Kat goes to a small school, too small she always thinks. For there is no place to hide. At least with a big school there might be a field or a bush or something to hide behind, but here at her small magnet, not-sports-offering school, there are no bushes or walls or spaces or places to hide in, there`s nowhere, everything is out in the open. And so, lunch and break are Kat`s most dreaded hours of school.
Kat has no friends. It’s not because she doesn`t want any or is mean, Kat`s just. . . “Quiet”. Kat is shy, she is frequently called quiet, and unlike numerous people Kat knows that there is a difference between the two, the monumental difference. Kat used to have friends, and she used to dwell on this constantly—it chomped away all of her thought space in her head until finally, she had an empty plate of thoughts and had to refill her plate with fresh food, and now Kat feels content. She likes doing her own thing, she no longer cares what others think of her (nearly as much).
Kat is ambitious and passionate. Each day she escapes to the library at school, instead of eating lunch—because Kat has long ago decided it is not worth it to eat lunch in the open where everyone watches you and wonders what a freak you are for decidedly sitting alone day after day---and reads. Reading is Kats euphoria, she loves reading, for it captures her and lands her in an entirely different world. Kat lives the teenage life through book characters. With her book character friends she has raced old cars  in alleyways, ditched school constantly, surfed all summer long, followed all the current gossip, traveled the world, and gone on adventures, and made friends. Besides, this way Kat has so much time, enough time to work tirelessly on her art projects that she paints. Kat always has a paintbrush in her pocket, paper and paint in her bags, and it works. Painting makes Kat ecstatically happy, nothing can compare to the focus, the Zen feeling she gets when she works on a super difficult new idea of hers.
Kat lives in spurts. For a long, long, long time she is perfectly content being alone, isolating herself in the library, attemptively avoiding all human interaction that she can. Then arrives a spurt of time in which she questions everything. I am throwing my life away. She thinks. I can`t help but think that if I have friends, life will be happier. I am never going to get anywhere in life without social skills. Why must communication be so important? I am missing out on so much. It’s during these spurts that Kat becomes familiar with the downfalls of isolation and retreats back into herself.
Kat walks home from school, she doesn`t live far from it and she always enjoys the walk. Being outside, it is always astonishing to think how much pleasure one can simply accumulate from appreciating the weather outside. This day, it is cloudy, the sky threatens a storm, and the air is practically buzzing with zaps of energy—Kat can feel it. She passes one house and stops, a cat stares at her from the window, contentedly sitting on the top of a couch, peering lazily out at the world. Why Kat stops she isn`t at first certain, just, something about that cat. It reminded her of . . . herself. The cat is a tabby with stripes and soon dozes off into a nap, as Kat watches it. Eventually, Kat realizes she has got to make her way home now, lots of homework to do.
The next day at school Kat does not go to the library, instead she walks around the campus. It is loud, so loud with so many different conversations that all of the sounds blur into one so that, it almost seems, there is no noise at all. (This is weird for Kat, the library is always relatively hushed in volume.) It is bright and the sun glares down warming her skin. The library is usually dim, for the broken lights have yet to be replaced. The air smells of grass and food. The library usually smells of dusty, old, categorized books. Kat, frowns as she passes groups of kids smiling and laughing and talking with each other, she longs for this, this type of fun. How do I get it? She asks herself, but she knows the answer. Kat has known the answer all along, this was not her first questioning, she has done this before, but this time she feels more determined than ever, that cat looking at her pops back into her brain. Why?
A week later, Kat is late to school, she is running up the sidewalk towards her school, when suddenly someone taps her shoulder. Startled, Kat turns around, she does not even realize this person was there until this moment. She stops running and finds herself face to face with a girl with frizzy brown hair and crooked glasses. She smiles and Kat sees that she has perfectly straight teeth and brown eyes and a small pointed nose.
“Um excuse me, you go to this school don`t you—I mean I just assumed.” She looks nervous, and fiddles with her glasses now, trying to get them straight. She adjusts them, they were straight now.
“Oh, uh, yes, I go here. Why?” Kat glances down at her watch, not meaning to be rude, but thinking that she really has got to get to class, or she`ll be late.
“Well, I`m new here, I need to go to the office, I haven`t a clue where it is.”
‘Oh I`ll show you, come one.” And Kat starts walking faster towards the school towards the office. She reaches it and is about to point to it when suddenly she trips. The ground grows closer and closer and suddenly she thuds against it. The concrete stings against her exposed skin. Quickly she sits up, and examines herself. No bruises, scratches. She is fine, just a bit sore. Something clanks on the ground next as she sits up and she suddenly becomes aware of the new girl bending down to reach for it and pick it up.
She asks Kat, “Are you okay? That was quite a fall.”
Kat stands up and says, “Oh, I am fine, thanks.”  She feels a bit flustered. Where had the girl gone? She turns around and sees the girl standing up holding a stick, no, her paintbrush. It apparently fell out from her pocket.
‘Oh, thank you.” She says, holding out her hand for it.
“You paint?” The girl says, handing her back the paintbrush and smiling.
‘Yes.” Kat says, a bit tersely, she is really awfully late to class now.
“Oh, well, thanks.” She said, seemingly sensing Kats terseness, and turning into the office.
“Wait. Why do you ask?” Asks Kat, it suddenly occurs to her that no one has asked her such a question in a long time, even though she routinely keeps her paintbrush just barely sticking out of her pocket—the opportunity for the question had been present for quite some time.
“I paint too. I like using oils, that`s why.”
“Oh, okay. I like watercolor the most.”
“Okay.”
“I should get to class now.”
The new girl starts to go walk into the office again and then suddenly turns and smiles at Kat, who for some reason she cannot quite determine is still standing there, herself,  watching her.
“Could you save me a seat at lunch maybe? It was nice talking to you.”
“Uh sure, we could eat lunch together.” Kat says, internally ecstatic at the idea (of course she would need to buy a lunch, for she had neglected to bring one, though).
“Thanks.”
“I`m Kat by the way.”
“I`m Darcy. “
And with that the new girl, Darcy, spins around and walks into the office and Kat walks off to class, late though she is, she feels as though suddenly she has done it. She has changed, or at least is entering the process of starting to. And now, now, sunshine will beam down on her even on cloudy days. And she smiles at that. For she has always liked sunshine, and, presumably, always will.