A Week with Katherine

Day Four: Part 2

As promised, as soon as school ended I met Kat in the parking lot.

It was the first time that Katherine and I were seen publicly together, just the two of us, at school and everyone in the parking lot seemed to notice.

People openly stared and pointed us out to their friends so they could stare too. The parking lot even became quieter as people whispered to each other.

I wasn't used to that level of attention and I would be lying if I said it didn't make me uncomfortable.

The entire time, Kat ignored it all. She confidently walked with me to my car like everyone else wasn't there.

When we made it to my car, Katherine turned to me.

"This is your chance to back out. If we leave together now everyone will know about it by tomorrow morning." She warned me.

It was at that moment that I knew I had been right about Katherine.

Kat was a kind person.

She knew that there was gonna be gossip about the both of us but she only seemed to care about how it would affect me.

Kat was really good at putting up a front like she didn't care what others thought, but as I looked at her I could tell that she did care. A lot more than she let on.

"Where are we gonna go today?" I ignored her warning.

She smiled at me.

I regret many things from my week with Katherine, but I could never regret making her smile at me the way she had that day.

Her whole face lit up and for the first time, the smile really seemed to reach her eyes.

We got in my car and ended up heading to my house. When we got there, just as I had gotten out of the car and started walking toward the front door, Kat grabbed my hand.

I remember her hand had felt so warm and small in mine.

She dragged me behind her. Pulling me around my house to the backyard.

"I could have just driven us to your house," I said guessing that's where we were going as we walked into the woods behind my home.

I thought we were walking the path that Katherine told me about.

She looked back at me and smiled again. "We aren't going to my house." She answered before making a turn and changing the direction we walked.

Kat explained that if you walked straight through the woods we would have gone to her house. But if you turned right, we would end up at a special place.

Her special place.

And after about ten minutes of walking, we found it.

Kat's special place was above a waterfall that I would later learn led into the town's creek.

And, above that waterfall was a massive tree. And, in that tree was a worn-out tree house.

I couldn't help but smile the first time I saw it.

Kat would later explain that her dad had built the tree house for her when she was a kid.

"It's beautiful," I said admiring the view of the creek and the forest around us from up in the wooden structure.

The tree house had surprisingly been filled with pillows and blankets. The walls were lined with the type of posters I had expected to see in her bedroom. That little tree house felt more like her home than her house did.

"I know right," Katherine agreed with me as she sat next to me. Our legs dangling over the edge of the tree house.

As I looked around I noticed something carved into the wood of the tree.