Snippet #2548715

Catalina had spent most of the afternoon cooking. She did enjoy sitting outside and getting some sun most days, but it was beginning to get chilly and she could only hope that they would start travelling south for the winter soon. She grew up in Los Angeles where it rarely got lower than 50 degrees in the coldest months. Having spent the last twenty eight years traveling around the country, she had experienced snow and freezing weather, something that she didn't take well to. Luckily though, they normally spent the winter in the south where it was warm, but even the fifty and sixty degree fall weather wasn't Catalina's favorite.

She was cooking one of her favorite meals for tonight: arroz con pollo, or rice and chicken, and empanadas. Her grandmother had taught her how to make them when she was just a young girl and was helping out at the restaurant. Some of Catalina's best memories came from when she was working in the kitchen with her grandmother. After her mother was deported, her grandmother became her maternal figure and continued to support and guide her through life, regardless of the fact that they weren't biologically related. Catalina would come home from school every day, drop her backpack upstairs in the apartment and then spent most of the night down in the restaurant where should would help out in any way possible. Some days she would watch her grandmother cook, and other days she would wait tables or clean dishes. No matter what she was doing, she always felt useful and comfortable in the kitchen and she was glad that she was able to continue it at the carnival.

Since she had been given the task of basically raising Kaylee, she had always included the younger girl when she cooked. As a child, Kaylee had enjoyed it. She liked feeling important and involved, especially since at the time, she had no powers, but as she entered her teen years, she started to become less interested, not only in helping Catalina, but in hanging out with her as much all together. She tried not to take it to heart and constantly had to remind herself that Kaylee wasn't her daughter or even sister, but it did feel like she was. Catalina was the one who would wake up in the middle of the night when she was screaming and crying. She was the one who would feed her, bathe her, play with her and care for her. She played the role of Kaylee's mother more than anyone else had and even though she knew it was normal for a teenager to want to rebel and grow individually, it still bothered her sometimes.

There was some Spanish soap opera playing on the television and although Catalina was never a fan of the melodramatic shows, they reminded her of home. Her grandmother would have them playing constantly on a tiny black and white television in the back of the restaurant and even though the other girls here would pester her about how they wanted to watch something in a language that they could understand, Catalina liked to play it in the background while she cooked. She barely heard a knock on the door but everyone seemed to come in and out of the buses without notice anyway, so she wasn't surprised when Lucas appeared.

"Have you seen Kaylee?" she asked, turning off the stove and sliding the cooked food onto plates before offering one to him. Kaylee had left a few hours earlier and had disregarded her request to return within an hour. Catalina knew that she couldn't get into too much trouble on the carnival grounds, but again, it bothered her that Kaylee was beginning to blatantly disregard her wishes.