Chapter Text
- Reputation -
“Okay, okay, calm down,” I tell Burton as I pour the cat food into his bowl. He buries his head into it and starts to eat before I’m even finished. I shake my head at him, closing the bag and putting it back onto the shelf. I kneel down to pet him, but he hisses at me, pushing his bowl away from me and continues to eat.
I roll my eyes. “Yeah, sure. Just go on and forget the fact that I am feeding you every single day of your life, huh?”
I turn my head to the door and look around, searching for my other cat. “Taylor?” I call. “Aren’t you hungry?”
I can hear a muffled meow from somewhere down the hallway, but Tay doesn’t show up. I stand up, sighing. “Okay, I’ll just let Burton eat everything alone, then.”
Right as I’ve said these words, my phone starts ringing. I look around for a second before I spot it on the kitchen table where I put it just minutes ago. The display reads Evermore.
“Hey,” I say, picking the phone up.
“Hey,” she answers. “Are you busy?”
I look at Burton who is still eating his and Taylor’s cat food, his head buried in the bowl so that I can only see the top of his head and his ears. “Not really,” I say. “Why are you asking?”
“I was thinking maybe you wanna hang out for a while? We’re at Centennial Park.”
A flash of White comes rushing through the crack in the door and stops about two feet in front of Burton. His head shoots up and he bares his teeth, hissing at the other cat. Taylor tilts her head and looks at the bowl in front of him. He just grabs it with his paws and tries to pull it away from her.
I raise an eyebrow at him, but he doesn’t react, still shielding the bowl from Taylor with his tiny paws.
“And who exactly is we?” I ask Evermore, pushing the bowl away from Burton and towards Taylor with my foot. He looks at me with a death-stare, but finally lets Taylor eat something, too.
“Oh, it’s just me, Folklore and Lover. Those two are boring me to death.”
I crouch down next to Taylor and carefully scratch her behind her ears. “Maybe learn something from it and come right when I call you, next time?” I whisper.
“What did you say?” Evermore asks through the phone.
“Nothing,” I answer. “I was just talking to Taylor.”
“Oh, okay. Tell her hi from me.”
I look at Taylor and raise an eyebrow. “Evermore says hi.”
She lifts her head and looks at me questioningly for a second, before she continues eating.
“I guess I’m supposed to tell you hi back?”
“Kay, thanks.”
Burton slowly toddles over to us, seemingly having gotten over the fact that I gave ‘his’ food to Taylor. I get up and grab my keys from the kitchen counter, looking back at my cats for a second, before I leave the kitchen. They are peacefully eating side by side now, having forgotten their usual feud over the food – at least for the moment.
“So?” Evermore asks. “Are you coming?”
I turn my phone on speaker and put it onto the shelf, grabbing my jacket.
“Already on my way.”
“Kay, cool. I’ll see you in a few minutes, then?”
“Yeah,” I say and slip into my boots.
I hear someone scream at the other end of the line, followed by a laugh.
“Yeah sure,” Evermore shouts to them.
“I gotta hang up now,” she tells me.
“Okay, bye.”
“Bye,” Evermore replies before she hangs up.
“Taylor, Burton?” I call. No reply. “I’ll be gone for a while, be good cats, okay?”
They still don’t show any sign of recognition. Sometimes I feel like most of the time, my cats could literally be dead and I wouldn’t even notice until I tried to feed them.
I slip my phone into my jacket pocket and leave the house, locking the door behind me.
The walk to Centennial Park takes about fifteen minutes.
When I arrive there, I immediately spot Evermore and the others by one of the ponds. She is chasing her sister along the shore, while the third girl, Lover, is standing at the side, watching them. She looks in my direction and our eyes meet, a small smile settling on her lips.
She turns her attention back to Evermore and Folklore, telling them something. Just a second later, both of them stop running and look over at me. I lift my hand and wave. “Hey!”
Evermore drops her bag to the ground and looks at me, a small smile crossing her lips. “Took you long enough.”
I raise an eyebrow. “I only took, like, a few minutes. Not an hour or something.”
“Still.”
“Wow, thanks, Evy,” I say, rolling my eyes.
“Anyways,” she says, glaring at me because of the nickname, “This is Lover, but I think you guys already know each other, right?”
“Kinda,” I reply, giving Lover a quick glance. As far as I know she’s in my history class and I think I remember seeing her at most of Evermore’s birthday parties, since I moved here. Other than that, I’ve barely seen her around.
Evermore looks at her phone’s lock screen and then at us. “Are you guys hungry? Cause we could go and get some pizza.”
I raise an eyebrow. “It’s four pm.”
“And?” Evermore asks. “I still want to get pizza.”
I roll my eyes. “You’re such a child sometimes.”
“So,” Lover pipes in. “Are we getting pizza now or should we just stay here and argue for the rest of the day?”
“Mhm, sure,” I grumble, starting to walk toward the pizzeria.
The others follow close behind, and Evermore soon catches up to me.
“Have you finished your physics essay, yet?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’ll probably have to work over it once more, but I think I’m done with the first draft.”
“Can you help me?”
I turn my head to look at her, raising an eyebrow. “How am I supposed to help you?”
“I don’t know, just… help me. Somehow.” She looks at me with a pleading look in her eyes. “Please?”
I shake my head. “It’s not that hard, Evy.”
“Ugh, I hate it when you call me that.”
“Okay, sure, Evy,” I say, a small grin spreading across my face.
She glares at me while we walk out of Centennial Park and onto the streets of our small town.
“What?” I ask. “It suits you.”
“No, it doesn’t,” she protests. “It sounds like a nickname for some cute baby rabbit or something.”
“I was thinking of a cat, actually,” I tell her.
She snorts. “Yeah, sure. Maybe you should consider getting another cat so you can name her Evy.”
Lover catches up with us, walking beside me, with Folklore on her other side. We take up most of the street, but it doesn’t seem like anyone really cares.
“You have a cat?” she asks, looking at me.
“Two, actually,” I answer.
“That’s cool.”
Evermore sighs. “Lover, please.”
“What? I was just asking.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Lover loves cats,” Folklore pipes in. “She has one, too.”
“Kay, cool.” I give her a quick glance from the side. “What’s its name?”
“Benji,” she says. “Well, actually Benjamin Button, but I just call him Benji most of the time. He’s a Ragdoll and, like, a super model or something.”
“And he’s really cute,” Folklore adds.
Evermore groans. “Can we please talk about something other than cats now?”
I ignore her, looking at Lover instead. “Do you have any pictures?”
“Sure,” she says, fumbling for her phone. She unlocks it and opens the gallery, scrolling through her photos, before giving me her phone. “That’s from last summer, I don’t think I have any newer ones that are good.”
I look at the photo. It shows Lover with a young Ragdoll cat in her arms, smiling at the camera. Unlike now, the tips of her blonde hair are dyed blue, instead of pink.
I hand her phone back to her. “He’s really pretty.”
“I know.” She smiles at me. “What about your cats? Do you have any pics?”
“Yeah, wait a sec.” I pull out my phone and scroll through my gallery. There aren’t that many photos, and most of them are in black and white, so it doesn’t take me that long to find one. “They’re American Bobtails,” I say when I’ve opened the photo, handing her my phone.
“So, this is Taylor,” I tell her, pointing at the white cat. “And the grey one’s Burton. They don’t really like each other or me most of the time, so this is, like, the only even kind of good photo that I got of both of them.”
“Oh my god, you did?” Evermore asks from besides me, before Lover can even open her mouth to respond. “Can I see?”
I raise an eyebrow at her. “I thought you didn’t want to talk about cats?”
“I don’t,” she answers. “I just want to see that photo.”
“Yeah, sure.”
Lover gives me my phone back with a small smile on her lips. “They look cute. I wish I could see them in person, some time.”
“Maybe you can,” I reply, passing on my phone to Evermore.
“Awww, thanks,” Lover says, smiling at me. “You’re really nice.”
I raise an eyebrow at her, but don’t say anything. She doesn’t have to know that I don’t actually mean what I just told her.
“Wow,” Evermore exclaims, my phone still in her hands. “Burton doesn’t even look like he’s planning to kill you and Taylor, for once.”
“I know right?” I say, snatching my phone back from her before she can start to scroll through my photos. And I know she would.
“Hey!” she protests, but doesn’t make any attempts to get it back, instead turning into the street to our left and taking the stairs up to the pizzeria. “What pizza do you guys want?”
We settle for two simple cheese pizzas that we can share and sit down on the sidewalk outside of the pizzeria, waiting for our order to be ready.
“So,” Evermore says, “what are you guys up to this weekend?”
“Nothing really,” Lover replies.
“Me neither,” I say.
Lover looks at Folklore. “What about you?”
Evermore raises an eyebrow. “She’ll spend all the time reading, what else did you expect?”
Folklores rolls her eyes. “And how exactly would you know that?”
“Cause you rarely do anything else.”
Folklore stays silent after that.
“See,” Evermore says, triumphantly.
Lover sighs next to me. “Leave her alone, Evermore. It’s not like you’re that different from her.
“Thanks,” Folklore says, giving Lover a small smile. Now that I think about it, I’ve rarely ever seen Folklore smile.
“So, if none of us have any plans for this weekend,” Evermore says, changing the subject, “Can’t we all have a sleepover or something?”
“Um, sure,” Lover replies. “I’ll have to check with my mom but I think it should be alright.”
“Cool,” Evermore says, her eyes drifting to me. “What about you, Rep?”
“I don’t know,” I say, hesitantly. “I’ve… got a lot of school work to do, so I don’t think so.”
Evermore groans. “Oh, come on, Rep. Just this once.”
“No, sorry.”
Lover’s gaze drifts from Evermore to me and back. “Why ‘just this once’?”
“Cause I’ve been trying to talk her into having a sleepover with me for, like, the past two years,” Evermore tells her. “And she always comes up with some stupid excuse.”
I roll my eyes. “It’s not my fault that I don’t have as much free time as you do.”
“You could’ve done your school work right after we got it, instead of waiting until the deadline is only a few days away.” She looks at me accusingly.
“Well,” I say, “fact is, I didn’t. So, I have to do it now.”
“Ugh, you’re killing me.”
“Can’t you do your homework real quick and then have a sleepover with us?” Lover chimes in.
I look at her. “I can’t just write a five-page-essay real quick.”
“Please?”
I want to tell her no, but the pleading look in her blue eyes just won’t let me.
I sigh. “I’ll think about it, okay?”
“Thanks.” She smiles at me. “I can try to help you with that essay, if you want to.”
“Mhm, I think I’ll manage to do it on my own, but I’ll let you know if I should need any help.”
“Promise?”
“Yeah.”
Evermore raises an eyebrow at me, but doesn’t say anything, instead turning to Lover.
“How’d you just do that? You have to teach me.”
In that moment, a guy comes out of the pizzeria with two pizza boxes. “Your order is ready,” he says.
Evermore gets up to take the boxes from him and gives him the money. “Thanks.”
He smiles at her, shortly, and then goes back inside.
Evermore looks at us. “Should we go back to the park?”
“Sure,” Lover replies, getting up and holding out her hand for me. I get up on my own, ignoring her for the moment.
She just shrugs, holding her hand out to Folklore instead, who takes it.
We walk back toward Centennial Park, the boxes still in Evermore’s arms. I catch up with her, trying to open the top one, but she turns away from me. “Forget it. You can wait until we’re at Centennial Park and then you might get some pizza.”
“But I’m hungry,” I complain.
She raises an eyebrow. “Weren’t you making fun of me for wanting pizza just a while ago?”
I roll my eyes. “It doesn’t matter now, just give me that pizza.”
“No.”
“Can I have a slice?” Lover asks from behind us.
Evermore hesitates, but then turns around to walk backwards and let’s Lover open the box and take a slice.
“Hey!” I protest. “You’re not being fair.”
She sticks out her tongue at me. “It’s all your fault.”
Before I can think of anything mean to say to her, Lover hands me her pizza slice. “This is for you.”
I take it, a little surprised. “Um, thanks?”
She smiles. “You’re welcome.”
“You can’t just betray me like that, Lover,” Evermore chimes in.
Lover’s eyebrows scrunch together, and I can’t help thinking how cute it makes her look.
“I didn’t betray you,” she says, snapping me out of my thoughts. “I was just trying to be nice to Reputation.”
“Yeah, sure.” Evermore rolls her eyes. “You were just trying to be nice to some random girl you just met instead of being on your cousin’s side. Whom, by the way, you’ve known for the better part of your life.”
“Exactly.”
“You’re such a traitor,” Evermore declares, making an attempt to put her hand to her heart, but quickly giving up when the pizza boxes are threatening to fall to the ground. “Shit, these boxes are fucking heavy,” she breathes.
Lover holds out a hand. “I can take one,” she offers, but Evermore shakes her head. “No thanks, I don’t trust you anymore,” she says, playfully. Her gaze drifts to me. “Actually, I trust none of you guys, before you get any ideas, Rep.”
I take a bite of pizza, raising an eyebrow, but don’t say anything. Folklore is right behind us, typing something into her phone.
I turn my head to look at her. “What are you writing?”
“Oh, um…” She puts her phone into her pocket. “Just a few lyrics that came to my mind.”
“Can I read?” Evermore chimes in.
“No? I’m not really finished yet,” Folklore says.
“Still?”
Lover pipes in before Folklore can respond. “Just leave her alone, Evermore. You know that she doesn’t like it when someone’s reading her lyrics.”
“Yeah, sure.” Evermore rolls her eyes.
We turn left and enter Centennial Park, sitting down at the shore where I met the others earlier. I put the last piece of pizza into my mouth, quickly chewing it and swallowing, before reaching for one of the boxes.
Evermore swipes my hand away, looking at me with a taunting look in her eyes.
“You just had a slice. I want to eat something, too, now.”
I roll my eyes. “Oh, I’m sorry. How rude of me to not let the mighty Queen Evermore take a pizza slice first. Please forgive me, your majesty.” I bow my head just a little.
Evermore snorts. “Really Rep? And you call me childish?”
“Just shut up and take your pizza,” I tell her.
She shakes her head, a grin spreading across her face. “You’re impossible.”
My gaze drifts to Folklore and Lover, who are sitting opposite from us, already sharing one of the pizzas. I notice that Lover is watching us, a smile on her face. Our eyes meet for a second, but she quickly looks away.
Before I can think any more about it, Evermore passes me the pizza box. “I’m gonna kill you if you take more than one slice.”
I snort. “Yeah sure. And then you’ll end up in jail without any pizza at all.”
She raises an eyebrow. “Don’t underestimate me. I have a boating license, remember? No body, no crime.” She takes a bite of her pizza slice, looking satisfied with herself.
“You wouldn’t even know how to kill me,” I point out.
She glares at me. “Don’t act like I’m a child. I’ve read enough crime books to know at least a little about murder.”
“Hey, guys,” Lover pipes in, “can’t we all take a picture?”
“Sure,” Evermore replies, dropping her plans about killing me. For the moment, at least. She pulls out her phone, gesturing for Folklore and Lover to come and sit next to us.
I groan. “Do we really have to do this?”
“Yes.” Evermore holds out her phone, turning on the selfie mode. “Everybody smile. Don’t look so annoyed Rep.”
I force myself to smile at least a little bit while Evermore takes a photo. She puts her phone back into her pocket when we’re done.
“Can you send it to me, later?” Lover asks, sitting back down on her spot.
“Sure,” Evermore replies. “I’ll send it to y’all when I’m at home.”