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Chapter One: Staring at the Rude Boys
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There are three incontrovertible (and inconvenient) truths in my life.
Number One: There was no sense of karmic justice in the world. Case in point, I'd sacrificed myself on the altar of parental happiness and had got stuck living in an Outer Circle of Hell – or Forks, for the misinformed – in return.
Number Two: Upon leaving Phoenix, I had stupidly presumed that the further North I went, the less chance I had of running into Valley Girls. Unfortunately my first day at Forks High had shoved me into harsh reality.
Number Three: Edward Cullen was a selfish, arrogant, misogynistic pig to whom I was barely a speck of dirt from where he sat on his lofty Cloud Nine perch in aforementioned Valley Girls' fantasies.
Therefore, naturally, when Renee asks me what I make of the rolling-haystack, one street town she hightailed it out of I tell her that it's great, apart from the miserable weather, and when Charlie asks me what I plan on doing after high school I say that I haven't really thought about it even though I've compiled a dossier on colleges in sunny climes and hidden it under my bed. My one salvation in Forks, and the only person I might actually miss when I leave, is my best friend Jacob. We'd hit it off immediately, hanging out while his dad and mine were acting like the teenagers we were supposed to be, and taking secret rides on the motorbike he'd clobbered together from God knows how many scrap yards. The only downside, and it was a major downside that would have made it onto my list of unalterable truths had Edward Cullen and his perfectly gelled coif not existed, was that he was pretty much morally obliged to go to the school on the Reservation while I wallowed in the awfulness of Forks High. I'd tried to persuade Charlie to send me to Jake's school but apparently there was no such thing as "converting" because of our beer swilling, check plaid-ing, non Quileute-ing ancestors. It was massively unfair.
And so, to make up for the separate schools, Jake and I had ended up talking to each other nearly every other night – whether by phone or in person – and Friday night had become our weekly activity/complaining about Forks session. We each had problems, and while mine was over six foot tall with freakishly bronze hair, his was, to quote him and his potty mouth directly, "a bitch with balls". So when he'd turned up at Casa Swan with a scowl on his face that would frighten the wolves let alone the horses, I'd had a pretty good idea where his bad mood had originated.
"What's she done this time?" I asked as I let him in. He slammed the door shut with so much force that the frame actually shook. I winced, "And can you not take it out on Charlie's woodwork?"
He turned to me with a smirk, "Since when do you care about woodwork, Bells?"
"Since I have to vacuum." I sensed his remorse and quickly tried to change the subject, "Plus, Charlie's been harbouring a tin of the most revolting yellow coloured paint in the basement. I'm genuinely afraid that he'll see paint chips and the next thing I know I'll look out the window and see a tin man and a cowardly lion in the driveway." Thankfully that seemed to improve his mood because the tentative smirk grew wider.
"That was a road, not a door."
"Same difference," I retorted as we plopped down on the sofa Charlie had vacated barely an hour ago when he'd headed over to Billy's. "So, what's the problem?" He sighed and chucked a parcel on the coffee table. I looked at it curiously but when Jake offered no explanation I let it slide. "Let me guess, it begins with an 'L' and rhymes with 'Se-ah'?"
"Yep." I looked at him as he stared at the cracks in the ceiling. "I mean, I understand that she's pissed – I'd be too if I was her. Not that Sam would run off with a cousin of mine, or be with me to begin with..." he trailed off and I stifled a grin. I mustn't have been careful enough because he scrunched up his face in the manner I had labelled 'Jacob, Embarrassed'. "How many times, Bella? I'm just going to have to let Cullen down gently because I'm definitely not...that way inclined." He punctuated this with a decisive nod.
"Then why do you never have a girlfriend?" I hope he caught the teasing in my eyes.
"Just because I'm not bed-hopping every weekend doesn't mean I don't have game." I swear I couldn't help the cackle that came out of my mouth then, or the fit of giggles that followed it. Alas, my friend didn't see it the same way. "Bella! I got game!" Unfortunately, this made me laugh harder. "Bella!" This time it was a strangled cry, and so I decided to at least act like the adult age I was rapidly approaching.
"Sorry!" I wiped my eyes to disperse any lingering tears of joy.
"Focus!"
"Ok, I'm listening," I cleared my throat to add gravitas to the statement. He looked at me, askance. "Really. Go ahead."
"Right, so we all decided to head down to First Beach today 'cos, you know, there was sun," I nodded at this, I'd spent the time reading in the backyard, "And it was really great. Emily made a picnic and everything," his voice grew wistful. Motorbikes aside, food was Jacob's greatest passion. "Then she turns up – and, you know, she basically looks like a guy since she hacked her hair off, puts on that crappy music she listens to and lights a cigarette."
"Wait – she's smoking now?"
Jake nodded, "So, anyway, she gets up, walks over to us and I'm thinking that something bad's going to happen. And then she just sits between Emily and Sam, turns to her and blows smoke in her face." Okay, that was kind of bad. "Then she says, wait for it, 'another cousin of mine's coming to town Sam, do you want her number?'" I think he expected me to be horrified by Leah's words but, as I'd told him what felt like a million times, there was a huge chunk of me that leaned towards Team Leah. "Bella, isn't that fucked up?"
"Jake, she walked in on her long-term boyfriend and her favourite cousin rounding second base. On her bed. I'd say the eff-ed up boat has passed."
He slumped further back into the sofa, annoyance sketched on his face, "You're such a girl, Bella. And, besides, Emily's way nicer than that bitch."
"Not the point. Leah's just hurting," something occurred to me, "Did you even invite her out to First Beach with you?" I glanced at him. Clearly he hadn't. "Jacob! You're such an idiot." To reinforce my point, I gave him a light slap on his arm to which he reacted like I'd shot him. And he said I was the girl. "So, she's lost her boyfriend, her cousin and now her friends." I hoped he'd see the light and finally understand what I was saying because I was really starting to lose my patience as regards this situation. Leah had never been my favourite person in the world, but I figured it was time for people to cut her some slack.
Jake mulled over what I'd said for a few minutes then folded his arms and propped his feet up on the coffee table, "Nah, she's just a heinous bitch."
Really, there was no point because, apparently, my best friend was nothing more than a big kid. "I give up." I mimicked the way he was sitting, which – to be honest – didn't work too well since Jacob's stupid male adolescent hormones had propelled him to well over six foot while my meek female ones had forced me to develop a crick in my neck from looking up at him for the past year. Stupid male hormones and their stupid tall-ness. We sat in silence for a good five minutes while Jacob stewed over my words and I pretended to stew over his.
"Are you mad at me?"
"No." It was the truth.
"C'mon Bells, talk to me then."
"I am talking to you." He drew a frustrated breath before removing his legs from the table and reaching for the package he'd brought with him. He placed the plastic bag in my hand and told me to open it. "Is this a present?" I asked suspiciously. He knew I didn't like presents.
"Nope. Besides, I took it out of the library so even if it was a present then you'd have to give it back in a couple of days. That'd be a bad present."
I mumbled something about all presents being bad presents but all I got in response was a soft chuckle. I really wished he would stop looking at me while I unwrapped whatever it was because that was the worst feeling in the world, opening something and, even if you really liked it, feeling like such a phoney – all in all, the way I'd felt for seventeen years worth of Christmases. Well, it was probably more like fourteen because the first festive memory I had was of me falling off a tricycle Charlie had hauled all the way down from Washington to Phoenix when I was three: maybe that was the reason he had stopped Christmas visiting soon after. Or maybe it was something to do with my pre-school teacher who Renee was dating.
Inside the plastic bag was a very tattered, very yellow video tape. I read the title. "Romeo and Juliet? The good one?" I mean, I appreciated Leonardo di Caprio as much as the next girl but there was only so much of a cross-dressing Mercutio I could take. "Are we watching it tonight?" He nodded and I threw myself at him, "Thank you!" He laughed as I untangled myself from him.
"I figured you could do with the cheering up, you know, with the whole going back to the cess-pit that is Forks High. And Cullen," he added darkly.
"Oh he's a whole other class of cess-pit," I tried to laugh it off, "Besides, it's not like he actually does anything to me." That was, in essence, my problem.
"I wouldn't trust him as far as I could throw him." It was funny because the muscles he had recently developed suggested that he would actually be able to throw Edward Cullen quite a respectable distance. But taking one look at the tight expression on his face, I decided against telling him that and instead opted for something considerably more PC and less likely to induce violence.
"Jake, if he hasn't said one word to me in the year we've sat beside each other in Bio, then he's not going to start now when graduation's barely three months away," I reasoned, hoping the bulging vein in his forehead would begin to un-bulge. "And anyway, he's got a flock of girls hovering around him all the time, so I doubt he'd notice me even if I wanted him to. Which I don't," I added hastily.
Jake turned his face towards me, "I'd notice you."
Crap. Foot in mouth syndrome had led me into the dark alley of unspoken feelings. Jacob had made sporadic references to me and him in a more than friendly capacity but they had all unfailingly occurred when he was taking covert mouthfuls of the whiskey his dad thought well hidden, so I'd pushed it into the deep recesses of my mind and had thought no more of it.
"Hey, how about we make a night of it?" I said in an attempt to shift the path his mind seemed to be set on, "Zeffirelli, chocolate and tortilla chips?"
"Zeffirelli?"
"The film." His expression remained cloudy. "The director."
"Oh, sure," he paused, "by the way Bella, that whole chocolate and tortilla chip thing's totally gross."
"Says the guy who at his dad's last barbecue managed to scoff seven hotdogs and top it off with third helpings of Emily's triple chocolate fudge cake." I looked at him with a smile. "I can so see your point." I dodged the cushion he threw at me, laughing. "But we'll need to go to the store 'cos there's nothing in the house but leftover lasagne." He turned up his nose at the mention of my signature dish – amazingly, there was one meal that Jake's stomach couldn't tolerate. Not that it hadn't tried on more than one occasion.
"We taking my bike?"
I stared at him with incredulity, "Yeah, and then Charlie can bust your ass for having his only daughter on a jumbled together motorcycle before sentencing me to house arrest until I leave for college." To be fair, my less than stellar history with vehicles that didn't have four wheels sort of justified his concern. Clearly, he hadn't forgotten Tricycle-gate either.
"So, your car then?"
I nodded, "Uh huh."
The supermarket, which admittedly had more of the market less of the super, was only a few minutes drive from my house. It was also, fortuitously for some, the furthest away from the police station as it was possible to be in this town which attracted the dregs of society who came looking for a good, unarrested time, i.e. my classmates. I usually tried to avoid the place on weekend nights because of said miscreants, namely Cullen and his posse. I just didn't relish the opportunity to get blatantly ignored outside of Biology as well.
We pulled up in the parking lot and I saw possibly the most detested vehicle in the History of Man parked a few spaces over. I mean, what eighteen year old thinks to himself that the perfect car is a Volvo? Maybe it was different to the others who'd spent their entire lives in this place, but I'd always associated them with middle-aged accountants and mildly-successful lawyers. Grimacing, I got out of the car and very deliberately did not look in that direction. I think we may have made it to the entrance in record time.
I let Jake pick whatever crap he wanted because at that moment all I cared about was getting back to my comfy sofa and a man who, had he been real and living in the 21st Century, wouldn't have gone near a Volvo with a ten foot bargepole. The middle-aged cashier glared at us when we went to pay and I wanted to tell her that I wasn't part of the mob who were indulging in underage drinking and other such activities outside, but I didn't.
We were so tantalisingly and unbearably close to getting into my truck without too many problems – we'd even shoved the food into it – but it was at that point that Jake decided to notice a bike that hadn't been there when we'd entered the store. And by notice I mean salivate over.
"Man, that is one hot piece of shit," he gasped, eying it up. Was that wrong? Were people supposed to refer to motorized vehicles that way?
"Jake, can we please go now?" I really, really wanted to leave asap because even if Cullen deigned not to speak to me he had one hell of a glare on him. The guy was plain intimidating.
"No, wait. I have to see this baby," he replied reverently, moving closer to it.
"Jake, the dip'll go off." I was whining, I knew it and accepted it.
"It's canned. We've got a good few years yet." I cursed both conventional logic and whoever had invented the can, because they were completely screwing with my plan.
I was weighing up leaving him and going to sit in my relatively unloved truck when I heard a very familiar drawl shouting over from a few metres away.
"Hey, be careful with Desdemona! She's fragile."
Seriously, I was giving up when it came to men and their means of transportation. Who the frick named their motorbike Desdemona?
Jake's head flipped up in the direction of the voice, "Didn't mean any harm. She's a beauty," he gave a low whistle. She's also a vehicle, I lectured him in my mind. "What is she, vintage?"
"1975."
"Cool."
The owner of the bike was sauntering over, cigarette tight in the corner of his mouth and blonde hair almost white under the fluorescent street lights. "Jasper Whitlock," he said, holding out his hand.
"Jacob Black." I could have rung Jake's neck when he took Jasper's hand. When he rediscovered his manners after a period of seventeen years, I'd moved past neck-ringing and into murderous rage. "And this is Bella Swan," he said, motioning me over with his hand. I had to go, otherwise Jake would make a scene and the situation would get even worse. Recognition dawned in Jasper's eyes when I met them.
"Hey Bella, how was your spring break?" He lifted his hand for me to slap. Did I want to slap his hand? Would familiarity breed even more contempt? To be on the safe side, I decided against it and he lowered his arm, his lips twitching into a smile.
"Good." Monosyllabic was the way to go. Then I wondered if a non-reply combined with an unslapped hand would equal impoliteness, I mean I wanted to be hostile not rude. "Yours?"
Jasper's smile grew wider, "Can't remember most of it."
"Oh."
"That's the best way though, isn't it man?" Jake interrupted. How in the world would he know when the most alcohol he'd ever consumed amounted to half a bottle of whiskey over the space of six months? I may have to seriously reconsider his best friend status because I was sure as hell that Angela wouldn't do this to me. "Do you guys know each other?" Please Jake, be quiet. I wondered if I could transmit to him via brain signals that Jasper Whitlock was meant to be his mortal enemy.
"Bella here's in my History class," Jasper drawled, taking a drag from his cigarette.
"Oh." I could tell that didn't mean much to Jacob.
"Jasper's best friends with Edward Cullen," I offered, hoping this would stop his sudden and remarkable interest in his fellow motorbike owner.
"Oh," he dragged it out as far as it would go.
Jasper took another puff, "Do you know Edward then, Jacob?" Was he trying to channel James Dean? Or possibly Marlon Brando? Steve McQueen? In any case, it seemed Jacob was channelling the spirit of the God of T.M.I.
"Just from what Bella's said."
No. He. Didn't.
Please.
Someone tell me he didn't just say that to Cullen's second in command.
"Oh, yeah, you and Edward are Bio partners," Jasper reasoned nonchalantly as he blew out a cloud of smoke.
He knew that?
How did he know that?
I nodded, praying he couldn't see the scarlet elephant I was sure was stampeding across my face. A blaring horn prevented further humiliating revelations though as Jasper turned round and stuck up his middle finger at the person who had sounded it. When he moved, I saw who it was.
Edward Cullen, leaning on the side of his Volvo, glowering.
I'm pretty sure that glower was directed at me because I'd spent quite a considerable amount of time deciphering his expressions. My guess was that this one was in equal parts Get-Away-From-Those-Losers and Bella-Swan-I'll-Never-Speak-To-You-Ever with a dash of Oh-My-Jesus-Christ-My-Volvo-Rocks-Way-More-Than-Bella-Swan's-Heap-Of-Crap. Hey, I'd never had a conversation with the guy, so that gave me license to let him borrow my catchphrases. Not that 'heap of crap' had ever been very high on that list – but it was sort of like how I'd never complained that there wasn't a Starbucks in Forks when the diner struggled to serve drinkable coffee. It was all relative.
"Listen, I've got to go or else Edward will have a coronary but it was nice meeting you Jacob. Always good to meet a guy who appreciates Desdemona." Really? "Bella, see you in History." The horn sounded again, three beats in quick succession. Someone clearly had ants in their pants. Again, I forced myself not to look in the direction of The Volvo Owner. Jasper turned to go, smiling that full smile of his that often reduced girls who weren't me into blubbering wrecks and appearing to murmur something between puffs. I couldn't be sure but I thought I made out the words 'Edward' and 'bastard'. I must say, I felt rather validated – after all, if his best friend felt that way then I was perfectly entitled to as well.
I watched him slowly walk back in Cullen's direction and hand him the cigarette he'd been smoking. To my amusement and considerable surprise, Cullen crushed the cigarette under his boot. You could hear the yells of annoyance from where we were.
"So that's Edward Cullen," Jake said to me as we were belting up in my truck.
"Yep."
He looked troubled, "You know, I've never actually met him."
"Oh, really?" I replied, distracted as I attempted to get out of the parking lot.
"Yeah," he paused and I could tell he was stalling. It took the length of the song they were playing on the radio for him to speak again. "You didn't tell me he was so good looking."
I snorted, "Are you sure you're not harbouring same sex tendencies?"
"Shut up!" Note to self, questioning Jacob's sexuality was an excellent way to get him to zip it.
I spent the rest of that night trying to focus on Romeo and ignore the fact that not only had Edward Cullen and I crossed paths (sort of) but that Jacob had divulged way too much information to said person's best friend and partner in crime. It wasn't that I didn't like Jasper but I knew that he was far from the innocent creature he occasionally chose to act as. From what I'd heard from Angela, whose Aunt worked in the school office, he was close to flunking pretty much every class and was one more public drunkenness offense away from being expelled.
As I lay on my bed that night, having finally said adios to Jake a half hour before, I wondered how, unlike his friend, Cullen was not failing every subject. In fact, I was almost certain that he'd aced his last set of exams – he'd definitely got top marks in Biology anyway, to my complete shock and horror: I'd been counting on him to fail and therefore be shipped back out into non-AP Bio. It had not been a pleasant experience when he'd walked into Mr Banner's classroom at the start of the year and slumped into his usual seat next to me. I'd spent the entire lesson wondering how I could have such bad luck.
Stupid rich people, I thought as I stuffed my head deeper into my pillow, had probably hired their stupid rich son a private tutor.
Disclaimer: Twilight, of course, belongs to Stephenie Meyer. "Staring at The Rude Boys" belongs to The Ruts.