The bell rang. ****. Kara was just starting to feel comfortable, to feel the pain and the tightness in her shoulders and behind her eyes start to subside when they were interrupted, and even David looked like he'd been jolted out of their conversation. Things got awkward within seconds.

 "Well, I guess I better get to class." She didn't want to be the first to move, but the river of students heading to class was flowing toward them from either direction, and she knew it was better to leave than to be pushed and prodded and engulfed. David reacted first, lifting a foot and then another, and leaving her.

"Yeah, I'll see you around." He looked back over his shoulder and smiled at her, one of his front teeth slightly longer than the others. The smile threw her off; it was unexpected, and she was already slightly disoriented from the weekend, and her tears, and their strangely intimate conversation, but she wondered if part of it was caused by the fact that she'd never really seen his smile before. "Write back, if you want." He kept walking.

Dazed, she forgot to move and was jostled back to earth by Kim, at the the front of the crowd, taking her by the arm and whispering "We'll talk about this later," in Kara's ear, her voice almost sensitive.

She sat down in the cold desk of the Anatomy classroom and head Kim place her books and purse on the floor between their desks. The world seemed to be tipping, Kim's caring included. Though "best friends" because their schedules collided and their houses were within walking distance and their group was the same, Kim and Kara had never been very close about feelings before. Truthfully, Kara wouldn't have considered them "best friends" at all if she hadn't heard Kim use those words in conversation, referring to her.

They'd both been much closer to Shelley, who'd left freshman year when her grandmother died and the family had inherited the house in Portland, and when Shelley had left, so had the deep conversations and the sharing of thoughts. Kara and Kim had held to one another in Shelley's absence and throughout high school, but neither ever felt the itch to bond as two, the way they each had with Shelley.

It wasn't supposed to work like that, Kara knew, but she wasn't one to make drastic changes in her life. She only thought about it, that was her skill, and the doing she left up to someone, anyone, else.