Curse Jake! I thought mutinously. Why did he have to bring it up now? At all?
I kicked the doona off, leaving it knotted on the floor. Bed wasn't helping, my room wasn't helping. The whole inside thing. It wasn't helping.
I flung my self from the twisted sheets and headed for the stairs. Some times being part vampire was a pain: the height from my attic room was just too high to jump.
I ran south-east, headed for the oldest part of the forest. Here the trees were ancient and huge, beards of moss hung from their branches.
My tree stood on the top of a small rise, it's knurled roots twisting through the dark soil surrounding it. It was only the matter of a minute to scale right to the topmost branches.
Just sitting here, my mind cleared. I breathed out deeply, reaching for a pine cone. A light breeze caused the tree to sway slightly. From here I could see the mountains and right across the ocean to James Island. Slowly I shredded the pine cone, piece by piece as I sat back and contemplated my own mind. Being able to show others my mind didn't mean that I understood it for myself most of the time.
I don't know what a normal person would worry about when faced with such a quandary. But I wasn't normal, Jacob wasn't normal, my whole family wasn't normal. We were, in fact, just about as abnormal as you could get. We were even abnormal for our respective abnormal societies.
As it were I had my own problems.
It was over time for us to move on. My family had long since stopped visiting the town. The story had been that the whole family had moved closer to the universities where various members were supposedly studying. The only ones to know different were Jake, Grampa, Sue, Billy and the rest of the packs. The fact that they didn't age had to be kept secret from the rest of the normal human population. That was the rules.
I had been the opposite. In seven years I had grown from baby to adult, which would have been even more obvious than the whole non-aging thing. Being able to spend time with people was one thing I was looking forwards to now I had stopped growing.
Oh Jake, what was I supposed to do? I wasn't even sure myself where I wanted this to go. I sighed and plucked another pine cone. Jake was my best friend, my brother, could he become more? Did I want him to?
The questions spun through my head, not finding answers. I needed to talk to someone; this was far too much for one part vampire to try to figure out on her own.
I'd always confided in Jake, could I do so this time?
I glanced up at the one small patch of blue sky in the otherwise over-cast sky, and decided that it was worth a shot, he'd never miss led me before. I slipped down the tree and headed for home.