A/N: I had so many amazing reviews last chapter, I can't even begin to tell you all how wonderful you are! I've been out of school for so long that I've forgotten how nice it is to get feedback on what I write.

AGAIN, THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU! (:

I feel like this chapter is going to disappoint a lot of people, and I'll just tell you this: It was really hard for me to get out, because I truly think there is no "perfect" imprinting chapter. I honestly cannot imagine what occurred between Jared and Kim, and normally I wouldn't write about something I can't even imagine – but of course, in this circumstance it's necessary and I can't just skip over it. After trying it several times from Kim's perspective, I decided I might as well do Jared's, because it's slightly better. So you'll notice that the POV switches in this chapter.

Also, I did get one question a lot, and I'll address that here in case anyone was wondering. Yes, Kim is a sophomore and yes, Jared is a senior. They have classes together because I modeled La Push High after my old school – where upperclassman and underclassman may share some classes, depending on their preferences and the requirements for their grade.

Please enjoy and review! :D


Chapter Three.

"I feel that life is divided into the horrible and the miserable. That's the two categories. The horrible are like, I don't know, terminal cases, you know, and blind people. Crippled. I don't know how they get through life. It's amazing to me. And the miserable is everyone else. So you should be thankful that you're miserable, because that's very lucky, to be miserable."

Annie Hall

Every day, every minute, someone somewhere is suffering. Women get beaten by the men they thought they loved. A family in a hospital waiting room gets the news that their loved one didn't make it. Innocent people get shot because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

You look at suffering and all you do is ask questions. Why did this have to happen, what did I do wrong, where do I go from here? It's human nature for people to place the blame on themselves. You say to yourself, if only I'd done something differently, this wouldn't have happened. You torture yourself with the if's, as if you're not suffering enough already.

People don't think to tell you that it's not your fault. A man has a heart attack and everyone comforts his wife, but no one says, You didn't do it, because why would they? And all the while the woman is crying herself to sleep thinking maybe if she hadn't made him quite so many cheeseburgers he'd still be next to her.

No one ever said the car accident was anyone's fault. But the truth is it's everybody's. If Sophie had distracted my mom for one more second, if I'd come out of my room to tell her goodbye, if my dad had called her to keep her at home for just a few more minutes, it wouldn't have happened. Instead she got in her car at the time she did and maybe she was adjusting the radio to find a song she liked, because she wasn't paying attention for one second and that was it.

Chris told me about the chaos theory. How something insignificant can happen anywhere in the world and it will result in something huge somewhere else. Like someone in China blew their nose and that made my mom die. Apparently there's actual studies on things like that, but I think those are just people trying to place the blame somewhere else so they can escape it themselves.

***


It was snowing when I woke up, the first real snow of winter. It covered everything for miles and miles, and I must admit it looked promising, that snow. The fresh, clean whiteness was like a new beginning, all the problems and worries I'd had neatly covered up by it.

I took out the jackets I'd stashed in the back of my closet and hung them at the very front, in the most reachable place. When you live somewhere long enough, you know the weather patterns – and I knew this chill wouldn't be letting up for months.

In the kitchen, the news was on low while Chris read the newspaper with his glasses down his nose. He looked a lot like Dad when he sat that way, all old and wise and maybe even paternal. Chris was a defense attorney in Sequim and hated it, but he said that anyone who had to travel over seventy miles to an aggravating job with mediocre pay would complain. When I asked him why he didn't just quit, he gave me that look, the one that says, One day when you're older, you'll understand.

"Sophie's sick," he told me. "She's got a fever and Penny's keeping her home."

I nodded; Sophie had gotten sick at the start of winter every year since she was born. When she first started school, she said sick days were the best days. Mom and her would stay home and bake all day long, and then watch daytime cable TV. "I love being sick," she'd say, flashing a big smile. I'd smile back and sit down at the counter, being treated to muffins and cookies and a glass of milk.

It was a weird winter tradition, but it had been ours.

The thing about traditions is they don't always last forever like they're supposed to.

"How bad is it out there?" I asked.

"Not too bad," Chris replied. "You should be able to drive pretty easily."

And if I don't? I wanted to ask, but didn't.

I didn't eat breakfast, just left out the backdoor and stopped for a second, taking in the air. It was cold, smelledlike cold, a crispness in the air that made my spine ache. Across the street, I heard the waves crashing to shore, but they were somehow more subdued than before. For some reason, at that moment, I wanted to burst into tears. Just stand there for a second and let the misery have me, just for a little while. I could almost feel it, the warm stains that the tears would leave down my cheeks. But instead I took a deep breath and unlocked the doors to the car that was never supposed to be mine. I turned the heat as high as it would go, and then I didn't feel like crying so much.

"Fuck," I muttered, glancing at the dashboard that was flashing orange next to the gas symbol. The little dash was all the way on E and that always freaked me out. I made a quick U-turn and started driving the other way, to one of only two gas stations in town. It was old and falling apart, a half lit-up M flickering on the big sign that read the gas prices, which had lowered since the last time I'd been here. I pulled into the closest spot to the tiny store and filled my tank up quickly. Several people waved to me. They knew my face even if they didn't know my name: I was the town's charity case, after all. I waved back, with a grimace on my face that might appear to be a smile if you didn't look too close.

"Goddammit, Jared, you're going and that's final."

Everyone, not just me, turned their head at the authoritative voice that seemed to come from nowhere. After a second of searching, I found the source: Sam Uley, bursting out of the store with a six-pack of beer tucked under an arm and Jared Thail following behind, looking extremely pissed off.

My heart skittered and I wouldn't have been surprised if it came to a complete halt for a second. I watched the exchange as surreptitiously as I could, but after the initial outburst they both spoke in harsh undertones. Sam stood at one end of his car and Jared at the other. Finally, after a long moment of silent exchange, Jared stalked off in the opposite direction.

Was he going to walk to school? It was freezing, and he was wearing jeans and a white shirt, nothing else. It would take him a good twenty minutes to get to school from here; fifteen if he was fast.

I probably should have offered him a ride. He knew who I was, I think; we'd gone to school together for a long time, not to mention living in the same tiny town our whole lives. We'd crossed paths hundreds of times. But still I couldn't get myself to say those words, easy as they might be. It would be making myself vulnerable, and that was something I couldn'tdo.

I was excited in a nervous, jittery kind of way. Jared would be back at school today – he hadto be, what else could Sam have been talking about? Of course, I had no idea why Sam would be ordering Jared to go to school – or ordering him to do anything, for that matter.

Penny's cult theory suddenly seemed reasonable; I'd probably follow Sam, too, if he used that scary voice on me.

I saw him first in the school parking lot, talking to Courtney Loquato and Vince Pine. Though Courtney and Vince were smiling, laughing, gesturing with their hands, Jared seemed detached from the conversation. Had be run to school?

And he had changed. Gone was the Jared I remembered, the one whose every feature I had memorized. In the place of that carefree, playful boy was a man who looked like he'd seen everything there was to see, done everything there was to do. His hair wasn't long and wavy anymore, but chopped into no-nonsense style that made his face look like a statue when he didn't have any expression. He must have been about four inches taller, and so much more built. I never would have described Jared as scrawny, but before his muscles had been the long and lean kind, not completely obvious under his clothes. Now it was easy to see the indents muscles made through his clothes; his arms were thick and strong. What had he done, spent the past two and a half weeks working out?

I knew people would play the steroid card, and I could hardly blame them. If I heard it enough times, I might even start to believe it.

"Jared, mono? Really? I had mono and I was out for, like, three days," Courtney said. Courtney was one of those girls you could never really describe: she was known by everyone but not exactly "popular"; she got good grades but wasn't a nerd; she was the president of the math club but wore the title with pride. If everyone could pull off their weaknesses – or embarrassing strengths – like Courtney could, there would be no losers.

"You know my mom," Jared said.

And that was allhe said.

I shivered at the disturbing coolness to his voice, or maybe at the frost in the air, or maybe just because he had changed so much it made me feel like I'd never known who he was at all.

"Well, you're going to have a ton of makeup work," Courtney said sympathetically. She leaned forward slightly. She was flirting. "We get out for Christmas in a few weeks, and then midterms. I can help you study."

I yanked my backpack out of the backseat of my car with more force than I expected. I realized then that the only reason Courtney Loquato was tolerated was because she didn't flirt. She was too funny and smart and pretty. Girls wouldn't show it, but they were all nervous about her: she could take their boyfriends from them in the blink of an eye if she so desired. When girls like Courtney flirted, it made you want to curl up in the fetal position and evaporate. It was the secret wish of every girl in the school for her to be a lesbian just so that the threat of her would go away.

And it's shallow, but I got it. Courtney was nice – I knewshe was. She talked to me, she made me laugh. Maybe we weren't friends, but it's not like she'd ever be mean to me or ignore me. Yet I couldn't stop the feelings of hatred I felt towards her. She had everything, and it wasn't fair.

As I walked passed the tiny assemblage of the three of them, I made sure my hair covered my face from their view, because I didn't want Jared to see me at the same time he saw Courtney. I didn't want to think about the comparison he'd make.

The bell rang just as I entered the school, and still I was the first person to first period. I sat in my seat and tried to discreetly make sure I didn't smell bad. Some girl across the room noticed and gave me a funny look.

If you ask any grown person, they'll tell you that your opinion of yourself is all that matters. Who cares what other people think; that won't matter in the long-run. But ask any high-schooler across America, and the response would be almost unanimously different. All that matters is what people think of you.

But then, if everyone else's opinion is what matters, do you even really have one of your own?

My mom used to tell me I'd realize when I was grownup by looking in the mirror and seeing just my reflection, nothing else. I wondered if I could ever do that. I wondered if any girl could ever do that. When I look in the mirror, my first instinct is to cringe: bad hair, plain face. But then I look closer and see everything else that's really wrong, like how my cheekbones dominate my face and how my eyes don't match the rest of me. I think to myself, This is who I am. This is what people see when they look at me.

It's like seeing yourself on a video when you're little and wondering how to differentiate between the two you's: the one in your head or the one on the screen.

The late bell rang the second Jared took his seat next to me. I glanced at him to offer a small smile, one that would say: Oh, you're back. I barely noticed you were gone. But he didn't see, and maybe that was a good thing, because the smile probably ended up all wrong.

He seemed mad, I thought, and tired. He glared out the window of the class like he expected to be transported out there at any moment. His face looked harsh now, with this new expression on it: he looked mean, and threatening, and scary. Still perfect features, but with all the personality wiped away from them.

I tried not to look, because I didn't want to see.

Mrs. Stick commented on his having been away, and that was the only thing to get Jared to tear to the front of the room, and only for a second. He said, "I'm finishing up my makeup work at home, ma'am. I was sick," before turning away again.

Today we were doing presentations, which figured since I wasn't a good speaker and of course Jared would decide to show up the day I had to present. It was a book report, The Metamorphosis, and we'd all been given different aspects of the book to cover. I got lucky with "theme." While other people moaned about getting "personality deficiencies and character development," my report took all of fifteen minutes to write. Mrs. Stick liked me, or she just didn't think I could do anything at all. I noticed that more about teachers lately. They liked the ones who were weak, the ones who didn't talk much, because everyone remembers high school as being this horrible place, and people like me are prime examples that they weren't just imagining that.

When I was called on – just three minutes before the bell rang – I walked to the front of the class, my legs feeling wobbly and my heart pounding like crazy. Mrs. Stick smiled encouragingly; everyone else either watched with soft eyes, or looked away discreetly.

It was like first grade all over again, the year I'd been pushed off the swing-set and broken my leg. When I came to school the next week and it came time to show off our science fair projects, I talked about evaporation. I was so nervous that I was probably sweating, but no one looked at me funny like they usually did. They watched intently, their eyes darting to my leg and then back to my face, and I realized they didn't all of a sudden like me, they felt bad for me.

They say bullies target the weak, but that's a relative term. If they think you're too weak, then the pity overshadows everything else.

I looked at Jared, but he wasn't looking back. All I wanted was for him to look at me once, even if his eyes were disgusted or pitying or indifferent. I just needed to know that he saw me, that I wasn't invisible to him.

That I was there, that I was alive.

"The theme of this book," I began, "is rejection."

***


You're only as bad as the worst thing you've ever done.

In some people's cases, I guess that's comforting to hear. Maybe all they did was push a kid off a swing, like Vince Pine had done to me in first grade, or maybe they'd lied or cheated or stolen. Sure, they were sins, but they say God forgives as long as you apologize anyway. And it's easy to apologize to God, a lot easier than it would be to apologize to anyone else.

But me, the worst thing I've ever done is pretty horrible.

I was only eight, not that that's any excuse, but still.

What happened was one night I walked into Sophie's room and my mother was rocking her on the rocking chair that had once been in my room, singing a song that she used to sing to me. Sophie was just a tiny little bundle of blankets in her arms, fast asleep. My mother looked completely peaceful, her eyes shut lightly, her voice a perfect pitch.

When she was done with the song, she said, "I love you most of all, sweet little baby."

I was so angry my eyes watered. After everything that Sophie had done, after all those nights she'd kept everyone up crying, my mother still loved her best. I remembered when my mom had told me that, and I'd felt special, more loved than even Chris.

I went to my room before she could see me. I ripped up the note I'd made my mom in school that day, shredded it to pieces systematically, into tiny little squares until they were so small I couldn't anymore; you'd have never known I'd spent all of recess working on it. I sat on my bed until all the lights in the house were off.

Then I got up, into the nursery where Sophie was still sleeping. I remember it so clearly it's like a recurring dream: the way I walked into her room and picked up the pillow from the rocking chair, the very one my mother had been sitting on. The lights were off and Sophie was breathing in little baby huffs.

My eyes were streaming with tears, and I put the pillow over Sophie's head. I pressed down, until the edges of the pillows touched the mattress, until I couldn't hear Sophie breathing anymore.

It took about ten seconds for me to drop the pillow. I threw it across the room and stared in horror at my hands. Hands that could kill someone. That was the day I realized that you really could do anything, even the unthinkable, as long as no one's there to witness it.

"I'm sorry," I whispered, even though Sophie couldn't understand. Then I said, "I hate you," because if my mother did love her more than me, there was some kind of justice in that.

The next night, as my mom tucked me into my bed, she leaned down to kiss my forehead and whisper in my ear, "I love you most of all, sweetie."

I wanted to tell her that her lies were going to end up killing somebody someday, but I didn't know the words.

***


"He's back," Ella told me in second-period Spanish that afternoon. She sat next to me, a fortunate seating arrangement that may have saved the last shreds of any friendship we had.

"I know," I said.

"I've heard gang, cult, steroids, government-agency, and brainwash. You?"

I smiled. "Same, minus the government agency. It sounds interesting. Which department?"

Ella shrugged and then laughed, her mouth wide open. Ella had a belly laugh that was contagious, and soon I was laughing too.

"I miss you, Kim," she said once she'd stopped. She sat up in her chair and smiled sadly.

All I could think was, I miss me, too.

***


Jared's POV:

Something was wrong.

I could feel it, an almost imperceptible tugging behind my navel. It was that feeling of standing on a rug that could be pulled out from under your feet at any moment, except worse because I couldn't move off of it and I had no idea what it meant.

Sam would have told me, I reassured myself, if vampires were near. He would have warned me about this feeling, if it meant anything. It was probably just another side-effect of this whole wolf thing.

When you shift forms – literally phase from a man to a bear-sized wolf – your muscles become strong enough to endure almost anything, but your joints are loose and awkward. Sam told me it would go away after a few weeks, but for now I was stuck walking around feeling like I had the consistency of a jellyfish. In my human form, I felt weak and vulnerable and unprepared. I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to phase back when I needed to – but I was more afraid of phasing on accident.

I'd told Sam that I needed more time to learn to control myself, but he'd had faith in me. "Jared," he'd said, "you are going to be fine. You're not a temperamental guy; just keep your cool. You need to go back to school, people are starting to talk. And it may be a long time before Paul is ready to go back."

That made me smirk. Paul, my best friend since I don't know when, had always had a temper. He was a great guy, but I wouldn't want to be on his bad side. As a werewolf, that wasn't good unless you wanted to remain in a furry state forever. It had taken me two days to phase back – after the first few hours, I wasn't pissed, but I was scared, and it was hard. For Paul, it had taken close to a week because he wouldn't stop screaming profanities at Sam and I long enough to calm down.

"Jared," Courtney Loquato said, making me look away from the window. I focused on her face: pretty, open, coy. Courtney was desirable in that she was nonconfrontational and no hassle. We could have a good time and she wouldn't be freaking out if I didn't call her back when I said I would.

Before all this, I'd been thinking about asking Courtney out, making this thing we had official. It had all started up after I'd broken up with my last girlfriend, Tia. I wasn't looking for anything at the moment – Tia and I had been dating for four months, after all, and I wasn't a total douche – but Courtney had apparently had her eye on me. She'd flirt with me and come over to my house and sometimes we'd hook up. I wasn't crazy about her, but hey – she liked me. All the guys at school were into her, because she was hot and told dirty jokes and knew how to play football. She was smart and sexy, they said, and she was easy to get into bed. When we'd started our "thing", so many rumors flew around about her that I felt like a complete jackass. It wasn't like I could just not ask her out.

"Can you help me with this problem?" she said, leaning in close to my side. I knew for a fact she didn't need my help – she was the president of the Math Club, for Christ's sake. But I glanced at her paper anyway and found myself confronted with an up-close-and-personal cleavage shot.

"I hope I didn't give you mono, Jared," she said, and then grinned, because she'd spoken so loudly everyone around us could hear. I realized that was probably intentional.

"Yeah, well," I said. What else was there to say?

"So, I'm throwing a party Friday," she continued. "I'm inviting everyone. I'm turning eighteen."

"Wow," I said, even though I wasn't interested at all. "Happy birthday."

"Thanks," she said curtly; obviously she wasn't just chatting me up for well wishes. "So will you come?"

"Sure, sure," I said as noncommittally as I could.

"And tell Paul to come too."

The bell rang and Courtney forgot all about the problem she had meant to get my help on. She waited while I packed up my things and then slipped her hand into mine as we walked out of the classroom. My surprise at her action made me take an extra second to think, and before I could remove her hand from mine, she gasped loudly.

"Jared, your hand is burning!" she cried in alarm, her eyebrows scrunched together as she looked at me.

My mouth froze around words I was forbidden to tell her; forbidden to tell anyone, really. I didn't know how to get out of this one – whenever I'd questioned Sam about what to do if my cover was blown, he'd always replied, "We'll cross that river when we get to it."

"Are you still sick? Do you need to go to the nurse?" Courtney lifted her hand and I caught it just before it made contact with my forehead, which I knew for a fact would be over a hundred and five degrees.

"I'm fine," I said quickly. "Really. I was sitting on my hands during the lecture, that's why they're so hot."

Even as I said this I began to think: Courtney was pretty easygoing, and if she freaked out over my body temperature then every other girl would too. I wasn't at liberty to tell any of them my secret – was literally bound by blood to keep the secret, except in that rare case that more than likely would not affect me - and the extreme body temperature wasn't something I had an excuse for. Did that mean I would never be with a girl again, ever?

Thoughts like that can really upset a teenage guy, especially hormonal ones who have been going through a pretty tough time lately. I started to shake, a slow build-up that started in the tips of my fingers and gradually made its way up through my arms. I knew in the seconds that followed I would need to calm down, or else I was going to do the unthinkable. But I was sore, and pissed, and worried – and the feeling in my stomach wasn't going away. It was getting worse every second, like the threat was getting closer and closer.

"Jared," Courtney was saying, but I barely heard her. "Jared! Jared!"

Ten, nine, eight – I could stop this, I knew I could – seven, six – Sam had faith in me, I wouldn't fail him – five, four, three – but it was so hard, and maybe it would be easier not to fight it – two, one.

I almost did it. Exploded, snapped, whatever you want to call it.

But suddenly the unexpected happened – the unthinkable and the unbelievable – and everything stopped.

The rug had been pulled out from underneath me finally, but I did not fall. Our eyes met for one brief second, across the hallway, thirty people away, but it was enough.

And suddenly, everything I was didn't matter anymore. Anything I'd ever worried about was gone. My family, my friends, my pack – they faded into the background, like a spot of white on an off-white wall, there but not really. All I could see was her. It was like I was dead, only different – it was the feeling of caring so much for one person that you didn't have enough space to care about yourself.

I understood the world and all of its complexities now. I understood why my feet were planted firmly on the ground. I knew why I was breathing, why I was born. It was all so clear; I couldn't figure out how I hadn't seen it before.

She was the sun, the Earth, the moon and all of the planets. She was air and gravity and water and food. She was my heart and lungs and organs and everything else I needed to live.

She was it.

I don't know if I'd call it an epiphany, but it left me breathless and defenseless. The worrying that followed seeing her was enough to make my stomach constrict and my knees want to give out.

Was she okay?

Why did she look so sad?

Had anything bad happened to her? Had someone upset her? Was she sick?

Did she need something? I'd gladly give her anything in the world - I'd find a way to get it to her.

She was the most precious thing in the world, but also, in my eyes, the most vulnerable. Bad things could happen to her. Someone could hurt her. I could not be around for one second, and she could be gone.

I couldn't handle thinking about that, it was too much. The world wouldn't be able to go on without her. My world wouldn't even exist.

"Jared." Courtney's voice was like a wisp of smoke behind me, drifting away before it ever got the chance to really be.

I had to be next to her; my feet moved on their own accord. I needed to be near her, around her, inside of her. She needed to be in my arms, where I could be sure that she would be shielded from all the bad things in the world.

She had turned around when we'd locked gazes, to her locker. She took a long time searching for a book, so long that I thought she might be stalling. When she noticed I was next to her, she jumped.

Shit. I hadn't meant to scare her. "Sorry," I said.

But I wasn't sorry I'd gone over there. I got to fully examine her now, up close. She had dark brown hair that had been twirled into a bun in the back of her head, held together with a fraying ponytail. Her eyes were the exact color of honey, melted and deep, and framed by thick lashes. Her nose was evenly shaped and her mouth was full and red, a perfect contrast to her russet skin. Her body was perfect, would fit perfect with mine, but I got the feeling there wasn't much that was holding her up.

"Oh," she said, clearly surprised that I had spoken. "It's alright."

Hearing her voice melted away all of my anxiety, if only for a second. I knew that I needed to keep her talking.

"I'm Jared," I said, and then, because I'm the world's biggest fuck-up, I asked, "What's your name?"

I had to know, because not knowing was the worst feeling in the world.

She looked at me for a long time, and finally, when I thought she wasn't going to reply at all, she said, "Mary. My name is Mary."


Kim's POV:

It's possible to convince yourself that almost anything is true. All it takes is a determined will and an unwavering mindset.

The thing is, you can't change what's real, no matter how hard you try. I could tell myself that Jared acknowledged me, that he would care about me one day, that we were meant for each other. I could tell myself that, and in my head, it could be true. But outside of my head, in the real world, it made no difference. Jared didn't know me. He hadn't been paying enough attention in the past sixteen years to even know my name.

The Jared I'd thought I'd known was a lie.

"Mary," I told him, so that I'd be a lie to him, too. "My name is Mary."


A/N: Want to know something crazy? I posted the wrong document for this chapter twice...I'm losing my mind.

Like I said above, this chapter was almost impossible for me. The words just weren't flowing like they should have been, and I had to work really hard to fill in the details. That almost never happens to me, especially when I'm writing something for fun. It sucks!

I didn't have time to edit, either: I work two jobs and my laptop is constantly being used by my roommates. I didn't want to keep you guys waiting forever, so I just posted it. Again, sorry.

But if you still want to review, I would appreciate it so much! I love to hear what you all think, and any ideas or suggestions you have.