The Reason

Alice finding out

Alice's POV

Kathy had been acting kind of funny all day. It was like she had ants in her pants or something with the way she kept wiggling in her seat. I mean yes she had always been a little on the bizarre side, always being so secretive about her life outside of school and everything but she had never acted like this before.

As I stared at her in our English classroom I frowned as I watched her wriggle again with some sort of pained expression on her face. Had someone hurt her in some way that made her unable to sit comfortably? I felt myself get angry at the idea of someone laying a hand on my best friend.

When she first arrived here people gave her a wide berth, it was the way everyone reacted when a new kid came to our school. It was as if they wanted to get a feel for her before introducing her into their friendship circle, just in case she turned into some crazy person or something. I had always rolled my eyes at that concept though, just because they were knew it didn't mean that they were some antisocial reject or something.

I had been the first person to approach her on her first day here. I had heard people talking about a new girl but I hadn't actually seen her yet, I had just relied on what everyone else had told me about her.
Straight black hair, pale skin, calculating eyes and clothes that had seen better days.

But when I got my first good look at her, sitting alone on one of the schools picnic benches at lunch, I instantly felt sympathetic towards her. After all, I too had been a new student here once.

I had made my way over to her table with my packed lunch and sat down in front of her, not bothering to wait for permission, and handed her half of my sandwich.

It had taken a few days of my constantly nagging her and hanging around her but eventually she had opened up to me and we were now joined at the hip. She had become my new best friend.

When the bell had finally rang, signalling the end of the school day I quickly packed my bags up and made my way over to Kathy, hell bent on finding out what was wrong with her.

"Seriously Kathy, what's bothering you today?" I questioned as I perched on the edge of her desk, waiting for her to finish packing her stuff up so that we could head out to lunch.

"Hu?" Kathy asked as she slung her bag over her shoulder, looking very uncomfortable in the process.

"What's up with you? All you've done today is fidget, it's like you can't seem to sit still".

She hesitated for a split second, her shoulders and back tencing ever so slightly, before she relaxed again and started to walk out of the classroom with me trailing right behind her.

"Oh I just had a coffee this morning and I'm not used to the caffeine yet, it's making me all jumpy" she explained. She refused to look me in the eyes though, she just continued to stare ahead at the sea of people as we navigated through the traffic.

I frowned over at her as I walked by her side, something wasn't right with her. I let it drop though as we made our way out into the fresh air. It had been a really nice week so far; the weather had been hotter than it had been all year, signalling the start of summer, and the air was filled with the scents of flowers and cut grass as everyone prepared for the dry season. It wasn't like we had extreme droughts over the summer or anything but this was a small town that liked to worry. If nothing was going on then they would worry over having nothing to worry about.

"Damn Kathy don't you ever get hot in that thing?" One of our mutual friends Sean piped up as he took in Kathy's choice of clothing.

She always seemed to cover up, wearing layer upon layer and topped off with her dark green trench coat. When she had first arrived we thought it was fairly normal, it was winter and definitely not warm enough to leave the house without at least carrying a coat. It was now May though and even as the daily temperatures slowly increased she showed no sign of shedding some on her trusty layers.