Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When Catra’s eyes flutter open against a barrage of unwelcome daylight, it’s not to the caliginosity of her usual morose background of a bed room, and the sight sends her sluggish and tired mind reeling into full on consciousness.

Uh, where the fuck is all my stuff? This sure as hell isn’t my bedroom, is her first thought of several more incoherent ones. A million and one times she’s opened her eyes in the morning to the sight of worn-torn posters of Echobelly, Garbage, and The Cardigans, what little light her thick black out curtains allowed to seep into her teenage sanctuary reflecting off the wood of her acoustic guitar as her alarm clock radio blasted 89.2 FM, AKA, the ET Rock House station throughout said sanctuary and blasted Catra up and out of bed still clinging to the cat hair covered wool wrapped around her shoulders.  

And this- where she's found herself now- is not any of that. It’s the hellhole fucking opposite of it.

Catra is surrounded, trapped really, on the prison cell floor of sparkle and shine: bright, willowy drapes lape at her ankles, their inverted blossom shape ensnaring a king sized bed lifted an entire three feet above her, the lilac blankets of which are a recipe for nauseating Catra’s already upset stomach, and an army of plush toys ( What is this place? A five year’s old room or a five year old’s crayon drawing of one?) following her every move as she scrambles out of the rust colored sleeping bag that once was her only refuge from this princess nightmare brought to life. Her palms suffer to get traction against the rough carpet that meets her, and her back, for some reason aching like a bitch and half, keeps her from freeing herself one hundred percent. 

Two possible scenarios to Catra’s still sleep addled brain stand out. One, she fell asleep at work- stupid late Friday night shift, stupid shut in Hordak making me close so he could sulk somewhere besides his office for once- and her douchebag coworkers led by their ring leader Lonnie somehow managed to get her out of the store and to the second floor without waking her, and they chose Claire’s to be the crime scene they dumped her body in. The second, maybe worse option, the one that was becoming more and more apparent as her actual reality, was that her desperation not to be act like such a fucking fool was starting to make a fool out of her.

Oh right. Our little conditional alliance meeting ran so late last night I had to spend the night. Fuck me.

“Morning sunshine!” a voice calls out from beside a nearby dresser, confirming her worst of the two possible epiphanies. Catra slumps boneless back into the sleeping bag that’s still eating her legs with a moan equal parts sour and sinking. 

Ugh, even when Glimmer talks it’s like the glitter already in the air gets denser, for Christ’s sake. 

Glimmer, because she’s in Glimmer fucking Bowery’s room of all fucking places, responds with a certain lark that all but straight up mocks Catra’s misery, “ Who’s ready to do their one good thing today?”

“My one good thing, your majesty,” Catra mumbles into her makeshift hoodie pillow (at least something in this pastel colored pandemonium holds familiarity and Catra stands by her prideful decision not to take up Princess Purple’s offer of one of her many one hundred thousand pillows last night) as Glimmer’s shadow comes to stand over her and grant her reprieve from the unrelenting daylight Catra’s hoodie can’t block out, “is going to be not strangling you for making me get up so freaking early.” she hits the last words like a hammer hits nails, nails in the coffin her own ignorance is building her, apparently.

Guess this town was made for Catra after all.

“Okay but you’re the one who has to work a ‘grueling after school job’ all day before the party tonight,” Glimmer says, Catra watching out of the corner of her eye as the other girl pulls the top tuft of her dyed a poor purple, lopped-off locks  into a shimmering scrunchy. 

Yeah, that’s definitely from Claire’s- Claire’s? Oh shit! Oh shit, the mall!  

One indirect association later and the arrogant air of Glimmer’s words sink into Catra’s self identified thick skull.

She bolts up, hoping and praying to see that her battered Levi’s and house keys will be somewhere among the messy multitude of her ‘I’m sorry’ speech drafts, because “Shit, shit, shit! Tell me it’s not past 11 a.m!” 

Panic ricochets through Catra’s half-awake, pre-coffee state, destroying with relative ease any indignation that flares up at Glimmer’s nasty little way of wording her previous sentence. God, it’s fucking karma that this is who’s throwing Catra’s own hubris back in her face.

“Relax,” Catra doesn’t appreciate the way Glimmer snorts- or that any ounce of hysteria in her is a free for all of happiness for the other girl. Rivals no longer, that still doesn’t mean Catra’s in the mood to deal with the reminder her former competitor has some very real reasons to be upset with her, “It’s only a little bit after nine.”

“Ugh, Jesus, Inez , you don’t have to scare me like that!”

“My dad probably made breakfast if you’re interested. Unless, it takes you two hours to skate from my house to the mall and you have to leave right now.” Glimmer says with a lilt in her voice. Catra lets out a sigh, her body draping until it’s frozen over the sleeping bag. One hand is trapped halfway in her left sneaker, the other ransacking the little rat’s nest she’s spent the last twelve hours in the heir to the Standard Oil name’s bedroom and no , she’s not going to clean it up, for a much more precious heirloom. 

By the time chipped black nails snatch it up under a flurry of paper near her hoodie pillow, Glimmer is fully dressed in a TLC top Catra can actually credit accompanied with a faded denim skirt, has like thirteen more scrunchies on her wrist, and is standing by the door, armed with that alluring wit of hers, “And why are you still calling me Inez?” she asks. Catra shoves her other foot in her other Levi with a satisfying ummph . “Inez was just the person who told Betty the rumors about James. It’s not like Inez helped James get back together with Betty.”

Catra stands, curling her lips over her teeth to keep from saying what her heart truly reckons- which is, Inez was a mouthy, backstabbing bitch masquerading around as Betty’s friend and until like a week ago, that’s exactly what you were to me. Instead, she settles for something more like the better version of herself she was trying to be, “It’s not like you have to fit Inez’s role exactly to play her part in the story.” 

I know you’ve been talking to Adora about me, I heard you bitching about me during lunch like it’s a sport and you just have to go for the gold, Sparkles. Catra shovers her keys in her back pocket, fingers pulling away smelling of metal. Your hands aren’t any cleaner than Inez’s ones, gossip or no gossip.  

“And legends are meant to be rewritten here in this little corner of nowhere , for some reason that doesn’t apply literally anywhere else on planet Earth.”

“ That sounds like something Adora would say,” Glimmer tells Catra when Catra reaches the doorway, fidgeting with her day old tank tap ( fuck, does she miss sleeping in her Eagles t-shirt) and trying not to trip over the shoelaces she didn’t tie. “The part about legends being rewritten, not the overbaked sarcasm.” 

“That is something Adora says.”  

But Adora wouldn’t say legend . Nope. She’d bite Catra’s head off just for even using that word, in that old fashioned civil way of hers. Because the infamous love triangle of James, Betty, and the nameless August free-for-all was not legend to her; no, it was living, breathing truth, faith beyond faith, realer than the broken cobblestone their long-forgotten town was built upon and a much more important foundation in Adora’s opinion. An abused little kid’s flotation device that years later she was bringing to life without even trying.

And who is Catra now to even dispute Adora's logic, not when after years of growing up bored with that juvenile story she finally understands how James could've been so prideful to throw away what he had with Betty for a thrill that would ultimately expire, or why he held the colorful grudges he did against Inez and the rest of Betty's stupid friends?

There’s a silence that Catra and Glimmer share better than they share anything else that comes back as they traipse down the hallway from Glimmer’s chamber to the grand staircase, through a foyer that’s never known mess and a kitchen that’s straight from a movie scene Catra secondhand film knowledge can almost place. 

Didn’t they make a movie about this place? Catra’s brain sputters with wonder before fizzing out like day old soda. No way in hell could they, the shiny Hollywood big leagues and their even bigger screens, have whipped up a story to hold the mythos of this house without Adora knowing every single second of it right up until the credits.

Glimmer’s whistling a Frankenstein melody of “ No Scrubs” and “ Just a Girl” that grates against Catra’s ears in the most irritating, confusing way when they enter this movie set turned kitchen. Sure to Glimmer’s earlier word, on the island of marble and mahogany there’s a line of porcelain dishes ( way to bring out the fancy shit, and for breakfast no less) brimming with pieces of toast, bacon slices, waffles that look freshly made as opposed to her usual choice of frozen even after three minutes in the toaster oven, and eggs- sunny side up. The smell of the warm meal blends with the salt air that wafts through the open windows. Where Catra hovers, tugging on one the flannel sleeves dangling off her waist, Glimmer wastes no time helping herself  to the food because she’s not a stranger in someone else’s- previously her sworn social enemy’s- house.

Which she can’t still believe she’s in, much less spent the night at in the name of ameliorating, by the way. There’s an ache in Catra that blooms at the sight of the food left awaiting her in an empty kitchen, an abscess of homesickness in the place where a more established ache is rotting her heart hollow, for the salt box house that she was raised in. It’s a different breed of homesickness, a simple kind of missing your usual surroundings how lowly they might be in comparison, than the heaviest kind Catra’s been wearing around her like a weight around her neck all summer.

I wonder if Sparkles will make some poor gardener call home for me after he finishes cleaning out the pool with Dom Pérignon, or if she’ll just let me use the freaking phone myself.     

“Hey, you gonna eat?” Glimmer asks around a mouth full of toast. Some show of manners for the richest teenager in town. “I kinda feel weird standing around here just like, eating in front of you.”

Catra shakes off her funk. The ache can wait, it’s been waiting, and so can her callow, kindergarten  homesickness. She grabs a piece of bacon in the fugue state she’s been left stranded in, but it doesn’t appease the other girl back into their treasured awkward silence as she hoped it would. 

“What’s the matter, Catra? Are you really that nervous about the party tonight? We went over literally every scenario of what could happen, up to and including the Lakes are harbouring some secret shark and it attacks the ranch.”

Yes, of fucking course I’m still nervous about the party, why would I start to relax when trying to make it up to the girl I love by apologizing might not even be enough, and “ No-,” Catra chokes on her bacon, “it’s just, I can’t believe I’m having breakfast in Holiday House of all places. Or that I slept  over. ”

Taking another mindless bite of her measly breakfast item, Catra hears a door open somewhere beyond the foyer. The heavy scent of sea salt and seriously offkey humming follow into the expanse of the manor. It’s welcomed all too well by the boards and the bones of this house; Catra swears she feels the place around her relax, like this entrance is the opposite of a haunting, the antonym of a curse. She swallows her jealousy, leaving bits of bacon at the back of her throat. 

“Hmm. I’m surprised hanging out with me isn’t on that list.” Glimmer’s eyes dance with amusement that Catra’s already sick of.

“Don’t sell yourself short, Sparkles.” Because it’s not a stretch to say the most grueling part of this trying thing was not extending the olive branch, but keeping the dagger of insults that would cut right to the heart of all Glimmer’s insecurities to herself so that olive branch wouldn’t burst into flames, to her fucking self. 

“Sparkles? Moving beyond the make believe and not calling me Inez?” laughs Glimmer, spitting several statements Catra takes issue with, “Who knew Catra Lewis was even capable of evolution? I guess my help really is working afterall!”

Catra’s fingers curl into a fist that does not go anywhere. Yeah, yeah, she’s trying to be a better person and all, trying to be someone worthy by coming clean to Adora tonight, but fuck it if she doesn’t imagine for the thinnest of seconds hurling her bacon straight for Glimmer’s scrunchie. Glimmer’s the one with egg on her face while yolk drips down Catra’s hand and arm in this shimmering, momentary indulgence. It’s the divine intervention of the briny air and discordant humming entering the kitchen that snaps Catra out of this maladaptive daydream, reminds her where she is, what she's doing, why she’s here in the first place. 

“Morning my dear Glimmer,” That one of kind of entrance belongs to the one and only Micah, Micah Bowery, an out-of-place down-to-Earth entrepreneuring Jack of All Trades enthusiast, the definition of an Average Joe if not for his means to money by way of marriage and brief stint as a child actor during the seventies. Fleeting fame or money that had not, by the looks of his rain boots the color of stomach bile, cargo shorts, and scruffy beard, changed in spite of his time in the limelight. Nor had being made a widow changed him less than like, what six years ago? Seven? Catra would have never retroactively wished to be paying attention to the mindlessness of small town drama- or contributing to it, for that matter- but she also never thought she’d been standing in that same small town’s nicest fucking kitchen trying to remember when the headache-in-a-hand-purse PTA president died exactly.

She’s trying to make herself small, something past expertise growing up in that saltbox house should make a no sweat snap, something she must be out of practice in because Micah spots her like the sore thumb she is in this situation. Catra blinks. She knows her scowl on the other hand, is sure as hell not out of practice because it can still bring Glimmer to a cower. But it does nothing- nothing- to assuage this strange man’s need to make eye contact with her.

“And good morning, person who is not Bow or Adora but who still slept over with my daughter-- Are you?” Micah points a finger in the direction of Catra’s ornery aura and where Catra wishes to find animosity somewhere- anywhere- in his tone, she comes up blank, “That’s right , you must be Selena’s daughter! I haven’t seen you since you were, what? You must’ve been less than three years old when I last saw you, now bigger than my boot here now.” 

I wish I was dead. Catra steals her face into a blank slate as Micah gestures to the height of the atrocities gripping his legs. He’s sailor stranded at sea all these years in the dust of Catra’s memories- a man she knows for dressing up as the neighborhood Santa Claus and teaching the driver’s ed course part time at school, experiences too of the world for good and civil daughters of pastors to indulge themselves in- and now he’s here like he’s washed up on the beach right outside the foyer’s french doors, reminiscing about the cruel passage of time, the devastating folly of youth.  

“That um, that must’ve been when your family started going to the Methodist service up by the elementary school you kids went to.” the sailor finishes, and when he’s done, Micah is standing in front of Catra once again.

Catra sends Glimmer a restrained, yet dripping with furiosity why the fuck is your dad talking to me so much? kind of look. If Glimmer’s useful for anything, it’s sticking herself between people as both a human shield and world class meddler, so any effort of her part to stop her father from inserting his nose where it certainly shouldn’t fucking be would be welcome as all get outs. But nope- Glimmer’s revenge saga continues when she avoids the packed glance for another strategy of eating the rest of her toast in silence.

Honestly, Catra’s sigh releases some of the mounting tension in her body, what did I expect?

Not for Glimmer’s dad to shut his damn mouth, that would be one. “How uh,” one of Micah’s rain boots lets out a deafening squeak and the old man catches himself on the counter, “How is your mother, by the way? I know how difficult those last few months were for her, and speaking from experience, with your father gone now-”

“He’s not my father.” Catra’s response is instinctual lightning. In her grip, the piece of bacon she was nibbling snaps in half like a crisp piece of wood.

“Dad,” Glimmer tries under her breath, but the admonishing look is both too lost and too late. 

“That man wasn’t my father.” Catra’s still talking, why the hell is Catra still talking? “Just because he married my mother,” and proceeded to make her life and my entire childhood a living, inescapable hell, “and then bit the dust out of freaking nowhere,” Is she laughing? What kind of sadistic fuck laughs at cruelty like this? “ doesn’t make him related to me, okay?”

Regret floods her the second the words, clipped with that off putting laughter that came out of nowhere, leave her mouth and die as they enter the open air, singed away by the touch of salt that lingers. Glimmer’s gaze falls to anywhere but meeting hers. Micah exhales in a half grunt, half blunder. And Catra- Catra bows her head and curses herself, again, for having such a fucking nuclear reaction.

If my words didn’t shoot to kill like they always do, Catra puts the bacon down on a nearby plate and wipes her fingers on her jeans, then I wouldn’t have to even be in this kitchen to begin with, would I? Like father, like daughter.

“My mom’s fine. Thanks for asking,” she says in a whisper. The actual answer she should have given out of respect to this man’s civility. God, what the fuck is wrong with her? How the hell is Catra supposed to muscle through an act as foreign as asking for forgiveness tonight when she can’t even be a human being at the goddamn breakfast table of all places?  

Thank God Micah perks up at this peace offering, the dorkiness he definitely passed down to Glimmer shining through like Catra’s outburst didn’t leave a mark, bringing her spiral to a fatal halt. “That’s uh, that’s good to hear about your mom, Catra. I was worried she’d be working herself to death like she always seems to be.”

“She’s not home a lot,” Catra’s speaking on autopilot now- the depressed autopilot that listened to In Utero for an entire afternoon until her brain melted out of her ears and the repurposed Entrapta rigged CD player she’d been gifted short circuit, the resulting spark setting the carpet she’d swimming in her melted brain on magnificently ablaze. Having less than half a mind, Catra almost let the house burn down that afternoon- with her in it. Wouldn’t be the first time she’d stared down an end like that. If it weren’t for Melog howling for the entire neighborhood to hear and pouncing directly on her face, Catra… Catra might’ve never gotten up to make a break for the fire extinguisher.  “Even with him, you know, gone now. So I’m alone, a lot.”

Her own voice bounces off the marble tile and comes back to her corrupted, estranged. For someone who spent the first seventeen years of her life wallowing in the hopes that someday everyone just leave her alone to the self imposed isolation she craved more than her loudest desire to be whole, being by herself- no mom, no Scorpia, no high end crowd of delinquents parading around as intellectuals, no Adora- was a hoax she’d been a moron to sink her faith into. It was different, when the ones you loved left out the side door you were never not gunning directly for, when it was not a choice to be alone but rather a punishment, an exile. 

Considering she came close to letting her loneliness burn her house down, maybe it was time to go back, tail between her legs, to what chased her away in the first place, swallow her pride and live for the hope they’d have her back at all.  

One super helpful, not at all pitiful wince from Glimmer later, Micah is at it again, picking up the pieces of this broken conversation as if it’s nothing. He’s a fixer, afterall. “Well, she’s a doctor, working in the ER. Those have to go to be some brutal shifts she’s pulling.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know and I know that what she’s doing is honorable and I’m proud of her, especially since he wouldn’t let her work at all, but-”

“You miss having her around,” Micah finishes for her, “I can understand that. Teenage rebellion, the whole phase of pushing your parents away,” he catches Glimmer’s eye, “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”

Catra picks her bacon back up, “You’re telling me.”    

“So uh, Dad,” Glimmer says around the napkin she’s wiping her mouth with, “Have you been out on the boat today?”

“Yep. Been working on the old girl since about five this morning. It’s been a fun project these last few months, a good distraction from trying to fix up the house. And it’s been a blast to have something to work on with your boyfriend and your other friend, the singing one, cleaning the boat up and getting her ready for more than just a trip on the Lakes.” Micah tells her. He’s abandoned the awkward precipice of leaning on the ledge to help himself to a plentiful breakfast, a heaping of eggs, bacon, and toast that laughs in the face of Catra’s small helpings. 

His daughter features come alive with a disgust that throws Catra because didn’t Bow and Micah have a reputation for getting along maybe even better than Micah and Glimmer did? Like, in an almost weird way? “Ugh, I still can’t believe you’re hanging out with Sea Hawk. Of all my friends, you had to befriend the one that sings sea shanties all the time?”

Oh. Yeah, that sure as hell makes a lot more sense. As well as an overkill of validation to hear from Glimmer; Catra will never, not even in her attempt to befriend them or be friendly to them or whatever, understand why Adora drifted towards that lot of clowns in their particular circus. And Captain Dork of the U.S.S Bad Pirate Impersonation would be the king of those clowns- if Catra were not out here gunning for his crown. 

“What can I say?” Micah grabs a fork from across the island, “The kid knows a thing or two about boats.”

“Yeah, how to set’em on fire,” says Catra without really thinking. Glimmer spits out her sip of orange juice.

“Well he hasn’t set The Mighty Angella on fire so,” he replies before pausing, a flash of dread in his dark brown eyes, “yet… Maybe I shouldn’t bring matches in my toolbox anymore. Or let Sea Hawk use my tools from that toolbox.” The man mumbles to himself for a few more seconds, a mental list he makes verbal of every item on his new toy that could be considered combustible, “Well I guess if my newest project goes up in flames, I’ll just go back to rewallpapering the drawing room. That is what I was doing before I had to buy the boat.”

Repairing a boat and renovating a room. So that’s what normal fathers do. And here I thought using the Bible as a projectile device was a regular run of the mill dad activity. 

Catra’s fingers curl into her jeans, catching on the edges of rough fringe, her sweat slicked skin coming back with cat hair she wasn’t even aware was there. But of course it is. Just as with having a rather overzealous cat for her roommate (and only remaining friend, Glimmer notwithstanding), Catra’s yet to be put to rest daddy issues are an occupational hazard that cling to her like stands of Melog’s fur. And watching Micah now act with a gentleness that comes across as perplexing, and threatening in its unfamiliarity, Catra’s thrown back to the days of her weakest, rawest point, of watching someone else have a love she could never hope to hold in the palm of her hand. 

The urge to run, to sprint away from the table and hope her skateboard is still near the door, is strong. The urge to fade into the nothingness and become one with the salt that sticks to her skin is even stronger.

“What’s wrong, Catra?” When Micah pulls her back from thoughts of an escape plan, he’s speaking with a tolerance that makes her want to dissolve into the salt of her tears all while screaming the injustice of what could have been. “You know, she doesn’t actually mind when I mess with the house, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Catra’s mouth falls open slightly agape at such a left turn in the conversation. Her face might’ve stayed frozen that way if not for Glimmer’s seemingly practiced interception, “Rebekah Harkness’s ghost is not haunting our house, Dad. That’s a myth tourists like to speculate about, and people who own gift shops by the Lakes like to perpetuate to get those tourists to buy their crappy merchandise.”

“I beg to differ, my dear daughter. Her ghost is here, and so is that ailing husband of hers. I can hear them sometimes, when I’m working on organizing the attic, arguing, blaming each other for his bad habits, wishing she could relive her maddening glory days. She’s still giving him hooey for dying and letting everyone blame her for it, you know.” Micah finishes with a flourish of his fork.

God, no fucking wonder Adora loved spending so much time here. This kitschy crap is right up her alley, and right down the memory lane of my childhood. Does nostalgia always make your skin itchy or am I officially losing it?

“Well she’s right there. It wasn’t her fault his heart gave out.” Glimmer acquiesces.

“You’re not afraid of ghosts, are you Catra?” Micah asks her in a low, almost comical voice as if she’s seven, not seventeen, as if these so called ghosts aren’t the main characters of the stories her best friend lived for telling her, flashlight to her face, as they hid together in the closet of that saltbox house, trying in vain to escape their own hauntings. “There're a lot of ghosts in this house, and this town, too, you know.”

“No there’s not!” Shrillness incarnate protests.

“So is the dog here?” Catra answers Micah’s question with one of her own. Of all the tall tales about the scandalous Holiday House Adora dazzled with her during those days of their closet escapades, the dog theft was the one Catra always asked Adora to tell over and over again.

“It was a cat, actually.” says Glimmer and Catra wonders how soon she filled Adora in on that, too, if that information healed some of the tiny little breaks in Adora’s tired soul.

“But he is here,” Micah addition earns an additional grumble from Glimmer, “If you wait long enough in the east hallway on the third floor, key lime green paw prints will show up on the carpet, and then just like that, they’ll fade.”

“Da- ad !”

That goes on the list of things to ask if Adora did, Catra smirks only to bite her lip in solemn realization, if she doesn’t slam the door in my face the second she sees me. Oh God, I’ve had so many bad ideas this summer but this one might actually be the fucking worst in my entire life.

This past summer Catra has stood in the weeds and called it happiness, because calling it anything else, forcing it to be anything else, meant the choices she made to get there were blunders she couldn’t erase, mistakes she had to own in order to right her long list of wrongs. And in that desperation of trying to own her mistakes, there were real lessons to learn before walking in from the weeds and going home. 

Lessons like Micah’s once baseless claim; turns out, he was right on the money when he said that this was a town populated by ghosts, ghosts beyond the ones being used to drum up tourism in the late August season and summoned by giggling junior high girls with an long emptied bottle of wine during the witching hours of their sleepovers. Adora was right for the show to believe the stories that featured those ghosts mattered, like the heroes that formed the constellations above and watched their lives become messier, more labyrinthine with every passing night. 

Adora was right (about Catra, about everything) when she spoke with reverence about the ghosts and their legacies that hung like cautionary tales over their lives, about how what dies in this town never stays dead, so what’s the point of trying to die anyway? 

Dying just means she’ll end up haunting Adora the way Adora haunts her. And after this summer, that’s not a fate Catra would wish anyone . Not even on her worst enemy- and closest love.

Catra wonders as she watches Micah butter his toast and Glimmer finishes sipping her orange juice, if Adora will give her the chance to explain what she’s learned this first summer, and she’s willing to cross her heart, only summer apart. If Adora will hear Catra out when she tries to find the words to say she’s started performing much needed exorcisms, that some of those exorcisms performed themselves, that Adora’s the one and she always was. This summer has left Catra without an excuse not to love her. That now that her house is no longer haunted, do the childhood plans to run away, travel together, have happiness together, the ones that died on their evergreen funeral pyre, have permission to live again? 

Nothing to do but dream about the answer and its promise of dread for the next, mmmm, eight hours. That’ll be a fun way to spend her shift.

“So,” Micah starts. Lesson number thirteen hundred thousand Catra’s learned this summer- Adora found a new best friend without control issues and violent tendencies, without a violently controlling pastor of a father and that father, as charming and goofy as he is, never shuts up , “You girls going to Adora’s shindig tonight?”     

“Don’t say shindig, Dad.” Again, Glimmer winces (because she’s lucky the worst her dad can do to her is to act embarrassing in front of her guest) as Catra wipes her palms on her jeans. 

Wait, when had they started sweating? Were they always sweating? Is she going to be sweating tonight on Adora’s doorstep? Covered in cat hair and sweat and tripping over her words- the epitome of romantic gesture drenched with the irresistible stench of desperation.

Micah flies past his daughter’s suggestion without so much as blinking, “Your Aunt Casta was telling me she’s whipped up some more of those decorations you wanted, Glim. She was going to drop them off from the guest house before heading to the Ladies Luncheon.”

Guest house? Ladies Luncheon. Jesus Christ. Catra can’t roll her eyes far enough back in her head- or at all, for that matter, since she’s a guest in someone’s home and trying not to be a grade A bitch like usual.

“Let me guess, did she throw in a bunch of matching scarves into those ‘boxes of decorations’ for me, Bow, and Adora because she thinks that’s what teenagers are into these days?” asks Glimmer. She’s turned around, rummaging near a white basin Catra thinks might be too fancy and too big to be a working sink, and in the light pouring in from the windows a familiar flash of spherical glass with a red handle for company gets Catra’s hopes up a familiar ladder of disappointment. 

“You know your aunt, worried about you kids getting too cold in this nice weather.”   

Glimmer stops dead in her preparation of Catra now knows has to be fresh coffee grounds ( finally, real fuel), “It’s September. ”

“Mhmm, and you’ll be sure to thank your aunt with a nice note. You don’t want Bow to one up you again, do you?” Micah says before taking another bite. Catra can’t help her momentary lapse in civility this time around; this conversation is that pointless and Sparkles is taking too fucking long filling a damn coffee pot for Catra not to be rolling her eyes.

Speaking of lessons learned about spectors to relate back if Adora will have her, Catra is- for lack of a better term- becoming a spectating spector as she listens to Glimmer and Micah go back and forth until they’ve carved a circle in time with their conversation. Her fingers dip deeper into the crater they’ve carved into her jeans. In this grand house with such an innumerable amount of lavish extensions and ornamentation, in the presence of this healthy father-daughter ribbing, Catra is an outsider the ghosts of this town will never be. They- Rebekah, Bill, the not-dog-but-cat- they all belong here.

Catra does not. 

And yeah, sitting here spectating is better than eating frozen waffles, sipping coffee that burns the roof of her tongue, alone, staring at a post-it note on the fridge that reads, “Covering Dr. Sisk’s shift again. Eat something real. Be back tonight. Love you to the moon and to saturn, mija!” her own spite the only force that keeps her from giving in to the pathetic urge to grab the phone off the wall and dial the first phone number she ever had memorized, because the only place she ever felt like she belonged was on the other side of that phone number, of that phone call.

Her stomach is a bottomless pit, her heart the cliff’s edge that her panic’s jumped straight from and into the bubbling, boiling pit. Catra can’t bring herself to try and eat anymore out of forced politeness alone, not if she doesn’t want to spend her shift vomiting. Trying not to tear a hole in space and time in the fabric of her jeans is the best- well actually it’s all she can do. What better punishment is there for antagonizing Glimmer for the entirety of a never-ending summer than to sit here, silently, and tolerate this never-ending conversation with her father?

“I made coffee, if anyone wants any?” Glimmer’s shift in conversation snaps Catra from her purgatory. When she looks up, the other girl is holding three mugs with three different fingers. “Hm, Catra?”

Catra’s violin string of patience snaps and the sound is cacophony amongst previous provisional harmony, “Of course I want some, Sparkles! Jesus, could you take literally any longer to make a pot of coffee?”

By the time her second outburst in fifteen minutes ricochets off the cabinets and marble island back to her, Catra has cursed herself a hundred times over and then a hundred times again. So much for trying to be something she was not. So much for the faith that trying to change would be the postage stamp that sticks.

I should’ve tried to get more sleep last night.

“...Is what I would have said,” Catra gulps. Her words are ringing in her ears in a deeper tone that turns every organ inside her inside out. Micah and Glimmer’s eyes never dare leave her. Her eye is twitching, the earthquake against her eyebrow fissuring her in two. “Before I started hanging out with you.”

There’s a clinking of porcelain against marble as Glimmer sets one of the mugs down- a blue one, like the eye that’s registering a seven on the richter scale- and lets the sound of the coffee flowing from the pot to the mug be her acceptance of Catra’s apology. If that could even be called an apology and not just Catra halfassing a hostile attempt at one. 

“Are you sure you’re going to be ready for Adora’s party tonight?” Glimmer asks what must be written all over Catra’s face and betraying her the first chance it gets. “You don’t want any more goodness training?” 

Catra takes a sip from Glimmer’s peace offering, reveling in the tension that leaves her body at the heat that floods her mouth, even if the taste is, ugh, comparable to one of Micah’s terrible boots. “You sure you don’t want training on how to make a decent cup of coffee?”

“I’m serious!” Glimmer plants her hands on her hips.

“So I am!” Catra laughs- maybe for the first time since she’s stepped foot into Holiday House.

“Goodness training?” asks Micah, looking up from his plate with an expression that reads that term wasn’t in this issue of Posh Parenting Monthly. “What exactly are you girls going to be getting up to at this party? I thought you were just going to order a pizza and eat ice cream, paint your nails and what not. That’s all I gave you money for.”

“Actually Dad, it’s far more important than our original pizza and ice cream  and En Vogue karaoke party. You know that growing up, Adora and Catra were best friends, but a few months ago they had a falling out because Catra here-” Glimmer’s pause to wave in her direction gives Catra opportunity to groan in protest.

“You’re not seriously going to tell him the entire story right now, are you, Inez ?”

“... Fine. Note taken,” Glimmer makes a face of feigned humility, “Long story short, Catra is planning on apologizing for her part in the fight, or fights I should say, by coming to Adora’s party and saying sorry for every ounce of pain she’s caused Adora over the last couple of months.”

Catra scowls into her coffee at this aggressive turn in tone. There’s a thought in her head that flickers like a lightbulb on its last leg begging not to burn out. I’m not the only person in this room to take Adora for granted, so why do you get to call me out on the price of my tab when you haven’t paid yours? Yeah, Catra’s been something of villainess from one of Adora’s favorite films these past months, but she’s made like that like the role’s made for her; the look, like all those fucking scrunchies, is not good one on Glimmer. Cleverness does not cancel out cruelty, another lesson she’s learned in the loneliness of her midsummer night dreams, and calling out Catra’s brand of it worked well enough the first time. Glimmer will have to put her pitchfork away sooner rather than later if she didn’t want to see that cruelty when provoked .

“Oh- um, okay,” Micah says. He’s pouring himself his own fresh cup of Joe and Catra bites the inside of her cheek as he starts drinking it straight unlike his daughter’s spree of creme and sugar. Huh. So Catra does have something in common with him- besides his weird interest in her mother, “Then I wish you the best of luck, Catra. Are you sure you don’t want some more breakfast?” Annnnnnd, there it goes. “Can’t say I see you making up with Adora on an empty stomach.”

The party’s not right now! I can eat in the eight hours we have until the party and that’s both a good thing and the worst thing to happen in the history of mankind.

“Uh,” she struggles with a response that’s somewhat amiable for a total cop out. The end result is something like choking, “Not- not really. Thank you?” 

“What? Afraid you’re gonna barf?” Glimmer teases, wiggling her stupid pink eyebrows and absolutely begging to be punched in the teeth.

That’s it! Catra’s nails almost tear another hole in her jeans, her coffee almost wasted on the marble surface and porcelain mug almost in jagged pieces flung about the room’s opulence; it’s only the image of standing on Adora’s doorstep, opal eyes catching sight of her in the softest light like something off a film screen from the ones that star in Catra’s recurring dreams, that stops her, makes her think twice. 

Trying. Right. She’s trying for Adora. Fuck, how many times is she going to circle back like this? Is this going to be her whole day? Her entire life? She’s trying for Adora, she’s trying for Adora.

Just not that exhaustively. “Duh, I’m afraid I’m going to barf! Is that not good enough for you or do you actually want me to barf on Adora, too?”

“Honestly I’d take it or leave it.” The other girl shrugs.

“Yeah, well if I barf, I’m not staying to clean it up, so enjoy that job.” 

“I have a hard time believing that. I’ve seen you do a lot of questionable stuff Catra, but even leaving your vomit in the place you practically grew up in and making the girl who you grew up with and are still totally hung up on clean it up seems like a stretch.” Glimmer paints her picturesque point, stretching out words as if general emphasis isn’t enough, all the while continuing to taunt Catra with her perfect pink eyebrows.

“Fine,” Catra grumbles. She takes another swig of liquid coping before continuing, “Bluff called. You happy?”

“I don’t think it would be super entertaining to watch you barf,” Glimmer says in response, milling about in a dangerous, bite-me annoying kind of way, “But watching Adora tell you to go straight to hell? Now that will be painful to see.”

Catra’s eyes almost get stuck at the back of her head at that not so hypothetical. 

“You’re underestimating Adora.”

“Oh yeah?” those perfect pink eyebrows ask as they raise.

“She’s gonna tell me to go fuck myself, that’s what’s about to happen!” Catra slams her mug down on the marble.

“Hey, I’m allowed to have doubt in your apology plan,” says Glimmer, and Catra does nothing to stop the thought, yeah ‘cause it’s you and you doubt that your own fucking house is haunted. At least that sentiment doesn’t fly out of her mouth and right in the face of her strained goodness efforts. “You’re supposed to be confident in your apology plan,” Uh, when did this turn into a lecture? Is it insensitive to think your mom is also haunting this house and is now possessing you like some Evil Dead crap? “Because it’s solid, and also because I helped you come up with it. And hey- you’re wearing your old band. Were you wearing that when you showed up last night?” 

Catra nods, letting out a sigh that dissolves into her next sip of coffee.

Glimmer’s next scoff is something of a redress. “Wow. Guess I was just so shocked you asked me for help that I didn’t even notice.”

“You and me both.” Catra’s hand comes to her head in the midst of her trademark deflective sarcasm. Pushing her frizzing and frayed bangs out of her face, the headband resting on her head is an eulogy for her old self, the one she’s still trying to find again. The one Adora might’ve- maybe- loved, the one she could love again if Catra made an effort to make it worth her while. 

Back when their days were adventures contained and brought to life within the boundlessness of forest floor, when childish wonder was not yet desperate escapism and all the two of them cared about was which of them could reach the highest heights on the peak of Razz’s old wooden swing, Adora gifted Catra her first headband. A treasure the color of rust bought from the clearance rack of Goodwill’s and lined with tiny metal rivets that left a map of bruises on Catra’s scalp.

“To keep your hair out of your face,” a tooth gapped smile told her, pointing to the uneven braids on her own head, the ones Catra put there with loving, fascinated care, “And so that I can always see  your eyes, even when we’re hiding in the dark.” 

Catra grew out of the first one and Adora bought her a new one with the dimes and quarters she found when they were playing barefoot archeologists à la the mighty Indiana Jones under the pier. Bright red, like a target for her head instead of her back. Every time one headband broke or Catra grew out of it (she never ever lost one, but couldn’t say the same for her pocket Bible or piano workbook), Adora found another one for her, just like the last. To keep Catra’s mass of unruly curls out of her face, so Adora could always find her by the sight of her eyes.

Then that era of childlike wonder dried up like ink on the last page of a chapter, and Catra started to suffocate at Adora’s side, sick of rotting until no trace of her existed away in her best friend’s shadow. She was so far gone that her jealousy was louder than her love (which was saying something), that pushing Adora away was the same as being left by her, was the same as being betrayed by her, there was no grace in her reinvention. Catra stood in front of her bathroom mirror after that parking lot confrontation, outside her body watching until her reflection broke down sobbing, and ripped the headband from her person. 

It was an iconoclast’s demise to burn it and despite the madness inside her screaming to break it into pieces until it resembled herself, Catra could only bring herself to throw it in the bathroom trash can and hope it would fade from existence before she did.  

Melog, being Melog, saved the headband from death in debris. The relentless cat left it everywhere and anywhere it would be in Catra’s line of sight. But Catra had already refused to wear it from that moment in the bathroom on because Catra refused to be buried in it. When she wiped her tears from eyes that afternoon, the touch was her own and it was lonely and violent and unfeeling.

Yesterday morning Melog’s ritual of saving it from the cupboard under the bathroom sink left it right where Catra hid Adora’s other stolen treasure. Before grabbing her skateboard and trekking her sorry ass all the way up to Holiday House to ask for a hundredth second chance at redemption, Catra lay it back on her head, savoring her delusional illusion that it was Adora’s hands placing it where it belonged- just like back in the days of their other worlds, of pirates and archaeologists, of fairies and gods, cowboys and bandits, princesses and magic.

Glimmer pulls the mug away from her lips, head tilted to the side as she takes Catra in. Catra starts to itch her exposed skin again when she says, “Hey, it looks good . It's definitely a note I think Adora’s going to appreciate.”

“Really?” Catra’s voice is dry, “‘Cause it kind of feels like I robbed Adora and now I’m wearing something of hers to like, her funeral.”

“Yeesh, that’s dramatic. You and Adora really are made for each other.” When Catra crumbles at this throwaway comment, itchy and sweaty and nauseated from a breakfast that’s ten percent protein and ninety percent utter shit, Glimmer swoops in with a laughable rescue. Micah munches on his eggs in silence as if he’s not even there. “I just meant like, Adora’s so worried that you’ve, you know-”

“Changed?” 

“Yeah. You did spend all of summer break with a bunch of weird smelling college dropouts-”

“You can just call ‘em crooks like everyone else does, Glimmer, including the crooks themselves.”

“-who are in some sort of improv group? Or they’re a traveling theatre? Nevermind. You hang out with those guys, you relentlessly antagonize us whenever we’re around, and then you go and burn a building down-”

“The crooks set the fire and it was an accident, they just blamed me for it,” Catra tries to correct, but Glimmer’s on a roll that does not threaten to grant Catra mercy by running out of steam.

 “-and now your hair’s short and that’s a weird look and Adora thinks that just because you cut it-”

Catra kills that sentence before it can grow past its infancy, “I didn’t cut anything. My step-dad lost his fucking marbles one night because I ask my mom one time if I can get it cut, and before I know what’s happening, that psychopath is cutting it off himself.”

At least, that’s what Catra thinks that’s what happened. Her memory of the event is… fuzzy. On purpose, or- or maybe not. In terms of compartmentalizing, Catra’s a natural, a mother fucking prodigy. Lowly coping mechanisms from the lowest places come to her as easily as breathing. Another occupational hazard that comes from the laying on of hands from batshit crazy father to fucked in the head daughter. 

So there’s a… a gap of that night. A gap that begins around an eating area like the one she sits out now with a request to fit in just a little better in teenage wasteland and ends with the sound of an electric razor dying, heavy breathing, and shouting too far away to make out. When Catra came to without any inclination of how much time had filled that blank gap, surrounded by pieces of herself on the kitchen floor and her mother nowhere to be found, there was nothing left in her than to figure dying there surrounded by the faint smell of cleaning chemicals, with no one to hold her or tell her it would be okay, would be the only way to end this paradox she carried within her.

Dear old step-dad never came back. Her mother did , smelling of sweat and gasoline and the leftover grit of lake water, crawling into Catra’s bed with her and the cat around two in the morning, whispering swiftly a prayer to Saint Michael that had not graced Catra’s ears in since their house had become a purgatory. Catra did not ask any questions. Not that night as she fell asleep cuddled against the tear stains she left on her mom’s chest, not when she found a swollen knot on the back of her skull when cleaning up her lopped off ends the next morning. 

She didn't ask questions and she didn't answer any.

“Oh, I um, I didn’t know that until like two in the morning last night,” Glimmer mends her previous statement amongst a pause of silence. It’s not that her acknowledgment of their concessions made late last night (or early this morning) under the influence of the truth serum that were the dead-of-night hours of a sleepover doesn’t mean anything to Catra- progress is progress and at least Glimmer reciprocated by showing her the skeletons in her own closet- but her relaxed demeanor in front of her father is fucking with Catra’s sense of reality.  

Catra side eyes a quiet Micah, making an even quieter note of his new found preoccupation with his breakfast. But concern is Catra’s burden to bear alone; Micah is no more perturbed by mentions of child abuse or the obvious Lilith Fair idiosyncrasies of his daughter's friends than he is by his empty cup of coffee.

“But that’s definitely something you should fill Adora in on, I know she’s been worried about it.” finishes Glimmer, bringing Catra’s hunt for suspicion in her father to an unceremonious close.

“You’re banking on her hearing me out?” Catra doesn’t know what part of her is asking that question: her skepticism of this rag-tag friendship, or her own stupid hope that Glimmer’s knowledge of Adora’s true feelings are not just some manifest of Catra’s own pipe dreams. 

“I’m banking on our plan, Catra.” Oh so it’s ‘ours’ now? Glimmer, voice dropping low, leans over on her elbows “You’re not going to forget to bring it, right? That’s what our entire plan hinges on.”

Trying or not, Catra can’t help but bite back with a wallop of well deserved sarcasm. “No Glimmer, what precious and historic item of Adora’s that I’ve kept under my bed and slept in like a total loser every night since we broke up am I going to forget to give her back? What was it again? One of your aunt’s scarves?”

“I’m done helping you,” Glimmer says with a sigh. Catra almost hopes that’s either a threat- or a promise. Not that there’s a discernible difference; add that to the ever growing list of lessons Catra’s learned the hard way this summer, of bitter pills she’s been forced to swallow.

Catra’s right on the precipice of throwing another Inez related comment in Glimmer’s face when her father clears his throat.  

“Well girls,” the scraping of porcelain against metal signals an end. An end of this conversation, an end of this beginning, an end of this continuously awkward interaction Catra’s had to muddle through ( Thank. God.) when Micah gets up, fork, knife and empty plate in hand. As he walks toward the open mouth of the sink, Catra gets a strong whiff of what she can only describe as The Lakes. Wait, is he not working on the beach right beside his backyard? Huh. “This has been a weirdly eye opening conversation. A fun one, but still weird, not that I’m not glad Glimmer is making new friends.”

“Dad!” Once more for old time’s sake.

“But I gotta get to it, or I’m letting that boating license go to waste,” he says, putting the conversation to rest the same way he brought to life- with a resolute look in Catra’s direction that makes her more uncomfortable than sleeping on Glimmer’s floor all night, “Catra, will you tell your mom I’ll see her in Sunday’s service, okay? It’s been nice having her back after all these years.”

Catra fumbles for a second before remembering that gawking like a fish is not a human response and neither is exchanging glances of insinuation with his daughter, “Uh- yeah. Sure?”

“Oh, and tell her that if she ever gets time off from work, Casta would love to have her at the Ladies’ Luncheon.”

  Jesus Christ, how is this still happening? “Okay.”  

“Have fun at Adora’s party tonight!” Micah gives them each a nod before turning one last time in Glimmer’s direction. “Be safe, sweetie. Call me when you get to Bow’s.”

“We will, Dad.” Glimmer waves him off. 

The scent of the sea water- and the fresh water- follow the man as he walks out of the kitchen and down the hall, like that sailor that manifester before carrying a love long lost the way the star of a foreign film would, one Catra scored for Adora when they were still on terms that included talking. Here Catra is, watching him go into a house haunted by a company of ghosts and their what-ifs and their what-could-have-beens, carrying a lost love of her own.

How fucking fitting that Catra would reconcile with all of her regrets here.  

“I should go too,” Catra puts her empty mug down, swinging herself off her seat at the island. With Micah gone it’s t-minus fifteen seconds until Glimmer either picks her witch hunt backup or starts talking about the Backstreet Boyz, and Catra’s worried enough about vomiting at some point in the day. She’d like it to be closer, in location and time, to Adora’s party. “It’s like forty five minutes from Holiday Hou- your place- to the mall. Not that Hordak cares if I’m late anymore, but he could still decide to care today, if he’s feeling particularly bitchy.”

“You sure you don’t want a ride? I can drop you off on my way to Bow’s, but we’d have to drop by the guest house first.” Glimmer offers. 

Scoffing- guest house? Seriously!?- Catra’s already got her back turned, “No thanks, I’d rather-” eat glass  “- just skate.” 

I can’t rehearse my speech in your car, and I definitely can’t pretend that’s not what I’m doing with you blasting No Doubt on repeat.

“Besides, there’s a road I haven’t taken that I- I need to.” One where she could come to grips with the promises she’s yet to make good on.

“Made for each other,” Glimmer whispers under her breath, every word like an individual nail dragged down a catholic nun’s school chalkboard. Then, “See you at 8:45, James ?”

“8:45, Inez, ” Catra affirms with a nod before excusing herself back into the immaculate foyer of Holiday House, hoping that her skateboard won’t have wandered off like a certain set of key lime paw prints.

“Are you aware you’re covered in cat hair?” Glimmer calls after her.

Catra sighs. Just like that her eye is back to twitching, and her mind is back to thinking about how Betty’s roundabout lover knew more than he thought he did.

Stupid friends? What a fucking epiphany, James.

~

Working an eight hour shift on a laughable attempt at eight hours of sleep is proving to be a teenage tradition Catra thinks might be the only plight older than time itself. And where better to be honoring that shitty custom with a shitty work ethic than at the mall, at the center of adolescent coming of age amidst shiny, illustrious gift-wrapped suburban dreams, in the video rental store tucked into the furthest possible corner of this overhyped capitalist grime?

Catra’s on reshelving duty. Or, in the interest in being as truthful as possible because she’s supposed to be a good and honest person now, Catra put herself on reshelving duty because they’re severely understaffed and her boss is a Grade A prick and a half who decided half-assing the schedule would be a tolerable enough way to excuse not hiring another assistant manager after theirs left them high and dry so she could follow a hippie to the University of Vermont. Oh, and never see, speak, or hear from Catra again. That was an added benefit to Scorpia’s recent decampant.

At least she got out of here, Catra’s conscious speaks through metaphorical grit teeth as she puts back a beat up copy of “ Sunset Boulevard” and dives right back into the plastic crate of returns. At least Scorpia stood for something, even if she didn’t always have the backbone to keep her standing. 

The next thought slides in just like the VHS of Poltergeist she’s reshelving.

At least Scorpia is naturally a good person who cares for other people, and didn’t shatter her chance at love by dropping Perfuma’s heart just for shits and giggles, just to see if it would break. You, on the other hand-

Catra slams the next movie into its awaiting slot without forgiveness. No one shows these quote un quote greatest films of time any sort of mercy when they pull them off the shelf and rent them just to take them for granted, the cracking on the covers and the anatomically incorrect dicks drawn over Billy Crystal’s mouth and the gum stuffed in the tapes an exposé on their constant wear-and-tear mistreatment, so why the hell should Catra? 

Other than to pay reverence to the memories each of these movies hold for her, memories so soft and sweet against a background hurt that’s too big and trauma that’s too loud, ones where she’s hidden under the safety of a blanket fort of old quilts and sheets and pillows that smell of home, cuddled up and falling asleep on Adora’s shoulder as she holds down the rewind button of their momentary, twenty five inch adventure for the fourth time that night.

Catra picks up the crate a little bit more tenderly this time before stomping down another deserted aisle. 

For a Saturday in the town’s one place to be, the store’s vacancy is a fading unorthodoxy and the sound of just her and these VHS tapes is currently wrecking Catra’s war torn nerves. Nothing like an immense amount of time and space to taunt her, haunt her, make her regret and rethink her past, present, and future. When Catra first started here trying to shake the shadow of the only scorpion ever to not sting when fighting back, a break in customer activity like this one meant peeling off her tacky “How Can I Help You?” red vest and stealing off to the food court to grab an Orange Julius for Adora and coke for herself before seeing if her best friend was lurking on their preferred bench behind the mall. If Catra couldn’t find Adora there, she’d sneak through a back hallway into the movie theater projector rooms, where she’d be mouthing along with whatever feature film she was overseeing.            

There would be no one waiting for Catra in those rooms if she were to say “peace” to the empty store she stands in now. There would be no one waiting for her on that bench behind that mall. There isn’t even a shadow for her to ditch. She’s standing in the ruins, the echoes of what once was a marvelous run, a lively show one couldn’t miss, a love so great it would’ve been the one if not for her bad habits of always saying no to what deserved the answer yes.

Wonder if Adora likes working as an Olive Garden waitress better than she did at her dream job. Wonder if it’s haunted like everyone says it is, like everything and everyone is in this town is. Whatever, guess it doesn’t matter if it is, ‘cause I’m pretty sure whatever job involves not seeing me is Adora’s “dream job” and the place being haunted is just the fucking cherry on top.

Catra scoffs at no one, nothing. Her crate’s almost empty by now. What she’s going to do when her hand reaches in and comes up empty to leave her one hundred percent alone instead of just ninety five percent is a problem for her future self.

Not like that version of myself doesn’t hate me already. What do I have to lose?

Funny how this is how she’s spending her senior year of high school: restocking rental VHS tapes probably wiped of various body fluids and wondering how the hell she could’ve tarnished something so grand as to what she had right in the palm of her hands. Other people wasted their entire pathetic lives trying to find love, friendship, and all that sappy shit. Catra found it waiting for her across the street. And now that love will ultimately be leaving Catra, stepping on the last train out of this dump come graduation in nine months time, chasing dreams that were once theirs to be shared out on the west coast, while Catra will still be in this god forsaken place, hoping the pay of this insulting work wouldn’t be so insulting she couldn’t make a life after death here of all places. 

She knows what she says tonight under porch light might not change that, that it might not change Adora’s mind. Yeah, as wide eyed kids with nothing better to do Catra and Adora fantasized about leaving this dead end town for the wonder and whimsy of L.A. Together they’d made promise after promise, bricks for their best-laid plans, to take off on the cross country road trip to end cross country road trips the second their thirteenth year of schooling ended, armed with the purest love and unearned moxie alone- but those fantasies died ensanguined deaths that left Catra’s soul permanently bloodstained the second she took a dagger to their lifeforce when she severed her symbiosis to Adora. 

The ghosts of those pretty what-ifs follow Catra even now, as she walks through the graveyard of this store, empty and echoing. 

“We’ll take my mom,” her own words reverberate against the grainy carpet under her Levis and nearby window pane, “And she’ll finally be free of my asshole step-dad, because we’ll be somewhere he won’t ever find us, and he’ll never get to lay a hand on her again.”

“Where should we go first? I mean, what are you thinking? I was kinda thinking we could try Sunset Ranch first, or-or Amoeba Music? Oh, maybe we could find a place to drop your demos off, Catra. Okay yeah, I take it back- that’s what I want to do first when we get there.”

“I’ll be lucky if anyone wants to hear me without any sort of name recognition, Adora.” Catra had turned her face away from Adora’s eager expression, a desperate play to keep her rising blush hidden and discrete.  

“Then we’ll find some clubs for you to play at. Get you that name recognition you think you need so badly, as if your music doesn’t speak for itself.” Adora nudged her shoulder and Catra had cursed the way her stomach fell to her knees and her knees almost fell to the ground, “If you’re even brave enough to get on stage and not chicken out.”

“Chicken, I’m not- Shut up, Adora!” That little daydreaming for days-to-come sesh of theirs ended with Catra pushing Adora into the closest pile of hay because pure action tended to take over when words failed her (and words always failed her when it came to Adora, maybe that explained the compensation of 95% percent of her penned lyrics being anent to the girl next door), her knees falling to the ground and failing her next as Adora caught her wrist right before succumbing fully to a gravity that bought them both down. Gravity that brought them closer to the danger that was being that much nearer to each other. 

Adora had pieces of straw caught up in her ponytail from the impact. Catra can feel even now the hay rolling against the pads of her fingers as she pulled a tempting piece out her hair, a needle out of a haystack of pure gold, and the heat of that same danger swims up her nervous system against the feel of the mall’s air conditioning like that close call was closer than most.

How old had they been at the time? Like fifteen?

That sounds right, Catra grumbles for herself and herself alone, a copy of Rear Window tucked under her elbow,  that sounds like the honeymoon period of my pinning before I was out “making Adora confused” and ruining my step-dad’s reputation.  

Their double-entendreless roll in the hay ended not in Catra staring longingly into Adora’s eyes, until her reflection was made the embodiment of those glass cutting opal irises, but with Catra twisting her knuckles into Adora’s rib cage- touching her was touching her, even if it wasn’t like either of them wanted- tickling her until Adora was firing back and they were both so far gone laughing, trying to get the upper hand amidst their compromising situations, that none of their thoughts could dare entertain a future without one another.

Adora, if Catra’s buried hatchets don’t totally wreck her plans, will probably be taking off for L.A. alone once they tie the knot on this whole high school thing. Thanks to Glimmer’s intel, Catra knows Adora’s dreams of seeing what the other side of the country held for her still hold true- with or without Catra by her side. And Catra didn’t know what cut to the bone quicker: that Adora was cutting Catra’s string from the tapestry that was once their shared narrative, or that Adora was leaving and there was nothing left here in this homeland that would force her to reconsider.

Not with her guardian behind bars (good fucking riddance ) and lacking the visiting hours rights necessary to guilt Adora into staying, and Razz wouldn’t care. Razz, ancient and all knowing in the worst way , would be there in that kitchen out of time baking a pie and still mixing up Adora and Mara’s names while Adora left with the rest of the silent crowds on some night train. Adora was so dead fucking set on trading in willow trees for palms ones that she wasn’t even following Bow and Glimmer to what was supposed to be their college triptych upstate- a reason Glimmer found good enough to throw a rich girl fit over once she found out and start a fight with Adora, one that festered and magnified until there was no one left to sleep over at Holiday House except for Catra.

Adora refusing to give up her California dreaming for even her new best friends shone a bright light of truth that blinded Catra’s confidence in her and Glimmer’s last minute apology plan.

What if our dreams and our life and our dream life “together” were never really about getting to be each other’s without anyone else’s input? What if it was always just about her getting to leave this place?

“Whatever,  it doesn’t matter ,” Catra’s lack of faith is her only audience, “There’s no point in dwelling on it and getting paralyzed before the party.” Wouldn’t want to chicken out like we always do, would we? “I’m not doing this to buy back into her life plans.”

Even if they were “ours” before.

If Adora leaves, then Adora leaves. At least if Catra crashes her party tonight and puts all her cards on the table, Adora won’t enter L.A with only a frayed end of the truth. This truth she can thread through a needle and patch up that tapestry she’s shred in memoriam of Catra’s exile. 

‘Course… there is another string Adora could pick up and mend, another way she could react to Catra’s waylay appearance, where instead of slamming the door in a super deserving way in Catra’s super deserving face, she ties back the string that has always tied them together. Adora hears Catra out. Adora takes Catra, fucked up head and guitar string scarred hands, back. As her friend, as her girlfriend, whatever- something has to be better than nothing. Better than not even being of the thoughts in Adora’s mind that were heavy with hate.

And then, well Catra couldn’t say. All of Catra’s best laid plans have fallen at the sleight of someone else’s hand, so this time around it’s all but pointless to chart a path on ships that are about to sink. But if she were planning, betting on the hypothetical of it all, Catra would graduate and by some miracle, Adora’s Dodge Daytona would be there waiting for her in the West parking lot. Adora would hold her hand as they leave this town in the rearview, every item they’ve ever owned from all of Adora’s favorite movies to Catra’s guitar, listening to a mixtape Catra would’ve made to mark the start of their first adventure together. 

They’d drive up to Burlington to make one last extra stop before heading out west, where Catra could knock on a decorated dorm door because there was one last rite to perform before she could leave well enough alone.

Except I’m not expecting that. I’m not expecting any version of that. It’s hard enough just to have been dreaming about that all fucking summer long.

Catra falters in her reshelving, shuddering and blinking a familiar heat from her eyes. It hurts as much as it burns to entertain an ending where she hasn’t fucked up so deeply she still gets to ride off in the sunset with Adora in her passenger seat. Turns out that imagining happiness is just as gut-wrenchingly agonizing as never ever getting to see that happiness unfold. That’s just another lesson Catra’s learned the hard way this summer. 

It’s become her deepest hurt.

There’s no back up plan for Catra’s future because there was never any need for one. Since they were seven fucking years old, pinning up afghans and quilts around Razz’s living room to blanket themselves under while to watch the Peter Pan cartoon again because it was one the only movies they could agree on the timeless wonder of, their plan was to leave this ghost town in the dust for the splendor of Hollywood. Chase a music career there- producing, vocal backing, songwriting, instrumentation, hell throw in a record deal and LP of her own if they were truly shooting for the stars. Chase Adora’s history there- bring her treasure trove of unanswered questions about her past real closure.

That meant no college browsing and no light SAT prep on the weekends of Catra’s senior year. It meant dying a little bit more every time she showed up for a shift here at the Hollywood Horde Video Rental Store with the plastered, faithless aura of a sales rep who actually gave shit. Her mom had taken to leaving pamphlets for This-and-That university, including her alma mater on the dining room table before she left in the morning, along with calendars of audition dates for the music programs of This-and-That university. They always ended up in the trash can to be reunited with their corresponding pamphlets.

Catra’s calculations are simple, ironclad, a defense for which she has none. Either she dies tonight and becomes another name whispered in stories told around campfires here, or she dies tonight and takes her exile one step further by leaving for New York City. By far not new shit, a mockery of her old plans laying at her own feet in tatters, but if it’s over now then it’s over now. Catra will have to settle for a warped version of the story they were supposed to be the main characters of; they still end up big in a big ol’ city and they still get what they want- even if it’s half a torn polaroid of the whole picture.  

Either way, Catra is staring down a future where she wakes up alone. This way, she at least gets to choose where that loneliness will follow her. 

Unless Adora is somehow moved by her words, however choppy, and her gestures, however sloppy.

Well, gee, since there isn’t any point in dwelling on it, or are you just naturally a glutton for punishment?  

Catra frowns. In her hand she’s holding the last movie from the return bin, “Edward Scissorhands” and the urge to hurl up the contents of her “breakfast” from this morning is leaving a tartness in her mouth only the sight of seeing this movie can top. 

God, it’s like the whole fucking universe is rubbing in how stupid she was to ruin what she had with Adora and that the only way to do that is to leave little pieces of Catra’s ex littered throughout Catra’s universe like signs she’s too contrite to miss. 

“C’mon Catra,  we’re already past the part where Peg is introducing Edward to the family? Could you burn the popcorn any faster?” Adora’s ringing voice is the loudest sound the store has ever heard and maybe the entire universe too, smoothing down the rough edges of Catra’s psyche like waves brought back to the beach.

“This is a terrible movie, Adora, ” Catra’s past self sounds too happy to take the potshot of teasing Adora. Then again, Catra’s past self had absolutely no idea she was about to give that up, “And just for that, I’m gonna leave the popcorn in for forty more seconds. Hope you like burnt kernels.”

“Uh, by terrible, do you mean classic?”

“And by classic you mean were just watching this so you can swoon over Winona Ryder? Which you could’ve done just as easily if we had watched Heathers tonight.”

Past Catra’s voice dies an untimely death, smeared from the air as quickly as it had set in to leave chills up her spine, to fog up the glass of the windows that surround her. The movie is still in Catra’s hand when her present voice returns in full force.

I should’ve gotten Kyle to cover my shift. 

“Excuse me,” a voice calls out and the “Edward Scissorhands” tape almost shatters in half in Catra’s hand, “But do you have That Darn Cat in yet? I saw it in theatres and knew I just had to see it again.”

Catra slams the last of the returns into the waiting spot without responding to the voice in question. So the universe really is cutting her open to bleed her dry today? She really should’ve gotten Kyle to cover her goddamn shift.

“I’m not talking to you,” she hisses out every word.

The response Catra receives is patronizing in a way she has not missed for a single second. “Well, that’s too bad, because I want to talk to you.”

Catra turns her head- I can’t believe I’m entertaining this, am I really that undignified? Or that bored? - and swerves her trajectory just in time to avoid catching a mouthful of lime green boa feathers, the epitome of fashion taste. “What the hell do you want, Double Trouble?”

Or Crook Number One, as she should say. And if Catra really wants to aim for accuracy, Crook Call-You-Out just to have that much more fun Selling-You Out would work, too.

“To talk to you, like I just said.” When Catra falls prey to the old habit of letting out a growl for intimidation purposes, Double Trouble intones, “I brought a peace offering, if you’d be interested? I know it’s something you can’t resist.”

Her empty basket does not stay that way when the ghost of Catra’s recent, slandered past places three CDs in with a flourish. The CDs reflect the fluorescent light of the store in a way that can only mean they’re still in their plastic wrapping, aka the hardest substance to create a tear in in the entire world, and that can only mean Double Trouble is the one skipping out on their boring shift.

Either Catra’s not strong enough to resist a chance at new music for the grand cost of zero dollars, or she’s gambling on the notion she’s no longer weak enough to fall for Double Trouble’s bullshit as she pulls the CDs out to examine them. It’s not like she’d take them on blind faith, or any type of faith for that matter. That’s how she ends up with three of the same Weird Al albums. Either way, this is one hundred percent a trap.

And I’m about to fall for it. Like I always do. Hook, line, and sinker.

“Blink-182’s  Cheshire Cat, you know I already own this album, right? Entre a Mi Mundi- very funny, DT,” Catra all but snarls, “and Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill. Wait, what? You know I don’t listen to Alanis Morissette.”

Thought I was pretty vocal about that.

Bright green eyes join the shine under the store lights, “But she does, doesn’t she?”

Catra finds herself stuttering in indignation at this. Yes, DT’s always had the one up when it comes to reading Catra like a fucking book, and yes, it’s a skill of theirs that’s always been a pain in Catra’s ass considering it would just be better for everyone if that book remained closed, but this latest fixation of the washed out actor to be’s in fanning the flames of her burning love life is going to be what drives her finally mad.

“A little birdy told me what you’re planning for tonight,” Double Trouble says, continuing without permission- a specialty of theirs.

“A little birdy?” is all Catra can stammer out in reply. She’s still trying to figure out they got here and how quickly she can get the hell out.

“Mhmm,” DT nods, “The Ladies Luncheon is particularly chatty, if you know what I mean.”

Catra almost drops the CDs. 

Did Glimmer seriously fucking tell her aunt about the party tonight and then her aunt blabbed to her little wealthy women’s commission who then blabbed it to everyone else? Should I just assume someone told Adora too?

“I figured giving her dear Alanis’ LP might be good for a peace offering of your own.”

“How’d you get these?” Catra changes the subject strategically or cowardly, to put it another way. Discussing Adora’s   taste in music- or lack thereof- is a one way ticket to getting coffee-flavored bile all over the feathers of DT’s boa for several reasons.

Double Trouble hums again, “I have my ways, Kitten.”

“So, you stole them. You took the merchandise you were supposed to be selling. Of fucking course you did.”

This glamorous mall job reshelving rentals of Catra’s is an example of an assorted number of ways quasi- nepotism could be used as penance. When it came time to decorate her birthday cake with Sixteen Candles , she begged for permission to apply for a job at the mall’s record store, to be surrounded by vinyl paradise for this specific teenage right of passage. Nothing sounded better than the prospect of literally being surrounded by music- except for maybe the idea of tucking away new releases to bring home- and so it was either that or settling for the oubliette pawn shop she bought her Taylor acoustic from. The job application had been filled out, Catra’s name signed on the bottom line, a quick scribble of naivete before her mom had even signed off on the idea. 

The next day her stepdad passed on the news that in light of her request he, being the name dropping sleaze he was, had pulled some strings and found her a job at the mall. Then, because that monster loved dabbling in the art of getting his step-daughter’s hopes up, he promptly told her she’d be reporting the following weekend to her step-uncle’s video rental store and had the audacity to demand Catra thank him at the dinner table in front of her mom for his show of last minute “generosity.”

After their accidental dabble in arson, DT found a job opening to replace the one they’d lost in the now ashen theater known as The Disco (a misnomer of a place, not a club but a stage) at none other than the mall’s Tupelo Records, sticking half chewed gum on the unopened new releases Catra once dreamed of owning all to herself. Insult to fucking injury was it amounted to. Insult that DT had the freedom to come and go from Catra’s dream after-school job; injury in that it had to be DT of all people to snatch the position out of thin air, the same quid pro quo masquerader Catra swore off when three showers later she stilled smelled of smoke.      

“Why not?” the charlatan scoffs, “It’s not like anyone’s going to miss them. And as long as they can’t prove I did it, then there’s no harm in indulging one’s most selfish desires. You, of all people, know what that’s like.”

That depends on what DT means by selfish. 

“Can’t prove it, huh? Seem to be hearing that a lot this summer.”

She doesn’t elaborate. Instead, the absence of DT’s Corpus Delicti poses a headache inducing crossroads for Catra.

“Since you can steal all the CDs you want from Tupelo and no one gives a damn , then why give them to me ?” she steals herself with a breath that comes off cold and indifferent and somehow insanely insecure all at once. Why not pass them on to your improv friends or whatever hopemonger you're sleeping with this week? “What do you want from me? To steal you a movie you could rent for three dollars?”

Hollywood Horde doesn’t have That Darn Cat, Catra can tell DT that for free.   

The faux feathers of Double Trouble’s scarf brush against Catra’s hand and it paralyzes her the way she imagines snake venom might, “Credit, I suppose. I mean, who doesn’t want recognition for one of their greatest performances of all time? It wouldn’t kill you to give me a standing ovation. After all, where would you be Kitten, if it weren’t for my freely offered advice? You wouldn’t be on your way to Adora’s party now, would you?”  

Ugh, now I’m starting to think you’re the Inez in this version of the story. Catra scowls into the deep carve of her frown lines. Between you and Sparkles, you’re the mouthy gossip who always has it coming. At least Glimmer didn’t try to ice the burn of calling me out by bribing me with an Alanis Morissette CD.  And besides, I already have a goddamn peace offering!

“I definitely almost wouldn’t have died in a burning building.”

“Yeesh, dramatic much?” laughs DT, throwing a section of bleached blonde hair behind their head, “You know, we could workshop your tone for tonight, really ease up on that hostility because it is not a good look for sweeping women off their feet.” 

“No,” says Catra. She shakes her head, adamant. No more falling for any of these half baked get-love-quick-schemes as an excuse to avoid the work of doing the right thing, “I don’t want your help. I don’t need your help, so go back to your shift and just-” her shoulders fall, her new creed not to resort to anger at the first sign of anything coming back to her, along with an inescapable wave of exhaustion, “Just leave me alone, please? ”

“That’s the attitude that got you into this mess, Kitten.” trills DT. 

Then it might as well get me out of it. Might as well use the shovel I dug this hole with to climb out of it. Why does everyone and the ghost of their dead dog/cat have a problem with how I wanna fix the mess I made?

Catra sets the CDs down in the crate and elevates the crate on the jut of her hip bone before getting a head start in the front counter’s direction. A fitting post-mortem for this conversation, for this forgery of a friendship. 

“Well then, since you’ve got it all figured out,” there’s no bad blood laced in their words, their tone, their carefree easy-come-easy-go attitude toward all things genuine, “I suppose I’ll leave you be. But if you end up wanting to take me up on my offer, I’ll be on that bench behind the mall having a smoke. You know, the sad little one? No point in going back to work now anyway.”

They don’t wait for Catra to stoop to her usual level and offer some scathing cheek and tongue retort of a goodbye. Boa scarf thrown over their shoulder, Double Trouble sayshays back the way they came out the open doors. Goosebumps rise on Catra’s arms at the cold of their wake. She ignores it, doing everything in her pathetic amount of power not to imagine the utter irreverence of leaving cigarette ash littered over her and Adora’s last ineffable place, last holy memory.

“I’ll be done with riding lessons around five,” Catra sinks to the floor behind the counter where no one can see vulnerability bleed through the cracks in her armor, the plastic packaging of Jagged Little Pill sticking to the skin of her fingers, as Adora’s voice comes back to her, in a whisper, in a shout, in a scream, “Meet behind the mall, the usual place, okay?”

I should never have gotten in that car. I should have never driven away.     

As slow shifts go, at least Catra expected this one to be torture and expected to have to scowl and bear it. Double Trouble’s surprise guest appearance is unwelcome to say the least, but it’s the only one the universe seems to have bothered to schedule. No chatty eldery women to make Catra miss Scorpia as she rings them up. No college dropout punk wannabes to make her retroactively regret her contrarian choices. No hyper-active kids coming from the arcade toward the centerfold of the mall to make Catra clean up their spilled Orange Juliuses.  

Just the empty store, Catra and yellow pad of lined paper to scribble out sad prose that no matter how fucking hard she tries comes out to the chord progression of You Oughta Know. And when the land of smeared black ink becomes a melody she can stomach finally, Catra’s staring at some more honest version of all those apology speeches free of Glimmer’s pretentious edits and suggestions.

The word “promises” is woven like an aurelian thread through every wounded sentiment; she’s back to cursing Adora’s name and reminiscing about that last night in her bedroom and accusing Adora of turning her back on her after throwing Catra to the ground and breaking the same bones her touch had turned to gold.

“Just this once, I’ll ask you to stay,” Catra hums the melody somewhere beyond her conscious awareness, “Just this once, I’ll say anything to make it okay/ promise I’d never say I’m sorry/ promise me it isn’t too late.”

Yeah. Okay. Maybe Glimmer’s revisions were a necessary evil. It’s not like Catra’s ever apologized before, her refusal to ask for repentance evident by this mess one could call song lyrics.

Despite her attitude towards this new tune (Catra’s calling it Never Have I Ever Before which she thinks she might actually hate and blames the suffering of Alanis lyrics currently cycling through her brain), Catra’s still hacking and slashing away at the damn thing. Right up until she hears the life straight up leaving her boss in the back office. 

Ugh, what’s chafing that big bald head of his now? Other than our lack of customers that means this ship is sinking faster than every other one I’m on.

Catra’s compelled- by sympathy or boredom or chance to revel in someone else’s misery- by Hordak’s sound barrier breaking groan. Tossing the paper pad down onto the counter along with the offending Alanis Morissette CD (has she been holding on to that this entire time?) she finds herself pushing back the cracked door and at his mercy.

The creak of where carpet meets floorboard gives her away when the door makes no sound.

“What do you want?” Hordak is ready for her, anticipating her. His words are spit with the same poison Catra spoke with when she asked that question a few minutes, hours, ages earlier. 

“Uh, are you okay?” asks Catra. She keeps out the part where his head has found a pillow in paper work, fingers clasped and held over his head in a prayer position to herself. It’s the kind of pitiful image that speaks louder than words could anyway.

“And why exactly do you care?” He sinks further into his black hole of white collar middle management. Catra swallows a snicker, squaring her shoulders. 

“Because-'' Why does Catra care? She’s spent her entire fucking life despising the man in front of her and the way he turned the cheek every time his older brother brought down his hands on her mother. Hordak’s about as spineless as the spineless come. Scratch that, the fucker is practically boneless . Boneless sludge slithering around that was never high enough to kiss his brother’s ass- and not for lack of trying. His pouting, manchild attitude is the only one to give Catra’s shitty hostile state of mind a run for its money. “- I don’t know, does it matter?” 

Does it matter. That is the million dollar question Glimmer threw in Catra’s direction about thirteen times last night as she tore her a new one- well, old one if you consider DT’s “act” of “kindness”- while Catra sat, sinking further into Glimmer’s sandtrap of a bed and deeper into what was unfolding to be the neverending hole of her regrets.

“Does it matter why you thought you had to bully me, Bow, and Adora all summer vacation? All that matters is that you say sorry, Catra!”  

“I don’t say sorry!” Catra had stood, fingers balled into fists parallel at her side. Standing at her full height gave her a full foot on the Queen of Suburbia, “Don’t act like you know me! Don’t act like you know what I’ve been through! And don’t you fucking dare tell me to say sorry when no one’s ever bothered to say sorry to me!”

Her words had ricocheted off the walls of Glimmer’s bedroom like a series of bullets she’d fired at her enemy only to leave entry wounds up and down her own soul.

“Does that matter?” Glimmer shot back and Catra’s heart aches even now under the weight of that particular exit wound, “You didn’t even hear Adora out, Catra. You didn’t have to watch her try and fail to move on from you. You just got to be cruel! You want to turn things around? Start there, Catra. Do something something good in life for once, just one good thing, and apologize to Adora.” Once finished, once satisfied, Glimmer turned her back and crossed her arms. Her shoulders shook as she hugged herself tighter.

Speechless was her speech ready tongue, and Catra dropped her fists. “I- I didn’t know… any of that stuff.”

“Yeah?” Glimmer had sniffled, “Looks like there’s a lot you don’t know.”

Hordak doesn’t assume the offensive like Catra had enclosed in Glimmer’s dominion. A time ago, he easily would’ve thrown up the defenses without letting Catra even get a single word out, barking an order to leave his office like he was a madman and this office was a madhouse made to entrap him, but now he only grunts something unintelligible that makes Catra roll her eyes nonetheless.

Such an act is not much of a prologue for her next statement, “Look, I’ve been- I dunno? Trying?”

“Trying? Trying what?” his voice is the dead entertaining the living.

 “To be better. It’s a newer angle,” winces Catra, “And there’s been a painful and weird adjustment period, but it’s gotta be better than what I’ve tried in the past. Gotta be better than whatever it is you’re doing right now.”

“That’s your enlightened epiphany?” Hordak says, laughing under his breath in a way that reminds Catra of those sad circus clowns. Well, he certainly is the leader of those. “Try?”

Catra shrugs, “I mean, yeah. It’s not like I have anything left to lose. And what, are you supposed to sit in your office forever? Just because Entrapta hired your younger brother to be her weird assistant and left town? Just because this place can’t keep up with the new Blockbuster on 16th avenue and is going down like a sinking ship-”

“Is this conversation going anywhere?” Hordak stops her premature eulogy with a growl.

 “You’ve got a new start, is I guess, what I’m trying to say,” Catra’s words crawl to a whisper. This part, this getting past her own blatant flaws to offer advice on someone else’s, this is the hard part. And this is just a warmup . There’s still a couple of doors that await her knock. “With him gone, you know. You don’t have to be under anyone’s thumb. Maybe it’s time to just let all this go,” her eyes trace the disappointments of twenty years surrounding her boss, “And try something new.” 

Her words mean something to her, at least. Catra has to hope this hail mary will lead her to the right thing. After treading these broken and beaten paths just to end up right where she started, Catra has to hope that in returning to the original path she is finally walking down the right one.

There’s no breath of life from Hordak, no acknowledgement he hasn’t completely given up the ghost. He sighs, again, lifting his head up and bringing his hand to his chin. Then, his bloodshot eyes take her in for the first time since she stepped a tentative foot in his office.

God I hope that I’m back on the right path with Adora, ‘cause I’m getting nowhere with Hordak- or anyone else, for that matter. Her mind wanders to thoughts of Glimmer, or Micah, of DT.

When she can’t take anymore of Hordak’s grimace in her direction, which is about a thirteenth of a second, Catra turns on the balls of her toes. By her own mental math she has at least another hour of her shift to go before Rogelio shows up to take her place and close and if Hordak finds the idea of their mutual Come to Jesus meeting more repulsive than the idea of her crowding his office, then she might as well kill that time hammering out discouraging first drafts of songs and rehearsing her real up and coming heart-to-heart.

Sticking my neck out for Adora is more important anyway. Not like Hordak needs me to apologize for being a shitty step-niece or something, and it’s not like he’s ever gonna apologize for being the world’s shittiest  step-uncle. 

Catra’s back is turned and her hand is on the polished surface of the door when Hordak speaks, “Catra… you can,” he sighs in his usual over the top fashion, “You can clock out early, if you so desire. I’ll cover the floor. Besides, I’ve heard you have somewhere more important to be.”

A grin betrays her gratitude and surely this is must be the fucking day of firsts because Catra finds herself saying words she’s swore on her future grave she’d never say.

“Thanks, Hordak.”

~

Catra doesn’t know jackshit. That might be the most important, if not damning, lesson Catra’s learned this entire summer.      

It’s almost fucking hysterical, the irony of it all, that she could’ve survived a lifetime of abuse and indoctrination knowing it was the hands of the devil parading around as an angel, yet never seeing the signs of her own untimely demise. Catra tore away at those excuses like flowers on a petal; this isn’t my fault, this is all my fault, not it’s not, no it’s not.

Why admit to her own fallibility when it was weakness in the wicked eyes of her stepfather, disappointment in the closed, tired eyes of her mother, from one which iris they both gave to her? Why practice humility when there was no one around to model it after? Why go with grace and learn from her mistakes when it was easier to save face by pretending she had it all figured out, even when she was so unmoored standing there in Adora’s shadow? 

Excuses, excuses. Picked like leaves off of poison ivy disguised as a daisy. That’s what Catra’s left with. Seventeen years and all it had made her into was the king of fools without a court to command or a land to defend. Seventeen years and three homes she’d given up; one by Adora’s side, one in her eyes, one in her arms. Much in the way Catra stood in the center of that theatre as violent orange and red lapped up the walls caving in upon her only exit, too had Catra let those homes around her go up like a goddamn blaze in the dark. She’s always started it; she didn’t have to know what she was doing. Not that it mattered. Catra knew now she would’ve stuck that first twisted knife in anyway.

As she pushes the NO EXIT door of the back end of the mall open, Catra is met with the putrid smell of rotting corn dogs and thrown out, bad perfume samples from the dumpster nearby and the purple pink skies of a setting sun. Her skateboard drops from her hands and hits the asphalt beneath her. The sound ricochets through the empty parking lot; there’s no one here to join her funeral procession. Helmet on, strap unbuckled, Catra has left DT’s shameless attempt at gratuity in an unmarked cubby back at Hollywood Horde. A dead weight on a dead girl walking at least, the lost cause of a lost love at most.

Setting off on the path back home will take Catra through the figments of her worst intentions. That much she does know. That much she’s used to as of late. Turns out, whatever version of herself died as The Disco went down has been haunting Catra ever since, materializing as her own memories, her own mistakes, following her around and walking through the walls she’s put up. If she was dead set on refusing to learn before, this twin from her dreams is hellbent on seeing that Catra learns now.

The parking lot Catra skates through with relative ease lingers with the smell of smoke left by DT’s cigarette interlude as it morphs from sunset back to the bright April daylight, sounds of September slumber becoming the shouting of their last parking lot rendezvous. This is where the haunting always begins- on the edge of the last known place you could’ve found Catra alive.

“Catra, just listen to me!” The back door is opening with a rush, Catra’s Levis taking her down the path of no return, Adora hot on her heels. “It isn’t like that, I swear-”

“Then what is it like, Adora? Are you just going to be her little puppet for the rest of your fucking life? Am I just a mistake to you? Was that night a mistake to you?” Catra pulled at the curls on her head until she wrestled Adora’s headband off of it. The urge to snap it in half was almost becoming her.

“Catra, no-”

“Then why can’t we be together, Adora? Why can’t it be like we planned?” Breaking. Catra was breaking into a million little pieces for what felt like the millionth time. She skates over those pieces now, igniting a phantom pain that runs deep at a diagonal angle against her being and threatens to erase any other sensation. But even that anguish pales in comparison to where this thread of memories will take Catra through next. 

“You know it’s not that simple, Catra,” Adora practically begged, like at any given second she’d fall to her hands and her knees in desperate communion, “I can’t go against her or what she wants, not yet-”

“Bullshit, Adora, you kissed me! I’d say you’re pretty fucking far from going against her. God, I’m so fucking tired of acting like I don’t exist just so you can please her. I’m so fucking sick of you trying to erase me so you can be her obedient little zombie! You ruined me, Adora.” Catra seethed, breathing flames, “And now you want to throw me away, like you were always going to.”  

“Catra, please,” Adora caught her by the wrist, “I need you. You’re my best friend-”

“Don’t call me that!” Volatile and distraught, Catra ripped her hand and stumbled backwards, “In fact, don’t call me anything, Adora.”

Catra had always been the kind to strike to kill. It was the kind of defense made for her: corner her, she’d go for your limbs if it meant she didn’t have to cut off her own just to escape. And that smoking gun of hers was the wound that put them both six feet under.

Because she doesn’t know anything, as it turns out, Catra has no clue how that great divide would’ve continued to schism or if Adora could have found it within herself to say something to mend it if Double Trouble hadn’t driven up, window rolled down and wearing a smirk dressed as a winning smile, asking with a snake’s tongue if Catra needed a ride anywhere. 

Catra does know that, as she skates across the lanes between the mall and the dirt road back home, that she killed herself as she killed Adora just the same when got in that car and said before closing the door, “Call me when you figure out what you want. Or better yet, just don’t call me at all.”

The look in Adora’s eyes Catra caught sight of in Double Trouble’s rearview mirror will haunt her for the rest of the lifetime of love she gave up in that one move.

Catra is traveling back in time now, pushing off the concrete of the road each time her momentum slows, every time her direction begs to be changed. She’s making good time, and so this matinee showing of her deepest miseries she can at least sit through knowing she knows the ending. Before the mall became the turning point in their story (or Catra thinks of it as that because she’s still trying to change the end and doesn’t know face a reality where she’s burned up the rest of book), the rising action bled over in their high school gymnasium. To the night where Catra wilted like a wallflower against cinderblock walls watching a stranger occupy her home territory dancing in Adora’s arms.

Their high school is a quarter mile from the mall and as Catra skates by, the phantom with her same eyes invites her inside the double doors, down the hall marked with broken tiles and lockers of rust and chipping paint, around the homeroom she’ll spend the rest of the year alone in, to the gym where the lights flicker low and reflect a thousand colors of what could have been. 

Everywhere by Fleetwood Mac, Adora’s favorite song at the time (it could still be, Catra’s spent a score of sleepless nights wondering what she might be listening to these days, if her choices would annoy the hell out of Catra like they used to or if they’re just reflections of the scars from the knife she put in Adora’s back) played over the speakers. 

Adora must’ve requested the song from the shit DJ the dance committee hired to summon Catra from the shadows where they used to sneak around. A calling card, a “come on out now,” a please. Catra heard all three loud and clear from the corner where she stood frozen in place, still reeling from the visit she had just received out of the blue, the thorns of a single red rose breaking the skin of her hands.

Adora, her modest crimson dress Catra recognized from Sunday school dappling with flickers of light, stood there in the center of the gym looking every which way except for right in front of her. The song played, first verse, chorus, then the second, and Catra stayed standing there, her knuckles bloody, replaying only the words of the wicked witch of the west herself,

“You two have gotten too close. For the good of Adora’s future, you will not be seeing each other again. You’re confusing her, and if you don’t want your father to get word of what you have done, you’ll listen and do as you’re told. Cease this embarrassment for Adora’s sake, if nothing else.”

And then, as the song began to fade out, Bow stepped and saved Adora from further embarrassment, further confusion. Seeing the smile that lit up on Adora’s face sealed the deal and wrote Catra’s tombstone. She abandoned the dance and the gym and Adora, threw open the double doors and left the rose on the floor, shattering the delicate thing as she trampled the stem beneath her feet on her way out. Waiting in their old spot under the bleachers wouldn’t ease the hurt, wouldn’t heal the wounds from the thorns, but it granted Catra the kind of darkness she could sob quietly and hope for a reprieve that would never come.

Catra’s eyes brim with tears that shouldn’t be there. The sadness of that night has never really left her. And how could it when she kept choosing it over and over and over because no other sadness in the world could even pretend to fill the space in her heart that belonged to Adora?

That empty space only exists because I erupted when Adora confronted me about showing her up the next day. I could’ve just come clean about that evil old hag confronting me but instead I turned it around on her and made it her fault. I don’t think the mall’s ever heard a fight between two teenage girls that loud, though.

It was supposed to be different, that dance around. The Spring Fling wasn’t supposed to be like the prom Adora skipped out on and changed everything about them by doing so. The coast was supposed to be clear- no more hiding, no more sneaking, no more pretending. 

No more waiting.  

But Catra is skating past that little clandestine alcove in the woods where Adora parked that night she gave a middle finger to her guardian and her guardian’s pageant schemes when she pulled up to the curb and told Catra, “Get in the car,” and she sees now that they were on begged and borrowed time fogging up the windshield glass of her old Daytona.

“What are you going to do,” Catra had asked, heart beating with an anticipation for something she couldn’t say what. The light of the crescent moon cast the night in it’s image, a heavenly ether where the whole world was a kaleidoscope of columns of silver light and dark blue contradiction. Adora sat deliquescing in the driver’s seat, white knuckles clutching the steering wheel, eyebrows pinched and decorated with a halo of stray hairs from her otherwise perfect ponytail. The moon’s glow illuminated nearly invisible streaks of makeup that must’ve dried up when Adora failed to take it all off with warm water and washcloth. Not that any kind of clown costume could hold a candle to the real thing. Splintering with starlight, she looked like a fucking movie star straight out of the sixties to Catra. “When she finds out you’re not going to be there to win Prom Queen? You know she probably rigged that, right?”

Adora let out a laugh that was half mad before collapsing back in the seat, “Honestly? I don’t care. I just- I had to do something, anything. I don’t even feel like I’m my own person anymore, Catra. Rigged the prom queen contest for me? Try her rigging everything for me.”

Catra’s fingers curled into a palm as she inhaled through her nose. They’d been here before- so close yet still at an infinite distance. Like the fool Catra was, she wanted to reach out, to take Adora’s hand and thread their fingers together until they couldn’t be separated, like Catra’s touch was the string that could yank Adora out of her insecurities, like Catra herself could be the wool that wrapped around Adora and protected her from her demons. Hell, there was nothing more that Catra wanted than to be the blanket thrown over the barbwired that kept Adora enclosed and separate from the world the rest of them were living in. 

Ever unmoored in the face of the consequences that would surely undo her, Catra forced herself to be still and forced her thoughts to be somewhere beyond the goosebumps racing up and down her arms.

“I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep pretending I want what she wants, or what any of them want. Catra, I’m so tired of being someone I’m not.” the tears that brimmed in Adora’s eyelids glistened like fragments of glass. The mixtape, the one Catra skipped out on one of her stepdad’s most critical fire and brimstone sermons to make, the one Adora kept amongst her stash of Shania Twain CDs and movie scores, had long reached the end of its eight track run. Neither of them had bothered to rewind it.  

“Adora, it’s just-” Catra spoke without thinking, because thinking meant overanalyzing Adora’s words and hoping to hear something Adora wasn’t saying in a speech Catra had memorized after the first few hundred times. For Catra, this venting session of a regular variety had always ended in disappointment, in addendums to her plans she’d tear up and songs she’d write but never sing. “It’s just one more year, and then we can get out of here. We can have what we want. The end’s near, Adora, it’s in sight. We just have to wait a little bit longer.”

Adora’s head turned towards Catra. Catra’s eyes lingered on the lip caught in Adora’s teeth and it felt symmetrical to sin. But she couldn’t tear her eyes away even if it meant life or death as Adora spoke lethargically.

“One more year, huh? One more year of everyone’s shiny play thing…” she drifted off, sitting up right and shifting her body away from the steering wheel and the dashboard. Catra was staring at her smile now, “I feel like, like everyone thinks I don’t get it. That I don’t see that they’re just projecting their personalities onto me, you know?”

“Yeah. I know.” Catra’s eyes flitted downwards. Adora wasn’t the only one annoyed with her tendency to acquiesce to the environment’s demands, to bend to the will of the strongest in the room.

“ And it doesn’t matter if I break, because I let them do it to me. I’m so scared of what they’ll think of the real me that I keep trying to be whatever they want me to be. ‘Be smart and beautiful and have it together, Adora.”’ the sarcasm in Adora’s voice cut through Catra like a knife. This was the part of the speech that never failed to strengthen Catra’s resolve to whisk Adora out of this town, be her Peter Pan and fly her to a Neverland that was all their own. No one else deserved her, they all kept proving that when they took so much joy in hurting her. Intertwined destinies as lost girls never looked as close as they did in that mirror. “‘That’s boring now, do the broken thing. Good thing you’re so obedient, Adora, or else we’d all be bored out of our own minds!”’ 

“Shit!”

Adora gave an encore to her speech this time around by throwing her fist down on the horn, letting the shadows that crept on the edge of the woods know where they were hiding. The blaring sound made Catra jump so far in the air she hit the ceiling of the car, cursing enough to make her poor mother blush and send her stepfather into the redness of rage and Adora into a flurry of apologies.

“Sorry! Sorry! I didn’t- I didn’t mean to hit it that hard, I promise!” 

“I know that, bozo!”

“Is your head okay? I really didn’t mean to, Catra.”

“My head’s fine, Adora. You just scared me, that’s all.”

Where Catra’s hand had been hers to worry about and keep to herself before, Adora had a hold on it now. At some point in the chaos Catra grabbed Adora’s hand, or Adora grabbed hers, but the who and the how and the why didn’t matter when the end result meant Catra was going to die at the electrifying feel of her touch. Adora was so close- too close. Catra could see a red flush on those pale cheeks of hers, hair that fell into place like dominoes, opal eyes that were an ocean in and of themselves that wrecked ships and stranded the bravest of sailors. Catra had always been envious of the same beauty Adora resented. Her lanky awkwardness, untamed curls, her sunburnt freckles and mismatching irises, they could never hope to have a fair fight standing in the shadow of Adora’s natural light. But right then and there Catra wanted to jump into that ocean that was screaming her name, beckoning her. 

No more waiting. No more wondering. She was going down with this ship.

“Adora, you don’t feel that way with me, do you? ” asked Catra, anticipating again. Hoping, again. Speaking again because she was the certain she was about to do something monumentally stupid. “That you’re someone you’re not when we’re together?”

“Catra, no- no. Of course not. You’re not like the rest of them,” Adora’s laugh twisted Catra’s stomach into a tapestry of guilt and she wanted to turn away, to drop Adora’s hand. If she had, Adora’s voice might not have gotten soft as she said, “ You… might actually be the only one who I actually feel like myself with. Who I-I feel like myself is good enough with.”

Catra swallowed hard. There was nothing else in the universe but what was right in front of her, speaking a language she found herself understanding. 

“Really? You’re not trying to impress your new friends Sparkles and Rainbow?” Catra covered the crack in her voice with a coward’s attempt at coyness.

“Well, I’m not trying to impress anyone, Catra.” Adora told her. She was smiling brighter than the moon above them and coming ever so closer to a fate fraught with danger. 

“Trying?” Catra’s heartbeat was becoming that of a broken drum, her skin a hometown for chills and her words illicit smoke and mirrors, “Adora, you’re such an idiot. You don’t have to try at anything. Everything you do, you’re a fucking natural at-”

And then there was no more waiting. There was only Adora’s hand leaving Catra’s and finding her jaw, forging an uncharted path in heat and touch, a resolve in those opal eyes that paled in comparison to any ferocity Catra had ever seen in her best friend’s eyes. There was only Adora’s lips meeting Catra’s, soft and tentative, chasing away that corrosive unspoken anticipation, answering every question Catra was too much of a realist to ever ask.

 “If this is all in my head Catra,” Adora pulled away, breathing heavily, “You have to tell me now.”

Catra pulled back her in, “It’s not. I swear to fucking God, this is not just in your head, Adora.” 

“Good, that’s so good, Catra.” There were tears in Adora’s eyes for a different reason than when this speech had begun its tired run. Tears of happiness as Catra ran her hand down over that halo of gold around her head and kissed her again. And again. And again.

A few miles down the road, the head of the dance committee was holding an unclaimed plastic crown and sash, saying Adora’s name into the microphone for the third time. 

As the woods and their expanse fall out of Catra’s view, she leaves behind with it memories with an expanse of their own. The night Adora kissed her in the car was a seductive memory that held so much more than that single mercurial high, but flashes and images of tripping over her own feet and swinging from in the incandescent glow of the street light into Adora’s arms, not quite sober as they screamed FUCK CIVILITY together. 

A film reel of selective flashbacks forged from the tampering of the roll. In her head, she could replay it and replay it, each time giving up a piece of her spirit to that unforgiving void, until it was the only reality she existed in. 

Catra could get lost in it all if she was that hellbent on being stupid. There’s a part of her that’s amazed that those memories survived after her hundredth flippant attempt to cross out every good year and every good moment she ever had with Adora. But like all effective hauntings, fables, and campfire stories, the hero either learns the lesson the universe is trying to force upon them, or they die trying.    

“You might actually be the only one who I actually feel like myself with.”

Her story’s turning out to be no different. 

I thought we were out of the woods, fuck, I thought I knew it. I didn’t know that we were being watched.  I should’ve, though. We were always being watched.

Gravel turns under the wheels of her skateboard. Catra’s hands come to her arms and she suppresses a shiver; the woods cast a deep shadow and yeah, maybe it’s childish of her to think those fable characters are amongst the trees trading her deepest darkest secrets like currency, but they wouldn’t be the only ones in this town and they’d be doing the least amount of damage. 

Maybe she’s just blessed with twice the paranoia because she was born Catholic and then raised Methodist. 

Years of loving Adora in the worst way were a debt Catra was owed and then finally paid when Adora kissed her back. Years of wanting her when everyone else wanted her too, years of watching the way people would trip over themselves and fawn over her Midas’ touch, their jaws slack and their eyes twinkling wide. Years of Catra carrying inside of her a terminal disease, an infection she couldn’t cut out and time on her knees couldn’t make go away. Years of taking the next best thing that was being Adora’s “best friend.” All those years and their neverending turmoil made worth it when Adora said, “If it’s okay with you, it’s okay with me.”

Years of that shit for what, seven weeks in heaven? Getting to be with Adora the way she’d always dreamed of was better than any dream, sure, but it more than masked the signs that their nemeses were winding up to swing. Adora kissing her cheek and promising she’d tell her other friends soon. Catra getting sloppy and leaving her stuff in Adora’s room. Whispering over the phone, “Wait for my signal, and meet me after dark.” Breaking curfew and locks on liquor cabinets, damning the consequences and having the fucking time of their lives. Nothing could touch them. Nothing.  

But time was nearer than it appeared in the mirror. And those moments that she and Adora stole were crimes they had to pay for. Getting together turned new pages, ones of getting grounded, getting separated. Untethered, they were unprepared for the interrogations or the allegations spread by those fables foxes and wolves, the rumors that traded chattering mouths of snakes and swallows, until they were being spoken by Adora’s guardian. 

And Adora, like the good, civil, and obedient girl she is, caved.

Catra wonders- if however briefly because she isn’t the kind of person to spare a second thought to her stepfather, may he not rest in peace- if the anger that overcame her with the threat to rule her after something wicked came her way that night of the dance and told Catra she knew all the rules she broke and had a complete compendium of everything she had stolen, is how he operated all the time. Why he was always one wrong comment away losing his suffocating hold on poise and control.  

No, that bastard was all ego. He didn’t actually have feelings that could get hurt, so I’m gonna have to let that idea slide. Not like he deserves the benefit of the doubt, anyway.

Speaking of losing control, walking out on her date for the Spring Fling was nothing more than an invitation for said date to barge in the middle of Catra’s Saturday shift and start making accusations of her own. She was hurt, more than anything, and scared of what it meant that Catra didn’t show the night before or answer her innumerable calls. That’s what the rest of the mall heard, anyway. All Catra heard Adora say was “me, me, me, me, this problem revolves around me like everything does.”   

Adora had played her hand. “You know it’s not that simple, Catra, I can’t go against her or what she wants, not yet.” And because Catra saw she wasn’t winning, she quit the game altogether. “Call me when you figure out what you want. Or better yet, just don’t call me at all.”

But where Catra thought she knew that was the right thing to do, not everyone else agreed.

“You weren’t there when it happened, okay?!” she sobbed over Melog’s incessant, crescendoing yowling, trying to yank her headband from the cat’s teeth because it was going in the fucking garbage can- everything Adora had touched was, “She chose her again, not me! Adora doesn’t want me… not like I want her.” 

Catra had said that a hundred times before and each time, there always lingered a quiet hope that kept her coming back. But there, crying like a mad woman and collapsing on the floor still in her red “How Can I Help You?” vest, that hope died a quiet death that to Catra, was the loudest sound in the universe. The kiss in the car, their short lived run as more than friends- none of it meant to Adora what it had meant to Catra. Leave the pain of knowing it to be more painful than to never have known it all.

But I was wrong about that, too. 

Skating past the entrance to the neighborhood that up until a month and a half ago, she and Adora had shared for their whole lives, Catra’s stomach sours with nerves. She passes the school bus stop where she always thinks she sees Adora standing, but neither she or her spirit is ever really loitering there. One more sign Catra’s truly losing it. The last time Adora was trespassing this old haunt of theirs was when she was moving out of the house she’d lived in for seventeen years, back on the last day of July’s infamy- right after Catra’s mom started working full time again, DT was just starting to get on her last nerve but not yet revving up for their show stopping number, and Scorpia’s answering machine was not quite long past full. 

Adora had been loading a lifetime of cardboard boxes up into the back of Micah’s pick up truck, Bow and Glimmer standing by the For Sale in the yard fanning themselves with an old art project of Adora’s Catra recognized and bitching about the summer heat.

“Is this all of it, Adora?” Micah was asking over Glimmer’s lament for lemonade.

“Yeah, the rest of it’s at Razz’s-”

They weren’t supposed to make eye contact. Catra wasn’t even supposed to be around, her avoidance of Adora strategic down to knowing every last part of her schedule as of late- but Adora hadn’t been in that house since the realtor started showing it, and one more afternoon listening to Double Trouble butcher Emily Dickinson poems for an empty auditorium was to ascend to the seventh layer of hell. So Catra took the risk and braved a blistering sun to skate home, hoping to practice barre chords and scales for the rest of the afternoon until her callouses bled.      

“...already.”

Two different types of catastrophes occurred in that moment. The first happened when, having found herself staring at Adora and really seeing her since getting into DT’s car, Catra stopped breathing. Fully, violently, she was robbed of oxygen, not a single molecule of it reaching her brain. This certain lack of O2 caused a ripple effect of the second catastrophe, beginning with Catra forgetting where she was, why she was on the other side of the street and not standing on that truck bed, and everything that wasn’t the girl staring back at her, and ended in necrosis, with the upper right side wheel of Catra’s skateboard catching a minor concrete cataclysm from a nearby curb. The skateboard’s inertia was stalled by the impact- but Catra’s inertia was not.

“Fuck!”

Skating past The Three Moving Musketeers and their fatherly chaperone in broad daylight would’ve been embarrassing enough without flying off her fucking skateboard thirteen million miles an hour and skinning her hands on searing hot concrete as she barely caught herself before her teeth ate it, too. Catra lay there for only a split second that managed to last an entire decade, vision refocusing on the shine of Micah’s tires, the high pitched ringing in her ears not quite loud enough to block out Glimmer’s snickering and Bow’s voice cracking in shock. 

“Oh, are you alright?” Micah had started but Catra’s pride refused to let him finish. 

So what if her hands were lit was a certain inferno and her whole body ached like a bruise? Catra grunted, lifting herself up as she cursed and popped her skateboard up with a hit of her ankle before storming onto her own fucking front lawn, all the while Adora’s pitying gaze burning a hole in her back. 

Catra then slammed the front door with sufficient force to snap Adora out of it. There in her mausoleum of a kitchen she stood, Melog at her heels, running cold water over her bloodied and bruised palms until the telltale turning of the truck’s engine gave her permission to turn the water off and bandage her drying hands.

That afternoon, dissociating under a summer sun that flickered selectively through the window above the kitchen sink, Catra laid to rest her dignity and rose up from that tomb with a new epiphany.

“Call me when you figure out what you want.”

Those were words Catra ended their fight in the mall parking lot with. Those were the words she had ended them with. Bad was the blood in those words, ire in them still as they come back to Catra now as she skates into her driveway, just as they had tormented her and taught her when she was tearing at gauze with her teeth, practicing guitar no longer an option for at least a few days. 

Unlocking the front door with the swift move of her keys, Catra walks into a ghostly scene. Her mother is pulling another double shift to distract from her own bereavement, probably, birds of the feather that they are. Melog’s presence is once again scarce- no surprise there. 

For all her efforts to aim for Adora’s heart and go for blood, there was hypocrisy in her bullseye. Adora didn’t know what she wanted? Well, look at that, maybe Catra didn’t know what she wanted either- because Catra didn’t know anything . 

Catra thought she knew a summer lagging after DT’s thistle of thieves would be more fulfilling than dialing Adora’s number and saying she’d hear her out, and that she didn’t mean what she said behind the mall. Catra thought she knew the wisdom of a crook cost her less than a penny for Scorpia’s thoughts. Catra thought she knew that rock bottom was better than a grave. Catra thought she knew that sharpening the cold steel of her axe against the grind of own hurt just to throw it in Adora’s direction was more mature than leaving well enough alone. Catra thought she knew a lot of things.

Catra was wrong.

“You know she’s still in love with you, right?” Glimmer had said last night after reading Catra her last rites, wiping her snot on a nearby blanket. 

Scoffing, Catra hugged herself and turned away. She could do better than listen to Sparkles lie to her through the purple brackets of her braces just to humor herself. “Yeah, right. Very funny.”

“Yeah, well, I wish I was joking. I certainly didn’t get it at first, and definitely not after your guys’ fight after Spring Fling. But she does, despite everything. You guys are tied together by fate, or something, if you think about it.” 

“Adora’s made it pretty clear she hates me.” 

They all had made that pretty clear, but Catra thought that went without saying and that it was a somewhat justified hatred. Still, it was next to impossible not to take any of the shit Glimmer was talking without a heavy heaping of salt.  

“Pfft, what you’re interpreting as hatred Bow and I have had to deal with all of summer vacation.” Glimmer continued, “Why do you think Adora always takes your petty bait when you tease us? It’s ‘cause she wants to talk to you. That’s the only way she can get you to talk back. Adora thinks you hate her. She blames herself.”    

  “Why? She didn’t ditch me at the dance or take up Double Trouble’s offer for a ride. She didn’t do anything wrong.”

“She ratted you guys out,” said Glimmer. Catra’s shoulders fell, “Didn’t know Adora spent the entire summer worrying about whether you-know-who told your step-dad? Every time she saw you with Double Trouble’s friends and you were just there being bitchy it was comforting to Adora. Because it meant you were safe.”

Catra inhaled, “She didn’t tell him. She needed leverage on him, right up until the last time they saw each other.”

“You’re not wrong there. But even after he, you know,” Glimmer ran her thumb over her neck and clicked her tongue, “ Adora still worried. She never stopped. No matter how much Bow and I tried to talk her out of it, she’s Adora. I mean, being stubborn is her thing.”

Oh, of all the times Sparkles was so close to getting the point, to seeing the picture and not just the frame.  

“Adora can forgive you all day, but she can’t forgive herself. I think it’s why she can’t really move on, except for the fact that she’s still head over heels for you. Most people, they’d get over a break up in three months. But not Adora. It’s like she’s frozen in time, in that moment you broke up with her.”

“Ugh, you’ve never seemed like a riddle person to me. Use your words please, Inez.”

 “You’re so infuriating! And hey, quit calling me Inez! I am not a gossip! What I am trying to say is that you haven’t used up all your chances with Adora. You still have time to make things right, Catra.”

How tempting it had been to call bullshit on that last decree. The primorial reason Catra was standing in the Princess’s palace to start with was because time on the clock to make things right between her and Adora was dwindling into nothing. Adora had made that clear when Catra wandered Friday morning half awake into homeroom to take her seat at the back, and Adora wasn’t there at her desk in the front, fiercely annotating her copy of The Great Gatsby, highlighter in her mouth and about to break under the force of her teeth. A quick sabbatical with bathroom pass later proved Catra’s newest fear: the same image she expected to see now unbeholden to her behind a pane of six by three inch window in a graffitied, wooden door. 

Adora had switched her homeroom. For the first time in thirteen years of public school, they’d be sharing no classes together.

And that drove Catra’s last lesson home. She’d thought herself in fiction an untouchable oracle of knowing the way the world really worked. In reality, she knows jackshit, nothing, nadda, goose egg- except for one thing. 

Catra knows that she misses Adora. Catra misses Adora so much she’s spent all summer dreaming of her and spent every waking moment shoving down the way absence was making her heart grow fonder. Catra misses the tiny gap in Adora’s front teeth that shines when she smiles, the late night phone calls and early morning drives laughing riotously on the way to school. Catra realizes now that she’d give anything to be the person handing Adora her flannel when she sees her shiver, to sit in her room together and play her the songs she wrote over the summer, to kiss her in the car again. 

Anything. Even an apology.

The door to her room is cracked, inviting Catra across the threshold. The carpet fibres are dotted with the pilgrimage of tiny paw prints; it’s an image that calls her back to hallways of Holiday House and the key lime green apparition that may or may not be still walking among them.

Adora grew up one mad straw short from obsessed with the stories the people who own gift shops by the Lakes like to perpetuate to get those tourists to buy their shitty merchandise. It was a hand-me-down, this infuriating infatuation of hers, that was given to her by their mutual caretaker Razz and strengthened by the babysitter Razz would sometimes hoist them off to Mara, and Adora kept it close to the love in her golden heart the way old hand-me-downs should be.

Rebekah and Bill Harkness and their maddening run off the sea side cliffside. Dorothea and Marjorie West, sisters lost to the torrent of time. Este and her many hoaxes, curses, and casualties. James and Betty, reconciled lovers that there was no proof had ever existed here or anywhere else, except for in one single hand-me-down.    

Adora was right. They were never just stories or debatable history. They’re… who we are. Past, present, future. And there’s no escaping this, them. There is no other version of this story. 

This was a town woven together with the gold thread of myths, fairy tales, folklore; this town is a storybook come alive where the pages stick together and in their impossibility to pull apart, their fiction has become Catra’s fact, their histories repeated when the lessons learned faded from memory, their fables snaking in through the weeds, carving a path through the trees, out from the snow and into their homes were they became real, and irrefutable, and inescapable in the best and worsts ways.

And because Catra really doesn’t know anything, she doesn’t know if they’re rewriting the timeless story of James and Betty as she walks into her bedroom and meets a waiting Melog perched on the center of her bed, or if they are becoming the story of James and Betty.

Guess the rest is up to Adora and how she responds when I show up at her party and knock on her door. 

“Hey, Melog,” Catra says as the cat flicks their tail back and forth expectantly. She picks up the holy heirloom- Melog must’ve dug it out from its place under the bed, where it lived when Catra stripped if on in the morning and wear she tore if from to wrap herself in at night- and brings it to her face, the feel of wool comforting if not for the unmistakable scent of Adora woven straight into the fabric.  

The days of her summer have turned into the nights of her fall. An August of regretting and wanting and forming half made plans to say sorry only to abandon them, has faded into another nameless moment in time. Whatever thrill seized Catra before has released its grip on her as if it had never had a hold on her before. She knows now, at seventeen, what she wants. She knows now, at seventeen, what to do.

“You guys are tied together by fate, or something, if you think about it.” 

“This is it,” Catra sighs with anticipation as she pulls off her flannel overshirt and shoves her arms through the sleeves of Betty’s cardigan, “No more dreaming about this moment, Melog. I’ve got a party to crash.”

The cat meowls, head dipping in approval.

“Wish me luck, okay?”