The Vesta House Squad

30) Bad Romance, Part 3

As soon as the gang met up after class, Katrina began keeping a suspiciously close eye on Valerie.

Outwardly, she seemed perfectly fine, acting the way she always did by saying dumb things and teasing the boys.

And yet, whenever Katrina looked at her face, she could see that underneath the surface, something was just a little bit off. 

For a moment, she questioned wondered if maybe her powers were just wrong, before quickly dismissing the thought. Her powers had never been wrong before, Valerie had fundamentally different, and at this school, it was certainly possible that some kind of magic was behind this. Katrina just didn't know what it was yet, and she wouldn't get an answer until later, during dinner.

They were sitting at their usual spot. The boys were on Isaac's phone, watching dumb funny Youtube videos dating back to the late 2000s. Normally, Valerie would have joined in, but today she was looking around the dining hall.

Katrina's eyes narrowed.

"Whatchu looking at?" she asked, trying to sound as casual as possible.

Valerie turned with a bit of a start, "Nothing!" she said quickly. That was a lie. Katrina frowned.

"Nothing huh?" she pressed on, trying to get a better read on Valerie. Based on the look on her face, she was currently trying her best to keep a neutral face in order to avoid scrutiny.

"Hey, stop it," said Weiss, who typically ignored them in favor of her siblings, but decided to speak up for once, "If she doesn't want to talk about it, then just leave her alone, and stop reading her mind."

Her words made Katrina falter.. Despite being an idiot about 99% of the time, Weiss actually brought up a good point for once: if she was wrong about something weird going on with Valerie, then whatever was happening was really none of her business and all she was doing was being a nosy prick to her friend.

That is, IF she was wrong.

And Katrina was quite sure she wasn't wrong. Unlike the other demigods, she didn't just discover her powers recently, she'd lived with them their entire life. For her, reading faces wasn't like a superpower that you turned on and off at will, it was just a part of her existence, something that came as naturally to her as breathing, and so to put it mildly, she was quite sure that what she was sensing from Valerie wasn't normal.

Regardless, Katrina decided it would be wise to stop questioning her. Valerie was obviously hiding something, but whatever was possessing her didn't seem to be an immediate danger to her, and for once, Katrina didn't feel like causing  a scene with Weiss and the other Athena kids.

But she didn't let it go.

Dinner turned out to be quite a disappointment, as Valerie was unable to find her mystery boy. The four of them began making their way back to Vesta House. The girls walked silently in the back, with Katrina continuing to keep a close eye on Valerie, and Valerie vaguely aware that she was being studied. The boys walked in the front, cracking jokes and referencing things, oblivious to the tension behind them.

Finally, Valerie spoke.

"Wait Kat, let's go to the bathroom," she said, motioning for Katrina to follow her.

But Valerie didn't need to go to the bathroom. Katrina narrowed her eyes. "Why?" she asked suspiciously.

"Because that's just a thing girls do!" Isaac piped in, causing the two girls to turn towards him in surprise. "I mean, that's what you said this morning right? That girls going to the bathroom together is just a thing you guys do?" he added, looking at Katrina.