Where Two Collide

Chapter Seven - Cat

Chapter Seven

Cat

            I woke early, knowing I'd likely only had about four hours sleep, which was frankly normal for me. I was used to running on just a few hours, my body didn't need more, in fact it was basically impossible for me to sleep in even if I wanted to. Today I didn't want to, I had somewhere to be, something to do. Alice was still asleep, and she didn't wake as I tip-toed around the room getting dressed. She looked exhausted, but that was to be expected as my sister needed more sleep to function than I did. She could easily sleep twelve hours straight and it was me who usually had to wake her up to get her to school on time.

I made my way downstairs and into the kitchen, finding my mum at the breakfast table with her face in her hands. It wasn't just Alice who looked exhausted that morning.

"Good morning," I said, passing her and opening the cupboard to rummage for breakfast.

She looked up from her hands and smiled softly. "Morning Cat. Your dads already headed off to work, I was going to suggest you both stay home today." She paused, a heaviness arising in the words that followed. "It was a long night."

I shook my head as I pulled out a cereal bar and ripped open the packaging. "Can't, not today. I have club after school."

She nodded, and stood up, following me as I moved into the hallway, grabbing my bag from the hook at the front door. "How about a lift on my way to work then?" she offered. "I'll leave a note for Alice and let her sleep."

"That'd be awesome, thanks."

At school I did my best to avoid Alice's annoying friends. They'd been friends with Alice since we were about seven, and for a few years I had thought they were my friends too. It wasn't until we hit teenagerhood that it had become very clear to me that they were my always in style, always says the right thing and always had the eye of the right kind of boy twin sisters friends only.

I liked to wear clothes from uncool stores and old jackets I'd found in my mums' closet. I never said the right thing and rarely noticed when I'd accidentally hurt someone's feelings or was a bit uncouth. As for boys, I had no idea if I drew their attention, I did know however that I didn't care if I did. Boys, and especially the boys in our school, were stupid and took literally nothing seriously. That was not my kind of thing.

In between French and History I ducked into my locker. On the door I had stuck various scribbles and notes, but there was also of small photo of me and Alice from a couple of years back when we still had some sort of resemblance. We could have been unrelated now, with Alice's model ready aesthetic a contrast to my own half-arsed look.

"Are the rumours true?"

I closed my locker door and found Travis, my newer and more genuine friend, leaning against the locker beside mine. Travis was of course, a boy. I didn't really consider him as a boy as such, he was just Travis. I'd met his because we shared a beloved interest. We both loved art, though I was more of a contemporary artist, focusing around dystopian landscapes. Travis was into cartoony styles, his specialism being anime. He was good too, and I was envious of his skills.

As much as I liked Travis, I was pretty sure that if we hadn't bonded over art, we wouldn't have been friends. Where I was outspoken and extroverted, Travis was quiet and introverted as heck. When we were thirteen Travis used to get picked on by the girls in his class, when I found out, I met them on the tennis courts and got into my first fight. I'd gotten suspended, but they had left him alone after that and we'd been close ever since.

I frowned, closing the padlock on my locker. "What rumour?"

"That some guy tried to kill Alice with his car and Owen got beaten up saving her." Travis picked at his nails. "I heard the guy who sits beside me in English telling people about it."

I gave him a reproving look, though I knew it was not his fault. "No, that's not true." If that was the crap Owen was spreading around, I was going to murder him. "Actually, he was the driver who tried to kill Alice, and his injuries are just because he is an idiot."

I saw Travis hesitate. "Huh." Was all he said and leaned forward, glancing at the heavy folder under my arm "Are you working on your portfolio in the art room after school today?"

"That was the plan," I replied, happy to move away from the subject of my sister's idiot boyfriend. "Mrs Talbot was going to take a look at what I have so far."

Mrs Talbot, the art club teacher, had told us about a program that specialised in giving up and coming artists the chance to be taught by specialists in multiple styles from all over the world. Basically, if you got in, you'd have your pick of any University, so it was a must for any young artist. I'd been working on multiple pieces of artwork for a portfolio I needed to submit. I'd be up against thousands and thousands of entrants and they would only choose thirty students.

"Yeah, I guess there is only a month left for submissions." He nodded thoughtfully and then said, "I wonder if I can get her to take a look at mine too."

I thumped him lightly in the arm and grinned at him. That was the closest anyone who wasn't Alice would get to affection from me, and really it was only Travis who reached that level of trust from me. "Your dad is on the board, you're basically already a shoo-in, I bet you don't even need to submit anything."

"I wish," he said with a look of disgruntlement. "Apparently I have to enter my portfolio like everyone else."

I laughed as he mimicked his father perfectly. It occurred to me that it had been a while since I'd been over to his house. I used to watch movies sat on the rug on his lounge floor, whilst his parents sprawled on the sofa launching sweets at us from a bowl between them. "Has your dad picked up any good movies recently?" I asked, craving the family lifestyle suddenly. Our parents both worked a lot, and their shifts rarely matched up with when me and Alice were home from school. It'd been harder when we were younger, having to hop between grandparents when they were away, but now at sixteen almost seventeen, we just did our own thing.

Travis nodded. "Yeah but you've been busy recently, so we watched them without you."

I grasped a hand to my chest dramatically. "Ugh, the pain, its excruciating. Why must you hurt me so?"

"Next time?" he offered with a smile. "See you in club."

I watched him wander off, noting the number of young ladies' eyes following him as he left. I wondered when that had started happening, when had he reached that level of maturity that girls craved. It was true that he had begun to grow a thin shadow of a beard not long after his seventeenth birthday, and it wasn't that patchy kind that most of the guys our age had. That was the kind of thing that was in at the moment, beards. And he had one. Kinda.

I cocked my head to the side, watching him as the other girls were, but for me, that longing they clearly displayed toward him I just did not have. Maybe it was his glasses? Or perhaps his hipster clothing. It could be all of them combined I guess, who knew?

I shrugged and headed off to history. Just as I reached the classroom door, I spied the girls I'd been avoiding today, crowing like a pair of birds.

"Ooo. Ahhhh," they chorused.

They were a part of a small gathering of people. I immediately recognised the boys they were with, and then the person they were surrounding appeared amongst the crowd. As always, the centre of all attention as if his words were holy. Owen.

Anger burned deep within the crevasses of my soul; the rumour mill must have started from his mouth. I remembered Alice's fear and hope to keep it all quiet, and that was that. I had to say something. Or hit him. Whichever came first.

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It's crazy how quickly rumours spread, what's the craziest rumour you've heard? Comment below!