chapter seventeen

I wasn't sure if I was babysitting Jacob Black or if he was babysitting me, or some combination of both, but in a collaborative effort, Embry and Quil had tricked the two of us into spending the day together. Quil (who, when presented with the cake, said he had already forgiven me, but the cake was so disgusting he was mad at not only me, but Embry as well for feeding it to him) had driven straight past my home and into the Black's property under the guise of a quick errand. But Embry was there, sitting with Jacob in his garage, giving me a wide smile. And he and Quil disappeared into the woods, with a vague statement that they just had something to take care of.

"So what did you do to get put in time out?" Jacob asked while he worked under the hood of some car that looked older than me.

I shrugged. "I don't know. I think it's my general temperament and impatience. What about you?"

Jacob grimaced, not looking up at me, but narrowing his expression at the work in front of him. "Bella came by the other day, said hi to all the guys and everything. And we kinda got into a little argument. It was nothing big or anything, but I kinda lost control and said something a little too harsh. Now I can't be trusted to be alone or they think I'm gonna do something dumb over her."

"Like what?"

"I dunno, like go over to Forks and start a fight with her boyfriend or something like that."

"You should do that," I said, messing around with Jacob's tool box, looking through the screws and the wrenches and all the other things I couldn't name. "I mean, I think starting fights is underrated. A lot of people would disagree with me here but sometimes, violence is the answer."

Jacob snickered. "It's honestly so tempting. I think he deserves it."

"What did he do?" I asked, picking up a hammer. "I mean, I know he left her for a while and then came back, but it kinda seems a lot worse than that."

The muscles in his back tensed, and he let out several heavy breaths before he spoke again. "He just, Bella was so in love with this guy. And he just dumped her one day out of nowhere, brought her out into the woods and then left her there. She was lost in there for hours. And then his whole family was gone, they just moved. Bella was really messed up over it, never got any closure or anything. We got really close in that time. And then, he just came back, and she left me. He walked right back into her life like nothing ever happened, business as usual. Now, Bella's gonna up and leave her whole life behind just to be with him. Her friends, her dad, none of that even matters to her now. She's giving it all up for him. Will you please put the crowbar down?"

I dropped it and it clattered around on the ground. "Sorry," I said a little sheepishly. "But yeah, that's like, super unhealthy, and you should definitely kick his ass."

"Bella would hate me for it," he said, voice tight with an emotion I couldn't read. "I wish there was like, something I could do to make her realize how fucked up it is to throw your life away for someone like that. I really care about Bella, but you know, at the end of the day, even if she doesn't feel the same way about me, she's still my best friend. And I don't want my best friend doing something so stupid."

I tried to think of what I would do if Bobby threw away her entire life for some girl that broke her heart before thinking of Kim and I remembered that I didn't have to imagine what that would feel like. "I know what you mean, dude. Like, exactly. But I guess it's like, you gotta let people make their own mistakes. And if she can't see that what she's doing isn't healthy, she has to come to that realization on her own." I paused, and Jacob looked at me with intense eyes. "But what do I know? Whenever I'm upset I get so drunk I throw up on myself."

And he laughed a laugh that reminded me of who he was before he was a heartbroken cult member. "You sound like Embry."

"His emotional insight is rubbing off on me, I guess. You ever notice how he always says the right thing to say?" I tapped my fingers on my knees. "It's like he practices for emotional turmoil in the mirror."

"He does that with you more than anyone," Jacob said, returning his attention to the car. "Most of the time he just makes fun of me relentlessly. I'm only occasionally let in on the wisdom."

"I guess that's the prize I get for constantly having breakdowns." I looked around the garage. It was messy and cluttered and smelled like sawdust. "You should do something to get your aggression out. Like, something cathartic. If you can't beat up her boyfriend, you gotta do something else to get your anger out so you don't snap at her the next time she's around."

Jacob cocked an eyebrow at me. "Like what?"

I looked around the garage. "I dunno, do you have anything kinda sentimental? Something that she gave you or something that represents her in your mind?"

I stood next to Jacob in his backyard, shoulder to shoulder (well, bicep to head, I guess) and stared down a pair of rusted old bikes. They could barely stand up on their own and they looked like they had been left out in the rain one too many nights. "Okay, well this is a little more intense than what I had in mind. But I guess it'll work." I handed Jacob the crowbar. "Go for it dude."

He hesitated, knuckles tight around the crowbar and brows furrowed. "I dunno. This was the first thing we did together. We spent forever working on these."

"And look how that turned out." Jacob glared at me. "You're holding onto a past that isn't relevant anymore. Bella's not the same as she was before. You need closure the same way she does," I urged. I wasn't sure if I really cared if Jacob got over Bella or if I really wanted to see him smash up some bikes with a crowbar, but acting like his life coach gave me some sort of weird feeling of pride.

Jacob raised the crowbar above his head, very slowly, arms trembling like it was heavy. And then, in a motion that was almost too swift for my eyes, he swung it back down, smashing the handle bar off in one clean hit. I gaped. He repeated his motions, faster this time, and brought it down to the seat, leaving a dent so large it looked like it gone ran over by a truck.

"Holy shit," I said laughing.

And Jacob looked over at me with a grin. "This does feel nice," he said, and then smashed the wheel with a giddy, childlike laugh. "Do you wanna try?" he asked, handing his little weapon of destruction over to me.

"Nah," I said, mostly not wanting to feel weak next to him. "This is your moment of emotional release. It's also fun to watch you wreck them."

Jacob Black's laughter mixed with the harsh sound of metal banging against metal and I stayed back and watched as he destroyed his emotional little trinkets. I wished I had done something like that when I locked myself up in my room and lost my mind over Kim. I was trying not to think of her much but I couldn't help it when I kept imagining Jared's broken and bloodied face under the unrelenting fists of my brother. It didn't make me mad, like I thought it would, but sad. It was this heavy and exhausting sadness that wore me down and constantly tugged at me. I wished I could beat it and smash it away like Jacob did with those stupid rusted bikes but there was nothing I could destroy that would change the way my brother was. Jacob couldn't let go of the past but I couldn't escape it and I couldn't make that pain go away. I could only slap bandages over it and forget about it for a while. But it always came back.

In front of us, where there was once two distinct bikes, there was now indistinguishably chunks of busted up metal. Jacob stood next to me, smiling softly. "I feel kinda better," he said.

"Yeah," I said, and Jacob placed a hand on the top of my hair and scuffed up my hair. "Hey," I complained, batting away his hand.

"It's hard to accept this," he said softly after a moment, "but it's very fun to destroy things. Thanks Remy."

I crossed my arms over my chest and thought about how Jacob was right. It was so fun to destroy things. It was so fun that I did it frequently and eagerly and maybe once it would be nice to be let things grow instead of tearing them down.

"What the hell are you two doing?"

Jacob and I whipped around to see Quil and Embry approaching and I wished those idiots would wear shirts more often. My eyes lingered a little too long on Embry and his dumb little half grin. His face always looked so peaceful and it sent my nerves on fire. "Teaching Jacob emotional vulnerability and coping skills," I called back at them.

Embry landed at my side, wasting no time before pulling me into his side and resting his chin on the top of my head. "And the bikes paid the price for it."

"Damn, Remy," Quil said, "I would've thought you'd just teach him what to chase whiskey with or something like that. Not convince him to destroy his shit."

I felt Embry tense at Quil's words but by the time he opened his mouth to defend me I said, "You don't chase whiskey. You don't chase anything, if you're not weak."

"How'd it go?" Jacob asked, and I remembered that whatever weird shit the two of them were doing, Jacob was in on it. And I suddenly felt kinda stupid for spending my time convincing Jacob to beat up some metal instead of trying to get information on what Embry and Quil were doing out in the woods.

"Didn't find anything," Embry said quickly. "Bunch of dead ends."

I knew better than to ask him what he was talking about. Especially in front of Jacob or Quil, Embry would just brush it off with some offhand comment and and move on. And there was this flicker of annoyance I felt. Whenever the cult was brought into discussion I felt like a toddler, totally oblivious and left out of the loop while the grown ups talked vaguely and in code. It almost made me wonder why he brought me around so much.

"Nothing at all, huh?" Jacob said with a stark frown. "Not even-"

"No," Quil said sharply, cutting him off. "We didn't find anything on the Bella-front. But we weren't really looking that hard."

There was something twisting on Jacob's face. "You didn't even bother to check?"

Embry's arm tightened around me, pulling me in closer to his chest. "Not a priority right now,"

There was a abrupt tenseness but them, and I thought that all the aggression Jacob just let out must've built back up so rapidly from the way he stared at Embry. "Hey, Em," Quil said, voice cutting between the intense silence, "would you take Remy home? I'm gonna hang here for a bit."

"Yeah," Embry replied. "I'll see you guys later then." And I figured I wouldn't really have a say in the matter.

"Bye, Quil. Jacob, let me know the next time you need to break something."

"Will do."

Embry lead me back to the front of the house, where his truck had been parked this whole time. He kept his arm so tight around me that I kept tripping over my own feet. And when I was in the passenger seat with my seat-belt on, I asked, "What was that all about?"

"It was nothing," he said easily, backing out of the driveway smoothly.

"Okay, well what were you and Quil looking for?"

"Nothing."

I wanted to kick him. "Do you ever get tired of lying to me?"

His expression was strained. "Yeah, I do."

My hands balled up into fists and I locked my jaw because I couldn't understand Embry Call. I couldn't understand him or what he did or said or how he made me feel and most of the time I didn't really mind it but it bothered me now. And I wondered how he could want to know so much about me but not tell me anything about him. I didn't say anything, just looked out the windows and hoped that the blurring of the trees would calm me down but I knew it was pointless because the only thing that could calm me down was Embry. I thought of how he lied to me when he walked into my house that first time and how he had lied to me ever since then. He had spent so much time making me feel comfortable around him that I always forgot that he was constantly avoiding the truth.

He pulled into my driveway after a few minutes but I didn't move, feeling committed to my pouting. Embry reached over and touched my hand but I pulled it away from him. "Don't touch me while I'm mad at you."

"Remy," he said, sounding strained. "Will you please just look at me?"

And I shook my head with narrowed eyes because I knew that if I looked at him that stupid calming affect would take over me and I wanted to hang onto this anger for just a little bit longer. "No."

He groaned. "It's not like I don't want to tell you what's going on. I do, okay? It's just hard."

"Why?" I snapped.

"It's just," he said, and then sucked in air, "I worked so hard to get you to give me a chance. And now we're friends and I think you trust me and I'm afraid that if I tell you about what's going on you'll leave. I'm afraid you'd want nothing to do with me."

I looked over at him with my heart beating in my throat and my gut tugged. "Well, I'm not gonna stay in your life if you're just blatantly lying to me. So I guess you'll have to risk it." I didn't wait for a response. I just opened the door and jumped out before he could say something that would make me not mad anymore.

My mother was in the kitchen when I walked into the house. We hadn't been talking much, only strained conversations every now and then. The whole house smelled like burnt citrus and there was something popping on the stove. I liked it when my mother cooked now, because my appetite was diminishing and I didn't get questioned when I refused to eat my mother's food. The idea of eating anything made me feel sick, nevermind whatever hot garbage my mother threw on my plate.

I wished it was my dad instead of my mom. Because even though I was just as mad at him as I was at her, it was so much easier to be around my dad. He never fought back or instigated arguments. He didn't have the same fire in him that my mother and I did. And I guess he always got really tired of that fire, because he was never even home anymore to deal with it. My father just left us here to burn everything down.

She didn't look at me when I walked in but asked, "Where were you?" And I hated the way she talked to me and knew it was the way she always talked to Bear when he was in trouble for something dumb he did.

I collapsed on the couch, feeling exhausted from all the emotions I was forced to feel. "Jacob Black's house," I replied.

"What were you doing at Jacob Black's house?"

"Hanging out with Jacob Black."

"Did he drive you home?"

"No."

"Well, who drove you home?"

"Embry Call."

I didn't want to look at my mother because I didn't want to see her expression and I didn't want to imagine it either so I kept my eyes open and fixated on the dirt on our floor. "Well, are you at least using protection?" my mother asked, and something inside of me snapped.

"What?" I asked, sitting up and looking straight at my mother, who moved around the kitchen like her question was nothing.

She raised her shoulders. "If you're gonna spend all your time with a bunch of different boys, I'd rather not get a grandchild out of it just yet."

My mother always knew from the slump in my shoulders and the dread in my tone when I was already in a bad mood, and that was whenever she decided to rear her ugly head at me. She waited until it looked like I was on the edge of loosing it just so she could be the one to nudge me. "What are you implying here?"

She was tense when she spoke again. "You think I don't hear what people are saying about my own daughter? About how they pass you around?"

I thought about crying but I didn't let myself. "How could you say that about me? How could you even think that was true?"

"I'm not surprised by anything anymore," she said breezily, like she wasn't even bothered, "not after finding out you slept with someone right after your own brother's funeral."

There were a million things I could've asked. I could've asked her how she knew or who told her or when she found out but I knew that it didn't even matter because it had solidified an opinion about me that I didn't even know she was forming. And there was only one thing that was clear: my mother hated me. She resented me and she resented that I was her child. "Why don't you just say it?" I asked, voice shaking.

She turned and looked at me, leaving whatever was in her pan to burn. "What do you mean?" she asked, feigning innocence.

I stood from the couch and spat out words at her like they were clumps of burning coal. "Why don't you just come right out and say that you don't love me? You don't have to be so subversive about it. Just spit it out."

My mother rolled her eyes. "Don't be ridiculous, Rosemary," she said, but didn't deny it.

It never used to be this bad. It was always bad, and my mother and I have always fought dirty, but it had never been quite like this. "I hate the way you talk to me. It's like you forget that I'm your kid and you go out of your way to hurt me. It was the way you were with Briah, and I bet that's the reason he killed himself in the woods. So he wouldn't have to be around you anymore," I said, and knew it would be something I could never take back and would always regret. But I was so filled to the brim with exhaustion and rage that I just wanted to be as ruthless as I could.

And it worked, because when the smoke from the pan hit the fire alarm and the house was filled with noise, I turned around and walked out the front door, and my mother didn't say anything. She didn't even move.

Bobby wasn't answering her phone. I had called her three times and she didn't answer and that was so perplexing to me because Bobby lived on her phone. The sun had set and it was raining, gentle and light but my sweatshirt was gonna soak it all up and I wished I had my fucking car. Bobby didn't answer the fourth time, either, so I thought about smashing my phone into the ground and watching the pieces fly off into the street and the woods but instead I called Quil. There was nothing but a dial tone.

I didn't know where I was going but my legs were moving quickly and I thought that if I just kept going like this eventually I would pass out from exhaustion and get eaten by those stupid fucking wolves. I tried Quil again, and again was met with nothing. And I didn't want to talk to Embry, because I was stubborn and still carried the anger I had for him but the rain was starting to come down a little bit harder. I dialed his number out of memory and I pressed my phone to my ear. But he didn't answer either and I wondered if he was finally done with the way I exploded.

I craved the voice of my brother, thinking of the way he would've defended me against my mother and how I would've sat on the floor of his room while he complained about how we should've gotten real parents instead of the vapid impostors we had. My legs carried me all the way to the mouth of a trail. I didn't know how long I had been walking but it was the same trail that brought me to the clearing where I first saw the wolf. I stared down at it, and it stared down at me. It didn't take much thinking for me to make my way down the path.

Taking each step felt instinctual. I knew where I was going without very much thought and I thought of the way I sprinted away from the clearing with heaving breaths and a frantic mind. I wondered if I would've ran if I knew that Bear might have been out there that night while dead leaves and branches crunched under the weight of my feet. The rain was loud against the trees and it was weighing me down but I still would've rather been out here than anywhere near my mother.

The clearing was the same as it was before. It was big and empty with dead grass and a feeling about it that made me uneasy. I sat on the edge, leaning my back against a tree, and watched. It was dark but my eyes adjusted and I could make out the lines of trees and I waited for something. I didn't know what that something was but I hoped it would be Bear and he would run over to me and pick me up in his arms and apologize for disappearing and he would tell me that he loved me and that he would never leave again.

But it was dark and the rain was pounding and my eyes felt heavy and I thought that if I went missing here it would be okay. I closed my eyes, thinking of what it felt like to be warm, and let the rain wash over me.

I didn't know how long I sat there for. But my toes were numb and fingers stiff. The rain eventually slowed, but there was no movement in the clearing. No wolves, no laughter, no Briah. And I thought that someone might call me, someone might ask where I was or where I went. I thought that maybe Embry would show up with his arms open and warm and I would apologize to him and we would move on and be friends again and I would stop getting so mad at him. I thought that my mother would worry about me enough to call someone to look for me. But my phone remained silent as the woods around me, and I stood.

I cried the whole walk home, reminiscing on a time when I didn't care if anyone cared.

this chapter was v hard to write. hope i didn't disappoint anyone but this chapter was needed for development. so what do u think? as always, thanks so much for reviewing. none of my reviews were posting for a couple days but they're all up now. thank for you reading! lvoe u guys!