Chapter 1 High School: Friendless Style

I pulled into the student parking in my high school, my hands curled tightly around the steering wheel in my hummer, the latest in a rash of presents from my uncle. Ah, to be the niece everybody pitied. Nice clothes, nice car, nice home, and a screwy mother. Welcome to the Mehta Family.

I resisted my urge to reverse the hell out of the car and back up all the way to my home, get the hell away from the hell hole that had become high school. God, if only my stupid friends hadn't ditched me, being Rose Mehta might not have sucked quite so badly.

I opened my car door and hopped out, lifting my backpack out of the passenger seat with me, and slinging it onto my back. I shut the door and locked it, clipping the car keys onto one of my belt loops, maybe the only useful trick my mother had ever taught me: keys on belt loops only got lost if you lost your pants, and when you lose your pants, lost keys are not your biggest issues.

I tucked my headphones in my ears, pressing shuffle on my iPod and tucking it into my back pocket, walking towards LaPush High School. The first day of senior year, and I was ashamed to say that I had not one friend in this entire building. That was just pathetic.

I'd had friends, at one point. Only boys, mind you, but friends. Embry Call, Jake Black, Quil Ateara, Jared Gentry, even Paul Wainscott, the jackass that he was. I'd even been friend-ish with Kim Connweller and her confidante about her massive crush on Jared until Jared woke up to the reality of having the girl behind you in Spanish be in love with you and started dating her. But Embry, Jake, Quil, Jared, Paul and Kim were all friends now. Guess who wasn't invited to that lunch table?

You must be wondering, so I'll just put the question out there: what happened? What made my friends--especially Embry Call, who had been my best friend since we'd been in diapers--all up and ditch at the same time? Let me just briefly address that: I don't KNOW. I have no idea and it's been killing me. I'd run through every plausible scenario. Had I done something wrong? Was I a bad person? Was I a bad friend, did I have any outstandingly bad traits--I'd tortured myself for weeks, afterwards. I had to have something wrong with me, for my friends to leave so fast. I didn't know what it was, but I shut down, as they left, one-by-one, until it was just me and Quil Ateara, the two youngest in our group of friends, standing alone in the lunch room, while I tried not to cry as we passed Jared, Jake, Paul and Embry back at their table with Kim Connweller at their table. We'd been good-ole-fashioned ditched for what we could only assume was some sort of vaguely threatening gang, because Jared, Jake, Paul and Embry frequently sported new scars and new muscles. Quil and I promised that if either and I managed to make it to the other side, we'd let the other in on what the hell was going on. But when Quil joined, three months after Jake, I was left alone, with the determined thought that there must be something wrong with me. So I stopped. No more friends, no more dances or parties--just school. I just had to get out of LaPush, as far from Mom and my ex-friends as possible.

"Rose!" My twin called out after me, and I pulled one headphone out, keeping my face carefully expressionless as I turned to where he'd parked his car. He had a hummer, a gift from Uncle Walter, Mom's little brother, who lived in guilt for leaving us mostly alone with his screwy older sister.

Derrick jogged up to me, looking a little out of breath, and I eyed him nervously: he'd built a lot of muscle, recently, and had gotten about four inches taller in an alarmingly short amount of time, shooting up from what had used to be our shared height of six feet tall. Now I was six feet and he was six four. "Rosie, do you have any Advil in your backpack—I don't wanna go to the nurse, and I think I have a fever." He explained, and I frowned, reaching up to touch Derrick's forehead with my chilled hand. He hesitated, embarrassed at being taken care of, but I ignored how he shifted, just trying to figure out if the kid had a fever.

Derrick was younger than me by twenty seven minutes, but shared my dark hair and even darker skin: we were apparently half Quileute Indian, if you listened to my mother's drunken ramblings, but we looked like we were actually from the subcontinent of India, which our mother's parents were. Mum's parents were just obsessed with being American, and had, when they had their children here, named them Walter (my uncle who paid for most of our day-to-day lives), Shannon (my mother), and Geoffrey (my other uncle who we only really saw or talked to on the major holidays). Mum and Walter had continued that tradition, while Geoffrey had moved on to France and was living there with his wife.

"Jeez, Der, you're burning up." I told him, my eyebrows raising, and he shrugged carelessly. I frowned at him.

"I've got a game today, I can't go home sick." He explained hurriedly, and I rolled my eyes, but swung my bag down in front of me and rifled through the disorganized papers within. Derrick was right to assume I had Advil on me--apparently being a friendless high school senior could cause headaches, because I usually had at least one biggie a day. "Besides, I don't even feel sick or anything, just a little weird is all."

"Here ya go." I said, pressing the bottle into his hand, not caring that I looked like a veritable drug dealer. "Here's a Snapple," I said, offering the drink so he could take pills, but he just swallowed them with no trouble, and I snorted. Derrick liked to show off like that sometimes. Who exactly was he trying to impress, though? "Go to the nurse if you feel too sick, though, okay? You definitely have a fever." Derrick shivered as if to prove my point, and I glanced around. Jared, Quil and Embry, who were all standing by Quil's car, were flat-out staring at Derrick and me. I met Embry's gaze with a piercing glare, and Derrick followed my gaze after a moment and scowled at them, hard, before he stepped between us. "Come on, let's get to homeroom." He muttered darkly, and together we walked towards LaPush High school.

***

"Miss Mehta, are you listening?" Miss Dahl asked me seriously from behind her desk, and I glanced up at her sharply from where I'd been doodling in my notebook. Busted.

"Yes." I lied, praying she wasn't about to counter that with a question.

"Then can you name three organelles that appear in plant cells but not animal cells?" She asked me, and I swallowed, my mind racing. I'd done the homework last night even if I hadn't been paying attention, and it'd been in there.

"Chloroplasts…" I said slowly. "The cell wall. And the Large Central Vacuole." My tongue tripped over the last word—how did you say that, anyway?—but judging by the surprised expression on her face, I'd gotten my point across.

"Right." She said after a moment, before she moved to the next PowerPoint slide that projected onto the wall as the bell rang. "Alright, guys, well the homework's posted online." She said to us as I closed my note-less notebook and shoved it into my bag. I was out of the class before ten seconds had passed, but I stopped in the hallway, surprised by the fact that Embry Call and Quil Ateara were standing there, evidently waiting for me. My heart pounded in my chest nervously as I--literally and a little bit stupidly--glanced around, double checking that Jared, Jake or Paul weren't right around me.

"Rose." Embry began quietly, dashing any prayers I had of getting away from this scot-free. "We need to talk."

"Go away, Embry." I told him after a moment, turning away and walking down the hall, fuming. I didn't care that we'd ever been friends—he'd ditched me and I was not going to be one of those kids who just ran back after they'd been ditched. I was stronger than that.

Or at least I wanted to be.

The truth was, I would have given the world for Embry--yeah, just Embry--to come back to me and tell me that he was sorry. I probably would have melted right then and there, probably would have forgiven him despite the absolute nightmare I'd been living for the past months. But he hadn't so I hadn't had that chance to demean myself yet. It was so sad how much I was willing to give up for just Embry, but had been the first best friend, the one and the only.

"Rosie, I'm sorry," Quil tried softly as he followed me down the hallway. "But it's important. We need your help." This stopped me dead in my tracks, and I wheeled around glaring at the boys I'd once considered closer than Derrick. My heart was pounding in my chest, but I forced myself to remain rigid and angry, because they deserved nothing less.

"You ignored me all summer and most of last year, and now you want my help?" I asked, my eyes narrowed, and Embry hesitated before nodding once, and I snorted in sarcastic laughter. "You're actually retarded, I hope you know that." I told them quietly. "Go find some other more gullible girl to dupe into being friends with use her until you're done. I'm out." I pulled away and turned around, feeling proud of myself. That had been good—just cold and angry, not sad or teary. That was what they deserved. I had to remind myself of that as I felt Embry's eyes follow me down the hallway. Embry, God. It still hurt to think about him.

I stormed past my locker and my brother, ignoring the irritated look Derrick threw me as I passed him. Jake Black caught my eye as I passed him and he slammed his locker door shut, falling into step beside me. "It's about your brother." He said quietly. "Derrick's about to—change, Rosie. He's going to need our help, and we need to talk to him, but he won't unless you tell him not to kill us. He's... too protective of you to talk to us." I stopped, in the middle of the hall, searching Jake's face for any information on what was going on. Jake was almost as famous as Paul for wearing his heart on his sleeve, but more nicely. "So you're going to tell him we can help."

"That sounds like strangely veiled threat, Jacob." I kept my voice cold. "And I don't care. There can't possibly be something that's about to hurt Derrick that no one else on the planet can help him with." Jared looked mildly apprehensive, but I just scowled. "Nope, Jake, I don't believe it. Good for Derrick for standing up for me." I turned away to move away, and Jake caught my arm.

"He might put you in danger." Jake said softly, looking deeply, deeply concerned. I felt my own expression soften. He obviously cared. Still... "And you're still a friend. I don't want you to get hurt." Okay, wrong-o there, Jakey boy.

"Guess you shouldn't have spent the better part of the last year ignoring me, then, huh?" I said sarcastically, jerking out of his grip. I was scared of how intense Jake, Quil and Embry were being, how concerned they seemed, but I knew Derrick. My brother would never hurt me. That was absurd.

I got into the parking lot, for once grateful of the cold and how it stopped Jacob from following me.