Incarnate

Double Take

Renée awoke to the sound of Jackie's ringtone Pour Some Sugar on Me by Def Leppard. "Good morning."

"You still asleep? You sound like you just woke up."

"I did just wake up, why?"

"Renée, I'm on my way to your house. You should already be up."

"Oh, crap. Okay, I will be ready in two minutes." It was a good thing that Renée always put her clothes out the night before. She threw them on and headed for the bathroom. She looked in the mirror, her hair was frayed out of the braid she always weaved before sleep. She pulled the hair tie out and shook the tresses loose. Then she put it back up in a ponytail to avoid sitting on it later. She washed her face quickly and brushed her teeth. Renée rushed down the stairs, picked up her backpack on the chair near the door and ran out the door the moment Jackie walked up the steps.

"Wow. That was fast. You should really teach me sometime how you do that."

"It is just because I prepare the night before, and I do not spend an hour on my face and hair. Besides, as soon as I get some adrenaline going, I am up and running around."

"Right, and that's normal because?"

"I never claimed to be normal. Anyway, how was your night? Find anything new on the Internet?"

"No, nothing new, I mostly sat and watched movies last night. There was no use in wasting my time on what I knew I would not find. How about you? Did you run into your mother last night?"

"No, oddly she was not even home. I talked with Jake about her and went to bed. Come to think of it, I do not even think she was there this morning."

"Maybe she finally found another man and spent the night out with him. Well, we could only wish, that is." Renée made no comments. She could only wish that her mother would find something to occupy her mind in between work and sleep. "I got a text last night about Gage. Want to hear the gossip?"

"I am not sure I do. Your sources tend to make things up just so that they can have something to talk about. I would rather hear it from you only if you have witnessed it."

"Good point. I'll tell you anyway. Apparently he just started school just before lunch. So no one even knows his first classes. Maybe I'll have one with him. Also, someone said that he got kicked out of his old school. It was something about harassment or something."

"I would not put too much stock into that last one. I think it would have been in his file if it was true."

"Perhaps, we'll see I guess." Renée just looked at her. She wondered how she planned on getting all this information out of a guy not inclined to talk about much. She did not even think that Jackie's persuasion could pull that one off. Maybe if she managed to find out who Castiel was, then she could pry it from him.

When they arrived at school, it looked much more like it usually did compared to yesterday. Barely anyone seemed to be present. They walked up the stairs of the school and went to the cafeteria.

"Hey, Renée, check it out. There's Gage over there. He's all alone. Do you want to go keep him company?" Jackie said pointing to the opposite side of the lunch room where Gage sat at a table reading a book.

"You can, I need to go and change the clothes in my locker for Dance. Let me know how things go." Jackie frowned at her, walked over to Gage and sat down with him.

"Hi, Gage. How are you doing?" Renée heard her begin as she walked off. She wondered how long it would be before she got bored of trying to pry information out of him for gossip. When she got to her locker, she switched out her clothes and went back to the hall to get to her other locker. She thought she heard someone call her name as she put some of her books in her locker. When she looked around, she saw no one.