What if This Storm Ends

Chapter 5: Dead Flowers

A/N: So I'm glad people like this :] I feel special. I wanted to take a minute to respond to an amazing review I got from someone named Sara. I was so flattered by the things you said, and the things you outlined about my story that you liked are all the things I look for in other stories. It's comforting to know that I'm not just writing a throwaway story to pass the time, and that people realize how important it is to me to write something that really affects people. So a huge thanks to you Sara, and I hope you enjoy the rest of this! :]

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

~!#$%^&*()_+

The school hallways were empty, and Cat reveled in her last little bit of silence, as she followed Sikowitz to his classroom. She could feel her fingernails digging into her legs through her jeans, as she tried to steady her frantic heart.

She didn't want to alert Sikowitz to any problems, because she didn't want to have to see the guidance counselor. She kept telling herself that she could get through this on her own, but her belief in those words faded with every step she took towards that classroom.

The only sound in the hall was the sound of her own sneakers squeaking on the textile floor, and it soon became deafening.

The silence seemed to be rubbing Sikowitz the wrong way, so he turned his head to make conversation.

"You look different," he said, as though he had just noticed. Cat didn't say a word, for she really couldn't think of a response to that. Besides, she didn't want to talk about her brother.

Instead, she continued her walk in peace, and it seemed Sikowitz caught the hint as he didn't try to push the conversation further.

Cat kept her eyes on the poster-adorned walls they passed. It seemed safer that way, but she knew that eventually, her eyes would land on the same Improv poster she was used to seeing directly outside of Sikowitz's classroom.

A few seconds later, that very thing happened. She was at the end of the road. Cat frowned as Sikowitz danced toward his door like nothing was wrong, and she was beginning to wonder if he even knew what had happened.

He opened the door and held his hand out towards it, motioning for her to go ahead of him. She froze on the spot, feeling the same dreadful feeling as before.

He furrowed his brow at her, moving his hand a little, almost as though he were trying to make sure she had actually seen it.

Cat tried to will away her watery eyes, and swallowed hard before taking a few steps toward the door. She glanced at Sikowitz with pleading eyes, but he didn't understand her unspoken pleas.

She was in the doorway now, and Sikowitz gave her a small push so he could go in himself and close the door.

Cat tried to stare at the small stage at the head of the room, but her eyes couldn't help but wander to certain faces. The very face who she had once longed to see, Robbie's, was the one face she wanted to avoid more than any other.

She could picture his brown eyes staring at her, deceitfully pretending she didn't look any different. Pretending that there was a chance for her life to return to normal. Pretending that he wasn't disappointed by the fact that she wasn't the same Cat Valentine he'd grown up with.

She didn't want to see the disappointment. Still, his was the first face she looked to, and she was at a loss for the reason. Perhaps out of habit, or perhaps as a result of the feelings she didn't want to admit. The chance that he could be the anchor she needed when she felt like flying off the handle. Maybe she wanted to be around him. She often thought about it, even when the thing she wanted most seemed to be solitude. But she wasn't the same person, and he was, at least to her knowledge.

Walking through the classroom, pulling at her sweater nervously, she locked eyes with him. There was a reluctant sadness there, magnified by his bifocals. She couldn't look away. She knew she looked gravely ill, and she knew he saw it. She knew everyone saw it.

Robbie didn't look surprised, or even disappointed. He looked hurt, helpless, even. Rex wasn't with him, which was incredibly out of the ordinary.

Cat's lips parted slightly in surprise, ignoring the look of shock on everyone else's face, and focusing on Robbie's. There wasn't even sympathy present in his eyes. It was almost as if he were too wounded to feel anything beyond pain. Cat knew the feeling well.

It felt almost like he was hurting with her. Maintaining eye contact with him, she wondered for a moment if the pain in her own eyes had invaded his. It was only then that she forced her eyes in another direction.

Cat was miffed to find that the only empty seat was in the front row, and the last thing she wanted was to be on display. Robbie had taken over her thoughts for now, so at least she had something to distract her from the sympathetic looks she was getting from her friends.

Sikowitz went on with his lesson, though Cat was barely listening. She couldn't bring herself to care about anything he was saying, which provoked some guilt within her. This had been her favorite class, and Sikowitz had been her favorite teacher.

In her desire to leave, she had almost forgotten about seeing Robbie's face, until she absentmindedly looked in his direction. While everyone else's curious eyes were on Cat, Robbie stared at the floor looking absolutely destroyed.

The defining qualities of Cat's feelings of dread had been altered, all because she had made eye contact with Robbie. It was much worse than the sympathy she feared from the other students. To know that there was someone as miserable as her was of no consolation, especially being that it was Robbie. She wondered if there was something going on with his parents that was affecting him this way, or if he had lost a family member.

She was concentrating so deeply, she almost missed Sikowitz's dismissal. Her habit of wanting to be alone carried her to the door before anyone else could get there, and she kept going, even though she heard Tori calling her name.

Cat decided to go to her locker and place the things she didn't need currently inside. She was feeble enough without a ton of useless junk to lug around.

She spotted the eyesore of a locker easily, and made a mental note to change it as soon as she had the energy. It was a pink mess, covered in hand-painted unicorns and clouds. Was that was happiness looked like?

But she also noticed an anomaly in the design, something sticking out of the ventilation holes that she hadn't put there. She squinted as she inched closer to it, seeing that two carnations had been placed delicately there, the narrow stems intertwined through each ventilation hole.

The petals were as brown and brittle as ancient parchment, as though they had been there for quite some time. Cat brought a fingertip to one of them, causing the corner of a petal to crumble and sprinkle to the floor.

They were decrepit.

"Dead," she thought out loud. She hated that word, given that she felt it all around her. It was as though the Earth was dying under her feet.

She was so drawn to the dead flowers that she almost didn't notice Tori appear beside her.

"Hey," the brunette greeted her, in the happiest voice she had heard in weeks. It sounded strange.

"Who put these here?" Cat inquired, her voice barely above audible.

"Um, I'm not sure," Tori replied, caught off guard by the question and the lack of a greeting. Beck, Jade and Andre emerged from behind her, all looking equally uncomfortable.

"H-hey, Cat," Andre said, throwing a misplaced hand up.

"Hi," the redhead responded unenthusiastically, without looking up. She finally opened her locker and began placing books inside.

"I'm...uh...I'm sorry about what happened," Beck muttered, seeming to not want to be there anymore. Jade seemed to be the only one who understood that Cat didn't want conversation.

"I don't want to talk about it," Cat sighed, feeling her energy draining by the second.

"We'll talk to you later, Cat," Jade spoke up, before leading an all too willing Beck away. Andre followed suit, but Tori stayed behind.

"You should talk to someone," Tori suggested, and Cat closed her eyes, her face hidden by the edge of her locker. She wasn't even close to being in the mood for someone else to tell her what she needed.

"Talking doesn't help," she told Tori, who wasn't anywhere near giving up.

"Maybe you just aren't talking to the right people. I could make you an appointment with Lane-"

"No," Cat said simply, slamming her locker door closed.

"You shouldn't shut down like this. It isn't healthy," Tori replied, unfazed by Cat's unwillingness to open up.

"Look. Talking isn't going to help me. Talking doesn't bring people back from the dead," Cat informed Tori without conviction. Tori frowned at her friend.

"Neither does crawling in a hole and giving up on life," she retorted, and Cat was blown away by the fact that Tori was actually going to stand there and argue with her.

"You look sick," Tori added, looking Cat in the eye, her expression one of worry.

"Talking takes energy that I don't have, and I look sick because I lost my brother. Maybe your answer to that would be to walk around pretending everything is okay, but I'm not you, Tori," Cat explained, her voice as close to yelling as it had been in a long time.

She shrank back into docility immediately, though Tori still looked like a child that had been scolded.

"I was just trying to help," she stammered, her eyes welling up with tears, before she finally gave Cat the loneliness she craved and walked off.

Cat felt slightly guilty about what she had said, but not enough to go after Tori.

No one seemed to care about what she actually wanted. All they seemed to care about was doing what they thought was right in order to ease their own consciences. Cat wasn't in the mood for any of it.

She turned her back to her locker and leaned against it, closing her eyes and trying to block out the sounds that seemed to follow her everywhere.

Opening them, she was alarmed to see Robbie standing before her, the same sullen look in his eyes. Remembering the feeling of wondering if her own depression was spreading to him like a virus, she broke her gaze and glanced at the floor.

Robbie wouldn't speak, so she had no idea what he was thinking.

Without warning, his hands were around her waist, one of them on the small of her back and the other between her shoulder blades. He buried his face in her shoulder, and she forced her arms up so she could envelope his neck. It had happened so fast, she almost didn't know how to react. As they leaned into her locker, she felt his body start to tremble, and she heard small strangled sobs from the boy who was nestled against her shoulder.

The sounds alone led the feelings of dread back out of her stomach and into her veins, as strong as she had known them in quite some time. She felt her throat constrict, and she let a tearful moan of her own escape her mouth. The sounds of their weeping began to mingle, all of Robbie's weight pressing Cat into the lockers.

The carnations remained in their chosen place, dying together.