Wow, has it been a while. Multi-shot. Jatie. I'm not sure how long it will be, but I certainly don't classify this as a mulit-fic. Oh, no. This is a multi-shot and will probably be around four or five chapters.

As always, views, favorites, and alerts are greatly appreciated, and reviews, if you have the time, make my day.

…

"University of Hawaii, huh?"

Clare Edwards spears a leaf of lettuce that's too long to cram into her mouth and then results to shaking it off of her fork; she does this idly as she asks Katie the question, her shoulders and her voice suggesting nonchalance, but her eyes betraying her. The girl is a junior, one year younger than Katie (though infinitely wiser), and she's got blue, piercing eyes that shine sense and reason on everything.

"Yeah," Katie murmurs, head down, twirling a carrot through Ranch Dressing, "Yeah, I guess."

"Well, you got in, right?" Clare asks, and it's then that Katie realizes her previous answer sounded more like a question than anything.

"Yeah."

"And it's the best of the schools you applied to?"

"Yeah."

"And they've got a real good journalism program, you said, right?"

"Yeah."

Clare jerks her head with finality, brings her books close to her chest, and huffs. "Then, you're going."

"Yeah, I guess."

…

Katie finds him in the back of the cabin, glistening in sawdust and back turned to her as he balances on the ladder propped against the house. The boy works with such a steady rhythm, hands nimble, eyes focused; the forest moves around him, sparing only a curious glance – the sunshine pouring into the trees, creating it's own pattern between the leaves, the birds chirping, the squirrels scampering through the ferns with a swiping sort of sound. And Katie's sure that this is some kind of an art.

He doesn't notice her on his own; Katie thinks that time could pass like heartbeats, hours and hours of this rhythm, and he would never sense her behind him. "Jake?" She finally breathes, and her voice is gentle and lulling as if to slip its way into the song of the forest unnoticed. But with just the sound of her, Katie hears it all quiver and knows she's been unsuccessful.

Nevertheless, her boyfriend turns to her with the softest of eyes, his features settling back into his face and hair ruffling a bit under the breeze, as one can see the grass on a plain rise and fall with wind. "Is school really out already?" Jake chuckles, "I must have lost track of time."

"I'll say," Katie mutters, and when she hears the bitterness and feels the rhythm still to a halt around her, she knows the frustration she felt on the way here is resurfacing.

Jake's eyes tighten a little at the edge to her voice.

"This is the second time this week you've missed."

His mouth falls open then, his jaw tightening and tongue curling into his bottom teeth. "I had work to do," he says simply, his shoulders falling like there's nothing else to it.

"You missed two quizzes, Jake."

"Good. I wasn't ready for them."

Katie takes a sharp breath. "Well, maybe you ought to study tonight. You're going to have to take them tomorrow – along with that Chemistry test from Tuesday."

Still up on the ladder, he leans an elbow against the cabin's gutter and turns from her, looking through his arms down to the ground. "Don't know if I'll be there tomorrow."

"Jake," she finally protests, her voice loud and defined. The forest freezes over around them. "Your grades are going to plummet. It'll look horrible on a college application."

Rarely is Jake Martin rigid. He's a lanky boy, made up of gawky limbs and boyish features, pure skin and a soft smile. His shoulders fall in front of him half the time. But as Katie goes on, they lock up at his sides.

"Did it ever cross your mind, Katie, that maybe I don't give a damn what those college deans think of me?"

She huffs. Seldom does the boy raise his voice, let alone curse without a snort fitted in. "Jake, I know your mind is set on taking over your father's business, but he's making you apply to college for a reason. I just don't want to see you change your mind later and" –

It's then that he whirls around, maneuvering down from the ladder with quite the agility, and steps closer to face her. "Why," he demands, "is everyone so convinced I'm going to change my mind? You can't spend your whole life with one foot in and one foot out!"

"No, but you can spend your adolescence that way."

Jake eyes her in disbelief. "But that's not us anymore!" He yells, hands wild, voice straying away from its usual low, throaty pitch,"We're not little kids, Katie!It's about time we figure out how we're going to make it in this world, don't you think? And I'm not getting any closer to becoming a contractor by sitting in classrooms all day."

He kicks a pebble into the flowerbeds then, swallows hard, and glances at the trees. It's the signal to give up.

"Okay, okay," she mutters, taking a step back, letting the fire between them die down, "I didn't mean to start anything. I just" – she takes a moment to look out over the sky and breath – "I just worry about you is all."

It's a real thing to watch Jake Martin simmer down – a real thing, meaning solid and precise, a process that never changes in the slightest. First to break are those shoulders; they slump forward again, ease down. Next comes his fists, clenched firmly at his side; she watches as his fingers uncurl, and it is always the pointer one, on both hands, to stay still. Usually, after the fists, he'll swallow once, too, which he does today, though very lightly. And finally, the eyes break, thawing back to a warm blue like the ocean when the sunlight strikes it, and glisten briefly. Then, and only then, does Katie let go of her breath.

"I know," he chuckles lightly after the transformation is complete. He moves to her then, placing two, sun-warmed hands on her bare shoulders and looking her in the eyes. "But you worry too much, Katie."

"I know," is all she can get out, because his eyes are smoldering and his breath is mingling with hers, and more than anything, she just wants to kiss him.

"But I think that's what I love about you," Jake finishes, and before she can give in, he does, leaning down to press his lips to hers in a slow, familiar rhythm. It's the same one that held the land moments ago, and Katie's beginning to realize that she's only welcome to it when she's connected to him.

…

"I think Cam and I are going to go bowling tonight."

Katie shifts, turning her back away from the bed frame and looking up to her sister who is perched on the bed itself. Half an hour ago, Maya called her in to help with a Geometry problem, but now that this is settled, the textbook is tucked away across the room, and the two sisters sit quietly with the TV turned on, rarely talking, rarely watching. But they learned long ago that this is better than being alone.

With this, Katie stands up, arching her back painfully, and nudges Maya over playfully and without much retort. "That's nice," she murmurs, suddenly feeling very tired as she curls up to one of her sister's pillows.

This, however, gets a set of wide eyes from the girl beside her. Maya Matlin is a small, thin girl with a heart-shaped face that she got (and Katie never did) from their father, but she has the same eyes as her sister, blue and light. And when they are in disbelief, clear and wide, they are lovely. Katie wonders if Cam notices this; if she were to guess, she'd say he does.

"What?" Katie half asks, half chuckles.

"Did you just say you think the idea of me going out with Cam is nice?"

"Of course," she laughs, "I like Cam. He's sweet to you."

"Last time you saw us together, you were sitting in between us in a movie theater. Chaperoning." As if at just the thought of it, Maya blushes a little.

Katie just snorts. "Yeah, well, I've deemed him good enough for you."

"And you're not going to give me the whole 'broken-heart' spiel you did after Drew dumped you? Not even the 'boys play games' warning before I leave?"

Katie shrugs. "I already did. But it's your choice to date – not mine."

Maya seems to consider this for a moment, and she bats her eyelashes a few times. "I know I'm only fourteen, but I just – I like Cam. I like him a lot." – Maya takes a fringed, square pillow between her arms – "I really think he might be my Jake," she sighs.

And Katie's eyes, having been closing slowly in exhaustion, snap wide open.

…

A car door shuts outside. Katie can hear it from where she sits on the windowsill of Clare's room, and she attempts to subtly crane her neck to the side.

"It's not him," Clare chuckles, and the fact that her friend hasn't even spared a glance up from her textbook makes Katie feel sheepish as ever.

"Oh," is all she can mutter.

This makes Clare smirk even more. "He's working late tonight."

Katie almost responds with another single-syllable, but her curiosity gets the best of her. "Clare, don't you think he ought to be coming to school?"

"Yeah," her friend states simply, turning a page in her English book.

"Well, do you ever talk to him about it?"

Clare looks up then, studies Katie for a moment, and finally closes the book to sit upright on her bed. "Sure, I do," she shrugs, "but whatever Jake does has nothing to do with me."

It's strange to hear Jake's stepsister talk this way, so calm and indifferent. Because if there's anyone more neurotic than Katie herself (or, at least, who she used to be), it's Clare Edwards. Katie's best friend lives life like she's constantly late for something, and if it weren't for her other half, Eli Goldsworthy, a boy who says and writes what he feels, regardless of whether or not it makes any sort of sense, Katie knows that Clare's mind would be far too rational for anyone to put up with.

Katie wonders if perhaps she'd be the same way without Jake to remind her to breath now and again.

"But what if he starts failing?" She demands; she simply can't help it.

Clare sighs. "Katie, you and I both know that I'm the first person to knag Jake about this kind of thing, but he's eighteen now. He's a legal adult; he can do whatever he wants."

"Including throw away his future?"

Clare gives her a funny look. "You think being a contractor entails 'throwing away your future?'"

That's when Katie feels her stomach coil up. Of course, this isn't what she's meant, but she can see the accusation starting to gleam in her friend's eyes. "You know that's not what I'm trying to say."

Clare leans back against the headboard of her bed now. "Honestly, Katie, I'm not sure I do," she says, eyes on the opposite wall, "Look, I can see what's going on here – and I haven't said anything because it's none of my business and I know what it's like to be scared of the future. But don't you think it's about time to get real?"

Katie huffs unevenly and watches the trees outside as Clare continues.

"You and Jake are two really different people. And in half a year, you're going to be on the other end of the world, and he's still going to be right here."

Katie cringes when the words are said aloud, cringes because she knows what Clare's said is true and knows she doesn't have the right to be mad, knows she's being irrational. But Katie also knows that she has no idea how to start this kind of talk with her boyfriend, knows that he must have thought about it at one point.

And so she slides off the windowsill and starts for the door, fuming for a reason she can't fathom. "Katie?" Clare asks, but her lips are still.

"Katie, c'mon, I'm just being honest with you," she hears Clare protest behind her as she descends the stairs, "I care about you both, and I don't want to see either of you get hurt!"

Jake's sister follows her out to the driveway, still pleading her name, but Katie just slams the door of her BMW behind her and starts the engine.

"Well, fine then!" Clare screams, and it's an odd scene, Clare Edwards standing in front of her house in only shorts and a camisole, shouting at a girl with sunglasses in a shiny new car, "Just keep running away from all of your problems, Katie! But if you think that's going to make them disappear, you're wrong, and you know it!"

Katie keeps her eyes on the road, though. She fears the light of sense and reason in her best friend's eyes.

…

She sees the name every time she looks at her contact list (the names in her phone are in alphabetical order), and she's never deleted it. Not even in a fit of rage back a few months ago.

And as much as she hates to admit it, Katie knows the real reason she's kept Bianca DeSousa's number this whole time; it is, after all, the same reason she got it.

Surprisingly enough, the girl has kept her number as well. Or at least memorized it. Because when her voice sounds on the other line, it is a crackled, puzzled, and slightly chuckling, "Katie Matlin?"

Oh, God. What is she doing? What is she thinking? It's eleven o'clock on a Saturday night, and Katie is drowsy from the Benadryl and Advil – and shit, she's still waiting for an answer.

"Uh . . . hey."

"Hey."

"So, um . . ." she wracks her brain for something to say, anything casual, "What's up?"

"Why'd you call me?" The voice on the other line bluntly demands, and Katie's not surprised; she should have known better than to try and subtly work into a subject with Bianca DeSousa.

"Are you . . . Would you want to hang out tonight?"

There's a scoff. "You've got to be joking."

"Um . . . no?" The words are a question, and even though Bianca is miles away, Katie's face is burning up.

"Look, Matlin, I'm not the one to go to for that anymore, so don't waste your" –

"That's not why I'm calling." At least, she doesn't think it is, "I just . . . I need a night out with someone who isn't so . . ." Katie lets the sentence trail off; she's not sure what she was about to say anyway.

And just when Katie fears she's insulted the girl, Bianca's spark of a voice picks up again. This time, Katie can hear the smirk behind it. "Sensible?"

"Exactly."

…

"You don't do that anymore, right?"

They're in a bar on the outside of the city; the air is heavy and the music low, and no one asked them for their fake I.D.'s even though both girls were prepared for it. The man that let them in was old and worn with wrinkles around his eyes, which were dull and faded, and Katie has a feeling that he knows they're underage but that he doesn't care. She can't decide if there's any sort of poetry to that; perhaps, the old man is simply too tired to bother with the police.

It takes her a moment to realize what Bianca is referring to, but when she does, Katie shakes her head firmly. "No. No, of course not."

"Good," the girl mutters and twists the bracelet around her wrist.

And it's as she watches the girl's hand that Katie notices the ring on her left finger, a silver band with a clean-cut, single diamond. "Y-you're marrying him?" The question comes out before Katie can stifle it, and then she's cursing inside of her head. Of course, she's not, you idiot. They're eighteen. Why would you ask a question like –?

"Yeah."

Katie feels herself go numb. "Oh," is all she can breathe. Lately, it's been her response to most everything.

"Yeah," Bianca murmurs again, and this time, she twists the ring.

Katie can't help it then. "You really think he's the one?"

"I know he is."

But after the girl says the words, she takes a long drink from her bottle.

…

His fingertips dance up the length of her shoulder, stopping to rest on the blade of it, and everything is so warm. The blanket is heavy, and Jake's breathing is even, and now that even this can't ease her mind completely, Katie knows nothing will.

Not blurry nights with Bianca or vacant, now silent study sessions with Clare.

The rhythm is faltering. She can feel it.

And so when he tries to pull her closer to his chest, Katie rises, sitting upright on his bed and looking out at the night sky. "Come with me," she breathes, as quiet as the forest outside, the same one that used to sing and chirp and shuffle.

"What?"

Jake moves to sit with her, placing a hand on either shoulder.

"Come with me to Hawaii."

He laughs a little; it's the same chuckle it's always been, but without the rhythm, the sound is unsettling and nearly unfamiliar. "You know I can't, Katie."

"Why?" She asks. It was meant to be sharper, but her voice is breaking.

"Because I can't," he murmurs and starts to kiss her neck. She lets him for a few moments, but in the end, must turn away. Suddenly, she's starting to realize how much each of his touches now may hurt her in only a few months.

"Then what are we doing?" She demands, suddenly angry, suddenly livid. And she repeats it with more profundity, because her voice is crescendoing even though there's really nothing left to say. "What. Are. We. Doing?"

"Where is this coming from, Katie?"

She slides off the bed and crosses through the moonlight and into the corner's shadows, a few feet from the door. Instead of answering him, she rests her head against the wall, her back turned to the boy who lays startled and disheveled on the bed. The headlights from outside dance over his face.

"What is this? Th-this . . . thing that we've got between us, is it just going to end in a few months? Has it been like that from the beginning, because I must have missed the memo."

The silence drapes over her back, and she can't tell if it's enveloping or drowning her. The numbness never leaves; there's a part of her (a large, loud part, in fact) that wants nothing more than to crawl back into bed and forget about Hawaii and Clare and the ring on Bianca DeSousa's finger, but it's all too late now.

Jake still hasn't said anything, so she whispers, soft and truthful – yet futile now – that she loves him.

And even to that, he is silent.

"You know, I didn't need this," she says, her voice cracking and breath stuttering. "I was done with Degrassi. I was so done. There wasn't anything keeping me here; in fact, pretty much everything was driving me away from here. All I wanted was to get as far away as possible, and then you came along and screwed everything up!"

"That's not what I meant to do," Jake mutters, looking at her feet, the only part of her still in the light.

And she knows that if there was ever a chance of them making it, this right here is not the answer she needed to hear.

…

By the time she gets home, her make-up is smeared halfway down her face, the eyeliner chalky and dusty. The cab driver, who was a nice man with an unfortunately thickly accented tongue, took a solid five minutes attempting to spit out the question "would you like to talk about it?" Despite the struggle, the driver continued to rephrase and enunciate until Katie understood him, and after all that, she felt rude denying him. So, she blubbered out a simple sentence or two, and, while at first the man's eyes twisted in confusion, it didn't take long for him to pick up on what Katie was saying.

"My wife at home, she didn't want me to leave. But things are better here. One day, she will come to live with me."

In the mirror, his eyes, faded and lined by wrinkles, softened. "Thank you," Katie had whispered in return, and left him ten dollars more than the charge.

Her apartment appears at first to be empty, her father still at work and her mother out shopping. Maya, Katie assumes, is locked up in her room, surrounded by textbooks and old calculators.

But when she stumbles into her room, tears flowing freely at this point and small, mangled sobs getting caught on her lips, Katie finds her little sister sifting through her closet, unwanted blouses and skirts blanketing the floor beneath her.

At first glance, Maya bends down and scoops up a fist-full of the fabric. "I'll clean it up, I swear, and I know you don't like it when I borrow your clothes, but" –

Despite Katie's last moment attempt to wipe away the tears and straighten out her face, it is, predictably, of no use. Maya hesitates, her features becoming soft and careful. "What's going on, Katie?"

"It's nothing," she breathes. "I'm fine. It's nothing."

"Katie, what's wrong?"

Rarely in life does one cry and then proceed to assure those around her that it's "nothing" without expecting them to try again. But this time, it is all Katie wants to be left alone. To curl up in the warmth of her bed sheets and stare at the patterns on the ceiling until they start to dance before her eyes.

So, she takes a different approach with her sister. "I just want to sleep. Just let me sleep for a little while."

And there's something about the way she says the words that makes undoubtedly her sister, and even Katie herself, worry that if she closes her eyes right now, she won't open them again.

…

"Katie, open the door."

She's not sure why, but for a split second, Katie swears it is Bianca DeSousa's voice outside of her room. Of course, it's only Clare, and when she lets herself into the room, she just looks at Katie for a long time with sad, pitying eyes. Sharp, nonetheless. Always so sharp.

"None of this was supposed to happen," Katie whimpers, and Clare bites her lip, as if appraising her patient.

"I know."

"I wasn't ready for this."

And Katie doesn't know if her own words are referring to leaving or falling in love in the first place. All she knows is that Clare Edwards is here for a reason, and it is to finish her with one final blow. To force Katie to meet her gaze of sense and reason once and for all.

"Life never waits for you to be ready," she says, and Katie tries to blink, but it's too late.

…

Graduation day is overwhelming. It's the thoughts, Katie realizes, that are the loudest, most unbearably tear-inducing sounds. Many girls with shallow eyes cry; they cry dainty, little tears and hug each other and make promises they don't intend on keeping.

But the genuine people, the ones who don't talk much (and even the ones that used to talk a lot, used to cry dainty tears, but don't today) – they take it all in, go through the motions in a daze as they memorize it all.

Perhaps, it's Fiona Coyne who makes Katie's throat ache the most. The former high school aristocrat walks the grounds with gentle, aged eyes, hand in hand with her girlfriend, Imogen, a small, owl-eyed girl with nothing to do but move forward. That's how she's always been, Katie thinks, and wonders if perhaps, that's the best way to live life.

Suddenly, there is an overpowering urge within Katie to approach the two girls, to apologize to them for the moment that shattered any chance of a friendship between them and also for the little things, anything she ever may have done to hurt them, even the things she didn't realize.

And with that thought comes the wish to do that for everyone around her. Even the girls with their shallow eyes. If not today, some day, they'll appreciate it.

But the day is heavy, and her throat is melting, and before she knows it, Fiona Coyne and Imogen are gone. She looks for them in the sea of scarlet cloaks, but not hard; she has a feeling they were meant to get away from her. Life, Katie realizes, just isn't life without some things to regret.

…

Jake calls her in the middle of the night, halfway through the summer. They haven't talked since she left him, confused and concealed by the shadows months ago, and not a day has passed since then when she didn't think about calling. Maybe, it was supposed to be her to break the silence; Katie's not entirely sure. At any rate, it's Jake to give in first, and she knows that's rare.

His voice is wide-awake for the first time since she's met him. She can't tell if he's crying or just stuttering a lot. "Look, Katie," he tells her, and then pauses for a long moment to even out his breath, "I hate that we" – He stops.

"I mean, I lie awake every night, and" – He stops.

"I've never felt this way about a girl before, and I just don't know how to" – He stops.

Is her heart soaring or dropping? She can't seem to tell.

"I just don't want to be in love," he finally breathes.

There is a long pause, and the rhythm, once and for all, shatters beyond repair. Many times, he asks her if she's still there, pleads with her to say something, but Katie is numb. She feels as if she is a ghost of herself in the moonlight, looking down at a girl who keeps trying to speak. And she's quiet until he hangs up.

That night, she watches the girl cry herself to sleep.

…

The morning she leaves for the airport is a windy, rainy one. The rustling of the trees is a menacing sound, and it's impossible to believe that months ago, she was welcome to the rhythm of the forest. In fact, it's impossible to believe she had almost found a place here in this city lurking of ghosts.

Clare Edwards' shape cloys in the mist, her curls, now an amber tinted of gray under the stormy sky, as if slung with cobwebs, whipping about her face which is bowed to the soggy earth. She is still and solemn, a messenger sent to bid Katie her final farewell – or perhaps her warning to never return.

"I don't expect you to call," she murmurs, eyes tired and face soft as she lifts the last of the suitcases into the back of Katie's BMW, a car that has lost its shine somewhere along the way. "I get it; I'm the little sister. End things with him, and you end things with me."

She ought to be wounded by the messenger's presumption, Katie knows, and had she known in advance that Clare would say this, Katie's sure she would have expected herself to shrink back, to object immediately. But with the sky fading away and the trees hissing at her to never come back to this dreaded place, Katie supposes maybe it would be best to forget Clare.

After all, it is a foolish thing to leave one light burning in a valley of darkness.

"Maybe, I still will," she mutters and thinks about tagging on the clause "in time," but that, she decides, is a line to be derived from an absurd chic-flick attempting to model an ending open to the mind.

The junior, infinitely wiser than Katie, with her blue, piercing eyes that shine sense and reason on everything just stares dully at her now, eyes watered down to the color of the sky. And Katie looks into them for the answer that always used to be there when she needed it, but there is nothing.

Clare's gaze falls on the front door of the house where Katie's mother slips out into the wind and her little sister hugs her arms around herself, and she breathes a goodbye that is carried off by the breeze.

"I'll call," Katie says after her, already feeling the ache of never seeing Clare again, "I will. I mean it. I don't care about him."

And Clare just gives her a small, half-hearted smile that seems to say there is no truth in Katie's words. It's a gesture that worries Katie, for Clare Edwards is rarely wrong.