Chapter #23 - And The Golden Raspberry Goes To...
Over the years, Jade had found many hiding places to avoid eating lunch at the Asphalt Cafe. She had her reasons - often relating to Beck, Robbie, Trina, or more recently the younger of the Vega sisters. And sure, she had no qualms about eating alone, but sometimes she could do without people trying to talk to her, or the constant buzzing of Sinjin, who was unfortunately never too distant from her.
At present, she was sat in the make up room with Cat, who sometimes joined her in these lunch evasions. Jade hadn't asked her to come, but she hadn't told her to go away, which Cat decided was as good as an invitation, so she'd settled herself in the seat next to her friend, enjoying a burrito as Jade picked indiscriminately at her wilted salad.
"How come you didn't come to Uptown Downtown last night?" Cat asked, breaking the silence. Sometimes they sat in complete noiselessness, which was okay, if not exactly what Cat enjoyed. Jade didn't always want to talk, or listen.
"I had a baby to feed, burp and put to bed, Cat." Jade replied monotonously.
"Oh, of course." Cat sighed at the mention of Toby. "Well, it was really good. Beck did a great job."
"He's a good actor." Said Jade. "He'll be happy you think that though."
"Andre was so good in the band too! I loved all the songs!" Cat smiled, remembering the upbeat tunes she had enjoyed the night before.
"That's good. Were you not upset that you weren't in it yourself?"
"Only a little bit because it was so good that I forgot that. Oh and Tori was amazing! She sang so well and she and Beck acted so well together!" Cat beamed.
"Did they now?" Jade asked, her tone of voice slightly betraying the venom behind the question.
"Yeah." Cat replied obliviously. "They did such a good job considering they're not a real couple."
"Hmm. Good to know." Jade nodded.
"Oh, I nearly forgot, I was going to ask you-" Cat began.
"I already said I'm not modelling for your stupid make up project." Jade groaned.
"That wasn't what I was going to ask. Anyway, I've got Tori to do that now. I-"
"Before the performance? She's going to do the play as a zombie is she?" Jade smirked.
"No, silly, she's coming after the performance. She wouldn't be able to play Penny if she looked like a zombie." Cat shook her head.
Behind her eyes, the cogs in Jade's brain were whirring manically. "No, she wouldn't."
"Unless they did a zombie version. That would be cool. I would watch a movie about that. Or if they were werewolves. Or vampires. Hey, did you watch Twilight?" Cat rambled.
"Do you want a soda?" Jade asked, completely ignoring Cat's question.
"Sure." Cat grinned, quickly abandoning her initial train of thought.
"Cool. Here's two dollars." Jade replied, passing the girl the money. "Get me a cherry coke and whatever you want for yourself."
"Thanks Jade!" And with that, the girl was gone, in a flash of flowery perfume and red hair.
Jade sighed. She was going to have to work a bit harder with Cat if she wanted her friend to be able to fend for herself. Although, she tried to ignore the fact that she was taking advantage of this herself.
Her hand was on the zipper of Cat's makeup bag before she could even think about what she was doing. Then it was on the glue inside, and before she knew it there was a tube of grizzly glue nestled in amongst the fruity, colourful products within the bag. She hadn't even realised that she'd noticed the glue earlier, but she'd known exactly where to find it when she needed it. Her deviousness even scared herself sometimes.
"They didn't have any cherry coke but I bought a cherryade and a coke so you can pick yours and I can have the other." Cat explained as she returned to the room. Jade hastily sat up, drawing herself away from the makeup bag.
"Thanks Cat." She replied, retrieving the cherryade from her friend's outstretched hand and cracking it open. In turn, Cat gleefully popped the seal on her own can, crashing it against Jade's before taking a sip.
Jade laughed lightly. "Cheers."
What Jade had not been anticipating is that her in-extensively thought-out plan would result in more work for her. Or that it would lead to an earful of the most irritating sound in the world: Cat's whining.
"Please can you drive me to Bakersfield? Please!"
Her plan had otherwise worked perfectly: Cat had used the grizzly glue instead of her trusty makeup glue, and now, seventeen hours later, Tori's face was a terrifying grey mess. The show surely couldn't go on.
"Cat, I'm too busy for a four hour round trip, get someone else to take you."
"Everyone else is in the play! And Trina said she would take me but then she went off to play mini golf with Mark McCallan!"
Mark McCallan? Wow, Jade had expected better taste from him.
"Please Jade, I promised Tori I would go to Bakersfield to get her the solvent to take off the makeup. She's going to hate me otherwise!"
"She's not going to hate you, Cat."
"Yes she will! Sofia Michelle is coming and Tori's going to have to perform looking like a zombie!"
Of course the Sofia Michelle was coming to watch the play that Tori got the lead in. Of course. "Someone else can play the part then. I'm sure she has an understudy."
"No, she doesn't, which is why I have to go now!"
"I know her lines. I've helped Beck rehearse loads."
"If you play Penny then everyone will know I messed up and let Tori down. Please Jade." Cat begged, her eyes brimming with water.
Jade's mind filled with images of the play being wiped out by Cat's tsunami of tears, Vega's sickly smile getting wiped away as she was sucked into the whirlwind, and Beck's hair finding itself looking imperfect for once, as the flood of tears - Cat's tears - poured over it. Damn it.
"Ugh, fine, we'll go to fucking Bakersfield." Jade sighed. Sometimes she hated having a conscience.
"Yay!" Cat squealed, jumping at Jade and pulling her into a tight hug, which the girl immediately wrestled out of.
"No hugs, no singing, no licking the air like you're a dog, got it?"
"What about-"
"No licking the air like you're a dog, or a cat, or your brother when he forgets to take his medicine. No licking the air full stop, now get in the car."
"Okay." Cat squeaked, and hurriedly threw herself into the passenger seat as Jade started the engine.
Half an hour later, with Toby now in tow, the pair were on the highway with the radio blaring out a song that Jade could just about accept as music. Cat had so far managed to keep her head inside the vehicle and, save for the occasional comment about her brother, behave herself. The pair were making good progress, despite Jade's complete lack of desire to help Tori remove the zombie makeup from her face. She honestly thought it suited her. It made a change from the explosion of blush she usually wore.
"This is so fun, it's like a mini roadtrip!" Cat squealed from the passenger seat.
"Yeah, if I went on a roadtrip with a squeaky redheaded puppy."
Cat giggled for a moment before noticing the colour of her own hair and quietening. She shrunk in on herself, like she seemed to be doing a lot these days, focusing on her inner thoughts rather than the environment around her. Dr Colman had said that it was good for her to have a moment to think, rather than hyperfocusing on certain things, but she wasn't sure if she agreed. These 'moments' were never anything but worries - she preferred instead to flit between obsessions and distractions. If she was thinking about an episode of Sesame Street or whether the world contained more windows or doors, she couldn't be thinking about her brother's screams from the previous evening, or the last time that her parents had asked her how she was.
The trees lining the highway flickered in and out of her vision, and she decided that they were preferable to fill her head. She wondered how many leaves they each contained and how long they stayed clinging onto the branches before giving up and falling helplessly to the floor. Maybe she was a tree in a previous life.
Approximately 7236 trees, 3428 cars and 159 mostly silent minutes later, the pair were back in the car, facing the opposite direction this time, with the makeup solvent lying securely in Cat's lap.
Beside Cat, Jade flexed her fingers on the steering wheel. Cat could sense her frustration, as much as she sought to deny it. She liked Jade much better when she wasn't so stressed all the time - it made her mean. And sure, Jade was always mean, but this was different. Normally Jade was mean to be funny, or brutally honest, or purely because she enjoyed it. Now, it seemed as though she was mean because she couldn't manage any other emotion.
Cat thought she might try to cheer her friend up with a lighthearted question.
"Hey Jade, is it normal to sleep in jeans every night?"
Jade's eyes glanced at Cat from the side but her head didn't turn. "No, not really." She sighed.
"Oh, cause my brother keeps doing that." Cat replied lightly.
"Why?" Jade asked, against her better nature. Cat's stories swung like a pendulum between the very concerning and the incredibly stupid, but this nature wasn't always obvious from the outset. Jade's decision whether to pry or ignore tended to be based on her present tolerance for idiocy. Which for the past three months had been at record low levels.
"I don't know. My parents try to get him to put his jammies on but he just screams and screams and eventually they just leave him so he just goes to sleep in the clothes that he's been wearing that day."
"Well that's... something." Jade said, shaking her head.
"Yeah. I think it would be really uncomfortable but I don't say anything because if they don't let him then he'll just scream for hours and I won't get any sleep."
Jade raised an eyebrow. Cat's brother Marco tended to feature prominently in her stories, never for good reasons. Jade had had little interaction with him over the years, mainly due to her conscious avoidance of the Valentine household, perhaps the only one to challenge her own for dysfunction, but she had seen enough of him to know that his existence was not good for Cat, no matter her friend's love for him. There was a reason that, despite her detestation of her own family, she had rarely slept over at Cat's.
"That's not good Cat. You need your sleep." Jade spoke, attempting to turn the drivel into some kind of teaching moment for her friend. If she'd looked to her side she would've seen Cat beaming.
"He doesn't mean it though. He can't help feeling sad and angry."
"Angry?" Jade enquired, glancing at her friend as the pendulum began to move.
"Yeah. Only sometimes though. Like when there are too many vegetables on his plate, or if the doorbell rings more than once a day."
"They don't sound like regular things to be angry about, Cat." Jade said, her voice flecked with concern.
"I don't know. One time, my cousin Jesse chased these little Girl Scouts for three blocks because they rang his doorbell too many times."
"Okay, I'll rephrase. They don't sound like regular things for people outside your family to be angry about." Jade said, with a roll of her eyes. Both Jesse Sr. and Jr. also featured prominently in Cat's stories. However, whilst Marco had medically diagnosed psychological problems, she was pretty sure that the other pair were simply slightly crazed and incredibly southern Rednecks whose actions were largely inspired by an incessant desire to escape government surveillance. Why this was so important to them, she really did not want to know.
"Marco doesn't like Girl Scouts either. He always shouts out the window when he sees them outside. One time he-"
"Yeah I don't wanna know how your brother traumatised some nine-year-olds, Cat. He's messed up, I get it." Jade said, cutting Cat off. The pendulum had settled down and the story was becoming a ramble. She really just couldn't be bothered with one more buzz in her ear today.
For Cat, however, this felt momentous. Jade never usually shut down her stories, regardless of how much she could tell that her daunting friend wasn't actually interested. In this particular story, her brother had shouted at the girls that they were demons who had to go away and Cat had run after them to apologise and buy their cookies, but Marco had seen and had berated her for speaking to the girls. She'd wanted to ask Jade if she'd done the right thing. Sometimes it could be so hard to know.
The car descended into silence once again, save for the occasional babble from the baby in the back. Without this, Cat would've forgotten he was there. It's not like he really added anything to the atmosphere, so she wasn't really sure why Jade insisted on spending every free moment with him.
"Ooh, look a Freezy Queen!" Cat cried, pointing at the ice cream parlour in the distance. "Jade can we go, please please please?" She begged.
"No, we have to get back to school. Tori needs the solvent, remember."
"You don't even like Tori." Cat pouted.
"True." Jade nodded. "But I also don't like spending my evenings driving for four hours up and down the highway when I have four pieces of homework to catch up on and a temperamental baby to feed, bathe and put to bed."
"Maybe tomorrow then?" She suggested hopefully.
"What?"
"We could go to Freezy Queen tomorrow, or Taco Bell, or Jet Brew? Or somewhere else - you can choose."
"Cat, I can't." Jade replied, barely masking her frustration. "Everything I just said then, I have to do tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that until pretty much the end of time. I don't get days off, okay?"
"Surely you have some time. Toby can come with us."
"He would just cry until we got kicked out, and I can't exactly get my boobs out in the middle of Jet Brew."
"You manage it at school."
"Yeah, because I spend every other waking hour of my life with breast pumps attached to my chest. Do you think that's fun?"
"I'm just saying, it's possible."
"Yeah well I don't have an endless supply of milk, do I, and I'm not going to waste it on fucking Freezy Queen."
Cat sighed and leant against the car window. No arguing with that.
Jade couldn't help but feel the guilt gnaw at her as her best friend stared off into the distance from the passenger seat. It wasn't Cat's fault that she didn't understand how Toby was a full-time job, but it didn't make that any less irritating.
"I'm sorry, I just have no time - for anything." Jade affirmed. "It's not just you."
Cat didn't reply, and in some way Jade thought that that was probably worse. Fingers tapping restlessly on the steering wheel, she returned her attention to the highway ahead - better to avoid crushing Cat physically as well as emotionally.
The car was quiet for the next few miles of the journey. The air was heavy with untold stories and unanswered questions. Cat stared out of the window, watching the road signs flick past like a kineograph. She found that once one was behind her, she struggled to remember what it had said. All from the past was seemingly therefore a non-entity; if it wasn't remembered, did it truly exist? She shot a side glance at Jade, noting her position in the car next to Cat. Their friendship existed so long as she could see her, be next to her. She could only hope that Jade felt the same.
Dr Colman had told her to find a task to do when she felt stressed. Something simple and structured. Cat had taken to reciting the states in alphabetical order.
"Alabama... Alaska..."
Jade briefly looked at Cat but gritted back any comment. She knew that it was one of the illustrious Dr Colman's techniques, and she thought better than to comment on the irritation of it. Sometimes, on better days, she would even join in. Cat always got stuck around the Ms.
"...Connecticut... Delaware..."
Cat knew that Jade was ignoring her. But she could hear the words, that much she knew. And that meant something. They were still connected in some way.
"...Idaho... Illinois..."
Jade was estimating what time she might get home. It would be late, of course, but god, when did 8:30 become late for her? It would put Toby's bedtime out of whack, for sure, unless she skipped his bath time, but she'd already missed it the previous evening, and it had been so hot during the day...
"...Louisiana... Maine... Mad- Mas- M-" Cat began to stumble.
Jade glanced over.
Cat continued to stutter over the next state. She could see Jade looking over, tempted to help, wanting to-
A low trill interrupted Cat's thoughts, and she looked over at the dash, where the word 'Mother' had popped up on the screen.
"Ugh, my mom's calling, be quiet for a minute." Jade said.
"I can do that. Sometimes, when my brother locks me in my closet during hide and seek-" Cat began, but quickly stopped talking as Jade shot her a glare.
"Maryland." Cat whispered under her breath. She'd known it all along.
"Yes." Was Jade's brusque greeting as she accepted the call. Cat had never quite grown used to the pair's loveless relationship.
"Where are you, Jade?"
"Driving."
"I asked where you are, not what you're doing."
"I-5. Coming up to Frazier Park."
"Frazier Park- what- Jade, what on earth are you doing there?"
"Driving Cat. She needed to go to Bakersfield."
"What? Why would you agree to that? Did you forget that you were supposed to babysit Luke tonight? God, do you just expect everyone else to drop what they're doing to accommodate your impulses? You are so goddamn irresponsible Jade - I am sick and tired of it."
Jade swore under her breath. She'd completely forgotten she'd agreed to look after her little brother whilst her mom and David went to dinner. Well, 'agreed' was a slight stretch - it was one of the many things her mother had forced her to agree to in return for Toby's daycare fees and her continued rent-free residence of her room.
"I forgot, okay? I didn't do it on purpose. Can't Amber watch him?"
"You forgot?" Her mom scoffed over the line. "Well quite frankly that's not good enough, Jade. And no, Amber can't - she's going out, which is what David and I should be doing, but instead we'll have to stay here with Luke. Weeks I've looked forward to this Jade, weeks."
"Can't you just leave him on his own? You used to leave me when I was eight." Jade sighed. She cursed herself for forgetting - it was just another addition to the mountain of reasons David had to convince her mother to kick her out.
"And look what that led to." Katherine spat down the line, and Jade could almost feel the disgust in her tone pricking her skin.
She should've bitten back. She should've hurled back at her mother all the reasons that had contributed to her teenage motherhood, all the blame that Katherine tried to shift from herself surrounding the issue.
But, for once, Jade was scared. For so long she'd been able to speak without fear of the consequences. She would bark and fearlessly anticipate the bite of the rebuttal, because there wasn't anything she hadn't already heard. She had thick skin, and she one more scar upon its patchwork didn't make a difference to her.
But now there was something else on the line. Someone else. And Toby couldn't, wouldn't, suffer due to her recklessness.
"Yeah, got it." She replied, defeated. "I'm sorry, I'll get there as soon as possible."
"Don't even bother. I've been looking forward to a high-quality two hour dinner for weeks, not a 30 minute all you can eat buffet. I hope Bakersfield was worth it."
And with that Katherine West hung up the phone.
Cat nervously looked over at her friend. If it had been her, she thought that tear tracks would already be making their way down her cheeks; as it was, her vision was starting to blur just from watching the exchange. But Jade's face was stony and dry, her eyes fixed forward on the road and her jaw rippling slightly as she gritted her teeth.
Cat thought that Katherine seemed the meaner of the Wests.
"Are you okay?" She asked tentatively.
"Fine." Jade replied, her eyes not leaving the road.
They drove the rest of the way in silence.
When the thick black letters of the Hollywood Arts sign came into focus, Cat was no longer even excited to save the day, or even watch the play. She remained in the passenger seat, stuck between her task and the feeling that it would be wrong to get out of the car without somehow making the most of the time spent with Jade.
Unfortunately, her driver wasn't quite on the same page. "Well?"
Cat turned her head and glanced over.
"We're here Cat, get out."
"Do you want to come?" Cat asked hopefully. After all, Jade's boyfriend was in the play. She would surely want to watch it too.
"No, Cat, didn't you hear? I have to babysit." Jade snapped.
"But your mom said-"
"No buts, I have to go home." Jade growled.
Reluctantly, Cat nodded, and swung herself out of the door, solvent in hand. The door had barely shut before Jade was already speeding off, no doubt towards her angry mother. Cat sighed as she loped off in the opposite direction, towards the school and her other friends. She could almost feel the ripping binds between herself and her best friend.
Jade was asleep when Beck got in. At least, she was, until he clumsily entered the room, with loud handprints on doors and knees knocking into drawers. She didn't know why he'd bothered to come.
Beck, on the other hand, was expecting a much more pleased expression than the disgruntled one which received him. Cat had told him that Jade didn't seem to be in the best of moods so he'd taken it upon himself to go back to hers without even being requested, to share some of the night workload. That is, after he'd spent a socially acceptable amount of time at the cast afterparty - for appearances, of course.
"Hey." He whispered as he shuffled to her side. His voice was slightly strained and Jade could smell the alcohol on his breath and clothes.
"Hey." She replied. If she wanted to drink alcohol, she would have to 'pump and dump'. Wasted labour. She didn't have the energy for that.
"How was Bakersfield?" He smirked, and she could've punched him.
"Fine. He was good." She replied, without sentiment. Her eyelids were so heavy. She just wanted Beck to leave.
"You should've come to the play."
"I couldn't."
"Sure you could've." Beck jibed.
"No, I couldn't." Jade replied firmly.
Beck nodded warily. "Okay, you couldn't." He turned away and began to undress. "You missed out though. We met Sofia Michelle after - she's so cool." He said, T-shirt halfway off his neck.
"Mmm." Jade replied noncommittally. What Beck didn't seem to realise was that these days it was rarer to point out to her what she was experiencing rather than what she was missing out on.
"She invited us to this workshop thing next week, too." Beck continued as he changed. At this, Jade's ears pricked up.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah, it's really cool." Beck said, lifted by Jade's sudden interest. "It's with actual people in the industry and it could get me some really good connections for the future."
Me.
"Sounds cool. Who'd she invite?"
"Just everyone that was around her at the end. Me, Tori, Andre, Robbie, Sinjin... oh, and Cat as well."
Great. She was now getting replaced by Sinjin.
Suddenly, she was overcome with a wave of anger. Here was Beck, abs out, 100 dollar smile, getting parts in plays, and modelling shoots and workshops with broadway playwrights, whilst she was wondering whether she'd get time the follow day to deep clean vomit off her baby's onesies.
She turned away from Beck's grin and nestled into the pillows, closing her eyes against him, even if her ears could not do the same.
"I missed having you in the audience." Beck said, unsuccessfully trying to reengage her.
When she didn't reply, he silently finished getting changed and crawled into bed beside her. Feeling his weight creaking atop the mattress springs, she turned around once more, to avoid facing him and his hot, spirit-tinged breath.
He threw a heavy arm over her body, and she silently wondered when she had grown this urge to throw it off and push away from him. She wondered just how far that statement reached.
Behind her, Beck was already snoring quietly, his consciousness dwindling as soon as his head hit the pillow, it seemed. Jade couldn't relate - she'd always been a heavy sleeper, yet these days she found it increasingly difficult to get to sleep, or to fall back into slumber once waking. She opened her eyes to glance at the baby in the crib by her beside, but he was sound asleep just like his father. If she listened carefully, she could just about make out the gentle sounds of his breathing.
If she was awake she could hear him breathing.
If she was asleep she could do nothing.