I wasn't an arty person, really. I was more of a functional, hands-on kinda gal.

But I was the designated interior designed of mine and my dad's new home, and I was taking my responsibility very seriously.

One of the first things I'd done when I'd been told we were leaving Topeka was to explore what I could do with the new space. The only information I'd received was that it was 'pretty open, with big windows...oh, and no doorways'. I visualised an open plan space dominated by a spiral staircase, and wide, inviting bay windows beckoning a green landscape. I imagined hanging beaded curtains made of smoky oranges and reds and deep, mysterious blues off the doorways, and leaving a windchime at the front door to clink gently beneath a twilight sky, welcoming in visitors...

I puffed as I threw an old soiled sheet that had been loved to death by our old dog Reggie over my dad's double bed. He'd been a very goood boy with an entire treasure chest of various toys that dogs were supposed to find captivating, but little Reg was at his happiest when chewing on any sort of fabric that he wasn't allowed to get his teeth on. One Christmas I'd gotten Dad this really nice set of Egyptian cotton linens - we're talking a threadcount of 1000 here - which Reg had positively gone to town on when we left him alone in the house for no more than an hour.

That was the one and only time I'd been in a mood with my dog. No treats were had that day.

I'd already shifted the bedside table out of the way of the walls so that they formed an island of misplaced furniture in the middle of the room. I was wearing my most faded pair of overalls, and my hair was slicked back into a high ponytail, my fringe clipped back and away from my face.

Right, I thought, clapping my hands together and craning my neck around my father's minimalist bedroom once more to make sure I'd moved everything within paint flicking range safely out of the way. Though my father was an extraordinarily even-tempered man, he hated carelessness as much as I did. I imagined him coming home from a long and tiresome day at work to find that I'd ruined his trusty, three-year-old bedroom slippers made of lambswool, and my eye started twitching. My father was a master of the 'I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed in you' face.

Stepping back, I eyed the progress I'd made with the wall to the left of dad's bed. I'd primed the wall - and, I had to admit, I was pretty impressed with how even I'd managed to make it - and the tape I'd put over the trim was still looking secure. Pretty good job for a novice. And I really was a novice. I'd headed to good old Auntie Google to aid me with my wall-painting endeavours; the instructions had sounded simple enough, but when I was scrubbing at the wall to clean it with a sponge and a solution of mainly water and a few drops of washing up liquid, the thought whirring around and around in my head was: don't get complacent, Francesca. You poop up this this wall, and dad is not going to be happy. My dad was a lenient sort of man, and allowed me to do all the cooking and cleaning because he knew I was particular and liked it a certain way, but allowing him to forego creative control of the house had not been a straightforward job. There had been a lot of uhming and ahming on my dad's behalf on the flight up, and the six hour layover had mainly been comprised of me holding up my new '52 Interesting Interior Designs' book to my father's reticent face and saying, "Wouldn't this design just perfectly accommodate that lamp Larry got you for Christmas?" and "You know I've never been a fan of our sofas, but don't you think just that anything could look good against this chartreuse wall?"

Finally, he had relented (he always did) with the contingency that I had to run all my ideas by him. Like an eager puppy, I had agreed. He hadn't been a fan of the art-deco monochrome theme that the book on interior design promised was in vogue, and he also had't been a fan of the minimalist theme I'd suggested, arguing that what made a home a home were the little knick-knacks a person owned. After shrugging, I had agreed.

Experimentally, keeping my grip tight, I dipped the paint roller into the pale olive colour the container called ''Glow On, Olive'. For one moment, I suspended the paint roller in the air. It was heavier than I thought. I left it there, in the air, for a few seconds, ensuring the excess paint had dripped off.

I took a deep breath. Then I put the roller to the wall and got to work.

That's how my dad found me, four hours later, the only difference being that I had migrated from the left-hand wall to the right-side one.

"Frankie," he said, voice tinged with surprise. "This looks great."

My cheeks were a livid red from the slow, steady labour of painting, but a blush still managed to creep up my cheeks anyway. "Thanks, dad," I said, unfolding myself from the floor to look around at my work. The pale olive colour coated the left-hand wall, while the wall that acted as a backdrop to the double bed was painted a rich, chocolatey brown that I knew would work well with dad's plain, dark grey linens. Now, I was working on the wall to the right of the door as you entered, with that soft olive colour reaching a third of the wall. While I wasn't done yet, already the new colours were throwing off rich, earthy vibes. Mmmm. Cosy.

"You like it then?" I asked, eyeing him from the corner of my eye. "My book really emphasised the importance of warm colours if you're trying to make a small space cosy."

"I love it. How long you been working for, kiddo?"

"As soon as you left for work, maybe four hours ago? It's been pretty solid work."

Winding his arm around my shoulders, he leaned down to kiss me, his scratchy, ginger beard grazing my face in a way that was so pleasantly familiar. "You've done a better job than I could ever have dreamed of doing, daughter of mine. Can I thank you with a takeaway?"

"Daddy," I said warningly, pointing the pizza takeaway pamphlet at him from where I stood at the kitchen counter, by the phone. "Takeout doesn't have to be unhealthy. We're not ordering pizza."

Groaning, my father slumped back on the yellow cord couch in the connected living room, beginning to unlace his big, industrial boots. "Please. It's been a long day and I just want to sit back and relax with a nice, big tray of carbs. Is that too much to ask for, wicked daughter of mine?"

"It's a lot to ask of your heart and your cholesterol, which has beared the brunt of your poor eating habits for the past forty-five years," I said sternly. "Do you remember the picture of those nice, healthy veins and heart that Dr. Mackenstein showed us?"

I received a grunt in response."

"That's what I thought. I'm not doing this to hurt you, daddy, I'm doing it because I love you and I want you alive on this earth for as long as possible." I had stolen that last line from a movie about a woman who fell in love with an alcoholic, minus the 'daddy', but I wasn't about to tell my dear old papa that. "So what would you prefer, then? Mediterranean, or sushi?"

At about 8pm, I opened the door to the delivery girl who was shivering slightly under a bruised coloured sky. I exchanged a $5 tip in exchange for a grateful smile and a delicious-smelling carrier bag.

Settling the bag down on the counter, I received wafts from the food that made my mouth water. I cleared my throat and my father looked around from where he had his feet up on the ottoman, watching the football.

His eyes lit up when he saw me slide a full-fat Coke out of the bag, another outlawed food product in the Wilson household.

"I'm not a total monster, am I?" I asked primly, pouring him a big glass.

"You are rather lovely on the odd occasion, I'll admit."

Five minutes later, the two of us were settled down with our respective dishes in our lap - I had griddled vegetables with sweet potato and Quinoa salad, and dad had chorizo pilaf - and a psychological thriller. Psychological thrillers were always the genre of choice between the two of us if we were settling down with a takeaway; I got a thrill from being scared and didn't have to face the more full-on genre of horror, while my dad, logician that he was, liked to analyse what was happening so he could predict how the film would end.

"So she's claiming that he's her ex-boyfriend from back home," my father was saying to me, eyes on the screen, a chunk of chorizo speared on the end of his fork. "But you know in the beginning of the film when it panned to a shot of her and another guy when they were thirteen and she said it was her brother? Well, I think Tim is her brother and he's shaved his head and donned the construction gear and the scar as a disguise."

"Eh...a shaved head is hardly a disguise. " I reached out to my glass of Coke and took a big gulp, welcoming the sweet fizz down my throat. "But on that note, why is it always the case in movies that they're all conveniently so stupid? How can Harrison not recognise that that's his childhood best friend?"

My father shook his head, eyes still trained on the television. "It's the film industry. They don't have any balls. Movies like this are a dime a dozen, and it's only once every, what, two, three years that something worthwhile actually comes out."

Watching films with my father was always an inevitable descent into having a conversation about how the film industry treats its audience like dummies. We had the same conversation pretty much every week.

"Get Out," my father said, citing the title of one of his favourite recent psychological thrillers. "Now that was something worth watching. That was...man, that really was worth paying money to go and see. And buying the DVD. The way the film industry talks about losing money through loss of DVD sales, you'd think the solution was out of their hands. Well, boo-fucking-hoo, you make something worth spending money on, and people will spend their money on it. It's hardly rocket science."

"That's way too much of a simplistic argument," I argued. "With technology literally swarming the masses, it's much easier to get ahold of easy and digestible entertainment. Years and years ago, I remember when you'd take me to the cinema and it'd be a real treat, a real occasion. Now people can get their hands on exactly what they want with no trouble at all. A person's full, undivided attention is one of life's biggest values at the moment, and the industry know that it's much easier to get people's attentions via pandering to their, I don't know, wish fulfillment, let's say, than an actual, good story."

"Easier to get people's attentions that way, but not impossible to do it the right way. Hell, looking at David Foster Wallace's 'Infinite Jest'. That book is the definition of doing gruelling hard work with your butt in the chair, and it blew up the market. People do want challenging and good material, if only the directors could be bothered. Really, it's an issue of laziness. They're much too focused on what the actors and actresses look like. Everything has to look so polished. Everything has to look like it's fake. It's like the more they can deviate something from average, the better it is. But that's just not true."

I shrugged. "Populate a cast with beautiful people that your eyes don't want to look away from and people aren't gonna wanna look away from the movie. It's a money-making scheme."

My father and I continued to bicker back and forth as we watched the film and filled our bellies, and then he kissed me goodnight and we went into our own rooms.

My dad hummed thoughtfully as he chewed. "You know that babies tend to look at symmetrical faces more than asymmetrical ones?" At my surprised look, my father nodded importantly. "Yep. Even babies know what beautiful is. There could be some weight to your words."

We continued to bicker into the night into I felt my eyes closing. Dad kissed me on the head and ushered me up to my bedroom. Though it was dark, I could smell the static of a brewing storm through my open window. I pulled the window forth, leaving it slightly ajar, and then shut the curtains. After dressing in my winter flannel pyjamas, I tucked the duvet right up to my chin. I fell asleep not too long after that, to the sound of rain.

For the first time since starting Quileute Tribal High, I dreaded going in.

Well, that maybe a little bit of an exaggeration. I wasn't dreading going in, but I certainly wasn't bounding up to its iron-cast gates with enthused strides and a silly grin

Today was a Monday, and today was also the day I'd resolved with myself to go into school and reopen my quest to find friends. Though I'd merely been a little blunt more than exercising any real meanness, thinking back to the snarky way I had treated Kim last Friday embarrassed me more than I'd care to admit. But while I knew that I deserved to feel bad because I hadn't behaved in line with the standard I set for myself, I also believed that I should be extending some kindness to myself too, and the fact of the matter was that Kim was not a straightforward person. It was just a fact. She hid behind her hair and softened her voice and averted her gaze when she didn't want to answer a question, or didn't want to talk about something, or was too shy to say something, and it turns out that the answer to the question "what makes Kim squirm?" was "a hell of a lot." There was too much reading between the lines, and I hated jumping through hoops. Where it could be, life should always be simple (quote credit to Darren Wilson - thanks Dad) and I wasn't about to waste my time on people who not only didn't share this view, but who turned the antithesis of this view into their religion. Nuh-uh, no thanks.

But as I walked into school, my backpack heavy on my shoulders since Monday was the most demanding day stationery wise, a thread of nervousness wound through my belly. My first period class was maths, which Kim wasn't in, which would also make the whole 'try to make friends with people who aren't Kim' thing easier and much less awkward. Like always, the room was empty when I entered save from the teacher, who glanced up at me from her desk, smiled, and said hello.

Playing with my fingers, my eyes darted towards the door every now and then as students filtered in in twos and threes. I sat where I'd been sitting for maths for the past week or so, which was at the table in the middle and then to the right. I was right on the end.

Pulling out the chair beside me and throwing a careless glance at me, a boy with close cropped hair and deep-set eyes sat down and began shrugging his coat off.

I darted a glance at him. Perhaps he could be my new friend? Although he was giving off vibes that said he thought I was about as interesting as the tapestry.

"You should all have brought in the worksheet we didn't manage to finish off last week," Mr. Elton said, a tall, serious figure. I'd yet to see the salt-and-pepper-haired man smile, but he explained things in a simple and comprehensible way, so he was in my good books. Beside me, the boy muttered 'fuck'. "To those of you who brought it in: well done. To those of you who didn't: please get your life in order." A snicker rippled through the class, and when I glanced slyly at the classmate sat to my left, I saw him rolling his eyes. "Anyway, we'll resume roughly where we left off, which to my knowledge was on quadratic equations, but do correct me if I'm wrong. Those ruffians who forgot today's worksheet, turn to the person sitting next to you, hope that they're a little more organised than yourself, and ask very nicely if you can share." A shuffle of movement opened up in the classroom, and I heard, rather than saw, the guy sitting next to me sigh deeply.

He then proceeded to turn to the person on the other side of him - who wasn't me.

I turned to look to my right, where no one sat, because there was no chair there. I slumped back into my seat with a huff, inwardly raising a salute to invisible friends.

"Sorry," I said to a random student whose shoulder I bumped. The rush between first and second period class had us students acting as waves, and I rode the wave down the stairs, keeping check to stay as close to the wall as possible.

Kim was already inside, along with a handful of others, doodling on her notebook and humming softly. I took my place next to her as I normally did in Religious Education class.

She shut her notebook. When she turned her gaze to me, I detected no salient memory of my abruptness with her last Friday, just the typical shyness and warmth. "How was your weekend?" she asked softly.

Over the weekend, the overall softness of Kim, the feather-light gentleness that made you want to gather her up and protect her, was something I'd forgotten. Unpacking my bag and laying my water bottle, pencil case, notepad and notebook in their order in front of me as was my routine now at the school, I tucked a piece of hair behind my ear and levelled my gaze on her.

"Hey," I said cheerfully, putting a smile on my face that may or may not have been unnaturally wide due to guilt. "My weekend was pretty relaxing, thanks. I did a little hiking and I painted the house."

"Oh, cool! Which colour did you end up settling on?"

"That 'Glow On, Olive' colour, you know the really pale, sort of rustic green?" At Kim's nod, I sat down, playing with my fingers. "That one. How was your weekend?"

One of Kim's narrow shoulders lifted in a shrug. "Spent it with Jared mainly." While I'd only known Kim a couple of weeks, I'd inferred that her relationship with her boyfriend was, in a word, serious. Very serious. They spent a lot of time together.. Aside from in class, if I saw Kim during breaks, Jared was always there, which was normal enough, but whenever I asked Kim what her plans were after school or whatever, her answer was always the same: she spent it with Jared.

While this did seem like wet moppish behaviour to me, I couldn't judge. I'd never been in a relationship or even kissed a guy on the lips before; things like getting butterflies or being in love were all foreign concepts of me. What would I know about being in love?

The answer was that I didn't. Still, I couldn't imagine spending as much time with someone as Kim did with Jared without getting absolutely sick of them. What did you talk about for that long? Was it ever awkward or uncomfortable?

"My sister got into a really prestigious college," Kim shared a rare glean of information into her life. "So me and my family went to this really neat cocktail bar in Washington town to celebrate. My sister ended up throwing up." Kim rolled her eyes.

I snorted. "How old is she?"

"Same age as me. We're twins."

I gaped. "How are you only telling me this now?" I exclaimed. "You're a twin? Really?"

Rather than blushing, as I expected her to, Kim gave a light, floaty laugh. "Really. We're identical and everything."

My interest was piqued. But before I could ask anymore questions, Mr. Burke entered. Looking a little windswept, he strode to the front of the class and clapped his hands together. "Sorry I'm late, class. Traffic was hectic. So, to continue on from last week…"

This whole making friends thing really wasn't going to plan, I reflected as Kim and I walked slowly from break to our third period class (which we also had together). She must have seen the slightly morose expression on my face because, as we walked softly over the damp grass, she asked, "What are you thinking?"

What are you thinking? The question struck me as strange before I realised that I was experiencing a sense of familiarity because it was the question my dad asked me whenever I was gazing into the distance and frowning thoughtfully.

That must be what I was doing now.

"Just…" I shrugged, leaning my head back to look up at the sky. Another lovely clear day. "I don't know. I suppose...things were easier back in Topeka in the sense that I grew up with the same couple of handfuls of people and we all went to high school together, etcetera. I didn't have to be curious about anyone because I knew everyone. And they knew me. But here…" I trailed off, looking at the grass as we walked on, focusing on the faint noises of traffic passing behind the school. "I guess I'm just worried I haven't put in enough effort to make friends with other people."

Rather than getting offended, or ducking her head and not responding for at least ten seconds like I thought she would, Kim hummed thoughtfully to herself and said, "Well...you could always join a society if you want to make more friends."

"Yeah," I mused. " I did think about doing that actually."

"The societies committee is pretty active, depending on what you're looking for. There's an established fencing team, believe it or not," Kim said, smiling as I raised my eyebrows. "Arts and crafts is pretty big, and all the sports teams are pretty full to capacity, too."

"How would I go about joining a society? Is there an office somewhere around here?"

"Oh, it's in the office right by the gym. I could show you during lunch if you want. My sister actually heads the committee and she's...well, she takes her role pretty seriously." Kim rolled her eyes and snorted, as if laughing at a private joke. "She reminds me a lot of you, if you don't mind me saying." That shy smile again. "Anyway, if you want to join a club, she's your girl."

She really was, it turns out, my girl.

I poked my head into the office. "Hey! Are you Annette?"

Tapping speedily on a keyboard, a bespectacled girl with a thick, waist-length braid hanging down her back, who looked so much like Kim that it honestly frightened me a little, looked up. "That's me. Can I help you?"

I got straight to the point. "Yeah, Kim pushed me in your direction. I was wondering if it's not too late to sign up to a few societies?"

Her eyes lit up. She clapped her hands together. "No! Not at all! Let me get you a sign up sheet. What's your name?" She'd gotten up to move towards a stack of sheets sitting beside a printer, but then spun back around to face me. "In fact...you look new. Are you? New, I mean? I've never seen you before so I assume you're new." She looked at me expectantly.

Reeling slightly from the contrast between this boisterous personality inside of Kim's body, I replied, "Yeah, I'm new."

"I thought so." Brandising a sheet and scrawling something at the top, she fixed those eyes on me which resembled the unblinking gaze fixture of an owl. Huh. I wondered if Kim needed glasses as well and just didn't wear them. "Name, please?"

"It's Francesca Wilson. F-R-A-N-C-E-S-C-A." I stepped further into the room, casting my gaze across the den-resembling office space crammed full of administrative items - a computer, a photocopier, a printer, stacks of faceless sheets of paper balanced on all possible surfaces.

She might have been following the trail of my gaze, because she said, "It's an absolute hovel in here, right? I've been single-handedly trying to tidy up years of other people's negligence, throwing away everything that looks like junk while holding onto the important stuff. Turns out that the line between the two isn't so clear." She snorted. "Ah, well, this is what I signed up for."

She handed the sheet and I saw my name written beside the 'NAME' heading in neat, cursive capital letters.

"I know you're perfectly capable of writing your own name, but my eyesight isn't so hot so I try to avoid any and all situations where I might have to decipher something. I really feel it in my head when I've been squinting, you know?"

Looking at the sheet, I spotted categories like 'water sports', 'arts and craft', 'gymnasium' etc. "Can I fill this out now?"

"Go ahead, take a seat anywhere! I'll give you a pen. They're like gold dust in here, honestly."

I felt bad. I felt really bad.

Here I was, having, well, not mean, but definitely on the cooler side of lukewarm, thoughts about Kim and moping about not having made good enough friends, and here she was pushing me in the direction of the societies office and generally being a good friend and helping me to be able to make other friends. After I'd expressed my interest in certain societies with ticks, namely hiking, rock climbing, and arts and crafts - the last one because...well, why not? I liked trying new things - I had been let go with a promise from Annette that she'd have me seamlessly joining my chosen societies within the next week or so. 'The hikers in particular are always looking for joiners because most guys and gals are age are just so lazy, right? Most people struggle to get out of bed before 9am, nevermind voluntarily hiking a mile or two,' Annette had said scornfully. I had emphatically agreed.

"Hey, Kim," I said brightly, throwing my bag down on the floor of the table that had become my staple in the cafeteria. Jared and Jacob were already sat down, paying impressively single-minded attention to the mound of food in front of them. I could spot at least an entire baking tray and a half's worth of frybread, as well as an indistinguishable dish with a side of rice that smelled of tomatoes and spices. A growl tore from my stomach and, eyes wide, I self-consciously glanced up to find Jacob looking at me with a smirk.

God. Had he heard that?

"Hey," Kim replied, smiling up at me. A more modest portion of what the guys had was in front of her, barely touched. They must have just arrived. "Did you manage to find her?"

"Yeah!" I perched on one of the spare seats. "She was really helpful. I signed up to hiking and rock-climbing society as well as arts and crafts. Are you-?"

A snort from Jacob cut me off.

I rolled my eyes before fixing my gaze on him. "What?" I asked, exasperated.

"Arts and crafts?" Jacob was speaking with his mouth full, but I managed to make out the words he said even though the sound was very distorted. I wrinkled my nose. I didn't think the girls who fawned over him would retain even a quarter of their interest if they witnessed his appalling table manners. Elbows on the table, sloppy eating, plus consuming the food at a pace that suggested that it was going out of fashion.

Gross.

"Take it from me, Frankie." I couldn't pinpoint when Jacob had begun calling me Frankie, but after the first few initial moments of it being weird because the only person who called me that was my dad, I started to think it was sort of...nice. Jacob was as abrasive as a brillo pad and as sardonic as anyone I would ever meet, so when he called me by my nickname I got a sort of warm feeling, like he was a lot more redeemable than I gave him credit for. "There is no arts and crafts society," he continued (still with his mouth open, I noticed with a wince). "What happens is every Wednesday afternoon, the rejects of the school gather together in room B4 to share their nerdy comic book drawings. You're thinking it's all pastels and painting and shit. I promise, it's not."

"It's called anime," Kim said, sounding affronted. Glancing at her, I noticed her brow furrowed, a rare expression of negative emotion that I found very interesting because only Jacob seemed to be able to evoke it from her. "And it's an art-form like any other. Admittedly, it gets a bad rep because-"

Another snort from Jacob. "'Art form' is a stretch. The only place it's an art-form is-"

"Hey, asshole." Elbowing him roughly, and lifting his head, for once, from his food, Jared turned to cast Jacob a warning looking. "Let her finish."

Jacob muttered something under his breath which I didn't catch, but which made Jared jerk his gaze to him once more to give him a warning look, but the acerbic Quileute boy didn't say anything more.

"As I was saying," Kim continued, clearing her throat and resting her comparatively tiny hand over her boyfriend's pint-sized one. Jared cast a warm glance in her direction and linked their hands together, putting his head down to continue eating his food. "The people who go there do mainly focus on animation and stuff like that, but they bring along all sorts of materials so if you want to paint, you can paint, or if you want to draw landscapes with watercolours you can do that. The only thing they're not a fan of for some reason is charcoals but that's only because there was a bit of a fiasco involving a tin of them a couple years back."

I frowned as I tried to imagine what sort of fiasco could have happened to have made the art society abandon them as a tool altogether.

"But go, and see you if you like it," Kim urged, smiling warmly at me. "I bet you'd have loads of fun and it's a perfect way to meet new people."

"If you do end up going," Jacob said, waiting a few seconds after Kim had finished talking, probably so he wasn't on the receiving end of another of Jared's death glares. "Then bring Kim with you. She misses it."

My tummy rumbled again, and I put a hand over it as if to say stop that. "Oh? You used to go?"

"I used to," was the reluctant-sounding response. The long-haired Quileute girl was no longer looking at me, but was instead spearing a few green beans with her fork. "But the Wednesday afternoon thing wasn't working out for me. I-"

"Bullshit," interrupted Jacob. "You stopped going because of tweedle-dee." Jerking his head diagonally to the right, I followed the motion and found those two girls that had behaved so contemptuously towards Kim on my first day at school. Duna was laughing loudly at something on a phone Marissa was holding close to her face. "Admit it."

My friend looked very uncomfortable. "I didn't stop going because of her, it just became not so fun to be there anymore, that's all."

"Did Duna go to art society too, then?" I asked, trying to decode the conversation I only partially understood the context of."

A nod of the head affirmed my question. "She paints," Kim explained. "She's really good, too. I prefer watercolours, though."

"Duna Sands is hardly a good artist," Jacob scoffed. "For example, Frankie, one of Duna's best known works is this piece where she's just painted loads of red telephones on a beige background. Now, does that sound interesting to you?"

"She's very influenced by Magritte," Kim explained to me. "Some of her artwork's up in E block if you want to have a look."

Jacob's subsequent eye-roll was so exaggerated I thought it might actually have caused some corneal strain.

"I'm gonna go get some food," I said, standing up and stretching my arms above my head. A rewarding click made me sigh. "See you in a sec."

As I turned around, I inwardly, and maybe a little outwardly too, groaned. The line that had formed while I was talking to Jacob and Kim had grown exponentially into the the biggest snake ever. I walked to the back of the queue, passing a girl in my Chemistry class who I had engaged in small chit-chat with. Her lips pulled up in a smile, and I gave a brief little wave. As I settled at the back of the queue, a warmth settled in my stomach.

Things seemed to really be working out for me at Quileute Tribal High.

After I was handed my tray of food, I stared down at the deliciousness. There were no tags beside the pyrex dishes of food beneath the warmer display, so while I knew that what I held in my hands smelt amazing, I didn't actually know what any of it was

Turning around to walk back to the table, I saw that there was someone at the table who hadn't been there before. In fact, I don't think I'd seen him yet at school, not even in passing in the hallways.

Because I knew that if I did, I would surely remember.

In a word, he was massive. Massive like Jared and Paul. Massive in a way that demanded others' attention, with shoulders so wide and corded I thought you could probably put two average men together and get the same silhouette. And his face…

In a word, he was, ah, very handsome. High cheekbones and a strong jaw cast his face as all angles, but his mouth, for want of a better word, was pouty. It was the sort of mouth that at its resting state made the rest of the face look like it was sulking.

He, whoever he was, also looked supremely pissed off.

Jacob had a permanent agitated and sardonic slant to his mouth, as though he was in constant reckoning with something that he never directly articulated, that instead manifested in sudden bursts of anger at bizarre conversation topics.

But this guy's mouth was curled in a sneer, and there was something in his demeanour, maybe the tightness in his shoulders, the way he sat so upright and alert, that said don't come near me. Right now, he was saying something in a low voice to Jacob, who himself seemed to be angrily engaged in whatever conversation they were having. My eyes slid to Jared, who was still holding Kim's hand but had his head inclined towards the conversation with the other two boys.

God, what the hell was in the water on the rez? The three boys, having a fervent, low conversation about something that didn't sound pleasant at all cut striking figures. I watched as glances lingered over their frames, and on the guy I'd never met before in particular,, but the three of them seemed either oblivious or uncaring of the attention they were attracting.

Hotness crept up my neck and onto my cheeks as I slid my tray onto the table, next to Kim and opposite the guy I was unfamiliar with.

I caught a "...honestly thinks he can use me as bait, I'll show the motherfucker he's got another thing coming," from the one I didn't recognise.

"Francesca, you haven't met Paul, have you?" Kim said brightly, too brightly. She said the guy's name - Paul - loudly, as though she was communicating something other than merely getting his attention.

Suddenly, I felt very out of place.

That sneer was still infusing those handsome features with malice as 'Paul' lifted his eyes to mine.

I swallowed as I met his eyes, angry and stormy in a way that made Jacob's waspishness seem positively amiable. His gaze was full of a darkness I didn't understand, and didn't think that I could understand, even if he tried to enlighten me.

And then his expression just...changed.

From where I stood, I heard his sharp intake of breath.

Hey, you! Just a note to say I am so appreciative of the reviews I've received thus far, and would really, really love it if I received some more! I mentioned this in the previous chapter, but as this is my first fanfiction I feel like I'm shooting in the dark a lot of the time, so any thoughts at all are highly regarded. Thank you xxx