Chapter 2: I Don't Like You

Even half asleep, Catori let out a noise that was a mix between a grunt and a sigh, filled with exasperation.

The alarm clock just sounded, waking her up from her peaceful yet blank slumber. Feebly, she let her hand fall out on top of it to turn it off and she turned on her side to face her back to it.

She was tired, because she didn't rest too well. It was usual for her to have nightmares or restless dreams, which explained why she sometimes sleepwalked.

Grumpily, she opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling with a pout.

Not that going to school again seemed so bad after her first day, but it was waking up early what set her killer mood.

Resigned, she threw the covers off herself and got ready to go to class, choosing to wear her cozy black hoodie and a pair of pale jeans along with her red converse.

Once she was dressed, Catori watched her reflection on the mirror as she tried to analyze her own emotions.

She felt restless.

Actually, she felt herself shaking with excitement as she wanted to go back.

After knowing what she was up against, she wasn't as intimidated anymore. In fact, Catori wanted to see those people again.

Especially Scott. That damn boy had made himself a place in her heart already because she felt like he was a genuinely good guy and his kind and friendly nature made her grew fond of him despite not knowing him.

And maybe Stiles, to tell one or two things to that hyper kid who kept eyeing her suspiciously.

She sighed, feeling still in that fidgety mood as her stomach was filled with butterflies from the nerves.

Catori absently combed up her hair as she got ready to leave for school.

*

Even after her first hour of the day, the girl still felt just as restless and nervous. But not only that, she felt... strange.

Catori found no ability to focus that day as her mind kept wandering to places she didn't even remember. She was just absent without realizing, and even if she tried to stop daydreaming and leaving her mind blank, it was hard.

It was one of those days.

Barely realizing where she was going, she arrived to her locker and grabbed the books she needed for her next class. Still, her mood bugged her because she hardly ever got so absent.

That restless feeling in her stomach worried her, because it made her feel like something out of the ordinary was happening. Something... bad, even.

Frustrated, Catori shook her head and closed her locker.

"So you must be the famous Catori" A soft but sassy female voice said, causing the aforesaid to turn around.

She saw a really pretty girl with strawberry blonde hair and green eyes, opening a locker close to Catori's. She wore a beautiful dress that she combined with a pair of high heels.

For a second, Catori stared at her since she looked familiar but couldn't quite figure out why.

"I'm Lydia" The girl checked her hair in the mirror that was inside her locker and combed it as she pursed her lips together.

Catori then remembered seeing her the previous day, sitting down with Stiles as she bore him to death while he sent the new girl death glares.

"Scott talked about you" Noticing that she was still quiet, Lydia kept speaking to fill the silence.

The redhead showed her a confident and kind smile when Catori still didn't say anything.

"Did he?" She replied, a hint of a smile growing on her lips.

"He's excited like a little puppy" Lydia tilted her head and smirked a little.

Catori grinned, realizing that Lydia had just spoken her own thoughts. She liked her.

"Sounds like Scott"

Lydia smirked, happy that she managed what she wanted.

There was something about Catori that called to her, that made her want to be her friend. Almost as though they were similar, like they could understand each other better than anyone.

"See you around, new girl" Lydia picked up a few books and closed her locker, walking away from Catori, with the clicking of her heels sounding across the halls.

*

Yet another of those eternal classes was awaiting for the girl as she came into the classroom. She took a quick look around to take a seat, but it seemed like all the places were already taken. Except one.

What a coincidence that the only free seat on the whole class was the one behind Stiles Stilinski, the boy that obviously hated her.

Resigned, Catori plopped down on the chair and put her bag on the floor.

Just as she started to take out her notebook and case filled with pens, she heard a big and annoyed sigh coming from Stiles.

A tiny evil smirk formed on her lips as she had the perfect idea to annoy him. Since he was so determined to dislike her, Catori could give him a few reasons to do so.

She swung her legs forward and backwards, like a child, until her converse hit Stiles' chair. Fuming mad, he turned to her.

Catori pressed her lips together real tight not to laugh on his face because of the hilarious annoyed pout of his expression.

"Oops, sorry" Her voice drained sarcasm and fake innocence. "It was an accident"

Stiles showed her a mocking grin and angrily turned back round to face the board where the teacher wrote in.

Catori couldn't suppress an amused chuckle as she noticed the boy's stiff shoulders, and more when he pushed his chair forward so it was out of her reach.

Knowing she had to focus on the lesson and not on annoying Stiles –even if it was far more entertaining than Literature –, she fixed her eyes on the words the teacher wrote.

The continuous sound of the chalk hitting against the smooth surface of the blackboard almost put her into a trance.

Again, it was extremely easy for her to zone out and just leave her mind blank. Like it didn't want to face reality despite her efforts, like it was trying to let her know that there was something else inside her own psyche that she could be paying attention to instead.

So for once in the whole day, she embraced it.

Classes were boring, and sitting in front of her newly discovered nemesis, so she had no problem on letting her imagination wander or just ridding her mind from any thoughts.

"Catori!" A loud voice broke her from her fantasies.

"What!" She jumped up a little and looked around, being aware of her surroundings again.

Everyone in the classroom was staring at her. Including the teacher, her dark eyes piercing Catori harshly. And including Stiles, with a grimace of obvious dislike on his face.

How long did she zone out for? Catori felt like she had been gone for several minutes, because what was written in the blackboard then had barely anything to do with what her notes said.

"Would you mind stop daydreaming and pay attention, please?" The teacher asked her, sending her a glare of disapproval.

"Sorry" She bowed her head down and grabbed her pen to take notes again.

Someone huffed nearby, causing her to look up from her notebook. It was Stiles, who observed her from the chair, his body turned to her as his eyes were fixed on her in aversion.

"Weirdo..." He mumbled under his breath, but she definitely heard.

"Nerd..." She replied back, even if she didn't know if he heard.

However, Catori sighed. So far, her experience on the Beacon Hills High School wasn't so good. She had survived the first day, but her second day was turning out to be a disaster.

And she hadn't even bumped into Scott yet, who was the only one she actually wanted to encounter.

So she just resigned herself like she had been doing ever since she arrived at that strange town, and braced to put up with the rest of the day.

*

When Literature was over and everyone was leaving the room with collective relief, the teacher called her.

Hesitant as to what she wanted, Catori walked up to the woman with an apologetic smile.

"I'm sorry that I zoned out" The girl said, awkwardly adjusting the straps of her bag to her shoulders.

"It's alright" The woman shrugged with a bored expression. "I'm just a substitute teacher, I can't really expect you to take me seriously"

Surprised by that statement, Catori narrowed her eyes and stared at her. The woman surely was tired of having to be there, it was obvious by her exasperated looks.

Wondering what she really wanted as the teacher eyed her in a strange way, Catori cleared her throat.

"Did you want anything, Miss-?" Before she could finish talking, the woman interrupted her.

"Call me Vanessa" She showed Catori a mysterious grin. "I just wanted to offer you any help you need since you're new here too"

A moment of silence followed, in which the girl awkwardly stood whilst she waited for Vanessa to say something else.

"Vanessa..." She tried again, seeing as she still kept her from leaving. "Is that all then?"

The woman's glance shifted from Catori to the corridor and then back to the girl.

"Yes" She smiled at her again. "You can leave"

Thinking that she was cuckoo as well in that crazy town, Catori distanced herself from the woman.

Sarcastically rejoicing on the lecture the substitute teacher gave her, Catori walked out of the classroom to have lunch. Hopefully, there she could improve her mood by chatting with Scott. If Stiles didn't intercept him, that was.

"You don't see anything strange? She was in the middle of the road, alone, in her pijamas! How is that not strange, Scott?!" An irritated voice caught her attention as she walked into the corridor.

Of course, it was Stiles, who tried to convince his friend not to trust Catori.

"She looks nice... I like her" Scott shrugged as he looked at the rest of his friends.

A girl with dark hair put up in a ponytail, with her shoulders wrapped by Scott's arm. That blond kid from the first day, Liam, who frowned at the floor in doubt. A girl with a grumpy face that vehemently nodded at his words, agreeing in distrusting her. And Lydia, who listened to Stiles and rolled her eyes at his overreaction.

"You like everybody!" Stiles exclaimed angrily, worried about his friend's safety.

He had seen enough people trying to hurt them to just let anyone into their lives again. After all, he was right about Jackson, Matt, Peter and everyone.

So far, he hadn't been wrong. They turned out to be bad, and they had tried –and almost succeeded –to hurt, betray them or even kill them.

Why should he trust a suspicious girl that just arrived in Beacon Hills and apparently no one knew nothing about?

"Stilinski" Catori stomped her feet as she determinedly walked up to him.

Ready to face her, Stiles turned to her with his arms crossed. He didn't dare to look at his friends, he just fixed his brown eyes on her.

"I think we can agree that I don't like you and you don't like me" She started saying, to which he nodded.

"You're right, I don't like you"

"But if you have something to say about me" She ignored his comment and kept on talking "Say it to my face"

Catori sent him a hard glare that he held surprisingly well, not even batting an eye.

"Fine: I don't trust you" The boy replied simply.

"Stiles..." Scott meddled in softly, not really wanting to upset him any further but not wanting to hurt Catori's feelings either.

But Stiles ignored his friend, too pigheaded to admit he could be wrong. He was positive: there was something odd about that girl, and he was not ready to trust her nor to let his friends be in danger by doing so.

"Great, because I'm not here to get your approval, Stilinski" Catori was about to turn around and leave him there after dropping that, but he stopped her.

"Now that we're on the subject, why are you here?"

Catori glanced at him harshly, but didn't reply at first, she just kept her lips tightly closed.

She was not going to admit that it was just another town her dad had to move to. She wasn't going to admit that deep down his attitude hurt her because she had done nothing to deserve that hostility. Because she just wasn't like that.

The girl just looked up to the rest of them. Apparently only Stiles and the other girl, the one with the scowl, agreed.

Liam focused his blue eyes on her with a sympathetic look. Scott frowned sadly as he observed her. Lydia stared at her with an apologetic glance. And the other girl, who Catori realized was Asian as she saw him closely, didn't seem to think she was evil either.

"It's none of your business" Saying that, Catori left.

There went her only chance to be with Scott during lunch.

*

Rid from her appetite, Catori absently picked on her food.

That unpleasant encounter with Stiles and the gang had only made her felt bummed out. And that only made her thoughtful attitude to get worse.

Not that she cared what Stiles thought about her, because she definitely didn't. But he apparently convinced everyone that his paranoid thoughts were logical, hence banishing her from the only chance of a friendship she had.

Catori shook her head briefly, thinking that it was no use anyway. Again, chances were her dad had to move out again and she would have to forget about Scott and everyone one way or another.

"He can be such a drama queen sometimes" A familiar voice surprised Catori, because she hadn't noticed someone had sat down with her.

"Huh?" As Catori observed Lydia sitting down in front of her, she tried to make sense out of the words she heard because she was only half listening.

"Stiles" Lydia clarified, as though it was obvious. "He gets a bit paranoid at times. He doesn't hate you or anything, he just doesn't know if he can trust you yet"

"Like I care" The girl pretended to be cold and heartless as she put an emotionless face and shrugged.

"Don't take him seriously, he's just trying to protect us" Lydia absently picked one of Catori's grapes from the dessert on her tray and ate it.

"Protect you from what?" Although she was aware that Beacon Hills was a strange town, she couldn't imagine what Lydia was talking about.

"Believe me, this town is madness" However, as she talked, a warm grin was on her red lips.

"Maybe so" Catori pushed her tray aside since she wasn't hungry yet. "But what kind of a menace could I be to you guys?"

Lydia watched her nails for a moment in silence, inattentive, to then drag her green eyes until they met with Catori again. She didn't reply, just expressed herself through a simple shrug.

Frustrated, Catori sighed heavily.

"Just so you know" Lydia stood up from the chair and leaned her hands on the table. "He's the only one that thinks that way, because Malia is just as paranoid as he is"

Confused, the girl stared at her. Malia had to be the grumpy girl that was next to Stiles and seemed to have some sort of crush on him.

"In fact" Lydia insisted, reaching out to pick up Catori's hand and examine her nails. "We could go for a manicure whenever you want, you could use one"

Catori couldn't help but smile, knowing it was her way of being nice.

"Thanks"

Lydia nodded and flashed her a kind smile that she appreciated.

Not everything was lost after all.

*

Surprisingly, Catori chatted with Liam during the breaks in between classes. And Scott smiled at her warmly whenever they bumped into each other and she looked at him cautiously.

It seemed like, despite not trusting her entirely, they weren't prepared to hate her yet. Stiles' dislike of her didn't expand to the rest of the group.

Stiles' death glares didn't bother her anymore and, in fact, she enjoyed herself by trying to annoy him as much as she could or just hitting him back with sassiness and basically being rude to him.

So when classes were finished for the day and she walked back home –she knew her mom would be too busy to go visit her to the museum that day –Catori felt somehow satisfied with her second day. Or at least, more than she had been with her first.

During the evening, she went to the gym again for her jujitsu lesson and made a new friend. An extremely cheerful and lovable girl called Amanda who she got along surprisingly fast.

Again, the adrenaline rush helped her feel better when she got home, got showered and relaxed in her room.

The rest of the day was calm. She chatted with her mom when she arrived from the museum and texted Amanda for a while as well.

She felt like the next day could have many surprises waiting for her.

When she went to sleep, Catori lied down with a smile.