Cheshire Cat: We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.
Alice: How do you know I'm mad?
Cheshire Cat: You must be. Or you wouldn't have come here.
-Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll.

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If you ask what Cat Valentine remembers from her childhood, she'll tell you endless tea parties with her numerous friends, such as Mr. Tickles, her toy pig, and maybe even Keith and Jess; or brightly coloured tea cups that makes a rainbow, and biscuits on plastic plates that leave crumbs on her laughing lips. She'll say endless bedtime stories that brought her room to life, and a patchwork quilt that's still on her bed today. Snuck in velvet cupcakes, yellow nail polish, and high pitched giggles from the lips of secretive smiles.

But mostly, she'll tell you laughter.

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Cat grows up in a city filled with light pollution, trains, buses, taxis, and the bittersweet smell of glitter and cigarette smoke mixing together. To her, California is just one big park, with skyscrapers for tree and lights in the night for fireflies that lead her down a narrow trail. The zebra crossings are stepping stones over a black river, shopping centres are secret caves, and all the people are her friends (but the s u n is still the s u n ).

Still, she prefers the places away from the city, all those open spaces. With the green grass and the hidden places where the wind can still ruffle her hair, and where she's free to smile and never ever be rushed. Her favourite place is at the top of a hill, one of the only ones left where there are no five star hotels or apartments blocking her view. It has soft grass carpet under small feet, and a view of what seems like the entire world in front of her.

The dandelions grow there as well, the only place where they won't get stood on, or run over, or strangled by weeds. She plucks one from the ground, blowing on it and closing her eyes, without a wish in her head or on her lips. She opens her eyes just in time to see the white seeds in the blue sky, being blown around by the wind.

Then, a train comes along beneath the hill. She watches as the seeds start to follow the train tracks, drifting along them. She watches with the noise of the train still in her ears.

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When she was about seven, her family would take Cat to picnics up on that same hill. Her parents would lay out there rug, and watch Cat, Jess, and Keith all played together, tumbling and turning like flowers in the wind.

Jess, her sister, taught her how to do handstands. It took her five goes before she finally was able to get her head completely down and her legs completely up. She watched upside as the wind blew Jess' hair around her face, the ginger looking like flames. She'd been standing on her head for five minutes before she started to feel dizzy, her face all red and her brother sulking because he couldn't do it.

Jess also taught her how to do cartwheels, something she's never stopped doing since. Mummy used to say that Cat spent most of her childhood on her head, a smile constantly on her pink face.

(Jess used to say she was born to be a s t a r .)

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The first time she goes to an acting lesson, she's told that she rather bad, and then has the teacher l a u g h her dreams away of becoming an actor as if it's the simplest thing in the world, and if she didn't just break a little girl's heart. She's told that she over acts; that she needs to be quieter (Cat doesn't really believe her). Her singing class is alright though. She sings a lullaby that mummy used to sing, and everything's ok. Everyone likes it, in fact. Her cartwheels and handstands are good as well, and she likes though almost as much as singing or acting.

Still, her acting needs practise.

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Sometimes, Mummy would lie on her big bed, with pure white sheets, and pretty patterned pillows that smelled of lavender, and sometimes, if she asked really nicely, the curtains would be pulled down and Cat would feel like a princess. During those times, she'd pretend that she'd be in her own light-hearted fairyland, filled with fluffy clouds, and blue and white butterflies, and dandelions blowing in the wind everywhere.

That's when mummy would tell her stories, mostly just a childhood memory sometimes covered with a lie, or maybe of a dream she once had. Cat never cared; she just liked the sound of a voice and the smell of lavender on the sheets. Still, she thinks that each word may have strengthened their thin connection, which was already covered in tiny little cracks of genes and DNA and brain waves.

After a while, mummy would get a head ache, and a slam of the door meant that Jess and Keith had arrived home (Jess had just started Year 2, while Keith was still in Kindergarten). Quickly, her father would hurry her out the door, straight into Jess' arms as Keith trudged upstairs, a blank expression on his face, and the door to the bedroom would close with a click.

After that, a very small frown would be replaced with another large smile as Jess revealed a colourful wrapper from her pocket. Snatching it from her hand, Cat would run up and down the stairs with her sister behind her until her father told her to stop, walking out of the bedroom with a sorry and worn expression on his face. With the sound of giggles and busy feet absence, the silence would hang over them, until Cat would steal yet another piece of candy from her sister's pocket, and run upstairs with it safely in her clasp.

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Cat's whole family was smart. Her father was an engineer, her mother a scientist, her brother a whiz at maths, and her sister an all around achiever. She herself was smart, in her own way – though teachers continuously told her that trivial information did not make up real IQ.

Still, she was a quick learner, a stubborn one as well. She liked copying people; their voice, their actions, everything. The action of mimicking was set deep in her brain somewhere, even as a child when she began copying dances off of MTV, when she was trying to pitch the notes.

Mummy, Jess, and Keith are all like her. Or maybe she's like them (but she's C a t , and they're J e s s and K e i t h and m u m m y , and that's the way it's always been).

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W H A T ' S T H A T S U P P O S E D T O M E A N ?

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Her house is busy most of the time.

Noisy.

It's filled with stomping feet from her brother's room, and slamming doors, and exasperated sighs, and her own voice as she practises her lines for the play in a loud voice, hearing it echo and shatter around the room as it's broken by other sounds.

"Be quiet, Cat!"

She merely giggles, and cartwheels towards the cupboard and steals a red velvet cupcake from the box that is always in supply (thanks to Jess). She runs upstairs just as her father comes down, a smirk on her face and the evidence of her crime covering her lips as she giggles.

Moments later, she's in her room, pulling and twisting at the threads on her patchwork quilt, hearing another thread, a possible sniffle, and a curse word before she begins to sing at the top of her lungs, drowning everybody and everything out.

She doesn't like silence – not really.

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Overreact. Overact. Overreact. Overact.

C A T .

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When she's thirteen, she dyes her hair for the first time. It's thundercloud black, the same colour as her mother's, and from the same do-it-yourself kit. It's not very good. It starts to run, black tinged tears on her face and clothes, almost immediately after she steps into the rain.

A week later, she dyes her hair red for the first time. It doesn't change again.

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Cat's memories are like writing on a fogged up window; they're always there, but sometimes, you forget them. Sometimes, she traces the outlines, her imagination easily filling in the blanks, trying to re-create how she was feeling all over again. Sometimes, she thinks she can – feel it, she means. Feel how she was feeling when she was only five, the world as big as her green eyes, inviting and overwhelming all at once.

But some of the tracings are just left alone, for fear that she'll only mess up their perfection.

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On her first day at Hollywood Arts High school, she literally cartwheels through the doorway, a squeal and huge smile on her lips as she does so. She looks up to see everyone look at her, before they turn away with a slight smirk and a bit of a laugh. She doesn't really care though, because it's just all so amazing, and she thinks it will all just take her breath away, and she thinks she may just faint.

In her head, and sometimes out loud, she likes to say that at her school, everybody sings and dances and acts, but she's the only one that act, sing, dance and stand on their head for seven whole minutes. She's the only one that will occasionally cartwheel into class, does handstands for against her locker every day, and dyed her hair the same colour as red velvet cupcakes.

That's all Cat.

She likes to be herself, she does. But being by herself is a different story, because then no one can see her being by herself (but maybe they don't even want to). Sometimes, she looks at herself in the mirror, watches herself dance and sing and act, though that never works. She wants company, wants an audience. Of course, she has some friends, but they don't always clap when she performs and they look more like silhouettes than people.

No one invites her to the prom. She hopes that she doesn't care, but after thinking about, she decides that she does care. She puts on a pretty blue dress, a ribbon in her hair, and then she runs back to school. She sits by the doors of the school, watching people go in and ignore her, still hoping that someone will ask her.

No one does.

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She knows people think she's crazy. She's heard them say it enough times to even start thinking that they may be right, that she may believe them after all. But she never does.

She's different, mainly. She doesn't care what people think, not really. She hopes people will like her, but she doesn't care if they think she's crazy, with her red hair and her loud voice and her brightly coloured nails that remind her of candy. Cat likes Cat.

(She smiles far too much to be unhappy.)

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Twelve year old Cat does a handstand against the doorway, giggling as she looks around the room, watching Jess do homework in the corner of the room, a slight frown on her face. With a final thump, she falls down from her handstand, only to re-surface from the floor with another smile on her face.

"Three and thirty four seconds," Jess calls out. "You're getting better at those," she adds, turning to face Cat with a smile.

"Yay!" Cat squeals. She jumps up, clapping her hands and starting to do a cartwheel before realising that the room's to small. She frowns.

"Ugh!" she hears, turning around to see her sister shove the desk into the wall and frown before snapping the pencil in her hand in half. She hears her sister mutter a word that sounds a lot like stupid. Then, once again, Cat sets herself up against the doorway, getting ready to do another handstand.

"You know," she starts, putting her hands on the ground. "I want to do handstands just like you; I want to get to six minutes." She giggles. "I want to be just like you." She manages to get her legs up, and this time she's four centimetres away from the door.

"No!"

The shout is so loud that Cat drops to the floor again, not even reaching three seconds with her legs in the air and her hands on the floor. She looks up to see her sister, her eyes wide and her hair looking like a growing flame in the yellow light. Her sister gets down to Cat's eye level, staring her straight in the eyes as Cat recovers from her dizziness, still seeing two Jess's and feeling one earth move in the universe.

"Don't say that," Jess says. "You don't mean that, you don't want to! Don't become like me."

(What's that supposed to mean?)

She stares at her sister for a long time, brown eyes meeting blue as the words still echo around the room. Slowly, still not breaking eye contact, Jess reaches into her pocket and takes out a small object wrapped in shiny red.

"Yay!" Cat yells. "Candy!"

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Jess runs away a year later without a note, a goodbye, or a backpack. One day, she just goes, and no one's there to see her or ask where she's going or to give her a map. But Cat comes home one day, and there's no Jess Valentine, and that then means that there's no Cat & Jess Valentine (does that mean that she doesn't have a sister anymore?).

Mummy cries and screams and starts to throw and break things around the house because she can't cope. Daddy doesn't even bother to try and calm her, he just sits there and looks at his reflection in the wooden table's varnish. Keith looks down at his shoes for five minutes, expressionless, before he walks out of the house and rides away on his bike. He doesn't come back for a whole day. Cat looks out the window and watches as the dark, grey thunderclouds start to merge with the purple ones, and start to feel the disappearing blue sky.

Mummy and Daddy say they should've seen it coming, should've stopped it. Cat doesn't understand though, because Jess was happy and nice, and she liked home – she would never leave. And she wasn't Mummy, or Keith, or Cat. She was Jess.

(But Jess was stressed and unhappy and she didn't like home because it reminded her of everything that she wanted to forget, and Jess didn't like it so she ran away. And Jess is Jess and Cat is Cat and they make Jess and Cat, and Mummy is Mummy and Keith is Keith and they're all like each other.)

A week later it rains because Jess isn't coming back and even the sun is sad about that.

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Cat goes up to her dandelion hillside. She plucks the dandelions over and over again, holding them in her petite hands as she makes the same wish over and over again until the words have imprinted themselves on her brain, blinded her when she closes her eyes. She makes them for weeks and weeks, watches them as they leave the stem, but there's no wind, and so they fall down to the ground – lifeless.

Eventually, she stops. After she's mad her final wish, she drops the stem to the ground and looks around her, immediately bursting into tears when she sees that there are no more dandelions. She killed them all, she thinks to herself. She cries harder, wanting to help and make the dandelions grow again, but all the seeds have been stamped into the ground and now all she has are empty stems and unfulfilled wishes.

She runs away crying, dropping her latest wish to the ground as she does so. She feels bad, and she still hasn't stopped crying, but she can't get the image of dandelions and smiles and stems and ginger hair and green grass out of her head, and it only makes her tears fall onto the ground some more.

She runs home, up the stairs, back into her bedroom and straight onto her childhood patchwork quilt. After she's stopped sobbing into her pillow, she lies on her bed, looking up at the glow in the dark stars on her ceiling. She makes one final – the final one, she promises – wish.

(Falling stars are pretty.)

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Cat likes acting because she likes pretending. She likes the fantasy, and making someone believe something that isn't true, and most of all, she likes entertaining people – especially herself.

In a deeper sense, she likes things that never were coming to life, that when she's acting she can click her heels together three times and she'll go home, that she may just be in a wonderland and that there may be a grin without a cat around somewhere (she looked for it once, but she didn't find anything).

She also likes the costumes, and the smell of roses on a stage, and the sound of clapping in her ears because it drowns out all the other voices in her head. She likes the too bright stage lights, and hiding in aubergine curtains as she recites words in her hair , and all the people in front of her that are looking at her rather than ignoring her.

Other times, she just likes not being Cat.

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When she's seventeen, Jess comes back home. Mummy cries again, Daddy comforts Mummy and smiles weakly, Keith looks angrily at Jess and stomps up the stairs and slams his door, and Cat hugs her sister and tightens her jaw as she doesn't look anybody in the eye.

Then, she runs upstairs and balls her hands into fists as she hears the shower start to run. She steps into, clothes in and all, feeling the water turn from icy cold to scalding hot as it the spray hits her body. The water travels down the rivers on her arm, painting her skin until it's as red as her hair.

She steps out of the shower, letting the cold air contrast with her skin, stripping from her wet clothes and changing into her pyjamas. She goes to bed without any dinner, or even a goodnight kiss (it doesn't matter that she hasn't had one since she was seven, she still wants one).

Later that night, after staring at her glow in the dark stars for an eternity, she gets up. She puts on a white summer dress, with red high heels, and stares at herself in the mirror, watching as the moonlight reflects off the glass. Then, she waits until it's exactly midnight to sneak out of her room and down the stairs, barely making a sound. She notices Jess asleep on the couch, a frown on her face. Quickly, Cat looks away, letting her eyes fill with the image of the clock rather than ginger hair.

After the front door clicks shut behind her, she starts to run, red high heels slapping against the road and breaths puffing into night air. She keeps running and running, never stopping or getting distracted, just letting her hair fly out behind her.

Finally, she comes to a stop, collapsing against green grass and clasping it in between her fingers. She turns her head to the side, pressing her ear to the ground as she hears a train rumble beneath her. She waits until the sound is only a distant echo in her head before getting up and reaching for a bunch of dandelions.

She plucks three from the ground, blowing the seeds of one away and closing her eyes as she with everything she has. Then she begins to run again, the remaining two dandelions in hand as the seeds from the first one float down onto the railway track.

She hops onto the first train that arrives at a ghost town station. The carriage she steps into is empty, and she smiles as soon as the doors shut behind her. The train jolts to a start, and she starts to move as well; swinging around the poles, running up&down&down&up stairs over and over, still with a smile, the dandelions stuffed into her dress pocket.

But mostly, she looks out the window, watching the city at night blurring past her. After a little while, she opens the window, feeling the air on her skin, as she reaches into her pocket and drops a dandelion, letting the train leave it behind.

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She comes back five days later at four o'clock in the morning.

She goes into Mummy's room, gently tapping her should as she looks at her tear stained face. Her mother screams when she wakes up, crushing Cat to her chest as she scolds and cries all at the same time. Cat wraps her arms around her neck, suddenly feeling very small and very childish, smelling lavender all around her. Then, she gets grounded to her room and her windows are locked.

In the evening, Jess sneaks up. She closes the door behind her and timidly looks around the room before chancing a look at Cat. Silently, she holds out a perfect velvet cupcake in her hand, to which Cat smiles widely at the sight at and snatches it from Jess' open palm.

Then, Jess is by her side, adding extra weight to her creaky bed. Cat looks over at her clock and sees that it's nine, and that Keith still isn't home, and the last time she heard her parents was when Daddy was calming Mummy down again as she shouted.

Then, she remembers that she has to learn a whole page of her script by tomorrow morning's rehearsal, after missing the last three, and that she also needs to practise her singing. Now.

Currently, though, she lets Jess bury her head into her shoulder, refusing to notice the light scattering of pale scars on her sister's arm as she Jess grips her hand tightly. Ginger and crimson, blue and brown, tears and laughter, yellow painted nails.

Nothing's really changed.

(She still has red hair.)

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Her sister takes her back up to the hill a couple of weeks later. She's in her train outfit again. She and Jess sit on the hill, letting the sun kiss their faces. After a little while, Cat reaches into her pocket, bringing out the crumpled but still intact dandelion. Gently, Jess picks it from her hand and holds it out to the sky and close to her face. She blows, and the seeds waft on the gentle breeze.

"Make a wish."

Disclaimer: I do not own Victorious.

A/N: Review/PM if you didn't understand it, or hated it.