So I started writing this ages ago...it's about half way finished and saved on my computer, but I figured I would post it. Let me know if you think it's something I should continue.
Warning: This story does contain use of alcohol by minors in later chapters, mild language and references to sex.
Disclaimer: The characters and plot that are from Twilight belong to Stephanie Meyer. Nothing illegal happening here...
When I was eleven, I got into a fight with my best friend. She was in love with Aaron Carter then and had his posters and pictures plastered onto her walls with scotch tape and superglue. She was in love with him and she stalked him through the tabloids and planned out how exactly she was going to get the superstar to fall in love with her. I thought it was stupid and she got mad at me, because I was supposed to have a famous crush too. But that seemed silly to me, even at the age of eleven, to be in love with someone that I could never have. The unobtainable romance. And even though I condemned her (as much as any eleven year old could condemn another) for living in a fantasy world, I was no better. Because when I was eleven I fell for Jared Cameron. And I knew he would never love me back.
The first bell at La Push High School rang at 7:42 every morning without fail. And I always raced into first period between 7:45 and 8:00, because my dad dropped me off late or my locker got stuck or I ran into a deer on my way over. Luckily for me, I suppose, my homeroom teacher was gullible and usually never noticed that my excuses became more and more far-fetched as the year progressed. And today -Monday (the hell mother of all weekdays)- was no different. I slipped into the room at fifteen to the hour and muttered something about traffic jams on the main road, something that had never happened in La Push, before sliding into my seat four rows back from the front of the room.
"I'm buying you a watch for your birthday." Jackie said from my right, not looking up from the worksheet she was frantically scribbling answers on. I rolled my eyes and ran my fingers through my dark hair.
"I'd break it." I replied, "Or lose it." Jackie paused for a moment, then nodded in agreement. I looked closer at what she was working on. "You do realize none of those answers are right? The answers are supposed to be variables, not numbers."
Jackie sat up straight and considered the worksheet carefully.
"Shit." she muttered after a minute, "Whatever, I'll just tell him I didn't understand it."
I rolled my eyes again. Typical Jackie, always the academic slacker. Not that I was in the running for Valedictorian, but I managed to keep average grades and hand in my work without struggling to finish it in homeroom. She tossed her chocolate curls over one shoulder and grinned broadly at me while simultaneously tucking the paper into her notebook.
"Your boy called me this weekend." she said with a mischievous glint in her eyes. I groaned and slumped into my seat a bit. She laughed at my reaction and continued on.
"He wants to know how to win you back." she said, matter-of-factly, "I don't see why you won't give it another go, he was such a good boyfriend. Didn't he buy you that really nice purse?"
I glared at her. Nice purses were not what relationships were made of. Even if it was art in the form of leather and canvas. Ian didn't seem to understand that.
"When a boy refers to you as 'my girlfriend' more than your actual name, it's over Jax." I said flatly. Ian and I had broken up over a month ago anyway. He wasn't right. They never were. I was a terrible girl to go after and I knew it, because every boy I dated had been held to an impossible standard. I had held a torch for Jared Cameron since I was eleven. And after years of middle school fantasies and day dreaming, he became something of a prince charming in my mind. No boy that I had dated since had been able to meet the standard that I had allowed him to set in my heart. Not that I would ever admit my crush to anyone, not even Jackie. It was stupid, holding a flame for a boy who I had barely spoken to. But regardless, I couldn't let him go.
"Maybe that's his way of giving you a pet name?" she suggested lightly, "It's like...like...calling you baby or buttercup or something!"
"Who the hell calls their girlfriend 'buttercup'?" I said, making a face at the pet name. Jackie shrugged.
"Look, I'm just saying, Ian was the best guy you've dated lately. I mean, he's way better than Gavin was, right? You shouldn't give that up so easily." she sighed, as the 8:00 bell rang to signal our transition to first period. I pretended to think about it for a moment. Jackie would never drop it unless she thought that I had really put thought into it.
"You might be right, Jax." I said after a minute, knowing that that was what she wanted to hear, "I'll think about it, okay?"
Jackie seemed slightly relieved and slightly triumphant, as she veered off down the science hallway towards her first class. My first class was Government, at the other end of the school. I had a love-hate relationship with my Government class. I hated it because it wasn't particularly interesting and because I had been refused entrance into the fifth period Government class, which would have allowed me to arrive to school late everyday with an extra hour of sleep. I loved it too, because it was a required senior credit that was notoriously easy and I had no trouble keeping an A in the class. That and I was seated next to Jared. I doubted that fact even registered in his mind, but I was painfully aware of it. It wasn't that he disliked me or that I seemed to shrink into the background of the world. Jared Cameron and I simply weren't friends. He had his friends, I had mine and they had never overlapped.
For me, Jared was what I would never have. It was the sort of amusement that eighth grade girls got from having crushes on senior football players. Something to idly fantasize about as a way to pass the time, to make yourself blush and a face to use as the mask for your imagined perfect man. I knew that nothing would ever happen, but it didn't matter. And so I went through three and a half years of high school daydreaming about Jared and sabotaging any relationship I had because none of those boys matched up to how I imagined him. I dropped into my seat, last row and closest to the door, a few minutes before the bell. Jared had been absent for a few weeks now, I had noticed and it was the first time all year that I had taken diligent notes, just in case he needed them. It wasn't as if he would ask me for them. One of his close friends, Paul, was in the class as well and if he needed to be caught up Paul would be the one he would ask. I glanced to my left. Paul was two seats over, an empty desk that Jared usually occupied between us, snoring into his folded arms. Well, maybe not Paul.
The door to the classroom opened, just as the bell chimed to signal the start of class. I refrained from jumping as I saw an unusually tall boy duck into the classroom. It was Jared. A taller Jared, by what must have been five inches and a bigger Jared, broader and fitter than he had been before his disappearance. Apart from that, he looked about the same, in his usual simple t-shirt and jeans with his backpack haphazardly slung over one shoulder.
He nodded towards the teacher and made his way through the rows to his seat next to me. He didn't look at me, and I didn't expect him to. Instead, I reminded myself not to stare and fiddled aimlessly with my pen. I could still hear Paul snoring a few feet away and Jared slouched into the chair, his now larger frame making it seem as if the desk might break. My fingers slipped and my pen fell to the floor between us with a clattering sound. I glanced down at it slowly and was about to reach to pick it up, but Jared was faster. He held the pen out to me and I reached for it, our eyes meeting in the process. His brown eyes widened as they met my hazel ones.
"Thanks." I said, giving him a half smile and setting the pen safely on my desk. He was still staring at me, when I glanced back at him, looking confused, but also enlightened. Like the lights in his life were suddenly turned on. He shook himself out of it when he saw that I had caught him looking and he quickly brought his attention back to his notebook. I opened my own and attempted to take notes on what was being written on the chalk board, but I was distracted by that fact that every few seconds, he would look at me again. Finally he leaned over a bit.
"Hey, do you have the notes from last week?" he asked me in a whisper. I glanced up in surprise, but flipped back to the past few weeks in my notebook.
"Yeah, do you want them?" I asked and he nodded, taking the notes that I offered him. He still locked eyes with me as he did all of this and really didn't seem to care about catching up on the work he had missed. He half heartedly wrote down a few of the things that I had so diligently written, but continued to stare at me every few minutes. The rest of class continued like this, with Jared's unusual behavior making it impossible for me to pay attention to the lecture. I sighed when the bell rang. He still had my notebook.
"Can I give this back to you later?" he asked, "I want to be sure I get everything."
"Sure, no problem." I said lightly, running my fingers through my hair. It was a nervous habit that I had picked up since coming to high school. He grinned broadly at me.
"Thanks. You're the best, Kim." he said, standing up from his desk. He kicked Paul's leg roughly. I stifled a laugh as Paul grunted and glanced up with bleary eyes. I waved goodbye to Jared and he gave me another broad smile as I left the classroom.
I didn't see Jared again until the end of the day. He intercepted me coming out of my eighth period math class. Paul was in my Pre-Calculus class and had probably been his source for my location. I was surprised he had gone through the effort of finding me, when he could have just returned the notes to me the next morning. He beamed when he saw me.
"Here are your notes." he said, handing them to me, "Thanks."
"No problem, I'm glad they were useful." I said with a smile. So apparently taking notes was a good idea.
"Yeah, definitely." he nodded, "I owe you. Do you need a ride home or something?"
"Actually, a ride would be great." I admitted, pushing my dark hair behind my left ear. "If you don't mind?"
I had been planning on walking that day. I usually got a ride home with Jackie and our friend Val, who were both on the school's track team. Most days I had volley ball practice anyway and the two sports let out around the same time, so it was easier to carpool. But practice had been cancelled this week, because our coach was in Phoenix for a funeral, which meant that I could either walk home or wait around for the track team to finish up.
"No problem. Do you need to get anything first?" he asked, glancing down the hallway towards the lockers. I quickly explained that I needed to drop off my Pre-calculus book and began walking down the hallway towards the senior locker bay. He followed after me, asking me simple questions about my day as we went. He seemed genuinely interested in how my lunch was and what we were reading in my A.P. Literature class as compared to his standard level one.
"I don't like reading much. Or writing essays for that matter." he admitted, leaning against the locker next to mine on one shoulder. I smiled and grabbed my sweatshirt from the hook where I had hung it that morning.
"Not your thing? I don't mind it, it's numbers that I'm no good at." I said and dropped my Pre-Calculus book into the locker carelessly.
"See I like math. It makes so much more sense then all that interpretation in books and things." he explained. I grabbed the one notebook and textbook I needed for homework that night and slammed the locker door shut. He took the books from me casually and continued talking, without acknowledging the gesture. "I like things to be logical, you know?"
"Well I guess I'll be calling you when I'm pulling my hair out over matrices." I laughed. He nodded eagerly and reached into his pocket with his free hand, pulling out his cell phone.
"Yeah, definitely. Let me get your number." he said. I gave it to him and he called me so I could save his number in my contacts. We headed out towards the senior parking lot. He drove a beat up Nissan and he placed my books in the back of the car as I jumped into the passenger seat. He turned the ignition and the car spluttered to life. He paused for a moment and leaned over to reach into the glove compartment. From it he pulled out an iTrip and plugged it into the iPod that he had just taken out of his pocket.
"What kind of music do you like?" he asked me after a moment of fiddling with the radio and the iPod. I shrugged.
"I'm not picky. Anything really." He gave me a look and smirked.
"Seriously, what do you like?" he insisted. I sighed and reached for his iPod. He handed it over without hesitation and watched me carefully as I skimmed through it. I landed on one of my favorite bands of all time, the Goo Goo Dolls, and scrolled through their albums until I found my favorite song. I grinned as the opening notes filled the car and Jared smiled too.
"Good choice." he commented, as he put the car into reverse and pulled out of his parking spot, "Classic."
We talked easily about music for the rest of the ride home. He admitted, after some pushing on my part, that he sometimes knew what Taylor Swift was singing about and I confessed that I still loved Britney Spears, even if she was certifiably insane. I found talking to him was easy, as he guided the car down the road with one hand on the steering wheel, alternating between glancing at the road and looking at me. The smiles never left either of our faces. He pulled into my driveway and dust kicked up behind his car as it bumped down the unpaved path. My house was secluded, by the woods near the borders of the Rez. It was small, just three bedrooms and one story, but between my parents and older brother, it was enough. He reached behind his seat to grab my books for me and held them out to me with a charming smile. I took them as I reached for the door handle.
"Thanks for the ride." I said, with a grateful nod.
"No problem." he replied, his tone easy, but a strained longing was reflected in his eyes as I pushed the door open. He stayed in the car and watched me walk to my door. It wasn't until I slammed it shut that I heard the engine kick up and the sounds of tire on dirt. I leaned against the door, holding my books to my chest for a few minutes while I ran through the day. Strange.
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