Between Andre wanting to build on their their song at every opportunity, Cat's Wednesday evening singing classes, Jade's film shoots, Cat's extra maths classes over lunch (she was really terrified she would fail), & the other copious amounts of classwork they had- Jade and Cat had barely seen each other over the last two weeks. Of course, the one evening they had managed to both managed to get free was also the same day that Jade was being forced to go see her grandmother.
"Why couldn't she turn 90 some other day." Jade grumbled across the phone to her girlfriend as she drove. "Selfie B-"
"Swears!" Cat interrupted, covering her ears, which didn't do anything as she'd forgotten her phone was connected to earphones- so all she'd done was push them into her ears more. "Owie." She mumbled, slumping back down on her bed and kicking away the maths book she was working on. She'd spent the best part of an hour trying desperately to work out who on earth Pythagoras was and why everyone cared about his theorem. Maths was a subject she would never get her head around, but she couldn't fail another year of it so she was really trying hard to learn it all this time.
"How's the maths?" Jade asked, the sound of her car indicator ticking away in the background.
"Good." Cat lied. "I think I deserve an ice cream break." She decided, not lying. She did deserve an ice-cream break, maybe not because she'd gotten particularly far through the questions, just because she wanted one.
"How many questions have you done?" Jade asked, knowing that Cat wasn't really the most disaplined when it came to treats.
"All of them!" Cat lied, slipping her phone into her back pocket and jumping off her bed.
"How many really?"
"3." She pouted
"Sit back down." Jade commanded.
"Fineee." Cat pouted again, continuing to walk out of her bedroom anyway. What Jadey didn't know couldn't hurt her.
"Was that your bedroom door unlocking?" Jade pressed, hearing through Cat's fib.
"I was locking it back up- I'm still inside." Cat continued to lie, walking down the stairs. "Lalalala I'm in my bedroom."
"Cat-" Jade continued.
"Let me have my ice cream alright!" She yelled, half joking half annoyed that Jade could always see, or hear, straight through her falsehoods.
"Who're you yelling at?!" Mateo's voice suddenly joined from downstairs. He jumped up from the table where he was working on a puzzle and galloped over to his sister. His voice rose in pitch, eyes wide with a mixture of fear and frustration. "You know you shouldn't do that... It's… it's not right. People shouldn't talk to nobody."
Cat gave him a gentle smile, trying to keep the calm she knew he needed to see. "Matteo, I'm not talking to myself," she explained as she reached the final step down. "I'm talking to Jade."
"Jade? When did Jade get here? Jade's not here!" Matteo said, all at once, catching up to Cat.
"I'm on the phone with her." She explained, pointing to her earplugs.
"No, no thats- I know what phones are you're not on the phone." He retorted, eyes narrowing, confusion etched on his face. He was having a real bad problem with processing recently. He knew what phones were and he knew that earplugs could be used to listen to phones, but he couldn't connect the dots between things anymore. He was also constantly on edge, a symptom which told everyone that his meds would need to be updated soon. "It looks like you're just... talking to yourself," he muttered, a hint of agitation slipping into his voice.
"I'm not, I promise," Cat reassured gently. "It's like magic string that lets me hear her voice through my ears." she explained, pulling her phone out of her pocket to show Jade's name and icon on it. Jade was sat silently on the other end, just listening into how Cat and Matteo interacted. It was just one of those curiousity moments for her, hearing what it was like to be a fly on the wall in Cat's life without her physical presence changing things.
Matteo glanced at the device suspiciously. He still looked unsettled but seemed to accept her answer reluctantly. Then she got a text and it buzzed on her hand. Matteo's confusion escalated in an instant to fear. Without warning, he lunged forward, grabbing Cat's phone out of her hand and hurled it against the far wall. It hit with a loud crack, then clattered to the floor next to the table, the screen fractured into spider-web cracks, earphones lay limply attached to it.
"Matteo!" Cat gasped, shock and frustration mingling in her voice as she stared at her now-broken phone. She took a calming breath, realising he was just as startled as she was by his own action, wide-eyed and hands clenched in tense fists.
"I told you," he said, voice shaking. "I told you to stop… talking to yourself like that!" His expression wavered between panic and fear.
Cat steadied herself, choosing patience over anger. "Matteo, it's just a phone. I wasn't talking to myself—I was talking to Jade, just... through the earbuds, okay?" She softened her tone, hoping to ground him. "It's just technology. I know it's confusing."
"They all get angry at me when I talked to myself!" Matteo yelled suddenly, his brain clouded, eyes narrow and jaw clenched. This was the kind of anger Matteo displayed every once in a blue moon, the kind that happened after months of trapped emotions coming out at once. Cat knew better than to stick around for it.
"DAD!" She called out, turning to go get her phone and leave the room. "DAD!" She called out again, she knew he was home but not sure why he wasn't watching over Matty.
As Cat bent down to retrieve her phone from where it had skittered across the floor, Matteo's movement behind caught her eye. She hadn't realised he'd followed her over, typically his footsteps were too loud to be ignored. She barely had time to process the look on his face before he grabbed one of the wooden chairs.
In that moment, she felt her stomach twist with a cold, creeping dread, her instincts screaming at her to get up, to move. But before she could react, he swung the chair down, and pain exploded through her back. The force of the impact caused a primal scream to leave her, a sound she didn't know she could even produce. It had a raw intensity to it that told of urgency, of desperate need, as she was sent crashing to the floor. She could feel the throbbing ache spreading, a deep, pulsing agony radiating through her spine and shoulders as she lay there, stunned and gasping.
Cat tried to push herself up, her hands weakly clawing at the floor, but the pain was relentless. It felt like her body had betrayed her, locking her muscles in place. She could hear Matteo breathing heavily above her, his shadow looming, and her mind scrambled for some way to defuse the situation—to calm him down somehow.
"Matteo… please…" she managed to gasp, her voice barely more than a whisper. She could only hope he'd somehow snap out of it, that he'd realised what he'd done and the logical Matty would kick back in. But with each new round of meds the logical Matty was buried further and further down.
He didn't stop. Before she could even brace herself, his foot came down hard on her side, striking her ribcage with brutal force. Cat heard a sickening crack that seemed to echo in her head. An intense, piercing pain shot through her chest, her breath hitching as she struggled to breathe. Each gasp was shallow, sharp, and agonising, her rib stabbing every time she tried to inhale.
Fighting against the urge to scream again, she curled into herself, desperately hoping her dad would hear the commotion and come in to help. The room felt distorted, the edges of her vision blurring as tears pricked at her eyes. Each heartbeat seemed to reverberate painfully against her definitely broken rib, the rhythmic pounding in sync with the waves of pain rolling over her.
Now Matteo was just yelling, arms flailed as he was trying to make sense of what he'd done. He grabbed his own hair and started pulling it hard, crying out in pain as he continued to inflict it on himself.
It was then that she heard her dad's footsteps, hurried and panicked, racing down the stairs. Relief washed over her, though the fear lingered in her chest. As his feet landed firmly on the floor, his face paling as he took in the scene. In an instant, he lunged toward Matteo, wrestling him down to the floor, his voice steely yet controlled as he held him there.
"Matteo, you need to stop!" he said, his voice strained as he struggled to keep Matteo restrained. "Look at me. It's over, okay? Calm down." He managed to keep his voice steady, though Cat could see the strain in his expression.
Her dad glanced up at her, his face twisted in concern and guilt. "Cat, call for help. You need to call the police."
Cat's hands shook as she tried to push herself up, but the pain was too overwhelming. Breathing in shallow, quick gasps, she reached for her phone with trembling fingers, each inch an agonising effort as she stretched out toward where it had fallen. Her vision swam, and the cracked phone screen seemed to blur as she clutched it in her hand, struggling to focus.
Through the shattered glass, all she could make out was shapes- the call with Jade was still active. She must have heard everything. Her thumb hovered over the screen, but her grip loosened as the pain and exhaustion began to claim her. It was as if the weight of everything pressed down on her all at once—the shock, the fear, the intense, throbbing pain in her side.
She could barely hold on, her fingers slipping from the phone as her strength gave way. Her body felt heavy, her mind drifting into a fog as her surroundings faded. The last thing she remembered was her head hitting the cold floor again as her body gave in, her Dad's voice growing distant as she finally succumbed to the pain, letting herself fall into the dark silence.
Jade sat frozen in her car, her grip on the steering wheel turning her knuckles white as she stared at the glowing call icon on her phone. She'd long since pulled the car over, live traffic still wizzing past at speed. She'd barely been able to piece together what was happening before the tension rose, Cat's voice turning small and strained as she tried to reason with her brother. And then she'd heard the bang of what she assumed had to be Cat's phone being thrown against a wall, and then a few moments later a yell for her dad. Then there was a scream. An awful blood curling scream. Then the chaos of muffled voices and hurried footsteps. It felt surreal, like she was listening in on one of her nightmares, the pit in her stomach growing heavier with each passing second.
Every part of her wanted to do something, to race over to Cat's house and protect her, to break through that chaos and just be there. But the distance felt insurmountable, and every attempt to speak just choked in her throat, her hands clenching helplessly as she tried to keep listening. Her mind raced, piecing together a mental scene more horrific than anything she'd ever thought up before, as the reality of it all sank in deeper.
"Cat…?" Jade whispered, hoping for a response, hoping that maybe, somehow, Cat would pick up the phone and tell her it was just a mistake, some awful misunderstanding. But nothing came back. Desperation clawed at her. She felt paralysed, like a hand was squeezing her heart in an unbreakable grip, her thoughts spiraling with dread. She knew she should hang up and call someone to help her but it was as she was glued to her seat, paralysed with shock.
"Call the police Cat!" She heard Leo yell suddenly through the background commotion.
She expected the call to end, for Cat to call the police with her end of the line. But- it was almost worse when it didn't. Like it confirmed to Jade that Cat was unable to.
Finally, with trembling fingers, Jade sat up and pulled the phone away from her car mount, staring at the screen as if it could somehow give her answers. She forced herself to take a deep breath, her pulse still racing. Her fingers hesitated for moment as she ended the call and pressed 911
Each ring felt like an eternity, every second longer than the last. Jade pressed her palm to her chest, trying to steady herself. She couldn't fall apart now; Cat needed her.
"911, what is your emergency?" The operator on the other end spoke.