Cat didn’t initially intend to avoid everyone. She actively forced herself to emerge from the library for dinner with everyone on Sunday night, however much it made her limbs physically ache to. (Another symptom of being poisoned, she thought to herself.)

Cam, Kelsey, Hannah--they were in good moods. A little anxious for finals to start, but smiling easily and keeping track of every piece of conversation. Cameron was apparently very disappointed to find out that his date from last night was one of the worst lovers he’d ever had, and not for lack of trying. Cat struggled to pay attention, struggled to nod and laugh and “aw” when appropriate. Peter seemed to have an easier time pretending nothing was wrong. If he wasn’t just the tiniest bit tense, she would have been able to convince herself that the entirety of last night was one, giant fever dream. But she could tell, by the way he looked at her. He was there. He remembered very clearly. She had a brand right in the middle of her forehead from it.

“...just passed out after watching movies and eating too much ice cream,” Hannah said, answering one of Cam’s questions. “By the way, Peter--” She turned to him suddenly. “Sorry for missing your calls last night. I forgot my phone was on silent, and by the time I saw them, I figured you were passed out in the middle of a Denny’s parking lot or something.” The table laughed.

Peter shrugged, his dimples trying their hardest to make his smile look genuine. “Oh, just drunk dialing. Nothing to worry about.” The relief rushing through Cat’s veins made her feel like she would faint. “I called Cat, too. I thought I was talking to a literal cat. Like the animal.” Well. She could have gone without that exaggerated, old, stupid joke. Cam, Kelsey, and Hannah laughed, and Cat found his stupid lie obnoxious enough to roll her eyes. They bought it.

But the pressure was almost too much. When they returned to the dorms, Hannah was so animated, excited, nervous about her finals, but also sighing about how she was going to miss everyone. Cat couldn’t keep up.

“You seem down,” she finally noted when Cat didn’t laugh at one of her jokes. “You afraid for finals?” Yes, Cat thought. Let’s go with that. Afraid for finals, not afraid that whenever she least expected it, she’d turn around and….

“Just my first college finals,” she decided to say, her eyes on the ground. “I want to do well.”

“You’ll do fine. If anyone’s going to crush it, it’s you. What’s your schedule like again?”

Cat glanced to her alarm clock and sighed. “Eight AM human sexuality, and Tuesday I have an in-class essay analyzing some short story yet to be determined and stats immediately after, and communications Wednesday night at six.”

“And you’re leaving Thursday morning?”

“Actually,” Cat corrected, her eyes on her phone, “I found a cheaper ticket for Wednesday night after the final. I already booked it. Then I can sleep on the bus and see my family right in the morning.” It wasn’t, ultimately, what made her decide to get the earlier ticket, it was just an added perk. And it wasn’t like she was positive she’d be able to sleep one extra night here, anyway. Hannah let out a disappointed “oh.”

“Well, at least we can say goodbye at lunch or something. I’ve got a final Wednesday night, too.” Sweet, wonderful Hannah. Cat ached when she decided to go to bed early, thinking of her roomie’s tone. While Hannah stayed up and read some sort of assignment for one of her finals tomorrow morning, Cat stared at the back of her eyelids and struggled to see anyone’s face but Nate’s.

Not seeing her friends was very easy. Their schedules all conflicted; and best of all, she wouldn’t see any sign of Peter until their final for communications, as he had some stupid math final when they all agreed to get lunch together. And the excuse this time for “seeming down”?

“I’m going to miss you guys.” After a long group hug, Kelsey, Hannah, and Cam bid her goodbye for the last time this calendar year. Her reason was perfectly acceptable to them. The only person it wouldn’t work on was in her communications final, and he wasn’t allowed to speak to her because talking during a final was an automatic fail.

Cat sped through hers. Not because it was easy or anything, but because she just couldn’t find the energy to double-check her answers like she usually did. She was burnt out, her brain sizzling. And her memory was shot from lack of sleep. Too many times she came across a question and just thought, “Fuck it, let’s say C.” If she had any space to feel anything more, she would have hated herself for it.

She was the first one done. That used to make her nervous, but when Cat slapped down her test on Professor Harlem’s desk, the only thing she felt was a weight lift off of her shoulders.

Maybe she rushed out of there too fast. Maybe she should have cared a little bit more, but all she could do was look at the time on her phone and calculate how much time until she sat on the stupid bus to go home and get out of here.

“Cat, wait--” Instinctively, Cat clutched her bag and flinched. What used to just fill her with excitement now set off so much adrenaline. Something as simple as someone saying her name and approaching her. “You’re leaving tonight, right?” It took her a moment to let the blood drain from pounding in her ears. Cat turned around slowly; Peter stood, without his bag or anything, looking to her for an answer. Did he just walk out of there? She squinted.

“Are you done with your final?”

He shrugged at her. “Bathroom break. Are you leaving now?” She regarded him, attempting to take in his form. This would be the last time she saw him until next year. It was so different from when she first saw him in August. Sure, he wore the same exact jeans and a similar t-shirt under his jacket, but everything else was different. His hair was a little longer, his stubble more grown out. His eyes were softer, and even though he wasn’t as quiet, he seemed far less angry. Whereas her first reaction to him when they ended up in the same orientation group was a shallow attraction and a deeper hatred, now...she couldn’t even navigate what she felt when she saw him. There was too much of whatever it was, stuffing her chest and clogging her thoughts.

Relief that it was him calling after her, excitement still lingered, like an automatic reaction. But the residual fear from before--and now whenever he looked at her, it was tainted with what he saw that night. Worst of all, she could hardly remember what happened, just that she sobbed her eyes out and could barely walk. And that she would just walk into a situation like that…. How could he take her seriously?

“Cat?” At some point while she looked at him, she was transferred to the panic, the quick breathing, tingling limbs. He snapped her out of her trance. “Are you going to talk to someone when you get home?” She scowled at him.

“It’s really none of your business,” she said pointedly. Peter sighed at her.

“Then could you just...text someone when you get home so we know you made it there safely?” There it was. Concern, genuine fear for her safety. Cat was a wounded bird and he was this knight in shining armor that wanted to nurse her back to health and give her strength. She scoffed. The influx of superhero movies was getting to his head. She didn’t exist to make him feel better about navigating trauma. Her healing from this wasn’t a substitute for him healing from his.

But she didn’t say any of that. She simply didn’t have the energy to argue. So instead, she said, “See you around.” At least her annoyance with him was enough to distract her from the shadows of the night, or the eerie orange flickering of the street lamps while she walked to the bus depot.

Cat hoped being home would be different. She counted on it, even. But she didn’t think it would be this strange. The next day, she was like a zombie, dark circles under her eyes, no energy, moving slowly. Her brother still had school and her parents were at work, so she was by herself most of the day, alone.

Yet as she sat on the couch of the only home she’d ever lived in her whole life, she felt like a stranger. She wasn’t the same person that left. The old Cat from months ago had withered away from stress and confusion, and she was now this...shell.

Her family definitely noticed a difference, but accepted her excuse of being tired...for about three days. Then she had to pretend to be happy to be home, and it all felt like a massive lie. Not that she wasn’t happy to be home...it was just so much duller than it was supposed to be.

At least during the week, they didn’t notice that Cat spent the whole time sleeping, or staring at the ceiling. And by the time Gabe was done with school and remained home all the time, just like she did, the hype had gone down and questions about her semester simmered away and he was back to spending the whole day with his friends.

But nothing else changed. When her family could see, she traded staring at the ceiling to staring at the TV. Cat napped more in the two month break from school than she ever did as a toddler. Obviously, her parents didn’t notice--or they didn’t say anything if they did.

Gabe was a little more sensitive to it. It took him a long time to bring it up, until her last week home.

“You’re different,” he said one afternoon as he sat on the couch with her. She didn’t address his statement. “Like...I don’t know. At first I thought it was because you were tired, or Christmas was smaller than usual, or that we didn’t really celebrate New Years, but….” Cat averted her gaze to her hands. She couldn’t pretend to watch TV when it was just the same three commercials over and over again.

“I feel different,” she admitted after a while.

“Bad?” She glanced up to her little brother. Thick, dark hair, just like hers but cropped closer to his head. Brown eyes, almost black in certain light. They were never mistaken for anything other than siblings when they were out, and not just because she liked to beat the crap out of him before he went through puberty. She didn’t beat him up anymore, now that he could literally throw her across a room (but he only did that once, by accident), but she did pick at him with her words. He grew to defend himself from that, too. Now their uncanny similarities extended far more than just looks; arguments were a common occurrence, in and out of the house.

Gabe was very gentle with her this break. She didn’t throw very many punches; maybe he sensed things were...different.

“Different bad?” Gabe pressed, his words wading through her brain fog.

Cat shrugged and looked away. “Maybe.”

“Is it because of your head?” God, she nearly forgot about that. “They say that if you have a big bump to the noggin’ that it can literally change your personality. Or like, drugs, too. Brain’s fragile, man.” Cat raised a brow to look at her brother.

“Did you just have the DARE segment in health class?” Drugs Are Really Evil or whatever that stood for. Where a police officer came in and explained how drugs would ruin your life and handed out free shirts to bribe the students into silence during his presentation.

“Well, yeah, and I’m taking psychology this year.”

“Oh that’s cool.”

“Yeah, it counts as an elective. But we were talking about how certain events literally change a person. From like, strokes to trauma.” There was that word again...trauma. “Sometimes it doesn’t even have to be physical!”

“You sound kind of excited about it.”

“Yeah! I think maybe...maybe when I go to college, that’ll be my major.”

“That’s really great.” And it was. It made her smile, seeing him so excited about something. The last thing he got this worked up about was an upgrade to whatever gaming console he was into last winter. Some sort of xBox upgrade.

“So, um...was it your fall?” he pried. “’Cause you seemed fine at Thanksgiving and stuff.” Cat grimaced. If he was going to be a psych major, he’d be a natural. But he was also her brother. He literally knew her his whole life. He spent the whole year, when he was six, trying to copy everything she ever did.

She shrugged. “I had a close call,” she said. “And it’s just rattled me.”

Gabe sat up. “Signs of PTSD can range from--”

“It’s not PTSD, I wasn’t in Vietnam.” When she dismissed him, he stared at her.

“You can get PTSD from anything scary. It’s like--I bet you haven’t gone back to where you fell, right?” Her eyes shot up to meet his. “Your brain’s protecting you. Bad Thing happened there, so don’t go back, and Bad Thing won’t happen again. PTSD is just the brain going at it too hard.”

She hesitated for a moment, squinting. “That’s really stupid, though.” Not going somewhere wouldn’t protect anyone from random accidents. And panic didn’t solve anything.

“I think it’s something like...we learn fear easy, but we unlearn it hard or something. I dunno, Mom has some quote she shared on Facebook. I brought it up in class and it derailed the whole hour. We were supposed to talk about something else, but people really wanted to learn about anxiety and panic.” Probably because of how absolutely terrifying the world was.

“Dinner in five!” called their mother from the other room. Gabe decided this was the perfect time to start a conversation at yelling level.

“Hey, MA!” Cat flinched and covered her ears.

"What?”

“What’s that quote you told me about on Facebook? The thing about fear?”

From the den emerged their dad, Mr. Ramos, looking sleepy with his salt and pepper hair matted on one side. “What are we yelling about?”

On the other side of the room, their mom appeared in the doorway. “That quote? The one with the picture of the…?” She clicked her tongue. ”Cómo se dice...big cat.” She gestured with her hands, which were covered in some sort of sauce, to make a mane around her head.

“Lion,” answered her husband.

“I’m not lying, it had a big, orange cat--” As her children started to laugh at her, she sighed. ”León!”

Her husband lit up. “Not as slow as she looks, ladies and gents!” Everyone ignored the slew of lewd insults ther mother shot back at him.

Mrs. Ramos sighed and recovered from her giggles. “Yes, uh, the quote was...something like…. ‘It’s easy to learn to be afraid, but hard and brave to face it anyway.’ Something like that. Anyway, wash your hands for dinner, fix your hair while you still have it, you know the drill.”

Mr. Ramos’ hands clapped over his head. “While I still have it? I’m not going bald!”

“That’s because I put Rogaine in your shampoo, mi bistardo calvo.”