Learning to Spell - Chapter 3
All Things Being Equal (and Girly)
by GirlyCheerBoy
The sun was shining through a break in the curtains and was starting to warm her face. Slowly she lifted her hand to her face to brush aside some loose hair hanging across her cheek. The sun hit fully now, lightening her eyes with an intense glow that almost hurt. She had been asleep for a while apparently. Her eyes needed a moment to adjust. She slowly began to blink them open, fighting tears as she did - caused just by the shock of bright light suddenly.
As she began to move a little, trying to wrestle some flexibility into her rigid and tense body she began to become vaguely aware of voices. Softly speaking they sounded confused or surprised. Had something just happened? What was the big deal, didn't they wake up sore once in a while? No, it wasn't about her; well not like that. It was about HER! They seemed more interested in her being there than her condition. She turned her head towards the bulk of the voices as she sat upright.
Slowly shapes formed and in the soft morning light people began to come into focus. It took only a few seconds, but it felt like forever to the girl. The voices came back to different people, a bunch of girls - mostly in their mid-teens. As the faces became clear recognition of them became so too. Sarah, her sister, only a year and a half older and closing on her "Sweet 16." Stacy, her best friend in the whole world, just a few months younger than she was, being close to 13 years old. How much she wanted to be in the 'teenage group' with the rest of them. Ashley, Sarah's best friend and co-captain of the cheerleading team they were both on. She was regarded as the prettiest of them to many, but Ashley would never admit to that, quite possibly she didn't believe it. She had a deep and true friendship with the others present that it wouldn't matter if it was true, or completely the other way. For that Ashley found herself popular among others, and very admired among her close friends. Tara was Ashley's younger sister, and she too was growing up to look just like Ashley, save for her slightly darker hair and hazel eye (her sister's were brown). Tara was the most vociferous among the group, being close in age, but still younger than the oldest, and being a lot more outgoing and personable. She more fit the stereotype of a cheerleader. She was said to have never met a stranger and that no one, aside from the self-proclaimed anti-social Goth girls, disliked her. And finally Beth. She was the quietest of the group, well next to Stacy and herself anyway. The girl regarded her carefully. She had a strong personality and will, but was bound by a self-imposed moral ethic that most considered very 'conservative' - almost to a fault. It never kept her from enjoying Ballet or Gymnastics, though you'd never catch her skirts as short as she wore in either, and never in the 'typical workout shorts' she'd wear in the gym outside of the gym and without her leotards. She wore the longest possible uniform too, almost knee-length. For obvious reasons she declined being on the cheerleading team, despite the physical prowess that would have allowed her to excel at it. She is almost a bookworm...
"Kaitie?" Sarah asked softly. "Are you ok?" She all but fell on her knees, landing hard on the floor. She reached out and grabbed Kaitie's face with her palms gently, but firmly.
"Yea," Kaitie said with a flair of attitude. "Of course I am." She gave her sister a confused look.
"What were you doing?" Stacy asked her, coming down on her knees next to Kaitie as well. "We were so scared when that blast... and..."
Suddenly it flashed before her eyes. Kaitie had a split second of realization of her condition. For a brief moment she felt that she was no longer Kurt or Kaitie, but that she was everyone, or in everyone. There was a sense of power and a permeating understanding of everything. She could here, no she was the thoughts that each of the girls were having as they had them... before they had them. She was aware of time and that this sensation somehow left her outside of it, apart from it, but still connected to a point of it. She turned in some abstract manner, seeing the room blur around until a second after she stopped. They were all concerned, but there was something stronger she felt... Then she saw them...
Dangling on the necks of the Ashley and Tara; two crystal necklaces were glowing intensely bright, lighting the room as if the sunlight itself shone through them. Kaitie could feel a strong magnetic pull of the crystals but felt a caution, a fear almost, that kept her from touching them. Still there was a great power in them, and it was calling to her, it wanted out!
"Oh my goodness!" Beth said, pointing at the two girls with the necklaces, who were aware of the bright light coming from them by this point.
"Kaitie?" Stacy asked, looking at her friend a moment trying to reconcile what memories were real and which were magically fabricated. Did she really spend those three summers in a row at Camp Wallakachu for girls? Did they really enjoy Ballet classes and that Magical Princess party for their twelfth birthdays... Were their birthdays REALLY both on the same day; the same remarkable and rare day?! It didn't matter Stacy decided to herself. Kaitie was Kaitie now and those memories, real or not, were there because these were things that helped form who she now was. It would be easier, perhaps even better, to accept them and move on knowing they are closer as friends than they were as acquaintances before.
"I'm ok Stacy." Kaitie said slowly. "I just had an odd feeling for a moment or two." She shook her head, blinking her eyes and bringing back some clarity to them that Sarah and Stacy thought they'd lacked a moment before. "I am ok." She smiled. "Promise."
"Oh Kaitie!" Sarah almost fell on her in hugging her suddenly. She had pushed aside the false memories already, knowing what they were and what they meant to the situation, and the girl in front of her. But she knew her brother was still in there too, and now her sister. Even if she didn't understand it, she knew the magic that had fused or separated the two inside Kaitie was complete and that it was this way from now on. Even the spirit from before had told them on numerous occasions that she couldn't help Stacy, and that was a minor change she had said. Surely Kaitie's existence was far more than minor!
A sudden knock at the door disrupted the moment Sarah and Kaitie shared, and the conversation between Beth, Ashley, and Tara over the sudden outburst of light (and sudden loss of said light) from their necklaces as Kaitie first came to. Was it connected?
"Can I open up?" A man's voice said... "Are you little ladies all decent?" He asked, in a half joking, but well-meaning tone.
"Sarah?" Kaitie asked, half-recognizing the voice... "Could it be?"
"No!" Sarah said sharply. "It's not possible!"
"Daddy?!" They yelled in unison. A moment later he opened the door, their father. Alive and well, and looking very healthy and strong - not the battered and weak image they had last seen in the hospital a few years before. Though that image had been burned into their memory before neither of them could remember it now.
"Well hello." He said laughing, catching his two daughters in his arms as they all but leapt onto him hugging him "I've not been gone that long." He said, kissing them both on the forehead or top of the head before letting them down.
"Daddy..." Sarah said, wiping tears from her eyes. "I've missed you." She said, with much more emotion and power than she knew, and that he didn't quite understand.
"Me too." Kaitie said, likewise wiping tears from her face.
"Oh you two." He said with a sigh. "Such silly girls. My precious princesses." He knelt down so he was a little shorter than they were but so that he could look them in the eyes easier. "I love you two too."
"You mom is making all you girls breakfast." He started, after a few quiet moments of hugging his girls - and reaching out and taking the other three in a large group hug too. He was known to all Sarah's friends before he died as a loving 'Daddy away from Daddy,' as Stacy had put it once. They all liked him and respected him. To Beth, whose father had left her mother when she was only an infant, he was almost the Dad she never had; and more than her Stepfather cared to be. "Why don't you get dressed or get a robe or something on and come join us ladies." He said standing, patting Kaitie on the rear as he did.
"Daddy!" Kaitie said giggling, teasing him about the send off. "I am almost thirteen." She said, striking a pose in her teddy nightgown, realizing only second later her panties were showing before she jerked to the side blushing deeply. The girls erupted in laughter at something that was so 'typically Kaitie.'
Laughing her Dad replied, "Thirteen or thirteen hundred, you'll always be my baby girl." To which Kaitie could only smile from behind her bed headboard in embarrassment. "I'll see you ladies downstairs." He left, chuckling to himself.
"You dad?!" Beth asked amazed.
"Kaitie?" Sarah looked at her sister. "Did you?"
"No..." She said, remembering the spell casting the night before. Was that what they thought he was doing? Oh no, what would they do or say when they found out what it REALLY was about? She thought a moment. She should tell them... right now. "That was more of a personal thing." She said slowly.
"Personal?" Stacy asked. "Like what?"
"Well..."
As Kaitie started Tara shut the bedroom door, sensing a serious conversation starting. And with Magic being involved she didn't want it to be overheard. At their ages they were too old to seriously imagine these kinds of things happening and no telling what Sarah and Kaitie's parents would think if they thought the girls were make-believe playing, and believing their own stories.
"Actually, it was to get someone to like me." Kaitie said quickly, and quietly. She had hoped they wouldn't make it out and let it be, but Stacy had heard it... Her sharp hearing as always. A nod from her told her that they wanted to know the details. "And well when I was trying it you busted in and..." She paused, then pulled her hands together. "Boom!" She said quietly but with am emphasis to denote force, throwing her hands up and away like an explosion took place between her palms.
"You were trying to make a girl like you?" Ashley asked. "That's silly. You were a sweet and fun-loving guy. Any girl would be silly not to say yes if you'd ask her out." She smiled.
"You didn't." Kaitie said plainly, not intending to sound as sharp as she feared she did.
"Well..." Ashley was suddenly nervous and looked at everyone around.
"Wait, it was Ashley?" Sarah asked. Looking at Ashley and then back at Kaitie.
"And I had gotten some things..." Kaitie continued, pretending to not hear her sister's question.
"Oh. Ashley." Stacy said almost disappointed, but trying to not let it show. If not for Kaitie being so close she might not have even heard it; same for Sarah. But as it was, they both did, and looked at each other a moment.
"It wasn't Ashley." Kaitie said plainly a moment later, loud and forceful enough that it stopped all whispered conversations or straying looks of contemplation - all eyes were on her.
"Before I go on..." Kaitie said. "How did you know to come here to me?"
"We saw your bracelet in a vision when we cast to find the source of the magic our crystals alerted us to." Tara said. "And Stacy, having made it, recognized it."
"Well there's a reason you saw it." She smiled and looked at Stacy, who leapt to her side hugging her and kissing her cheek. Kaitie looked over Stacy's shoulder to Sarah who smiled, and had that 'I know, and you did good.' look on her face. Surely she knew Kurt had really targeted Ashley, but it was a good thing he did in lying to not pressure her, and to not break Stacy's heart. Surely Sarah would let this one slide...
As luck would have it, for Kaitie, Sarah did let it slide. She told Kaitie only much later, after the girls had gone that she knew the truth, and had suspected that was an ulterior motive (well to get close to anyway) when he first came down and joined their sleepover - despite the antics they put him through. She also told Kaitie something that almost made her cry and laugh at the same time. Beth and Ashley weren't just good friends, but secretly girlfriends - as in the dating kind. Even at their age they knew they weren't interested in boys. Kaitie laughed until she hurt and made herself cry over that. All that time as Kurt pining over a girl that he thought was being polite and sweet because she liked him, but torturing him by not accepting a date... all this time she wasn't interested in him because he wasn't a girl! Now that she found someone and thought he wasn't interested anymore... he was a girl! It was too funny, and Sarah and Kaitie started a new family activity, a sister activity... that evening they wrote about their recent activities, and thoughts, into their 'Sisterhood Book'; a combined diary they'd both write in to be completely open with each other. It was a promise to each other they knew they could work, despite the age and growth differences sisters tend to go through... Kaitie and Sarah somehow knew their relationship would be special.
:: AUTHOR'S NOTE ::
Well here is the intro to the new life for Kaitie. Sorry for the long delays and thank you for the kind words in the reviews. They meant a lot to me. I will try to get the newer stuff worked on and posted more timely next time, and I hope that the future works will have more "action" in them. Also, there is a "battle" between good and bad planned, some exploration of Sarah and Kaitie's relationship, Beth and Ashley's, and of course Kaitie's and Stacy's relationship will have to be talked about and clarified - and of course it will evolve with the story and the characters.
I had some personal issues that kept this from coming out sooner and I don't know that I'll do the next few chapters before other ideas I've wanted to write on (a "girly super hero" team thing - a parody on the "Magical Girl" idea in Anime crossed with some good-old-fashioned TG elements) first. I don't want to force this story and get burned out, but I don't want to neglect it either. I will try to perhaps alternate between the two - and of course, if anyone has comments please e-mail me.
:: END OF AUTHOR'S NOTE ::
*********************************************
© 2005 by GirlyCheerBoy~Kitten. All Rights Reserved. These documents (including, without limitation, all
articles, text, images, logos, and compilation design) may be printed for personal use only. No
portion of these documents may be stored electronically, distributed electronically, or
otherwise made available without the express written consent of StorySite and the copyright holder.