Hal followed Cat and Delta as they made their way to the school cafeteria. Hal would have rather slipped into the forest than spend lunch in the cafeteria, but Cat convinced him that Kylian Castillo would try to talk to her, which Hal thought was highly unlikely. But then he remembered the episode at the lockers when Kylian actually recognized Cat and tried to call her, and now Hal couldn't help suspect that Cat and the teen celebrity shared a history which Cat refused to reveal.

But Hal wanted to meet the boy, too. Like Delta said, he was popular, gorgeous, and full of good charms, and he even seemed to be one of the better sorts, too. But no one can be too sure. After all, Ruby started out the same way.

"It's weird he's in sophomore," Hal mumbled to Catalina as he stood behind her friend at the end of the line for lunch, watching furtively as Kylian Castillo casually talked with Ian while trying not to seem like a creep. "He seems so much older."

"Hm,"Cat replied, moving a step forward.

"Like Junior or Senior, even," Delta agreed from front of Cat. "It's kinda dumb he's joining during the end of the term. he could have waited till after Winter Break."

"Mhm."

"How do you know each other?" Hal asked, unable to hide the accusation from his voice. "He wanted to talk to you."

"Maybe later?" Cat shrugged nonchalantly, but her voice told them to drop the subject. "Where's your lunch money?"

"Maybe later?" Hal echoed, not ready to give up just yet, annoyance creeping up his voice despite himself. He didn't want to be too intrusive, but he couldn't help it. "When exactly is this later?" How could Cat know Kylian Castillo personally?

A student joined the line behind Hal, an orchestra of orange. Hal ignored her but Cat leaned back, her eyes suddenly lit with resentment, and threw the person behind Hal a nasty look.

"That much orange is unhealthy, don't you know?" Cat sneered, "even to people around you."

Hal's mouth fell open, shocked at how horrid his friend had suddenly turned. He couldn't help but notice his friend' been acting more sour than she does on her bad days. He turned his head around hesitantly to see the result of Cat's unexpected outburst. Hal froze when he realized who it was.

Jasmina Castillo smiled coldly, but it held more warmth than Cat's did. "How predictable, Catalina." She pursed her lips together. "You haven't changed one bit." Hal noticed that Jasmina's shirt was actually more of a pink than orange. He refrained from pointing that out.

Cat smiled back with false enthusiasm. "Yes, but you have."

Hal swallowed slowly, trapped between the two of them. Delta shot him a confused look, laced with worry. They both knew what happened when Cat got angry.

Maybe he should cut back on annoying Cat with questions about the Castillo siblings. There seemed to be more going on than some simple bad-blood between them than he had first expected. Cat was picking fights with whoever and whatever ever since the day started. The probability of ticking her off increases, it seems, by a hundred percent if the Castillos are involved.

"Excuse me," Hal said quietly, trying to get away from them and hopefully join Delta alive. But Cat's eyes flashed. As if she just realized Hal was there.

She grabbed Hal's arm, pulling him back into the line. "You wanted to meet the great Kylian Castillo, didn't you? Here is his even greater sister."

Hal yanked his arm away. "What's wrong with you?" he snapped angrily, just as Jasmina let out an exasperated, "what are you doing?" Jasmina gave Hal a fleeting look before turning her attention back to Cat.

Hal felt like a small animal trapped between two tigers ready to rip each others' throats apart. He felt small and uncomfortable. What had suddenly got into Cat?

To make matters worse, Kylian Castillo's attention was caught and he was heading their way, a concerned look on his face, Ian in tow.

"Ladies," Ian said, his hands raised in an attempt to placate the two.

"Shut up!" Cat and Jasmina snapped at the same time.

Ian raised his eyebrows and turned to Kylian. "Your call."

Kylian frowned at the two girls and changed his focus to Hal, who's arms wrapped around himself, the only person he herself thought was the sane at the moment.

"What's going on?"

Hal scowled at his white Adidas canvas. "They've all gone mad, that's what," he said before storming out the cafeteria, no desire to wait for the next Castillo to engage in a tirade with his highly charged friend.

He was still fuming about the way Cat had treated him a few moments ago that he barely paid attention to where he was going, not making much of an attempt at being inconspicuous as he sneaked into the forest. Woods, whatever. He was slowly turning it into a forest anyway.

He looked up, his eyes scanning for a tree to climb onto, one comfortable enough to even doze off for sometime. He wouldn't mind missing the rest of the classes for the day. It was only PE.

He soon found one good enough. It wasn't his usual spot but he wondered how he had missed such a gem before. Two oak trees, majestic in their height, entwined around each other, forming numerous comfortable spots he could get lost in. Like two souls joined together in life. Like something out of a fairytale where the life of the hero changed forever. Did he make that unknowingly? It seemed unlikely.

Hal huffed angrily as he placed his foot on the first foothold. Soon he had found several footholds that helped him effortlessly climb the tree. It wasn't hard. He had done this all his life. He would climb any tree if he had the chance to and his mother almost always encouraged it. It was almost like he's lived in the trees his whole life. Maybe living like Tarzan wouldn't be so bad, even.

He let out a soft sigh as he got comfortable in the crook he decided would be his resting place for the day, where the trees met the third time, almost twelve feet off the ground. He stared at the happy-blue sky peeking though the leaves. He willed the trees to spread out a little more, grow a bit thicker until he felt like he was under a canopy of leaves, with just enough gaps to see peeps of the sky and let sunlight trickle in. Just like a fairytale scene.

Hal let out a contended hum. He always felt so cooped up in the world, trapped in his life. His desires were pulled in both directions. He didn't want her abilities—never did—but it was torture to not ever use them. He had it at his fingertips. He would prance on every opportunity he got to use his abilities, his gift.

Gift.

Curse?

His father's face came into his mind. Young forever, preserved in his memories. "Remember. It's just abilities, altered DNA. But how you use it is what matters more than anything."

Hal had learned to accept it. And he tried to make himself believe it was a gift, that it never was a curse. Like his father said, just altered DNA.

But sometimes, it felt like none of them. Not a curse, not a gift, but something trapped in him that just desperately wanted to get out and be set free.

He was a freak conjured up by science, and he was almost fine with that—he learned to be fine with it—as long as he would be allowed to breathe freely, he didn't think accepting it would matter. 

No, he was fine with it. But if he ever stumbled across Francis Fortone, one of them wouldn't walk out of it alive, that much he knew for sure.

If only he had a way to let himself—let the world let him—be himself, be who he was originally made to be. Only, he didn't know what they had meant to make him into.

He must have dozed off. Or maybe he had been staring at the sky for too long and had lost concentration because the next thing he knew, he's staring at Cat's face, red and tense. His emotions returned, this time as disgust and frustration. He almost forgot about his surroundings, that he was on top of a tree over twelve feet and that Cat, who was scared to death of heights, so much that her knees shook at the very thought of the climbing ropes in gym, was right here next to Hal.

"You're blocking my view," Hal said without compassion. 

Catalina didn't reply. Instead she swallowed and leaned over to Hal, took a precarious look down, pulled back immediately and let out a long breath as she clutched the branches with trembling hands as she held on for dear life.

Hal pointedly ignored Cat's look of terror, but at the same time, part of his angrier motions fell away. How could he be mad at someone who does the very thing that gives them nightmare just to see him? Nevertheless, he didn't make any attempt at helping Cat.

Catalina took in a shaky breath. She tried to switch to a better position as Hal watched on mercilessly. Her fingers wriggled in their hold as if they were getting sweaty. And she looked awfully uncomfortable and awkward that Hal almost laughed. Almost.

"Look," Cat said slowly.

"I'm looking."

"Look, I'm sorry." She tried to switch to a better position but all she managed to do was shake the branches in a way that alarmed Hal. "I should have never ever behaved like that, I shouldn't have—" 

The branch she was holding onto made warning crack but didn't give away. Hal's fingers flinched. Cat gulped loudly, her lower lip trembling for a second.

"I shouldn't have tried to pull you into it," she continued, "and I shouldn't have ever thought climbing up here was going to be a good idea. Should've just called you down."

A dry smile pushed into Hal's lips. "Yeah, but then I wouldn't have come down."

He pulled his legs closer to him. What he didn't realize was that Cat was positioned over Hal's legs and by moving them, she dislodged Cat.

Cat's eyes went wide as the cracking branch gave away and her whole body fell back, over the crook, back first, hurtling to the ground. Cat screamed, a sound of pure terror. Hal heard another scream, a deeper one, but in the panic, she didn't comprehend.

Cat was going to die from the height, or at the minimum, break something severely.

It wasn't on his will or consciously that Hal did it. But out of the sheer panic and horror that gripped his mind and body, the ground erupted with the roots of the trees around them.

It was all over in a few moments, but every second of it was seared into his mind.

The roots, as if in slow-motion, as if they couldn't go faster despite every nerve in Hal's body screaming or them to, all surged up towards cat. She had her hands outstretched and flailing around, her hair flying around her head. The mass of roots wrapped around Cat, around her torso, her outstretched limbs, her neck, her head before, Hal hoped, Cat reached the ground.

Cat laid there, still, unmoving and frozen. Hal's mind raced. Talk to me!

Then, as if all the wind from her body that was stolen brutally was suddenly returned, Cat's chest heaved.

Hot tears stung Hal's eyes. A painful gasp escaped his lips. "Oh, God," his voice cracked as he fumbled to look for a foothold to help him get down. He hoped Cat had heaved because she got her breath back, not because of some sort of painful spasm.

He scrambled to find foothold after foothold, but towards the last few feet, his foot slipped and he fell, crashing to the ground. After a second, he shakily rose to his feet, sure that he didn't fall harder than Cat. The skin in his palms were smarting painfully, and his left shoulder ached where he took the brunt of the fall but he ignored it and ran wildly towards Cat.

A small whimper escaped Hal. The sight of Cat lying there wrapped up inside a cocoon of brown roots was horrifying to look at. They wrapped around her outstretched arms and legs, twisted in an awkward angle, it made her look impossibly small.

Tears fell freely down Hal's face as he hesitantly lowered himself to his knees. He reached to touch Cat's cheek, her face being the only part of her not covered in roots. She was white as milk an her whole body was tense. 

"Talk to me," Hal whispered tremulously. In response, the roots uncurled from her and snaked back, but didn't return to their original positions or sizes. 

He pushed the hair out of his friend's face. Cat blinked furiously. "You could have killed me." The words were barely audible, but Hal couldn't be more relieved.

Hal buried his face in his hands, and winced at the pain it brought. His body started trembling. "Oh, my God," Hal cried into his hands, "oh, my God. You could have died." His chest heaved with the sob that pushed out of him. he took a deep breath, then another.

He pulled his hands away and looked at Cat who was staring at the sky and had her legs pulled towards her body, her knees pointing skyward. Her breathing was still fast.

"Does it hurt too much?" Hal asked softly.

Cat shook her head mutely.

"Can you stand?"

"Probably."

Hal nodded and stood up, bending down to help Cat. He slipped a hand under Cat's shoulder and gently heaved her to her feet. He let out a half-relieved breath. Cat looked okay overall. He wiped his eyes on his sleeves and proceeded to dust them both off.

"We should get you to the nurse," Hal proposed hesitantly.

Cat wrapped her hands around herself, her body hunched. "Yeah."

Hal looked at his own hands, tears stinging his eyes again, although the shock was slowly ebbing away. Now the guilt and the fear started to manifest in him.

"You might get suspended."

"Suspension sounds nice," Cat smiled uncertainly, "I need the rest, I think."
"I'm sorry," Hal whispered.

Cat didn't reply immediately. She looped her arm with Hal's, leaning on her. "For saving my life? No, I don't think I can forgive you."

Hal couldn't even think properly to react to Cat's attempt at a joke. Or maybe it was sarcasm. He could barely form a proper thought. "So?" He was afraid.

Cat nodded. "Nurse it is."

Hal struggled to swallow. That wasn't what he had meant.