Skye P.O.V.
I was looking forward to coming back to La Push, but there were some things I was going to miss about living with my dad. For one thing, it wasn't going to be easy replacing the warm, sunny weather in South Carolina—where I've been living with my father for the past year—with the rainy, cloudy weather of Washington—where I'd be now living with my mother again. It was also going to be a little strange trying to catch up with everything I'd missed with my family and friends. One of the things making another move not so overwhelming was seeing the beautiful mountains and wilderness again—one of the things I'd missed most.
When I got to my old home—a two story house with faded green siding sitting in a semicircle-shaped yard surrounded by trees—I had to unpack all of my belongings, put them in their places, and then make sure I had everything ready for my first day back at the reservation's small high school the next day. I was rushing through putting everything away, thinking that the faster I threw things in my drawers and closet the faster sleep and then morning would come, because I was surprisingly excited to get pack into the more relaxed and laidback La Push routine.
The next morning, I actually woke up when my alarm went off; usually, I went back to sleep until someone had to come into my room and wake me up. Because of that, I had a lot more time than I usually did to throw together an outfit—which ended up consisting of a navy Jill jacket, a cream Abigail sweater, a blue stripe Keegan button-up shirt, and a navy Shea skirt all from one of my favorite stores, Abercrombie & Fitch. Luckily, the outfit was both cute and warm in the rainy, chilled weather.
On my way out the front door, I yelled goodbye to my mom and grabbed an umbrella in the basket by the door. I threw my bag over my shoulder and opened the umbrella as I stepped off the porch, listening to the sounds of raindrops hitting against the top of it.
The school was within walking distance of my house, and I got there on time and in only about five minutes. As I walked, I searched for familiar faces of any kind. Eventually, I found one of my best friends—Ruby—standing under her own umbrella.
When I was only a few feet from her, she finally realized I was coming towards her. She had to do a double take to make sure it was really me.
"Skye?" she said, bewildered but still smiling.
"Hey," I said excitedly.
She threw herself at me and squeezed me so hard it hurt—but in a good way. I hugged her back, and we both started laughing.
"When did you get back?" she asked.
"Yesterday. I can't believe I'm back already." I took a deep breath of the fresh mountain air and let it puff out of my nose.
"Thank goodness you came back. I was starting to worry if you fell off the face of the Earth yet," she said sarcastically.
I laughed and we started walking again. That was when Piper, another one of my good friends, found us. She reacted the same way Ruby did—shocked at first, but then really excited. Piper also assaulted me with a hug.
The three of us didn't have much time to catch up because we eventually had to head off to our first class. As I looked at my schedule—mailed to my mother's house a few weeks earlier—and maneuvered my way through the building, the rooms and halls became familiar again, and that made it easier to find my classes than I would have expected.
Throughout my first five classes, I was reunited with several of my other, not very close friends friends—Nora, Jade, Carl, Aaron, and Bailey—and at lunch it was finally time to catch up with everyone.
"So how was living in South Carolina?" Nora was the first to ask this question.
"It was alright," I said. "The weather was definitely a lot better, though." A couple people laughed at my sarcasm. "But other than that, it wasn't really that amazing. I missed you guys too much. So…please inform me on what's been happening here without me."
Jade, Bailey, and Aaron went on to tell me about the latest budding and failing relationships, but it wasn't very interesting. It was just about the same guys and the same girls getting back together, finding someone new, or breaking up—same old, same old. What was somewhat interesting was the relationship budding in our group of friends—like Aaron and Jade. I always had that feeling that they would be good together, but I never thought that it would actually happen.
The remainder of the day—consisting of three more classes—went kind of quickly, and I couldn't wait to regroup with Piper and Ruby again after classes were over.
Since it was the first day of school, no homework was given out, so us three walked down to the beach. As we passed Embry Call's mother's store on the way there, I noticed three slightly unfamiliar figures coming out of the store. The only thing I recognized about them was their faces, and the three guys were definitely Quil Ateara, Jacob Black, Seth Clearwater, and Embry Call. I personally didn't know them, but I would occasionally see them around school or the reservation when I lived here two years ago; I also knew they'd already graduated, so it made me wonder what they could still be doing here—unless they didn't get into a college. What was unrecognizable was their build—extremely tall and muscular with very short hair; the last time I'd seen them they'd been at least a foot shorter, they'd had much longer hair, and they'd been lanky instead of having muscle on every inch of their bodies.
"What happened to them?" I wondered out loud.
Piper and Ruby both looked over at them.
"No one really knows," Ruby said. "It was weird. They missed some school, and when they came back, they looked…like that."
"Yeah," Piper agreed. "The same thing happened with the twins Brady and Collin and even Seth's older sister Leah. They all hang out with Sam Uley now, too."
"Hasn't he been graduated for years now, though?"
Piper shrugged. "It's probably just some weird guy thing."
"But what about Leah?" I asked. "I mean, I was never really friends with her, but I don't remember her ever really talking to any of those guys. Except Seth, but he's her brother."
"I don't know. I heard Sam's kind of…bad news, I guess. Maybe Leah's just looking out for him," Ruby said.
"Maybe." It was all a little suspicious to me, but I decided to let it go. It was none of my business what people I wasn't even associated with did with their lives.
The three of us kept walking, and the guys were starting to get closer to us as they walked farther away from the store. I glanced over my shoulder at them again, and I noticed that Seth—who was slightly smaller than Jacob, Embry, and Quil—was watching me. He didn't even look away when I caught him looking, like most people would do.
I jerked my head around and continued on to the beach, trying to shake off the strange feeling his gaze sent through me.
Seth P.O.V.
I felt stupid just standing there staring at her as she walked away, but I couldn't stop. I knew what just happened; I'd just imprinted.
"Perfect," I heard Jake mutter sarcastically beside. "That's just what I need. Another lovesick puppy."
I knew Jake was right, since that made three people out of five who've imprinted—including Jake himself—but that still didn't change the fact that the girl I was suddenly in love with was walking away, and all I wanted to do was run after her.
"Damn, he's got it bad," Embry joked from a few inches behind me.
"I wish you would imprint already," I finally said. "Then, you could stop annoying the hell out of us."
My imprint was out of my site by now, and I wished to see her again more and more as the seconds ticked by.
"Hey," Quil started, chuckling, "At least we can team up on him now."
Jake and I couldn't help but laugh a little bit, but Embry just grimaced at us.
"We better go," Jake sighed. "Sam said he needed to talk to us about something. He apparently needs our help with something."
We all perked up a bit at the sound of possibly doing something for once; things have been very quiet around La Push and Forks ever since the Volturi were proven wrong last winter about Nessie's birth.
I was the last to follow Quil, Embry, and Jake into the trees because I couldn't stop from glancing back at the last place I saw my imprint—that longing feeling in my stomach came back, but stronger this time.