"I swear to god I will throw that lamp out of the fucking window. Turn it the fuck off, please. Thank you."
Charlie had had enough of Lydia. Charlie who barely noticed when Lydia would strew her clothes all over their dorm room: on chairs, window shutters, laptops, coffeemaker, photo frames, doorknobs and both beds. Who had been bringing Lydia real wine gummy bears from Harvey the food technology guy for the past two weeks. Who had a good day if you handed her a cup of coffee in the morning, but only if she had had her seven and a half hours of sleep on the previous night. The perfectly oiled studying machine that was Charlie Never-call-me-Charlaine Jones really only required the minimum amount of consideration from her sleepless roommate.
Lydia Martin had been tossing and turning for the last two hours. She laid herself to bed pulling the blue and white striped cover over her head and waited for one night's oblivion. Instead of sleep taking over she felt her legs and arms go peculiarly numb. Switching sides on the bed and fluffing the pillows didn't help. She got up twice to drink a glass of water and three to pee. She even tried reading for half an hour -Tolkien always put her to sleep- put on an extra blanket, took off the blanket and then her pajama pants. All failed.
Charlie's protest was the last straw. Lydia kicked off the covers and dressed. She put the appropriate college student after midnight attire which consisted of pajama pants, her blue go beavers sweatshirt, slippers and baseball cap to disguise her hair. She even put on her YSL frames which were finally going to meet the world outside her room.
"Where are you going?" Charlie asked from under the covers trying very hard not to wake herself up entirely.
Lydia picked up her keys, blackberry and purse which held her grade A fake I.D. inside. "Seven eleven or open liquor store, whichever is nearest," she replied. She waved goodbye but then she remembered not to jiggle her keys.
"Don't wait up." Haha.
If you're a first year in college you cannot get a dorm house with its own parking space right across the street. Unless you're Lydia Martin. Call it early registration, call it the five things to ask the college admissions office for; the one practically begging you to attend, rotation be damned. Lydia's House of choice was a gorgeous renovated early twentieth century building with red brick alcoves and arched cloisters , but most importantly shaded parking space to protect her apple green VW Beetle from the Pasadena sun.
Fifteen minutes was all it took her to re-enter campus with a bottle of alcoholic coconut delight and a bag of sour cream and onion flavored chips on the side seat. Still when she took the left turn to the dorm she found a black Porsche SUV was sitting in her space cool and innocent as you please. The purple neon digits on her dashboard said it was one fifty-four in the morning. The angry stream of obscenities that one would personally voice Lydia thought, embellished and put in seven lines of iambic heptameter before she reluctantly drove off to find another space.
It was no surprise that the only parking lot with available spots was the one adjacent to the track stadium all but walled on three sides by dark and empty athletics facilities and a wooded park on the other. She squeezed in an available spot on the edge of the park between a Hyundai and a silver Cayman, perfectly aware that she was blocking the Porsche's driver's way.
The parking lot lamps were all working, shedding a reluctant sallow light over the cars. The thick leafy canopy blocking the light kept the park grounds in darkness. The park absorbed noise pollution, the treehuggers said. It encouraged predators, sane people said. Lydia got out of the car and pushed her key button to lock. There was the expected mechanical sound of the doors locking accompanied by a flash of the headlights. They briefly illuminated the tree trunks ahead of the car and a wide-shouldered man's silhouette standing just fifteen yards away.
Lydia stared blankly at the now completely dark spot where he'd appeared. A screech owl's call unfroze her. She unlocked the car and got back inside as fast as she could, heart in her throat and locked again. She switched the headlights on flooding the copse with light. There was no one there.
Lydia remembered she had pepper spray in the glove compartment (and a mountain ash letter opener) but the true choice lay in her willingness to leave her car. At that moment she didn't care about double parking as long as she could run into the building in twenty seconds; she started the engine, put in reverse and backed out. First gear and the car's tires squealed something out of Psycho's theme as she drove out the parking lot. Why could she not have just locked herself in the bathroom and bawl her eyes out like every other time? Or track down the Benz owners and fuck both?
She did not see the man stepping in the beetle's way. He hit the hood with a thud and swirled on the windbreaker to thud on the roof again. She braked grinding the car to a stop tires screaming and she as well.
She kept on screaming while the fright turned to disbelief then anger and then she just screamed for the hell of it. She had caught a clear glimpse of the man, the same square-shouldered man that had scared her into leaving, his black t-shirt, black hair and unshaven angular jaw: Derek Hale.
He knocked on the window. He didn't seem to have lost any limbs, in fact he looked unshaken from the collision apart from the streak of dust on one shoulder. He brushed it off, cracked his neck as if to get rid of a kink. He smiled.
"Are you freaking kidding me!?" she yelled at him behind the closed window.
She could see his mouth moving forming something like, "Anaheim."
That did not make any sense. "What?"
"I teeth to talk new you."
"What?!"
Derek gestured with his hand the international sign for, "Roll down your window."
"No," she shook her head. He had vanished from Beacon Hills on that night before Halloween having wrecked havoc on everyone's lives and no one had seen him since, not even his pack. Isaac had looked for him for months on end travelling to god knows where missing school pushing away anyone who cared especially Erica and Boyd who had got left behind again and again with only the insecurity and aggression that entailed to keep them. Whatever Derek was doing in Pasadena she wanted him to do it away from her.
He had brought war in Beacon Hills and she had had to—finish school and go to college.
Derek looked pissed. He reached in his back pocket taking out his phone. "I'll call you," he said gesturing.
He pressed on the screen, pressed some side buttons, shook it growing madder by the second and then as if remembering she was right there paused and showed her. The screen of his phone was completely blank with a crack running through it. He must have broken it when he crashed into her car.
Why should she open the window? Lydia sat within the cardboard illusion of her little car's safety feeling the grief of the last two weeks bearing her down feeling the violence of the last two years to have worn her skin thin and scaly, ugly and itching to be shed like yesterday's bad news, ready to snap like a hair carrying a sword over the head of a man in a throne.
Derek's voice came faint through the glass. He spoke again his mouth forming the same shapes, and again. On the fourth time it came to her. "I'm sorry," he said over and over eyes round and stark, hands useless by his side.
"Well, he's not planning to kill me," was a lame excuse but Lydia Martin went ahead and opened the car door.
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A/N: I had to post this like this or else I never would so...