High school teaches Renesmee a lot about life, even if it can't teach her much about history or English or math. She is thrilled to be included in Will's group of dweeby, kind-hearted friends. There is Kevin, the constantly-joking, impossibly skinny tall one with horn-rimmed glasses and pink-palmed hands that don't seem to match the rest of his skin, which is the color of coffee. There is Justin, the portly one with bad skin and worse breath and the best collection of comics Nessie has ever seen. Richard is the bad boy of the group, which isn't saying much considering the group: his bad-boy status is mostly dependent on the fact that sometimes he will steal his grandpa's car for a few hours' joyride, but since the farthest he ever goes is to the record store at the mall, and he always drives the speed limit, Nessie doesn't really see the harm. And there is Lizzie. Small, golden-skinned, with dark almond-shaped eyes and a ready smile. In fact, all of Nessie's new friends smile easily. It's why she likes them so much.
Having classes with her father drives Nessie crazy, because she can't even daydream with him around, she has to pay absolute attention to the teacher. She can't believe he met her mom in high school. She can't believe he was flirty and cool as little as five years ago, whispering in the back of Bio lab with Bella Swan, daughter of Police Chief Charlie Swan. He is an unbearable drag right now, always breathing down her neck, clearing his throat prissily when her mind wanders from whatever boring lesson they are supposed to be learning about compound nouns and Greek roots and irregular verbs. At least Composition is the only class she has with him.
Health class is much better, because Alice is in that class with her. All of the Cullens are enrolled, but only tiny Alice really looks like a freshman (although Edward and Bella do their weather best). Alice has it down to an art.
"You see," she tells Nessie one day in the girls' locker room, "The physical stuff is one thing. It helps that I'm so scrawny. But to really sell teenage girl, you can't act like you know everything. You have to make some really dumb jokes and say embarrassing things at the wrong times. You have to act like you're always really obsessed with what people think of you."
"Is that what I do?" Nessie asks, horrified.
"Well, a little," Alice admits. "Don't worry, you don't embarrass yourself, you just come off shy, you know? That's exactly what I'm talking about. Rosie can pull off junior or senior, because she is terminally self-assured. Ditto for Emmett. That stuff works for upperclassmen. But for us ickle freshman..."
"You have to act like an immature idiot," Nessie grumbles, hiding her head in her oversized gym t-shirt.
"Don't take it the wrong way, sweetie," Alice says, tying her designer sneakers into an unnecessarily elaborate bow. "It's a good thing that you act the way you do. It's normal to be uncertain sometimes."
Nessie pops her head through the neck-hole of her shirt and grimaces at her aunt. "Well, I'm glad you approve. Thanks a lot."
"Oh, don't be mad!" Alice says, swooping forward to enfold her niece in a hug and looking up several inches into her eyes. "I love you just the way you are!"
Nessie rolls her eyes, but she isn't really angry. By the time she and her aunt are out on the track field, running laps with the rest of their class under the watchful eye of their overweight gym teacher, she has forgotten all about it.
That night, however, she stews over their conversation. She isn't sure what it is that bothers her about it, but she feels unsettled and anxious. She tries to sleep for a while, but she can't get comfy. Finally, at half past one in the morning, she pulls out her cell phone and calls Jake.
"Hey, Ness," he says groggily. Nessie feels instantly guilty that she woke him for something so stupid as her own teenage insecurity.
"Hey, Jake," she whispers, aware that no one in the house is actually asleep and that they all have stellar hearing. "I woke you up, I'm sorry."
"It's okay," he says automatically. "I was having a dumb dream anyway. What's on your mind, Nesslie?"
Nessie doesn't really know how to order her thoughts, but she knows Jake will never judge her, so she comes right out with it. "Jake, do you think I'm immature?"
There is a silence for a while. Then, "In some ways, yes. In other ways, no."
"Thats a safe answer," she says, frowning into the darkness. "What ways? What do I do that's immature?" Nessie twists one curl around and around her left forefinger.
"Maybe 'immature' is the wrong word," Jake amends. "It's clear that you're young, but you're much smarter than anyone else your age—I mean your apparent age."
Nessie already knows she's smart; people tell her that all the time, and anyway it's not what she's interested in at the moment. "But how is it so obvious I'm young?" she demands. "What do I do that's so childish?" She needs to learn what it is so she can fix it. She lives with a bunch of ancient immortals and until now has never questioned her place among them, but suddenly she is worried that she fits in with her family as poorly as she fits in with humans.
"Well," Jake says, and she can tell by the way his tone has changed that he knows he is wandering into dangerous waters. "Okay, you know I love you, right, Ness?"
"Duh," she says. "Now tell me."
"Well," he says again, "Sometimes you...sort of stare at people. Especially people you don't know that well."
"I do?"
"Yeah. That's something most people have learned not to do by the time they're a teenager. But you're not a teenager, technically, and even though you've been taught a lot of things, no one ever taught you about staring. I mean, who would have taught you that? Your family doesn't need to blink, it wouldn't have occurred to them. And I...well, I..."
"Didn't want to hurt my feelings," Nessie finishes for him. "Well, what else?"
"Ness, are you sure you want to talk about this now? It's really late..."
"Yes," Nessie says firmly. It's not fair of her to make him stay on the phone with her when he must be exhausted, but she feels so frazzled that she wants to keep hearing his voice.
"Well, you're really sensitive."
"I don't care, I can take it!" Nessie insists. "You can tell me."
"No," says Jake, "I mean, that's another thing about you. You're really sensitive. You're thin-skinned. People usually learn to roll with the punches as they get older, learn to let things roll off their backs. Not you, though. Everything affects you. I don't know if that's because you're young or if it's because you're your mother's daughter or if its just because you're you."
"I see," says Nessie in a small voice. "I didn't realize I was so...so..." Her voice wavers. "Pathetic," she whispers.
"Aw, Ness," Jake says, "Please don't be upset. These aren't character flaws. They're just...just a part of who you are right now. Some things about you will change as you get older, and some won't. But seriously, everyone has to go through this bullshit, you know? Figuring out who they are and how to deal with life. I mean, you're only three. Cut yourself some slack!"
"Yeah," says Nessie. "Sure."
"Man, I wish I hadn't said anything," Jake grumbles. "It's just 'cause I'm tired and I wasn't thinking..."
"Well," she says, "I asked you, didn't I? All you did was answer my question. And anyway, I amonly three, it's true. But I'm also not. I mean, I don't know what age I feel, but I guess I feel older than three. Does that make sense?"
Jake clutches at this incoherent thread. "Yeah," he says emphatically. "Exactly."
"So stop telling me I'm only three, okay Jake?" She tries to keep the petulant whine out of her voice, tries to sound grown-up and assertive.
"Sure, Ness, whatever you want."
"You don't get it," she says. "I need you to understand that I'm not three anymore. Maybe I don't have an age. Maybe I'm not even a real person!"
"Ness, I'm sorry, but you are talking out of your ass right now," he says through a yawn. "Of course you're a real person."
"I mean, I know I'm not three. I know how to drive already!" Jake snorts discreetly on the other end. "Well, mostly," she adds. "The point is, if you're going to think I'm really young and immature, I at least want you to think I'm the right kind of young and immature. Okay?"
"Okay," he says. "So what age is that, if it's not three?"
"I don't know," she admits. "I can't tell."
"Well, maybe I can help," he offers. "Let's see... Um, do you hate either of your parents yet?"
"What? No!" Nessie exclaims. Then, after a moment, "But my dad is really annoying at school. And my mom is super embarrassing."
"Oh, good," Jake says. "So you're definitely at least thirteen. You know, mentally. Have you, let's see...have you written any morbid poetry in your Trapper Keeper?"
"What's a Trapper Keeper?"
"Sorry, wrong generation. It's a notebook...thingie. My sisters had them."
"Oh. Well, I don't really write a lot of poetry. Except I did some limericks for my Comp class. I don't know if that counts."
"Can you read me one?"
Nessie leans over the bed and rifles in her backpack, pulls out a neatly handwritten page.
"There once was a man from the Valley;
Around children he never could rally.
But when faced with a rubber,
"No, no!" he would blubber.
Now he has too many to tally."
There is a silence, and then Jake lets out a surprised guffaw. "You wrote that?" he says, sounding pleased.
"Yeah," says Nessie.
"Wow," he says. "Did your dad read it?"
"The whole class read it."
"What did he think?"
"He didn't think it was very funny."
"No," agrees Jake. "He wouldn't."
Nessie smiles in the darkness. She wonders if her father is listening in on her thoughts right now, but she has no way of knowing; her parents' room is two floors below hers.
"Yeah, he wasn't big on birth control, was he?" she says.
"Or humor," Jake adds. "I don't think I've ever heard that guy laugh."
"He laughs sometimes," Nessie says. "He used to laugh at everything I did. But he doesn't so much anymore. I don't think he likes me growing up."
"Well, you're kind of speeding through that part. Besides, fathers are always baffled by their teenage daughters."
"Are you glad I'm growing up?" Nessie asks.
"Sure," says Jake. "I mean, you were a really cool baby, and you were a really funny little kid, and now you're a really awesome, um...whatever you are."
"Young woman?" Nessie volunteers.
"Whoa, whoa," says Jake, laughing. "Let's not get carried away here."
"I'm already taller than my mom."
"Everyone's taller than your mom."
"And I'm learning to drive."
"And doing a damn fine job of it, might I say. Although my Rabbit cringes in fear whenever it sees you coming."
"Jake!"
"Kidding, kidding."
"And I read Slaughterhouse Five for English and I actually sort of understood it. Not, you know, a lot..."
"Well, Nessie, I hate to admit it, but I think you might actually kind of sort of be a young...womanish...thing."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence," she jokes. Her voice turns serious. "Hey...Jake?"
"Yeah?"
"How old do you feel?" Nessie is understandably confused about her chronological place in the world, but Jake's got problems of his own. He's only nineteen—not even old enough to drink!—but he has responsibilities above and beyond most nineteen-year-olds'. But he won't age far beyond this age, either: he hit a growth spurt in his teens that projected him into his twenties, where he's likely to stay forever. How does thatsquare up?
There is silence on the other end. Then, "I feel my age, mostly. Sometimes I feel older. When I have to boss the other wolves around, I feel this weird extra layer of authority in my brain. It's not me, it's just the alpha thing wearing my skin. I don't feel like I'm naturally a bossy person, you know? But this alpha thing just leaks right under my skin, makes me act all...ugh. I used to give Sam a hard time about it but I'm not doing any better. It's the not the logistical parts of it, either. I mean, scheduling my wolves is a minor headache, but we haven't had a leech in six months so we don't patrol the way we used to. It's just that every time I wolf up and start giving commands I feel different. Sharper. I don't even feel like me."
"That sounds awful," Nessie says sympathetically.
"It is. And it's not like I have a choice about it. If we go long enough without seeing a leech, the other wolves can go back to being normal, but I never can."
"Because of me," she says, more bitterly than she means to. He'll never be fully human again, because he had the ill-fortune to imprint on an inhuman girl.
"Hey, hey," he says, "Trust me, I wouldn't have it any other way. Besides, I think the imprint is about way more than just you and me, or Emily and Sam, or Jared and Kim. I have a theory."
"What's that?" It seems like everyonehas a theory, but so far they all seem pretty lame to Nessie.
"Well, in the legends, Taha Aki outlived his first two wives. You remember the stories?"
"Yeah, then he imprinted on his third wife."
"Right. After he imprinted on her, he stopped phasing, for obvious reasons."
"Yeah...so?"
"Well, after he died, there were no wolves for a long time, not until Ephraim Black. And they didn't have to stay wolves for very long, because they made the treaty with the Cullens. There wasn't really any actual danger to the tribe, because the Cullens only ate animals."
"Okay. What's your point?"
"Well, when the Cullens moved back a few years ago, they triggered a hell of a lot more phasings than they did before. Partly this was probably because there were more of them by then. I think it was also partly because of your mom."
"What's she got to do with it?"
"Well, the Cullens didn't stay nearly as long the first time, and they interacted with the tribe way less; there wasn't as much of an impact. But this time, because your parents were dating, they stayed and stayed and just...stayed. And I hung out with your mom a lot, and so did the Cullens, and that vampire smell was all over her and it got all over me and I carried it back to the rez, and so after like a year suddenly there were eight new wolves. Eight. And it's a good thing, too, because your mom is a magnet for trouble; more and more vampires kept coming to the area, which triggered more and more phasings. None of us had any idea what we were doing. We were in very real danger, us and our whole tribe, and we had no idea how to fight it at all. It would have been really nice if Ephraim had been around then, to show us the ropes, you know? Explain things to Sam, explain things to all of us."
Jacob pauses and takes a deep breath. Nessie can vaguely see where this is going, but she doesn't interrupt.
"Okay," Jake goes on. "So, Sam was alpha because he phased first, but the alpha thing doesn't get into his brain the way it does with me. He was never really meantto be alpha, and so he imprinted right away, because hey, what happens when you imprint?"
"You stop phasing," Nessie answers.
"Right. Imprinting gave him a, kind of a statute of limitations on leadership. He'll never want to outlive Emily; he won't even be able to. He's planning on giving up phasing as soon as we're confident that there won't be any more leeches coming through. Same for all the other imprinted wolves, and I would expect that even the ones that don't imprint won't want to outlive their families. Basically, every single wolf is going to stop phasing and resume aging sooner or later. Everyone except..."
"Except you," Nessie says.
"Except me," he echoes. "I may not always have to patrol and stuff like that, but I'll never stop phasing, because I imprinted on an immortal. God willing, I'll still be here in a hundred years, so the next time some band of red-eyed leeches decides to take advantage of the cloud cover over the Olympic Peninsula, and some little Quileute boys who haven't even been born yet start having growth spurts and anger management issues, they'll have someone to look to, someone who knows what to do. We'll never be caught with our pants down again." There is a long pause. "That's my theory, anyway," he adds in the sort of studied, offhand voice that signals he actually thinks about it a lot.
"It sounds reasonable."
"Yeah," he says."And hey, if you'd never been born, maybe I wouldn't have imprinted ever. Or I'd have imprinted on a human, and aged and died. But you wereborn. Maybe the wolf gene is just really opportunistic."
"It makes sense," says Nessie quietly. "It sounds awfully...um, calculating."
"Well, I don't even know if I'm right," says Jake quickly. "But anyway, we always knew the imprint is weird and mysterious and annoying."
"Annoying, huh?"
"You'renot annoying," he says. "But can I be honest?"
"You can always be honest with me," Nessie says.
"I don't know how I would have felt about you if I hadn't imprinted on you. Maybe I would have hated you. But I think not. I mean, everyone adored you as soon as they laid eyes on your tiny fuzzy baby head. Maybe I would have too. Even Leah liked you right away, and Leah is a heartless bitch."
"Jake!"
"Well, she is!" Jake says defensively. "I mean, she's my beta, and she's awesome, and I can't believe I'm admitting this but she's one of my best friends. But that doesn't change the fact that she's brutally cynical."
"Well, maybe," Nessie concedes. "Okay, go on with what you were saying."
"Well, when push came to shove, even if I hadn't imprinted on you, the wolves would have fought alongside the Cullens. We wouldn't have had a choice, with the Volturi coming. We would have needed all the allies we could get, even if we rejected the treaty afterward. And I was angry at your mom, but I never wanted her dead, you know?"
"Sure."
"So, what was the biggest impact of imprinting on you? Not the ceasefire, which would have happened sooner or later. None of the other theories out there, either. The only lasting effect is that I'll be around forever, I'll always know exactly how to handle being a wolf, I'll always know how to be an alpha and handle new phasings. From my tribe's point of view, that's a huge freakin' benefit."
"So you imprinted on me because it's good for your tribe."
"I know it sounds cold, but I'd rather it be that than...anything else."
"Why? What else could it be?"
"Oh," Jake says uncomfortably, "There are other theories. Stuff about, you know...genes..."
It hits Nessie what Jake is getting at. "Oh," she says. "Okay, I get it, I get it. You don't have to say any more."
"Thanks," he says, sounding relieved. "And I mean, I used to think imprinting was all about dictating love. That's how it seemed with Sam and Emily. And I hated that. I hated the whole idea of it. There was a while when I hoped I would imprint, so I would stop caring about your mom. But it doesn't work that way. It's not like I imprinted on you and then you just replacedher."
"Um, that's good," Nessie says drily, "Since I was a baby and all."
Jake laughs easily at this. "Yeah, yeah," he says. "I know, imprinting is gross and wrong. Trust me, there's nothing you can say about it that I haven't already thought. But honestly, all it did was realign my priorities. I realized what a trainwreck it would have been if your mom ever actually reciprocated. And I realized that a lot of what I was feeling for her was just me projecting my own shit onto her, it had nothing to do with her at all. Honestly, I didn't even know her that well, I was just a testosterone-driven teenager with mommy issues. She was a pretty girl who knew me when I was young and my mom was still alive. Sometimes, that's all it takes to convince yourself you're in love. Not to mention, I had a competitive streak and I couldn't stand the thought of being beaten at anything by a Cullen." A note of worry enters his voice. "Oh god, is it weird that I'm saying all this about your mom? It's weird, isn't it? We don't have to talk about it if you don't want..."
"No, I want to hear," says Nessie. No one ever talks about the recent past with her. The distant past, sure, the days of jazz and horses and bayonets and Latin liturgies, but not the past decade. She's certainly never heard Jake speak so openly about this before. But it seems to be the witching hour: all sortsof things are coming out, things she's never suspected about the guy who has always been her best friend. Nessie feels like she is getting a rare glimpse into what makes him tick, and she is consumed by curiosity.
"Well, when I saw you," he says, "I guess I realized how empty Bella was. How empty my feelings for her were. No offense or anything, that's just how I feel." Nessie isn't offended. She's sometimes thought that herself. "Anyway, love shouldn't be dictated. Which is fine, because the imprint isn't forcing me to loveyou."
"It's not?" Nessie looks out her window toward the west and sees the moon sinking over the trees.
"Hell no! The imprint forces me to needyou. It ties me to you, and because you're immortal it ties me to life. That's fine. I can handle that. But if I'm gonna love you, I'd rather be free to do it on my own terms. I'd rather love you because you're really smart and you're always nice to people, even if they're kind of douchey to you. And you're one of the most creative people I know. You're good for me. Sometimes it seems like my life can be boiled down to two things, struggling to manage the logistics of the pack, and struggling to make ends meet so I can actually go to college and make something of myself. You're the one thing in my life that isn't a struggle. You're my happy place."
Nessie feels a warm glow at these words. She is pleased and honored to be loved by someone as cool as Jake. "You're good for me, too," she says. If he were here, she would touch his hand and show him all the things she loves about him, but she doesn't know how to say it in words over a phone. "And I'm glad you told me all this stuff."
"Yeah," says Jake, sounding a little bemused. "I don't know why I started vomiting family history..."
"I like your word-vomit," Nessie says. "How come you've never told me this stuff before?"
"I don't know," says Jake. "It didn't seem...I don't know. It just never came up."
"Well, you're always listening to my navel-gazing," Nessie says jokingly. "It's only fair that I should listen to yours."
"Sure, sure," says Jake, and then Nessie hears a rustle that means Jake is covering the receiver with his hand. He comes back a moment later.
"Something wrong?" she asks.
"Oh," says Jake, and he sounds oddly tense, "I thought I heard my dad moving around."
"Is he okay?" Nessie asks with some concern.
"Yeah, he's...aw, screw it. No, he's not okay." There's an angry undercurrent to Jake's voice that Nessie rarely hears, and she immediately hates that anything can make him sound like that. "Dammit. He either won't take his medicine or he won't eat right, and there's nothing I can do about it, I just have to watch him trash his body and it sucks. He had a lot of sugar today and then he forgot to take his insulin and...god, I just hate it. I wish he would get his head out of his ass."
This is a complete one-eighty from his tone a moment ago. Nessie knows that Jake only lives with his father so that he can take care of him, that he would move out if he could, and she is furious at Billy Black for putting so much on his son. Jake sounds strangely young, his voice stretching thin as it coils through the phone and into her ear.
"Its not your fault," she says.
"Maybe not, but that won't be much comfort when he cake-and-soda-s himself to death."
"That won't happen," Nessie says.
"Sure it will," Jake says. "Why shouldn't it? He obviously doesn't care."
"He cares a lot, Jake," Nessie says. "He cares about you. You know he does."
"I just hate this. Oh god, I'm even depressing myself. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to get into this whiny crap tonight, it doesn't do anyone any good."
"It's okay, Jake," Nessie says. She has a powerful desire to make his pain go away, and no idea how to actually do it. She doesn't know what to say, so she sticks with the truth. "Jake, I don't really know what to tell you that will make it all better. I don't think there is one single answer to this. I know that you always have to be strong for the pack, and for your dad. You don't have to be strong for me too. You can just...rant and spew bile and be totally unreasonable if you want. You can say that stuff to me even if you can't say it to anyone else."
"Yeah, like I'm just gonna dump all my shit on you, just because you're too nice to hang up on me. No thanks." She can tell from his voice that he is only half-teasing: what, does he think he's imposingon her?
"Jacob!" Nessie says. She almost never uses his given name, and this gets his attention. "If I tell you it's okay to vent, that's because I mean it. I go to you all the time with my problems. You can come to me with yours. Okay?" He starts to say something about imprintingbut she cuts in. "And don't you dare say it's just because you're my imprint, not after that little speech you just gave me."
"Well, if you say so," he says, sounding more relaxed now. "But you know, you're myimprint, not the other way around."
"Psh, whatever," Nessie scoffs. "I loved you back when you were still trying to figure out how to dump me on the nearest windswept crag. So you can just take your imprint and shove it up your..."
"Up my...?" Jake prompts with amusement in his voice, as Nessie's bravado falters.
"Up your left nostril," she says with dignity.
"Thanks," he says, laughing. "I'll remember that."
Hey friends! Thank you all for your comments. I'm always eager to hear what you guys think about this stuff. A few of you mentioned a desire to a.)not see Jake hurt and b.)not have Jake get with other ladies. I certainly have no desire to make Nessie just relive her annoying mother's life. I hated Bella the first time around; why would I like her any better a second? However, I am intrigued by the idea (which I have encountered many places, not just here) that Jake must never never never be sexually attracted to anyone other than Nessie, and vice versa. In reality, I don't have a problem with people marrying their first love. In fact, I so don't have a problem with it that I did it myself, a year ago.
What I do have a problem with, however, is the way Smeyer presents first loves. Let's look at this for a minute. Vampires, which are obviously just Smeyer's little avatar for The Perfect Human, only fall in love once. If you are a vampire, your first love will be your only love, forever and ever and ever, and if they die, you will never ever love again. She gives us this message again and again, with the vampires, with Bella, with poor love-lorn Chief Swan, even with Jessica and Mike who can't apparently break the cycle of dating only each other.
We only get a couple of exceptions to this rule, and they are sort of the exceptions that prove the rule: the lesser one is Renee, who finds a second love. But Renee is also presented as very flaky and flighty, someone no one would ever want to emulate. Remember, kids, only a total flake would ever love two people in one lifetime! The second is, of course, Jake. And how did Smeyer resolve Jake's conundrum? Why, she just forced him to love someone else, of course! With magic! Because it would never happen naturally. He would never recover from Bella in his own sweet time and find some nice girl or lady or divorcee and settle down and have a normal, happy life, oh no! He has to be shoehorned into the most irritating, unrealistic narrative cheat of all time: he has to imprint.
How is this okay? How do we just accept this? I mean, I write almost exclusively about imprints, because I am desperate to get some closure on this gaping literary wound (or "literary"). I don't have a problem with marrying your first love, but I do have a problem with mandating that your first love be your only love ever, that if you mess that one up you will never get a second chance, there are no take-backs, people's hearts don't and never should change. I suspect a lot of this has to do with Smeyer's personal demons, perhaps her feelings about marrying so young and popping out kids right away, in a culture where second thoughts are really frowned upon. How can she not feel some twinges of uncertainty, even regret? The stakes are so high for her and for women like her. Maybe the only way for her to cope is to convince herself that her way is definitively The Only Right Way. Maybe she hopes that if she says it enough times, it'll start to be true.
Anyway, the long and short is that yes, I totally understand and even sympathize with those of you who are deeply opposed to Jake/Nessie ever being in love with anyone not each other. I get that. We all have certain requirements to make our ships float just so. But I refuse to play into Smeyer's diabolical hands. I'm not saying the Jake and Nessie in this story will necessarily hook up with other people. I haven't written that far ahead; I'll put down whatever feels right when I get to it.
I am saying that this is important to me. While I appreciate that many of you disagree, I request only that you disagree with me politely and thoughtfully.
Whew. I'm assuming few of you read all that, but if you did, here's a shoebox full of Pacific Coast porn. Review if you have any thoughts about my story, or my rant, or, you know...life.
