Chapter Text
Kate is alone. She wakes up in the morning, drives to school, goes through her classes, goes to practice (D-E-F-E-N-S-E ringing in her brain), and drives home.
She wasn’t ever close with the cheer team, and only made the switch from gymnastics to be with Chess in the first place. “You’re literally going to hate it, I can’t believe you’re actually doing this with me,” she had said when Kate followed her to tryouts. “Yeah,” Kate replied, nervously adjusting her hat, “But I don’t hate you.” Chess smiled, and her smile shot through Kate’s heart like a flaming arrow.
So Kate is alone. None of her teammates/accessories to a felony have reached out to her. Sure, they’re probably all dealing with their own issues, and it’s not like Kate would have reached out to them either, but still. Having no friends kind of sucked. Especially after she lost her best friend (more than best friend? She died before Kate could have ever gotten the nerve to tell her how she felt). Chess was everything, and now she was gone, and Kate felt her absence like a knife in her side.
She drove home from another practice that nobody had their heart in, with Riley desperately trying to get everyone to contribute, frantically trying to keep the team together, the huge smile plastered on her face seeming more like a grimace everyday. Kate fidgeted with her bracelet, the one Chess gave her for her birthday last year, the matching one still on her wrist when they buried her less than a month ago.
The funeral was awful. The whole team came to pay their respects, but none of them knew her, really knew her like Kate did, and it all felt so fake. None of them really knew what to say, and Annaleigh couldn’t even look at her, not wanting to see the same loss and sadness she also felt. Cairo, thankfully, didn’t make a snide remark about the nature of her and Chess’ relationship, but the dangerous glint in her eye when she saw Kate made it clear that she knew if anyone was going to crack under the pressure of keeping what happened at the sleepover a secret, it was her. Kate stared at the casket, the one her best friend was in, dead and cold and gone, and a dull ache spread through Kate’s chest. She ran into the bathroom the moment she got home that night and puked, and then cried on the bathroom floor, for hours, head in her knees, the bracelet heavy around her wrist.
As Kate pulled into the driveway, her phone beeped. She picked it up, and her stomach dropped.
GOOOOOOO TIGERS!! 🐯🐯🎉📣📣
Riley: Hey everyone! Practice at my place tomorrow!! I have a GREAT routine prepped for the pep rally and I need everyone there so we can be perfect!!!
She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t go back there, see the house, see the basement, see the bench outside where she fought with Chess, the same bench where Chess --
She didn’t even want to be a cheerleader in the first place, she could just quit now and it would all be over, and she could just forget anything had ever happened. Yeah, she could just tell Riley that right now. Or, she could tell her she’s sick, that she came down with the flu suddenly. She could just run away, get back in the car and drive across state lines. She’d always liked California, maybe she’d go there, start a new life and never come back. Or maybe she’d finally call the police and tell them what really happened, they could find out who actually killed Chess, and Farrah, and Clark, and maybe then she wouldn’t feel so terrible all the time and she wouldn’t want to cry every time she had to put on that stupid orange cheer uniform and look in the mirror, without her best friend there to make a snide remark to or look to for support when Riley put them through another stupid bonding exercise.
Kate shakily took her keys out and unlocked the door to the house. Her parents weren’t going to be home for another hour, so she had enough time to have an internal crisis about this in her room before they came to check on her.
She took deep breaths as she walked up the stairs, one foot after the other. Left foot, breath in, right foot, breath out. Her hands gripped the railing so hard her knuckles turned white. Kate reached her bedroom, and opened the door.
Chess, wearing the same tank top and leggings, hair up in the same braid as the day she died, sat on her bed. There was a red stain on her shirt, the same blood that Kate had frantically tried to press her flannel to, knowing in her heart she was already dead, not wanting to believe it, not wanting to admit she was gone, the same blood she saw in her nightmares every night.
Kate stared at her, and Chess stared back.
Chess (was it Chess? Was this all some sort of vivid hallucination?) stood up. “Hey,” she said.
Kate passed out, her head hitting the floor with a resounding thunk.