Desperation? ((Luke))

[Caitlin Martinez G7]

Caitlin had never avoided anyone in her life like she was avoiding Luke Dallan. She was constantly looking over her shoulder, hiding behind books, keeping to friends in classes they shared, and checking around corners before moving down the corridor. Some would call her melodramatic. Some would even go as far to say she was insane to avoid Luke Dallan, but Caitlin had her reasons even if her friends didn’t agree with them. Even if her friends didn’t know about them. The reasoning behind her avoiding him is probably one that wouldn’t make sense to anyone else. The night in the Hospital Wing, Caitlin had let a part of her down. She had let that wall she built up against all boys (except Colin, go figure) come down and allowed Luke to enter into her life and ask her that question that she was dreading. The question that she knew was inevitable. “Why are you so sad, Stargirl?” Not only did he gain access into her life, and not only did she almost tell him why she was depressed (all Colin problems aside), she had been attracted to him. Whereas her friends might have said that was normal for Luke Dallan, Caitlin didn’t like it. She hadn’t been attracted to anyone… not really, not at Hogwarts. It was strange of her to just want to kiss him. Then there was the whole idea that she had just met him hours before. That was what got Caitlin the most. That was what made her uneasy about it all. Caitlin had narrowed it down to why she was feeling this way. She overanalyzed things, but even if she did do that… it shouldn’t have mattered. They wouldn’t have met anyway if he hadn’t thrown that Quaffle at her, and then she wouldn’t be in this place… this place of confusion and denial. “Cait? Hullo?” Caitlin jumped at the sound of her name and looked around the table she was sharing with her Astronomy study group.

“Oh, erm, sorry. What were we talking about?” her reply showed that her mind was elsewhere. Her mind was never elsewhere during Astronomy group, and this worried some of her friends. Astronomy was what Caitlin did best, Astronomy was Caitlin. Caitlin and Astronomy were one thing, one entity in which she was so into it that she didn’t even have to think about an answer to a question. She just went at it. Now, as she slouched down in her seat and pulled the deep purple baseball cap down over her eyes, she could feel her friends’ stares on her. She was already lost elsewhere again, the baseball cap (though she had worn it plenty enough) smelled like him and Caitlin had to control every inch of her from buckling under the emotion she was feeling. She wasn’t supposed to feel like this. She couldn’t feel like this. Caitlin took a deep breath, breathing in his scent, before sitting up and lifting the baseball cap from her eyes to find her friends still staring at her. “Well? Do we or don’t we have an assignment from Miller?” her voice, though strained, was noticeably aloof. A small smile still on her face as she leaned over and pulled the Astronomy textbook from the pile on the table. Instantly, she dove into the essay. Words flew from her fingertips as she wrote and wrote, not even realizing she what she was writing. Within ten minutes, her essay was finished. She blew on the parchment to dry the ink before she stood and rolled it. “Um, well, I’m finished. It’s a rather easy assignment, if you look in chapter twelve you’ll find everything, and I do mean everything, you need.” Caitlin smiled as she tucked the scroll into her book bag and slung it over her shoulder. She quickly left the library with a good bye to her friends, her book bag banging against her as she dashed away.

As she walked down the corridors, her hands in her jean pockets, Caitlin smiled. A song circled her head, the same song that was stuck in her head the day that she was hit with a Quaffle. “Out one day, out walking one day, out one day with you hallelujah.” She sang quietly as she made a right turn into the Courtyard. The sun was brilliant and Caitlin had to suppress the urge to break out dancing. There were students milling about, but none in their uniform. It was a weekend, so there was hardly any spotting of uniforms in the school at this time. Except for the overzealous Prefects. There weren’t many of those this year, though. “We found a wood, we unfound a wood, and then we cry; oh no.” She situated herself underneath the tree she had been sitting at the day Luke had thrown the Quaffle. The grass was warm as she laid down it, her eyes looking up into the green leaves of the tree. Sun speckled through and down onto her, casting glares into her eyes. Caitlin groaned and pulled the hat down over her eyes again, as her fingers tapped out the beat to the song in her head. Even as the song whirled around inside her head, she couldn’t stop her thoughts. They always returned to Luke and how much she didn’t want to like him, but how much she seemed to be starting to. Before she could get too deep into thought, the cap was lifted away from her face; casting light back into her eyes, blocking her view of whoever it was who had taken her hat. “That’s mine,” she said bluntly as she reached up blindly for the cap.

[Luke Dallan H7]

Luke leaned up against the wall of the library, his blue eyes scanning through the racks of books. His arms were crossed causally across his chest, still in uniform. There were some empty spaces between all the books which he glanced through in hopes of finding someone. Disappointed, Luke shrugged as he scanned each title looking for the one title that would help him with his transfiguration homework. His gaze stopped upon a title that made Luke fall still. The book was a deep brown color, with cold threading along the spine. It wasn’t the design of the book that made Luke freeze, but the title. Reaching out for the book, he slid it off the shelf, holding it in both of his hands. “The Wonder of the Stars,” Luke spoke the title opening it up to the first chapter. It made him think about Caitlin, or in his case, Stargirl. Where was she lately? Normally, Luke always saw her around before he even met her, but now it was as if she was avoiding him. Why would she want to avoid him? He didn’t do anything to make her want to do that. Or maybe he did. “Girl’s are too confusing.” Shaking his head, Luke closed the book back up, sliding it back into the spot where he had found it. Just a couple sections from it, he found the right textbook he needed for his essay. Taking it out, Luke headed over toward where Madam Prince. As she helped him check it out, Luke couldn’t help but take a quick look around the large library. There were only a few students around. No one that he was looking for.

Nodding thanks to the older woman, Luke tucked the book under his right arm, heading out of the library. He might as well get a head start on his essay that was due in just a couple of days. A head start? Was this the over achieving Luke talking? Usually, Luke would put off doing homework until the last possible minute. What was making him change that now? Shrugging, he Luke stood in front of the large portrait hole giving out the password. It swung open, and he entered the common room, bouncing up the stairs to the dorm room. The common room was already filled with some students hanging out, and others doing homework. Setting the book down on the bed, Luke looked around the empty dorm room sighing. Bryce wasn’t anywhere to be seen. “Probably hanging out with Weetzie,” he told himself nodding as he went for a different pair of clothes to change into. Taking out a yellow tee-shirt and black cotton shirt, he pulled them on leaving the black shirt unbuttoned. Luke liked to layer his shirts, putting odd things together like worn out tee shirt with a nice button up collar one. Though, when it was really hot, Luke just normally wore one shirt.

After getting dressed, Luke made up his mind to work on the essay latter. He still had plenty of time, especially after dinner. Setting his wand into the front of his jean pocket, Luke ruffled his blonde hair while heading out of the small dorm room. He found himself soon outside, with the sun shinning lightly down on him. Smiling, Luke stopped as he noticed a familiar figure sitting under a tree. His small smile soon turned into a grin as he saw that it was Caitlin in the place where they had met last time. That was quite ironic. Quickly making his way toward her, Luke plucked the hat right off from her head. Her brown hair bounced as she stood up to retrieve the cap. Holding it up higher from the girl’s reached, Luke looked down at her. His blue eyes met hers, holding her gaze. “It’s quite hard to find you Stargirl. Though, I like a good challenge.”

[Caitlin Martinez G7]

Caitlin felt her breath leave her again when she realized who it was. Dammit, why had she stopped to enjoy the nice day? She stared up into his blue eyes and forgot that he had been holding the hat out of her reach. He liked challenges, did he? Well, he had a challenge on his hands if he didn’t stop trying to look for her. Caitlin pulled out her wand and pointed it at the hat that was in Luke’s hand still. She muttered a spell and the hat grew so hot that Luke had to drop it. With a smirk, she bent down to retrieve it and plopped it down on her head again. It was cold now, but the spell had served its purpose. “I’ve been busy,” she told him after a moment of silence. That was a flat lie. She hadn’t been busy, she had actually been far from it. She had trouble finding things to do while she was locked away in the common room, avoiding him. She wouldn’t tell him that, though. No one liked to hear that they were being avoided. Especially if they had been trying to find the person who was doing the avoiding. “You’ve been looking for me, then? Are you stalking me, Dallan?” she asked this with a teasing smile on her face as she sank to the ground again, pulling Luke down with her. All thoughts of avoiding him had fled from her mind. It would do no good to rush off in a hurry, giving him another lame excuse. It would probably just confuse him, anger him, or annoy him. All three of those emotions were things that Caitlin didn’t want to be the cause of. She was already confusing herself. Then again, that wasn’t too difficult to do. Confusing herself was something Caitlin did on a regular basis. It was… confusing herself over a boy that made her weary.

She had looked away from Luke by now, her gaze was on the tree leaves again and how the sun filtered down through them. She wondered how it was to be a tree. The silence that was between them was deafening, and Caitlin had only heard silence so deafening once in her life. In fifth year. When she was just starting her depression. “I don’t think I wanted to be found,” she suddenly said with a quick look at Luke. Her brown eyes held questions and confusion, and she knew she wasn’t doing a good job at hiding them, so she merely looked down at her hands. “I have issues. Huge issues. They’re Jurassic issues.” She lifted her hands and spread them apart rather wide, “Ten times this length, issues.” Caitlin smiled with a roll of her eyes that still held the confusion before she dropped her hands and leaned against the tree with a sigh. “Issues that cause me to run out on guys that irritate me in the Hospital Wing. How mad was Poppy after I left anyway? I was supposed to stay the night there, you know.” That thought hadn’t even occurred to her when she had bolted. The only thing that was on her mind was getting away from Luke as fast as she could so she could get her mind off the thought of kissing him or being with him or whatever she thought she felt she wanted. A lot of good that did. She only got a killer headache when she reached the common room and she started to only think about Luke. That lead to her avoiding him, and that lead to where they were now.

“I’m sorry,” Caitlin whispered after another silent moment, “that I ran out. I just… the question… it wasn’t one I could answer easily and instead of staying there and explaining it to you… I felt like I had to leave.” OK, so that statement wasn’t a complete lie. She had in fact felt like the question was too complicated to answer and that was half the reason she was freaked out. She had let her guard down. Was telling a truth with omission still considered a lie?

[Luke Dallan H7]

Luke smiled his charming smile as he looked down at Caitlin, her gaze meting his. Why did look like she was beating herself up? There wasn’t a crime for wanting to be with him. Maybe he should tell her that, but what if she wanted to stay away from him because she didn’t like him? His eyebrow rose slightly as she took out her wand pointing it at his hand. Instantly the hat got extremely hot, like the time he had touched the hot skillet when his mom was making Breakfast. Dropping the hat, Luke grabbed his hand staring down into his red palm. Playfully glaring at Caitlin as she retrieved the hat he shook his head. “If you wanted the hat back you could have asked me. I would have given it to you eventually. It was my hat to begin with. You just changed it a different color that looks hideous on me.” Grinning Luke dug his hands into the pockets of his jeans, the stinging feeling in his pal slowly falling numb. His face scrunched up curiously when she told him she had been busy. “What have you been so preoccupied with lately to not even glance my direction?” he asked leaning closer to Caitlin, his blue eyes searching into hers. “Oh yes I’ve been stalking you. I’ve figured out where and when you do things all day.” Grinning as he shook his head he laughed softly. “No. Stalking isn’t something I normally do to a girl that interests me.” Luke wondered how she would react to his words. “I normally go for hitting girls in the head with quaffles and taking them to the hospital wing technique. Normally girls wouldn’t stay away, just stay in close distance. You on the other hand, I have to go out and find.”

There was a dead silence between them and Luke followed Caitlin’s gaze to the tears leaves. He smiled at the sun shinning through the holes of the branches forgetting about how much he loved spring. Winter was just too cold, with a higher chance of getting some kind of cold or flu. Though, spring brought allergies, but luckily, Luke didn’t have any. When Caitlin broke the silence, Luke was quite shocked when he heard her say she didn’t want to be found. Looking over at her, Luke wondered what she meant by that. Did she mean about her depression, or a completely different topic? When she finished explaining about her huge issues Luke just shook his head at her. “You are so confusing to understand Caitlin.” Rolling his eyes playfully he looked back up at the tree. “Why can’t you tell me about these….huge issues of yours? You don’t trust enough or do I irritate you to the point where you can’t stand to be around me.” Luke really wanted to know more about Caitlin, but she didn’t even want to be around him. How could he be a friend if she didn’t want to be? “Oh yes Madam Promfrey went ballistic when you left. She was about to send me after you, but I convinced her that you were fine enough to leave,” Luke answered with a small smile taking his hands out of the pocket of his jeans. “She wasn’t quite happy that I turned the hospital wing into its own galaxy filled with stars.”

Shaking his head when Caitlin apologized he shrugged it off as if it didn’t matter to him, but it did. Gently taking her hand, Luke slid to the ground pulling Caitlin down next to him. “Don’t worry. I would run if someone asked me something to personal….” he spoke a small smile on his lips. “Now that you aren’t avoiding me at this moment, tell me more about yourself. If were going to be friends, I’ve got to know some things about you.”

[Caitlin Martinez G7]

“Well,” Caitlin said after a pause and took the hat off her head, “that just takes the fun out of it, doesn’t it?” She grinned and tapped the hat with her wand, changing it back to its natural blue colour. She looked at the cap a moment before she turned so she could place it on Luke’s head without difficulty. “Voila! It is your hat once again,” Caitlin smiled and moved away from Luke again, her eyes staring straight ahead of her. She kept trying to think of an excuse to get away, any excuse. Or if she couldn’t get an excuse for leaving, she needed an excuse to look away. She couldn’t just… sit there and talk to him. It was too hard for her. What are you thinking? You shouldn’t have an issue about this. He doesn’t even like you, and you don’t like him. End of story. Right? Caitlin chewed on her bottom lip as she turned her head to look at Luke again. He asked her what she had been so preoccupied with to not even look at him. “Astronomy, and other things. School related, mostly. Besides, I hardly see you anyway, right? So it wasn’t like I would look up and there you were.” Nope. Caitlin had made sure that he wouldn’t be there when she looked up. Or at least until just a few moments before she had made sure that he wouldn’t be there. She shrugged and turned her attention to a group of first years a couple of feet away from them. She had become painfully aware that he had leaned closer toward her. The closer he got, the stronger the scent she had been smelling all day became. Caitlin breathed in sharply before she turned her attention to him, tensing up slightly. “I interest you,” it wasn’t a question, it was a statement. A repeating of his words, “well, what can I say? When someone hits me in the head with a Quaffle I don’t tend to grow buddy buddy with them,” she rolled her eyes slightly, thinking about how ironic that sentence really was.

With her attention on the tree above them, Caitlin felt like she was doing just fine. Until he responded to her issues rant. He called her confusing, and then asked her why she couldn’t tell him about the issues. She felt guilty when he asked if it was because he irritated her to a point where she couldn’t stand to be around him. “No, it’s not that. It’s just… I’ve never told anyone my issues, ever. I was on the verge of telling Colin, but then he upped and disappeared so my story remained untold to anyone. It’s not that you irritate me or that I don’t trust you, not at all. It’s just… it’s difficult.” She knew she was using that excuse a lot, she knew that perhaps Luke would just get annoyed with that answer – but there wasn’t anything Caitlin could do. Her life was complicated. That was all there was to it. It was a simple way of putting her life into a summary. “Oh,” she said in reference to him saying Madame Pomfrey was ballistic, “Poppy will get over it. She was just upset that no one ever brought the galaxy into the Hospital Wing for her.” Caitlin shrugged, knowing the Poppy was rather lonely. Although Caitlin hadn’t stayed there often, the stays she had before had been rather lengthy so she and Poppy talked quite a bit. Poppy was a good listener and she had a heart of gold even if she was rather cold to those who visited the Hospital Wing. She was just a lonely woman and Caitlin understood that.

Another breath left her when Luke took her hand and pulled her to the ground beside him. She gently took her hand away, busying it with the necklace around her neck, as she looked up at the tree still. He wanted to know things about her. He wanted to be friends. Caitlin chewed on her bottom lip before shrugging; “I’m…um… I don’t know what to tell you. I mean, there’s the usual. My mum’s recently been remarried and my real father is a jerk. He disappeared when I was ten and then… reappeared some months after he left. I was…” she swallowed the lump in her throat before continuing, “I was hospitalized after an ordeal at sea… and now I’m here.” She looked over at him, wondering if he would make the connections between her fears and her past.

[Luke Dallan H7]

Luke watched curiously as Caitlin took the cap off, tapping it lightly with her wand. The purple material changed back into the dark blue, the emblem of the Appleby Arrows still the same gray color on the front. He stared at the tip of the cap as Caitlin settled it back onto his head, remembering the time when his father had given it to him. It was when Ryder had gotten his coaching job for the professional Quidditch team. Taking the cap off, Luke ruffled his blonde hair, making it messier than before. His blue eyes watched Caitlin as he took out his wand from his front jean pocket. He twirled it around his fingers, his gaze following hers. There was only a group of younger kids off in the distance, but that wasn’t far to interesting than him? Luke looked down at the cap tapping it with his wand. It turned back into that purple color that looked so good on Caitlin. Smiling, Luke shook his head closing the gap between them. Ruffling her own curly brown hair, Luke set the cap back down on her head, his smile never leaving his face. “Consider it a gift from friend to friend. I have plenty of others, and my brother can get me a new one for free.” Fixing the cap so it fit better on her head he smiled as she explained her busy schedule. “Sounds like you take your studies very seriously,” Luke replied, nodding his head as he tucked the wand back into his jean pocket. When Caitlin spoke again, his time it was about how he said she interested him. Luke just smiled nodding his head wondering if she should answer that question. “Yes, you do interest me.” Luke rubbed the back on his neck as Caitlin brought up the time when he had hit her in the head with a quaffle. “Well, I was kind of hoping that we could at least be friends. Though, I do understand if you don’t want to be.”

He just stared at Caitlin as she tried to tell him why he wouldn’t tell her anything. Luke didn’t like the fact that she was hurting so much inside, and he didn’t quite understand why he cared about that so much. He barely even knew this girl, and was already trying to pry into her life. “Sorry. You don’t have to tell me yet,” he began a small smile curling onto his lips. “But do you promise to tell me later? When you’re more comfortable around me?” he asked hoping that maybe she would say yes, or even a maybe. Luke knew he shouldn’t get his hopes up to high. Caitlin after all, was a confusing girl to understand. Then again, when was the opposite sex ever not so baffling? His small smile soon turned into a grin as Caitlin responded to Madame Promfrey being mad about the whole turning the hospital wing into a galaxy. “She wasn’t yelling at me or anything, but when she saw those star, I thought her eyes were going to fall right out of their sockets. Before I could even say a word she made it all disappear.” Luke nodded as he remembered the look on her face. He had never been so afraid of a professor; well expect Snape, but who wasn’t afraid of the potions teacher?

Once they were seated on the ground, Caitlin pulled her hand away from his grasp clasping onto the necklace on her neck. Luke shrugged as she pulled his feet up, resting his elbows onto his knees. He listened as Caitlin gave a short version of her life, stopping at a certain part about her father. Luke’s eyebrow rose as he glanced over his shoulder at Caitlin, silence between them. “What happened with you at sea? Nothing like boat broke down, or lost in a storm?”