Trial Of Hearts: (game on) 🤍

Δ prologue Δ

listen to "This is why" by Paramore

Kate

Life sucks.

What was that? You don't agree?

I can easily convince you.

Step into my palace and take a peek behind the curtains - yup, that chaotic storm there is my life. And yes, it sucks people in, like a giant hurricane. And yes, it destroys stuff along the way. And it kills. Hurts. Kicks people off their feet.

I wouldn't get near if I were you.

Why would you want that?

I would have asked Ethan, but I couldn't talk. Couldn't move.

Couldn't breathe.

When you are a girl and the hottest, most gorgeous perfect guy cages you between his muscled arms against a wall, you turn liquid at his feet. You'd be happy that someone like him would even lay his eyes on you, right?
You'd swoon over the idea of having his attention.

But not me.

I was freaked out by how close our bodies were. That he might actually touch me...

Please, don't.

I'd break into pieces. I'd give in and that was my biggest nightmare - that someone out there was meant to take my heart and break it.

And I couldn't handle any more pain at that moment.

- Kate...look at me.

God, no, I could not.

I tried my best to avoid eye contact, but everything else was just as bad - his perfect jawline screamed touch me and his lips... I was convinced that they contained both heaven and hell and if he were ever to kiss me, I'm done with.

I had to get away from him.

He was bad for my health. Bad for my brains... Bad for my heart.

Or at least I tried to convince myself that.

- Kate?

He was persisting. Because I wasn't saying a damn word, he knew that he had me under his spell.

Talking is my superpower. And for someone to take that from me... God, I hated the guy...

But wait. You have no idea how we got here, right?

Let's revert back a little, so you can get an idea what we have cooking here.

So, my name is Katalina Marie Alvarez Blue. Kate, for short. Nice to meet you.

I come from a family of nine, with me being exactly the middle child. I have three older and three younger siblings - starting from my step brother Rob /who's technically not a Blue/, followed by our eldest Blue boy - Cole, then Chris, then there's me. Right after that - the twins Kyle and Jason, and at the very end - our baby sister Maya.

You probably have already guessed the dynamics - constant fighting, yelling, the house is always like a jungle and you need great survival skills to be able to make it through every single day. The three - minute bathroom rule is broken every morning, so usually we're late for everything. In elementary school, they even had the saying "as late as a Blue kid", you can already guess why.

It's not hard enough to be the middle child, but for 12 very long years of my life, I was the only girl stuck between four brothers. Again, exactly in the middle.

Our mother obviously couldn't stand this madness, because - surprise - she left us for a rich guy with no kids.

Imagine how my father must have felt - not only abandoned by the love of his life, but left all alone with five kids who acted like nut jobs most of the time. Poor guy, I am so proud he survived us and moreover, remarried! Can you believe this? Someone out there was exactly as crazy as he was, to even want to come anywhere near our mess of a life!

Clara really was our saviour.

Whatever disasters befell the Blues after she joined the family, seemed not to be enough to make her leave us like my mom once did. And when I say disasters, trust me, I am not exaggerating.

I'll skip the small ones and get directly to the one that almost broke us apart: the shooting at my school two years ago.

Words will never be enough to describe the horror of such an event, and don't get me started on the aftermath for both the survivors and the families of the victims. For me, personally, this is the darkest time of my life, something I'll probably never recover from, something I never talk about, because the stain is so big, it's unwashable.

Why the stain on me, you ask? Very simple: the shooter was my boyfriend at the time.

Wonderful, isn't it?

I won't say his name, but I'll tell you the truth, he wasn't a bad person. Troubled, yes, but never cruel. This part is what I never fully comprehended - why he did what he did. It still keeps me up at night, knowing how sweet and thoughtful he often was, and how it all ended.

For him, it did.

For me and my family, the nightmare will probably never fully be over.

You cannot imagine the terror we received after people found out I was unharmed that day. The threats, the phone calls, the jokes, the pranks... "Wish you were dead" cards in the mail. The questions like "how did you not know what he was about to do", "did he tell you his plan", "why do you get to breathe while my kid does not"...

Seven kids lost their lives that day. Many more injured.

For my family, however, the fact that I got to live, created so much more trouble than anticipated. After all, this should be celebrated, but instead my dad had to leave his job at the police, we moved temporarily for six months, changed schools a bunch of times and in the end I was sent abroad to a boarding school for a year.

My brother Chris lost his sports scholarship and didn't get to go to college, Cole quit on his own after the first semester and started working to help out with the bills... It was a mess. Every single member of my family suffered consequences because of me.

To say that I felt bad about all of this is a serious understatement.

I was completely destroyed, depressed, anxious and guilty. Almost nothing of Kate Blue was left to pick up, especially after me and Nadia came back from the exchange program.

You probably wonder why Nadia was also dragged in this hell. Simple - the shooter, my boyfriend, well, he was her cousin.

Talk about complicated.

We are forever bonded over death and misery, and wherever I went, she followed, and the other way around. We stick together, this is the only way we know how to move on.

So, long story short, you get the picture - everybody hates us no matter where we go.

Even overseas, they still managed to find out what happened, who we were and of course, used that to their advantage in order to stomp on us.

Coming back was no better, since people do not easily forget, and even changing schools is not enough to start anew.

Turning a page was something I was looking forward to, but I had no hope of doing that home. No one was in my corner, no one was rooting for me and being invisible was the best thing I could do for those around me.

This is why it's hard to wrap my head around the fact that only a few months away from my return, I would be in the very heat of the action.

A dangerous game.

Love interest.

Friendships.

Destruction.

All of this would eventually suck me in and change my life forever.

Edit: the lives of all those around me.

Ready?

I was not.

Get on board and let's play a Game.

...

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It's life and death.

Will you play?