Danny had been Cat's first time. She had been told over and over again by Jade, who'd lost her virginity in the back of Beck's truck at age fourteen, to wait until she found the right person, someone she trusted, who would make her feel comfortable. And Danny had been just that - she trusted him with her life. He was caring and gentle, both with the words he spoke, but also in the way he touched her, and moved within her, with caresses so featherlight she could barely remember whether they were real.

Afterwards, they had lain together, his arms folded around her with such protectiveness that she was brought to tears. His response to this, of immediately worrying that they'd moved too quickly, or that he'd hurt her, did little to stop the watershed. He just cared so much about her, and wanted everything they experienced together to be enjoyable for her. Most of all, he wanted her to feel loved.

And boy did she. Lying there, staring into the deep brown of his eyes, she realised that she was in love. Because this was love; no fear, no apprehensions, just safety and warmth and comfort. Danny, in his blue-walled room, in the house devoid of arguing parents or screaming brothers, was her calm, her haven.

She wanted this forever.

So it was a real shame when she walked into the Hollywood Arts hallway at 3:30pm and saw him kissing Tori Vega.

The squeak she let out was involuntary, but it did the trick. The pair burst apart, heads whipping towards the source of the noise. Tori's eyes turned into saucers, her mouth dropping open, not that Cat saw; she was too busy staring into those deep brown eyes that she had trusted with her heart, only for it to be scrunched up and thrown on the floor.

"Cat!" Danny shouted, scrambling away from Tori.

"Cat, it's not what it looks like!" Tori said, equally putting distance between herself and her ex-boyfriend, whose personal space she'd just been more than happy to share.

Cat's mouth gaped open. This wasn't supposed to happen. Danny wasn't supposed to be the kind of person who would do this. And Tori was supposed to be her friend.

"Cat, we are so so sorry. It- it was a mistake. We don't like each other like that. We dated a long time ago and we broke up for a reason. I promise I would never-"

All Cat could think about were those pure, perfect moments she and Danny had spent together. The times in which she had felt that, regardless of any evidence otherwise, things would work out for her. Those blissful times shouldn't have been a placating memory - they should've been her past, present and future. And yet, all she could hear was the endless self-preserving nattering of the girl that had ripped that into shreds.

"Go away Tori, please just go away!" Cat screamed with a venom that Tori hadn't heard before. She had to admit that it scared her - that such a small, sweet girl could possess such anger. Perhaps her friendship with Jade did make sense.

Tori knew the fight was lost. She backed towards the doors of Hollywood Arts and out of the building, out of Cat's sight, out of the way.

Cat turned to Danny.

"Cat, I can explain."

"What? You can explain why you were kissing my friend when you're supposed to be dating me?"

"Yes, I - I know what it looks like, but she was kissing me, I promise."

Cat had seen the exchange for more than a single moment before she alerted the pair to her presence. She knew that Danny was lying.

"You're lying!" She cried, hot tears spilling down her cheeks.

"I'm not, Cat, I-"

"I saw you, Danny! I saw you kiss her! Don't lie to me!"

Danny sighed in defeat. "I- I'm so sorry, Cat. I don't know- I didn't mean to..."

"Then why did you?"

"I really don't know. If I could take it back I would. I like you so much, matter-of-fact, I love you, Cat. I love everything about you. I love your smile and your hair and your personality. I love how passionate you are about music and acting and everything. I even dug a freaking puppet out of a classroom, thinking I could use it to impress you. I'm not artistic or creative or anything, Cat - I just wanted to be with you, to be part of your world."

Cat tried to blink away the tears, but more still came. Would anyone ever be able to say anything like that about her again? They sure hadn't said it before.

"I can't do this." She whimpered. "I'm sorry."

"Cat, please, I love you."

"I know. And you still cheated on me."

"I wish I hadn't. I wish I could turn back time."

"But you did. And you can't. So I think you should go."

"Cat-"

"Go, Danny." Her voice didn't have the same malice or volume that it had held when she had spoken to Tori, but instead a quiet resignation that struck Danny as eerily final.

His fight was lost. So he left.

Cat immediately descended into a monsoon of tears. She was emotional at the best of times, but even the most heartless critic couldn't have denied that she didn't currently have reason to.

Danny was- he'd been everything to her. She'd wanted everything he'd told her, she needed it. She needed the promise of someone who loved her and only her, but clearly that was never the case.

Just like her friends, just like her parents, Danny had someone else on his mind. Some other priority. So Cat faded into the background once again.

"Cat? Cat, what's going on?" Cat looked up to see the once-comforting face of Jade. Nowadays, however, she always had something to do or someone to see; Cat just felt like a burden to her.

"Nothing. I'm fine." Cat sniffled.

Jade shook off the novelty of Cat keeping something from her, and continued to press. "Sinjin told me you were shouting at Tori. Please Cat, clearly something's happened and you're not okay."

Cat sighed, a bubble popping in her throat as more tears continued to fall. "Tori, she- she kissed Danny."

"What?"

"And he kissed her back."

"What the fuck?"

Cat winced at the language, Jade's vocabulary ironically far more colourful than her own.

"I'm going to kill them both." Jade seethed, but Cat rapidly shook her head.

"No, don't. It's done. I broke up with Danny. Just leave it, Jade. There's no point."

Despite not considering herself a particularly empathetic individual, Jade felt her heart break at the pathos of her friend's cloud of defeat. If there was anyone who deserved to be cheated on, it certainly wasn't Cat. She was too pure and innocent to have her trust entirely decimated. Hell, Jade didn't think that even she should be cheated on and she silently accepted the label of 'wicked witch'. Cat needed other people, and she needed to be able to believe that what she was told and what she saw was real. Danny had clearly never understood her if he didn't realise how earth-shattering such a small action would be for Cat.

"Come here, Cat." Jade said, pulling her sobbing friend into her side. "He wasn't right for you. If he was he wouldn't have done that."

"No, he was perfect. He understood me. He loved me for who I am." Cat cried, clearly deep within the first stage of grief.

Jade shook her head. "A perfect guy wouldn't have kissed another girl, Cat. A perfect guy wouldn't have dared hurt you like that."

But Cat couldn't be convinced.

"He said he even found a puppet to try and show me that he could be artistic because he knew how much I loved this place. How perfect is that?" Cat whimpered. "And now it's all gone."

"I know, Cat, but that's..." Jade trailed off as she considered what Cat had just said.

Cat's head bobbed up as Jade fell silent, waiting for the next part of her rousing speech.

"He got you a puppet?"

"No, no, he just found one to play with so he could make me laugh. Because he cared about me." Cat said, descending into another flood of tears.

"Did he say where he found this puppet? Or what he did with it?" Jade asked, eagerly.

"What? No. Jade, the puppet's not the point, it's that he cared about me." Cat said, directing a mixed tone of hurt and irritation towards her friend's inexplicable preoccupation with Danny's words.

"I know, I know, I-", Jade felt herself torn between two seemingly moral obligations, silently cursing herself for choosing today of all days to have a conscience. "-I, I'll be back in a sec." She said, bounding to her feet.

Cat's mouth gaped open, but Jade was already out the doors, hoping that Danny was too enshrouded in a cloud of self-pity that he hadn't opted for a hasty exit.

As it happened, she was correct. Heading past the pathetic figure of Tori Vega sulking on the steps outside Hollywood Arts as though she was the one who'd been wronged, Jade headed towards the car park. Danny was slumped on the stone wall by his car, head in hands, and seemingly in no rush to leave the place of his undoing. At the sound of a person nearing, he looked up, his face twisting into a sneer at the sight of the presumably vengeful best friend of his new ex.

"If you're going to yell at me, I don't want to hear it. I just lost the most amazing girl - that's all the punishment I need." Danny spat.

Jade barely stopped herself from rolling her eyes at the melodrama.

"I'm not." Jade replied, and Danny's expression softened.

"Even though you're a cunt who I should really punch in the face for cheating on my best friend."

Danny's face immediately fell.

"I'm here because I heard you found a puppet - in the school?"

"Yeah?" Danny asked, fear traceable behind the stoic tone of his voice.

"Where'd you put it?"

"The stupid puppet? I threw it in a cupboard in the classroom I found it in."

"Sikowitz's classroom?"

"Who?"

"Bald man wearing no shoes, probably holding a coconut."

"Oh, yeah, that's the one."

"Right, thanks."

"No problem."

"Now fuck off and don't come back."

Danny showed some rare sense in following this instruction, turning away from Jade and walking with remarkable speed into the darkness of the night.

As soon as he'd turned away, Jade launched herself back to the school, hoping to stop Cat before she began spiralling.

However, upon re-entering the school, Jade found that Cat was no longer there. She ran around the hallways and threw open the very same cupboards and classrooms she'd inspected earlier in the day - really, this was far too much searching for one day. Yet, even after startling multiple teachers to whom she was already mildly averse, Cat was still nowhere to be seen, meaning Jade had to, exceptionally reluctantly, revert to her last resort.

"Where did Cat go?" She spat at Tori, sulking on the steps of Hollywood Arts as if it was her that had been wronged.

"Jade, I really didn't mean to-"

"To what? To kiss your friend's boyfriend? The one you said you didn't like anymore?"

Tori winced and shrunk away from Jade. "I don't like him."

"That might even be worse." Jade laughed. "So you ruined Cat's relationship, just about the one thing that's keeping her happy at the moment, and for what? Because you were feeling a little lonely?" She scoffed. "You and Danny deserve each other."

"It was a mistake."

"Yeah, well I'm sure that's really comforting for Cat who's crying her eyes out thinking that she's lost the only guy who'll ever love her for who she is."

Tori had no response to that.

"So where the hell is Cat?"

"I don't know, honestly." Tori shrugged, eager to escape a second lashing. "She ran past me a couple of minutes ago. I assume she's gone home."

Jade cursed under her breath. "Okay, give this to Robbie." She said, handing Tori the puppet.

Tori was wondering why Jade was holding Rex. If she hadn't been so utterly terrifying, it might have been hard to take her so seriously.

"Uh, sure." She said, reaching up for the doll. Jade, however, dropped Rex unceremoniously into her lap before jogging towards the car park without so much as a flicker of eye contact.

You're welcome.

This left Tori to contemplate things. She'd messed up, that was for sure. She'd been telling the truth when she'd said that she no longer had feelings for Danny, so she wasn't quite sure why she'd done it. It had been a while since she'd been wanted, she supposed, and the fleck of lust in Danny's eye before they'd simultaneously leaned in had reminded her that somebody had, once, and perhaps still did. She silently wondered whether her lusting after Beck was having more dire consequences than she had initially thought.

Now, sat on the steps of Hollywood Arts after everyone else had gone home, Tori didn't feel so successful. That moment of desire had only left her feeling less loved. And she couldn't bear to think about the idea of Beck finding out - Beck, who thought she was kind and sweet. Well, she was of course - this was simply an uncharacteristic lapse in judgement: She wondered how long was deemed appropriate for one to shamefully sit on the steps of a building after kissing one's friend's boyfriend, who also happens to be one's ex. She decided that another minute would probably suffice.

"Tori, why are you sat out- Rex!"

Robbie Shapiro, in all his curly-haired glory, had burt out of the Hollywood Arts doors, holding a computer science textbook that made unneccesary any guesswork as to why he was at school after-hours. Tori had barely looked up before Robbie was exploding with emotion at the sight of the puppet in Tori's lap.

"Rex! I can't believe it! Oh, I can't believe I've found you!" Robbie cried, cradling Rex to his chest.

"About time. It has been a rough day, Rob." The puppet spoke, first angrily, and then wearily. Tori had to admit that Robbie's skills of ventriloquism were really quite impressive.

"I can't believe you found him, Tori! Thank you so much, really, I- just thank you." Robbie stuttered.

Well, that was the outpouring of love Tori hadn't known she'd needed. She may not have been in Cat's good books, but at least Robbie considered her a valued friend.

"We are going to have so much mayonnaise when we get home." Robbie said to Rex, shaking his head. "What a day. Thank you Tori, again." He said, beginning to walk away.

"You're welcome." Tori smiled.

At least she'd been able to say it out loud this time.