7. SCARY STORIES
The Star Trek Botswain whistle was going off incessantly in my room. I could hear it through the noise of my shower. There was nothing that would force me out of the hot water before I was ready, so I took my time shaving and rinsing my hair. When I returned to my phone there were more than 20 new messages in the Lunch Crew chat. After scrolling through to get the gist of the conversation I shot back a reply.
~On my way in 10, y'all.~
As soon as the message showed delivered I dove into my closet pulling on the warmest things I had. Sun or no sun, this was still Washington in February, it wouldn't get warmer than 45 degrees.
Everyone was assembled in the parking lot of the sporting goods store Mike's parents owned when I arrived. The swarm of happy collegiates had nearly filled all of the available spaces, but there was a spot left near the group that I could fit my tiny car into, so I swung in and joined them.
"La!" Mike called with a big friendly wave. "You made it!"
"I told you I was coming, Mike."
"Well, I think we're just waiting on two more unless you invited someone?" He eyed me expectantly.
"Nope," I lied to him effortlessly. It didn't matter; Emmett wouldn't be back in town until the next day anyway.
"Great!" The happy reaction I received triggered a glower from Jessica. "You can ride shotgun with me!"
"Thanks…" I looked at Jessica sheepishly, but the guilt wasn't warranted. I was able to wedge her between Mike and myself in the front seat, which made her very happy.
The road to La Push was absolutely beautiful. It wound through the dense green forest this way and that with random stunning glimpses of the wide Quillayute River. The others chatted and sang and told stories on the way while I did my best to remember anything about this place.
My mother told me we used to spend a lot of time in La Push with my aunt and uncle when we lived here. Both my mother and uncle were Quileute and had grown up just outside the reservation. When my uncle lost his job in San Francisco, he and my mother had moved back into the small cottage style house their parents had owned. The few times I'd come to visit him since moving to Forks myself, had ended there on the outskirts of the res. I had yet to venture further in toward the coast.
Nothing looked really familiar to me yet, so I gazed around avidly waiting for some memory to pop up. We pulled into a parking lot designated for beach-goers beside little resort that blocked the greater part of our view as we approached the water. The view expanded by increments as we rounded the resort until, suddenly, the full majesty of the mile-long crescent appeared.
The sun was still rising over the rocky shore; the ocean lapping at it lazily as we approached. It was a breathtaking vision. Suddenly I had a memory of two girls sitting with me around a campfire… Rachel and Rebecca, if memory served. We would huddle around the fire while our parents drank beers and grilled out. I wondered idly if they still lived in the reservation or if they'd moved on.
Once we arrived I took a few more steps toward the ocean, watching it heave over the rocks, and beat up against the sheer cliff sides of the random islands that jutted out of the harbor. They stood like austere sentinels peering ever westward through the gloom. There was only a thin stretch of sand just before the water, the rest of the crescent was taken up with large round stones of varying colors, the gaps between them filled with moss, seaweed and bright splashes of other unnamable greenery. The tide line was littered with gigantic driftwood trees creating a stalwart wall against the ever-present beating of the ocean.
I watched the grey water for another long moment, thinking that it was precisely the color of Emmett's eyes when he'd dropped me off on Thursday. I wondered idly whether he would have come here with me had he not been camping with his brother.
The others had found a fire pit that had obviously been well loved and set to building a fire out of driftwood. This was clearly a familiar task to several of the people in our group as the teepee shape was sturdy and expertly filled with as many flammables as they could find.
"Have you ever seen a driftwood fire before?" Mike leaned over to ask me. I shook my head and watched as he lit a slender twig with a cigarette lighter. He fit the flaming twig into the debris under the teepee until it caught. "Watch this."
When the flames started to lick up the wood I noticed with some awe that they were blue.
"The salt!" I exclaimed.
"Pretty, isn't it?" he asked. I watched the fire eat its way into the wood and let Jessica reclaim his attention.
The chatter continued for several more minutes until someone suggested going to see the tide pools. I jumped at the chance as I hadn't seen them since I was a small child.
The tide pools were one of the first things that got me really interested in the sciences. They were beautiful little microcosms of oceanic life clearly visible to the eye and I found them fascinating.
The hike wasn't long at all. Before I knew it I was leaning over a large rock peering into a natural aquarium. The tide pool below me was full of brightly colored anemones undulating in an invisible current, little crabs hiding in their shells, a starfish stuck motionless to a rock as another crab tiptoed deliberately around it. I hung myself over a boulder, dangling my fingertips into the water, mindful about not disturbing any of the life as I watched.
Eventually, several members of our party claimed hunger was driving them to distraction, so we all headed back to the fire for some snacks. When we arrived there were several new people around the fire. All had copper skin and shining black hair; boys from the reservation come to socialize.
One of the lunch crew made introductions around as we approached and I noticed one of the newcomers turn in my direction as my name was said. He was one of the few wearing his hair down around his shoulders rather than pulled tightly back into a ponytail or in a braid down along his spine. It came to his waist in luxurious folds of silk that he swept aside as he faced me, expression full of open curiosity. He was wearing an old threadbare shirt that might have been red at one point, but had given up most of its pigment.
Mike brought me a sandwich just then so I turned toward a driftwood bench and dug in. After everyone had eaten the group split up to go see separate things. Some went up to the tide pools for the second time, others made a run into the reservation proper to get some more snacks, while still others turned toward the water for a walk. When my bench companion jumped up to join the hikers the man with that incredible hair came to sit by me.
I took a moment to appreciate him before he spoke. He was clearly Native American with beautiful russet skin, dark eyes set deep under a strong brow and high fierce cheekbones. His jaw was straight and pronounced and led into the graceful curve of his neck. His hair maintained the same appearance of silk up close that it had from the other side of the fire. It was identical my mother's hair before hers had become streaked with silver. I'd always been jealous of it growing up, as mine was a hybrid of hers and my Dominican father's. Jet black, but full of unruly waves.
I put him right around 20 to 22 years old, the baby fat was gone, but he hadn't completely filled out yet. His old bedraggled shirt hung limply on him. It couldn't disguise the residual gangliness of a teenager that still clung to his tall frame.
"Are you Kevin's niece? Kala?"
I went very still, blood draining from my face. As he noticed my reaction he smacked his forehead with the heel of his hand and moved quickly to cover his mistake.
"Crap," he swept his hair back over his shoulder and turned to me more directly. "I'm Jacob Black," he held out hand, which I took in a light shake as I listened to the bell's ringing in my head. I definitely knew that name. "Your uncle said you'd changed your name. I totally forgot, sorry about that."
I looked at him warily but found I couldn't distrust him. He had a sincere honesty that hung about his features, and he certainly looked contrite.
"It's Delilah," I relented. "La for short." I let myself welcome him with a smile, and let it warm as he smiled back at me.
"Kevin and my dad, Billy, are good friends. You and I spent some time down here on the beach together when we were little."
The faces of the two girls I'd remembered earlier resurfaced. There had been a third child, a young boy that was frequently hanging from Rebecca's skirts.
"Oh! Rachel and Rebecca!" I remembered. "I should probably remember you more clearly, too."
"No way," he said indifferently. "I was a baby… I think I might have been 4 or 5 when you and your mom and sister moved away."
"Right, right," I nodded. "We had to babysit you. Rebecca used to complain about it… How is she? Are they here?"
"No, no," he shook his head with a grin. "Rachel got a scholarship to Washington State so she chose the Seattle campus, and Rebecca married a Samoan surfer. She lives in Hawaii now."
"Whoa," I let the astonishment show. "Married? She can't be too much older than I am?"
"She's 25."
"Wow." Same age, much different life.
"So, what brings you back to Forks?" he asked.
"School," I told him. He gave a loud snort that earned him an expectant look. "What?"
"Didn't you get out of here already? Why would you come back here for school?" He was bursting with comical disappointment.
"My uncle still lives here, as you know," I explained. He nodded at my words. "And he lost his wife not too long ago, so that was part of it. But mostly I just really needed to be somewhere very different from where I was."
"I can get that, this place is just so…" he looked around at the beauty surrounding him without seeing it and let the sentence trail off.
"Amazing? Awe-inspiring? Beautiful? Welcoming?" I supplied to which he laughed. It was a very good laugh, husky in all the right places. One of the girls I'd never warmed to noticed the laugh and interjected in a very insolent tone.
"You know La, Jacob?"
"We've sort of known each other since I was born," he supplied with another laugh.
"How nice," her smile was so venomous I wanted to smack it off of her face. The smile suddenly turned to an expression of obviously insincere concern as she continued. "I was just saying to Tyler that it was such a shame none of the Cullens could make it today. Didn't anyone think to invite them?"
Her name was Lauren and she was an absolute snake; a vicious, petty girl.
"Dr. Carlisle Cullen's family?" the eldest of the reservation folks spoke up before I could spit a reply at Lauren. He looked very serious and suddenly unwelcoming, contradicting the statement I'd just made to Jacob.
"Yes, you know them?" Somehow Lauren was able to look down her nose at the man without standing up. If I wasn't so disgusted with her I may have been impressed.
"The Cullens don't come here," he said severely closing the subject. It sounded like he was saying they weren't allowed to come here; that they were prohibited, but why would that be? I looked over at Jacob and found him watching me with heavy-lidded but alert eyes. I knew that look very well, indeed. In all honesty, if my head wasn't so full of Emmett I would probably be reciprocating his admiration. Jacob was a very good looking man. To my shame, the possibility of his attraction gave me an idea.
"You wanna walk down the beach with me?" I asked and gave him a sly smile from the corner of my mouth. It was wrong and totally unfair, but I needed information. If that heavy-lidded sexy look he just gave me meant what I thought, I could use it to my advantage.
"Let's go," he offered his hand gallantly and swung me up from my driftwood perch.
We headed toward the fallen bone white trees lining the shore, stepping carefully between multihued rocks. The clouds finally obscured the sun bringing an end to our beautiful day. The temperature plummeted as the sea darkened to an ominous color. Our conversation was light, easy, and full of merriment as we approached the trees. We walked until we found a large piece of driftwood that curved up from the sand with a branch stretching along the base, parallel, creating a natural bench. I waited until we were seated and comfortable before I brought up the reason I'd brought him out here away from the others.
"Who was that guy that was talking to Lauren?" I asked, trying to sound casual. "He seemed a little serious to be hanging out with a group of goofy college kids like us."
"That's Sam," he informed me with a massive eye-roll. "I don't know what got into him recently. He used to be a lot more fun."
"What was he saying about the doctor's family? He made it seem like he didn't like them."
"Yeah, the Cullens aren't supposed to come here," he shoved his hands in his pockets and looked away out towards James Island. I followed his gaze and took in the rugged cliff face and jagged top that was dotted with tall fir trees.
"Why not?"
He chortled. "I'm not supposed to say, it's a really dumb story. Actually, you probably already know it."
Not supposed to say? That raised all kinds of red flags, and I was fairly certain I didn't know any story that associated the Cullens with my mother's tribe. I racked my brain trying to think of one but came up short. "I won't tell anyone. I'm just curious what all the doom and gloom was about."
He looked at me for a moment, making a decision. "I guess since you're part of the tribe I won't be breaking the treaty…." Then he lowered his voice and leaned toward me. "Do you like scary stories?"
"I love them!" I let my enthusiasm show, knowing he wouldn't know the real reason for it anyway. In fact, I hated scary stories. I had plenty of nightmares as it was, thank you very much. This story, though, was one I needed to hear.
"You spent some time here as a kid, but you may have left before they started telling you the histories. Do you remember any of the stories about where the Quileutes came from?" The question seemed out of context, but I was willing to play along.
"Not really," I admitted, feeling ashamed that I never paid attention when my mom talked about it.
"Well, we have a ton of legends, some of them claiming to date back to the Great Flood. Your mom really didn't tell you this one?"
It came back to me then. "Oh yeah! She said the Quiluetes tied their canoes to the top of a mountain to survive it." But what could the Cullens have to do with the tribe's origin story?
"Silly right? We have a ton like that, but the one the tribe holds close is the one that claims we're descended from wolves, that they're our brothers still."
Oh, right. "And it's against tribal law to kill them," I finished for him. This tidbit of information had been a repetitive theme on the reservation I remembered clearly. It was so much a part of Quileute culture that I'd never thought twice about it.
He nodded enthusiastically and rubbed his hands together as though he could tie that sentence into his next one. "Then there are the stories about the cold ones." He let that linger, watching my face. This I did not remember.
"The cold ones?" I prompted, not worried about looking too interested. Jacob's intensity was catching.
"Yes. There are stories of the cold ones as old as the wolf legends, and some much more recent. According to legend, my own great-grandfather knew some of them. He was the one who made the treaty that kept them off our land.
"He was a tribal elder, like my father. You see, the cold ones are the natural enemies of the wolf—well, not the wolf, really, but the wolves that turn into men, like our ancestors. Others call them werewolves."
"The Quileutes are werewolves?" I asked in utter astonishment. Again, this was not part of the story I remembered. Perhaps my mother had left this part out. I thought about how that applied to Emmett and still couldn't see the connection.
"That's what the elders say, but do you see me sprouting hair from my ears?" he turned his head so I could see for myself. I giggled then made a motion with my hand for him to continue.
"So the cold ones are the traditional enemies of the tribe, but how does this all connect with the Cullens staying off your land?"
"It comes back to this group that came to our territory during my great-grandfather's time. They were different. They didn't hunt the way others of their kind did—they weren't supposed to be dangerous to the tribe. So my great-grandfather made a truce with them. If they would promise to stay off our lands, we wouldn't expose them to the pale-faces." He winked at me. I rolled my eyes at him.
"What made your great grandfather think they weren't dangerous?"
He shook his head, face very grave. "Don't get me wrong. There's always a risk for humans to be around the cold ones, even if they're civilized like this clan claimed to be. You never know when they might get too hungry to resist." He deliberately worked a thick edge of menace into his voice. "This clan claimed they didn't hunt humans. Apparently, they were able to prey on animals instead."
Something in my head clicked into place. "And this fits with the Cullens because they're cold ones like the ones your great grandfather met?" I tried to put skepticism into my voice, but my heart was thumping and a thrill was tingling along my spine.
"No, they're the same ones."
I stared at him, brain working a million miles a second. The same ones. Cold ones. That sounded an awful lot like…
"There are more of them now, a new female and a new male, but the rest are the same. In my great-grandfather's time they already knew of the leader, Carlisle. He'd been here and gone before your people had even arrived." He was smiling now, clearly proud that he'd scared me.
Never aging, immortal, cold, no heartbeat. My face felt stiff as I said the next words.
"The cold ones, they're…" I couldn't bring myself to say it.
"Blood drinkers," he replied darkly. "Vampires."
Goosebumps shot up and down my arms as I shivered.
"Did I scare you?" Jacob asked, torn between amusement and embarrassment.
"You're a great storyteller." I tried to laugh it off, but it sounded strained.
"It's pretty nuts though. No wonder my dad doesn't like anyone talking about it." He was silent for a moment, and then shifted uncomfortably. "Man, I hope I didn't just violate the treaty."
"You didn't if you're allowed to tell ignorant tribe members," I pointed out.
The sound of beach rocks skittering and bouncing against each other alerted us to the presence of another person. I turned to find Mike and Jessica walking down the beach towards us.
"There you are, La!" Mike called, waving his arm over his head. There was a possessiveness in his voice again. I frowned.
"Is that your boyfriend?" Jacob asked, picking up on the jealousy in Mike's exclamation.
"Absolutely not," my defensiveness made him smile.
"You should come out next time Kevin comes over to watch a game with Billy," Jacob said as we watched the two come closer.
"Yeah, definitely." I felt a little guilty that I'd used him but hoped we could forge a friendship out of it anyway.
Mike reached us then and took a moment to appraise his competition. I looked at Jacob again, too, noticing for the second time how pretty he was. If there were any competition to Emmett at all, Jacob would certainly be it.
"Where have you been?" Mike asked stupidly.
"We were just having a walk, talking about local stories," I told him and smiled warmly at Jacob in thanks. "It was enlightening."
"Well," Mike looked between us again obviously wondering what was going on. "We're packing it up. It looks like it's going to rain soon."
The sky did, indeed, seem to be roiling and setting up for a downpour. I popped up quickly, not interested in getting stuck in the rain.
"Okay, I'm coming."
"It was nice to see you again." Jacob was clearly ribbing Mike. I did my best to keep a straight face but lost it when Mike frowned deeply and stomped away, Jessica in tow. Jacob and I hissed giggles behind our hands.
"It really was," I agreed. "I'll see you soon."
When we got back to the Suburban everything was already loaded so I crawled into the back seat next to Angela and leaned my head back trying very hard not to think about everything I'd just heard.
