Family Ties

Jenna Sommers almost chokes on her spoonful of cereal when she sees his face on the morning news.

How perfect, she thinks. Just what she needed this early in the morning, and just like that her good mood is gone.

She closes her eyes; as if she can will his image away if she blinks hard enough, hoping that this was some kind of funny dream or illusion. Because really, whoever decided to put him on national television should just… die.

But this isn't a dream or some sick reality TV, and willing him away is not helping.

He's talking about the animal that had been caught earlier that morning. A cougar. The expression of honesty and assurance etched on his face is an irony that is not lost on her and she crushes the empty milk carton in one tightly clenched fist.

Later that evening at the founders' party she sits at an almost empty table, playing with a dessert fork, too fed up to even wipe the bored expression off her face. She's spent most of the evening listening to the women of Mystic Falls talked about their ridiculously insignificant lives and she wonders what she's doing here. If she rolled her eyes anymore tonight they'd fall right out of her head.

Events such as this had never been her thing. She had been the sister that left town, the one that went away for college in an attempt to leave this town as far away as possible. Since coming back from LA, the small town that she had grown up in had somehow gotten impossibly smaller. It was especially during events like this when she felt the familiar claustrophobia like a hot wire around her neck.

Unable to hold it in any longer, Jenna lets out an exasperated sigh, awarding her the sympathetic look of a late forty-something year old woman whom her sister would no doubt recognize. She smiles kindly at Jenna.

"Of course spring carnival will be late this year," she comments, much to Jenna's confusion, because Jenna had been too busy fantasizing about man-eating cougars and Logan Scumfell to have followed the conversation.

Making some noncommittal noise, she manages to escape her seat before the onslaught of Mrs. Lockwood's carefully planned council events could fall around her head.

She could be at home right now working on her thesis, she thinks, because this night really couldn't get any worse.

She's lifting a glass of wine off a waiter when she eventually spots him watching her.

Oh great. It just did.