An idea. Tell me what you think.
Forgive me if it sounds surrealist. I'm reading Douglas Adam novels as of late and my sanity has run off into a corner and made itself very scarce for the time being.
I don't own Twilight.
Alice Brandon is a badass. From her ripped jeans to her wife beaters and rebel spike she exuded that 'I really don't give a fuck about anything at all' vibe. She insulted and punched people who pissed her off -even if the principal was standing right behind her.
Mostly because she really didn't care about anything -except one thing, or person if you're looking for details- and you'd have a hell of a hard time getting it out of her.
But, that doesn't stop her from watching him.
Him, with his un-ripped jeans and brilliant student body president smile. Him, with his perfect GPA and button downs over t-shirts. Him, with his brilliant blue eyes and pale silk locks. Him, the president of the history club and captain of the baseball team.
Alice watched him from afar through a cloud of smoke and a veil of rain, witnessing his world and all the differences it had to hers- a sudden twist of reality and a dash of irony to thicken the overly clichéd plot. Really, it's a wonder it doesn't make her want to gag and projectile vomit into the dumpster she's standing next to- Alice has never been one to enjoy the stereotypical teen movies, and this fit's the bill to a t.
"Really, Alice?" A voice broke into her thoughts, interrupting her watching. His voice was amused and she could almost see the stupid crooked smile on his face.
"Shut the hell up, Edward." She didn't need to look at him to know that she'd been caught. They've done this way too many times to count.
"Jasper Fucking Whitlock. Really?" He snickered, overly amused.
"Isabella Fucking Swan. Really?" She mocked, making sure to huddle under the slight overhang the building provided so that her cigarette wouldn't go out.
That shut up her annoying best friend, but a glower did come attached to his silence.
"Fine, touché, we're even. I won't talk about you stalking Whitlock if you don't say anything about Bella."
"It's not stalking." She said blowing out a puff of smoke and flicking ash off her Camel in a disdainful, uninterested way.
"Might as well be."
"I heard Swan was getting cozy in the library with Black the other day." She said examining her nails, nonchalant just to piss him the fuck off because he was interrupting her watching and her smoke by being the proverbial thorn in her side.
"Fuck you, Alice." Was the immediate reply- one that was only too expected.
Alice grinned and waited.
Three.
Two.
One.
"Who'd you hear that from anyway, Brandon." He tried to appear indifferent, but Alice saw through his guise as his green eyes glanced at her in a almost nervous way that was completely and utterly not Edward.
"Tsk, tsk, Edward. You're becoming too predictable." It was almost comfortingly so in a way. Edward was never predictable and seeing him constrain himself intrigued her.
"Just tell me." He sighed, putting on his I'm-too-bored-for-this face, as if that would throw her off his trail.
"No." Alice shook her head, grinning like a Cheshire fucking cat- something that no doubt enraged Edward.
"Why the hell not!" He was angry, undeniably so.
"This jealousy is unhealthy, Edward. Kicking Black's ass will do you absolutely no good if the rumor is confirmed. What then? She realizes you like her, or she hates you for beating the living sunshine out of her best friend. Besides, this gives you an excuse to ask her. Less suspicious and, frankly, less messy."
Edward was characteristically brooding for a few minutes while Alice smoked -watching the picnic tables across the Quad for that flash of blond hair through the relentless downpour to where he sat under the overhang outside the cafeteria.
"I heard Whitlock was fucking Hale." Edward finally spoke up.
Alice's cigarette broke in half.
She turned her lethal glare at the disheveled bronze haired boy. Edward's emerald eyes sparkled with mischievous amusement.
"You're lying." She accused, but she couldn't tell.
"Am I?" It was times like these that she hated when Edward was such a good liar -normally it worked out to her benefit.
"I swear to God, Cullen-" Her little hands balled into fists, angry little wrecking balls capable of causing mass havoc.
"No need to get feisty Brandon, Edward's just messing." A low voice interrupted, filled to the brim with amusement and glee.
"Go away Emmett. I don't need your help." Edward glared at the mountain of flesh that was Emmett McCarty.
"Is he now?" Alice asked, looking to Emmett for a truthful answer. Emmett might not be the smartest card in the deck, but the boy knew when to hold them and when to fold them -and he always had a knack for telling the truth, even when that wasn't the best thing.
"Yep, yep. I'm fucking Hale. Besides, I heard, and don't kill the messenger Brandon, that he was swinging an entirely different way." Emmett smiled his slightly-clueless dimpled smile, the one that made him look just a bit more drunk than he normally was.
"Now that's a crock of shit. Stanley was just pissed that he wouldn't go to Formal with her." Edward shook his head- cutting sidelong glances at the pixy girl.
"Would you both just shut the fuck up? I mean, of course, if you know what's good for you." Alice spat as she saw a mass of too familiar blond hair disappear into the relentless rain, too tired of this conversation to bother being polite.
"Whatever, Brandon. Be a bitch." Edward mumbled while Emmett looked characteristically clueless, that dimpled smile stuck on his face.
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When she got to detention, for telling off Mr. Banner, Jasper was sitting in the front seat, looking at his books and gripping the desk like he was uncomfortable.
As he should be. Jasper Whitlock didn't get detention.
Alice Brandon did; often enough that she bribed and tricked the sit-in into being out of the room so she could be as well. But, perhaps being in detention today would be much more interesting than going up on the roof to smoke and watch the cars leave the parking lot.
No, today, Alice decided, she would stay in detention.
Jasper was so consumed with being uncomfortable and reading that he didn't notice her until she dropped her books on the desk next to his loudly and he glanced up at her, his eyes widening in surprise at the noise.
"Alice?" His voice is all honey coated, and sugar rimmed; southern to the nth degree.
As if he didn't know who it was. Everyone knew everyone else in Forks. Nice try Jasper, better luck next time.
"So, Whitlock, what the fuck brought you here? I thought good boys didn't get detention, but perhaps I'm mistaken Mr. Student Body President." Her tone is a dry as the Sahara, her expression one of scathing sarcasm to match the words oozing out of her.
He tried to hide his face with his hair, and pretended to read his book -perhaps hoping to ignore her, or to be ignored by her; she couldn't tell which. Alice wasn't fooled though and she snapped his book shut before hopping up on his desk on top of it -her lithe dancer moves coming in handy for the first time in a long, long time.
"That's impolite. Didn't your mother ever teach you manners Mr. Whitlock?"
Jasper sighed like he was in pain.
"Hey." She said, seeing how upset he was getting. Her tone was softer than she intended seeing his discomfort.
For some reason, he looked up.
"I'm just teasing. Don't get your panties in a twist." She smirked- trying to erase her kindness.
His brow crinkled in confusion- like an accordion.
"I'm being mean, aren't I? Oh, well. Some habits are hard to break. Perhaps we should start this over? I mean, we'll be stuck in here for a least a half an hour." Alice frowned realizing she wasn't doing this the right way.
"Hello, Alice." He said after opening and closing his mouth on another response.
"Hello, Jasper. How are you?"
"I'm fine." He smiled at her -amused by their conversation, or maybe just her.
"That's lovely."
He nodded. "And how have you been?"
"Horrible. Thanks for asking."
"Wait- what do you mean horrible?" Concerned eyes flashed across his face. Alice's heart fluttered because this -this- was why she like Jasper; his emotions, his charm, his charisma.
Alice shrugged and looked away, pulling out her cigarettes.
He grabbed her arm, halting her actions. "Alice?"
"Jasper?" She shot back, voice feigning annoyance as she refused to look at him.
"Why do you smoke?"
"Do I have to have a reason?"
"I'm curious. I've seen you smoking by the dumpsters sometimes and I've always wondered why."
"I don't know why. I just started and I liked the taste."
"The taste?" He raised a skeptical eyebrow.
"Mmmhmm." She nodded, slipping her cigarettes back in her pocket, unopened.
"What do they taste like?" His curiosity is barely concealed.
"Like bad decisions and badassary mostly." Alice drawled.
Jasper laughed, his eyes crinkling up at the corners and Alice grinned her schoolgirl grin from when she was a little and excitable girl and ran her hand through her hair -a bad habit she'd picked up from Edward.
"Why are you in the history club?" She asked, propping her feet up on the desk with her books on it -they barely reached.
"I like history." Slips out of his mouth quickly, almost like it's a trained response. Typical.
"Why?" Alice prodded like she was in second grade.
"Do I have to have a reason?" He said, smirking.
"I'm curious." She smirked right back, giving him a taste of his own medicine.
"Why are you curious?" He leaned forward -another Jasper quality; making it seem like you're the only one he notices when you talk to him. Right now, Alice feels like she's the most important girl in the entire world- and vaguely wonders in the back of her mind how many other girls have fell for this; for him.
"We've known each other since preschool, but I know absolutely nothing about you anymore." Her voice falls into a slightly bitter tone that leaves a bad taste in her mouth because… well, it's true. She can remember when they ran around at recess and shared the best parts of their sack lunches -Jasper would always give her his oatmeal cookie and Alice would give him her Ho-Ho, even though she liked Ho Ho's more than nasty oatmeal cookies.
"My favorite color is still red." He offered, like a truce to some unknown argument -probably the tension of not having talked to someone for six or so years.
Six years is a long time, Alice thinks looking at him with all the light in his eyes and his smile -the aura that was Jasper. Undeniable Jasper, the one who always made her smile. God, how you can miss someone in six years.
"Mine's still blue." Alice said, glancing down at book she was half sitting on -something about the Civil War- trying to hide the wetness she felt in her eyes, because Alice Brandon doesn't cry, and she certainly doesn't let anyone see that she's about to.
When she returned her gaze to Jasper, eyes tear free, he was smiling. "I'd wondered if the Alice I knew was still in there."
Her heart cracks a bit at that smile -the one she fell in love with; the one that she's almost positive could push away every single cloud in Washington- because even though she doesn't know him anymore, he's exactly the same as she remembers.
"Somewhere." She assured him, not knowing how much of that Alice was left, or where exactly she was.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Jasper's brow crinkled like an accordion, his smile slipping into a frown.
"Sometimes I wonder what that little girl I used to be would think of me. Sometimes I wonder what the little boy who used to eat Ho-Ho's would think of me." She admits, smiling to try and fool him into thinking that's she's just teasing.
He chuckled a little at her attempt at humoring him before sobering up. "What happened to that? To us?"
"You don't remember?" Somehow that makes it worse.
"Honestly? No."
"You were too busy with trying to be everyone's friend in seventh grade that you didn't have time for little ole Alice anymore." Suddenly the clock at the front of the room is the most fascinating thing -or it would appear that way from her almost unblinking stare.
"Really? That's why we stopped talking?"
Alice nodded, slipping off his desk and onto the teacher's desk in one fluid motion.
"I'm sorry Alice. I thought…. I don't know what I was thinking back then. That's probably the most idiotic thing I've ever done."
Alice didn't grace him with an answer, instead she just pressed her back against the filing cabinet and choked back the emotions she always seemed to gather in Jasper's presence by closing her eyes and clenching her teeth together while the blunt metal handles jabbed her in the back.
Consequently she didn't hear him get up and move over to her.
She did feel his fingers on her face and her eyes snapped open so fast she's surprised they didn't pop out of her head.
"I'm sorry Alice." His eyes were honest and she couldn't take him looking so defeated -like the little awkward playmate he used to be back when he couldn't stand up for his best friend when the bullies picked on her.
"It's okay." She hears herself say.
"No, it's not. You were a great friend and… I feel responsible for what happened to you."
"What happened to me?" Like she's some sort of fucking charity case. Now she's getting angry, and it's showing.
"Wait- that came out wrong."
"You're damn right it did!" She snaps.
Jasper held up his hands in surrender and sighed.
Her temper dissipated instantly -Jasper had that calming effect, but she didn't want to feel it today.
"Forget it. I fucking knew this would happen." She said sliding of the teacher's desk and grabbing her shit. "I'm out."
"What about the sit-in?" Jasper asked, and for a second Alice wondered if he was trying to get her to stay, and if so, why.
"They're not coming." She bit out as she yanked the door open, deciding that she didn't care and that she had probably invested too much emotion in a boy named Jasper anyway.
And she left, without a backwards glance.
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The next day he was by the dumpster when she came out for her mid-day smoke, looking like a drowned rat that had died smelling something bad -his nose crinkled up at the smell wafting out of the mud splattered trash receptacle.
"Why did you stay?" Is the first thing out of his mouth- cutting off the witty and snarky comment on Alice's tongue.
Alice pauses and cocks her head to the side slightly. "What are you talking about?"
"Yesterday, in detention. You knew the sit-in wasn't coming and you stayed anyway. Why?" Jasper -the good boy, the golden boy- hadn't looked so messed up since his first day of preschool when his southern accent made him almost impossible to understand and he didn't talk much -or get talked to, except for a small dark haired girl who chatted his ear off. His eyes have bags under them like he hasn't slept at all, his shirt is wrinkled, and he just doesn't look like Jasper Whitlock, student body president, at all. He looks kind of like the Jasper she used to know and love.
Alice debated leaving -the harder and more sanity saving route- and dismissed it as soon as his blue eyes met hers, choosing to stay and light a cigarette instead.
She shrugged; that was the only answer that she was willing to give him right now. Alice would hold her cards until this all paned out more, or until she didn't think about Jasper Whitlock anymore -an option that didn't seem like it could happen anytime soon.
"That's it?" He seems disappointed, and he rubbed a hand over his eyes tiredly, giving a small, hysterical laugh. "That's it?"
Alice's words come out a tad bit sharper than she intended, "Was there supposed to be something else?"
"Yes. No." He pulled at his hair. "I'm not even sure anymore, Alice."
"Then why," Alice drawled, taking a nice long drag on her cigarette, "Whitlock, are you here?"
"Yesterday, I saw you. Like really saw you- the real you. I haven't really seen you in…. fuck, what six years?"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Since when did you start dropping the f-bomb like it's Hiroshima? For some reason I think you've been abducted by aliens. Where is Jasper Whitlock?" Her voice was dry -more sarcastic than it had been in a long time. She's angry and confused and… fuck, hurt from what happened yesterday. Her defenses are up, and she's not sure if she should ever let them down in front of this boy again.
"Can't you be serious for a second, Alice?" He's fisting his hair, and pulling in a way that looks painful, eyes pleading with her.
Alice wrinkles her nose and stands by her previous comment -that Jasper Whitlock is in a spacecraft somewhere. She can't say that she doesn't enjoy this Jasper a bit -this hair brained boy whose accent is magnified by his stress and frustration, one that reminds her of the little fifth grade version of Jasper, the one who fell down a lot on too awkward limbs.
"If you want me to be serious you're going to have to say something that makes sense."
"I thought you hated me up until yesterday. I didn't know what I had done wrong… But then you joked and nothing was wrong, it was like…back in the old days, until I fucked it up…. Again. I'm sorry Alice, but I have to know why you stayed." Jasper look like a half drowned spaz. "And I have to know… I have to know what happened in the first place; because I can't stop thinking about it."
"I used to hate you, back in Junior High. I got over it." Alice mumbled around her cigarette -the taste of which wasn't as comforting as it usually was.
"But why did you stay! You're Alice Brandon, badass. You don't just stay in detention when you don't have to. Or, at least that was what I thought."
"You got this confused overnight?" Alice asked for verification, her resolve crumbling a bit.
"Yes." He sighed.
"Finally, a straight answer."
"You haven't given me a straight answer yet!" His temper flares, and he drops his hands from his hair- that's when she sees it, him; Jasper. The one that was and the one that is, combined and barely changed. Alice's stomach flops, and she feels like she wants to vomit -because she cares.
She's spent the last five years trying not to, but it's still there. She still loves him; perhaps even more than she did before. She'd tried to make it seem like he'd changed -that she couldn't possibly know or love this new Jasper- but he hadn't, and now she was screwed.
Alice tosses down her not finished cigarette and watches as it fizzles out on the wet concrete- unable to take another drag.
"Do you want to know why? Do you really want to know?" She gives him a steady look and decides that she really has nothing to lose. Her resolve makes itself so scarce that she's not positive that she ever had one to begin with.
"Yes." His eyes burn in that way he's always had -with a conviction that no one in their right mind could possibly deny. She's seen the look a hundred times when they were kids, and now it makes her want to run up and hug him. He's older, and taller, and smarter, and more handsome- but he's still Jasper.
Alice will always love Jasper.
"Because I hate oatmeal cookies. I always have, and I'm pretty sure I always will."
"Alice what does that have to do with-" She cuts him off, and he stares at her, more confused.
"I love Ho Ho's. The chocolate, the white cream. I love breaking off the outer shell and eating it slowly, bit by bit. But, you always used to smile when we used to trade. I swear that I thought that smile could make the sun shine in Forks all year long. So I traded, grinned, and ate that disgusting cookie, just so I could see that smile every day."
He tried to interrupt her, but she continued.
"When we started junior high, you never had enough time for me. I got to eat my Ho Ho every day when you sat with Mike and Tyler and I sat with Edward, but I started missing those nasty cookies. It didn't take me long to figure out that I missed you. You, and your southern accent. You, and your too long limbs. You, and your smile. But Jasper, you were so happy, sitting with them. You used to smile that smile, and you didn't even have to trade with me. You didn't even need me to smile. You didn't need me."
Jasper was staring at her now, lips pursed and mouth handing open slightly, his brow an accordion again, but Alice didn't stop.
"I hated you for that. I hated that you were happy without me. I hated that you didn't miss me too. I hated you so much, because I couldn't hate you."
"Alice-" He started.
"I stayed yesterday in detention, because I still miss that smile, Jasper -the one that I still swear can make it shine all year round in Forks. I left because maybe that smile isn't meant for me -it sure does cause me a hell of a lot of pain."
And with that, Alice turned on her heel and headed back inside, crashing into Edward just inside the door.
Edward didn't say anything about her tear filled eyes, but stopped Jasper from following her without her needing to ask.
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The day after that, there was a box of Ho Ho's in Alice's locker with a note inside that read :
I hate Ho Ho's. I love oatmeal cookies. I miss Alice grins, and being called 'Jazz.' I have for six years. -Jasper
P.S.- I love history because it makes things what they are, and I wouldn't be me without you.
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Alice found him in the history room- in the middle of a history club meeting- that afternoon. She'd searched all day and couldn't find him and was practically frantic when she burst into the room -hair sticking everywhere, jeans muddy and soaked from the rain, cheeks flushed from running around the school to find him, and a crinkled note crumpled in her fist.
He looks up with disheveled hair, and bags under his eyes.
"Alice?" He asks, because quite frankly, she looks ridiculous.
"I want to join the history club." She's breathing hard because she's just sprinted back from the parking lot when she saw his car was still here.
His brow crinkles in confusion -like an accordion.
Alice grins, "You see, I really love history."
Jasper's forehead smoothes and his eyes open wide. "Why?"
"Do I have to have a reason?" She says even though everyone is staring at her like she's gone crazy, because Jasper isn't, and that's all that matters.
"I'm curious." He says, standing up.
"Because, Jazz," Alice unravels the note, even though she has it memorized, "It makes things what they are."
Jasper smiles and drags Alice from the classroom to kiss her senseless.
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Alice Brandon is a badass, and Jasper Whitlock is president of the history club, but they love each other -and really, that's all that's ever mattered.
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"Hi!" An excitable girl says to the blond boy hiding in the corner.
His brow crinkles like an accordion for a second before he smiles shyly and says, "Hi."
She gins, and her smile almost doesn't fit on her face. "My name is Alice. What's yours?"
"Jasper."
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