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Catra didn't like her new school, just like she hadn't liked the old one, until Adora. She makes school not suck, even when she changes the rules.
"No, you didn't blow the robot up," Adora says, sounding like Mrs. Z when she has to give an instruction the third time. "We're not allowed to blow stuff up at school."
Catra sets her jaw. "That's stupid."
"It's Mrs. Z's rule. If you get caught you're going to get a color down." Adora's eyes are wide and serious, like she can't imagine anything worse. "One kid played pretend guns and got a call home."
Catra doesn't think about what Mom says when Mrs. Z calls home. Instead she says, "You said you blasted it."
"That was with my light magic," Adora says. "Remember I told you?"
Catra crosses her arms, something dark bubbling in her gut. She doesn't remember, but she's not good at listening. Of course Adora has magic. Maybe that's how she convinced Catra that she didn't hate her.
"You can pick a magic too, there's a lot. My friend from home has sparkle magic when she plays, and-"
The anger balling up her fists stops. "Sparkle magic?"
"-and my other friends have water and plants and ice and stuff. Any kind of magic works in the game." Adora furrows her eyebrows, probably trying to think of more, like she thinks she's going to play with her again, like she meant it when she said she wanted to be Catra's friend.
Something good hums under Catra's skin, and she lets the grin escape onto her face. "I have blowing-up-stuff magic."
Adora throws up her arms with a heavy sigh, but she's smiling. "Catra."
Catra laughs, and Adora blinks like she hasn't heard that before, and maybe she hasn't. The bell rings, and Adora sticks her hand out. "We'll find you a good one," she says. "One that won't get you in trouble."
Catra pushes the weird feeling in her stomach away. "Race you," she says, and she runs past Adora's hand, wind on her skin, Adora calling out behind her.
She draws Adora later, when she finishes her math page early. She tries to capture how the light pools in Adora's hair and turns it gold, how her teeth peek out of her smile like a secret. She guards it until Mrs. Z tells everyone to pack up, and when she pushes it towards Adora, her blood pounds and her mouth dries.
Adora holds the picture like she's trying not to wrinkle it. "Is this for me?" Adora asks.
Catra can't quite figure out Adora's expression. "If you want it," she says, heart in her throat.
Adora looks at the paper again. Catra's about to snatch the picture back, shove it in the trash can by the door, but Adora puts it in her notebook with careful movements. "I love it," Adora says, quiet, and Catra thinks this might be what dying feels like.
Catra met her first cat at the end of kindergarten. The lock on the back door clicked when Mom locked it until she was ready to deal with Catra's bullshit again, and gray skies stretched wide over the backyard. She picked flowers out of the beds Mom spent hours fussing over and ground them between rocks until there was nothing but froth.
She tried to get a handful of everything - lilies, daisies, the red ones that shone like plastic when she picked them - and she was yanking on an iris when she saw the cat, hiding under a bush. Its tongue was paused over its leg, where something dark glittered in the fur. Its eyes glowed in the shadow.
Catra didn't realize she was reaching out to touch it until it ran, but it didn't get far. It hid in Catra's favorite hiding spot, in the corner with the fence on two sides. Blood trickled down its leg into the dirt. Catra couldn't see what was wrong, but it didn't move right. The cat looked too small to bleed like that.
Catra inched closer. It hissed, snarling, showing its teeth. "It's okay," Catra said, trying to sound like Ms. Gil when one of the other kids fell on the playground. "I'm not going to hurt you, just-"
It happened so fast. She was reaching out, thinking about how you're supposed to press on a bleeding spot until it stops, and then she was looking at her own blood, welling up on her arm, four thin lines. It stung bad enough for her to bite her lip, but she wasn't going to be a baby and cry about it. Something flashed past her, and the broken part of the fence rattled, and she didn't see the cat anymore. Catra pushed down on the scratches, the way Ms. Gil had done when Hila skinned her knee, and smears of blood dried into her fingerprints.
Mom was angry about the scratches, but she was angrier about the flowers. Catra had library at school the next day and she looked and looked until she found a book with facts about cats. She couldn't read most of the words, but she studied the page with the close-up of claws, light catching on the sharp tips.
Catra tries to draw lots of things at school, now that Adora always wants to see what she's making. Adora likes adventures, so she draws dragons, sea monsters shining wet, robot enemies with smudges of soot and deep dents from the explosions Adora still won't let her use.
"You know you're really good at that," Adora says. "I never met a kid that could draw as good as you."
Catra keeps her eyes on her paper, where a large spider grows under her gray crayon. She tries to do the texture of the little hairs on the tarantula they read about this morning. "Guess you don't know a lot of kids."
"Do so," Adora says. "I have a lot of friends, and none of them are that good."
Catra shrugs, stomach twisting. Adora has a lot of friends. Adora has better friends. Adora's going to get sick of her and go play with someone else and Catra's going to be alone again trying to imagine that anyone on earth would care if she died and-
Crayons jumble and Catra jolts. Adora fishes out pink. She's drawing something with a lumpy body and wide things out to the side. It's choppy, and Catra isn't quite sure what it is, but she wants it anyway.
"You can do little lines," Catra mumbles, still looking at her spider, voice quiet enough that Adora can pretend she didn't hear if she wants to. "Small, kinda - overlapping. For the feathers. If that's your horse."
"He's a unicorn," Adora says. "The flying kind. Is there a word for that?"
Catra shrugs. Probably Adora's other friends know. She shapes another droplet under the spider's angry pincers. She doesn't remember picking up a red crayon. Stupid Kyle puts his face closer to his paper.
The next time Mrs. Z passes by them, she asks Catra to come up to the teacher table to talk for a minute. "You can't draw this stuff here," she says, tapping the spider and the pool of blood under its teeth. "Only nice things are allowed at school."
Catra's face burns. She wants to slam her fists into the table and scream and scream. She used to do that at her old school. They always called Mom to take her home when she did.
"You're smart and talented," Mrs. Z says, lying. "We just have to keep working on what's okay at school and what's not."
Mrs. Z keeps the dumb picture. Catra didn't want it anyway. She didn't want Adora to make wide eyes at it and say how cool it was, because it was bad and ugly and stupid. Catra slams back into her desk and pinches her lips so the angry tears stay in her head as Mrs. Z says there's two more minutes before they have to switch to math.
Adora spins her paper around. "The lines? The ones you said, for feathers? Do they look like this?"
They're not bad. Catra can see what Adora's trying to do, trying to layer them to make a rainbow. "Pretty much," Catra says.
"Show me," Adora asks, pushing the paper forward, fingers leaving pale circles on the edges.
By the time Mrs. Z tells them to get out their books, Catra's built a wall of rainbow feathers. Her breath doesn't fight in her chest anymore. The rainbow extends past where Adora outlined the wings, and they didn't make sense next to the unicorn's body anyway, but Adora looks at it like she doesn't want to look away.
It's good that Catra learned doubles facts already at her old school, because she doesn't pay attention when Mrs. Z talks about them. She replays the memory of Adora's face in her head, and she can tell herself that she's trying to figure out how to draw it best.
Catra's art teacher at her old school gave her a notebook with no lines before she moved. She said to keep drawing. She thought Catra was good at it. Catra knows that isn't true, but it settles the storm in her chest, so she draws anyway.
Someday she'll be able to get Melog on paper the way they look in her head. At school she draws them calm, resting, behaving. In her book of blank pages, Melog's mane spikes red when they fight the shadows that spill long and cold across the page. Catra's black claws slice through them too, tearing them to ribbons, making the tendrils recoil. Melog always stands in front of her, teeth bared, and when Catra listens she can hear them growl.
No one else sees Melog, because they aren't real. Catra knows they aren't real. But she wants them to be, sometimes.
It's one of those times later. She bundles up the clothes on the floor of her closet until it's a ball big enough to hug, big enough to shove her face in, and if it were Melog she would have fur against her nose. Their mane is warm water, a blanket in the dark. They don't talk, but she can feel what they think like it's in her own head. it's okay, Melog's rumble means. They don't care if she cries, and no one else is here to tell Catra she's crazy.
"Do you want to come over sometime?" Adora asks one day during lunch. She has a smudge of ketchup on her cheek. Catra has to keep looking away from it.
Catra swallows her bite, and the breaded chicken shouldn't scrape on the way down. "To your house?"
"Mm-hm." Adora's mouth turns up. "You can see my room and my grandma and my sister and I'll show you the trees in the backyard-"
Catra has been in two houses in her life, her old house and her new one. In those places, she knows what little corners she can tuck into. Maybe Adora can show her where they are in her house.
"-so much fun. So do you want to come?"
"Yeah," Catra says.
Adora grins, hops a little on the cafeteria bench. "Maybe I can go to your house sometime too, and-"
"No." It comes out meaner than she wants it to be. Catra's stomach cramps. Adora stares, lips parted. Catra scrambles for something to say. "You have ketchup on your face."
"Oh," Adora says, scrubbing at it with the side of her hand. "Sorry, uh, Mara says I'm messy. But she's a teenager, so she's always complaining about something. You'll see."
"Yeah," Catra says, and then Adora starts talking about how her sister helps her wash the dishes.
Catra tries to keep her jitters in a little ball but they keep working their way out. She's wiggly in library and science and writing, enough that Mrs. Z has to take her color down, and she doesn't even slam her chair about it. She messes with the edge of her sleeve, after she packs up at the end of the day. It's fraying at the edges. Adora's clothes are always perfect. Is Adora's grandma going to be mad at her for having an ugly shirt or-
Adora nudges her. "That's your bus," she says.
Daphne's in the doorway looking even more frustrated than usual, lanyard hanging. Catra says, "You don't take the bus."
Adora looks at her like she's crazy. "You do."
"But-" The words die in her mouth. Adora was lying before, she's just waiting for Catra to leave so she can giggle with Lonnie about how Catra's so stupid and desperate and what kind of idiot would let a bad kid like Catra in her house.
Catra snatches the cup of pencils from the center of the table and throws it hard on the ground. It hits loud. Pencils skitter under Adora's chair.
Mrs. Z's talking, Daphne's talking, Lonnie's whispering something too loud at the table behind her, but Catra only hears one voice. "Calm down," Adora says.
"Shut up, liar," Catra snaps, and she's going to be in trouble now because she got mad, and Mrs. Z's going to call Mom and she's going to-
Catra only gets halfway down the hallway before she trips, knees hammering down hard on the plastic tiles, and it doesn't matter. She's going to go home and Mom will yell about how awful Catra is and she'll be alone with Melog. That never felt lonely before.
Someone drops down next to her and Catra jumps. "Are you okay?" Adora asks, breathing hard.
"Go to hell," Catra says, pulling her legs in. Daphne's walking along the hall, lanyard swinging. Mrs. Z's probably calling Mom now. Catra can already hear her.
Adora frowns, wrinkles raising on her forehead, and Catra hates that her first thought is how she could scrape into wax on paper to capture them. Her hair frizzes like a glowing mane around her head before something sparks in her eyes.
"I didn't mean come over today," Adora says. "I have to ask my grandma, and you have to ask your mom. She'll be worried if you just don't come home."
Mom would love it if she never came home. The words lock in Catra's mouth. "I knew that," she says instead.
Adora's arms wrap around her so fast that Catra almost forgets to flinch away. "I'm your friend," Adora says. "And I don't lie anyway."
Daphne's almost caught up with them. Catra should move. Adora's hug is nothing like Melog's, warm and bony, sweatshirt soft on Catra's face while she squeezes her eyes shut hard enough to keep from sobbing like a baby on the floor. Catra doesn't know if she can ever move again.
Adora lets go, and Catra makes her arms let go too. Something alive squirms in her chest. Adora says she'll see her tomorrow, and Catra says it back. While they walk to the bus, Daphne says she needs a note from her mom if she isn't going on the bus, and Catra can't even care, with the echo of Adora's hug buzzing on her skin.
It's still there later, after Mom gets the message from school. Catra watches the shadows that pace around the kitchen and thinks about glowing light that melts them away before they get close enough to sting.
When Mom pours soap in the bathtub and hands her the sponge, Catra's hands scrub and her mind plays through more battles. She and Melog pounce in sync, teeth and claws digging into the shadows until they curl up and vanish.
The story used to end with Catra climbing on Melog's back and running and running and running until they're planets away, in a deep cave with glittering walls and glowing worms like she saw in a library book once, and Melog races her and sits with her while she reads and purrs when she draws on smooth white paper that never wrinkles. She sleeps tucked under Melog's mane, and the only voice she hears is her own.
This time, she thinks about trees. Adora didn't say what kind her yard had, but Catra imagines apples ripe on the branches. Adora sits with her in the crook of the tree, feet propped up on the bark, and the leaves rustle when the wind blows.
It gets colder here in the winter. Adora starts wearing a coat and hat, and Catra starts running faster at recess.
"You pick the game," Adora says one day, when wind curls the leaves on the concrete into spirals like little tornadoes.
"Race you," Catra says, and sprints for the fence. She's a rock skipping across the surface of the water, flying and flying and fighting the pull to the ground, and it's the closest thing to magic she's ever had. The other kids move when they see her coming, now, because they know she doesn't swerve. The chainlink gives a little when she crashes into it, metal clashing loud.
Adora hits the fence a few seconds after her. "A new game," she says, breathless. "We always race when it's your turn to pick. You make one up, like I made up Princess Battle. Something no one ever played before."
Catra shoves her hands in her sweatshirt pockets. Across the playground, the other kids climb on the monkey bars or toss a ball. Adora's waiting, and before she decides Lonnie's game looks more fun, Catra says, "Let's play Shadow Monster."
Adora's eyes gleam. After Catra tells her the rules, Adora says she wants to be the monster first. She cups Catra's hands in hers and closes her eyes, forehead tense when she focuses, and Catra can't breathe as long as Adora holds her hands. "There," Adora says. Catra's hands flop when Adora lets go. "Now you have my light magic. That's got to be good against shadows, right?"
"Yeah," Catra says, heart fumbling in her chest. "It's the best thing."
Adora disappears into the playground equipment, and Catra steals in after her. The rules that she laid out were that the shadow monster hides and when the princess gets close, it attacks, and then the princess can blast them with light. Catra can almost see the magic pooled in her palm, translucent like Melog's mane, warm as skin against hers.
She comes out of the tunnel and there's a flicker, around a bend. She inches closer and Adora bursts out. "I'll get you, princess," she says, arms up and clawed, eyes bright, and Catra lifts her magical hands and plants them on Adora's chest, pushing her slightly backwards.
The shadow monster's death throes last almost a minute. Catra watches, trying not to laugh, trying not to think about it too much. Adora sits up, grinning. "How was it?" she asked.
"Not bad," Catra says. Something churns in her gut, but it's easier to ignore it. "The shadow monster is supposed to be scary, though."
"I was super scary!" Adora protests, bringing up her hands again, but she's still smiling. "Show me, then."
Catra has a script in her head, knows the deep echoey voice and twisted face she wants to do. Instead, she watches from outside herself as her hand grabs Adora's wrist, tugs on her sharp and demanding. "Insolent child," spits angry from her mouth, jagged and sharp, blood-streaked. "I don't know why I've kept you around this long."
Adora jerks out of Catra's grasp. Her eyes are wide. "I don't want to play anymore," she says.
Catra runs. Adora doesn't come after her this time. There's no bed to hide under on the playground, but she shoves into the gap between the bench and the ground, and she chokes on the storm in her lungs. The cold cement bites through her worn leggings. The recess teacher comes to tell her to come inside, and Catra stays small and quiet and invisible. Melog doesn't come to school, and she must have left the memory of their solid warmth at home.
The teacher doesn't go away like Mom does if Catra hides long enough. She keeps talking, too quiet to hear under the thunder that roars in Catra's ears. It's so cold. Maybe if she doesn't move she'll freeze solid. That thought doesn't scare her like it probably should.
Her teeth are chattering and she's shivering against the bench when a familiar hand reaches under and pulls her out. Her knee catches, tearing fabric and skin, but Mom doesn't seem to notice. Catra picks at the hole on the drive home. She always lets Mom's angry words spill around her like water flowing in the bath, but some of them squirm into her ears anyway. Useless - disgraceful - I count the days until I can finally wash my hands of the miserable task of raising you.
Catra presses her palm against the bleeding spot on her knee, even though it stings, until red stops beading up in the scrape.
The book without lines is half full. Some pages have Melog, some have Catra with bristling fur and long claws and points on her teeth so it bleeds when she bites, some have shadows so dark that the thick layers of wax make the paper stiff. Catra rips sheet after sheet. She drew Adora with long billowing hair, a flowing cape, a sword that glows next to the shadows and blasts them away. That picture tears too.
Before, Melog would curl up around her, mane rolling in and out like the waves Catra's old teacher used to project on the screen for yoga time. The beat of their breath would be gentle and slow and mean it's okay, and their hug would be empty and imaginary, and Catra could close her eyes and pretend that was good enough.
She doesn't want to get on the bus in the morning. She stays in her pajamas until Mom tells her what'll happen if she doesn't get dressed. Her backpack's heavier than it used to be. Catra stomps her feet to keep them warm at the bus stop, arms crossed tight over her chest when the wind streams across her neck.
Number 6 is one of the first buses to arrive, and it's usually just her and Rani in the classroom until more buses get there. Mrs. Z has her sort the crayons today, because she says Catra's the best at it. She squints at an unwrapped stick of wax and her shoulders tense up again each time the door opens. Maybe Adora's absent. She'd rather be alone with Adora absent than with her sitting on the next chair over.
Adora bursts in, face pink from the cold, and she doesn't stop by the cubbies to hang up her stuff before she comes to their table. "You're here," Adora says.
"Sorry," Catra snaps, stomach climbing up her throat. Her fingernails are digging into the crayons she was sorting, and she lets them rattle back into the bin.
Adora's digging in her backpack. "I thought I might have to leave it in your cubby," she says, before dropping something in Catra's hands. It's fabric, a brown that's almost the same color as her hair. It looks like a hat, but there's flaps Catra can't make sense of. Adora's still talking. "It has ears on top. Because you like cats, and it's in your name, and - anyway. Grandma showed me how to make them."
Catra swallows. The texture of the pointed ears is bumpy under her fingers. She hasn't shown Adora the pictures where fur ripples along her skin, claws sharp, tail whipping when she flips. She doesn't have any of those left, after last night.
"There's mittens too," Adora says, "but I didn't finish them yet. Well, Mara didn't, because she has to help with the tricky parts, and she had band yesterday. But Grandma helped me with this last night so it would be ready today."
Catra should give the hat back. It's so soft in her hands. "I don't get it."
"I scared you yesterday." Adora's eyes are gray as the sky before it snows. "I'm sorry."
Catra wasn't scared. She doesn't get scared. She gets mean, and mad, and sharp enough to cut anything that gets too close, so she's the scary thing. She should tell Adora that she doesn't know shit. The words can't get past the sunburst unfurling in her chest, bright as the lights over their heads.
Adora says, "I wanted them to be done before it snowed, I didn't want you to get cold when we were playing, but then after yesterday I wanted to say sorry. Does it fit?"
It does, snug over her real ears. Adora adjusts it to center the fabric ones, teeth peeking out of her smile. Mrs. Z is watching them from where she stands by the door, and she's smiling too, and Catra can't remember how to bare her snarl. "Thanks," Catra says, words pebbled on her tongue.
"You gotta thank my grandma," Adora says, "she's going to come for family day next month. Oh! And I was thinking, and I think I know what magic you could have, if you want."
Catra knows a thousand things Adora could say to make fun of her now. The door's behind Adora, ajar as Kyle comes in, and Catra's the fastest kid in the class. She can run and hide in the playground equipment like she used to at her old school, and when Mom takes her home she can stay in the closet under the clothes with Melog, where she knows who likes her and who doesn't.
Catra takes a breath. "What is it?"
"Rainbows," Adora says, gesturing at the crayons. "Mara said they're part of light, and she's fifteen, she knows stuff like that. And I thought they would be good at fighting shadow monsters too."
It's somehow even dumber than sparkles. Catra shouldn't like it. "Yeah," Catra says. She rasps a little. "I bet it would."
Mrs. Z doesn't make her take the hat off when class starts. Later, she can still run faster than Adora, but she doesn't. They can't blast robots at the same time if Catra's already crashed into the fence. When she gets home, she finds an untorn page in her notebook to draw them together, white and rainbow lights arcing, and she's filled the page before she realizes that she's run out of space for shadows to fight.