Spring break was a drag when it mostly meant more time for the side job. Katie couldn't remember the last time she hadn't smelled like pizza, and her car had soaked up enough of the cheesy miasma that she was relatively convinced that it was forevermore going to smell like the inside of a Papa John's. After ten hours of driving around the greater Destiny City area delivery hot carby goodness to just about everyone who was celebrating the time off, Katie was done. Her arms were heavy and her legs felt spent, and there were two words that tumbled around on her tongue as she slumped down from the driver's seat and onto the trim walkway that ambled up to the sturdy Catigern home.

I quit. I quit.

Her key clunked in its slow dance with the tumbler, granting her entrance to a darkened foyer, the only light drifting in from her uncle's study. Spring break or not, it was still a school night for the younger kids, and it was lights out by 11 under Carol's iron fist. Reginald usually stayed up until the wee hours of the morning working on his latest novella, which explained why his study was lit, but what couldn't be explained was the low murmuring that took place just beyond the threshold of her comprehension. Katie couldn't help it--she slowed her steps and left the door half-ajar, sidling up against a wall as she sneaked closer to the dim light and the dark chatter.

"...on you to get published isn't an option anymore, Reg, you've got to start considering other options," Katie heard a murmur to the tune of her aunt's voice, soft and drained and so unlike the powerhouse woman that Katie had come to know that she took a moment's pause just to comprehend what she was hearing.

"If I pick up a nine-to-five, who's going to take the kids to school?" responded a plaintive voice that was definitely Reginald's.

"It's not ideal, but we're all going to have to pick up the pace for a little while, until the Reynold's deal is done," came Carol's defense, with more of her characteristic resolution. Katie started to get a wavering feeling in her chest that told her this was a conversation she wasn't supposed to be privy to, but she leaned in anyway. "Katie can take the kids if she has to, it's not that big of a deal."

"Katie's got class in the mornings," her uncle protested, quieter this time.

"Katie's about to not have money for class in the mornings if everyone doesn't start pulling their weight or this deal doesn't go through," Carol snapped, and though she wasn't in the room, Katie shrank away from the harshness in her aunt's voice. They weren't...really going to stop helping her with school, were they? Not when she was already two years through and had worked so hard, despite everything? Her instinct was to toss her grease-stained hat to the floor and fly up the stairs, indignant in her fury and hurt, when all of a sudden she heard a soft, quaking sound.

Crying.

"...This isn't about the Reynold's Deal, is it," Reginald spoke softly after a period of silence, accompanied by the sound of his chair scraping against the hardwood floor. Katie leaned forwards, as if she might see what was happening, but she imagined Reginald pulling Carol into his gangly arms and holding her, despite her grief and her rage. "I saw the letter from DCPD. I know. I'm sorry."

"They can't just abandon her," Carol growled, her words rattling like bones. "That's our girl, our baby girl, Reg, she's not a lost cause, ******** them, <******** them, when I call the city tomorrow they won't hear the end of it--"

"And you'll be one in a chorus of voices," Reginald sighed, though Katie imagined him holding his wife just a little bit closer. "So many people have gone missing, I'm sure they're overwhelmed."

""They're overwhelmed?! It's my daughter still out there, and they're a little overwhelmed?" The sobs started again, a broken wheezing that sounded entirely foreign and unwelcome to Katie's ears. Carol was a powerhouse, Carol was inimitable and never once in all of their press conferences, the candlelit vigils, the search parties, or the interviews had she once cracked. She was solid rock, and to hear her crumble was strangely devastating in a way Katie couldn't quite place.

This conversation had never been hers to hear, and as it degenerated into harried sobs Katie looked down blankly at the crumpled hat in her hands, trying to focus as her world shifted ever so slightly. Could she really go in there and whine about her day now? Delivering pizzas was a**, and continued to be a**, but there was a twinge of guilt that nagged at her senses when she re-evaluated her original plan.

I quit.

She wanted to throw it down, throw it all away. She didn't even have to live here, if she thought about it--she had friends, teammmates, classmates, people who would all be happy to take her away from the terrible sound that was her Aunt Carol's sobs, rattling around in her chest like shards of glass. It was a strong impulse, one that made her like her father, just as whimsical and irresponsible and terrible as his stupid artist's heart had been when he'd run away from home and made her.

Katie was not her father. She couldn't quit. Not just yet.

Before Carol and Reginald had a chance to step into the kitchen, Katie took soft steps back to the front door, where she closed it slowly and locked it tight. Gripping her hat, she carefully climbed the stairs with a cautious hand on one banister, navigating the halls in the dark with an expertise that came of years of sneaking off to bed past lights out. She touched Beau's door first, then Ashlyn's, but she stopped when she came to the third door, her hand wavering over the crown molding of the threshold to the oldest Catigern child's room.

"I won't quit," she whispered, and there were tears in her eyes that hadn't been there a moment before as she traced out each glitter-made letter of her cousin's name. Biting her lip, she squared her shoulders and faced away, gingerly turning the doorknob on the door to her own room, what had been the Catigern office until a few years ago when she'd shown up with nothing but a duffle bag and an acceptance letter. They hadn't given up on her, either. She couldn't quit just yet.

Katie swung in her door and flicked on her light, nearly forgetting her need for stealth as she flopped onto her unmade bed. The coils in her mattress squealed as they bore her weight, and instantly she froze, cursing to herself when she thought of the grieving couple downstairs. "Shiiiiiit," she murmured, lifting herself up slowly as she kept an ear up for any sound of footsteps coming up the stairs. Luckily for her, no one came, and after a few moments of waiting, she let out a relieved sigh, sinking into her blankets and letting exhaustion settle in.

She could have fallen asleep like that, work clothes and all, were it not for a strange glint of light on her table that shone through her closed ********...?" Katie maneuvered herself up to her elbows, staring pointedly at her computer desk where everything seemed to be in its usual state of disarray. To the right of her monitor was her breakfast plate and a half-eaten pancake, right where she'd left it, but to the left...

She always had a stack of papers at her desk, for reading, for editing, for future reference and filing that never happened. Topmost on her stack of papers was a missing persons poster that showed a picture of a short girl with a coral bob, grinning wildly. On top of this stack, however, was a single ball, white except for a single six-pointed star. That had not been there this morning, or rather, ever, and it glinted invitingly in the lamplight. It didn't look like Ashlyn's or Beau's, and they both knew better than to play in her room anyways. This was different, the sort of thing that thrummed like destiny in her chest.

She sat up on the edge of her bed and reached out, and for a moment she thought she could hear her heartbeat thrumming through her head. There was something resolute about such a small action, and she felt the weight of it before her fingers even touched the smooth surface of the ball. She hesitated, almost, when she remembered her new mantra, and then with one motion she scooped the ball into one hand and her world burst into light.

Katie's body tingled like her skin was champagne, and she was aware of some shift to reality, but she couldn't quite place it. She felt the pressure of arms around hers, and then it was gone, and the light was gone, and even Katie herself was gone.

The page that sat in her place stared down blankly at star-clad heels hidden between a flash of ruffled purple, dotted with gold and shimmer. Her gloved hands wandered up her dress, to the pearls at her neck, the sash in her hair. "What the ********," she mouthed, standing slowly to admire the full length of the train on her dress, trailing down to her ankles where only moments before there had been jeans. "What is this," she murmured, spinning once to make the stars in her skirts shine. "This is..."

"...Chauvet?" The name drifted to mind from seemingly nothing, but once she said it she knew it to be true. The Cosmos page looked herself down and up, putting her hands on her freckled cheeks. Those, at least, were the same.

"Holy s**t," she whispered in quiet awe, putting the puzzle pieces together. "I just hit magical terrorist puberty."

Chauvet had little time to contemplate her origins--all at once, she felt a sensation of being pulled somewhere, far beyond the span of her bedroom, which increasingly felt too small. Whatever it was that was tugging at her senses, she made the conscious decision to tug back--

--and then, in a flash, she was gone.

((1742 words))