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Nepeta Leijon entered the halls of her school for the first time in two weeks. She swallowed heavily, staring around at all the rushing students with wide eyes and a rapid pulse. Swallowing again, Nepeta forced herself to nimbly navigate through the much taller students, dancing towards her locker on the other side of the hall. She squashed her knit cap firmly on her head, averting her eyes from everyone around her. She quickly opened her locker, grabbed her books, and ran past the people around her locker staring at her, even her two best friends. When she did glance back, the pain and pity on their faces made her stomach churn and tears come to her eyes, which just made her feel more sick. Karkat’s pity especially just made her want to sink into the ground with embarrassment. So she wiped her eyes off furiously and stomped to the biology classroom, glad to be studying animals and forcing her mind off of unspeakable things. Even though one of those formerly mentioned best friends sat next to her as always, slyly giving her a picture of a horse and a cat nuzzling, she didn’t speak a word. Instead she grasped his large calloused dark hand in her tiny soft pale one and squeezed as tightly as she could.
When she looked into Equius’ eyes she didn’t see pity, but rather pure sadness reflected in them, and was comforted.
No matter how much he would have otherwise wished, however, that couldn’t have made it all better.
And so she trudged on through the day, still avoiding all unnecessary contact, until lunch. She could see off into the distance the table with her fifteen dearest friends in the world, all eating, an empty spot between good Equius and Karkat waiting for her. A small amount of vomit forced its way up through Nepeta’s throat and she purposefully ran to the always-empty table, sitting down and nibbling on her sandwich while staring at the floor.
Not two minutes passed before a voice pierced her ears like bee stings on skin.
“Nepeta, why aren’t you sitting with us?”
Nepeta looked up into the bright red glasses of Terezi, her hands on her hips and arms akimbo in irritation.
“I don’t want to sit or talk to anyone today,” Nepeta mumbled.
“Nepeta,” Terezi let out a long, heavy sigh, running a hand through her firey red hair, “I get that, trust me.”
“I don’t think you do,” Nepeta muttered, forcing her cap down further on her head to hide her significantly more boring brown hair.
“Well maybe not to the same extent, but I’ve been having drama, so I don’t feel like sitting there without you to make certain people shut up,” Terezi sighed, “So can I sit with you?”
Nepeta finally looked up again, “You’ve been having drama?”
“Oh please don’t focus on my problems to ignore your own, Nep, it’s unhealthy,” Terezi groaned, taking a seat anyway and drinking apple juice.
“Please let me for one minute, Terezi, just one minute,” Nepeta begged, her voice cracking a little midway through as she fought back tears again.
“Alright but in return you have to talk to me about you, got it?” Terezi hissed. Nepeta nodded meekly, rolling her apple in her hand.
“Vriska’s pissed at me,” Terezi sighed. Nepeta looked up in shock.
“Really? Why?” Nepeta asked softly.
“She seemed to think… well…” Terezi looked back at the table. Vriska was there, flipping her blonde hair over her shoulder and talking to Tavros, who was scratching his Mohawk nervously and looking over at Gamzee in what appeared to be fear. However, Gamzee was clearly as high as ever, looking at his spoon like it was the most fascinating thing in the entire universe.
Nepeta looked back at Terezi and cocked her head to the side.
“Damn, why do you have to be so adorable?” Terezi muttered. Nepeta smiled for the first time in two weeks.
“Anyways, Vriska seemed to think I… leaned her way, as it were,” Terezi sighed.
Nepeta’s eyebrows flew into her hat and her mouth dropped open in shock.
“It wasn’t a surprise Nep, think about it for more than two seconds,” Terezi rolled her eyes.
Nepeta did think about it. And it was true, that throughout their LARPing, playing World of Warcraft and Civ V together, and various other competitive gaming Vriska had always been… flirty in her over-competitiveness with Terezi. After all, it was true that after Tavros had suffered that unfortunate accident in the eighth grade, falling out of that tree and damaging his spine, Vriska had insisted on continuing to LARP with Terezi, calling her a chick and playfully shoving her on the arm, always making excuses to touch her. And it was true that Vriska said there was no way Terezi could look prettier than Vriska was going to at Homecoming, and then Vriska promptly said when she saw Terezi in her dress that she was wrong. Small, backhanded insults that were secretly complements were common, and small touches and tiny glances were frequent. But Vriska was never one for humbling herself, and would never have admitted that she liked Terezi. Or at least, Nepeta thought.
“So she actually admitted it? That she liked you?” Nepeta asked in shock.
“Oh yes. She was drinking at the party Rose and Roxy threw last week,” Terezi rolled her eyes, “You know, when their parents were out of town, and Dirk and Dave were at that music con? Well I guess you might not have known, I mean we told Meulin about it but she said she wasn’t really ready to go out and you definitely weren’t.”
“She told me it was happening and that we were invited, yeah,” Nepeta sighed, “So Rose was drinking again?”
“Oh yes,” Terezi grumbled, leaning forward, “I’m going to kill Roxy for getting her hooked on that stuff.”
“I thought Roxy was trying to quit though? For John?” Nepeta whispered.
“Well yes, but she got Rose buried so deep that she can’t even quit for Kanaya and this is beside the point,” Terezi sighed, “We can talk about that later.”
“True,” Nepeta looked over in worry at Rose, who was wearing sunglasses and rubbing her forehead, clearly hung-over. Kanaya looked worried sick, biting her nails nervously.
“But anyway, Vriska came on to me and said ‘Bet I can kiss you better than you can kiss me,’ and when I finally managed to get through to her that I wasn’t attracted to girls at all, she snapped and threw a glass at me, saying that I could have at least played along with her for a moment, made her feel less like crap that no one would touch for five seconds. She seemed really, really vulnerable,” Terezi groaned, pulling on her hair slightly, “I felt horrible, but what was I supposed to do?”
“Nothing you could do,” Nepeta agreed quietly, “I can’t blame her either though. After Kanaya turned her back on her in junior high, and John dumped her last year, she hasn’t been feeling too great about herself, I don’t think.”
“She can pretend she’s the best in the world all she wants but we all know what she actually feels, you’re right,” Terezi sighed, “But I’m as straight as a board, and I like Karkat, what was I supposed to say?”
Nepeta swallowed bile for what felt like the millionth time that day. Karkat. It always was Karkat with her, or Dave. Dave or Karkat. She had to stop dangling these boy’s affections in her hands and playing with them like her dragon plushies.
“I thought you were going to ask out Dave?” Nepeta asked softly, playing with the straw to her chocolate milk.
“Yeah last week he pissed me off again,” Nepeta shrugged, “he didn’t like that I flirted with Karkat.”
“Can you blame him? And isn’t that why you and Karkat broke up two months ago?” Nepeta asked.
Terezi glared at her and she meekly looked down at her food again.
“You weren’t supposed to do anything different than you had done,” Nepeta muttered, getting back to the original subject, “So is she making your life hell now?”
“Yes,” Terezi sighed, “She knocked the books out of my hands, tripped me in the hallway, and stole my braille edition of our biology textbook. What’s more, she told Karkat I liked him and Karkat told me he wasn’t going to enter that pit of vipers again.”
“Jesus,” Nepeta whispered before she could stop herself, covering her mouth in shock.
“Don’t let Karkat’s pastor father hear you,” Terezi joked, but she sounded sad.
“I’m sorry Terezi,” Nepeta sighed, “I really am. She’s out to ruin her life, isn’t she?”
“Just a little,” Terezi kicked the post of the table slightly, “So I don’t want to sit there while she flirts with poor Tavros and makes fun of me to Karkat.”
“That’s fair,” Nepeta nodded.
A small lull occurred in which Nepeta slurped the rest of her milk and tried her best to not cry again.
“So talk to me Nep, please,” Terezi begged. Nepeta looked up at her. You could barely tell Nepeta was blind, most days. Born that way, she was very good at sensing the world around her through taste and smell and hearing, and most people didn’t know she was blind until she told them.
Nepeta sighed and said, “It’s so hard Terezi. It’s so hard.”
Terezi waited patiently.
“Some days I’ll just wake up and expect her to still be there, expect her to come into my room and playfully shove me out of the bed to get me to wake up to go to school, or be burning pancakes on the stove in an attempt to feed us, or out gardening on the balcony of our apartment,” Nepeta wrung her wrists with her hands anxiously, clenching her teeth in pain, “And then it’ll hit me like a t-ton of bricks again.”
Terezi reached across the table to hold Nepeta’s hand in hers.
“Was it really only two weeks ago? Has she only been g-g-gone two weeks?” Nepeta was having trouble holding back sobs, “The apartment is so empty. It’s like her ghost is hovering there all the time, just watching me as I try to distract myself with make up work or TV or my painting. But she was there, happy and alive just two weeks ago.”
“No one could have predicted this Nepeta,” Terezi soothed, “It was a freak accident.”
“SHE GOT ELECTROCUTED!” Nepeta roared. The cafeteria fell deathly silent. Everyone at Nepeta’s usual lunch table looked over in shock. Nepeta looked away from everyone and mumbled under her breath, “My mom was electrocuted and died two weeks ago and I’m never going to get her back.”
“No,” Terezi replied softly, “You’re not.”
“Meulin’s going to have to raise me even though she’s only 18 years old.”
“Yes, she is.”
“Because of me, she doesn’t get to go to school far away in California, but is stuck going to her safety school here in the city. Because of me, she is going to have to be a part time student and not live her dreams,” Nepeta whimpered.
“That isn’t because of you Nepeta. Life happens. Shit happens. And it sucks. But it is not your fault that she has to do those things,” Terezi reassured.
“Then whose fault is it?” Nepeta whispered.
“No one’s,” Terezi sighed, “Your mom didn’t mean to get electrocuted and it’s not your fault that someone has to take care of you. You can’t live on your own or anything after all. And your sister loves you. You and Meulin are as thick as thieves.”
“That’s true,” Nepeta sighed.
“And your mom would want you to keep living your life and to be happy,” Terezi paused, “She worked hard to give you and Meulin a good home and a good life. Don’t waste it by not living it the way she’d want you to.”
Nepeta nodded wordlessly, trying to fight the tears coming to her eyes.
“It’ll be okay, Nepeta. I know it doesn’t seem like that now, and it won’t possibly for years to come,” Terezi paused, “But it will be.”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Pyrope,” a snide voice commented nearby. They both turned to see Vriska headed towards them, sneering at them in amusement.
“She’s always doing that, you know,” Vriska continued, flipping her hair over her shoulder, “Leading people on.”
“I never lead you on, Vriska,” Terezi muttered under her breath.
“Yeah, sure, excuses excuses,” Vriska paused, “You know why she keeps coming back to Karkat, don’t you Nepeta?”
Nepeta shook her head quietly, wringing her wrists anxiously, although she knew she knew the answer.
“She just can’t stand the thought of Karkat being with anyone but her, so every time he starts getting close to someone else… let’s call her Eta… she draws him back in again,” Vriska sang sweetly.
Nepeta sighed and shrugged, even though Terezi was hanging her head in shame. She knew this was true. She had figured it out about a year ago when she thought she and Karkat would start dating, and Terezi got back together with him instead.
“But I guess you’re okay with getting walked on all the time Nepeta. You let Equius fight your battles and hide behind your sister when you’re scared. You’re weak, just like your dead mother,” Vriska sneered, walking away calmly. Nepeta watched her go in shock.
“I thought we were better friends than that,” Nepeta muttered.
“I know, I’m sorry Nepeta, I’m so sorry,” Terezi sighed, her head hung in shame.
“Not you, Vriska,” Nepeta rolled her eyes. Terezi looked up tentatively.
“Huh?”
“Terezi I’ve known all along you were doing that,” Nepeta shrugged, “I’m not going to let a stupid boy ruin our friendship, are you?”
She shook her head slowly.
“You aren’t ready for Karkat to date anyone else and that’s okay. That won’t last forever, my… my mom told me so. And besides that, even if it did, you’re still one of my best friends, and if you don’t want me to date him then I won’t, it’s a simple as that. You’d do the same for me,” Nepeta smiled.
Terezi smiled weakly back, “You’re such a good friend Nepeta.”
“Thanks. And Vriska is a huge jerk,” Nepeta paused, “But she’s going through a lot right now. I mean she had to come out to her dad this summer and he walked out on her mom Aranea and her. And then this whole thing with you? I’m giving her some allowances.”
“That’s true,” Terezi sighed, “And you’re very strong Nepeta. This would be hard on anyone.”
Nepeta smiled weakly, “Thanks Terezi.” They continued to eat in silence, but Nepeta felt slightly more heartened for their conversation. It would be hard for a long time, like Terezi said; but some day, one day, she would be able to really smile and laugh again, and she knew it would be with one of her best friends.