Who Are You, Really?
So you're feeling tied up to a sense of control:
You shouldn't have woken up. You shouldn't have gone down the stairs. You shouldn't have looked out the kitchen window into the backyard, wondering why your parents were out by the shed so late. But you did. You wished you didn't, for a long time, but now you know that the only thing worse than knowing is not knowing.
You stop archery. You stop gymnastics. You wear black like her, like the girl, the girl whose name you saw in the newspaper, saw in the "Missing" fliers her father posted all around town. When you first saw her, bloody, beaten, at your parents' knees, you couldn't remember her name. You thought it started with a C. It didn't. It was Emily Doroshenko and she had shockingly blonde hair. You will always remember the way it shined in the moonlight, eclipsed only by her glowing blue eyes. She sat in the back of your History class and didn't talk to anyone. She wore black. Black skirts, black boots, black eyeliner.
They never find her body. You always wonder about that, even after you move away, wonder if one day they will find her, but, as far as you know, they don't. Maybe they never will. Your parents are too smart for that.
Your parents killed Emily Doroshenko in your backyard and you saw. You saw and you ran back upstairs and hid under the bed until you were sure they were asleep, and even then you didn't come out. And now you are the girl wearing black in the back of the class who doesn't talk to anyone.
Your mother hates it, hates your new attitude, hates your listlessness, your laziness, and you know your father feels the same, even if he isn't as vocal about it. They're mad at you all the time, about your mediocre grades, about your anti-social behavior, about your disinterest in exercise. But you don't care. You become a vegetarian for a year, just to piss them off, even though you love pork, and you join the local chapter of PETA. You don't go to any of meetings, but you do cover the walls of your room with posters about animal rights. One of them has a wolf on it. They've always told you to be strong, worried about you being too sensitive. Now you know why, and you will make them fear to try and make you one of them.
That was two towns and a year and a half ago. Now it is a new town, a new house with a lock on the basement door, and a new school. You're sixteen now, almost seventeen, and you should be nervous on your first day as a second semester sophomore in a school with less than 500 students in attendance, but you're not. You don't care. You've done this so many times before. You try to leave the house in your customary all black, but your mother doesn't let you and makes you take one of the jackets from a boutique in San Francisco she gave you that you never wear. She accuses you of being a goth again, even though you don't wear makeup or studded belts or skulls, and despairs of your fashion choices.
It's not that you don't like clothes, or pretty things, you think as your dad drives you to school. You do. Even Before, you never were a tomboy. It's just that you don't have the energy to try on that kind of thing anymore. Black is easier, comfortable, and it allows you to be invisible, to a certain extent.
You don't care about making friends, you think as your mom calls for the third time on the bench as you wait for the assistant principal to take to you to your first period. You can't find your pen, which is humiliating, but you'll live. You're not sure how long you'll be here anyway. There can't be that many werewolves in a tiny town like Beacon Hills. As long as none of them go to your school, you'll be okay.
You should've known better, you realize less than a minute later, when the cute Mexican boy in the seat in front of you turns around and hands you a pen, completely without provocation. You should have known your luck would only hold out for so long.
A girl named Lydia Martin with red hair and an arrogant smirk likes your jacket and she and her meathead boyfriend drag you to watch lacrosse tryouts. Putting up a fight is too much work, and anyway, you know this isn't going anywhere. She'll get tired of you soon enough, just like all your old friends did.
The Mexican boy plays lacrosse and he smiles at you from the field. You ask Lydia who he is, but she has no idea. You hope you were wrong, that it was just a coincidence, that he's just a weirdo who hands pens to random girls all the time, but the lacrosse tryouts prove you wrong beyond a shadow of a doubt. He's not even subtle. He flips over three defenders to make a shot. He has an adorable smile as the coach tells him he's made first line (in front of everyone, what is wrong with him?) but you feel sick, wondering how many people he's killed.
Emily Doroshenko killed three people, before your parents killed her, but you remember the way she sobbed at your parents' feet, the way she kept to herself at school, and you know that she didn't mean to. It's why your parents didn't want you to read Harry Potter. They lock up the werewolves in Harry Potter, give them a potion to help them maintain control. Your parents just kill them.
Lydia wants you to come to some stupid party Friday night, but you decline. You couldn't be any less interested in high school parties. Instead you stay home and stare up at the full moon, wondering if the Mexican boy will be at school on Monday, or if your parents are killing him at this very second.
The werewolf is at school on Monday. His name is Scott McCall, and you know this because Jackson keeps ranting about how he thinks he's taking steroids during lunch. Lydia doesn't pay him much attention (real solid relationship there) and keeps trying to get you to talk about what it was like living in San Francisco. You excuse yourself because she won't stop asking about the shopping and go to the bathroom on the other side of the school just for something to do.
"Allison?" a voice says as you're meandering back to the cafeteria, and you turn around to see the werewolf-Scott-behind you with a hopeful smile on his face. "It's Allison, right?"
"Yes," you say warily, and wonder what he wants. Does he know about your parents?
"I'm Scott," he says, looking suddenly embarrassed, sticking his hands in his pockets awkwardly. "I was wondering...I know you couldn't go to the party on Friday, but there's another one on Saturday night, and I was wondering, would you want to go? With me? It's totally okay if you don't, I thought I'd...just...ask."
You stare at him and his cheeks redden further, his warm brown eyes darting away from yours. He's...asking you out? you think. Why?
"No," you say, and his eyes snap back to yours.
"Oh, okay, that's cool," he says, looking a little hurt, but he puts on a good face. "I thought it cou-"
"I don't date," you say coolly and try not to stiffen up. There are other people starting to trickle out of the cafeteria into the hallway, and he doesn't look angry. You don't think he'd attack you, but you don't know for sure. You've never been this close to a werewolf, as far as you know.
"Oh, okay," he says again, awkwardly. "I guess, I'll see you around, then."
You turn around without comment and go back into the cafeteria. Why did he ask you out? you wonder as you go back to sitting next to Lydia. He doesn't know you. You've never spoken before this. Not to mention you are the daughter of werewolf hunters, though you're guessing he doesn't know that part. Imagine if you'd said yes, you think, your face twisting in disgust. Who knows what could have happened to you?
You're so distracted by Scott's interest that you agree to go with Lydia to the lacrosse game tonight. It's annoying, but you already said yes, and you don't want to have another fight with Lydia, who does not seem like the type to let things go. You tell your dad that you need the car to see the game, and to your horror, he wants to come with you. You immediately back out, making something up about an English paper, imagining nightmare scenarios of finding your parents murdering Scott in your backyard. They can't find out about him, not because of you. You don't think you could live with his death, or anyone's, really, on your conscience.
It ends up being good all around, though, because Lydia stops talking to you after that, and you resume your usual friendless existence.
"Have you made any friends?" your mother asks you in exasperation at the end of the second week of school.
"No," you say plainly, taking a bag of chips out of the kitchen cupboard and quite unapologetically stuffing your face with them. The only person you've talked to this week is your conversation partner in French class, and you don't think he counts.
"Enough with the chips!" your mother says, grabbing the bag out of your hands. "You keep eating like this, you're going to get fat! You need to exercise!"
"No, I don't," you say, walking around the kitchen counter into the living room to get away from her. You're twenty pounds heavier than you were at fifteen, but you don't really care about the pudge of fat at your abdomen and your flabby arms. You've stopped caring about a lot of things since you were fifteen.
Two and a half more years, you think, as you lie on your bed in your room, surrounded by unpacked boxes, and stare unseeingly at the ceiling. Then college. You'll let them pay for college, because they're rich and they can afford it, but then you're out of here. What you'll do, you don't know. But it has to be better than this.
One of the bus drivers is attacked a couple days later and the entire thing reeks of werewolves. You think of Scott immediately, and feel sick when you notice how pale and shaky he looks the entire day. He had, hadn't he? He hadn't meant to, but he'd done it, and because as far as you can tell Scott is a genuinely nice guy, he's drowning in guilt.
You hate everything.
"Alright, we get it passé composé is hard," you mutter under your breath as your French teacher, this young African American woman who barely looks older than the seniors harps on about how difficult it is. You already know passé composé, of course. You should probably be in French III, but you didn't bother to take the language placement exam.
Your conversation partner snorts quietly with laughter. You've never had a conversation outside of French class, but you like him. He sits in the back next to you and you can tell he's pretty much just as miserable as you are all the time. He plays lacrosse, but you never see him sitting with any of the other players. He sits alone in the cafeteria, like you.
"Last semester she made us memorize, like, fifty irregular verbs and then repeat them over and over again the entire class," he says under his breath. He shifts in his seat, reaching up for the hood on his black hoodie that he wears every day, before remembering that he's in class and Mademoiselle Morrell probably wouldn't let him pull it over his head.
"This class is a joke," you mutter back, tightening your grip on your pen needlessly. "What a waste of time- we could be doing something useful."
"In high school?" your conversation partner says sarcastically, rolling his eyes at you. "I can't even imagine what that would look like."
"Monsieur Lahey," Mademoiselle Morrell says sharply from the front of the class, and all their classmates turn to look at him. "Voulez-vous dire quelque chose à la classe?"
"Uh," Lahey says, slouching down in his seat. "I don't...no."
"En français, s'il vous plaît," Morrell says, walking down the aisle to stand over him in annoyance.
Lahey looks cowed, not daring to make eye contact with her. "Non," he says, quietly and you feel bad for him. His conversational French is pretty terrible.
"Non, quoi?"
Lahey swallows, clearly having no idea what to say and you hiss: "Non, je n'ai rien à dire," before you can think better of it.
"Mademoiselle Argent!" Mademoiselle Morrell turns on you. "C'est assez!"
Thankfully she doesn't give either of you detention, but spends the rest of the class looking over at you to make sure you don't talk again.
"Bitch," Lahey mutters once the bell rings, and you smirk in response as you gather your things.
"Could be worse," you say once you're out of the room. "Harris is a real piece of work, isn't he?"
"You have no idea," Lahey scowls, and then says. "See you," before walking off in the opposite direction.
That night your parents tell you Kate is coming to stay with you for a couple weeks, some bullshit about them needing her for the family business. You're not sure how you feel about this. You haven't seen Kate since you found out. As much as you love her, you're pretty sure she's a hunter too. Kate has always been nice to you, taking you shopping, sneaking you your first beer, covering up for you that one time you broke your mother's vase, but you can't help but remember some of the stories she's told you, how often she's seemed to find other people's pain funny.
Kate is excited and enthusiastic to see you, complimenting your looks even though you've gained weight and you haven't had a decent haircut in more than a year. For a minute, you can almost let yourself believe she doesn't know, isn't part of it, but then you try to help her unpack, and well. Kung-fu death grip. You're not sure you want to know what's in the bag. The lie about what exactly caused your father to go and pick her up at three in the morning just makes things worse.
You sit with Lahey in the back of Econ today as well (you should probably learn his first name, but it seems awkward at this point to ask. He knows yours.) and together you hate on your teachers and half of your classmates. Lahey has a pretty dark sense of humor, which you find funny because you're screwed up like that, and you also learn a lot about Beacon Hills High. You learn that Coach Finstock is even more ridiculous than you imagined and should totally not be allowed anywhere near high school students. You learn that Lydia regularly cheats on her boyfriend with lacrosse players from other schools, but no one blames her because Jackson is just that much of a dick. Greenberg has failed senior year once already. The entire sophomore class thinks that Scott (whose horrible asthma kept him on the bench every single lacrosse game up until recently) and his best friend with the buzz cut (loud and annoying) are sleeping together, because they're attached at the hip and never talk to anyone else.
Coach Finstock yells at Lahey when you laugh too hard, but it's okay, because you use the distraction to glance over at Lahey's paper and learn his first name. It's Isaac.
You sit together at lunch and complain some more about, well, everything, but it's not like you're really friends. You don't talk about yourselves or your lives at all, and you doubt you'll ever spend any time together outside of school. That's okay, though. It's nice to have someone to sit with at lunch, and besides, you don't have the energy to maintain friendships.
The parking lot is backed up pretty badly on your way home, and when you get out of your car to see what the trouble is, you see Scott putting a sickly-looking man into his best friend's jeep.
What's going on? you think as you drive home, anxiety churning in your stomach. Who is that man? Is he another werewolf? Why is he sick? Does it have something to do with Kate coming back to town.
You don't have long to wonder, because fifteen minutes later Scott is at your front door.
"Oh, Allison!" he says, pretending he didn't know it was your house. His shirt is covered in what looks like car oil. "I didn't know you lived he...I'm really sorry, my car broke down," he points vaguely down your street, but you don't bother to look for it because you know he rides his bike to school, "and when I popped the hood it kind of...exploded on me. I already called a tow-truck, but do you think I could use your bathroom to clean up?"
He's lying, of course, but you don't know why. Why does he need to get into your house? Is it because his friend is sick? Did Kate do something to him?
"Okay," you says slowly, and then step aside to let him in.
You let him use the bathroom in the guest bedroom, because you figure he needs to get in there anyway. You sit in the living room while you listen to the water running in the bathroom and wonder if you're doing the right thing. It's one thing to not want to get involved in your parents' vendetta, but another to be actively helping werewolves. Scott seems like a nice enough guy, but you don't really know him. You're still not sure if he killed the bus driver.
"Hey, Allison," Scott says, wandering out of the guest room into the living room. His shirt is badly cleaned off, and you should probably offer to throw it in the washer for him, but it's not like that's why he's really here anyway. "Thanks. I'd better get going."
He smiles at you winningly and it disturbs you that he might be a murderer and still he looks so innocent.
"Okay," you say expressionlessly and he leaves quickly. A good thing too, considering your father and Kate come home with groceries five minutes later.
When they think you're asleep that night, you sneak downstairs and listen to your father and Kate's conversation about the werewolf attacks. They think an alpha is doing it, like the one who attacked Kate last night. A Hale? Blaming them for their house fire? They mention someone named Derek, but not Scott. Does that mean that Scott didn't kill the bus driver? Maybe the alpha bit Scott.
Kate says she'd shot the beta. That must have been the man Scott was helping. Was he Derek?
The night before your birthday there is another attack. A man who owned a video store is dead. You watch Scott carefully the next day, and he looks worried, but there's also a sense of determination about him. You don't think he did it. It was the alpha again. Does he know who it is? Is he trying to stop them? You wonder if you should tell your parents, but you're worried they might kill him. At the same time, though, people are dying, and your parents are trying to stop it. Can you really stay silent?
"What is wrong with you?" Isaac asks when you glare at him for making fun of your Geometry homework.
"It's my birthday," you say truthfully, glaring down at your homework. It's a study hall and both of you are sitting against the wall of lockers doing your math homework. "I hate my birthday."
You don't, really. You used to, when people made fun of you for being held back, but the last couple schools no one has even known you existed, much less cared how old you were.
"Okay," Isaac says, looking at you dubiously.
"I'm seventeen," you say, shrugging your shoulders. "I got held back."
Isaac doesn't ask why. You don't think he cares.
He winces when he gets up after the bell rings, holding his side.
"What happened?" you ask, squinting at him.
"Lacrosse," he says with a bit of an eyeroll. "Got caught between McCall and Jackson's bitch fight."
"They fight?" you ask, inappropriately amused by the idea.
"They're idiots," he says dismissively, as you walk to Geometry.
"He asked me out," you say without thinking.
Isaac actually turns around to give you a very strange look. "Jackson?"
"No, McCall," you reply, rolling your eyes, because gross.
Isaac just gives you this look like he doesn't understand why anyone would ask you out and it's so rude that you almost burst out laughing. This is why you get along so well, you think. Neither of you are particularly nice people.
Your parents are not pleased with what your teachers said about you on Parent-Teacher Night, surprise, surprise. You're anti-social and withdrawn. You don't try in class. You have a bad attitude. You've heard it all before, though. And you mostly zone out while they demand you change your act or they'll take away your allowance.
"Hey, Allison," Kate says, coming into your room later while you're listening to depressing music on your Ipod. "I have a presen-Whoa."
She stares at your wolf poster above your desk and you try not to let your betrayal show on your face. You always liked Kate. Thought of her as a sister, even. You hate that she's involved in this.
"Save the Wolves," she reads turning to give you a strange look. "What for?"
"In Alaska people chase them in helicopters and shoot them from the air," you respond, not able to look her in the eye.
Kate looks disturbed. "Okay," she says, looking taken aback.
Good, you think, with a surprising amount of anger. This is what I think of you.
She gives you your birthday present, a pendant that's supposedly a family heirloom. It has a wolf on it. It's pretty. You hate it.
"Allison," she asks, looking at you worriedly. "Are you okay? I know it's been awhile, but you seem...different. Did something happen?"
Yes, you think. I found out what you are.
You wear the necklace to school like you do with the clothes your mother bought you. You always do that for a couple days, and then you go back to wearing black. You hide it under your shirt once you get to school and it feels like a brand, burning "murderer" into your skin. You wonder how far back hunting goes in your family. You could probably find out, but you don't want to know.
You're so filled with rage when you get to school that you immediately look for Isaac to rant at how much you hate your family. But when you find him, your anger fades immediately. He looks horrible. His skin is pale and his eyes are unfocused and tired.
"Are you okay?" you ask, concerned. He looks pretty sick.
"Fine," he grunts, not looking at you and walks into Chemistry class without a glance in your direction.
You're his lab partner now and sit next to him, but you spend most of the class watching him worriedly. He doesn't take notes. Instead, he stares straight ahead of him blankly. He won't take his hands out of his pockets. When Harris calls on him to answer a question, after utterly humiliating Scott's friend Stilinski in front of the entire class, he doesn't even hear the question and you have to hiss out the answer to him behind your hand so Harris doesn't see. It's only when you see pain flick across his face when he stands after the bell rings, stumbling a little and taking his right hand out of his pocket to steady himself on the lab table that you realize what this is. Every finger on his right hand is bandaged clumsily. You're pretty sure all his nails are broken.
This isn't from lacrosse, you think, feeling sick. This is something else. He'd had a bruise on his cheek the first day you met him, too.
He won't look at you at all in Econ and when the bell rings he tries to leave quickly, but he gets up too fast and he sways dangerously, nearly falling over his desk. You're pretty sure he has a concussion. You take his wrist and pull him out of the room and to your locker where you sit him down and wait until the next bell rings. It's your study period now and it really looks like he needs the break.
"I'm fine," he grunts out when you look at him carefully after the hallway's mostly cleared.
"Okay," you say. "Do you want an ice pack?"
He doesn't say anything. You take that as a yes and go to the nurse's office, pretending you banged your elbow on your desk. He's still there when you get back, thankfully, but he won't look at you when you hand him the ice pack. He doesn't put it on his head, but sticks it under his shirt. You wonder how bad it must be under his clothes.
"Did you hit your head?" you ask, watching as his dark blonde eyelashes flutter shut at the feel of the icepack against his bare skin.
He doesn't say anything.
"I think you have a concussion," you say.
"It's fine," he mutters, still not looking at you.
You want to ask what happened, but you know he won't tell you, and anyway, you know what it's like to have people constantly bothering you, trying to get you to talk about your feelings. You think you can guess, though. Statistically speaking, it's probably his father. Isaac's never talked about his family and it doesn't look like he wants anyone to know. You will respect his wishes.
It makes sense, though, you think darkly, on your way home. There's no way you could become friends with anyone who didn't have anything seriously wrong with them.
A couple days later the school gets closed for repairs and Derek Hale has been accused of murder. You're not really sure what to think. You bring it up with your parents, but your father just looks disapproving and your mother makes some comment about badly-raised children. You gape at them for a second, because you're pretty sure they burned down the Hale House, children and all, and then you have to excuse yourself and throw up your lunch.
You're pretty sure it's not true, anyway. You don't think Scott would be friends with someone who was killing random people. Last week the girl with the crazy hair who sits out most of the time in gym class dropped her stuff all over the floor and Scott was the only one who bothered to help her pick it up. People like that don't help mass murderers. He could have tricked Scott, though. You can't help but notice he isn't the brightest crayon in the box. He asked you out, after all.
But you change your mind about that later that day when he asks you out again after English.
"I said I don't date," you say, annoyed, because can't he take a hint? You hate how he always smiles at you in the hallway.
"C'mon, it'll be fun," Scott says, and the grin on his face is uncharacteristically cruel. "I know you'll have a great time."
He leans into your space, reaching out to tug on a strand of your hair. You jerk back, anger rising in your chest like molten steel.
"Don't touch me!" you say furiously and turn on your heel.
"Oh, come on, don't overreact-" you hear him call after you, but you pay him no heed. You're still furious by the time you get to French class. You've always had a temper. You're pretty sure it's genetic.
"You okay?" Isaac asks you, no doubt noticing the angry flush in your cheeks.
You resist the urge to say something nasty in reply. Isaac is pale and has this horribly underfed look. If not for his height, you doubt he'd had ever made the lacrosse team. Today he has a horrible bruise on his wrist and his nails still haven't grown all the way back. Why is he asking if you're okay? He should worry about himself.
"Fine," you say, with more vehemence than is necessary and he doesn't try and talk to you again until lunch.
Scott stares at you all through lunch, like he's undressing you with his eyes, and you distract yourself from your rage by imagining chucking your tray at his head.
"Sco-McCall asked me out again," you say furiously, when you can't keep it to yourself anymore. "And now he's staring at me."
Isaac looks over at Scott and then back at you in confusion. "Okay..." he says slowly. "Why are you so angry?"
"He's being a creep," you reply, stabbing your mushy green beans with your fork. You don't care if he can hear you. It's the truth. Maybe he is involved in the murders, you think furiously. Obviously he's good at disguising his true character.
Scott tries to talk to you twice more that day and you ignore him, but it comes to a head in Gym. You're in the middle of your basketball unit and the class is split by gender. You're hanging back while some of the jock girls hog the ball when there's a loud bang from the boy's side of the gym. You turn around to see Isaac on the ground, clutching his side, Scott standing over him looking smug.
He did it on purpose, you realize as a couple boys take Isaac over to sit on the bleachers. He has a bloody nose too. Out of jealousy? Spite? You don't know and you don't care. You imagine going over and slapping that smirk right off his face in front of everyone, but you don't. Instead you go over to sit by Isaac and make sure he's okay. You'll have to keep an eye on him the rest of the day too, in case Scott decides to come after him again.
You sit in the stands during lacrosse practice after school, but Isaac seems to have realized that Scott did it on purpose, and stays away from him on the field. Scott seems to have lost interest in him, and brutally tackles Danny Mahealani instead. Stiles drags Scott aside while the rest of the time crowds around Danny, looking confused and appalled at his behavior, but Scott brushes him aside uncaringly. You see Stiles look up at the sky and you follow his gaze to see-
The full moon, of course. No wonder Scott was acting so out of character. Your anger at him dissipates, to be replaced by wariness. He wouldn't kill someone tonight, would he?
He doesn't kill someone that night, but the murder of two men in the woods is on the news when you get home. It looks like it happened the night before. They were burned to death and your parents and Kate are suspiciously absent. Did they do it? Were they werewolves? It wouldn't be Scott, right? Fire doesn't sound like a very werewolf thing to do, not if he was being influenced by the full moon.
Still, you resolve to keep away from Scott at school. His crush on you is dangerous, to Isaac as well.
Unfortunately, Scott has other ideas.
"Allison?" he says the next day, coming up to stand in front of you and Isaac during your study period. You feel Isaac stiffen up next to you and you force your expression to stay blank. What does he want now?
"Hey, I wanted to apologize for yesterday," he says, looking genuinely contrite. "I was totally out of line and I have no excuse. I was acting like a total douchebag and I'm really sorry."
"Okay..." you say warily, unnerved by his repentant look.
He turns to Isaac then and apologizes just as remorsefully. Isaac is even more uncomfortable with it than you are and can barely look him in the eye.
"Christ, Jackson was right," Isaac mutters once he leaves. "He really is on something."
You don't say anything, but you feel a sudden shock of pity for Scott. Didn't have an excuse? He had the best excuse in the world. He'd been turned into a monster and had no control over his actions around the full moon. You wonder what it'd be like, to be afraid of what you might do, who you might hurt. Still, did he act like this every full moon? He probably should just not come to school.
Days pass, and as the Winter Formal draws near, it seems like it's all anyone is talking about. Dresses, afterparty plans, who is going with who (Jackson dumped Lydia, did you hear?) Even your mother asks you if you're going, and then gets mad at you when you make a joke about not planning to fit in any of your old dresses. You and Isaac are so fed up with your classmates that you spend most of lunch complaining about the stupid dance. Then Scott snaps a tray with his bare hands.
The entire cafeteria stops to stare at him, but Scott isn't looking at any of them. Instead he's glaring off at...Jackson? You frown in confusion as Jackson smirks and takes a bite of his apple. Scott barrels out of the cafeteria immediately, leaving Stiles behind. You wouldn't have a clue of what's going on, but the naked fear on Stiles's face erases all doubts from your mind.
"Allison?" Isaac says, looking at you strangely. "What's wrong?"
You turn away from your food, suddenly feeling sick. This can't happen again. Your parents can't kill one of your classmates again. You don't know exactly what's going on, but it looks like Jackson has found out about Scott and is blackmailing him. Jackson must have been taunting him from the other side of the room, knowing he could hear him. And no one would believe Scott is a werewolf. No one but your parents.
"I don't feel well," you tell him and go to the nurse's office. You tell them that you have a killer headache and they let you call your mom to pick you up.
"You want to take something?" your mother asks, checking your temperature and fussing with your bedspread.
"No," you say hoarsely, shaking your head. You just want to bury yourself under the covers until everything goes away. "I'm fine. You can go back to work."
Your mother looks worriedly at you, but leans down to kiss your forehead. You just manage to hold back your flinch as her lips come in contact with your skin.
"Alright, call me if you start to feel worse, okay?" she says. "Kate just went out shopping, so she should be back in an hour or so."
"Okay," you whisper and then close your eyes until she leaves the room.
You wait until you hear the car pull out of the driveway and then you relax, staring up at the ceiling. You don't want to get involved. You don't want to live in this world. But you can't pretend you don't know what's going on, pretend you don't know what family you're living in, whose daughter you are.
You throw off the covers and head down to Kate's room on the first floor. You pull out her bag from under the bed and grab one of her guns and some ammo, sticking it in your purse. You're back in bed in less than three minutes.
Later that night, you pretend you need to pick a book up at the library and drive to Jackson's house. His mother lets you in and you get her to show you to his room instead of calling him downstairs. What a stupid woman, you think. She doesn't know you. You could be anyone.
You knock on the door to Jackson's room because you don't want to walk in on him jerking off or something, and when he opens the door you shove him back into the room.
"What the hell, Allison?!" he says, looking shocked and wronged. His room holds no surprises, just the typical teenage mess with workout equipment in the corner and hyper-masculine posters.
You reach in your purse and take out the gun.
His eyes go wide and he opens his mouth, but you cut him off before he can speak. "Now this is how this is going to go," you say firmly and tell yourself not to shake. "I am going to talk. I am going to ask you some questions. You are going to answer. You are going to do what I say and I'm going to leave. You don't answer my questions, you don't do what I say, it is going to end a little differently. Do you understand?"
Jackson just gapes at you, mouth wide open. He looks terrified, his blue eye panicked. He's wearing a muscle-shirt and basketball shorts, but he looks very small. You shouldn't, but you like it. You're glad you wore your high-heeled boots your mother bought you for Christmas last year.
"Do you understand?" you say sharply, pointing the gun at him.
"Yes!" he gasps, talking a huge step back, almost stumbling into his dresser.
"Do you know who I am?" you ask first. "What my family does?"
"I-I don't," he says, looking bewildered. "I don't know, you never, you never said!"
You look at him carefully while he shakes. You're pretty sure he's telling the truth.
"Well, that makes things simpler, then," you say calmly. "So here is what's going to happen now. You are not going to tell anyone about Scott McCall. You are going to leave him alone, stop blackmailing him or whatever you're doing. If you don't, I will kill you."
"Sc-M-McCall?" Jackson gapes, staring at you incredulously. "This is about McCall?!"
"Yes, it is," you say calmly, even though you're starting to feel sick. You hope this is over with soon or your confident facade is going to crack. "Make no mistake, you tell anyone, you bother him about it, I will kill you. And I'll get away with it too. No one is going to suspect me."
"Y-You know?" he says, shakily, gripping the back of his dresser now. "You know he's a...a..."
"I know he's a werewolf," you say, trying to steer this conversation along. You can feel the adrenaline rush starting to fade and you don't want to be here when you crash. "Right now, you and I are the only ones who know." Stiles and Derek Hale don't count. "It is going to stay that way. Am I understood?"
"Ye-Yes," he says, eyes a little dewy, and you'd laugh at him if you weren't trying to get out of here so fast. "I won't...I won't tell anyone, I swear."
"You'll leave him alone?" you say, taking a step forward even though you know you should keep your distance.
"I-I will!" he says, looking terrified at the gun in your hands.
"Good," you say, lowering the gun, and putting it back in your purse. "Don't forget."
You leave the room before he can say anything and hear him gasping as you close the door. You don't bother saying goodbye to Jackson's mother and instead walk on shaky legs back to your car. You get inside, lock the door, and gasp for breath as you realize what you've just done. You just threatened someone with a gun. You could go to prison for that, if he talks. You don't think he will.
You put your purse down on the passenger seat and hear the bullets rolls around in their box. You let out a disbelieving snort as you realize why the gun felt so light. You hadn't loaded it. What an amateur mistake, you think, but you're not all that upset about it. It wasn't like you planned to shoot him anyway, not this time.
You look across the street, to the house that must be Isaac's and your smile fades. It's a pretty normal house, but small for Beacon Hills. The lights are on inside and somehow that triggers a particularly vivid fantasy of going in there and shooting Isaac's father in the head. You don't know what he looks like, but you like to think you could identify him on sight.
You don't do it, of course. Instead, you start your car and go home.
Jackson avoids both you and Scott the whole next day and Isaac gives you weird looks when you can't hide your smirk.
The Beacon Hills High Lacrosse team has done well this season (wonder why?) and you go see Isaac play in the semi-finals game that night. Isaac only plays in the first half, but the combined power of Jackson and Scott destroys the other team's defense. You don't really care about the outcome, but you're glad to see that Scott is a lot more subtle. He's stopped doing flips on the field, at least.
You weave through cheering fans on the field after the game is over to find Isaac, but when you finally spot him he's off on the other side of the field talking to an older man that can only be his father. Isaac stands a good three or four inches taller than him, but he's slouched over like he's trying to make himself smaller, not meeting his father's eyes. His father looks irritated and unimpressed, a stark contrast to the rest of the excited parents on the field, and a lightning bolt of white hot rage goes through you at that, even though you don't know what he's saying. Isaac nods seriously at something he says and then turns to see you watching them. His eyes widen meaningfully, fearfully, and you take the hint and disappear back into the crowd.
Your good mood from scaring off Jackson has completely vanished. As you drive home, you entertain furious fantasies about killing Isaac's father.
You need to calm down, you tell yourself, hands shaking on the steering wheel at the light. You don't have any idea what you're doing. Just because you pointed a gun at someone once doesn't mean you can do whatever you want. You've shot a gun before, at shooting ranges a couple times, but you didn't like it, so your dad stopped taking you. You can't just kill someone because they're a horrible person, and anyway, you couldn't get away with it. You wonder idly what your parents would do if you told them he was a werewolf. Or maybe Kate. Kate seems like she'd have no problem doing something crazy like killing your friend's father.
Your rage only increases the next day, when Isaac comes to school pale and sick-looking again, his fingernails broken and crusted with dried blood. You bandage them with the First Aid Kit you've taken to carrying around with you during your study period while he stares blankly ahead, jaw clenched against the pain. Jackson continues to avoid Scott, who is so worried about something that he doesn't appear to notice. You wonder what's going on and try and eavesdrop on the conversations between him and Stiles, but they stop talking immediately when they notice you getting close. Scott stares at you in class when an announcement over the PA comes about the Winter Formal tomorrow night, but he doesn't ask you to go with him.
You're not annoyed, you tell yourself, when you leave. You didn't want him to ask you out, anyway. You'd have said no.
Kate is on her way out of the house and you're immediately suspicious of her when you realize how little you've seen her these past few days.
"Just some boring business stuff," she says with a dismissively grin and you pretend not to know what's in the duffel bag slung over her shoulder. "When I'm done, we'll hang, okay?"
But you never do. You only see Kate one more time after that, because in two days she's dead.
There's a loud ringing in your ears when your parents sit you down on the living room couch and tell you, and it doesn't go away when they reveal she was behind the Hale House fire and the other recent murders.
"Allison," your mother says, placing her hand on your shoulder when you don't respond. "Allison, do you understand?"
"Yeah," you whisper, feeling your eyes prick with tears. You rub at them and look instinctively at your father. "Dad...Dad, I'm sorry," you say.
Your father nods shortly, grief in his eyes, but there's anger also. Your mother is angry, too, even if she's trying to hide it. Were they really not involved in the Hale fire? You know they have some sort of code (your father certainly talks about it enough,) but you don't know exactly what it entails. It hadn't stopped them from murdering Emily Doroshenko.
You go up to your room and cry into your pillow for a long time, trying not to remember all the fun times you'd have with Kate over the years. Your entire life. You skip dinner and once you're sure your parents have gone to bed, you sneak downstairs and steal Kate's bag of guns under the guest bed. You hide it in the back of your closet and resume your crying.
The next day you wake to the sound of your parents talking downstairs and lie on the upstairs landing with your ear to the floor to listen to their conversation.
Peter Hale, Derek Hale's uncle had disappeared from the long-term care ward in Beacon Hills Memorial. Your parents are pretty sure that he is the alpha and that he and Derek Hale killed Kate in revenge. Worse, Lydia Martin was bitten at the Winter Formal and is in the hospital. Your parents don't think she's a werewolf, though, because otherwise she would be out of the hospital by now. They think Derek or the other beta must have bit her. They don't know who the other beta is, thankfully. And now your grandfather is coming with reinforcements to deal with the werewolf problem. You've only met him a couple times, but he's an Argent. That can't be good.
People stare at you in the hallway on Monday, whispering about Kate behind their hands. Isaac glares at them and looks at you very worriedly, but you wish he wouldn't because he has a black eye today and he moves very stiffly. You wonder how many other bruises there are under his clothes.
"I'm not surprised," you tell him dully at lunch, picking at your food. You've had no appetite over the past three days. "She wasn't...she wasn't a good person. My family...they aren't good people."
Isaac's eyes widen and you hope you didn't give him the wrong impression, but you don't really want to talk about it anymore. There's no point. Even if you wanted to, you couldn't tell him the truth.
Scott has a new haircut and seems more relaxed. Did he and Derek Hale stop Peter Hale? Did they join him? You wonder what happened, if he was there, but at the same time you don't want to know. Lydia Martin runs around naked in the woods for two days in some sort of psychotic break, but her bloodwork indicates she's not a werewolf, so your parents aren't too worried.
You hope it's over now. You hope that Scott and Derek Hale got rid of Peter Hale, or he left or something, and that they'll just lay low until your grandfather and the reinforcements leave. You hope things will quiet down so you can grieve for Kate in peace and your parents will have no werewolf targets to murder.
You're such an idiot.
A/N: I apologize for my terrible French. It's been years since I've studied it, so feel free to correct me if it's wrong. Also, as you can probably already tell this story is extremely strange. This is one of those plot bunnies that should probably have stayed in my head, but instead I decided to write it down and subject it to the world. Basically, while I was writing any given scene I would think "how can I make this even more weird" and then wrote that. You have been warned. Please review!