Kaitlyn was a charity case, and I knew it. Of course, I always held a sense of guilt about that knowledge because I had to keep her from figuring it out. Oddly, for how often I'd acted as a surrogate older brother to her, she was a year older than me at nineteen. She'd been held back at least once to my knowledge, making her a junior when I was enrolling in college full time. Kaity was a bit distraught at the thought of me moving on and leaving her to fend for herself in her remaining two (given her track record, possibly more) years of highschool.
I should probably point out that this wasn't her fault. She had some kind of condition that left her both a little slow on the uptake, and bafflingly naive when it came to social situations. I would have assumed Aspergers or something, but she wasn't actively antisocial. Far from it, she actively threw herself at people with a witless enthusiasm that generally drove anyone with a sense of self-preservation away. Add to that a conservative, very religious upbringing and a complete inability to detect sarcasm, and it became quite clear how she'd made it this far without friends to speak of, to say nothing of a boyfriend. The few friends she did have were the type of socially unconscious girlfriends you'd pick up through sunday school, with the Christian charity to befriend the poor dear and self-righteous enough to be persona non grata in any of the popular social circles. For all the effort she had put into acquiring a boyfriend, she couldn't seem to think of a use for one aside from holding hands and filling in the required space on a well adjusted highschool student's checklist. The few boys new and ignorant enough to accept her attentions generally called it off after an awkward day or so, going on to insist that it had never happened should anyone bring it up in the future.
Which left me. When I came to highschool as a sophomore, transferring in from another school, I'd also been met with her amorous attentions within a week of my arrival. Unlike most of her usual victims, I had the foresight to turn her down. However, I'd used the "Let's just be friends" approach I'd found effective at warding off unwanted advances in the past, citing that I didn't know her well enough to date her. Kaitlyn took that literally, to the point where I was abruptly transferred from potential token boyfriend to Best Friend Ever without much say in the matter on my part.
Now I might be genuinely antisocial. I don't hate people, per se. I just often find better things to do with my time. So it was no small amount of trepidation that I faced her daily enthusiastic greetings, surprise hugs and torrential reports on anything that might have happened to her in the space of her attention span, which was mercifully brief. I have to admit it was a bit embarrassing to be greeted every day by my name squealed at the top of her lungs, usually accompanied by a cheerfully spastic wave and an intense hug whenever she got within range. But I wasn't trying to impress anybody, so I endured it with as much friendliness as I could muster. Besides, she did squish pleasantly against my chest whenever she hugged me, a pleasure somewhat mitigated by a habit of forgetting to wear deodorant at least twice a week. Still, I often had to dispense chaste "side-hugs" lest certain anatomical reactions betray exactly how I enjoyed them.
My own peculiar scholastic situation meant I only saw her at most twice a week, spending the rest of the time in advanced or college level courses, to which I was consigned despite my relative antipathy to studying. I may be a smartass, but I never put much work into it. I owed most of my advancement to parents who were constantly jockeying to have their "genius son" skip grades, take advanced courses and whatever legal or illegal means would put me further ahead of my peers. Despite that, it became pretty clear to me that I was probably Kaity's only real friend. She never seemed to notice, but most people went out of her way to avoid her. I couldn't really blame them either, I just happened to be more susceptible to guilt than most, and letting her putter away in all the wrong directions was easier than possibly hurting her feelings by telling her how to fix herself. In hindsight, she may have been aware of the situation to some degree, but I don't think her position really dawned on her until her nineteenth birthday.
She invited me, of course. She must have ended up inviting half the damn school. I was wondering how she was going to cram all of these people into her house, let alone feed them. It was supposed to be a pizza and pool party in her backyard and she was expecting twenty or thirty people. So, when I rattled up her driveway in my battered Mazda, I was a bit confused by the utter lack of people. The confusion slowly turned to horror as I figured out what was going on. It became pretty obvious as I let myself in that I wasn't just the first to arrive: I was the only one to arrive. Kaity perched forlornly on a bar stool in front of a counter laden with full pizza boxes, cake and assorted party snacks, none of which had been touched. Her mother busied herself non-nonchalantly about the kitchen, apparently unwilling to risk disturbing her daughter more when she was obviously upset. I caught sight of her younger brother gazing longingly at the food, wondering if it was ok to begin eating with no party guests in sight. At the risk of embroiling myself in what was obviously an awkward situation, I spoke up.
"Hey Kaity! Sorry I'm late. Where's the party?" She perked up a bit as I announced myself, and I caught a grateful glance from her mother as I tried to salvage the occasion.
"Noone is coming." She let a bit of her melancholy show through her happiness at seeing me, "My friends all had more important things to do than come to my birthday,"
My eyebrows rose involuntarily at hearing Kaity of all people resort to sarcasm. "Well," I retorted, "To hell with them then. I know I'm worth ten or twenty of them on a good day, so why not have a party of our own?" I punctuated my declaration by leaning down and lifting her unruly dark hair out of her eyes, giving her my best devil-may-care grin.
She responded about at well as I could have hoped, giving me a hopeful smile through tear-reddened eyes. "Okay."
Her mother took advantage of the distraction immediately, shooting me another thankful glance as she took charge, "Let's just have dinner then, we can go out back later, maybe break out a movie or something once it gets dark out."
Despite the poor turnout, I felt like I'd managed to bring enough life back into her for the family to pick things up. We gathered round the pizza for her mom to say grace. We talked more than ate, for once I felt like an actual friend, and a bit more human than I'd felt in a while, struggling to help my naïve little friend through the realization that most people didn't really want to be around her when it really came down too it. Still, I made sure she had a good enough time. Even her mother seemed to be in a rare good mood as she snagged some pizza for herself. He little brother was in hog heaven, going to town on the overabundant food like a starving man, which should have been a warning sign that the disasters weren't over.
Not content with going into a food coma like any sensible child, the little bastard decided he wasn't feeling well and promptly threw up down my back. I was disgusted and a bit outraged, feeling hot bile soaking into my clothes and listening to the middle-schooler hacking up a storm. I might have felt a little sorry for him had I noticed how red he was getting while I politely excused myself to change into the swimming trunks I'd brought with me.
While I was skinning out of my slimed clothes and tossing them into the family washing machine, I caught some frantic raised voices and the slamming of the front door. A few minutes later, a soft tapping at the laundry-room door prompted me to finish pulling on my trunks and call out, "I'm decent."
I had my back to the door, bent over the washer when Kaity walked in talking quickly, "Mom's taking Kyle to the emergency room. She said it's ok if we used the pool while she's gone."
Running over that little non-sequiter, I choked out a surprised, "Wait, the Emergency Room, why..." before I turned around and abruptly lost all will to continue. Kaity was standing framed in the door, somewhat dopey smile still showing on her face, in what had to be the smallest bikini in the county. In her habitually loose clothing, I'd always assumed she was a little pudgy, but her current attire was busy banishing such notions, as well as most rational thought, from my mind. Strips of white fabric with black polka dots did a rather poor job of covering curvy pale flesh, and I swore I could hear the strings of her top humming with tension as they tried to restrain the snow-white balcony which dominated the landscape, and certainly made a fair bid for my attention. The sudden ringing in my ears drowned out whatever she had to say, forcing me to stammer out, "I'm sorry, what was that?"
"Oh, I said he had an allergic reaction to the tomatoes. We got him a special pizza without them, but he ate the wrong one." She answered, oblivious to the effect she was having on me.
"Right." I responded curtly, more like he'd eaten that one and then kept going. "Is he going to be ok?"
