Chapter 8: Boiling Points

The music was playing so loud that Sadie could feel it shaking her very soul. In fact, the bass was actually making her floor vibrate. Geoff would have enthusiastically agreed that it was at the optimum sound level for a party.

Unfortunately, the blue glow of Sadie's phone unsympathetically informed her that it was 2:37 am.

She burrowed deeper into her pillow and blanket cocoon. It had no effect. The sound wasn't even muffled. There was no hope for further sleep unless that awful noise was stopped, post-haste. She moaned sleepily and rolled onto her back, nearly tumbling off the bed.

Ten minutes later, Sadie had mustered enough drive to step into the hallway. She could feel the rolls of sound pulsing under her feet, causing her to wonder where this music was coming from and how loud it was at the source. In the stairwell, it became clear that it was some sort of death metal. Electric guitar echoed up and down the stairwell, converging upon its own sound until it was a huge rolling mass of continuous guitar riffs. As Sadie shuffled down the stairs toward the source of the noise, the sound grew until it was knocking her about the ears with the sheer volume of it.

Three floors down, Sadie met Noah sitting outside the entrance to the main hall of the floor, scowling at the door.

"You can hear it all the way on the third floor?" she yelled.

"What?" Noah yelled.

She bent down next to him and repeated the question, shouting into his ear. He nodded. "It comes through my vent! It's not this loud down there though!" he yelled. "But I was awake anyway!"

"Why?"

He said something she couldn't hear.

"What?"

He repeated himself, but the answer still didn't carry over the music.

"I still can't hear you!"

"I said, I WAS PLAYING VIDEOGAMES!"

"Oh." She shifted back and forth between her feet, staring fixedly at a tiny scuff mark in the shape of an angel wing on the wall beside him. The music thumped a few decibel levels higher, causing her to plug her ears. "WHAT'S GOING ON?"

He yelled something back while shaking his head and gesturing towards his ears. She took that as a sign that he hadn't heard her and, realizing that there was no chance of them hearing each other unless they were mere inches apart, she screamed directly into his ear. "WHAT'S GOING ON?" she yelled again, pointing at the closed door that served as the final barrier against the noise.

He leaned over to yell into her ear. "DUNCAN AND COURTNEY!"

Suddenly, Sadie began to doubt the possibility of getting back to sleep at any point that night. She considered the vibrating door, attempting to conjure up a quick fix to their noise problem. "WHAT CAN WE DO?"

He gave her an exaggerated shrug in response. "IF I KNEW, I WOULD HAVE DONE IT BY NOW!"

The two resumed staring at the door, both wearing similar troubled expressions. Leshawna came charging up the stairs, muttering to herself as she went. Unlike Sadie, who had pulled on a t-shirt and shorts before leaving her room, Leshawna hadn't bothered to change out of her purple pajamas. Despite their slight transparency and femininity, they did nothing to offset Leshawna's hard glare.

Suddenly, the music fizzled out in a burst of static. Leshawna's mutterings became audible as she burst through the door to the hallway.

"If this is who I think it is I'm going to raise a whole lotta-" was all they heard before the door swung shut again.

There was a spurt of a guitar lick. Then, silence once again.

"YOU CRAZY BITCH!"

This was most definitely Duncan's voice piercing the sound barrier. Sadie and Noah exchanged glances. Noah raised his eyebrows. "Classy, Duncan," he said, looking up towards the heavens.

Sadie crept toward the door, feeling a rising sense of terror as she grew closer, as though Duncan and Courtney were going to burst through and hold her at gunpoint. (Actually, that might be less terrifying than some of the arguments Sadie had witnessed them having.) As she crawled, she noticed that her ears were ringing unpleasantly. She huffed out a sigh and cracked open the door slightly, hoping to avoid any other more unpleasant injuries.

A cry of rage from Courtney met her as she opened the door further. She shoved it closed hurriedly and looked back at Noah with panic flooding her.

"That's what you get for being nosy," Noah said, appearing thoroughly amused.

Sadie stuck out her tongue impertinently and ventured to peer back into the hallway, her panic draining away.

"What's going on?"

Sadie flinched so violently that she slammed the back of her head into the doorframe. Three separate voices called out, all with varying levels of concern.

"Sadie!"

"You okay?"

"Oooh, that's gotta hurt-"

"Sadie?"

She uncurled from her cocoon and looked from Cody, who was patting the right side of her head soothingly, to Noah, who crouched on her left. Trent bent over beside Cody, also looking concerned.

"You okay?" Cody asked worriedly.

"Why do I hurt myself so much?" Sadie cried, a sudden feeling that the past few days had been especially klutzy ones washing over her.

A quiet sound came from her left. She wasn't quite sure if she had heard right, but….. She looked over to Noah.

No, he was definitely snickering. "It's, like, not funny!" she said, a whiny note entering her voice.

"Nosy," Noah said.

And then she couldn't help it, she was giggling a bit too. "I'm fine, I'm fine," she said to Cody, brushing away his hand. Cody's face flashed through an expression she couldn't figure out.

"Good to hear," Cody said. He flashed her a gap-toothed smile, reaching for her hand. "You're adorable when you're clumsy."

She smiled back, touched. "Thanks!"

"Well, I'm tired and I haven't been to bed yet," Noah said, sounding oddly chipper. "So I'm going to try to get some sleep while the Princess and the Frog are quiet."

With that exit line, Noah began slowly walking down the stairs. Cody watched him go, looking as though he were trying to figure out some difficult calculus problem without any paper.

"Bye!" Sadie called.

"See you, man," Trent said. "I think I'll head off too. Maybe I'll get some sleep." He gave a heartrending sigh, still wearing the pitiful expression that seemed to permanently have settled on his face these days.

"Night," Cody said. Sadie echoed the farewell.

"Hey, Sadie, do you-" Cody began.

"-SOME GOTH WHORE!" Courtney's voice cut through his words.

Sadie's eyes widened. She cracked open the door and peeked through.

"What's going on?" Cody asked.

"Duncan and Courtney are having a fight," Sadie narrated. "I think Courtney is holding something…. Oh my god, is that a hammer? Yeah, it's a hammer! She's, like, trying to whack Duncan with a hammer! Leshawna's holding her back."

"You serious?" Cody said incredulously.

"It's like a soap opera in there," Sadie whispered, sticking her head farther into the hall. "There's, like, a huge hole in the wall behind Duncan. Wait, I think Courtney got that hammer from the fire extinguisher. At least it's a small hammer-"

Courtney's voice cut through Sadie's narration. "Damn it, why would you-"

"Is she? Is she really?" Sadie said disbelievingly.

"Is she what?"

"She's crying," Sadie said, astounded. "Courtney's crying."

"She's what?"

"Oh, she ran away," Sadie said pityingly. "Leshawna looks sort of freaked out."

"Courtney was crying?" Cody said, sounding as though someone had told him that the sun was actually cold. "You're not serious."

"I'm, like, totally serious. Duncan just punched the wall. Oooh! Ouch. I think he just made that hole even bigger."

Sadie missed breakfast entirely. She and Cody had gone back to his room soon after the Courtney and Duncan fiasco had finally quieted down. For a while, Sadie had sat on Cody's bed, going through the motions of awkward small talk with him while waiting for him to get over himself and kiss her. Cody still hadn't quite figured out how the whole boyfriend thing worked.

He looked hideously nervous every time she entered his room and would chatter on about something she had absolutely no interest in, like the relative strengths of the starter pokemon in each pokemon game or how funny it was that all of his cousins had names that began with C. She wondered if his 'smoothness' with girls only worked when he knew he had absolutely no chance of being with them. He didn't seem to have any idea what to do when he actually had a girlfriend.

Eventually, she would give up on him ever making a move and she'd kiss him. This time, they seemed to have progressed a bit further. After he sat next to her in awkward silence for a few minutes, he puffed up his chest and mustered his courage.

"Um, could I, um, kiss you?" he asked.

"You don't have to ask, silly," Sadie said, leaning in to kiss him.

He broke away from her suddenly. "What's wrong?" she asked, wondering why he looked so serious.

"Um."

He played with the blanket, balling it up in his fist and releasing it over and over again. "Hey, Sadie?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you, um." He sucked in air and looked away from her. "Do you like me?"

She giggled. The question was on par with "Are Duncan and Courtney insane?" in her mind. They both had rather obvious answers. "Duh."

"You sure?"

"Yeah, I'm sure. Why?"

He shook his head. "Never mind."

It was all very perplexing. She was still confused by where the question had come from when she returned her room at 3:30.

She slept through breakfast, waking up just in time for a late lunch. She joined Bridgette and DJ at the table in the dining hall, still feeling sleepy.

"Did you hear something last night?" Bridgette asked. "I think I woke up at some point because of some noise."

"You're, like, a really deep sleeper," Sadie said. "Duncan and Courtney had this huge fight. It was really loud."

"Aww," Bridgette said sympathetically. "That explains why they weren't at breakfast." She paused and something dawned on her. "Did Leshawna get involved?"

"Yup," Sadie said. "By the way, does she like Duncan?"

"Mmm, not sure," Bridgette said thoughtfully. "I think she might though."

Katie approached the table, carrying a bowl of soup, but froze once she sighted Sadie. Sadie sighed. "I'll see you later," Sadie said, standing.

"Um, okay," Bridgette said. She only realized the reason for Sadie's hasty exit once Katie sat down and became far too engrossed in inhaling her soup. "Seriously?" she said to nobody in particular.

"Huh?" DJ said, still clueless about the majority of the drama that had occurred during his absence.

Sadie dropped into a seat beside Ezekiel a few tables away. "Hi," she said cheerfully.

"Morning," Noah said, smirking. "Make that afternoon, actually."

Ezekiel let out a strangled noise, which Sadie took as a greeting. "I overslept a little," Sadie said. "Did you hear anything last night, Ezekiel?"

From the look that Ezekiel gave Sadie, you would have expected Sadie to be holding an AK-47 to his head and forcing him to recite pi to the 47th decimal place. (Which he could do, but that was beside the point.) "Iuh."

Knowing that Ezekiel had been rendered incapable of answering any questions posed to him by Sadie, Noah cut in. "While I'm flattered that you deigned to join us for lunch, I'd rather not be used as an excuse for you to avoid your other half."

"I'm not avoiding Katie," Sadie proclaimed, stubbornly deluding herself.

"Yeah. Just like Katie's not avoiding you and Trent," Noah said disparagingly, standing to get more food.

Sadie resisted her need to drop her head into the table and thump it against the surface a few times in frustration. She might possibly have considered making up with Katie after Noah had told her to, not that she would admit it. But she didn't know how to go about making up with Katie without riddling her own pride with holes, so she had given up the idea altogether. Strangely, she was actually starting to get used to living without Katie. At first, she had thought that she would eventually combust without Katie there. But then she had gotten to the point where she realized that life without Katie was just…. Well, it was just life without Katie being a permanent presence. She might prefer Katie's company, but it wasn't a necessity.

"So did you sleep well last night, Ezekiel?" she said, having exhausted how much she could allow herself to think about Katie.

"I – ah- me?"

Now Sadie was mystified. Since when was Ezekiel unable to talk to her? It wasn't like their limited conversations in the past had been shining examples of witty repartee, but he'd at least been able to form coherent sentences. "Did you hear anything?" she said, making one last attempt.

"O-okay," he stuttered.

She gave up.

She looked around for Noah and saw him standing at the table she had just vacated, talking to Bridgette. This was surprising; Noah had paid about twenty seconds of attention to Bridgette in all the time he'd spent at the Playa. She stared for a while, but was distracted by her phone buzzing in her pocket.

It turned out to be a text from Leshawna, who was wondering if Sadie would come hang out in her room for a while. "I'll see you later," she said to Ezekiel, texting back a quick confirmation to Leshawna.

"Okay," he said, slightly more confident in his words this time.

"So what's up?" Sadie said, lying stomach-down on Leshawna's bed.

Leshawna, who had made the mistake of venturing outside into the pouring rain earlier that morning, was attempting to calm the afro that had resulted from her hair's exposure to the elements. She clamped her hair between the flat iron. "Not much. I just needed some company while I fixed this fro."

"Cool. So what happened last night? I saw Courtney, like, crying," Sadie said.

Leshawna's sigh lasted for several seconds. "Girl, I'd rather not talk about that."

"Sure, that's totally fine," Sadie said. There was a beat of silence before Sadie pulled out her next question. "So do you like Duncan?"

Leshawna nearly dropped the flat iron. "What?" she said, turning to look directly at Sadie. "Where did you get that crazy idea?"

"You don't?" Sadie said, amazed that her theory had been wrong. "Who do you like then?"

Leshawna laughed. "I might as well tell you if you're going to come up with insane guesses like Duncan," she said. "It's DJ."

"What?" Sadie said, sounding as shocked as Leshawna had a few seconds before. "Really?"

"I don't know why you thought I was into Duncan," Leshawna said incredulously. "Who could think that I'd be into that little delinquent? He thinks he's hot stuff, but he's still trippin' worse than a lovesick puppy over Courtney."

There was a knock on the door. "It's open," Leshawna called.

The door opened and slammed shut again in record time. "I did not come up here for nothing!" Bridgette said forcefully from behind it. The door rocketed open and, using more force than Sadie had ever seen her use on a person, Bridgette shoved Katie into the room. "I am sick and tired of watching everyone around here fight all the time!" Bridgette said, almost shouting. "You two were the only people that I could count on to not be killing each other. It doesn't make any sense that you two are fighting!"

Leshawna placed the flat iron down on her dressing table, grabbed her key, and walked to the door. "This is an intervention. We're locking you two in here until you come to your senses and make up."

"But-" Katie began to say.

Leshawna and Bridgette didn't wait for her to voice her concerns and closed the door in her face.

There was a pregnant silence in the room.

"So," Sadie said. She found that she had nothing else to say after that.

"Yeah," Katie said, finding herself in a similar situation. She sat down on the floor and leaned against the door.

Sadie felt that it was her job to initiate some sort of conversation because if they weren't talking, they weren't solving anything. If she was being honest with herself, which had become more difficult in the past few days, she knew she wanted to make up with Katie. It was just that Katie was always the strong one, the pretty one, the one that was apologized to. This was that one time that Sadie wanted Katie to apologize to her. But really, Sadie didn't expect that of Katie and there came a point when someone needed to be mature and glue together the pieces of their friendship.

"What exactly did we fight about?" Sadie asked. "Well, like, I know what we fought about, but I don't get why we're so mad about it."

"I don't know, you just…" Katie trailed off and tugged at one of the loose hairs at the nape of her neck. "You just brought up Keith and I was totally mad that you even talked about that so I said something mean."

Keith. That was really what it was. All this time later, and the two of them were still bothered about that.

"It was a totally dumb argument. It's my fault," Sadie said. She had brought up Keith. She should be the one to apologize.

Katie sniffed audibly, looking like she was about to cry. "Katie, are you, like, okay?"

"I'm so sorry!" Katie cried, rubbing at her eyes with her palms. "I just couldn't deal with everything! You were, like, mad at me and then I was so mean to Trent! I couldn't help being mean to him. I'm so sorry!" She sniffed again, loudly. "You were, like, totally fine without me and I was just like a terrible person."

Almost automatically, Sadie began to say that she hadn't been fine without Katie. Suddenly, she reconsidered her words. She really had been totally fine without Katie. "You were fine without me," she said, rolling off the bed to approach Katie. "Just because we're, like, BFFFL's doesn't mean we have to be together all the time. You don't need me."

"Sadie!" Katie cried, pulling Sadie into a hug. "I missed you so much!"

Sadie's smile could have lit the world. "I missed you too."

A/N: So. Lots of things to think about in this chapter. I think it turned out pretty epic. That's the end of this act. It was so much fun! Did anybody see Leshawna's crush coming? No? Didn't think so. Mwahahaha. And I kind of lied about the chapter not being so Duncan/Courtney-centric. It didn't quite turn out that way. But I did get a good bit of Sadie time in. Is everyone satisfied with the Sadie/Katie fight resolution? Anybody have any predictions to make? (I find it hilarious that some of you made comments that were unwittingly close to the plan for this story.) Leave a review if you have anything to say!

Until next Act!