Leap of Faith

Day Fourty

*~*~* Cate *~*~*

I had barely made it on to the last step on the staircase when I heard my mother’s voice call out to me from the kitchen.

“Get back up those stairs, Cate,” she shouted out to me.

A few seconds later she rounded the corner and stood in front of me with her arms crossed over her chest. My mother was a work-a-holic and very rarely took a day off from her job, so you could imagine my confusion when she was still at home at seven fifteen in the morning. And if her presence at home was a shock, the fact that she was dressed in a pair of flared jeans and a white blouse with her hair pulled up away from her face really floored me.

“What are you still doing standing there and gawping?” Mom raised an eyebrow at me.

“I’m going to school, Mom,” I announce wearily.

My body was tired from all the crying last night and the heartache I had felt at Georgie’s betrayal was beyond any pain I had ever felt before. I’d hardly slept and I could feel my muscles throb as I moved. Everything felt like a chore today and I knew my heart wasn’t in it.

“No, you are not, Cate,” Mom said softly as she moved towards me and cupped my face between my hands.

“Mom-”

“Catherine Marie Westbrook,” she brought out the big guns. “Are you arguing with me?”

My mother is a ballbuster who would be as suited to the courtroom as she was to the boardroom. She had this uncanny knack of ripping apart your argument, turning it against you and winning. She was formidable and my sisters and I had learnt not to go up against Jennifer Westbrook if we valued our lives.

“No,” I answer solemnly, turning my attention to the ground and shrugging my shoulders. “I just need to do something to keep my mind occupied.”

Mom sighs. “Fine,” she relents. “You can go to school, but you are not going dressed like that.”

Mom climbed the stairs, dragging me behind her as we went, and she was soon in my closet picking out clothes that was more appropriate. My mother hated the fact that I had always wore jeans and t-shirts and as she rifled through my clothes I knew she’d have a hard time finding anything in there that wasn’t denim or had comic characters printed on it.

With a defeated huff, Mom came to the doorway of my closet holding up a pair of skinny jeans that I hardly wear and a cream long sleeved silk top. She threw them at me, along with a cream camisole to wear under the sheer top, and then disappeared down the hall. When she came back, I had already pulled on the outfit she had chosen but still sat dejected on the edge of my bed.

“Libby!” Mom called for my sister.

Libby had been avoiding me since yesterday when she found out that Georgie had used her to mess with me. From the terrified look she wore as she hovered in my doorway, she probably thought I was mad at her, but the truth was, I wasn’t. How could I be? Georgie had obviously taken advantage of her and I knew exactly who I should blame for that.