KF: Maybe if I don’t shave for a few days…
D?: LOL!
D?: At the risk of sounding like a complete dunce… I didn’t connect Kat with cats. No idea why. Seems kind of obvious now, but I just thought of Kit-Kats.
KF: That’s one of my nicknames.
KF: What about you? You have any nicknames?
D?: Kinda. Not really. None that I really like.
KF: That bad huh?
He didn’t respond right away. Not that I was expecting him to, but suddenly there was a gap in the conversation.
D?: Yes.
D?: Wish I could text more but I’ve gotta go. Later.
“Who ya texting?” Kayley batted her eyes at me from the other side of the table.
I shrugged. “Just some guy.”
“Ooooooooh!” Kayley sang.
I assumed this was an amused teasing kind of call, but evidently it was also some kind of juicy gossip proclamation because within seconds Kimber came barreling down the stairs and into the kitchen, eyes wide, “What’s happening? What’s up? What did I miss?”
“Kat’s been texting Some Guy.” She said it as if ‘Some Guy’ was his name and also someone everyone actually knew.
“What?” Kimber gasped, and I gasped along with her, just for fun. “Tell me everything.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell them everything. I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell them anything actually. I needed to stall. “Okay, but… later?”
Kayley squealed, piercing eardrums several houses away.
“Kayley,” Aunt Josie scolded.
Kayley clamped her hand over her mouth in an ill attempt to contain her squee as everyone looked at her with looks of terror and alarm. Well, everyone that wasn’t Kimber.
I turned to Uncle Tate, who had a finger in his ear. “You ever wonder what life would have been like if you’d had boys?”
“Quieter, less fruity smelling.”
Kayley and Kimber gasped as if they were offended, then Kayley said, “You know you love us.”
“Yes, I do,” Uncle Tate grinned.
・❀・❀・❀・
Later that night, settled into bed with a book, Dominic texted.
D?: Dumbass, but only my gramps calls me that. Dom, people call me this because they think they know me, but if they really knew me, they’d know I hate being called Dom. Dom-Dom, my mom used to call me this. She’s a fucking train wreck. And I guess D-Train, it’s a football thing, the only one I don’t mind, and nobody really calls me that.
From across the room, from behind her own book, Kayley’s brow lifted along with her intrigue, “Is that the guy?”
“Maybe.” I didn’t give her any attention beyond that, my eyes were on my phone, trying to figure out what to reply.
Two seconds later both she and Kimber were on my bed. “It’s later, girlfriend. We need answers.” Kayley explained.
“Okay, just, gimme a second to reply here.” I wasn’t sure what to say. It was hard to think with them staring at me all expectantly. After a half a minute I set my phone down. “Last night of tour, I got a text from a wrong number. We started chatting, we’re still chatting. That’s it.”
“It’s a scam,” Kimber frowned.
“Does Julian know about this?” Kayley folded her arms over her chest.
“Okay, first thing, so far there hasn’t been anything scam like about our conversation, but if it goes that way, I’ll insta block him, so no worries. Second thing, Julian doesn’t have to know every single thing I do, you know? He doesn’t own me.”
Kayley looked doubtful.
I rolled my eyes at her.
“It’s a scam,” Kimber shrugged. “If he wants to meet IRL, say no and tell him you have a gun, because he really just wants to murder and rape you.” She narrowed her eyes. “Probably in that order.”
“Well, at the risk of sounding overly optimistic, I think I’ll be fine. He hasn’t expressed any interest in meeting me in the real world. It was a wrong number, he was upset because his dog had just died, and when I told him he had the wrong number he apologized and that was going to be the end of it. I’m the one that has continued to text here, so if anything, he should be worried about me, the too friendly psycho he misdialed, right?”
“Don’t try and romanticize this,” Kimber pointed a finger at me. “This guy is probably just some really clever stalker.”
I grabbed my phone and read back some of our conversation from today. I started with, “I texted him: ‘Apparently seeing dogs makes me think of you now. I hope you’re doing okay.’” And stopped at Kit-Kat being one of my nicknames.
“Awww,” Kayley cooed. “He actually seems kind of sweet.”
“You know he’s an adult right? I mean, he’s using punctuation and correct grammar,” She pointed at my phone. “Or he’s a nerd. Like you.”
“Omigosh!” Kayley gasped. “What if you two end up getting married! Wouldn’t that be the most amazing, cutest, ‘how we met’ story?”
“Uh….” I started to laugh. “I’m not getting married, maybe not ever, so, it’d be more than amazing, it’d be miraculous.”
Kayley looked confused. “You don’t want to get married?”
I shrugged. “I’m 16 so, I haven’t really given it a lot of thought. Maybe in say… 10 years? I’ll consider thinking about it.”
“You’re weird,” Kayley shook her head.
“That’s not weird, Kayley,” Kimber sighed. “Kat’s a strong independent woman, she doesn’t need a man to complete her.”
“No one needs anyone to complete them, Kimber, holy balls. Both of you need to promise me that you will never — ever — marry because the other person ‘completes you’ I mean seriously, that’s gross.”
“You don’t think that’s romantic?” Kayley tilted her head.
“No. You are all the person you need to be.”
“Good point.” Kimber put her hand up. “I promise.”
Kayley’s lips were pursed, considering.
“Kayley?” I lifted a brow in her direction.
“Okay,” she relented. “I promise too.”
Once they were both back in their own beds I pulled out my phone and reread the message from Dominic and texted back:
KF: Yeah, none of those are great. I have a grandmother who, to my memory, only ever called me Pip-squeak. I hated it so much. One time she got upset with my mom because she didn’t name me after her, and then she threatened to kidnap me and change my name. I was six at the time. I haven’t seen her since. I bet she and your gramps would get on well together, or it would be an interesting fight at least.
D?: HAHAHA!!! I would pay good money to see that!
・❀・❀・❀・
Dear Diary,
I kind of love having short hair!
It dries so fast. It styles quicker. It’s lighter.
And extensions are so awesome. I have so many colors now. Brown of course, to match my natural color, but also red, purple, white, black, auburn, and even a sparkly glittery silver color. It’s so cool. Plus, they’re so long! Some of them come clear down to my butt, and they look so cool in a spin. I’m always worried that one time one of them is going to come flying off, but they’ve held all summer, so I’m slightly less worried now.
So I guess this means my newest hobby is collecting human hair! Well, it’s not all human, that stuff’s expensive and also doesn’t come in sparkly.
Speaking of creepy things, I can take out all the extensions, wash off the make-up and I’m basically unrecognizable. And that means fewer creepers hassling me after shows. I think they assume I’m crew now or something. Don’t know, don’t care.
Living la vida loca — now with short hair,
Kat
・❀・❀・❀・
The first week of school is never without its grief, I swear. Any grade beyond elementary, it almost always comes down to schedule. Doesn’t matter what classes you request, or what classes are available, there’s always going to
be something amiss — or at least that’s how it’s been for me. If there is someone out there whose class schedule arrives to them sparkly and perfect, I would like to meet them because they have been blessed with a unique kind of luck.
I’d been on tour so my schedule was waiting for me at the Emerson’s when I got back, and it was mostly wrong. Not a single Advanced Placement class, but Physical Education, in the form of Gym class, was listed twice. It was as if someone looked at my class requests and marked the opposite of what I’d requested. There was even a note next to the second PE classes that said *special dispensation. The only thing that was even remotely right was the Family and Consumer Sciences class. My ‘easy A’ foods class. And if history held any evidence for the future, I was probably going to lose that one in order to schedule a class I actually needed.
School started in a week. I needed to get ahead of this mess ASAP. I went in to the school the next day. Red-Headed Office Lady tried to be helpful, but there wasn’t much she could do about the mix-ups, I’d have to meet with a guidance counselor, and because I was after AP classes, I’d probably need to have a parent or guardian with me. I literally had five of those at that moment, so you’d think scheduling a time for one of them to come in wouldn’t be such a big thing, but everybody works, and two of them are out of the country so yeah, it kind of is. And then there’s also the guidance counselors schedule…
Julian was still sick when I dragged him into the school two days later to sit down with the Guidance Counselor, Mr. Pringle. Gotta give him credit, dude owned his popular namesake with an extensive collection of Pringles cans. They literally lined the walls of his office, floor to ceiling. It was both impressive and kind of gross. I mean, that’s a lot of chips, you know?
Mr. Pringle seemed chipper and happy and upbeat, in that super annoying ‘you won’t believe how truly unhelpful I can be’ kind of way. I explained the situation, he pulled up my files, frowned, and told me I’d need a parent to sign off on most of the classes.
“That’s why I brought him,” I pointed to a very tired, very grumpy, Julian.
“You can’t just bring your brother in. It needs to be a legal guardian.”
Julian retrieved the files he always carried with him for things like this and set them on the guidance counselors desk. “I know you have copies of all of this. I brought them over myself, in May, when I registered her for classes.”
Pringle looked over the files on his desk, then the ones in his computer, his face thoroughly confused. And then, Bink! Another total coincidence I’m sure, but I swear the fluorescent light above him made that sound and got brighter at the same moment he realized… I don’t know, something. Something like the monumental mix-up that was my schedule And how utterly absurd it was to have two gym classes?
Pringle cleared his throat and bounced his gaze back and forth between Julian and his computer screen half a dozen times before saying, “You’re Julian Romero?”
Julian nodded.
“Arts in Motion?”
“That’s the one.”
Mr. Pringle gave a nervous little laugh. It was weird. “This will only take… just… a mo…ment.” His whole sentence became long and annoyingly drawn out as his eyes became transfixed on the computer screen, darting around at the lines of information, his lips pursed. I think it was his concentrating face. There was some serious mouse movements, like the kind where you have to pick up the mouse and reposition it in order to keep moving the cursor the rest of the way across the screen, a little bit of typing and eventually, about ten minutes later, Pringle printed off my new schedule.
And it was perfect. AP classes in the morning, Independent Studies after lunch, followed by Spanish and I even got to keep my ‘easy A’ FCS class at the end of the day.
“You did something didn’t you?” I asked Julian as we walked back to the car.
Julian shrugged. “His daughters take dance now.”
Yep, Julian the hero, saves it again.
・❀・❀・❀・
The Friday before the first day of school was new student orientation, but pretty much everybody called it sophomore orientation. Including Mr. Pringle, who recommended I go so that I could figure out where everything was before my official first day. Kayley was going to be there, and I was her ride, so it made sense.
Orientation consisted of a presentation in the auditorium a tour of the school, locker assignments, and everybody figuring our where their classes were. As special torture, certain seniors had been assigned to assist, these ended up being student council members, and members of the athletics teams.
If your name wasn’t on your shirt, like the guys on the football and basketball teams, who were mostly the same guys, you got a crappy stick on name tag. Mine read: KATIE because in school, that’s the name I go by.
It’s been this way since early Kindergarten. And for the stupidest of reasons: Kat Franks, is easier to make fun of than Katie Franks. My Kindergarten bully was called Trevor Flynn. In Trevors family, Franks were synonymous with hot dogs. So my name, to him was basically Cat Hot Dog, which he found so hilarious that he would literally fall to the floor laughing when he heard it. So my teachers started calling me Katie. It wasn’t a far stretch, others have called me Katie. “Dad” in quotes, for one, and at the time, only. But, as it turned out, Katie Hot Dog had no comedic value to Trevor. And after a couple of months he mostly forgot about it, but would occasionally remind me of the time he thought my name was Cat Hot Dog and how funny it was. He moved away in 3rd grade. Praise the Frankfurter Cat Gods, but the name Katie stuck.
Back to the future, the orientation presentation was almost as lame as how I came to be called Katie, but at least it was brief. After that we were divided into groups to be escorted around by one of the seniors. Kayley and I got put with a group that was led by a girl called Adria, who was on the cheer squad. Sweet girl, bright-eyed, cheery, over exaggerated mannerisms. Anytime she wasn’t sure of an answer to something like, “How long is lunch?” she’d put her finger to her lip, look up at the ceiling and say, “Hmmmmmmmm. I. Don’t. Know.” And then she’d flag one of the other seniors and ask. “Ryan, how long is lunch?” It was usually Ryan she asked, and Ryan seemed to know all the things, so it made sense. Also, Ryan is super cute. He’s tall, and fit, and has light brown hair, cool blue eyes, and dimples when he smiles. And he has a great smile.
“Forty minutes,” Ryan informed.
Adria shrugged.“I just listen for the bells.”
Going over my schedule so I knew where my classes were going to be Adria and I discovered we had Independent Study together. She told me it was her favorite class and invited me to join her after school study group. “We meet Tuesdays and Thursdays and it’s like so much fun.”
“Uhm. Maybe. Do you actually study?” I had to ask because, Independent Study is pretty much the same thing as having a free hour for most kids, but it was serious get all the homework done time for me.
“Oh yeah, for sure,” Adria insisted. “Aimee Millington is in the group and she wants to be valedictorian this year; she’s super studious.”
“Okay. I work on Thursdays, could I come just on Tuesdays?”
“Yeah, that’d be abso-fab.”
Chapter 5
Sunday was a much needed do nothing day. My last big laze before school started. I was looking forward to doing as little as humanly possible. I brushed my teeth and felt as if that were accomplishment enough for the day.
Kayley was freaking out that summer was over and her tan would soon have to be store bought if she wanted it to stay. Kimber and I were still in PJs and were both intending to stay that way, but Kayley decided we should have a pool party and grill instead. She dragged their old pink kiddie pool out of the garage, filled it with water and convinced Uncle Tate we were going to need our foods cooked on the grill for every meal that wasn’t breakfast.
Kimber and I put on bikini’s and sunscreen, Kimber pulled her hair up into a messy bun and we laid out on the
trampoline while Kayley tried to plan an impromptu end of summer party. By noon, about 15 of her friends had showed up to drink sodas, listen to music and eat what mostly consisted of chips and Oreos.
Uncle Tate grilled dogs and burgers and Kimber and I moved from the trampoline onto towels under a shady tree and Kimber fell into her book. It was one I’d read before. I knew she’d made it to the first kiss, in chapter two, when she got quiet and stopped giving me a play by play of what she was reading.
I took a picture of my toes in the long grass and sent it to Dominic.
KF: Lawn needs mowing. How’s your weekend treating you?
D?: LOL. I just finished mowing! Just about to hop in the shower. There’s something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about. Kind of like a favor I guess? Trying not to overthink it, totally am. Back in 20.
A favor? My brain had absolutely no choice but to puzzle over the kind of favor he could possibly be after. I also wondered if he sent that text naked. Normally my brain would have set me up with some imagery of that thought, but I had no idea what Dominic looked like — at all. So I just thought about Bix, and how dogs are basically expected to be naked and nobody seemed to mind, but naked people was just so scandalous. Probably because humans are both judgy and insecure.
Eighteen ‘nakedness and nature contemplating’ minutes later, he texted back.
D?: Did you mean what you said about texting you if I ever need someone to talk to?
Kit Kat & Katie Did Page 5