A/N: Hello readers! Welcome to my Seth/OC story! I did want to do a quick disclaimer and trigger warning: there is a lot of casual conversation about suicide in this story, and I will try and TW every chapter that has any triggering content. I don't want to give too much away right now, but because it's loosely based on The Edge of Seventeen, there is obviously some mature topics that will be in this story along with sexual content later. Please please leave a review!

Chapter 1: Perfect Day

Shit, I thought to myself in an endless loop of panic and frustration. Shit, shit, shit.

Arguably, one of the worst parts about living in Washington was the leaves. It's hard to imagine how flaky, dead foliage could be the source of my wrath almost every single day, but when you live in one of the rainiest places in the country, you'd be shocked by just how many normal things become a deathtrap for the gravitationally challenged. Which brought me to my current dilemma, as I lay flat on my back, cursing in pain outside of the steps of the tribal school.

Like every morning, I had already been running extremely late to my first class of the day. And also, like every morning, something catastrophic sent by a higher power with a particularly violent hatred towards me was sent my way to disrupt my piss-poor attempt at getting to algebra on time. While a large part of me wished the Great Spirits (or whatever the hell decided to constantly make a mockery out of me) would distribute the unfairness a little more evenly, an even bigger part of me wished that something would just take me out for good. Maybe a bus, or something a little crazier, like a lightning strike or a shark attack.

It would need to be something big enough to make some waves in the local gossip, but also just destructive enough to finally put me out of my misery. If you ask me, the fact that a higher power could give my older brother the body of a Greek god, but somehow couldn't give me the mere ability to walk upright, was just a little uncalled for.

And of course, the contents of my overly- large carrying case had spilled out onto the ground next to me. The hole in the corner from years of wear and tear had given way, and the entire stitching from the bottom part of the studio bag had ripped. My pink and red paper backdrops were currently laying in a puddle, and I didn't even want to look at the crooked angle of one of the legs of my tripod as I forced myself to bundle everything in my hands.

"Kill me," I seethed under my breath. "Somebody should just do it already. Shoot me! Right in the head! What the hell do I care!" My arms ached as I forced myself to carry all of my bulky film supplies; my vision obstructed by a broken studio umbrella slipping out of my grip. If it weren't so sad, it would almost be kind of fascinating that most of my days seemed to start off a lot like this one.

I walked as quickly as I could through the hallway to my locker after practically dragging myself up the front stairs. Hearing the sounds of sketch pencils and other small trinkets fall to the floor as I pushed through crowds of people was making my teeth grit dangerously, and every I was losing on my way was adding itself to my mental calculator of supply costs. Was that a roll of color negative film I heard? That was eight dollars at a store in Port Angeles. A linco backdrop clamp definitely just crunched under my boot? An additional thirteen dollars I'd have to spend.

I finally got to my locker and did my best to cram everything I could into the blue, rusted metal storage space. My hands were shaking from my efforts, and as I looked down, I couldn't help but notice a huge smear of mud from the puddle I dropped all my things in all over my turtleneck.

Life has a way of getting worse before it gets better. My life was proof of that.

Let me start from the beginning.

When I was a little kid, it was pretty apparent to me right from my very introduction to social interaction that talking wasn't something I was naturally good at. For a lot of people, being quiet can look like an adorable personality trait. If the overly common female protagonist trope in the young-adult fiction I read taught me a single thing, it was that being cute and shy and quirky could actually be seen as attractive. For most people, being "quiet" was all meek head ducks and rosy cheeks; subtle lip biting and batting eyelashes.

But as a person who's been described as "quiet" for her entire life, I'll tell you the truth. It's a word people choose to call you because they're simply at a loss for what else to say about you, since everything you do and say is so cringeworthy it becomes victim to patronizing eyes and pity-filled glances. You're not "nervous," you just simply can't get out a sentence without stuttering or stammering your way through it because your brain short-circuits anytime someone talks to you. You're not "anti- social," you're saving everyone (including yourself) the discomfort of seeing you turn bright red, or trip over your own feet, or the other million things that generally go wrong in a social setting. It's a paralyzing and awkward existence, and more often than not, I personally felt like maybe biology made a mistake when it formed my frontal lobe.

Now being an extremely awkward person was a hard life to live on its own. But it's exacerbated when your brother is lusted after by a good 98% of the female population of La Push. Jared was a social butterfly- he was popular on the rez, he had a good reputation, and he was conventionally attractive if you were into the steroid-ridden-Russian-Olympian kind of look, anyway. He had an easygoing attitude, a smile that had broken a million hearts, and his gaggle of male model friends were practically celebrities among the girls at the tribal school. As his nerdy younger sister, I couldn't have been any more different if I tried.

They never tell you how lonely it is to sit in the dark, gloomy shadow of another person. Jared was a winner. And as far as I was concerned? I was a loser.

"Late again, Ms. Cameron?" my algebra teacher said dryly as I tried to sneak in without drawing attention to myself. My eyes shut tight as I grimaced, my plan completely foiled as I took a tried to discreetly slip into the seat next to Kim. "I…sorry," I bit out uncomfortably. The wet mud on my shirt was sending a chill all over my body, and my damp, short hair stuck to my face irritatingly as I dug out a pen from my bag. I could feel Kim's wide-eyed gaze as I tried to fix my disheveled appearance, and I refused to look up at the harsh stare of Mrs. Allison as I squirmed in my chair.

"You've missed another pop quiz, Ms. Cameron. It looks as if I'm going to have to make a call home," she said as she glowered at me; her back turned to the whiteboard as students around me snickered. My face flushed in embarrassment, but all I could do was nod. Her and I both knew my mother wouldn't particularly care anyway, and seeing as I hadn't seen my dad since he went off to the corner store to buy lottery tickets five years ago, it was sort of an empty threat.

I doodled on the side of my notebook absent-mindedly, the notes on the board in front of me looking a lot more like hieroglyphs than anything I recognized as mathematics. My cheek was buried in my palm as I held by head up by my elbow, and my eyes were half-lidded from exhaustion as I thought about the new shots I wanted to take of Kim in the woods after school. I wasn't exactly sure how I was going to accomplish that since all of my equipment was probably soaking wet or broken, but I was used to MacGyver-ing my old, thrifted supplies after years of being completely broke.

I ignored the questioning stare coming from my right, I'd talk to Kim about my crazy morning later on. Honestly, a bitter part of me laughed at the hypocrisy of my best friend feeling worried about my habits when for the last few months, I couldn't help but worry about her. The first time she stood me up when we were supposed to hang out, I wrote it off as a one-time thing. Kim was an extremely type-A person, and I simply thought it had slipped her mind as SAT season came around and her stress-levels seemed to increase overnight. But after the fifteenth or sixteenth time of being stood up or bailed out on, it was obvious to me that Kim was clearly going through something she wouldn't tell me about, no matter how much I pestered her about it. It sucked, to be quite frank. It sucked that an impenetrable wall had come between our ten years of friendship, and I didn't even know which one of us built it.

As class ended, I glanced up at Kim with a sigh of relief and an exasperated eyeroll. "This morning was literally so shitty it made me feel homicidal, dude," I told her, my voice just hushed enough that no one could overhear us. Kim, the goodie-two-shoes skeptic that she was, quickly glanced around with wide eyes and looked back at me sternly. "Don't say things like that! We're at a school!"

"Oh please, Kimmy. Nobody's looking over here, I can guarantee you."

"Mrs. Allison is already upset with you, Moody! The last thing you need is to get written up or suspended or something!"

"What is she gonna do? Call my mom?" I laughed. Kim's face twisted with pity, but I waved her off casually. "Trust me, if Mrs. Allison saw me slip right on my ass earlier, she'd understand. I think I broke the tripod."

Kim gasped. "Not the tripod."

"Yeah. Happy Monday to me, amirite?"

We walked out into the hallway, slipping between the hoards of students around us as I headed back to my locker to get my history book. I bit at the chipped, blue nail polish on my thumb as I tried not to get overwhelmed with the sheer volume of people blocking my way, and I could feel Kim grabbing onto the shoulder strap of my tote bag as she pushed her way next to me.

"I swear, all the council talks about is how attendance is down at school, but I swear it's more crowded than a women's prison," I joked, pushing the collapsing filmmaking equipment into my locker with frustration. Kim slapped my shoulder in admonishment, but I rose a playful eyebrow at her. "One day, you're going to get in trouble for the stuff you say," she warned as she chuckled. I held my hands up in surrender, a wry grin on my face as I slammed the door shut. "I think it's actually kinda nice that you think people are actually listening to me. But also, I couldn't help but notice that you didn't disagree."

"Well, just because you talk a lot of crap doesn't mean you're not right."

"Kimmy, you make my heart feel warm."

We laughed as we walked down the hallway, and as we made our way over to her locker before we headed to our next class, I glanced over at the giggling group of girls a few feet away, whispering.

"-Goth or something- "

"-Hair looks like a lesbian- "

"-Jared's sister, can you believe that- "

I rolled my eyes as I avoided their stares, not willing to engage in the month-old drama my brother's ex-girlfriend that he dropped out of nowhere, Talia, and the rest of her clique seemed to reignite every few days. It was kind of pathetic when I thought about it, how Talia had doted on me like her and I had been best friends for life when she first started dating Jared, but the minute he left her my very presence became a personal insult. My eyes flickered over to hers, her face mustered up in hatred as she looked me and Kim up and down. As always, Jared's inability to keep his man-whore ways to himself always seemed to affect me and my non-existent social life.

"So, when we meetup after school, I kinda wanna try and see if I can set these backdrops up on some trees since I accidentally stepped on one of the clips… I think the grey could be kind of cool, it'll make you look super serious when I film you," I told Kim as I held out one of her books helpfully to her. "But I guess it just depends on how much daylight we have when we get outta here. If we have any light at all, since it looks like it's going to downpour again."

Kim took her book from my hand, her face sheepish as she looked at me. "About after school…" she trailed off; her voice laced with anxiety. The light smile on my face immediately fell and I groaned. "No," I whined in irritation. "Please don't do this to me again." I wanted to stomp my foot.

"I'm sorry, Moody, I just really can't come with you."

"Again, though? You're a super genius, why do you need all this SAT tutoring, anyway?" I asked pleadingly. My spirits immediately came crashing to the ground, and the excitement I felt about getting to hang out with my best friend was quickly replaced with disappointment. "Can't you skip? Just this once?"

Kim didn't look up at me, her gaze was focused on the tile floor below us as she let out a fake laugh. "I just have a lot to catch up on. I want to get the best score that I can."

I put a reassuring hand on her shoulder even though I felt resentment bubble up inside me even though I tried to look encouraging. "You're going to get into Stanford, Kimmy. They'd be stupid not to admit you. And plus, we're just juniors. You have some time before applications and all that, anyway."

Kim's shoe scuffed at the ground nervously, a heavy expression on her face that I couldn't discern. "I think I might just do U-Dub. It's closer, anyway, and I probably have better scholarship prospects," she replied quietly. My eyebrows shot high up on my forehead, shock overtaking every other feeling I was having. Stanford had been Kim's dream school since we were thirteen- she had signed up for their e-letter the minute she got her own laptop, and her and her parents had toured the school three separate times before junior year. Kim's Ivy-league ambitions were practically a character trait at this point, and I didn't even know what to say about her change of plans.

"Um…what?" I asked, my voice threatening to betray the surprise I was feeling as I stared at her. "I thought…Kim, I thought…"

"Well, I guess you thought wrong," Kim snapped, her eyes finally meeting mine. I faltered in my step, and I suddenly felt strange and off-balance from our exchange. We never got angry with each other, and even though Kim had been particularly weird lately, I didn't understand what I said wrong to upset her. Seeing my hurt expression, her face softened and she gave me a forced smile. "I just don't really think I wanna leave the rez, y'know?" she asked.

I nodded, even though I had no idea where this was coming from. Kim's biggest goal was moving to California and as far from La Push as she could, but I didn't want to upset her again. I shrugged as I tried to shake off my thoughts and glanced back at her. "Well… I mean, maybe we can hang out sometime this week, then? We… we don't have to do anything with the movie. We can just watch a movie or hangout," I suggested awkwardly, feeling like I was stepping on glass as I watched for her reaction. I didn't want to guilt-trip her, but I felt like I hadn't seen her outside of school in months. I missed my best friend, and I wasn't sure what I had done to make her avoid me, but I wanted to fix it.

"I'll check, okay? I promise. I'll…I'll see you later," Kim replied unsurely. I smiled, but I felt miserable.

My best friend was slipping right through my fingers, and just like Dad, I couldn't do anything to stop it.

I met Kimberly Conweller on the first day of kindergarten. Like a tiny, brown-haired angel, she showed up in my life like a prayer as I sat at a red lunch table all by myself. My eyes had been wet with unshed tears as I failed to converse with any of my classmates, and I picked the crust off my turkey and cheese sandwich with disgust as I stared down at the soggy bread in front of me. I officially hated school, and I had decided that on my very first day.

As I sat boredly, my sandwich suddenly darkened as a shadow loomed over the other side of the table. As I glanced up warily, I saw a little girl with straight, brown hair and a single dimple on the left side of her mouth sitting across from me as she took out a container of pretzels and some pasty, tan colored mush in another. We sat in silence until my curiosity took over me, and I leaned over at the mysterious oatmeal-looking food in the green Tupperware. "W-W-What's that?" I asked as I stared at her.

"This?" she asked me, her eyebrows furrowed together as she lifted up the container. I nodded. "It's hummus."

"Hum…?"

"Hummus, it's like mashed potatoes but with chickpeas," she replied, holding it out towards me. I had no idea what chickpeas were, but I liked mashed potatoes even though my mom made them from the box. It didn't look very good, but neither did my sandwich. "Is it yucky?" I questioned. She shook her head and opened the container as she pushed it over to my side of the table. "Want some?"

I took a pretzel stick and cautiously dipped it into the creamy mixture, staring at it like it was an alien creature that somehow slipped into a Barbie lunchbox. I grimaced as I bit into it, my tongue overwhelmed with flavors I had never had before.

It didn't taste anything like mashed potatoes.

"It's…"

"It's healthy, that's what my mommy says," Kim interrupted, her eyes eager at my reaction as she swung her sparkly-shoe clad feet underneath her. I took another bite, my jaw still closing around it slowly as I tried to decide whether or not I liked it. It wasn't bad, exactly. I just hadn't taste anything like it before.

"It's okay," I said definitively. Kim's smile beamed at me, a know-it-all proud emanating from her six-year-old body as I reached for another pretzel stick. "Told ya so."

It's weird, how little kids decide to become best friends over something so random. I would find out years later that she had been kicked out of another lunch table for her strange lunch option, and that she was terrified that I'd do the same thing. In the first few moments of me deciding that hummus wasn't the worst food I ever had, she had decided I was going to be her friend for life.

Kim and I were exact opposites in almost every way: she was logical where I was creative, she wore pretty pastels and old-lady sweaters while I wore alternating shades of black and mom jeans I found at Goodwill, and her perpetual optimism contrasted with my deep-rooted disdain for things outside of my control. I was the Yin to her Yang, the Lucy to her Ethel, the Veronica to her Betty. In a lot of ways, we were like a corny vaudeville comedy-duo even though for most of our adolescence, our "misadventures" were mostly just us playing with her mom's Bath and Body Works lotions and roller skating in my driveway.

As we got older, our differences seemed to embolden themselves in us, but it made our friendship even stronger. We never ran out of things to talk about as I descended into my cinema obsession and Kim got involved with things like tennis and mathletes. We gossiped about the other kids in our grade, we started our own "book club" which consisted solely of the two of us, and we complained about our siblings incessantly. We didn't need anyone else but the two of us, and even once we entered high school under the false impression that maybe we would somehow be considered "cool" by the very same people who loved to make fun of us, we didn't care. We didn't need them. It was always Kim and Moody, Moody and Kim. Who needed other friends when you could have one that made everyone else fade into the background?

We told each other secrets we never thought we'd tell anyone else out loud- like how Kim kissed her cousin from the Makah Reservation when she was eight, and how I drank one of my mom's "special drinks" for the first time when I was twelve and puked all over the shag carpet in my living room. We had sleepover's every Friday night, and we'd order pizza as we watched a particularly awful Disney original movie under a bunch of blankets. We'd talk about our crushes and about drama we had overheard from our parents, and we'd scream at our siblings to leave us alone whenever they tried to bother us.

And it turned out that Kim's life wasn't perfect either. The Conweller's were a family of serial perfectionists and expected nothing less for their daughter than the best. Her parents argued a lot, and the disturbingly hyperactive behavior of her two younger brothers left her feeling alone in her own home a lot of the time. After my dad left the family, Kim was my shoulder to cry on as Mom became a barely- functioning alcoholic and Jared escaped the house whenever he could. Sometimes, I didn't think either of our parents seemed to like us very much- the extreme pressure Mr. and Mrs. Conweller put on Kim was a very different level of "dislike" than the one my mother had for me, but I knew how it felt to feel like a disappointment. But it was okay, because I had her and she had me, and there was nothing that would ever tear us apart.

Things changed when we turned fourteen.

"Can you just…I don't know, can you try to cut in a straighter angle?" I whined, seeing my black locks hit the tiles of the bathroom floor as Kim stood behind me with a grimace. "I'm trying, Moody! It's not like I want to do a bad job!"

Another large cut with the kitchen scissors, another huge clump of thick, black hair landed under my feet.

"Can you…I dunno, get a ruler or something?"

"I don't know if a ruler is going to be able to fix all of this."

I stared at my reflection, looking at how my waist-long hair laid around me tauntingly as I stared at the bowl cut in the mirror. My mouth dropped in horror as I turned to the side, seeing the choppy angles and uneven hair sitting by my ears. "This doesn't look like the girl from "She's All That," Kim! I look…I look like a boy!" I sobbed.

Kim mussed up my shorn locks carefully, her face stricken with panic as we looked at the mess we had created. "My mom's gonna kill me," I whispered. She shushed me as she clenched her teeth, her eyes scanning me as her brain racked for any solution it could come up with. "I think it looks very…unique."

"I didn't want to look unique! I wanted to look like Rachael Leigh Cook!"

"I mean…I still think you look really pretty, Moody. It's…you look great, and your hair will grow out!"

"I need it to grow out by tomorrow morning. I…I can't even look at myself, oh my god."

As Kim attempted to encourage me again, we both heard a knock at the bathroom door. "Shit," I blurted out, my eyes wide as Kim looked at me nervously. "Um…busy!" Kim exclaimed, her voice squeaking. As she scrambled towards the doorknob, it turned too quickly for her to lock.

"Can you both get- whoa."

Jared stood in the doorway with a towel in his hands, his jaw dropped dramatically as he looked at me. "I…" I trailed off, feeling tears swell in my eyes.

"You look…awful," Jared said honestly, a shocked laugh leaving his mouth as he gawked at me. My hands flew to my head as a tear ran down my cheek, my jaw clenched as I glared back at him. "Shut up!"

"What the hell happened in here?"

"Hi, Jared," Kim said to him dreamily, her voice breathy as she looked up into his eyes. He barely acknowledged her as he stepped forward, looking at the pitch-black mess all over the sink. "Why…Mom's gonna kill you."

"I know. I know Jared, help me!"

"What do you want me to do? Glue it back to your head?"

"I don't know, I'm…I'm screwed!"

Jared let out a low whistle, a smirk on his face that if I hadn't felt so panicked, I would have tried to punch right off of him. "Guess I'm not showering 'till the morning."

"Jared!"

Later that night, as I lay under my pretty, purple sheets with one of Jared's winter beanies on my head, I looked over at Kim as she stared up at the ceiling. "What was that?" I asked her annoyedly, thinking back to the weird way she looked at my brother earlier. "What was what?" she replied.

"You…you were talking to Jared all weird in the bathroom," I said, my voice carefully blank as my eyes narrowed at her. "Why were you talking like that?"

Kim sighed; her eyes averted from mine. "I didn't talk to him like anything."

"Bull."

"I swear! I was just, like, shocked from the situation."

I stared at her for longer, my eyes scanning her nervous expression as she turned away from me. As I took in her lack of eye contact and anxious body language, horror dawned on me and I gasped. "No. No, no, no!" I exclaimed, my hands slapping over my mouth. Kim whipped towards me, her eyes dangerous as she put a finger over her mouth to silence me. "Would you be quiet?!"

"No, Kim, not…not him! Not my brother! Ew!"

Her cheeks turned beet red, and she shoved me. "God, you're annoying," she bit out. I sat there, gaping at her as I pressed my back against the wall. "For…how long have you liked him?"

"Shut up!"

"Ew! Oh my god, no Kim, just…no!"

Her face turned suddenly very sad, and I felt guilty for my obvious disgust as she sighed. I just couldn't understand where this was coming from. Kim and I talked about my brother's man whorish ways all the time, how we couldn't understand how any girl from La Push would want to be his girlfriend with his less-than stellar track record. When did she start crushing on him? How hadn't I noticed?

"It's not like it matters, anyway," Kim mumbled to herself as she drew her knees underneath her chin. "He'd never like any girl like me."

I sucked in my teeth sympathetically, crawling over towards her as I gave her a hug. "Because boys like my brother are stupid and gross and treat girls like dogs," I responded, my voice serious. "Please, whatever you do, forget about him. You could do a lot better, anyways."

"Yeah right, like who?"

"Once you go to Stanford, the entire male population is going to stick to you like a fly to honey."

"Ew."

"That was my reaction when I saw you talking to Jared."

We laughed, trying to muffle our giggles in my bedsheets as the moonlight cast a pretty glow in the room. As we both stared up at the shadows of the trees on my wall from my window, I turned back towards her, biting my lip nervously. "But seriously, Kim," I pleaded quietly. "Please…Please don't like him. I just…you're my best friend, right? Please?"

Kim knew how hurt I always felt when one of Jared's prospective girlfriends decided to show me some "extra attention," only to drop me once he left them behind. I hated being nothing more than Jared Cameron's little sister, I hated knowing that most people ever even talked to me because of who he was.

Kim looked at me, a quick glance of uncertainty passing over her face at my request until she shook her head of her thoughts. "Of course, Moody. I'd never betray you like that."

Even though our hormone-riddled brains and our lack of popularity made high school a little harder, I still had my best friend and she still had me. Change was inevitable, or at least that's what I told myself. I hadn't exactly prepared for the last few months of being blown off, but Kim still talked to me in school, so I hadn't lost her completely. Things were just…different now.

But I still held onto hope. We'd get back into the groove of things, I could forget about the last dozen times I tried to hang out with her, everything would be great!

I wished I had a little warning before everything turned to shit.