Summary: Charlotte’s a popular, rich, cat-loving gal who doesn’t want anything to do with pierced and tattooed dog-loving outcasts. So why is the new kid, Jeremiah, following her around? It’s infuriating and it’s terrifying her friends. But when an after school activity pulls them closer together, maybe they’ll find they have more in common than they thought, even if his dog is always trying to kill her cat.

I'm pretty much testing the waters here, so if the story sucks, just tell me

Oil and Water, Cats and Dogs

Chapter One: One of the Bradys, But Bitchier

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Irish Proverb: Beware of people who dislike cats.

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I’m sure there was a time in my life when I believed in fate. That disappeared about the time that Barbie’s began to seem a little silly.

There was a time when I believed in happy endings.

I’m sure. I can’t recall the time off the top of my head, but I have this vague feeling of once feeling warm in the belief that, even if boys found me repulsive then, there was no way I could grow up without having found my prince charming.

There was a time, I’m sure, when cats and dogs got along.

That’s my way of telling you that there’s no way in hell I could go back to believing in the things that made my younger years so blissfully happy. Because, though I was happy, I was also naïve. Not to say I’m some jaded, down-on-her luck, bitter, scorned woman.

After all, I’m only seventeen. What could have possibly happened in those seventeen years to make me regard all happiness as an elaborate hoax?

Well, let’s see.

Once upon a time…

There was a girl named Charlotte Jillian Tucker. That girl is me. I was sweet, I was popular, I was (I like to think) rather pretty. I only let people see the best side of me, and they loved that side.

“Where the hell are my tampons!”

Okay, so I had my off mornings. Everyone does.

As if the word ‘tampon’ were a curse not fit for human ears, one of my older brothers, Justin, currently sitting solitary at the kitchen table, grimaced in horror and looked down at his cereal, as if expecting something unpleasant to be there, something like the image my words had conjured in his mind.

“Charlie,” he whined in protest, looking abjectly pathetic as he lifted his sad face from where it had been hanging in exhaustion. It was the exhaustion only a Monday morning can bring, and I would’ve felt perhaps an ounce of pity if I weren’t so sure either he or his twin brother had pilfered a very necessary item from my bathroom cabinet.

“Justin,” I snarled, marching forward and slamming my hands on the table. He jumped back and looked slightly more awake as he eyed me warily. “Where. Did. You put. Them. Because if I do not get my TAMPONS!” I yelled that awful word for the pleasure of seeing him leap about a foot out of his chair, even more horrified. “There is going to be an unpleasant situation on our hands.”

“Q-Quinn,” he stammered, nodding spastically. “I’ll go see if Quinn knows. Okay?” The legs of his chair tripped him up in his panic to be out of the room.

His twin, Quinn, the Quinn Twin, wouldn’t have been so easy to rattle, and it was for precisely that reason that I was grateful to him for being a lazy bum, as it meant I was sitting down for a quite breakfast alone, without the chaos of a full-blown episode of the Tucker Family Madness, a relief after my struggle to get ready, which involved me hopping on one foot to paint my toenails, attempting to straighten my bangs with a very hot appliance, and stabbing at my mouth with a toothbrush. I’m proud to say that, unlike the Bradys and other such unworthy families that don’t know the meaning of contraceptives, we were in the seventeenth season and still going strong.

Justin’s cereal was soggy so I dumped it out and got another bowl to pour myself some Special K. I chewed thoughtfully until the tell-tail uneven thump on the stairs announced Quinn’s descent. He’d broken his leg really badly in his junior year of high school, in three places, requiring surgery. He claimed the scar attracted chicks.

“You’ve been terrorizing Justin with exorbitant mentions of your feminine issues again, haven’t you, Lottie?” he asked, condescending but fond, long used to the games his younger brother of four minutes and his younger sister of five years were constantly playing, pitting themselves against each other in an all out war that had raged for well over a decade.

“If he hasn’t realized it’s a physical impossibility for me to be in dire need of my tampons for three weeks in a row, then he doesn’t deserve to eat a peaceful breakfast,” I said haughtily.

Quinn shook the box of Coco Puffs. “At least you prevented him from finishing off the Puffs. Owe you one, Lottie.”

I gave him a two-finger salute and grinned. “I’ll just scribble another I.O.U. next to your name in my special little book.”

“How many does that make, my anal retentive skinflint?”

“Approximately 397. That’s not including saving you from Karen’s clutches. That was complementary, for being a t-rrific oldest brother,” I said with a mockingly sappy grin. He winked and dug into his cereal.

“So what’d you do with Justin?” I asked around a mouthful of Special K.

“Quinn! Quiiiiinn! They aren’t in mom’s bathroom, and I’ll be damned if I’m going through her underwear drawer. Charlie, if you want them that badly you can do it yourself. You’re a woman! This is not a task suited for someone of my…sensibilities!” Justin howled down the stairs, outrage poured into every syllable.

The two of us at the table cracked up. “He always gets eloquent when he’s freaked out,” Quinn chuckled. I glanced up at the clock, and jumped to my feet with a whoop of alarm.

“Shit, the bell is ringing as we speak!”

“Oh calm down! The late bell isn’t for another five minutes, and I know the way you drive!” he shouted after me, somehow conveying both censure and laughter in his voice.

He was right about my driving, it was a little erratic, and it was a rare day when I stayed below or even on the speed limit for more than the time than it took to rev up the engine. Even so, my Jetta was in peak condition.

I screamed into a back spot in the parking lot with seconds to spare, and since I’m not exactly light on my feet, the echoes of the late bell had died out by the time I slid into the hall. By then I’d dismissed an on-time arrival as a definite impossibility, and I took my time as I smoothed down my skirt and sauntered to class.

I know what kind of effect I have. I’m tall, blond-haired and blue-eyed, I have the facial bone-structure my mom’s good breeding gave me, and the slim build of my dad’s family. So even though my first impression on my teachers might have been less than favorable on the first day (where I had also been late), the impact on my classmates after a summer of separation was somewhat more amicable.

And it was no different today. Mrs. Shea’s European History classroom was still noisy when I opened the door, but somehow she was able to spot me through the crowd of milling, sleepwalking students.

“Ah, Ms. Tucker, so nice of you to join us. Would you care to explain why you were so late this morning?”

Heads turned my way and the class slowly settled down, sitting as I walked past, watching me, like they always do. Although Mrs. Shea was the teacher, in actuality the class was mine. Every single person in here would kill to talk to me, be seen with me. It was disheartening to know that all of that popularity was because of my rabble-rousing brothers, but as a freshman coming in the year after Quinn and Justin graduated, I had taken what I could get, and now I was popular in my own right.

Everyone in European History was a senior because the class had been new in sophomore year and all the smart kids had taken it. During junior year it didn’t happen because there weren’t enough people, and now, during our final year in Beckford High School, it was only available for seniors, which meant the dumb people who hadn’t taken it before signed up.

I’d like to take this moment to say that I am not really dumb. Most people would laugh if they heard me say that, but I’m not. I was in the top 10 of my class, but that was a little known fact and I liked to keep it that way. However, during freshman year, seduced by my new popularity, I didn’t try as hard as I should have. There were extenuating circumstances, but I won’t go into that right now. My schedule for sophomore year was the lightest I had ever had, and even as I felt ashamed because I knew I should’ve been aiming higher, I basked in the warmth of so many people’s adoration.

“I was so busy torturing my brother about stealing my tampons that I completely lost track of the time,” I said, my voice dripping with remorse.

There was general laughter. It sometimes got annoying, being constantly surrounded by ‘Yes Men and Women’, but it was gratifying.

Only one face was unsmiling, and it was a face I, surprisingly since I know everyone, didn’t recognize. Mrs. Shea must have caught my look.

“Oh, since you were late, my dear, you weren’t here to meet our new student. Mr. Reuben, please stand up and introduce yourself again so that darling Ms. Tucker doesn’t have to suffer the knowledge that she lacks the latest gossip.”

I was an unorthodox popular girl, but I was still a prep, something that Mrs. Shea obviously had never been. Not surprising since she was frumpy, with a thick pair of glasses complete with awful frames.

The guy had been startling enough sitting down, but when he unfolded himself from his chair, I saw that in addition to brilliantly red, messily spiked hair, he had a lip piercing and two eyebrow piercings. He wore what seemed to be a habitual scowl with his brow drawn low over hazel eyes, and I mentally logged him in with the other ‘punks’ in our school.

“I’m Jeremiah.” His voice was scratchy, like he never used it, and he sat down, slumping down in his baggy ‘Adopt a Ninja’ shirt. Not once did he look at me, and for some reason that infuriated me.

But the rule of the endless war between the upper end of the social spectrum and the punks was not to let them get to you. So I just smiled brilliantly as I welcomed him, making sure my friends knew I was being fake in my enthusiasm, and then sat down at my desk near the back. Mrs. Shea looked angry.

“Now that we can finally get to our lesson,” she spat, glaring hard at me as if she had had complete control up until the instant I walked in, “who would like to tell me about the man who said ‘Paris is worth a mass’?”

It was October, about a week before Halloween. That date is nailed into my mind as my first encounter with Jeremiah Augustus Reuben, soon to become the biggest pain in my ass since my little sister Lila hit puberty. And I don’t count that little introduction in class as our first meeting. Oh no. I had a much more reasonable basis for despising him.

The Massachusetts weather had a definite bite to it—during the evening it crawled down to 44 F—and while other girls in my crowd wore the same mini-skirts and stomach-bearing shirts as they had during the summer season, I was a bit more practical in my skirt and long-sleeved shirt. It was still chic, but it left a little to the imagination. The other girls in the ‘Fantastic Four’, which was the derisive name given us by the more bitter elements in the school, had never really understood the meaning of ‘class’.

Plus I don’t think they had older brothers that would lock them in closets if they ever tried to leave the house looking like a whore.

AP European History opened into study hall for most of the individuals in the class. I, however, was off to art. It had been a rash decision on my part; I hadn’t done an art class since elementary school. But during that summer before senior year I’d done a favor for my best and only real friend Rebecca by accompanying her to an art class. I discovered that I enjoyed it, and called my counselor to make a last-minute switch out of study hall. It was only by luck that I ended up in Rebecca’s class.

My counselor, Ms. Brennan, was the only adult in that school that really understood me. All of my friends complained about their counselor’s as unhelpful bores, but with stronger language. Ms. Brennan, however, had steered me onto the straight and narrow path after I ran to her in tears after ending my freshman year with a D and two C’s. She told me I just needed to get back on track. I think she was the only reason I ended my junior year with straight A’s. She’s the reason why I stopped truly caring about how I appeared to the people around me and only pretended to care.

It infuriates bitches when you smile and they know you should be crying. I destroyed a girl sophomore year because when she lost her head, I was the cool, collected one. It was after that that I made a promise to myself never to use my status to hurt anyone ever again. That girl never came back to school, and I was more ‘in’ than ever.

The one thing I regret more than anything is that my newfound status went to my head enough for my visits to the cemetery to dwindle down to, at most, once a month. It was more than the twins could manage, but it still made me sick to my stomach, for all I made excuses to myself.

But more on that later.

The art teacher was one of only two males I’d had since starting high school. My other one had been an insane head case that taught Algebra 2 like it was the only thing that could save us from certain doom. This old guy was much more chill, and that was definitely appreciated in a school full of the crazy, the bitchy, and the downright cruel.

“This is yet another self-portrait project, and no complaining!” he chided as a groan began to build from our toes up. “It’s only a matter of time before the winter show down at the Vertoni! Today’s theme is greenery. And don’t use berries for eyes, because that’s just going to look kind of creepy.”

I chuckled as I set up my sketchpad and waited for Becca to cross over and sit on the stool next to me.

I wordlessly held out my hand, and in it she deposited her compact. Whereas she was used to these assignments and had a big mirror tucked in her cubbyhole along with her supplies, I had skipped ahead to this class, and was always unprepared.

“So, have you seen the new guy?” she asked. I was expressionless as I answered in the affirmative by way of grunting. “Ah, not a good run in for the queen bee, eh?”

Becca always called me the ‘Queen Bee’ to take me down a notch, and I’m not lying when I say that, though I resented it sometimes, in truth I ended up appreciating it more than the fawning of my lackeys.

As we began to draw, she asked me about my weekend.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t come to the party on Saturday,” she added as I mentally organized my response. “But Mrs. Lackey was really riding my ass about that paper, and I figured a 50 is better than a 0.”

I’d finished my paper almost a week early out of boredom and the feeling that I was letting myself fall behind again. If I told Becca that, she’d just call me an overachiever. Besides my family, not including my mother who was always so wrapped up in work one would hardly knew she existed in our household, she was the only one who knew that my grades weren’t those of a typical blond bimbo.

Becca wasn’t part of the “popular” group, though me being who I was I could have easily snuck her in. She was about an inch shorter than me, with long black hair, dark eyes, and a sardonic smirk. Other members of the ‘Fantastic Four’ called her a Goth, but she definitely wasn’t. True, she had her own style, but her wardrobe certainly wasn’t entirely black, and she didn’t put on as much makeup as the raccoon-eyed girls who followed me around. She was real, and it shows how much I really distanced myself from my other friends by the fact that none of them knew the two of us were closer than sisters.

“It’s okay, it was just the same old. You know, pointless,” I replied with a shrug, making my hair out of ferns as I scribbled away.

“Awe, did you miss me?”

“Not at all. Hardly noticed you were gone.” We grinned at each other and went back to work.

At the end of the day, after going through the torture of Calculus and the agonizing pain of Chemistry, I went to a lovely gray car with an enormous scratch down the side which was flaked with red paint. I narrowed my eyes. I don’t know how I knew who’d done it, but I instantly lifted my head to scan for a red-haired fuckhead.

I saw him leaning against a red car with a gray line along the edge of his passenger-side door.

As sweetly as I could manage while my teeth were threatening to grind each other into dust, I smiled and approached him, making sure to keep my step swinging and my strides calm.

Normally I would have beat him down with words. So I’m not quite sure what made me jerk my knee up. All I know is that it was extremely humorous to hear that squeak, and equally delightful to find that I was in a position I was used to—standing tall, looking down on him.

But I don’t even count that as our first real encounter, because there were no words exchanged thanks to my actions.

No, the first encounter happened at about six o’clock that night.

I was waiting outside for my mom to get home from her high-falutin’ job as editor of what she called a business journal and what I called a corporate rag. She took my sarcasm in stride, of course, because she felt she deserved the digs, being that she was never home. It was more habit for me then; I understood why she had to work almost every hour of every day, how could I not? She was a single mother with a big house, having to provide for two kids at home and two kids in college.

My oldest cat, an almost comatosely calm animal named Darcy, was sleeping in my lap, and my youngest, Scotia, wound excitedly around my feet, brushing her tail against the insides of my knees as she swept through the shelter of my bent legs again and again. The calico kept crying, no doubt for the food she’d already been fed. She wasn’t a very pretty cat, wasn’t a very smart cat, but she was by far the softest.

And being young and inexperienced in the ways of domestic animals, Scotia did something extremely stupid when a mangy dog appeared out of nowhere and began barking violently. Whereas Darcy blinked sleepily and curled deeper into a ball, Scotia took off. The slobbering beast tore after her.

The older cat was more than a little perturbed when I jumped to my feet, dumping him out of my lap, but he only succeeded in swatting at my bare foot half-heartedly before I scooped up my high-heels and broke into a run down the street.

Scotia finally listened to whatever logic was in that tiny, crazy cat-brain of hers, and she shimmied up the tallest tree in the neighborhood, hissing and spitting at the dog that circled the trunk. The barking was getting on my nerves.

I kicked at it and peered up into the branches, meeting her glowing eyes with a glower.

“Come on, baby. It’s okay, I’m here. Don’t let this thing,” I said, lashing out again to emphasize the last word, “scare you.” I growled and finally took a break to clumsily put on my heels.

She climbed to a higher branch and I cursed, turning my glare on the dog and leaning over to grasp a heavy stick half-concealed in my neighbor’s lawn. I wouldn’t have hit it, but I wanted to scare it a little. But that didn’t work, because it just barked again, joyfully, and snagged the end, turning the situation into a mini-tug-of-war.

“Argh, you mutt!” I finally shouted, shoving the stick forward so the thing had to run around in a little circle before it got its balance back. Then it edged closer, waggling the stick. “I am not playing with you. Shoo. Leave my poor cat alone.”

“I don’t think my dog speaks your language.”

Guess who’s dog it was. No no, just guess.

“And what language is that?” I demanded, whirling around to face the punk that had maimed my car as my anger rose. “Huh? Angry female? Blond?”

“Woah, you said it, not me,” he cackled, holding his hands up in a placating gesture.

“Ha!” I exploded, reaching boiling point. “That’s funny! You get to be a coward and not give a real answer.” I then interrupted him before he could say whatever ‘funny/sarcastic’ thing was swimming sluggishly through his brain matter. “I suggest you get your dog away from my cat before I stomp a crater in his face.”

I smiled sweetly and shifted meaningfully on my shoes.

“You touch my dog and I’ll kill you, sweety pie,” he said silkily.

“I doubt that thing is worth life in prison,” I scoffed, jerking my head in the dog’s direction.

“And I’m thinking your cat would make a fine tennis-racket,” he snapped back angrily, calling his dog to him with a sharp whistle and snapping a leash on it.

“Why wasn’t that thing on him in the first place?” I cried. “No dogs are allowed on these streets without a leash, you moron.” I was being awfully brave considering this guy looked like an escaped convict. And as he jerked his dog around to step onto the sidewalk, I saw a tattoo on his wrist. That would make him at least 18!

“Oh, sorry, princess. I guess since I don’t live in this Barbieland you might call a neighborhood, I wasn’t aware of your asshole rules.” With that he turned and started to leave.

“Well why don’t you just walk your mutt in your fucking alleys then, dumbass?!? Let him pick through the trash there instead of dirtying up our streets.” I knew it was a stupid thing to say even before he stiffened and whipped around. I was honestly scared right then. But he didn’t come any closer.

“Right, like your streets are so pristine, you stupid bitch.” His voice was so dark and deadly that I stopped breathing, and he smirked when he saw the look on my face, running his tongue over his lip ring. “What, first time someone’s called you on being a slut? Get used to it, because once you leave your fucking mansion, you’ll be ripe for guys like me.”

I flushed an angry, appalled red, more at the lascivious tone than his obvious hatred of me, or even the filth he was spewing. I went hot and then very cold, and by the time I’d gotten control of myself, he was going around the corner.

I was breathing hard like I’d been running the entire time.

I looked up at Scotia, who was crying again, and I tried to ignore the embarrassed heat across the back of my neck and across my brow.

“Come here.”

I eventually gave up and decided she would find her way home that night. I had too much to think about to worry about her, especially since I was swallowing back tears.

I ignored Justin when he asked me what was wrong. Pausing by Lila’s room, I listened to the first few lines of an Avril Lavigne song, but I didn’t say hi. Then I was in my room, where Darcy had made his way up to settle beside Angel, a white cat with a crown of yellow spots on her head. Darcy saw me and rolled onto his back, but I ignored him and sat on the seat of my window.

I wasn’t quite sure what to do with myself. My hands were shaking from anger, and from shame at letting the cruelty I sometime demonstrated in school follow me home. I had thought myself freed from that, and it depressed me to know I was wrong.

I took a sheet of paper and began to write. I wrote Dear Dad, and the rest of the words just poured out. I told him I was constantly ashamed of myself, that I knew I was always letting him down, that I wished I could be more than just another bitch at my school, that I wanted to break out of the mold I had made in allowing myself to be dragged into the hole left by the older Tuckers. I told him it wasn’t their fault; they’d been true to themselves, but I just didn’t fit and I’d had to change myself to match.

And I cried. I always did when I thought about him. And as I stared at the tear-stained paper, I felt so incredibly exhausted. I leaned forward and touched my forehead to Angel’s. He had jumped up onto my desk. I felt horrible, because I knew that, for me, writing this letter was a penance for not visiting his grave, even though it was less than five miles away. I hadn’t written it out of love, but guilt.

Angrily, I dug through my drawer and came out with a lighter. After I cast around for the clay bowl I’d made at camp when I was younger, I placed it between my feet. I lit the paper, and I dropped it in the bowl.

By the time Quinn called me and Lila down for supper, only ashes remained. As I turned away from the window, I thought I saw someone move outside, and I turned my head back as my heart pounded. When nothing else moved, my eyes met the fuzzy gaze of my reflection.

It’s only you, I said silently to the reflection.