Closer to the Ground (Kidge One Shots)

Chapter 3: The Punk and the Nerd

     Katie sat alone and ate her lunch. She finished pretty fast, and she put her tray away. She sat back down at her table. She pulled out an old broken phone, they were allowed here, and a screwdriver and she began to tinker with it.

  A shadow fell on Katie and she looked up to see Lance and Hunk.

 "Can we sit here?"  Hunk asked.

 "Sure," Katie said. She went back to tinkering. It was her old phone, and she was trying to find and track her brother's phone, dead or not.

   "Your name is Pidge right?" Lance asked. "Pidge Gunderson. Are you new? I haven't seen you around before."

   "Yeah, uh huh," Katie said distractedly. "That works..." 

    Lance and Hunk exchanged looks of confusion. 

     "Are you okay?" Hunk asked.

     "Yeah yeah, I'm good, just working on a project..." Katie said looking up. Just then the bell rang and Katie sped to her next class, shop.

    Katie walked into shop to see Coran running from his other class and into the room. 

     "Sit...any...where...and pick your...own project." Coran panted. Katie picked a spot in the back of the room and got to work on the phone again. Students bustled in, sitting down and playing around with their friends. 

     "Pidge!" Katie looked up to see Lance and Hunk jogging over to her. "We have a lot of the same classes together!"

     "Yeah," Katie said. The boys sat down.

      "What are we doing here anyway?" Hunk asked.

       "We pick our own projects," Katie.

      "So what did you pick?" Lance asked Katie.

       "Phone...locater...tracker...thing...for dead phones," Katie said cautiously. 

       "How is that going to work?" Lance asked.

        "I don't know," Katie said roughly.

         "Wouldn't you have to connect with a satellite and find their last known location?" Hunk said. 

         "That won't help me, I know their last known location..." Katie mumbled. 

          "Whose last know location. Pidge what is this for!" Lance asked.

           "It doesn't matter," Katie snapped, "All that matter is I have a lot of parameters that I have to fill and I am going to make it work."

            "Alright, alright," Lance said, "I am just trying to help and it would be helpful to know what this is for and what the parameters are, that's all."

          "The why doesn't matter, it is not bad, just a personal matter that I don't want to talk about. What I need is a tracker that can find the location of any phone, dead or alive, and tell me where it is."

          "That is going to be hard, what do you have so far?" Hunk asked.

           "I can get the location of any phone online, so long as I have their number. Also, I do have an advantage, the specific phone that I am looking for has an S.O.S. signal that is solar charged. He put it on the phone for cases of emergency. "

         "He who? Oh right, never mind." Lance said.

          "My brother, he is...lost at the moment...don't give me any pity," Katie said, choosing her words carefully. They spent the rest of class trying to figure out how to do it, and they made some headway, able to connect with the said signal.

          One minute before the bell rang Coran ran out of the classroom and didn't come back. Then the bell rang.

          "What class do you have next?" Lance asked Kaite and Hunk.

           "Study hall," Katie and Hunk said at the same time.

             "Hey! Me too!" Lance said they chatted about the phone tracker as they walked into their study hall class. They looked at the teacher, who was Coran? Again?

             "Okay, you all get free time today!" Coran said. "But you have assigned seats."

              Katie looked at the board to see that she sat next to four people at the circle table. Lance, Hunk, Allura, and Keith. Again. He hated her for some reason. She sat down with Lance and Hunk, Keith was already there. Keith would not meet her eyes and wasn't talking to her.

           Keith had been arguing with Lance for five minutes, Hunk talked to Allura, but Katie had zoned off. That was until Keith said something that caught her attention.

          "There is always someone to blame. Always. And even if you can't find them, there are others to blame." Keith said to Lance. Katie's eye widened, but she covered it with her hair. He blames me for his missing brother. That is why he hates me. 

       Hunk was the only one who noticed her shock, but he didn't mention it. Keith and Lance kept on arguing until the bell rang. Coran ran out of class as fast as he could again. Katie walked to her next class, not making eye contact at any of them. She sat down in her six-period class, not even surprised when Coran was the teacher again. (Time skip.)

      The bell rang and Katie wandered to her homeroom, the last class of the day. She stepped into the classroom, and there was Coran, again. She found her assigned seat and waited for this day to end.

      She put her head down in her arms and sat there. Katie felt a hand on her shoulder and she looked up to see Hunk. He sat down in his seat next to her.

     "Pidge, could you please tell me what is going on?" Hunk said.

     "I would, but then you would worry and pity me and really don't like pity," Katie said.

     "Please Pidge, I need to know what is going on. I know that Keith knows something, but he was never going to tell me anything, please." Hunk begged.

     "Okay," Katie agreed. "My name is actually Katie, Katie Holt. My brother, father, and brother's best friend got lost in the woods after a NASA test and couldn't be found. My mom is depressed, I learned all of the freshman year in the summer so I could focus on finding my family, and Keith's brother was the other person on the trip and he blames me for his brother's disappearance." 

    Hunk looked at her in shock, surprised she let all of that go at once.

    "Pidge, why haven't you told anyone?" Hunk asked.

     "I don't want people to feel like they have to be careful of what they say and do around me. I can take care of myself plus all of the authorities know..." Katie.

      "Why change your name though?" Hunk asked. 

        "That was an accident, I said my first name was the nickname my brother gave me, on accident and just went with it," Pidge chuckled.

        "Do you have the phone on you right now?" Hunk asked.

         "Yeah," Katie said pulling it out. Hunk grabbed it and her screwdriver.

           "We are going to find your brother." Hunk declared. Then they got to work.