Howdy! Short, yes. Random timing, yes. Guilty-author-who-should-be-updating-her-other-story, yes. Hey! This storie's got everything! Just not the everything you were looking for. Even so, please read it, because it's Jared, and it's oh so gushy and kind of somewhat depressing. Anyways...FINALS ARE ALMOST OVER! YES! Of course, I have ALL AP classes next semester so that will be...interesting - but we're looking on the bright side here. The bright side being: a thingy for you impatient readers of The Force to gnaw on for a while! So, read, review, and be merry, as always. Tootle-oo!
I loved her.
It was a desperate, aching love that burned through my bones and boiled my blood – turned my brain into mush and twisted my stomach into all kinds of uncomfortable positions.
It hurt. And I mean it fucking hurt. I couldn't breathe or swallow unless I was absolutely sure she was safe, wrapped in a blanket at home or surrounded by friends that would protect her if trouble came. The worry I felt for her – always present, like a dull aching throb in the back of my mind – was incapacitating, crippling. Everything scared me now, every danger of the world was suddenly thrown into a more realistic light – it was blinding like the sun, and I'd forgotten my sunglasses.
Girls got raped. Women were beaten, kidnapped, tortured, molested, shot. I'd always lived in this world, this terrifyingly dangerous and morbid world, but until Kim, I'd never been afraid of it.
I was a tough guy, I worked out, and I was strong. I could protect my mom from my dad when he was drunk, I could protect my sister from unwanted glances and situations. When I heard the news, plastered with stories about teenagers being violated and women being murdered by their husbands, I felt sympathy and regret for their losses – I wasn't a total dick – but I never dwelled on the fact that these things were real. They didn't affect me directly and so they were stuck onto the backburners and, usually, forgotten until the next story surfaced and I was hit with another wave of pity.
And then, bam! I'm hit with puberty again. I have a growth spurt – six inches in a week and a half. My appetite goes way up. My temperature starts rising and I keep getting headaches, terrible, stabbing headaches that drill right through my skull and lodge themselves into my brain with stubborn, permanent barbs.
The day I tell my mom, she unhinges. Suddenly she needs the numbers of every Quileute Elder that's still alive – or half alive in Old Quil's case – and she needs to call some sort of emergency meeting or the world will…what? Explode? Implode? Be consumed by the Bubonic Plague? Whatever the consequences, they must be dire because she wont hold still or stop blathering on about how she had been "so worried this would happen to her boy." Now I'm scared. I was her boy – what the fuck was happening to me?
I was turning into a werewolf. At least that's how Sam Uley explained it, when his voice entered my head after I had exploded in my living room and about murdered my mother. I can still hear his exact words, running through my head like they're stuck on repeat. You can't fight it Jared – this is what you are. You can't fight it Jared – this is what you are. You can't fight it Jared – this is what you are.
So I was a monster. You can't fight it Jared – this is what you are.