A/N: Are Jasper and Alice finally going to meet in this chapter...? (wink, wink).
I thought that they were going to meet in the next chapter, but this chapter was way too short, so I decided to combine it with the next chapter. Tell me what you think, I'm not Edward, so I can't hear it! (:
By the way, thank XxNonstoppSmilerxX that I got this chapter out so fast. Well, at least this is fast when it comes to me and the bunch of homework and tests I'm ignoring to post this.
(ROSALIE'S POV)
As usual, the moment I opened my eyes, a terrible headache crashed upon me. I did the same as always, and tried to ignore the throbbing pain. It didn't help, but it was better than the only other option: to focus on the raw hunger instead. Take a pill? Thanks for the advice, but I didn't have a lot of pills to choose from unless I counted drugs. I didn't, yet.
I opened my eyes instead and stared one of the dirty walls. It would help my eyes to get used to the dark, even though the mud covering the walls were dark to. When it became possible for me to see something, at least, I glanced around in the room. I rather wished that I wouldn't have been able to see it. It wasn't exactly a pleasant sight.
When my eyes wandered over to Jasper's empty mattress, my breath caught. It wasn't empty! It came as a total shock. The days when the two of us were 'home' at the same time were rare, and hadn't occurred in over a week now.
I tried to stop myself from gasping from happiness, but it was too late. Jasper stirred around in his bed and turned his serious face towards me.
"Good morning," he muttered with his hoarse voice. Of course, we couldn't actually see whether it was morning or not – the only window was covered with dust so thickly that our room constantly was dark. We were however pretty good at guessing.
"It's a surprise that you are home." I watched him stretch his bruised arms above his head. He really did deserve better… I forced the guilty feelings aside. I'd deal with them later.
Even though I hadn't seen him in a week, he looked just like he always did. His blonde hair was muddy and stuck up in every angle. His clothes were the same as he usually wore, but maybe a bit cleaner: the pair or black jeans and the black trashed T-shirt. If I remembered correctly, the laundry day (once a week) had been a few days ago. I didn't really know a lot about his life…
He was the same old Jasper, but the look in his eyes had changed again. Sure, it was dark in our room – maybe I didn't see him clearly. However, I knew my brother, and I knew when he was immensely unhappy.
He attempted to smile, but I think it came out more bitter than he had meant for it to. "I've got something for you." He reached into his jeans pocked and pulled out a... what was it? Could it be a chocolate bar? I hadn't eater chocolate since... a lot of years ago.
I looked at him and knew how hopeful my eyes were. "It's a chocolate bar," he explained, when I didn't make a move for it. I knew how skinny he was, so I immediately suggested that we could share it. He simply shook his head, and the chocolate tasted too good for me to ask again.
It was perfect. The sweet taste mixed with the bitter chocolate... I've heard that hunger makes the best appetite, but apparently it's true regarding chocolate too.
The chocolate bar ended long before I would have wanted it too, though there was nothing to do about that. Even a little of it had been amazing.
Then, I finally took the time to actually look at Jasper. He looked miserable, as usual, but had fewer bruises than usual. The only sign that he had recently been in a fight was an already fading black eye. I grinned in spite of myself – that must mean that he had won the fight."Any plans for today?" I asked him.
"Just the usual." He sighed, "Got school today?"
I nodded. It was Friday, which meant that the boring weekend was getting closer. I didn't like school, but the thought of spending another full day by walking around the house wasn't too appealing either. Not much of a shocker there, then.
A loud crash from the kitchen caused Jasper to jump up to his feet. His eyes had been distant for a while now, and now I finally realized that he had waited for the sound of our scary foster parents waking up.
Jasper muttered something about having to work and told me that I should be going to school. Instead of retorting, as I wanted to, I put on some of the cleaner clothes on the floor. "Bye," I sighed and loosely hugged him. He'd never hug me back (something that hurt me more than I admitted) but at least he didn't pull away.
Ten minutes later, while I was running to the crashed bus station, the taste of the delicious chocolate bar lingered in my mouth. I really, really hoped that Jasper would give me a few more of those.
Then I remembered what he had once said while our real parents were alive. Hoping doesn't get you anywhere. Fighting does.
(JASPER'S POV)
Rose had gone to school a few hours earlier, so I could sneak outside without any guilty feelings. I'd had a shift with a few of my guys earlier today, but the only thing we had done was stealing some soda from an apartment. Extremely exciting… not.
This would have been my free hour. Once again, I was spending it with searching after a fancy car to steal. I would rather not, though, but after seeing how much my sister had enjoyed that chocolate bar... while watching her eat it, I had made a decision – I'd fix her some more good food, no matter what the cost would be.
I hated stealing cars; I considered walking a few blocks away and then rob a supermarket instead. Sadly, the risk of being caught was higher than by doing my what I did best. I'd also have to share all of it with the large gang, which wouldn't leave me much.
This was the fourth trashy street I was walking through. I hadn't found anything interesting enough. These neighborhoods didn't have any stupid rich-kids who happened to leave their cars behind. The nicest car on this particular street was a white Nissan, which was pretty worthless when calculating the money it would give me.
Suddenly, I saw a flash of red next to me. It was a damn hot motorcycle, something that'd definitely earn me some hardcore food cash. It also happened to belong to one of the leaders in our rival gang. Damn, that was too perfect to be true.
Even though this vehicle stealing wasn't something I liked, these situations were too hard to resist. The bike's owner obviously wasn't there, and very few people were on the street – none of them would be able to stop me, or even call the cops.
I didn't hesitate any more. Hotwiring the babe went smoothly – obviously. Once I was on it, no alarm went off. And driving it? Well, it was awesome.
The way to the gang garage was almost too short. I'd love to drive it longer than so... But that wasn't something I'd get to do. That shit was starting to irritate me. The 'guard' at the garage entrance recognized me and let me drive in.
Once I was inside, I had to jump off the awesome bike. I did it exactly on time, because the first person I met inside the garage happened to be the gang's leader, Shatown. Yeah, his name was weird as fuck – but who was I to whine about it?
"You've grabbed a hot piece of shit again, Whitlock. Plannin' on a career?" Shatown drawled. (A/N: He didn't go to school at all, he's supposed to talk weirdly. Also, he's in a gang, they do swear, right?)
"Well, no, but it'd be a hell of a mistake to let this baby slip, right?"
He agreed, and I pushed the car deeper inside of the garage. One of the other guys in the gang shouted at me across the quite big garage. "Aren't you ever caught, Whit? I'll have to crash your car party some time."
I didn't bother answering; instead, I smirked at him. That guy, Michael, was the best at pocket theft, but bringing him along to steal a car... not such a good idea.
"Let's take a look at this honey. You can stay here a few hours, right, Whit?" One of Shatown's buddies said to me. He was kind of 'in charge' of all car and bike business. I nodded my agreement. Yeah, I didn't have any choice.
This was going to be one hell of a long day...
(Still Jasper's POV, 24 hours later + a few more... - should have been next chapter)
The dark surrounding me was soothing. Car thefts made me guilty – but I was slowly running out of other options. It'd be dangerous to think that I could somehow get rid of the guilt. Even these thoughts I had right now were too filled with the irritating emotion called 'hope'. Hope made everything seem so much worse once you realize that there is no way out.
Nevertheless, that wasn't what I should focus on. For once, I wasn't on a car chase again, looking after something that wasn't a collection of worthless trash pieces. I was actually only on a walk, trying to ease my mind from all the guilt it carried.
So far, it wasn't going so well. I tried again, harder this time, to push away all thoughts from my mind. What would one of those whiny rich-kids think about? I tried to imagine it in my head.
That rusty old apartment is in a cool building... I silently wondered whether it would be easy to break into it... and then caught myself before I could continue that thought.
It was simply the way my mind worked. It was trained to calculate all sorts of things into anything that'd give me an advantage. I sighed and walked faster, and soon I had gone down another one of these pointless streets.
What I saw parked in the middle of the street made me stop dead in my tracks. Okay, so maybe not dead. But the sight certainly was shocking. The ... thing... a few meters away from me was a freaking yellow Porsche.
It shocked me. Who'd leave a Porsche in these kinds of neighborhoods? And who the fuck bought a yellow Porsche? It was sweet... but it also looked weird. I also couldn't help to notice how extremely expensive it must be.
I was next to it in a flash of a second and readied myself to hotwire it. There was no one nearby and I wouldn't miss an opportunity like this. That was when I heard the voice. My blood froze to ice. Even my almost non-existent heart stopped beating. The voice of a teenage girl yelled something to me.
"I love that car. If you steal it, I'll be really sad..."
Holy fuck, someone had busted me. That never happened! Wait, why wasn't she calling the cops? I froze in front of the car. Surely I had a chance to drive off before she saw my face and could tell on me. Should I?
"Please, don't."
(ALICE'S POV – 4 hours earlier.)
It was finally Saturday! Forks High School wasn't my favorite place, but I couldn't complain. I sat with Rose on lunch again yesterday, and we had a few classes together.
However, I felt like weekends were going to be my favorite days.
My brothers and I were sitting in my yellow Porsche, on our way to Seattle. We had decided to watch a movie there instead of only going to Port Angeles. That place was already getting boring. I had never been to Seattle before, so I let Edward drive. He drove excessively slowly for my taste, even though he was breaking the traffic rules.
We arrived at the Seattle movie theatre during one hour, which wasn't too bad. Then it was time for us to decide which movie we were going to see. I honestly didn't care. My brothers, on the other hand, were making it a big deal.
"A romantic comedy? Dude, seriously!" Emmett snorted at Edward's suggestion. "Let's watch action instead."
"What about action and romance?" Edward suggested.
"Just because you won't get some doesn't mean that we'll watch a romantic movie with you, Eddy," he grinned.
Edward looked pissed off. "Last I checked, you don't have a girlfriend either."
I sighed and decided to interrupt their argument by quickly buying three tickets to a romantic action movie. Emmett whined about the romantic part, but shut up while we waited for the movie to begin.
Seattle movie theatre certainly wasn't big, but it wasn't too small either. During the whole movie, I fought not to fall asleep. It wasn't such a bad movie... It was however really boring and there was not much of a story to follow. It was mostly random people making out and a lot of guns and blood. When the movie was finally over, I think all of us breathed in relief. We went out of the theatre and breathed some fresh air greedily.
"Dude, that was terrible!" Emmett's horrified voice made me laugh. It really had been terrible. We decided that we'd not take romantic action next time – as if that hadn't been obvious.
I grimaced to them. "What should we do now?"
It was Emmett that came up with the plan, and both Edward and I agreed to it, even though I didn't like the last part of it - my brothers, however, were overly excited.
We went to a fast-food place and each bought a sandwich. When we were done, I let Emmett drive to a store that apparently was cheap and sold training clothes. However, as we drove deeper inside the buildings and houses of a poorer part in Seattle, I got a bad feeling in my gut. These streets were dangerous, obviously, and we had left the safety of Seattle's mall a long time ago.
The sky was now pitching black, which didn't improve the unsafe feeling these streets gave me. Finally, Emmett pulled up on a side road and parked the car in the middle of the street. There weren't a lot of other cars there, and none of them were at all fancy.
This was definitely a part of Seattle that didn't wrinkle its nose by drugs and criminals.
"The shop is in the next street. Are you coming with us, Alice?" I shook my head – a sports shop didn't sound interesting. The boys shrugged and I watched them walk away from the passenger seat.
I sat still for about ten minutes, staring out of the car window, and then suddenly got a feeling. It was as if every nerve in my body was telling me that I had toget out of the car now. I didn't know why it was so important – and it also wasn't an impulse that sounded tempting.
Taking one last glance out of the window, to the dark and narrow streets, I threw my car door open. The cold wind stole my balance for a moment, but I caught the car and was able to straighten myself out. I reminded myself that I'd have to buy a thicker jacket soon. The crazy impulse to do something had disappeared. However, now that I was outside, I might as well take a walk. There was no one nearby, and I had the keys to lock my car.
I walked down the street and took a sharp left turn into another one of these not-so-crowded streets. A few minutes later, I started to panic. The sky was too dark and the streets were too quiet. Maybe it was better if I went back to the car…
I got back just in time to see a dark figure stand uncomfortably close to my car. It was a man... Or was it a very muscular teenager? His muscles were tensing inside his black, trashed t-shirt. His hair was so muddy that I wasn't sure whether he actually had blonde hair.
I gasped when I realized that he was trying to hotwire my car. If I stood here one more second, he'd probably even succeed. I couldn't see his face, but I was sure that it looked just as dangerous as the rest of him. I took a deep breath, which I struggled to make quiet.
I couldn't just stand here and not do anything!
It only was a split second decision before my high-pitched voice cut through the air like a blade rasping a metal plate.
"I love that car! If you steal it, I'll be very sad."
He didn't say anything. He didn't even turn his head to look at me. But I had seen how his muscles had tensed a bit and his well-defined cheekbone seemed to clench. He had definitely heard me.
"Please, don't." My voice shook a little and my surprise increased when he actually answered me back.
"Why not?" His voice was hoarse and rough and the anger in them scared me more than anything. "It's just a car."
I wasn't sure what made me say what I did next.
"I got it for my sixteenth birthday. My grandmother convinced bought it for me so I could go and visit her in Chicago. Like on a car trip, you know. I promised her that I would. My parents got angry at her for it, they've had something against her ever since I was born. She died a month after buying the car for me. She didn't even tell us that she had cancer, and we didn't even go to the funeral. I still haven't fulfilled my promise, and it would suck if I couldn't."
Something in his features changed and he turned his dark, endless eyes towards me. He stared straight at me and I now saw his face. He seemed so… familiar, that it shocked me. He slowly started to back away from the car. He didn't look away nor relax his position. Soon he was almost swallowed by the shadows.
"Wait!" I yelled. "What's your name?"
I couldn't figure out why that'd be important, but I felt like it was. He turned away and walked into the shadows provided by an alley.
He called back to me quietly. "It's Jasper."
Jasper. Where had I heard that before…?
