Kate Hopper's life had seemingly fallen back into place.
After a year, her relationship with her family, new and old, had developed into something that truly mattered, and she had made a couple new friends since the catastrophe of last year.
Since t...
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KATHERINE MICHELLE HOPPER read in her car with a cassette playing in the background before first period started, just as she usually did.
On that day in particular, she continued her reading of the Talisman instead of reading the Stranger for her literature class. She'd been putting it off, but she figured since it had to be read by next Monday, she'd read it in time, considering she had next to nothing to do, anyway.
It had been that way for a long time.
While, of course, she had friends, she didn't hang out with them too often. Considering she could never have anyone over, it was extremely difficult to talk to any of her friends outside of school. For her other friends, it almost seemed like nothing had changed, partially because Kate had never been the one to host anything, didn't even get to hang out with them that often anyway. She realized, after all this time, that she'd really only hung out with one person before they'd split apart, and that had taken up most of her time outside of school anyway: Steve.
The last time she and Steve had spoken had been much longer than Kate had ever expected: they hadn't had a true conversation since that night at the hospital, which had almost been a year ago. She almost laughed at the thought: any time before that week and it would've been deemed unacceptable. She'd learned for herself that the second Steve had gotten an actual girlfriend, his need for a best friend, his need for her, suddenly disappeared. Everything that Kate and the boy had once done together had been quickly replaced as dates with Nancy. It stung Kate's heart, and she knew that their friendship, if not, her whole life was a lie: Steve Harrington didn't care about her near as much as she thought he did.
