A/N: Hello! This is my first fic, and I'm super nervous/excited. This is just a prologue of sorts, so leave reviews and let me know if i should continue!
She is bored, utterly bored. She sits in the middle of the classroom – not at the front, because she doesn't nearly care enough, and not at the back because she cares too much – and picks at her fingernails, gazing longingly outside the window, waiting for something new to happen. She wishes for it every day, something novel to break the routine she's set for herself: wake up, text Scott, go to school, hang out with Lydia, do homework, and fall asleep with Scott only to find that he's stolen away in the middle of the night.
Allison used to pride herself on her discipline and love of routine, but recently, when so much else has changed, she finds herself changing along with it. They used to be happier, carefree and young teenagers worrying about nothing more than love and grades, but that was before.
Before, she used to sit in fields and pick at daisies and kiss Scott and revel in the feeling of being alive. Now, being alive feels like a burden rather than a gift. Now, when Scott kisses her, she barely responds. She is a shell, she is broken, she is no longer the lively Allison that stumbled into Scott's life.
Before, she would smile at Stiles and he would smile back, and they'd talk about Scott and the world, and the future. Now, as if an unspoken ritual, they meet at the creek by the old, burnt down house in the woods every Thursday, and just sit with each other, neither saying a word. They don't know why they do it, but it makes them feel less alone.
Before, she and Lydia would stay up for hours talking about boys, and how stupid Jackson was for breaking up with her, while eating ice cream and laughing about the latest gossip. Now, she and Lydia play a careful game, neither reaching too far for the fear of upsetting the precarious balance that they have so carefully constructed. They are best friends (best friends forever, Allison thinks ruefully. She even has the necklace to prove it), but it's not the same. Nothing is quite the same.
It's different now, and she doesn't like it. She wants the days of honey and promise, the guarantee of youth and frivolity, but she is faced with a harsh reality of cold metal pressed against temples and suicide notes.
It has been sixty-seven days since Jackson Whittemore committed suicide.
No one expected it. The golden boy, co-captain of the lacrosse team, so smart, so promising, so young. That's what everyone, Allison included, says. She wants to say more – tell people about how sometimes he was a jerk, about the way he loved Lydia, about the way he always felt the incessant need to prove himself to someone, but she doesn't. She bites her tongue, twiddles her thumbs, and looks down at her lap.
No one expected his suicide, but none of them (save for Lydia) expected that they would miss him this much. No one expected that Jackson Whittemore, of all people, would leave a gaping hole that no amount of grief counseling and assemblies on suicide prevention can fill.
It is a rainy November day when Derek Hale rides into Beacon Hills, the sound of his engine reverberating throughout the entire town. At least, that's how Allison remembers it. She remembers it quite well, because after weeks and weeks of days blurring together, feeling rather black and white, Derek Hale and his black Mustang that purrs too loudly seem to stop time completely.