Archive of Our Own ^beta

Much like the big G in physics, boys like Mike Newton are a universal constant. Boys that stick around like little splinters caught in the sleeve of a cardigan only to be noticed by movement out of the ordinary- or in this case, as Bella's reaching up to grab her French textbook from the top shelf of her locker.

"Oh, let me," he says, swooping in and extending his arm the half-inch she had left to reach the damn thing. He hands it to her with a bright smile and even brighter eyes that bring to mind golden retriever puppies and Victorian orphans. He hands her the book, eyes glued to her arm "Hey, can I sign your cast?"

Bella lets out a breath through her nose and squeezes the corner of the textbook so tightly her fingers shake. (She remembers nails like dog's teeth sunk into her arm, bloodshot eyes bulging as the bones twisted.)

Mike goes on, mired in oblivion as always. It's a good place to be most of the time. "Everyone's been talking about it, you know." He leans in as if conspiring. "Between you and me, I hated the guy. You're a hero, ask anybody decent. He'd been terrorizing me and my friends for years. He got what was coming to him, believe me."

Bella slams her locker door shut. The metal bashes a shocking echo through the mostly empty hallway. A few kids cast curious glances their way.

"Bel-"

Bella cuts him off, red-tinted grey shuddering in front of her eyes. "I did it to see Royce eaten, not to see you fed." With that, she turns and walks away.

"Hey, what's the rush?" he calls out, jogging to catch up with her. "A few of us are going to the movies later if you-"

"I have somewhere to be," she mumbles as she passes the glass trophy case by the exit, stuffed with a shrine to the departed.

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These days, the denotation of Somewhere loses a great deal of unspecificity.

Somewhere is the weather-bowed outdoor bleachers bolted to the concrete tract around the blacktop basketball courts.

Somewhere is the pocket-sized sketchbook in her lap collecting poor outlines on the rice thin pages.

Somewhere is her slanted stare anchored on Kate Denali, former swim team captain and honor roll hang glider who happens to spend almost no time in the water anymore. Or in class, for that matter.

Kate skips last period almost every day and comes out here to lie on the highest riser of the bleachers in the weak sunlight, knees bent, damp blond hair free-falling off either side of the narrow seat and stirring in the wind like limp banners. Mostly she just shouts into her clunky cell phone and flings her hand up to her face a few times a minute to draw some murky smoke into her lungs from her tiny white cigarettes.

Bella tucks her foot beneath her thigh and scratches out a vague outline of the pointy bend of Kate's knee. She adds a dark rectangle with a collapsible antenna and a swirly pillar of smoke, glancing back and forth between the page and the girl to get it just right. Flicking through the book's pages quickly reveals the world's most uneventful flipbook cartoon, but that doesn't stop Bella from playing it over again instead of listening to the civics lecture.

Usually, Kate notices her after about five minutes and narrows her icy eyes for a few seconds before dropping her head back down with a thunk that sings all the way down the row of metal bleachers. They don't speak. When she's through with her phone call, Kate typically hops off the high side of the bleachers and walks away. Bella doesn't follow her. She just finishes up her sketch and heads home herself.

In the handful of counseling sessions she promised Charlie she'd try out, the shattering-grief treatment consensus seemed to be fairly simple (if not applicable to almost any situation ever): find a routine and stick to it. And she's doing just that in her own kind of way.

She's outside, she's trying a new hobby (drawing), and she's with someone. Technically.

It's been about a month of Kate outlines. When Kate doesn't come to school, Bella's day feels incomplete. But instead of moping on the wet bleachers, Bella just goes home and locks her bedroom door until morning. That's a pattern too. A pretty fucking sad one, but one all the same.

But today would make her last counselor's heart sing. A mundane, vanilla, median day. It's even sunny. In Forks. A perfect example. A paragon of mental health.

At least it was supposed to be until Kate ruined everything.

Maybe she was just in a worse mood today, or maybe her phone call took an unexpectedly rancid turn, who can say really? All Bella knows is that instead of leaving at around 3:10 like usual, Kate sits up blowing smoke out in a thin trail. Her voice, a rough scrape. "Hey."

Pattern obliterated.

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To understand any facet of present-time, a look to the past is almost always necessary.

The trophy case by the exit in the main hall is stuffed with fake flowers and hockey ribbons. Beau Swan's face beams out from all kinds of cropped team pictures and class portraits. There are even a few framed numbers from their family camping trip to Yellowstone the summer before last.

Beau was two years older than Bella, but she skipped eighth grade and chased him hot on his heels into high school. It took all of two days in those crowded halls to realize that her goofy older brother seemed to be the whole world's best friend, not just her own. But then, it had sort of always been that way.

Beau's yearbook superlative: Best All-Around.

Bella's: Student Not Selected.

He was killed last year in June, right before graduation. A car accident on a rainy night. It happens all the time. That's what the deputy said when he took his hat off and sat beside her on the front steps of her house after Charlie rushed over to the scene. And strangely, that singular proffer of the mundane made her feel better than the hundreds of awkward condolences flung her way since.

Still, gravity changed irreparably that day in the Swan house.

It was sort of like a foreign object came burning through the atmosphere and slashed him out of every photo he would ever be in again. A clean sever right at the shoulder of the arm that would have been wrapped around Bella's scrawny shoulders. One day, Beau was standing in front of the TV eating Trix and blocking Ren & Stimpy, and the next, the cemetery groundskeeper was lowering him into the dirt with a mercifully silent crank.

It happens all the time.

Except Beau wasn't driving. It was Garrett, his closest friend; who appears in exactly one trophy case photo, grinning beside Beau in the busy colors of the ice rink; and whose blood alcohol level could have turned cucumbers to pickles.

Garrett survived. The car accident anyway. But wound up dead himself about a week later. The boys have neighboring plots at the cemetery on the far side of town.

It never made sense to Bella why Beau would get in the car with Garrett, why he would even let Garrett behind the wheel in the first place. He never let people drive his precious Omni that he bought with his own dishwashing money, and he certainly never let his friends drive drunk. He rarely ever drank himself.

So as Deputy Mundane was explaining to her his best guess of what happened, Bella gave in to the howling in her ears and stopped listening.

She didn't buy it.

Beau affectionately gave her the nickname Nancy Drew after she devoted the entire last week of the summer before fifth grade not at the pool with her friends, but tracking down the thief of Beau's lucky shin guards. She'd presented them to him with a smile, ignoring the death glare of the culprit (Eric Yorkie, longtime soccer rival) who mumbled an apology before darting away to go practice penalty kicks.

She resurrected the nickname five years later to retrace her brother's last steps that night. It involved sneaking into Charlie's file cabinets while he was out, crouching in bushes with binoculars, and tracking down everyone who went to Royce's party that night. Most of them had packed up and left for college by the time she fished their names out of someone else, but most responded to her letters with sincere condolences and their best attempts of recreating their last interactions with Beau and even Garrett that night.

Within a month, she'd learned that Beau was unconscious when Garrett put him in the car. Five different people wrote some variation of the description "blue-lipped and sagging."

Bella spent another few days in the library looking for afflictions to match the boy they all described in smeared black ink and curly cursive. A few visits to the nurses' station at the local hospital with trays of coffee in hand revealed tell-tale symptoms of anything from anaphylaxis to heart attack. To drug overdose.

So she dug deeper and lurked around Royce's college parties in Seattle on the weekends (Who invited that girl?). Beau was slightly allergic to peanuts, but Bella was pretty sure Royce wasn't serving peanut brittle at his end-of-the-year party.

A little more digging (groveling around coeds) brought to light off-white tablets that tended to show up in places where Royce King was concerned. Four out of five shimmer and slow everything into a fishbowl carousel (in a good way, Victoria clarified, a few times actually), but occasionally, number five incites a shut-down and may require a hospital visit.

She wasn't going to bring Charlie into it. Or the police in general. All she wanted to do was unravel everything she'd discovered over the past couple of months and make him look her in the eye. She didn't even care about an apology. She just wanted him to know that she knew everything. The closest she could get to closure.

Royce didn't really see it that way.

There were eight other people crammed into his dorm when she came knocking with her arms full of files and statements, interviews and proof, essentially. She got maybe two sentences out before he grabbed her arm and twisted roughly until it cracked and kept going, eyes like a wild animal. Horrified, his friends tried to stop him. Someone called the cops. And there it all was, scattered on the floor in the hallway.

Every bit of evidence they'd need to charge him (once they double-checked, and found it all irrefutable), plus a poor young girl with a broken arm and no choice but to press assault charges.

This all ended a little over a month ago.

But without a crusade, Bella's days started to fold into each other until she was barely making it out of bed in time for fourth period. The attendance office was starting to put a pin in her grace period of bereavement absences. Then one day, she bumped into her desk and sent some of her early-summer notes plummeting to the floor. Among them was the list of younger students at that fateful party. She hadn't got a chance to speak to all of them before she found more promising leads in the college kids' letters.

Near the bottom of the list in her own distracted scrawl was the name Kate Denali, who was, coincidentally (and completely unbeknownst to Bella), Garrett's girlfriend.

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So that's why Bella knows Kate's lines better than almost anyone.

And that's why Bella's high-tailing it for the forest, arms pumping, good pencil abandoned, shoes slapping on the damp pavement- running for- for her life?

Unfortunately, Kate used to be a great swimmer and air is just another fluid. She catches up and stops Bella with a hand on her shoulder, breathing hard, coughing even. It's probably the cigarettes. She's still holding one, after all.

"God," Kate wheezes, bending slightly at the waist. All the pockets of her green cargo pants are opened.

Bella takes a step back and swivels her head looking for exits. They weren't supposed to talk. That was the whole point.

Kate straightens up, standing quite a few inches taller than Bella, but sizes her up all the same, blue eyes lining all the seams of Bella's shadow-colored clothes. "What's your deal anyway?" she asks, crossing her arms with the cigarette burning itself to nothing between her knuckles. "Wanna bury me too?"

Bella shakes her head, says nothing.

Kate's gaze slides down to her shoes where she grinds the dropped butt out with her heel. "I wouldn't blame you if you did."

Nothing, again.

"Well, let's go."

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Kate comes out of the gas station and jaywalks across the busy street with two large coffees and cinnamon Tic-Tacs. Bella's sitting scared at a dirty thermoplastic picnic table beneath the faded awning of the seasonal ice cream shop.

She hands Bella one of the coffees and sits on the tabletop with her feet on the bench beside Bella. "Sugar's in my leg," she says with her mouth around her cup.

It feels like a trap, but Bella reaches inside one of her pockets and pulls out a little pink sugar packet.

"Do you ever talk?"

Bella swirls her coffee around to mix it and swallows nervously. Of course, she talks just not to her.

"I guess that's fine. Most people in our class talk too much." She shakes the Tic-Tac container a few times. "Especially about us. You and me all summer- mostly you, granted. Then me after I quit the team in August when school started. And now you again with- with Royce. I think you're going to have to explain that one to me because you do not look ready to pull off a drug bust- no offense."

The coffee tastes beyond burned, but Bella sips it anyway. Kate doesn't seem to notice.

"I can't believe he did that to you," she says, pointing at the blue cast poking out from beneath her dull grey flannel. "Motherfucker."

"Why'd you quit the team?" Bella asks suddenly.

"You ever feel like you're walking the same path every day? I mean like, down to the detours, and it gets to the point where it's not even you anymore, it's just your body doing it all while your head's thinking of…anything else, I guess." She mutters something Bella doesn't quite catch before glancing over at her again. "Is that crazy?"

Find a routine and stick to it.

Surely, that's good advice.

Even if it turns you into a ghost, haunting tracks in the halls?

"Everybody's mad about it because I'm missing out on all the big scholarships now, and our school's gonna drop rank, but…I don't know. After everything that happened, all that scholastic shine just looks so…"

"Meaningless?" Bella supplies, crumpling up the empty sugar packet.

Kate gives a short laugh. "Yeah. Something like that."

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They're walking now, along the river that borders the back of the little shopping center. Kate holds a bushy pine bough back for her to pass and brushes her sap-sticky hands off on her pants.

"So are you a ghost like me or are you kind of adjusted?" The sound of the rushing water almost drowns out her voice.

Bella trips fantastically on a root and lands in some muddy reeds. Kate steps over her sprawled legs and offers a hand. "Thanks," she mutters. "I'm…"

"You're…?" Kate hasn't let go of her hand yet despite the mud squishing between their fingers. The temperature is weird. The texture, even worse.

"I'm okay," she says with as strong a nod as she can manage.

Her hand swings lifelessly to her side when Kate gives it back to her. The girl starts on the rocky path again, black platform flip-flops as sturdy as hiking boots. "You can lie if you want to, that's cool."

"Where are we going?"

Kate flicks her head around, long hair dramatically fanning. "You're walking me home."

"Okay."

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It takes about ten minutes of trudging through sticky mud and overgrown brush, but they finally get to the edge of the more residential side of town. Kate's house is pale green with stark white trim. Grounded cars and sun-bleached outgrown kids' toys clutter most of the front yard, but it's no different than the house next door. Or across the street.

"That's my room," Kate says, pointing out the leftmost window on the second floor because that's just what you do.

Bella looks up. The curtains are purple in that bedroom.

Kate lifts the latch on the chest-height chain-link gate but pauses before pushing it open. Instead, she turns halfway, curious. "Why do you stare at me at school like that?"

When no answer comes, she tugs Bella's slightly muddy notebook from her hands, ignoring her harmless fretting. Her pale Rapunzel hair is draped around her shoulders and flung over her bent elbows like a shawl. She squints at Bella's shaky outlines and flips through the pages in the wrong direction, but there's a distinct lack of revulsion on her face. A lack of anything, really. But what was Bella expecting? For her to be impressed?

After an agonizing minute, Kate shuts the book and hands it back to her. Satisfied for the moment. "I've never heard you speak."

"I've been talking to you all afternoon."

"You've been whispering at me all afternoon."

"Okay."

Kate rolls her eyes. "So why do you draw me?"

Bella twists on her feet, uncomfortable enough to fuse into the misty air. The sun's gone again.

"I guess you don't have to tell me. I'll see you later."

To her retreating back, Bella mumbles, "You look like me."

But Kate heard. "What did you say?" She's right back up at the gate now, warm interest on her face like a sunrise.

Bella dips her chin, a grim hardness in the small muscles of her face.

"Nothing, huh?" Kate says, amused for some reason. She bends to rifle through her pockets and comes up with an uncapped red Sharpie. She curls her finger, indicating Bella's arm- which she rests along the rugged top of the fence. Bella watches in mild shock as Kate scrapes the dried-out point of the marker against the blank powder blue of her cast.

She waits until the front door closes behind Kate before turning away from the house and heading back in the direction of the school. The blurry mist fuses into a light rain as she pulls back the sleeve of her flannel and stops dead on her feet in the middle of a crosswalk, much to the dismay of Mike's mother, honking in her minivan.

Kate left her phone number.

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The following Saturday, Bella waits until Charlie's cruiser disappears down the end of the block before walking downstairs to the landline, rife with hesitation. And it isn't like she can tell herself that Kate's forgotten all about her in the four days since they hung out because they've seen each other where they always do. The dates in her sketchbook match up as recently as yesterday.

She picks up the clunky handset and glances over the faded upside-down numbers written on her cast, dials a few numbers with her pinky, freaks and hangs up.

What is she supposed to say? Does she ask to hang out? Does she want to hang out?

Bella takes in a deep breath and shakes her right hand out at her side, attempting a mental appraisal. She knew of Kate before all of this, of course she did with how small this town is. But the Kate she saw around was always dripping chlorine in the locker room and running to class late, weaving through people and ducking under arms. On your left!

If Bella had been drawing her last year, she would have been a series of frenetic smudges that would zip right off the page and disappear into next week, full speed ahead.

Presently, Kate seems no longer in possession of any of those qualities. In fact, if Bella had to shape her lines into words, she'd say Kate seems a bit faded. Like the sun punched her red into pale pink despite somewhat obvious efforts to mask it. That's how Bella has decided to interpret the other day, anyway. People don't usually drag faceless kids like Bella down to the riverbank unless they want someone to witness them doing something. Anything besides lying in bed until sunset.

Which is sort of how Bella's been feeling lately. Maybe she could use a witness too.

Mind made up, she dials the number again, hand twinging against the handset as it rings four times before Kate picks up in a roar of sound. "Hey, Bella!" she shouts, sounding about two inches away from an active wind tunnel.

"How'd you know it's me?"

"Lucky guess?" There's a lot of noise on the line. All static and indeterminate crashing followed by the muffled whine of other voices.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah, the step-pig's having a dudes' night. They're renovating my bathroom. Or so they say." Kate scoffs her revulsion like cardboard tearing. "Men are animals, all of them. And I don't remember buying a ticket to the petting zoo, asshole!" she shouts with the receiver presumably against her chest to block the sound. Not a beat later she chirps, "Pick me up in twenty? I'll be at Maggie's."

"Where does Maggie li-" Kate hangs up abruptly, and Bella's left standing awkwardly outside the kitchen with the speaker still pressed to her ear.

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It's not very Nancy Drew of her, but she gets Maggie's address from a quick and embarrassingly flirty phone call with Alice Cullen. If one can withstand a few overt come-ons, the girl is a skeleton key to everybody else's business (it's like she has the whole school bugged). But she turned out to be an invaluable source in Bella's search for the truth last summer. Bella owes her a lot.

By the time Alice put away the glitter and lowlight (Oh, you're no fun!) and gave her the address, she had just enough time to coax her monstrous truck across town before Kate's attention could zip to higher voltage people, places, and things.

And now, as she turns down the street she can already see Kate waiting for her on the front steps, smoking like a noir detective and ignoring Maggie's shivering, bird-boned Chihuahua as it yaps at her from behind the screen door. Twin braids fall over her shoulders like climbing ropes and double over themselves in white-blond piles on the chipped green steps.

She stands as Bella pulls to a stop at the curb, flicks her cigarette aside and shouts something over her shoulder into the house. Bella waves awkwardly from her truck and reaches across the cab to unlock the door.

"Hey," she says as Kate climbs in and sets her bag on the bench seat between them. The truck's idling like an earthquake, so Bella shoves it in gear and pulls onto the street.

"I didn't think you'd call."

"Was I not supposed to?"

"Well, I played it over in my head- the other day, I mean. And I think I was a little bit bossy. Which I am sometimes, but not in a super loud way. My sisters say I make it hard for people to say no."

"Oh," Bella says, distracted by the shrieking as she brakes for a stop sign. She really needs to take the poor thing to the shop already. But as some girl scouts cross the street, Kate's words light up in her head. "I know how to say no, Kate."

"Can I borrow ten dollars?"

"Yeah, my wallet's in the gloveb-" Bella stops mid-sentence and smiles a little. "I mean no."

Kate laughs, a surprisingly bright sound. "See, you never have to call me again." She unclasps her bag and starts digging around inside. "But I do need your help today for like an hour. Tops."

"What are we doing?"

"Take a left here," Kate says, peering up from her bag for a second. As Bella takes them off the main road, Kate produces a camera the size of her head. "I'm on a deadline."

"I didn't know you were on the yearbook staff." Bella glances over at her, all iced-over and cool even in her baby pink tank top that stops about three inches shy of the waist of her pants.

Kate leans against the door and lifts the lens in Bella's direction. "I'm not."

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They're behind the TV repair shop in some scrap of a lot that's basically a graveyard for all things metallic and mechanically deceased. Broken glass crunches beneath Bella's shoes as she acts natural per Kate's request. A tall order for a girl who can barely get comfortable in her own bedroom, but she tries to chill out as she steps over a smashed VCR. She's never modeled before, but something tells her stitches and tetanus don't normally make the waivered-away list of occupational hazards.

"Usually, I do this with Maggie, but she's so fucking Vogue all the time. She's literally too delicate-hot to be standing next to all this shit." Kate kicks a bike wheel that's so mangled it can't even complete a single revolution. "And I'm not calling you ugly. You just fit the project is all."

"I think I'm scared to ask."

"It's your broken arm, babe. And the depresso outfits, no offense. You actually dress better than half the school." She squats down and messes with all the little rings on her camera. The paintbrush ends of her braids sweep the pavement. "Kinda like you're in a band or something, it's cool."

Bella tugs self-consciously on the cuffs of her jacket. "Were you always into…taking pictures?"

"Yeah. Everybody acts like I wasn't. So it's like some huge shock like I gave up swimming just to take shitty pictures. But my dad got me a camera freshman year. I brought it with me everywhere. I took all our swim team pictures. But I guess nobody remembers that."

"Why not?"

The shutter clicks and Kate tilts her head a bit. "I think…everyone just wants to believe I'm worse than I am. Like super fucked in the head after what happened last summer, and not just always being this way, you know?"

"They want a reason," Bella offers.

She nods and snaps another picture. "It's like…I gave up on my childhood dream. The Olympics, by the way- sometimes I forget we don't really know each other that well. But anyway, I quit and then I started taking fucked-up pictures and locking myself in the darkroom, and my mom's like Katy, I read this pamphlet today at the doctor's office. I think you might be depressed. Yeah, no shit. But it's not new, and there's no reward for noticing now when you couldn't see it back then."

It's a lot to hear standing in the shadow of a precarious stack of TVs, but Bella understands more than Kate probably realizes. After all, last summer was closer to the two of them than just about anyone else.

"So this project, what's it for?"

"There's this photography program up in Alaska I have my eye on. You need a portfolio. But unfortunately, I suck. So I'm practicing." Snap. "With you." Snap. "Right now."

"Alaska?" Bella tries to mimic the effortless quirk of the covers of Dazed but ends up feeling like an idiot.

"Yeah. It's where we lived before my parents got divorced. God, why the fuck am I telling you all this?"

"It's okay. I like listening."

Kate lowers the camera, almost comically dubious. "No, you don't. You're just quiet. Quiet people get branded as good listeners whether they like it or not. You hate listening."

"I do not!"

"Admit it!" Kate raises her camera and snaps a few photos that couldn't have possibly had time to focus.

Bella laughs a little, thrown. "Okay. I hate it."

"What?" Kate cups her hand around her ear.

"I hate it!" Bella shouts, aiming a fiery kick at the stack of busted TVs. It comes crashing down in a mild explosion of glass and juddering plastic.

"That's better."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. And do that again. It was cool."

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Later, they're sitting across from each other at Carver's with Cokes and a basket of greasy fries to share. Kate's cheeks are flushed red from the unexpected chill outside. Bella pictures her up in Alaska, bundled in a giant puffy coat and yelling over the wind.

"I asked around about you, you know? When I first started seeing you on the bleachers." She turns her pebble textured plastic cup on the sticky table. Her fingernails are painted a greyish periwinkle so similar to Bella's cast, it's probably not a coincidence.

Bella bites a fry in half, hiding her smile. "What'd you find out?"

"That you've always been quiet, but you used to be… less quiet."

"My reputation…" Bella mutters, reaching for her soda.

"Did you really write the spring play last year?"

"Yeah." A raving success that Bella doesn't really like to think about. The high school actors did their best, but at the end of the day, they made her proudest work into something of an embarrassment.

Kate's cobalt-blue eyes flash with interest. "So you're a writer?"

Bella shrugs and stirs her straw around the ice in her cup. "It was just one play."

"Bella."

"What?"

"I saw your play. Twice."

Bella rolls her eyes and sucks on her straw. "You can lie if you want to, that's cool."

"I'm not lying. I literally dragged Gare back the next day, you can even ask h-" She stops short. "Well, you'll just have to take my word this once, considering."

"Sure. Except it only ran one night because the leads got food poisoning at the after-party."

"Okay, fine." Kate slumps back into the booth and crosses her arms. "I didn't see it. But I just feel bad, all that shit I dropped on you earlier."

"I lied too."

"Yeah?"

"I really do like listening to you."

Kate sets her cup down quickly, surprise splashed all over her. She recovers weakly. "Okay, freak."

Bella smiles. "Liar."

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On Monday in chemistry, Bella watches with poorly disguised amusement as Kate yanks Mike Newton's lab stool out from beneath him and husks an action-movie-quality Get Lost in his general fleeing direction before setting the chair upright in the spot beside Bella and sliding onto it, cool as a steel nerve.

Bella raises an eyebrow as Kate takes out her notebook and a pencil and faces the whiteboard.

"What?" Kate says without even looking. "I asked him nicely first."

"I'm friends with a bully."

"Whatever. Newton doesn't count."

By the end of the lesson, Bella's hardly written three words down in her notes. Partly because she was slightly (extremely) mesmerized by the platinum curtain of Kate's hair and the way she flips it over her shoulder every fifteen seconds- but mostly because it's still a little unreal to her that Kate's sort of in her life now rather than next to it.

As they're walking out of the classroom, Kate bumps her shoulder. "Hey, instead of drawing me today, can I show you something during sixth?"

"What is it?"

"If I tell you, it takes like, half the fun out of it."

"I don't know," Bella says, struggling with her backpack straps and her books and her cast all at the same time. "I like drawing you."

"Well, who wouldn't?" Kate says flatly. She shakes her head at Bella's helpless struggle and takes the stack of books from her. "Give me those. You should be in the fucking ICU."

"I think I'm doing a little better than that."

"Debatable." Kate turns and backpedals out in front of her. "Are you going to make me ask you nicely too?"

"God no. I'll go. But we should probably go to sixth period today. You know, for appearances."

Kate pushes her books back into her chest. "That's so nerdy, but whatever. I'll meet you in the parking lot after."

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By request, Bella parks her truck around the block from Kate's house and waits for an explanation that doesn't come. Kate's talking about something else and already twenty feet down the sidewalk before Bella can get her door to open and stumble out.

A pint-sized Kate-clone answers the door with a giant clipboard and a prim frown after Kate knocks for a solid thirty seconds. "Stop forgetting your keys," she says sharply before turning on her heel and disappearing inside.

"That's Irina," Kate says as she drops her stuff on the floor in the entryway. "I swear she gets nicer every day."

"Really?"

"No, but life sucks when you're twelve, so we just let her act like a troll all the time." She takes Bella's backpack off her shoulder for her and drops it with a thunk on the hardwood. "Is anyone else here?" she shouts around the corner.

"No, Mom's in Seattle, and the pig's at work," a higher voice echoes back. "You're supposed to take me to dance at four."

"Yeah, yeah," Kate mutters as she turns back to Bella, a bright grin across her face like a lightning bolt. She grabs the hem of Bella's jacket. "C'mon."

Bella's helpless to the tow as Kate charges further into the house. The blurred glimpses Bella gets showcase a comfy, lived-in mess- jackets and shoes all over the living room, laundry baskets piled with unfolded clothes waiting on the couches, a creased rug halfway pinned beneath the cluttered coffee table. In the three seconds they spend crossing the bright open kitchen, Irina hisses at them to stay away from the three bean plants she has growing on the window sill- presumably some junior high science experiment she appears to be taking very seriously.

Kate makes a face at her before ripping a narrow white door open and dragging Bella into the brimming darkness of the basement. Bella lifts her casted arm to steady herself against the wall of the stairwell. Her fingers brush the edge of a light switch but it's stuck in the off position with a piece of duct tape. "Is this a bad surprise?"

"Yeah, any last words?"

"Is this why you made me park far away? No connection to the victim?"

"Watch your step," Kate says, a distracted note in her voice as she tugs Bella through some invisible maze in the cool, invariant blackness. Finally, Bella hears a doorknob turn and the jangle of a light chain. In a blink, the inside of a small darkroom comes into view in the corner surrounded by old soccer gear and boxed-up Christmas decorations.

It's vaguely similar to the one at school that Bella's been inside on a few confusing occasions, but this one's a lot smaller and decidedly more Kate. About a dozen processed photos hang from twine cables near the ceiling. There are few narrow surfaces built into the walls topped with unfamiliar white bottles with geometric logos, photo trays, and a hefty-looking enlarger.

"Do you still think I'm gonna kill you?"

"Not really." Bella steps inside with her. It's a tight squeeze with two people. "This is cool."

Kate reaches around her to pull the door shut, her entire arm brushing against Bella's side, setting sparks up into her ribs out of the blue.

"Thanks, I built most of it my-" the sentence gets mauled when Kate turns her head toward Bella and realizes they're just inches apart- so close, Bella can smell the cinnamon Tic-Tacs apart from the lingering chemical scent. "Uh."A nervous laugh bubbles from her as she pulls her arms back into her own space, trays clamoring as she bumps into the table behind her. "Sorry, I'm not used to having people in here."

Bella nods too many times, unexpectedly nerve-scattered. "So, you wanted to show me something, right?"

"Right," she says, turning abruptly to the drying line. "God, I probably seem so dorky right now, I'm just- excited about this. You never saw me like this, okay?"

"Sure."

Carefully, Kate unclips a few photos and looks them over, a flicker of pride across her face before she holds them out. "I'm so going to Alaska next year."

Bella almost doesn't recognize herself in the black and white prints. Lately, she's been so subdued and grey in the edges of Angela's spontaneous yearbook shots. But Kate somehow caught her in full motion throwing a busted VCR over her head, black stripes of unraveled cassette tape trailing behind it like gymnastics ribbons, smile eeking mischievous catharsis. There's another of her accidentally dodging a collapsing tower of milk crates packed with busted computer hardware, totally oblivious to the raining plastic until the crash a second later.

Still up on the lines, she can see various blurry versions of herself walking toward the camera with her hands out in front of her to block the lens.

"What do you think? Cool, right?" Kate says, chin resting on her shoulder. "I have a bunch of weird ideas we could try. I was thinking about it all weekend."

The last print in her hands was taken in the diner. Bella's sitting with her shoulders slightly hunched, arms together under the table. She's talking to the waitress, so her head's in profile, and she's smiling more brightly than she remembers.

"Alright," she says, unsure how to contain this foreign feeling in her chest and burning at the corners of her eyes.

"You want to?"

She nods and hands the pictures back, discreetly swiping at her eyes when Kate's back is turned.

"Great!" Kate rubs her hands together. "So how's-"

Irina screams down the basement stairwell and slams the door within a span of two seconds after which Kate just groans and pulls the chain on the hanging lightbulb.

"What was that?" Bella says to the wall of darkness.

Kate's hands close on her cast and tug gently to guide her along the path carved through the clutter. "She's not allowed to come down here, and her explanations are always like twenty minutes long- plus footnotes. So I told her to just scream and I'll come up."

"That's-"

"I know."

Irina's waiting impatiently in the kitchen, freshly changed into tights and a pale pink leotard, golden hair pulled up into a severe bun on the top of her head. She's actually tapping her foot at them which Bella would laugh at if she weren't the slightest bit afraid of an aggressive attack.

"Let's go," she says, stomping toward the front door.

"Is she always like that?" Bella whispers.

Kate leans in slightly. "Tanya calls her Meanie-Rinie."

"Do you guys need a ride?"

"No, it's like two blocks away." She picks up a pink duffle with a giant cursive letter I stitched in white thread and tosses in a water bottle from the fridge. They follow Irina's warpath outside and pause at the chain link fence to part ways.

"I'll call you tonight?" Bella says.

Maybe it's the light, but Kate's cheeks appear to take on a faint shade of red. "Yeah, okay."

"So we can figure out…" Bella makes a vague gesture with her hands.

"Where to shoot. Yeah." Blush gone. Return ticket punched in Siberia once again. "I'll see you tomorrow, Bella."

.

.

Charlie's cruiser is in front of the house when Bella pulls into the driveway. He's been working later shifts for the past few months, usually seeing her for a bit in the morning before school and then coming home when she's winding down with her homework late in the evenings.

Things are quiet in the house these days.

Beau was always out tripping through sports practices or hanging out with his friends, but when he was home he was always blasting Third Eye Blind and badly singing along or making a huge mess in the kitchen or turning all the laundry pink by accident. It's almost unbelievable how specific the holes are in her life now.

Sitting in her truck with the engine off, she almost doesn't want to go inside.

But she does.

Her dad's warming up a packaged dinner in the microwave when she comes in with the mail. There's an envelope from her mother with RSVP ASAP! written on the back. She can only imagine what that's about.

Charlie has an unopened beer in his hand and a game playing on the TV in the living room. "Hey, Bells," he says, eyes following a play made in some stadium a thousand miles away. "How was school?"

"Good, I think. I got a B on my chem quiz." There was no quiz. Charlie hums his approval and mutters a customary good job. She glances at the little window of the groaning microwave. "I could make you something better," she offers, resenting the palpable over-eagerness in her voice. It must be ten times worse in Charlie's ears by the way he turns his gaze elsewhere.

"Nah, don't bother with it. I'm fine for tonight."

"Okay." She sets her bag down on the table and tears open the envelope from her mother. There's a monogrammed card inside with curly script font. "I was thinking we could go see Billy this week. If you wanted."

"Yeah, maybe," he says. The microwave beeps. Charlie grabs the little tray and takes it out into the living room, not even stopping to peel the plastic seal off the top.

Bella sighs and shoves the card in her pocket to look at later. It's been a strangled couple of months for the both of them. Her little stunt this summer with Royce didn't help even if her intentions were mostly good. As long as she lives, she'll never forget the rough set of his face when he walked into her hospital room in Seattle, new plaster cast on her arm. He was furious like she'd never seen him before. Almost unrecognizable.

Maybe things are better now that she's going to school and staying in the lines of her teenage life, but everything's so strained now. And the whole time they were standing in the kitchen together, Charlie didn't look at her once.

.

.

Two weeks later, Bella holds her nose under the red lights as Kate transfers photo paper between trays of smelly chemicals. It's surprising how smoothly Kate works in here despite only having about a square foot to move around with them both inside the tiny darkroom. Somehow she's making it work.

It never really gets old, the way the image darkens under the fluid like magic (like chemistry! - Kate) onto the bright white paper. This bunch is from a few days ago up on the cliffs in La Push. The wind was straight out of a category 4 hurricane and Bella almost plummeted to her death on the sharp rocks below a few times, but Kate managed to catch a couple of decent shots.

The shoots are fun if not a little awkward for Bella who still feels as much like a model as she does a pro hockey player. Still, it's fun in a way, hanging out with Kate in these random places and then back here in her darkroom, watching silently as she works through a deeply memorized process, rarely providing any explanation of what she's doing. Bella doesn't mind so much. It beats waiting around at home by a mile. A marathon, even.

Kate sets her little digital timer for the stopper bath and turns on her stool, halfway through a sentence before she rolls her eyes. "It doesn't even smell bad."

"Yeah, it does."

She pulls Bella's hand away from her face. "If you want to be my assistant, you have to get used to it. I make the rules."

The timer cheeps and she swivels around to do the next step, dropping Bella's hand like a rock.

"You get really into this," Bella notes. She takes a sip of the juice box Kate swiped for her from Irina's perfectly organized and labeled shelf in the door of the fridge. Seeing her so concentrated like this makes her wish she'd brought her sketchbook down here. It's kind of embarrassing to think about too much, but it's full of all kinds of Kates now. Irritated bleachers Kate, Kate behind the camera, Kate measuring out fixer.

"Yeah, well. Despite what everyone thinks, I didn't give up completely." She stands and clips the wet photo to a line overhead. "I still enjoy my hobbies, still want things out of life, and all that. I didn't die."

"I get that. Every time I talk to Jess or Lauren, it seems like they're surprised my whole life didn't end back in June." Bella draws her legs beneath her on her metal folding chair. "And the teachers too. Last week, Mr. Gelbend told me the color was coming back to me when I laughed at one of Emmett's jokes."

"You're kidding."

"No, he said it in front of everyone. I was so embarrassed."

"I would be too. I would've walked out or sued him or something. The guy's like a hundred and fifty thousand years old, he's gotta have something."

"Which is why he still teaches."

"Good point." She points over at something in the corner. "Hand me that would y-"

A different beeping fills the tiny room, sounding much more urgent than the photo bath timer.

"Shit," Kate says, smacking her watch to shut it up.

"What's wrong?"

"The pig's coming home soon. You parked around the corner, right?"

"Yeah, I-"

"Good. I think I'm set here. You should-"

"Kate?"

She slows her strangely frantic movements and sinks back down onto the stool. "Yeah?"

"Is everything alright?"

"Yeah, it's just- Look, you don't want to be on the step-pig's radar is all. That's why sometimes I have you pick me up at Maggie's when he's home." She twists her braid between her hands like she's trying to start a fire.

"Why?"

"Um. He was kind of a total creep around Tanya's friends before she moved out last year."

"Oh."

"If he even looked at you, I'd kill him," Kate mutters. But then she smiles, like a coin flipping, and it's so odd Bella can't help but stare.

"Are- are you okay?" she asks.

Her eyes widen, indeterminate under the red lights, but the slight flail in her hands out in front of her does nothing to reign in what she's let out into the air. "Oh no, babe. I'm fine. You don't have to worry about me."

"You sure? It sounds messed up."

"I know, sorry. I'm sure." She picks up Bella's backpack from under the table and hands it over. "You should get going."

"Okay. Um, I'll call you? Tonight?"

"I'll be up." She gets up behind Bella and follows her to the stairwell like a hesitant shadow. "And Bella? You really don't have to worry. Sometimes I just say things- It's not like that. I'm fine. I promise. I just don't want to put you in a bad situation, you know?"

Bella nods and finishes climbing the stairs. She can't help but pick up the speed once she gets outside, kicking up orange and brown leaves as she goes. It's not quite night yet, but the street's empty, and the lamps are on.

At her truck, she fumbles a bit with her keys, headlights catching on the silver in her hands and the side mirror as a white car rolls around the corner, slowing as it passes her. It's too dark to see inside, but Bella keeps her head down just in case, Kate's words zigzagging around her head the whole way home.

.

.

In the hall at school a few days later, Mike Newton (G = 6.67430(15)×10⁻¹¹ m³⋅kg⁻¹⋅s⁻² appearing ad infinitum) jogs to catch up with her, sneakers squeaking on the trampled linoleum. She's been trying her best to avoid him all semester but slows down for him anyway. He's basically harmless, just a boy-shaped mass of hang-out invitations.

"Hey, did you hear about Alice's party?" he asks, turning his head to discreetly catch his breath.

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure she invited me about ten times. In-person." (Interactions with Alice Cullen are never anything but delightful, no matter how hard one tries to resist. There really is something about that girl.)

"So, you thinking of going?"

An arm loops through hers, all mystery lost from the long blond hair trapped between their elbows. "Where are we going?"

"Mike wants us to go to Alice's party on Saturday."

"Aw, Mikey. That's so nice!" Kate says sweetly. It's grating because Kate's never sweet, not at school anyway. Especially not to Mike Newton of all people. (He's just so punchable I can't help it.)

"Yeah," Mike says with about a quarter of the enthusiasm he had ten seconds ago. "Bring Kate with you. That'll be...great."

He shuffles off before they reach the end of the hall. For her part, Bella feels a little bit bad for the kid. He's just trying to be friendly. "You're so mean to him."

"I didn't even say anything."

"If you say so."

The bell chimes, dispersing what was left of the hallway crowd. Kate sighs and slides her arm free, fingers catching Bella's like an afterthought. She squeezes her hand a little just like that first day at the riverbank (minus the mud). The tension of it travels up Bella's arm like an electrical current.

"Maybe we could go on Saturday. Together," she says, still lingering. Her eyes are softer than usual, the heavy blue gleaming rather than glaring.

"Yeah, sure," Bella says, eyes bobbing between her face and their hands. "If you want to."

"Well, do you want to?"

Bella nods without thought. "Yeah."

"Okay. We'll go." She lets go of Bella's hand and takes off for her afternoon Spanish class without another word. Bella watches her go, hair a smooth white cape, cargo pockets all unbuttoned.

Arm still buzzing, she walks to her next class.

.

.

On Thursday, Bella skips second period to get her arm checked out at the doctor's office. Bad news like always: Come back in three weeks. She peels the little calendar sticker off the card with her appointment details and slaps it on the truck's dash right over the top of the last one.

A glance at her watch tells her it's not even lunch yet. She was hoping to miss a little more class time. They're going over The Brothers Karamazov in English, a book she already analyzed within an inch of its cracked binding for the class she took up at the junior college in Port Angeles a few semesters back. Hearing the kids of Forks high stumble over the translation detonates some kind of white static bomb inside her skull, and all she can do about it is stare at her hands in her lap.

Almost every day at Forks High is starting to feel like a rehash of the same topics and vague lessons over and over again, a wall of layered nothing. There's almost no point in going back today, but Charlie keeps getting sternly worded messages on the answering machine from the attendance secretary. Usually, she just erases them when she gets home from school, but she's been staying out later with Kate these days. Sometimes she forgets.

Really, the only thing worse than the silence between them is the awkward knocks on her bedroom door and the gruff, straightforward: You show your face in class tomorrow, alright? And worse than that, the indecisive shadow underneath her door as he silently berates himself for playing dictator. I know it's hard, and maybe it feels pointless to you. But you shouldn't bow out right at the end, okay? You've made it this far. Just try.

She pulls into the school parking lot for Charlie's sake. As she's climbing out, she bangs her cast on the frame of the door, dull pain all through her arm.

.

.

By the time last period rolls around, her resolve is pretty much beaten into the dirt. She sticks around to help the teacher sharpen some pencils and slips out a few minutes after roll's taken, weight easing off her shoulders as she dips between buildings and comes out by the outdoor basketball courts.

Kate's on the phone like always and walking along the first row of the bleachers, heel to toe like a tightrope walker, long hair caught around her free arm as it searches for balance. A few weak sunbeams slat in through the clouds and brighten the yellow of her t-shirt. She turns at the end of the row and stops, one foot still in the air and waves, flashing a smile. She says something to whoever's on the other end of her line and hangs up, dropping the bulky cell into the thigh pocket of her cargos.

Bella takes a seat on the second row and pulls out her sketchbook, flooded with relief after such a lackluster day. At least she still has this half-hour or so with Kate who chases away the static, easy as anything.

"Hey," Kate says, sliding into the spot beside her. She feels Bella's sleeved arm and frowns at the plaster shell beneath. "Still?

"Yeah, a few more weeks." She flips to a blank page in her sketchbook and pulls a pencil out of the inner pocket of her jacket. "My dad said we heal in slow motion. I guess he was serious."

Kate pats her legs. "I have a Brownie's knife in one of these pockets, I'm sure I can hack that thing off of you in no time."

"You were a girl scout?"

"In like first grade." Kate lies back on the bench, her head propped against Bella's thigh."I just wanted the knife."

"Yeah, right. I bet you were super into it." She adds a few careless lines to her wispy sketch. It's kind of hard with Kate's head in her lap. "All the badges, the little handbook. Everything."

"Close," Kate says, playing with the cuff of Bella's sleeve. "I got kicked out for biting."

Bella adds a few sharp teeth to her drawing and flips the book over Kate's face. "I think I've got your likeness down."

Kate looks it over like a critic in a gallery, turning the book every which way to examine each angle. Finally, and without warning, she tears the page out of the book. "This is…photorealistic. I'm keeping it."

The phone in her pocket rings, but she ignores it and passes the sketchbook back. She folds up the loose drawing and sticks it in her pocket.

"Who are you always talking to out here?" Bella ventures, feeling stupid for it. But she has been curious.

"Tanya, usually. She's busy all the time except for a twenty-minute stretch between her mad-scientist math classes and waitressing." She squints and holds her hand against the weak sunlight. "Or my dad. He wants to take me to get a new camera for Alaska. Preemptively."

"That's nice of him. And you'll get in, obviously."

"You would say that."

"I mean it. Your pictures are amazing."

Kate flushes slightly and covers her face with the bars of her forearms. "Thanks, mush," she mutters, awkwardly genuine.

.

.

Bella holds the door open for Charlie as he carries in an armload of wood from the stack under the tarp on the back porch.

"Good thing I let Harry talk me into that extra half cord," he mutters. "It's getting cold early this year."

"Yeah, good thing," she says lamely. "Do you need any help?"

"No, I've got it."

"I was thinking lasagna for dinner," she says, neck sticking out too far and she hates it. It shouldn't feel this difficult talking to Charlie. It's not like they had great dizzying conversations in the past. Neither of them are big talkers. But it's never felt like a game rigged to lose before.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that when she got home earlier, he was standing in the hallway upstairs, a hand on the doorknob of Beau's bedroom, motionless. He hadn't heard her coming up. When she called his name, he jumped.

Charlie tosses a log in the fireplace and brushes his hands off on his pants. "Whatever's easiest, Bells."

.

.

After school on Friday, Kate convinces her to walk down to the bend in the river where everyone swims in the summertime. Bella's hunched over their gas station coffee cups while Kate throws rocks into the cold water.

She's talking about Irina's latest fascination with blue mascara and hogging the bathroom for forty-five minutes every morning just to come out looking like a smurf with pink-eye. Bella shivers in the cold, nodding along as she listens halfway, losing Kate's voice every now and then in the rush of the water.

A pebble bounces off the toe of her boot, and when she looks up, Kate's looking right at her. Expectantly.

"Sorry, what?"

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah, why?" She sips her coffee, slightly uncomfortable beneath Kate's searching gaze.

"Not to sound like literally everyone else in this goddamn town, but you look sad. And not even your usual mope- that I adore by the way- but like…forlorn."

"I am not forlorn."

"Whatever. I don't know the word." Kate walks up the slope to her spot beneath a giant oak tree and sits beside her in the crunchy leaves. "How are things really? And no brave answers or I'll scream."

Bella just looks at her sitting there in her rain-speckled blue windbreaker, a black beanie pulled down over her ears. She's crushing leaves in her hands, waiting patiently for an answer that Bella's not sure she has.

"I guess I'm just worried about my dad."

"Is he okay?"

"Yeah, he's just…broken up, I guess. He doesn't really want to talk to me anymore. Or look at me. Even though we're both trying way too hard, there's just something there in the way. I don't know how to get back to a good place with him."

Kate slides her fingers through Bella's and offers a supportive squeeze that somehow spurs her on.

"Sometimes I think it's because when he looks at me, he just sees Beau. Everyone always went on about how we looked so similar." She shudders slightly, and it's not from the cold. "I'm gonna be older than him soon, it just doesn't feel right. And I guess my mom's getting remarried? I don't know when that happened, but it feels like it's just her way of distracting herself from Beau. And me. Not that I need her grief too."

"Have you talked about any of this before?" Kate asks softly.

Bella shakes her head. "After it happened, I tried a few counselors, but it was too immediate. I didn't really know what was going on."

"What about now?"

"I…I can't tell anybody this stuff."

"Okay," she says gently.

"You're not anybody."

Her thumb traces a few little circles on the back of Bella's hand. Her eyes are gentle. "Then tell me."

"I mean…I'm trying to keep up with school. I'm in easy classes this semester, but I can't focus anymore." She tucks her hair behind her ear, nerves jittering in her stomach. "I feel like my whole life has shrunk or something. Like, I used to write plays for fun and wonder about things. Now it just feels like I'm thinking the same ten thoughts all day, and most of them aren't good. And I just wonder when things are going to feel different."

Bella trails off, eyes stinging a bit. When she looks up, Kate's head is bent so close to hers their foreheads brush, barely a wisp of contact but it jerks something in her chest beyond repair. Bella slumps forward, brow pressed to the line of Kate's collarbone. How did she do it? How did Kate find the right thread to pull to unravel every thought inside her head?

Bella sighs from somewhere deep in her chest. "And I'm tired of hearing about him, but I miss my brother. So much that I can't move sometimes. And I know everyone's sorry, but they can just forget about it."

Kate rests her chin on the top of her head and threads her fingers together on the back of Bella's neck. "That day in front of my house you said You look like me."

Bella smiles a little into her cold windbreaker. "I wasn't sure if you heard that."

"I did. I thought I understood then. Like you were saying we went through almost the same thing, but…I see it now. We're not even two people anymore." Her voice lowers into a breath of a whisper. "My arm's broken too."

"No, it's not."

"I'm not someone else."

"Okay."

.

.

If Alice were about ten years older and twelve hundred miles south, she could be throwing the kinds of parties that make one eligible for a star on that sticky walk of fame. But unfortunately, high schoolers make terrible guests. They ignore decorations and themes, show up in their school clothes, and drip lukewarm beer all over the imported rugs.

By the time Bella and Kate show up late Saturday night, Alice has already wilted on the sofa (carefully thought-out background music forcibly ejected and replaced with somebody's shitty mixed CD, drippy ice bucket chewing up the immaculate hardwood floors, orange Cheeto dust handprints waving from various plush white surfaces).

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Bella asks, flinching as Alice's adopted brother, Emmett, whizzes by with a giggling cheerleader over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Further inside, Alice powers back to life and starts to make her way through the clumps of people toward them.

Kate shrugs, projecting disinterest. But from the grip she has on her hand, Bella knows she's reluctant as well. "Might as well, just to say we attempted re-acclimation." She's wearing shimmery lip gloss tonight, Bella can't help but stare for a few seconds before tearing her eyes away, red all up her neck.

"This time last year, would you have been here?" she whispers through Kate's hair as Mike Newton waves excitedly from the top of the stairs, calling her name.

"Unfortunately," Kate grumbles. She gives Mike a look that could melt ice caps and smiles triumphantly when he withers and zips out of sight.

"Bella! You made it!" Alice chirps and she glides over to them, slightly ruffled but otherwise CosmoGIRL! cute in her ruby red party dress. "And you look so handsome!"

"Thanks, Alice." Bella exhales a laugh. All she did was swap her usual t-shirt for a black shirt buttoned halfway up her sternum. She pulls Kate a little closer by their joined hands. "You know Kate, right?"

Alice's dark eyes flick between them, doubtlessly creating a new file in that endless database of hers entitled Bella + Kate (??).

"Sure I do," she sparkles, turning to Kate with her bright smile. "I hope you don't mind if I steal your date for a quick second. I'll give her right back, I promise."

"Ditching me already?" Kate mutters.

Bella squeezes her hand. "I'll find you in a little bit, okay?"

.

Alice leads her by the hand to a semi-private corner tucked beneath another set of stairs. She kicks the stereo wired into the wall, effectively silencing the techno-pop and replacing it with something a little smoother.

"Uh, I can't really dance."

"Humor me, would you? This is the first of my numerous invitations you've accepted all year."

Bella sighs and rests her hands on Alice's waist letting the much shorter girl lead them in a slow circle. "How's this?"

"Mm, wonderful." Her perfume is light and elegant and so far from this high school party. "Done with the whole detective thing, are you?"

She shrugs. "I think so."

"That's a shame. I liked that side of you. Calling me in the middle of the night, rasping orders." She stretches up on her toes to whisper the next part against Bella's ear. "It gave me chills."

Bella draws away from her mouth. "I found out all I needed, Alice. You know that."

"Yeah, yeah. One less drug-dealing frat boy on the streets." Her lashes flutter. Bella wonders if she can help it. "You never call me anymore- though I guess I know why now." She slides her hands down Bella's arms and nods toward the kitchen where Kate's talking to Jessica Stanley. "She's really beautiful, isn't she?"

Yeah, Bella wants to sigh it out in a trail of hearts, but from Alice, the question was surely meant to go unanswered. Instead, she clears her throat and holds Alice's eyes. "Ali, if I ever want to pin a murder on someone, you're the first girl I'm calling."

"A murder!" Alice throws her arms around her and squeezes surprisingly hard. "Oh, do you really mean it?"

"Cross my heart," Bella strains out.

Over Alice's shoulder, Bella catches Kate's blue gaze. Something simmers there between them for a few seconds before Kate throws back her drink and disappears around a corner.

.

A few hours later and after spending a good twenty minutes searching the place from the ground up, Bella's helping a moderately inebriated Kate out of a broom closet and into one of the quiet bedrooms on the second floor to cool down.

"Really, really red," Kate mutters, slipping from Bella's arm and folding into a sad paper doll on the floor.

"What?" Bella hoists her back to her feet and wraps a steady arm around her waist, barely managing to drag her the rest of the way to the bed.

"You do look handsome. But I knew that the whole time." Kate falls into Bella's chest, that shimmery lip gloss smearing a sticky line down the column of her throat. She sniffs and drops like a rock onto the pristinely-made bed. "You wear goth clothes, you know? I thought I didn't like it. That's not true."

"Okay, drunky." Bella smooths some of her pale hair out of her face. "Maybe take a quick nap. Why'd you drink so much anyway?"

Kate rolls onto her side and grumbles something into the pillow that sounds a lot like pretty, pretty, pretty eyes.

.

.

By morning, Kate's a vampire. She hisses at the sunlight through the curtains and turns off all the lights they pass as they wind through the maze of the Cullens' place, garbage scattered everywhere, stray kids slumped over on trampled furniture.

Alice, ever immune to over-drinking, presents them with to-go cups of her mom's fancy imported coffee and a thousand-watt smile that gets Kate hissing all over again.

"Sleep well?" she asks sweetly.

.

.

"Shit," Kate mumbles when she finally orients herself and drags her head off the cool glass of the passenger window, forgotten cigarette burning down to the filter between her knuckles. They're about a block from her house. "What time is it?"

"Almost seven. I didn't mean to fall asleep."

"It's not your fault. I don't think anyone's awake yet." She flicks the butt out the window and gathers her hair away from her neck. "Do you have a hair tie?"

Bella holds out her wrist, and Kate pulls the little black band off, twisting it around her sleep-stampeded hair.

"Sorry we didn't hang out more. I think I kind of…lost the plot somewhere in the middle." She twirls her finger around in front of her. "But at least you had Alice, right?"

There's no heat on her words, but Bella feels it anyway from her own side.

Bella pulls to the curb in front of her house and kills the shuddering engine. "Actually, after I talked to her I spent the rest of the night looking for you. And hiding from Mike. Intermittently."

"Oh."

"What happened anyway? Did you get nervous or something?"

"I'm just…" She turns in the seat to face her. "I was trying to do what I always do at these shitty parties. But it wasn't fun this time. And then I got to thinking about the last time I even went to one and it was- Well, you know. And I thought maybe it's because Gare's not here, but he hasn't been here in forever."

Bella glances down at her hands in her lap. There's a red ring around her wrist from the hair tie. Kate doesn't talk about Garrett much. Sometimes Bella finds herself forgetting that June's impact radius reaches further than the tips of her own fingers.

"I think," she says slowly, pulling on the door handle, "I should stick to pictures for a little while. Save you like ten steps."

"Kate?"

"Yeah?"

"You were fine."

Kate scoffs as she hops out of the cab, then turns on her heel, a wicked smile across her face. "Did you think I was jealous?"

"No."

"Well, I was. Just so you know. But I was sad too. I never had this many emotions before, and I don't think I like it that much."

"It never stops."

"That's comforting."

Bella smiles at the tangled, rumpled version of possibly her favorite person on this planet. "See you tomorrow?"

"Yeah, mush." She pushes the door shut, and Bella watches as she walks up the leaf-choked path to her front door, pats her pockets, and looks up at the sky with what's probably disdain. She turns around in slight embarrassment.

Bella's about to stick her head out the window and ask if she forgot her keys again when the front door jerks open. A large man- clearly the step-pig- reaches out of the dark house and grabs Kate roughly by the arm. He glares a cattle brand into Bella's forehead through the fogged glass of the truck and yanks Kate inside, front door slamming behind them.

Frozen, Bella sits there for what feels like forever.

.

.

Bella tries her cell phone after an hour of sitting stiffly in the living room. Nobody answers.

.

.

A little after nine pm, a knock on the door disrupts the stillness of the Swan house. Charlie had been going through some bills at the kitchen table while Bella was rooted on the couch with a blanket around her shoulders watching old cartoons to distract herself.

Charlie glances up, but Bella's on her feet in a flash, struggling out of her blanket and sliding across the old wood floor in her socks to answer the door.

"Oh my god," Bella mutters, practically tripping over the threshold into a calamity of a hug.

Kate accepts the impact easily. "Hey, mush. Missed you too."

"I called, I was worried."

"My phone was dead downstairs. Plus, I was kind of locked in my room all day. Not that I would have gone out there for the world. The pig loves to scream. He gets so red, I have to try not to laugh."

Bella leads her inside and gives Charlie's raised eyebrows a pleading look at which he relents and returns to squinting behind his glasses at little numbers. They settle on the couch, Kate's eyes flipping all over the living room. It strikes her then that Kate's never been here before.

"How'd you get out?" Bella asks.

Kate pulls the throw blanket over herself and lifts the end for Bella to scoot in. "I climbed out my window and slid down the fucking drainpipe. Then I stole Irina's bike, total Jailhouse 41 move if I'm honest."

Bella lets out a breath and feels a whole day's worth of tension slowly uncurl in her jaw and shoulders. Kate snuggles closer and finds Bella's hand under the blanket. Her eyes are on the cartoon violence, colors thrown over her face.

.

"You could stay if you wanted," Bella says. They're out on the front porch now, saying goodbye. It's cold and the wind's dragging dead leaves around their feet.

"Your house is cute and all, but if I have to wear these clothes to school tomorrow I might drop out." She's making a face, but it's not lost on Bella that she's dressed like she always is. Except instead of a tiny t-shirt she's wearing an old Mariners hoodie Bella's never seen before.

Arms crossed against the cold, Bella shivers. "Will you be in trouble?"

Kate laughs, a bright note in the darkness. "Tons probably, but it's just…worth it, you know?"

Bella feels herself flushing- thank god it's so dark out- but it's nothing compared to the heat when Kate reaches up and fixes a piece of Bella's unbrushed hair. There's a peculiar second where nothing happens- just Kate's eyes on hers, intent and blue to the core.

Then all at once, she steps forward, takes Bella's face in her hands, and kisses her- the gentle touch like lightning beneath her skin. Her mouth is soft and achingly tender against Bella's, it's almost too much. Bella's arms fall limp at her sides as her eyes slip shut.

.

.

Kate's not at school on Monday. Or Tuesday. By Wednesday, Bella's dragging her feet through the halls. All kinds of excuses fly through her mind. Kate's sick or her dad came into town and whisked her and Irina off to the Alaskan tundra for the week or maybe the kiss was so bad, Kate just had to switch schools to try to forget about it.

All are equally likely. And all are equally incorrect as Bella realizes in a shock when she walks into her chem class Wednesday morning and is greeted not by an empty stool (or a sickeningly chipper universal constant) but Kate Denali herself, smiling cool like wind off a glacier.

"Hey," Kate says as Bella's setting her stuff down on the black lab table, and for the briefest moment, Bella catches a glimpse of Sunday night through a crack in her usual in-public indifference. It has her feeling warm all over again.

"Where've you been?" Bella whispers as the teacher noisily uncaps a dry erase marker and begins to write the name of their lab on the whiteboard. She doesn't even bother copying it down.

"I'll tell you later," Kate says, opening her own lab book for possibly the first time this semester.

Bella clicks her pen, satisfied for the moment. Kind of. At the very least, they can talk more during sixth out on the bleachers. At the risk of sounding overdramatic, Bella's sort of been going out of her mind at home. They kissed. And then Kate ran off into the dark. They haven't had a chance to talk at all, and right now, separation by chromatography is close to the last thing on her mind.

Mr. Molina passes out trays with the needed equipment and releases them to their own devices.

Kate starts the prep, and she's actually doing it right instead of trying to ignite everything with the bunsen burner like usual. Bella kind of wants to check her forehead for fever.

"Have you been holding out on me?" she asks.

"Yeah," Kate says simply as she measures out some isopropyl alcohol/water solution. She hands Bella the beaker when she's finished, a sharp kind of smile on her face. "You just looked so cute taking the lead."

The beaker slips from Bella's hands and thunks against the tabletop, liquid sloshing all over her lab book and flooding to the table's edge in a steady stream of drips. She reaches for the roll of paper towels and somehow manages to knock an entire rack of test tubes off the table and into a million glittering pieces on the floor.

"Girls, girls, c'mon! Already?" Mr. Molina says, exasperated.

"Sorry," Bella mutters as she blots their entire workspace with paper towels. And the dotted knees of Kate's beloved cargos for good measure.

Kate stares at her for a few seconds, something warring in her eyes. But apparently, one side wins because she grabs Bella's hand and drags her out of the classroom and down the hall about a hundred feet to a storage closet.

"What are we do-" Bella starts to say before her back thuds into the door, Kate's hands flat on the metal on either side of Bella's head.

Her voice is low with an edge Bella can feel all down her spine. "They took my phone and Brian fucking nailed the screen on my window shut- total fire hazard- and nobody's talking to me in that house. I'm like a goddamn prisoner, and-"

"And what?" Bella says, breathless.

"All I can think about is kissing you again. Especially after that disaster show back there."

"You liked that?"

"Top ten fantasies, babe." Kate cups the back of her neck and kisses her. And this time, Bella's ready- or at least something close to it for the way her hands barely even shake as they find the perpetual gap of skin between the hem of Kate's cropped t-shirt and her pants. Her skin is warm, Kate smiles against her mouth.

And maybe this closet where they keep extra watered-down hand soap and glue sticks is Bella's new favorite place in the world.

They stay there for another ten minutes or so, Bella's a little fuzzy on the whole concept of time at the moment, especially after Kate found that spot on her neck with her teeth. But eventually, Kate pulls away, flushed and a little dazed in the eyes, and turns the doorknob with little warning. "You can still draw me in sixth, the pig can't take that from me."

"Okay."

Bella watches her go, heart racing in her chest. Kate doesn't so much glide as she trudges in her chunky shoes, long hair rippling behind her. She pauses her long stride by the Beau shrine/trophy case, seemingly frozen for a second as she glances inside the glass. An inaction so minute, Bella cannot account for the cold dread it floods into her system.

.

.

Kate doesn't show up at the bleachers that day. Or the next. Or Friday. Bella waits in the cold anyway.

Monday comes around again. Mike's in her seat with a sheepish smile.

Things start to get worse.

.

.

Two weeks later, Bella slaps her alarm clock and pulls the blankets over her head for the fourth day in a row. She's missed tests in half her classes, probably a due date for an essay too. She hasn't been paying attention even on the days she manages to make it to the school without immediately turning around and going back home.

Charlie knocks on her door. "Bells?"

"Yeah?"

"Look, I know you're not sick, but I…I called the school anyway. I just-" He sighs on the other side of the door. "I wish you would tell me what's going on with you lately."

Suddenly overwhelmed, she tightens her fists in her blanket, hot tears soaking into her pillowcase.

"Bella?" The door cracks open. Unsure, he waits a few seconds before stepping inside, then a couple more before he sits on the edge of her bed. "Please talk to me."

She shrinks beneath her quilt, her face a patchy mess of tears. Her fingers ache from how tightly she's clutching the blanket. "I feel alone."

"I know," he says quietly. She feels his hand come to rest on her shoulder. "It's my fault, and I'm sorry. I've left you all alone in this, and it's not right. There's no excuses. But I'm worried about you. And I'm scared I'm gonna lose you too."

She shoves the quilt away and hugs him, tears falling fresh. "I miss him," she whispers. "He's in my dreams, and then I wake up. And I remember."

"I miss him too." He squeezes her back.

Hard enough to break something.

.

.

A few days later, Bella parks in her old spot around the block from Kate's place even though the driveway's empty and it looks like no one is home. She knocks on the door anyway. It's almost been three weeks since Bella last saw her. Since anyone last saw her.

Surprisingly, the door opens a few seconds later, and Bella is greeted by a tiny congresswoman complete with a blazer and dress shoes.

"What are you doing here?" Irina asks, glancing at the street behind her.

"Is Kate here?"

"Obviously."

"Can I see her?"

Irina frowns. "She's sick."

"Well, I brought some of her homework. There's a lot more. The office said nobody's been coming to pick it up." Bella hands the girl a backpack stuffed with books and packets of work. "Is she okay?"

"I said she's sick."

"Are you sure?"

Irina looks down at her shiny shoes, looking a lot younger than twelve for a short moment. "No," she whispers.

"What's going on?" Bella mutters, glancing up toward the purple curtains on the second floor.

"I don't know. Nothing. What are you looking at?"

"Kate's room."

Irina steps out with her and looks up. "That's not Kate's room. That was Tanya's."

"Oh."

"Did she tell you that?"

"Yeah."

Irina rolls her eyes and goes back into the doorway. "She lies a lot."

"I know."

"Did she make up a dad for you?"

Bella sighs. "Yes."

"She likes that one. And step-pig. Even though it's just regular old pig." Irina scratches her arm. "I don't know what difference it makes."

"Okay, well. Can you just tell her I stopped by?" Bella asks, and when Irina nods, she turns and heads for the gate.

"Wait," Irina calls after her. When Bella turns around, she has her pink duffel bag over her shoulder, both hands gripping the white straps.

"Yeah?"

"Can you take me to dance?"

"Sure."

.

.

Awake long past midnight, Bella sits at her desk with her sketchbook, flipping through the pages just like she used to back before they'd ever said a word to each other.

Her lines used to be so vague, they could have fit around most of the girls in the school. Near the end, it's unmistakably Kate. She suspects that has little to do with her becoming a better artist. Even at the end, she's out of proportion and rushed- Kate with a gas station slushy, Kate pretending to be Count Dracula with her hair as a cape.

She lies a lot.

Bella already knew that. But the things she lied about don't change anything. Not really anyway. An imaginary absent father? What room she sleeps in? Everything else was true enough. It had to have been. Otherwise, what was the point?

She opens the bottom drawer of her desk and sifts through the pages of notes until she finds the list she made back in June. The one that led her to Kate in the first place.

Back then she had just wanted to see how she was doing. The other girl left behind. She remembers the first time she found Kate out by the basketball courts. She wasn't yelling into her phone or smoking, she was just lying there, staring straight up into the clouds.

Months later on Bella's front porch, things were already unraveling, but she looked so sincere when she pulled back from the kiss, happy even. And for the first time in months, Bella felt just the same.

.

.

On Saturday night, the phone rings.

Bella's in the middle of vacuuming beneath the couch cushions. She just barely catches the fifth ring. "Hello?"

"Bella?" Kate's voice shrills, crackling the speaker. "Why aren't you here? I miss you soooooo much!"

The handset slips a little in her sweaty grip, but she manages to hold onto it. "I thought you were avoiding me. Or like, locked in your room."

"I'm not even. Come and get me, I don't feel so good. Please. See, I asked nicely."

"Where are-" But Kate's already hung up.

.

Alice isn't picking up. Which either means she's dead or bleeding in a ditch somewhere. Or maybe she's just upset that Bella has ignored her last few phone calls. She hasn't exactly been the best friend lately.

She flips through the numbers written down in the little book by the phone and lands on one that might work, even if it makes her even more of a jerk.

"You got Mike-man, what's up?"

She fights the urge to hang up. "Hey, it's Bella."

"Oh, hey! You calling from home? Why aren't you at Lauren's? Well, since you called-"

"Thanks, Mike! Bye!"

.

.

She rings the doorbell at Lauren's place, getting soaked from the freezing cold rain with no idea what she's going to say.

"Oh, thank god," Lauren says when she answers the door. She turns and disappears around the corner for a few seconds and returns with Kate in tow, practically shoving her at Bella. She tosses a giant blue duffel bag out after her. "Get her out of here."

Bella catches her before she can topple down the stairs. Kate leans heavily against her, humming the alphabet. "What happened?"

Lauren scowls. "What do you mean what happened? Nobody's seen her in weeks and she just shows up here with all her shit and gets plastered. It's my birthday, Bella. She destroyed my pinata. I didn't even get to hit it. And I really fucking wanted to!"

"Happy birthday?"

"Thanks," Lauren says, and then she slams the door.

Kate squirms out of Bella's arms and starts tottering down the walkway with the balance of a chubby baby.

"Kate?" Bella grabs the duffel. It's the kind the swimmers take to weekend tournaments, and it's packed full of stuff. She catches up with Kate and grabs her arm to steady her.

"I'm fine," she snaps, blinking a few times afterward like she can't believe she's here right now. If she sounded drunk on the phone, Kate's absolutely wasted in person. She wasn't even close to this at Alice's party. She rips her arm away from Bella's grasp. "I don't need your help with anything."

"You asked me to come and get you. That's what I'm doing."

"Relax. You're always so wound up. I'm tired of it." She glares over her shoulder at her, and there's something weird about her eyes. Maybe Bella's just not remembering them right. "And don't look at me like that, like I'm falling off some wagon. I'm not."

"I'm not looking at you in any way."

"Yes, you are. You're judging me. You always are. Like it's my fault."

Bella has no idea what she's talking about, but it's making her angry, that much is clear. "Look, Kate. I'm gonna go now." She turns and heads for her truck.

"Wait!" Kate fritzes like a wet robot, blinking helplessly, a hand outstretched. Then all at once, her stare hardens and Bella can tell she's about to slash out of her skin. She smiles. "Why don't you let me drive, mush?"

Bella winces. She kind of liked that little nickname before. Not now. "Kate-"

She reaches for the keys clutched tightly in Bella's hand. "It's not even raining."

"Kate."

"I'm not that drunk. I can probably drive better than you. I can drive by your house fifty times and stare at the- the purple window. I can-"

"Just shut up and get in the car," Bella says sharply, regretting it instantly for the way Kate freezes. But then something flips and her blue eyes narrow hellishly.

"Why are you telling me what to do? Just narc on me already like you did with Royce. I'm sick of you following me around. You have plenty of evidence. I was there that night doing things I wasn't supposed to. Just like everyone else. I'm here right now"

"Kate, you're drunk."

"Yes, I am. Just like Gare when he wrapped that car around a fucking tree." She pushes Bella square in the chest. "They put your brother on that blue sky with the corny clouds and a fucking Bible verse. You know what they did for Garrett? A moment of silence in first period. That's what you get when you kill yourself. Sixty seconds to make everyone else feel like shit."

"Kate-"

"Shut up. You're just like him. Just like Beau, and I can't stand you. Following us everywhere, staring at me. I told them not to take anything from Royce. Fucking clouds!" She spins around to storm off but it's dark. Before Bella can stop her, she trips off the curb and lands roughly in the street. Her shoulders start to shake as she cries. Bella kneels beside her. She can see where her cheek is torn and bleeding.

"I'm sorry," Kate whispers into the wet asphalt.

Bella helps her sit up. "I know."

.

.

Charlie's out when Bella drags a half-conscious and bleeding Kate in from the rain. Maybe it's for the best he doesn't see this. Getting her up the stairs is a struggle, and Kate's no help at all. But eventually, they get there, and Bella lugs her into the bathroom, sweeping her hand blindly for the light switch as they stumble inside together.

She sits Kate down on the edge of the bathtub and snaps in her face to keep her from fuzzing out. "I think you hit your head."

"I didn't."

"Just stay awake, please."

She does her best cleaning up her cuts and scrapes and digging the gravel out of her palms. Kate barely flinches the whole time, but her dead stare is starting to make Bella worry.

As she's moving Kate's hair away from her neck, Bella spots a dark bruise creeping over the back collar of her shirt. Kate definitely fell forward onto the street, but maybe she hit her neck on the way down? Puzzled, Bella takes a closer look. It's starting to yellow around the edges like it’s been a few days. She pulls down the fabric about an inch and still hasn't seen the end of the bruise. Kate winces, her shoulders rising up by her ears, but she doesn't say anything.

"Can I lift your shirt?" she asks quietly.

Kate hesitates, then nods once, hands folding in front of her. White-knuckle tight.

As Bella slowly lifts the hem of her t-shirt, her chest tightens each time another bruise slips under the harsh white light. Kate's spine rises like a mottled banister, purple and blue and yellow. She looks so frail. You don't have to worry about me. Bella lets her shirt fall back down in place. She kneels beside her bandaged leg and puts her hands over Kate's, sick suddenly.

A few seconds later, the solid clunk of Kate's forehead against her own knocks a few tears loose.

.

.

Nobody really talks about Garrett the same way they talk about Beau. Kate never talks about him at all, but Bella sees it when she's about to. When she stops herself.

The truth has been smoldering unmentioned between them for months. Maybe it's the only thing that kept Bella from pushing Irina inside and marching up to Kate's bedroom (wherever it is), demanding answers for the freeze-out. That last little wall between them that's never going to go away.

They've been relying on vagaries, but the whole truth is: Charlie found Garrett three days after Beau's funeral about a mile into the woods behind his parents' house, an extension cord knotted around his neck and looped over a high branch. He'd been reported missing from the hospital. The whole town was combing those woods.

Her father only talked about it the one time, but there was a note. It was addressed to Beau, some shaking apology meandering through that night. Apparently, Beau didn't even want to go, but Garrett talked him into it. Royce gave them something to chill out, something Garrett hadn't seen before. It wasn't like what Royce usually stole from his dad, but Beau seemed fine until somehow in the night, Garrett lost track of him. They found him in the bathroom, cold. Garrett just wanted to get him to the hospital. It was raining so hard, like end times. He wrote that he couldn't remember the rest, just that he woke up like a cruel joke in the hospital with a broken leg and a mild concussion. When the car hit that tree, Beau was killed instantly. That's what the report said. And that's what the officer growled at him when he was lucid enough for questioning.

Back then, Bella considered phoning Officer Mundane down at the station and asking him if that happens every day.

At the school, they put together a little memorial service and that trophy display in the hall for Beau. There's a scholarship in his name for student-athletes. They even retired his hockey jersey. It's too many gestures and little bits ceremony for one boy when the other just seemed to get swept under the rug.

Bella can't imagine how that must have felt for Kate, trying to grieve and given nothing.

.

.

Bella helps her under the blankets and crawls in beside her. Kate's shoulders pitch forward as she cries silently. Mindful of her bruises, she squeezes an arm around her waist and presses her forehead to the back of her shoulder.

"Where's Irina?" Bella asks, thinking of the duffel still sitting in the bed of her truck. It's starting to piece together.

"At Maggie's."

"We can tell my dad. In the morning if you want. He can help."

Kate turns into her chest and nods.

.

.

When she stirs awake early the next morning, Kate is gone.

.

.

Bella hasn't been to the cemetery since Beau's funeral. Admittedly, she couldn't make it out of her bedroom for Garrett's even though Charlie offered to drive her. It's just another thing that claws at her when her mind inevitably crawls back to June for the tenth time of the day.

Kate's sitting on the wet grass in front of Beau's stone just staring at the carved letters in the dim light. Beloved Son and Brother. Her pale hair is moving slightly in the breeze, glowing like ghost arms in the yellow shine of the streetlamp.

Bella's shoes squelch in the waterlogged grass. She passes behind Kate and sits down just one plot over, Garrett Fairbanks, Forever in Our Hearts.

Bella holds out her hand.

Kate takes it.

Beau had a lot of friends, but none so close and familiar as Garrett. He used to help her with her trig homework when he came over after hockey practice to crush Beau on the N64. She liked the way he sometimes wore his shaggy brown hair in a stumpy little ponytail and let her borrow from his extensive CD collection whenever she wanted.

"I saw them leaving that night," Kate says, voice tight with tears.

Bella doesn't say anything.

"Garrett could barely walk, but drive?" She coughs and shakes her head. "But I was mad at him. I can't even remember why. Beau even tried to smooth things over between us, he was that nice. I could've…fought with Garrett more, just to keep them at that party and not out on the road. I could've called an ambulance- or your dad or someone. But I was so angry, I didn't even care."

Bella squeezes her cold fingers. "It was an accident, Kate."

"I saw him once after," she says. "In the hospital. We'd only been dating like four months, but when I saw him, he was just…shattered, and I loved him for a few seconds standing in that doorway. I sat with him for a little while, but I don't think he noticed. I never saw him again."

Bella wraps an arm around her shoulders and presses their heads together. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because I went to two funerals that week, and no matter what anyone says to convince me I shouldn't, I feel guilty for both. I think I always will." Kate sniffs. "And I just know you would've gone on some Nancy Drew rampage trying to prove me wrong… But it's not up to you to fix all this. You know that, right?"

"I'm not fixing anything."

"Then what was that thing with Royce?"

Tears well in her eyes, stinging and useless. "Misguided revenge, I think. Turns out I'm not so good at it." She knocks her cast against her knee and looks away, bleary. It's almost funny. Her appointment to get it taken off is in just a few hours. "I want to be angry, but mostly I just…cry. And I can't stop. That's why I started drawing you. You were like…my fixed point on the horizon."

"But then you got to me. I know I let you down."

"You didn't."

"If I could go ba-"

"Shhh! Look," Bella whispers as a large white owl soars between evergreens. Kate looks up and misses it by a fraction of a second. A tear slides down her cheek.

The sky is just turning blue.