Between Universes

Chapter Seven

Katherine's eyes shot open with a shove her to shoulder. Josephine was standing above her, smiling widely. Katherine looked around. She was in the portal room. This is how she got into Henry's universe. Henry. Her heart ached as she realized what was going on.

"They fixed it? She wanted to go back?" Josephine nodded, helping Katherine out of the portal. She wobbled a bit; she was still new to universe travelling. She glanced down, noticing that she was wearing one of Henry's sweatshirts. How had she gotten one of his sweatshirts, and how did she know it was his? The sweatshirts from their school were all the same.

She took a deep breath, walking out into the common area of the facility. The others were standing around and when they noticed the two girls walk in, they began to clap lightly and smile. Even her crush from before, Tyler, was clapping for her. She tried to smile but inside, she was hurting.

She got away as quickly as she could, getting a ride to the airport so she could catch a plane home. Josephine and her had parted ways at their home airport. Katherine cried silently on the car ride home, her mother chatting away happily at how proud they were of her and how they would go to the DMV the next day to get her official license. Katherine didn't listen.

She didn't have enough happiness to listen.

She shot up, looking around to see Kat's bedroom. She sighed, reaching up to stop the tears from streaming down her face. It was a dream. It was a dream. She didn't know why her heart ached at the prospect of going home, but she thought it was because her heart belonged here now. She missed her family, and that was it. Nothing about GenU appealed to her anymore. She knew that going home was inevitable, but it would hurt her more than anything else she had experienced in her life.

That day at school, it was obvious that something was bothering her. She wouldn't tell Aaliyah or Josephine about her dream, especially since it was about GenU. She didn't speak in any of her classes, and noticed weird looks coming from others in the hall due to her lack of loud laughter and speaking. She even deflected eye contact with Henry when they passed each other in the hallway. After another class, she decided to take a different route than normal, avoiding the confused looks of her friends.

She couldn't focus all day, and as the end of the day neared, she decided that she couldn't act like this. Kat wouldn't act like this. She stopped in the middle of the hall, moving to the side, and she took a couple of deep breaths. She heard another pair of footsteps stop next to her.

"Look, Aaliyah. I'm fine."

"You're not, and I'm also not Aaliyah." Katherine looked up to see Henry, her heart squeezed in pain as she thought of her dream again. "That's the first time you've spoken all day according to what I've been hearing. After the night you had last night, I can't blame you-"

"That's not what it's about," She looked at him, cutting him off. "Henry, I'm glad that we've been talking recently, but I can't right now. I need to go to class."

"Now that we're talking, you're going to start being like that again?"

"It's not like that. I'm just having a really hard time today. I don't want to say something I don't want to. I'll see you, okay?" She walked away before he could respond. She wanted to talk to him. She wanted to confide in him. She wanted to hug him and go out with him, but she couldn't. She had listened to Josephine the night of the back to school dance, but it didn't register with her that she wouldn't be able to keep playing as Kat until her dream last night. She would get the call to go home, and she would have to leave. The only time she would be able to return would be after the murder was solved and the world would be open to officials for documentation. She wouldn't be able to talk to any of them again. The only people who would have the experience would be her and Josephine, and she had a feeling that the other girl wouldn't want to hear her go on and on about missing Henry and Aaliyah.

As the days got colder, Katherine felt her heart doing the same. She wasn't as open as she had been, the sadness of her potential of leaving soon growing by the day. Josephine noticed, and had eventually got Katherine to tell her what she was feeling. She tried to reason with Katherine that she was going to go on more missions, meet more great people, influence them and their worlds, but nothing made Katherine feel better. She had always been excited to become an official, to help her other selves with their problems, but now that she was here, she couldn't imagine going anywhere else. She couldn't imagine being another version of herself, even the one she was born as.

Josephine comforted her by giving her a long hug, one only a true family member could manage, and then she walked away, continuing to work on her project to contact GenU. She had been getting more and more worried as the weeks went on. They had been here for six months, far past the normal period for a mission, and Josephine had singlehandedly convinced herself that there was something terribly wrong, and that GenU had been attacked by aliens or something. As Katherine tried to calm her down about it, Josephine tried to calm her about Henry.

As it was custom at Greylake High School, the end of the semester signalled another school dance. This one was courtwarming, a big event at the high school because the basketball team was doing well. Katherine had never had any interest in sports, but she was glad that the school seemed happy and in spirit for the holidays. She hadn't talked to Henry in what seemed like forever, but she fully planned on doing so at the dance.

One night, a week before the dance, Katherine had made another rash decision to search for Andrew Reynolds. She had given up the job for two months due to her sadness at the possibility of leaving, and the guilt of not helping the storyline was getting to her once again. She felt like she was in a rut, finding information that she couldn't do anything with, ending up in an awkward situation with Henry, getting upset, and repeating the process all over again.

Grabbing her phone and her coat, she drove herself down to the edge of downtown. She walked with her head down, avoiding anyone else. She pulled up the map again on her phone. Her feet hit the pavement quietly as she walked through the maze of roads. Making her way back to the corner of the road she had been on previously, she gazed down the street.

She'd need to talk to people again, and seeing the groups of men standing outside different buildings made her feel very unsafe and uncomfortable, especially after what happened last time. At the thought of what could've happened, her throat tightened and she turned, walking back to her car as quickly as possible. She locked the door when she stepped in, gripping the steering wheel with white knuckles and breathing heavily before hitting it. Pain flashed through her hand at the feeling, and she let out a soft sob. She needed another lead; she just didn't know how to find one.