Even now, with all her stuff prepared and the canoe pulled up onto the sand, Kate knew she wasn't exactly the camping type. It had taken her way too long to realize that she'd forgotten to pack any water, even though she'd remembered food, a sleeping bag and a flashlight. The serious lack of water was the reason she was late now, jogging along the boardwalk to where she'd left the canoe, hoping Effy hadn't been there for ages already, waiting for her. Not that she was particularly punctual most of the time, so it probably wasn't even a surprise.

And even though she knew she wasn't the camping type, she was excited for the trip. In all the time Kate had been on the island, she'd never done anything like this. Killer stuffed animals hardly counted as an adventure, since that wasn't exactly the sort of fun anyone went looking for. She hadn't been to see the dinosaurs, hadn't gone down into that underground city, hadn't changed bodies with anyone -- though she had been a dude for a few days, which had been sort of fun. This, though, was planned.

On top of that, she'd never really gone on any sort of trip with a girl friend before. She and Tara had done that weekend trip that had ended pretty okay, even if it had started off rough, but she'd never done anything like this. By eighteen, she figured it was the sort of thing everyone had done, but not Kate. Of course, by eighteen, most girls hadn't done half the shit she'd done, but that sort of wasn't the point.

"Hey!" she called as she finally made her way to the beach, breathing hard and skidding in the sand a little. She dropped her pack as she tried to catch her breath, then waved her hand absently at the canoe. "Sorry. Forgot water. Had to go all the way back."

The nice thing about being kind of self absorbed was that Kate didn't really think about the shit she did affecting people negatively. 

She was sure it happened -- hell, she'd tried to burn down the bookshelf -- and she was sure there was at least one person on the island who didn't like her much, but the other nice thing about being self absorbed was that it brought a kind of confidence to a person, too. Someone out there might hate her, but it was pretty easy to not care about that much. Still, part of not thinking about it was avoidance of certain things and although Kate knew she hadn't exactly done anything wrong, she still felt sort of awkward now and then if she let herself think about Harry and Ginny.

He'd decided to stay with her, so that had to mean something, and Kate was happy with that decision. But it also meant she avoided thinking about Ginny much, just in case she wasn't happy with that decision.

Avoidance only worked so long as she could actually avoid someone, though, and sometimes that got tough. Especially when the person she was sort of avoiding -- not actively, though, that would be weird and they did have a class together -- looked exactly like someone she considered a friend. It was with the thought that she had spotted Wichita ahead of her on the boardwalk that Kate hurried to catch up with the other girl.

"Hey," she said, sounding a little breathless, though not nearly as breathless as she might have once been. That self defense class was paying off in that sense.

It was only when she arrived there that she realized that she wasn't standing beside Wichita. She tried not to be an asshole, but she also didn't exactly go out of her way to talk to Ginny either, which meant her sudden arrival at the other girl's side was probably pretty weird. "Ginny," she added, not wanting to let on that she'd confused her with someone else.

Not that she'd say it, but Kate felt sort of stupid about the whole trying to burn down the bookshelf thing. Having to spend the night in an IPD holding cell wasn't exactly her idea of a good time, especially given that the rest of the night had been pretty good. Something had happened to shift her mood, something between Harry and the bookshelf, but she couldn't remember what it might have been beyond the books themselves. There were bits and pieces of the party she still couldn't remember, but for the most part, everything else had come back to her.

Everything. That included acting like a complete asshole to Jeff when he'd just been trying to stop her from getting into trouble. Eventually she'd have to find him and apologize, not to mention thank him for what he'd done, but she wasn't ready for that just yet. It wasn't like Kate was a stranger to doing stupid shit, but usually the only people involved were her family members and even then, she tried to keep her trouble to herself.

Instead of finding Jeff, like she knew she should, she was distracting herself with the task of moving her things into the hut she and Marshall had moved to. The Compound had been nice enough, but she wanted a real door, something that could afford her a bit of privacy when she needed it. Not to mention that she'd missed natural light. The place was still sort of a mess, half her clothes on the floor and the furniture was pretty pathetic, but she was sure they could fix it up.

It didn't have marble counters or a heated pool, but it would be okay.

She was heading down the boardwalk with an armful of things when she spotted Hermione. "Hey!" she called, peering over the top of the pile, trying to balance the photo album from Alice in her arms. Hermione, at least, hadn't witnessed her shit fit from the rave and hopefully she didn't know about the whole night in jail thing either.

"Do you think you could give me a hand?" she asked, offering the other girl a grin. "This is the last trip, I swear I'm not trying to rope you into helping me move all my crap."

Kate had no idea how she'd gotten to the Compound.

She didn't know what time it was or where any of her friends were or why she was at the Compound instead of at the rave. Maybe it was over. Maybe it was so late that it was done and she'd tried to stumble home and had instead found herself in the rec room, surrounded by books and movies and things she didn't want.

Earlier, she'd been feeling good. Well, not good. Good enough. For some reason, good seemed to be escaping her lately, like maybe she wasn't capable of feeling it right now. But the rave had offered an escape; a distraction she'd snapped up greedily, but she couldn't remember the last hour or how she'd gotten into the rec room or why she was even there and although the drugs were still coursing through her, they felt dark and unhappy. She didn't know where Harry was and she didn't know where Marshall was and it was late. Everything was dark.

People were still moving about, she could hear them, like she always did when she was in the Compound. It was never silent, never completely still, not like home had even managed to be now and then.

She wandered toward the bookshelf, even though she didn't want a book. She wanted to go back to her room and sleep until the world stopped spinning and she wanted to be sure that the people she loved were okay -- her mom and her dad and Charmaine -- and it wasn't until she leaned against the bookshelf that she realized what every single shelf was filled with.

A Doctor's Harrowing Journey of Treating a Woman with 17 Personalities and The Dissociative Identity Disorder Sourcebook. Kate frowned as she scanned the rest of the shelves, finding more of the same. A Shattered Mind and The Stranger in the Mirror and book after book on trauma and attachment and it was stupid, it normally wouldn't have bugged her much, but she couldn't take it right now.

"Fuck you, you bastard," she whispered, pulling one book off and letting it drop to the ground. It was strangely satisfying and Kate grinned, pulling off another and another, each thump on the floor causing her smile to grow. She didn't realize that the noise was louder than she thought, didn't realize she wasn't actually whispering, but shouting at the bookshelf. Each book she pulled off was replaced with another, all of them about DID, all of them about the disorder, but nothing about her mother.

"This is all bullshit!" she shouted, getting her hands on the shelf itself and trying to pull it out. Maybe if she toppled the whole damn thing, maybe if she burned it, then it would stop. In the middle of a pile of books and movie reels, Kate began to search herself for a lighter, finding a book of matches in one pocket of her shorts. Like most of the night, she couldn't remember how they'd gotten there, but it didn't matter.

She was going to burn this fucker.

Okay, so the guy teaching them how to play the instruments was a little on the cheesy side with the whole 'punk rock, I swear a lot and used to do all the drugs' attitude, but it turned out he actually knew what he was doing. At least, he'd communicated it all pretty clearly to Kate and even though she was pretty far from an expert, she was actually playing chords and then stringing the chords together to make songs.

It was all pretty cool, especially since she had never stuck with anything. The pointe shoes the island had given her were collecting dust under her bed in the room she shared with Marshall, but the guitar was getting used. She was a far cry from making up her own songs -- besides, that was a band activity, not a solo one -- but she could play songs she already knew and that was pretty badass.

Kate was sure her dad, in all his Beaverlamp glory, would be proud of her.

Sitting near the Compound, she shifted the guitar in her lap, singing quietly as she played. It was a little chick folk rock of her, but whatever. No one here was going to make fun of her for being a weirdo hippie. She was waiting for Miranda and Britta to join her so that they could maybe play together. Joe Dick had called that 'jamming', but there was no way in hell Kate was enough of a dork to use a word like that.

It just figured that as soon as some things started to go well, other stuff went totally to shit.

Given what everyone said about the island, Kate just figured that was how things went, but that didn't mean she had to like it. A part of her was super psyched, because she'd actually met a guy who was nice and wasn't a complete freak like both Ben and Gene had been. So he was also Harry Potter, which she was sort of pretending wasn't a big deal in front of him, although it was kind of awesome under the surface.

On the other hand, Effy obviously wasn't around anymore, which sucked. A lot. Knowing people wasn't the same as being friends with anyone and even Kate knew she'd lacked in the whole friend department back home. On the island it wasn't a lot different, but she'd actually considered Effy a friend and now she was gone, which Kate didn't really know how to deal with. She didn't want to talk to Britta about it, only because Britta was older and was probably able to keep her shit together way better than Kate ever could.

Marshall already knew she was kind of screwed up. She figured he wouldn't judge her too much for either of these things.

"Yo, Moosh," she said, coming into the room they shared in the Compound. One day she'd maybe ask him if he ever thought about moving out into a hut, but today wasn't that day. Today she was just torn between feeling weirdly shitty and weirdly happy.

Lounging on her bed on her stomach, a magazine in front of her and her feet up in the air behind her, Kate pursed her lips and flipped a page. The magazine was totally outdated and she was pretty sure that this whole furry purse thing that was on practically every single page went out of style a few decades again, but it was better than nothing.

Which, on the island, seemed to be her only option.

Blowing a sigh out from between her lips, she looked over at Marshall, who seemed totally engrossed in some weird book. "C'mon," she said, flipping over and grabbing the bright pink flip flops she'd managed to weasel out of the box a few days before. "We are going to go outside and like, do something other than lie in total silence and be bored out of our minds."

And she knew Marshall probably wasn't bored with his book, but before he could protest, she grabbed a little bag from under her pillow and held it up, wiggling it between two fingers.

"I got this from this Canadian guy who kept talking about rocks and ice and stuff," she said with a grin. "It's island grown. Probably the best pot we're ever gonna get our hands on. Way better than anything we'd get in Overland Park."