Missing.
The poster looms over her like something out of a nightmare.
She weaves her fingers through her blonde waves, knotting it into fistfuls as she squeezes her eyes shut, willing herself to wake up, even knowing that she can no longer dream. Because this simply has to be a dream.
With eyes squeezed shut, memories come flooding back into her head. His blonde jokes, her dog jokes… the way he smiles when he looks at her. A wicked grin that warms her up from the inside, spreading throughout her and making her feel truly warm for the first time in nearly a hundred years. That special smile he saves for her and her only.
That smile… she whips her head up, eyes shooting open. Focusing back in on that dreadful poster.
Age 18.
That was the age she was when she went missing, too.
She wonders if something similar has happened to him; was he hurt? If so, how badly? Was it vampires that got him? She tightens her fingers in her hair, strands coming out in her hands.
She hates him. She tries to convince herself that she is happy that he is gone. That she is pleased with the thought of someone or something taking him and harming him. She has always hated him and his stupid jokes.
Yet hate is a passionate feeling. And she recognizes that passion she feels for him, despite being unwilling to admit it to anyone, least of all herself.
She closes her eyes again and fantasizes that she can smell that god-awful scent he carries; a wet dog stench that feels to her nose like inhaling bleach would to a human. But that scent never matters once she looks into his eyes; once she looks into those deep, dark eyes that seem to say he knows something that she does not, the scent disappears and the world stops. Nothing else matters but her and him, him and her.
Opening her eyes again, she sees the number to call if he is ever found.
Angry, she rips a fist from her hair, throwing it through the solid brick wall as if it were made of paper. She grabs her head and throws herself down on her knees, curling up into a ball on the ground as if she were praying, always clutching her head. She ignores the pouring rain and the fact that she is kneeling in an enormous puddle. As thunder cracks overhead, she lets out a shriek as she rocks back and forth, a shriek that makes even her long-gone blood turn cold.
She stops rocking and, squeezing her eyes shut as hard as possible, lets the memory of their last encounter resurfaced.
"Hey Blondie," he says nonchalantly as he saunters through the front door and past her.
"Dog," she mumbles, irritated.
"Hey, so I have a new joke for you," he says cheerfully, turning back around to face her.
She simply continues to stare out the window, clearly not amused.
"Three blondes are on an elevator when it breaks down. Their cell phones don't work, so one suggests 'why don't we all call for help together?' Have you heard this one Blondie?"
She does not answer him, simply narrows her eyes and continues to stare at the rain as it falls from the sky and caresses the glass wall.
"Good, so you haven't. Anyway, they all inhale and, as loud as they can, start shouting 'together! Together! Together-'"
She interrupts him by throwing the remote at his head as hard as she can. He ducks out of its path just in time, and chuckles. That chuckle sends two sensations up her spine; one of pure fury, the other something she does not recognize.
"That was not a funny joke," she growls.
Her special smile spreads across his face, his eyes lighting up like the sun.
"Don't worry; I'll have a better one next time."
As this memory ends, she feels something inside of her snap. The pain blasting through her bones and inside her veins, her non-beating heart feeling as it if were about to burst into a million tiny pieces. She fears that there will not be a next time. That she will not hear that better joke.
And then it hits her like a tidal wave: she does care. The one thing in this whole mess that she has been unwilling to admit; the one thing that now makes her insane to recognize as actually being real. The rain runs down her cheeks, and she enjoys it; the drops feel like tears. The first tears she has felt running down her cheeks since the night she was murdered.
And then, suddenly, her world starts spinning rapidly, her head hurting, her chest aching. Longing for one more joke, one more wicked smile, one more whiff of that wretched scent. Longing to be near him. Gravity seems to pull her toward him, yet she has no idea which direction to go.
She slowly drags her eyes up to meet the poster for one final time. This time is different. This time feels real. She stares at the picture before slowly inclining down to the last two words on that poster, the last two words she wants to read on a missing poster.
Jacob Black.
He was gone now, her precious Jacob gone, and no matter how badly she yearns for him, no matter how much she wants him to be hers, no matter how much she wants to tell him her true feelings, she cannot have him.
Because for all she knows, he is dead.
She stares at his face, grinning down at her from that poster. She memorizes every part of it that she can, tracing the outlines of his features. She remembers how he looked alive, that last encounter burning intensely in her mind. Those dark eyes, the way they stared at her, his face bright, his flesh so warm, everything about him eminently radiating into her very soul, making every past horror and all of the pain she had ever felt melt away.
She thinks of him and how she has always treated him; as if he were nothing, as if his existence meant nothing to her. As if she does not care.
"But I never did…" she whispers, trying to convince herself as her voice quivers, sounding so uncertain.
She hates him. She knows that. She tries to convince herself that she is happy that he is gone. That she is pleased with the thought of him being dead. That she feels better believing, feeling in her gut, that he is now gone forever. She has always hated him and his stupid jokes.
Yet the poster looms over her like something out of a nightmare.
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