Catherine Raines
April 21, 2007 6:41 PM
How all the mighty have fallen... by Catherine Raines
One of Catherine Raines' three signature lunches - a fruit salad and a half-glass of mineral water - sat on the table in front of her, untouched. Catherine poked at it with her fork, not for the first time, hoping that rearrangement of its elements might make the dish look more appealing. Sips of her water were going all right, so long as she kept the sips small, but just looking at her food too long made her feel almost nauseous. The thought of stabbing pieces of it with her fork, lifting them to her mouth, chewing them up, and swallowing them made her feel even more tired than she already was.Contrary to her fervent hopes and expectations, her midterm break had not gotten better after her father got out of the hospital. Charles had left home before Catherine woke up on Christmas morning, and hadn't returned until nearly nine at night, sending her, Lila, and Amelia into frenzies of worry that had, inevitably, turned into catfights. Those had been abandoned to waves of relief when he showed up alive and in more or less the same condition he'd left in, but the peace had given way in its turn to a series of fights between her parents.
Most of the fights had been about her.
It had started out with Lila seizing on the obvious 'you-ruined-Christmas-for-my-little-girl' line. That was to be expected, and Catherine had been too relieved that he was alive to ruin Christmas to be very upset by it...but that hadn't been the end of it. They had run several different ways with that one before Lila found out about a boy from Sonora getting kidnapped, and that had really done it. It had been a war zone for the last few days of midterm, and Catherine had found eating and sleeping harder every day. She just thanked Merlin that her mother hadn't let her in on the fact that she was going to be landed with a little half-sibling until near the end, or she thought she might have died. For the first time ever, she was glad to be at Sonora. At least she understood the school's politics, as was only proper; she had helped to make them.
She didn't look very much like someone who could say that, though. Even she was willing to admit it. She'd slept even worse than usual the last night at home, and it showed, in a big way. She had overdosed on eye make-up and gone heavy on the rest of it - except her lipstick, which she had had neither the time nor inclination to find and put on - in a desperate attempt to fix her face, but it felt like all it had done was draw more attention to the flaws. Her clothes were even worse: a dark, monochromatic skirt paired with a white blouse and pumps had gone out of style for any event not taking place at a funeral parlor when her mother was a girl, if not even further back.
The fork slipped from her hand as she covered her mouth, a vain effort to suppress a yawn. She didn't want to eat her salad, but she had to. If she didn't eat something, it was only a matter of time until she got sick, and there was no time for that. It was hard to care much, however, when all she wanted to do was go to sleep. Putting her elbow on the table without a thought for manners, she used it as a prop for her head as she rubbed her temple, eyes half-following the lines of the table downward. She needed to pull it all back together, or there'd be trouble. Her friends, she was sure, had had wonderful holidays, and Catherine doubted it would matter much to them that hers had been horrible.
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Catherine Raines
How all the mighty have fallen...
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