"Hold it, Bella, it won't bite."
Five year old Jacob held a helpless sea creature in his hand, waving it in the face of the slightly older girl.
"Put it back, Jake. I don't want to touch it."
She wasn't afraid. It was just gross and not something little girls were interested in. The boy didn't give up and she found herself with a hand full of starfish.
"Jake, I told you, no." Bella shook her hand, dropping the wet body on the sand.
"You always tell him no," a voice answered. Startled, the two kids looked up.
"Hi, Paul," Jake greeted their new companion. "You wanna touch it?"
"No, I want Bella to touch it. To hold it. To feel it," Paul said slowly, making Bella think he was up to something.
"I don't want to touch it anymore." Bella rubbed her wet hand against her jeans. She didn't remember him having joined them at the beach but he was here all the same.
"You never want to touch anything or hold it. I don't think you like us." Quil was suddenly before her, his hands on her shoulders and squeezing painfully.
"Stop touching me!" Bella tried to push the younger but bigger boy away from her. Instead she ended up falling backwards onto the hard, cold, wet sand.
"For once, you're beneath me," he told her, laughing aloud, Jake and Paul joining in.
"It's about time," Jake said. "She's always been too good for us. Above us. Better than us.
His voice sounded meaner.
Rougher.
Older.
Bella stared up into the faces of boys she had known all her life. Smooth cheeked Jake, the young boy who always smiled even when Bella had turned down his prom invite. Goofy Quil, the resident trickster who shoved Cheetos up his nose before trying to ask Bella out and then laughing with her when she shook her head. Handsome Paul. The bad boy of the area, he'd drive his beat up car to places Bella would be, always trying to get her to go someplace with him. She never did.
What Bella thought she saw disappeared into the dark night sky above. These people were here, but she couldn't see all of them at once, not the way they had positioned her.
"All you're doing is smearing it. Stop moving your hands."
The twine tightened, continuing to cut into the delicate flesh it held in place.
"Did you call…oh fuck… Jared and Embry?" Quil panted above her. Every grunt he made intensified the pain she felt.
"Yeah," Jake answered. A small burning ember caught her eye and Bella knew it was from a cigarette. That and the smell of exhaled smoke when he loomed over her. "They're on their way. Let's flip her over."
Bella had a lot of feelings going on at the moment: pain, fear, anger, humiliation, confusion…sadness. But the worst one, the feeling that scared her above all others, was that the boys weren't finished with her yet.