. She wanted to say more than loud. Beck and Jade arguing was more than loud. It was unsettling and scary and reminiscent and exhausting and mean. It was not the way things were supposed to be, but Cat did not know how to explain that, especially not while she felt so conflicted.
Jade was possessive of Cat, and now that she saw a way to use that against Beck, she drew Cat into involvement. "Hear that? You're being too loud for her and she thinks your arguments are stupid. Shut up."
"You shut up! She never said that."
They weren't stopping. Cat whined, a high-pitched whimper with nervous glances at the door. She just wanted to leave. Why had she come to Beck's after school when her friends had been bickering all day?
"And for another thing, you..." Beck started, but Cat interrupted.
"Quiet!"
She could not handle any more of this. Beck and Jade needed to say sorry, to kiss, to say sorry to her and then maybe give her a treat or hug to make it up to her...
Jade snatched her phone out of her purse and sent what was clearly a vicious text to Beck, judging by his offended expression three seconds later when he received a notification on his phone. A few seconds later, he texted Jade back.
Cat scowled. Did they think she wouldn't notice that they were fighting with their phones again, like they had at school earlier? Changing the medium of their argument did not take away the tight feeling that made her feel like her heart was being stretched so far apart between Beck and Jade, even though they were both right there.
"Let's just go," Beck grumbled, grabbing his car keys. Cat scrambled out of the trailer. She wanted out of the tight confines of frustration simmering around her like a pot of tension stew.
...
"No!" Cat repeated, stamping her foot for emphasis.
"But it's for Sikowitz! And the play will be so fun," Tori coaxed.
Cat shook her head stubbornly, refusing to look past Tori at Beck and Jade. Once they had arrived at the Vegas, she had gotten out and insisted that she was staying with Trina. Trina - who was older and tended to have pretty, shiny clothes and even shinier plans - was scheming up something and had said that she could use some help. Trina had been upset when Tori said she was leaving and couldn't help her. Perhaps Beck and Jade did not want Cat's help, but Trina would! She was staying with Trina, where her tender heart would be safe from being tread on by those who generally protected it most. Besides, she admired anything pretty and shiny, so Trina was a thing of wonder to Cat.
That was logical to Cat, and she was unsure why her other friends could not understand. She glanced up when Jade finally sighed, "Let her stay. We have to go now or we'll be late." Cat made eye contact with Jade and Beck for a second, trying to confirm her condemnation of their fighting. They looked guilty for a few seconds, but then Tori insisted they had to hurry to go meet up with Robbie and Andre in time, and they pulled away.
Cat marched inside to be an assistant to the self-made pizza chef-and-delivery-girl Trina. This was simpler than dealing with her emotions when there was emotional turmoil around her.
...
The next day, Cat had hoped Beck and Jade would be finished their fight. Only Jade was around at the auditioning table where they were sitting, helping Tori out with some half-baked-with-lots-of-love save-Sikowitz scheme. Since it was just Jade there, Cat was able to hold out hope that the argument had fizzled out while they were out last night.
Later they will be having grilled cheese, and they will invite me to come too, because it's my faovurite! And then when I come with Mr. Purples, they will say sorry they were so mean, arguing with each other in a mean argument way, not just a surface argument way. And they will say sorry they upset me when they argued. And then everything will be okay again.
That hope dissipated when Jade looked at a new text and let out a strangled "Auuuuugh!" She frowned, her syllables clipped. "Un. Believable. Okay." She started texting back furiously.
"Still fighting with Beck?" she asked curiously. Maybe it was just Jade getting annoyed at a telemarketer. Cat never even got annoyed at them - why would she be upset by a new potential friend calling her and not saying "wrong number" once they heard her voice? Still, she knew Jade did not like telemarketers.
Her stomach dropped a little when Jade answered, "Ooooh, yeah!" in that tone that meant she was seriously peeved, followed by a viciously satisfied "There."
"What'd you text him?" Cat asked.
Jade flipped her phone around so Cat could see.
Cat gasped and rested her hands on her cheeks, as if she were trying to block herself from hearing what she had already seen.
Had Jade really called Beck a "useless split-ends airhead with noodle muscles", along with a few other words that Cat had been told were bad?!
That's not very nice! They need to stop fighting! Cat thought.
She had considering telling Jade that she should just be nice, but her questions about the play production ended in her getting her mouth stuffed full of cereal, so she wisely decided that now might not be the time to ask Jade to change her mood toward Beck. Especially after a second round of cereal being shoved into her mouth after an innocent question about Tori's plan, Cat quieted down and waited for Jade to be in a better mood.
Jade and Beck were still arguing a couple hours later, but this time Cat was not the only one getting concerned by it.
"Oh, cut it out," Tori told them grumpily from where they were text fighting across the room. "I need you both to do a favour for me, and it'll probably go a lot more smoothly if you'd just have a decent conversation while doing it."
"Shut up, Vega!" Jade said fiercely.
"Yeah, butt out of it, Tori," Beck snapped. Tori had a moment of deja vu from when she and Andre tried to figure out what this whole stupid fight had been about originally, but this time she was not giving up.
"Sikowitz doesn't miss his girlfriend. He misses her bunny. So now we are going to get him a bunny so that he'll stop being so sad and go back to be the teacher we all love and miss," Tori forged forward.
Jade glared at Vega as if personally offended by the idea of love existing, but Tori - now very experienced in surviving Jade's bad moods - plunged on with her directions. "I can't go get the bunny myself because I have a piano lesson tonight, and then Trina and I are going to shop for our dresses to a police event that we're going to with our dad. But I've got it all lined up, and I need some people to go get the bunny for Sikowitz."
"I can do it," Jade offered. Was it normal for her to offer to run errands for someone else, especially Tori? Of course not! But this was different. It was involving a bunny, and Jade had a secret fondness for the soft, snuggly creatures.
"And I suppose you need me to drive you because your car is still broken down," Beck grumbled, while still reaching to check that his keys were in his pocket.
"Naturally," Jade snipped back at him, but it seemed more from habit than from actual animosity.
"Can I come too? I'm coming," Cat decided, not wanting to give them a chance to say "no". She was pleased when no one argued, and she skipped behind Beck and Jade as they walked to the car. Their relationship must be back to normal, right?
Wrong.
"Unlock the car, Oliver."
Not a good sign. Cat felt her throat tightening and began to feel a little dizzy.
"What? You think I can manage it after all the insults on my intelligence and physicality?" Beck asked sarcastically, smirking when Jade tried to open the door of the car again while it was still locked. She huffed angrily.
"Stop that, Oliver! Unlock this stupid car!"
Beck laughed harshly. "Temper, temper," he said teasingly with cross eyes while Jade looked ready to kick his car door.
Cat's breathing began to pick up a little.
"Stop it, Becker!" Jade yelled, regardless of anyone around them.
"Stop it, Jade!" he mimicked mockingly.
"No! Stop it BOTH of you!" Cat screeched from behind them, making them both spin around in surprise. She could feel panic rising up inside of her. She could handle them disagreeing. She could handle them arguing and she could even handle their text battle. But this was too far. She could not stand to watch them argue in a way that frightened her equally to what she experienced at home. Jade and Beck were her safe place, and now they were acting in a way that was more scary than comforting.
Jade processed that first and she bit her lip guiltily. "Um, Cat, I ... forgot you were right there." She went blurry in Cat's vision as her eyes pooled with tears. She tried to shake them out of her eyes, but gave up her attempt at stopping them when she felt Jade's arms wrap around her protectively.
"You ... were mean to ... Beck!" Cat sniffled, trying to squirm away from Jade's hug as she was still a bit upset at her.
"She didn't mean it," Beck said quietly, coming over and patting her back. Cat could feel him kiss the top of her head. Normally she liked when he did that. This time she squeaked unhappily.
"You. Were. Mean! Both of you!" she insisted, trying to elbow away from them. She was a little annoyed but simultaneously relieved when Jade did not let her get away. Hugging meant she was still loved, and holding someone meant that you were trying to keep them safe (at least that's what her parents said when they were doing "restraining holds" on her brother).
"Yeah, we were. But we fight sometimes. That's just how it it," Beck explained.
"We didn't mean it," Jade confirmed. Cat missed the look between the two, but when she finally pulled out of Jade's hug and looked at the two of them with clearer eyes, it was clear that Beck and Jade had apologized to one another in some silent form of communication.
"No more arguing?" Cat asked hopefully.
"We'll try not to argue any more than normal," Jade said, which was the best they could offer.
"Okay. Now do I get to hold the bunny when we get it?" Cat asked, wiping the residual tears off of her cheeks.
How could anyone say "no" to that?
Jade and Beck - freshly guilted - could not. And so all the way home from the rescue, Cat held the bunny in her lap and basked in the after-storm Beck and Jade who were getting along as well as if they had never even heard the word "argue" in the entire lives.
It would not last forever, but the break was very appreciated by an sensitive Cat. And perhaps her small intervention helped Beck and Jade remember that whenever "little" ears (if only in developmental age rather than literal) were listening, they needed to tone done their fights.
