Chapter Eight

Kit stared at Zoey for what seemed like an eternity, before blinking in an attempt to dilute the apparent fury in her friend's eyes. Both starting at the sound of Zoey's voice, Kit and Eddie were now a respectable distance apart, but Kit couldn't stop the guilt seeping into her veins. Zoey glanced at Eddie only momentarily; she then diverted the full beam of her attention back at Kit, hands on her hips, head tilted to one side with incredulity. Kit chewed her bottom lip and opened her mouth to reply, to smooth over the situation, but Zoey beat her to it.

"I'd have thought better of you," she told Kit shortly, and Kit winced, not daring look at Eddie, just looking at Zoey, the furious look on her face enough to hold Kit's attention completely. "I mean…" She paused, and made an indeterminate gesture with her hands. Kit's heart sank. She and Eddie hadn't done anything, but evidently it had appeared otherwise to Zoey; and in possession of more-than-friendly feelings towards Eddie, Kit still felt incredibly guilty, and not altogether sure she could convince Zoey of her innocence.

Kit swallowed hard and met Zoey's eyes. "Look, I'm sorry," she started, and Zoey cut her off with another wave of her hand before she could go any further. Kit risked a glance at Eddie, to find his features riddled with confusion as he watched Zoey and Kit's exchange. Zoey still hadn't cast another look his way.

"It can't be helped, I suppose," Zoey said, begrudgingly, and Kit couldn't help but register a sigh of relief, "but I wish you'd said something to me." Kit's mind spun. Zoey's anger had subsided into some kind of forgiving acceptance, which seemed far too blasé a response to the whole situation, surely? Kit almost didn't catch the rest of Zoey's tirade, but when she tuned back in, her friend was in full flow again. "…I just feel at a complete disadvantage now, if I'd have known sooner I could have done something about it, you know…" Zoey paused and caught Kit's bewildered expression as she tried to keep up. "Actually, Eddie, could you go and get me a drink?" she suddenly asked, breaking off and finally acknowledging her boyfriend's presence. Eddie mumbled something that Kit didn't catch, and left the two of them alone, Kit suddenly feeling extremely vulnerable, and wondering if Zoey had sent Eddie off so she could really lay into her.

"I'm sorry," Zoey suddenly said, making sure Eddie had fully left the immediate vicinity, "I didn't mean to get so angry… I mean, I'm sure you can see what I'm saying, right?"

Kit felt it unwise to disagree, and merely nodded, hoping that sooner or later, Zoey's motive for sudden forgiveness would become clear. "I just think, had I known that Sky was making a play for him, I would have been better prepared, and you must have known for a few days, and it would have been nice if you'd have mentioned it." Zoey's eyes still had a certain steely quality to them, but she seemed to have softened considerably, and Kit suddenly realised why. Zoey was angry not because she thought she'd caught Kit and Eddie behind her back, but because she'd somehow found out that Sky liked Ollie, and that Kit knew, and had neglected to mention it to her. Kit's relief was palpable. She was innocent, after all.

"So… did you speak to Sky?" Kit asked, trying to make sense of the jumble of emotions Zoey had just gone through in front of her. As far as she had been aware, Sky wasn't even there that evening, but one look at Zoey's expression and she surmised that at some point, Sky must have made a belated appearance.

"In a fashion." Zoey glanced around the room darkly. "She made some comment about making a move on Ollie, and when I asked her about it, she said she was making no secret of it, and that as a matter of fact, you already knew all about it, and she was surprised I didn't know." Zoey recalled the conversation with some distaste. Kit mentally cursed Sky and her inner bitch. Sky wasn't the type to speak without thinking, and Kit had a feeling she had known exactly what she was doing, casually mentioning to Zoey that Kit knew all about her plans for Ollie. "I mean, I can't deny that I was hurt. I thought we were good friends," she said, much more warmly, and linked her arm through Kit's as though the past ten minutes had never happened. Kit flinched slightly, finding it harder to dismiss Zoey's thoroughly venomous outburst when she had first approached her.

Sensing Kit's reluctance, Zoey gave Kit a sincere look. "I'm sorry I was a bitch," she said, "I just flared up when I heard all that. And I couldn't really say anything specific with Eddie there… I hope he wasn't bothering you," she added, as an afterthought, and despite her annoyance, Kit wanted to laugh at the irony of it all.

"Not at all," she managed to say, desperate to chastise Zoey for her flippant treatment of Eddie, but not wanting to rock the boat any more than it had been that evening. "Won't he wonder what you were angry about, though?" she asked, remembering his confused expression at Zoey's initial tirade.

Zoey shrugged. "I'll tell him it was girl stuff. He won't ask," she said confidently, and Kit had an overwhelming urge to wipe the smile off her friend's face, all of a sudden. "To be honest, things aren't going that great…" You think? Kit thought incredulously. "But he's a good friend, you know? He's always there if I need him." Apparently, this was good enough reason to keep stringing him along, and Zoey quickly changed the subject, leaving Kit with a rather empty feeling inside as she was propelled along towards a haughty looking Juliet and a nervous looking Kerry, to further discuss the ways in which Sky could be taken down and put out of the running for Ollie's affections.

Kit had left the club slightly earlier than most of the others, gratefully taking Kerry up on her offer of a ride back to Wyttham Ridge. Another forty minutes of avoiding Eddie, dodging Juliet's reproachful looks, and indulging Zoey's bitching about Sky's chances with Ollie had been more than enough for one evening. Kerry, apparently, had agreed wholeheartedly, looking quite defeated by the time she held up her car keys and gave Kit a hopeful look.

Kit didn't really want to admit it, even to herself, but the confrontation with Zoey, tame as it had all turned out to be, had shaken her somewhat. And something else, something Kit was trying hard not to address, was prickling at the corners of her mind, scraping at her consciousness at a more rapid rate even than her secret feelings for Eddie.

It was only later that night, lying on her bed, that Kit finally allowed herself to fully formulate the nagging thought that threatened to disrupt her night's sleep.

Can Zoey and I really be friends?

Not just because of Eddie, although Kit acknowledged that her crush on Zoey's boyfriend wasn't helping, but in general. Could she and Zoey really be the good friends that Zoey had professed to believe they were? That Kit had hoped they would be? Zoey was funny, and smart, and friendly, and had had no qualms about taking Kit under her wing, but that didn't, after all, bind them together indefinitely, and Kit could already see the cracks emerging. Zoey was nice, but she was also demanding and dramatic, confrontational at times, and could quite easily run circles around Kit if she let her. Two weeks ago, Kit had been entirely blinded to these nuances of personality, but now, slightly more settled in her still unfamiliar surroundings, she felt better placed to evaluate her new acquaintances. Zoey, Juliet, Kerry, Sky, Eddie, Ollie, Matt… they were all starting to emerge in Kit's mind as distinctly separate entities. Some loud, some quiet, some outgoing, some shy, some bitchy, opportunistic, kind, well-meaning, superficial, some on Kit's wavelength and some far from it.

"What's on your mind, Kitkat?" Hermione entered the room, a look of concern directed towards her sister as she closed the door behind her. Evidently, she had just arrived home, and as she waited for Kit to answer, she kicked off her shoes and hung her jacket over a chair.

Kit's first reaction was to dissuade Hermione, and ask her about her evening instead, but it crossed her mind that her twin might be the person best placed to understand. "Just… everything's so complicated," she sighed, sitting up slightly and watching as Hermione sat down on her own bed and nodded in what appeared to be agreement. "With everyone here, I mean."

"Tell me about it." Hermione rolled her eyes and gave Kit a small smile. "I can hardly keep track of it, half the time."

Despite herself, Kit was surprised to hear Hermione so ready to admit that she was having some trouble keeping up, too. "It sounds so stupid," she shrugged, hugging her knees, "but I feel like there's some kind of secret code that I'm meant to know, except I don't." It was a new way of thinking about it, but possibly the most eloquent thought Kit had voiced all evening.

Hermione grinned. "I think that's true of anywhere," she shrugged, "but it's on such a small scale here, it gets a bit frustrating. Like, Sky and Zoey seem to have some kind of vendetta against each other, and I have no idea why that is, but then Sky also has ongoing vendettas against half of her friends, and the friends she does currently hold in favour have to agree with her, but she's extremely likely to cross back to the other side at any moment." Hermione offered this insight wearily, and Kit felt bad for thinking, in the past, that Hermione always seemed to have it so much easier. "And I was pretty happy, to start with, to have this ready made group of people to make friends with," she added, "Sky and all her friends, but I'm starting to wonder if I'd be better off without them. Although, I am well aware that that would be social suicide." Hermione pulled a face, and not for the first time that night, Kit wanted to laugh with giddy relief that she wasn't the only one after all.

Relief still enveloped Kit as she climbed into bed half an hour later and Hermione turned out the light, but it was accompanied by another feeling- one of determination not to fall into the trap of taking sides and getting caught up in the intricate social dealings of South Sett High.

One more image crossed Kit's mind before she fell asleep, but she pushed it firmly away. Avoiding all this social confusion meant avoiding any feelings towards Eddie too, and for the sake of her own sanity, Kit didn't see how she had much choice in the matter.