Chapter 2: Good Times
The next day, Jeremy skipped first period, but made it to school in time for the first class that he knew he had with Jake and Hamilton, which happened to be math. They were trying to decide the best way to get a rowboat, which Jake had just bought off of Craig's List, from the house of the previous owner in town and out to the quarry, when an idea popped into Jeremy's head.
"I know a guy with a pickup truck, he could probably hitch it up and haul it out there, especially if you pay him twenty bucks or something. Oh, and there's a party tonight at the falls too, if you guys want to go, too," Jeremy offered.
"What time's the party?" Hamilton asked, because it was a school night, and he'd had a close call the night before.
"Can you introduce us to the truck guy today?" Jake wanted to get the boat out there right away. Getting rowed around the quarry with just her and Hamilton where they'd have plenty of privacy would remind them both of all the time they spent floating around talking while at Rawley. It was their thing, and Jake missed it. Plus Hamilton wanted to keep his rowing arms strong so that he'd be able to get back on the crew team with their friends. There wouldn't be much Jake could do to practice coxswain though, plus even if she got back in at Rawley she probably wouldn't be allowed back on the boys' team, even if they had been the summer champs. Jake would miss crew, but at least she'd get to keep Hamilton.
"Uh, yeah, probably, to the truck guy, and sunset for the party," Jeremy answered. "It's a back to school tradition thing, and the cops will probably let it go on all night unless there's some kind of problem that makes them break it up."
"Maybe Roger will let me have an exception, tonight?" Hamilton hoped.
"The eight PM rule is gonna be a problem, Hamilton, we're only on the second day of school, and now we don't live on campus where everything happens during the daytime. It's like the opposite here," Jake predicted.
"You have that early of a curfew? Can't you just ignore it?" Jeremy was surprised that these kids cared about rules so much.
"No, he can't. If he screws up at all, it could draw attention to the fact that I'm here, and they'll split us up," Jake answered. "I had to fake a lot of stuff to keep my mom clueless about the fact that I'm renting a room in a townie's house in Mystic Falls and not still at Rawley. Hamilton's parent's don't realize that my mom doesn't even know I've been expelled from their school, or that I enrolled here to be with Ham. My friend Bella did all the 'mom' phone conversations and I took care of the rest. We can't give them any reason to find out, so Hamilton has to keep his dad's cousin Roger happy. If my mom ever learns the truth, she'll make me go back to New York and probably hire someone to keep an eye on me. As long as nothing goes wrong, though, she'll be out of the country for the next six months filming."
"Good thing she won't be coming to any more parent's day events this semester!" Hamilton laughed. It had been hilarious escorting Jake back and forth across the lake to the girl's school side in a 'borrowed' motorboat between their crew competition heats, where Jake had needed to keep changing into a dress to visit her mom, and then back into boy clothes for their races. Hamilton had almost pissed himself the one time that Jake had forgotten to take off the girly pearl necklace and lipstick before getting on the boat as their coxswain, and had gotten some funny stares from the guys that saw him wiping off 'boy' Jake's mouth with his sleeve. Not that it mattered for long after that, when Ryder had told everyone that he'd caught Ham and Jake making out in the library. Pretty much everyone there still thought that they were a gay couple, since Jake didn't get caught being a girl til the last day when almost all the other students had left campus. Only a few of their close friends really knew the whole truth. Nothing mattered to Hamilton anymore except whether or not he got to be with Jake. Sometimes the charade had been a little fun though, like parent's day. He figured Jake would probably disagree.
The look of horror on Jake's face definitely confirmed that she did not enjoy parent's day. "If Mom ever shows up back at Rawley to 'surprise' me again, I'm so screwed. That was the first time she ever came to anything like that in six years!"
"Why can't you just tell her you've transferred to Mystic Falls without admitting you got expelled?" Jeremy wondered.
Hamilton snorted, "Jake is mega-rich, and her mom expects her to at least go to elite private schools, definitely not this random townie public school where my dad's family came from. That's the only reason I'm here; because my dad had to 'punish' me for a semester in order to keep his job as the Rawley dean. My mom wanted me to go to a different boarding school, but most of my dad's family, except for him, went to public schools so he didn't care. Mom hated me leaving home at all but is glad that I'm staying with family here. Plus this school was definitely better than the public school in the town near Rawley. No way that Jake's mom would let her add this school to her transcript though, if she actually knew about it!"
"Oh." Jeremy thought that most of the other Founders were all pretty rich too, and that Mystic Falls High was good enough for all of them. There weren't any private schools around for them to go to, though, just the public school, and the founding families were all pretty proud of their town. He guessed it was just different for rich people that didn't have their own special town history to obsess over.
At the end of the school day, Jeremy brought them over to meet Matt Donovan before the older boy went out to football practice. When Jake offered Matt two hundred dollars to pick up and transport their rowboat out to the quarry, Matt said he'd even help carry it out there! With that settled, they just had to wait around until Matt was all done practicing. So, they decided to head up to the roof spot that they'd found the day before.
Of course, if Jeremy had realized that his two new friends were just going to start doing their homework in close proximity to the hot spot, he probably wouldn't have followed them up. Instead, he ended up joining them and getting done schoolwork that he'd never intended to bother with.
"Hey Jeremy, are those drawings of us?" Hamilton had spotted a few of the other boy's sketches as he was flipping around through his notes. "They're great!"
"Oh, uh, yeah, you can have em if you want," Jeremy tore out a few that didn't have any notes on the back of the pages.
"Thanks!" Hamilton looked back and forth between the sketches and Jake. "It looks so much like him. Her. I mean, it reminds me of when we first met, Jake."
Jake smiled, "Yeah, they're really good Jeremy. Have you ever thought about art school? If you can sketch out all these just in one outing when we're just wandering around the woods… well, you could probably do this professionally!"
"Especially if you hate regular school so much," Hamilton added. "Jake's mom knows a lot of important people in the arts industry, she's going to show a bunch of my photographs to a famous wildlife photographer!"
"That's pretty cool. Huh, well maybe I'll think about it," Jeremy never expected to have much of a future outside of Mystic Falls, especially after his parents died and he'd stopped caring about just about anything. These kids seemed like they still thought the world was at their fingertips, and maybe it was. He got up and decided to have a smoke real quick since he hadn't all day, but this time Hamilton politely turned it down. As he walked towards the edge of the roof, he noticed that football practice was ending, so he went back over to let his friends know it was time to meet up with Matt and go get the boat.
Jake ended up having to get a hitch extender for Matt's truck bed, just to keep the boat in, because even though it was a small rowboat it was a little too long. By the time they pulled up as close as they could get near the quarry it was pretty late in the afternoon, so they were probably going to need to just carry it to their chosen hiding spot. They started off with Jeremy and Hamilton carrying the front and Jake and Matt carrying the back, but between the trees and rocks, it was eventually just Matt and Hamilton carrying and Jake and Jeremy helping out whenever they could. Finally they got the boat by the water, close to where they were going to hide it.
"You're a pretty strong kid, Hamilton, how come you aren't playing football?" Matt asked, because he'd actually decided that he liked the kids that Jeremy was hanging out with, and the team could always use more good players.
"I rowed crew all summer, but I just got here, right before school started. I tried to sign up to play on the JV team but the guy in charge, Tanner, said that I missed tryouts. I have him in history and he hates us already, so I doubt he'd change his mind," Hamilton liked playing sports, but he'd only played football with friends before. He wasn't the biggest guy either at only fifteen, even if he was strong.
"Tanner hates everyone," Matt laughed, "but he gives jocks a break usually. Varsity definitely requires tryouts, but we aren't that big of a school, so pretty much anyone can play JV and it's just the beginning of the year. I can put in a word and you can play if you want? All of you could."
"I'll pass," Jeremy said.
"No, thank you," Jake was not gonna bother mentioning how much attention it would draw, because she was fine with Matt thinking she was a boy at the moment. Jake preferred staying off the radar, and tossing around a ball with friends was fun, but playing on a team? Jake was really skinny under the baggy sweaters, so getting tackled hard didn't appeal. Plus, even if it was just JV a town like this would make a huge deal if Jake tried to join. She had to admit she'd enjoy watching Hamilton play, though.
Hamilton was enjoying the ego boost and praise from the older guy, and wanted to at least get the boat in the water for a quick row. "Hey, tell you what, Matt. I bet you that I can row across the quarry and back faster than you. If I win, I'll take you up on the offer to join the team, if Tanner let's me. Although I think that's probably a lost cause."
"And if you lose? Which you're going to," Matt laughed. There was no way this young kid could beat a quarterback upperclassman that bench pressed more than ninety percent of the rest of the varsity team.
"I'll toss in another twenty bucks as a tip," Jake offered, backing up Hamilton. "Except, I also get to ride along for both races, as a sort of spotter..."
Matt wasn't going to turn down the money for such an easy bet. He had nothing to lose either way. He ended up racing first, with Jake in the boat watching ahead. Matt threw all of his strength into it and got across the quarry pretty fast, but had a bit of a hard time turning, waiting a bit to long to slow down despite Jake trying to give him a few tips and let him know when, and then he ended up struggling a bit with maneuvering the boat without hitting the rocks on the edge. He still made up for the loss of time with his power strokes rowing back.
At least he thought he did, until he saw how skillfully Hamilton cut through the water, and the agile, perfectly timed turning. Even though the rowboat was a bit short and fat, Hamilton definitely handled the oars far smoother than Matt had, and ended up getting back a solid twenty seconds faster than Matt, according to Jeremy who had timed them both.
"Are you serious?" Matt realized he must have just gotten hustled, but it was all in fun.
"We won a crew championship this past summer," Hamilton admitted, with a smirk. "You should have listened to Jake on the turn, too. Best coxswain our school has had in over a decade according to our coach. Lemme know what Tanner says, though? Maybe if I play football, he'll back off of Jake too?"
Before Matt left to go transport all the beer to the party at the falls, Jake tipped him twenty bucks anyway for giving them the extra time to get the hitch, which he could keep.
Matt liked these kids, they seemed to be a good influence on Jeremy, too. Hopefully that would get Elena to chill out a bit, after the rumors that were already going around school about the crap she pulled harassing her brother in the men's bathroom. He just wished Elena would give himself another chance instead of that other new guy, Stefan. Why couldn't Elena just be happy with Matt?
That night, Jake and Hamilton joined Jeremy at the party for a few short hours before Hamilton had to rush home to make his curfew. Luckily for them, they left just in time before another, much darker presence arrived. Instead of seeing the human boy that looked exactly like himself, a young woman that was wandering around alone in the woods caught Damon's eyes and he decided to feed on her.
As soon as Jake and Hamilton were gone, Jeremy started to drink alone, and ended up almost in a fight with Tyler after catching that asshole trying to force himself on Vicki in the woods. Instead of thanking Jeremy, Vicki said some confusing crap about how it was even worse that he wanted to talk to her, rather than just use her body like Tyler. Then, just when Elena was about to start lighting into him again for drinking even more, they found Vicki badly hurt and bleeding out in the woods. Luckily she was alive and got brought to the hospital in an ambulance in time. Either way, the party was definitely over.
After Stefan raced back to the boarding house, he found himself in a disturbing confrontation with Damon. His brother had returned, and was definitely not planning on playing nice. Stefan was terrified at the prospect of what Damon might do to Elena. He also expected that Damon would likely kill the boy, Hamilton, as soon as he spotted him. It was one thing if Elena looked like Katherine, who was long gone for over a century, but another thing entirely if Damon knew that he had his own human lookalike in town too. Either that, or he'd plot something even more sinister than he was already likely planning.
Stefan wasn't sure why Damon hadn't fully killed Vicki, but worried that it was likely only a matter of time. As for Elena, Damon had certainly made it perfectly clear that she was already a target, and there was no way that Stefan could stop him. The only thing that could protect her at all would be vervain, because Damon was far, far stronger. Stefan fully expected that this round of his eternity of misery was going to probably be the most devastating yet.
The next day at school, Stefan watched Hamilton and his smaller friend sneak into a faculty bathroom, which he thought was a bit odd. He was definitely even more surprised to hear kissing sounds and a bit of giggly laughter. It wasn't long though, before the bell rang and the halls were empty, and the kids tumbled back out of the bathroom in a rush to get to class, only to find Stefan blocking them.
Stefan focused hard to keep them from racing by him, compelling as he spoke, "Saw you two leave the party really early last night, before Vicki got attacked, any reason why?"
"Hamilton has a curfew," answered Jake, confused as to why she didn't tell this strange guy to take a hike instead of answering him.
"I had to be home by eight PM, it's my curfew," Hamilton also replied, before adding, "Do you have some sort of problem with me, I don't even know you?"
"No problem. Forget that we had this conversation, but make sure that you always get home before your curfew and never sneak back out at night." Stefan then turned to Jake, who he could now smell had a feminine scent that he hadn't expected. Apparently Jake was actually a girl. "Make sure you always get Hamilton home safely before his curfew. If you ever see another guy around town that looks just like him, both of you stay far away from him and don't catch his attention. If that happens, let me know as soon as possible."
After walking away, Stefan felt weaker than he'd expected to. Fighting Damon had taken a lot out of him and he needed to go hunting for animal blood, badly. He hoped that his compulsion held, especially since he planned on stopping by the hospital to talk to Vicky too. Dealing with Damon was going to be a nightmare, but he'd have to prioritize Elena, so only she would get the small amount of vervain that he had left.
"That was so weird," Hamilton said, looking around the empty hall in confusion, before glancing back at Jake.
"What was weird?" Jake asked, just as confused, looking at Hamilton.
"Exactly," answered Hamilton. "I don't remember, do you?"
"Remember what?" Jake hated not feeling clearheaded. Jake never drank or smoked for a good reason, and the fact that they both suddenly seemed to be standing in the hallway with a moment of discontinuity was very unsettling.
Hamilton frowned. He knew that something strange had happened after their brief make-out session in the faculty restroom, but he couldn't figure out what. If Jake didn't remember either, it was extra freaky, especially since he felt that same chill go down his spine, like the time it had happened when leaving the Grill. Suddenly, he had a weird flashback sort of memory of that scary older kid glaring at him, and not only at the Grill. He could of sworn that older boy had just been in the hallway talking to them, glaring at him, again.
"I dunno, Jake, but somethings got me freaked out, let's get to class, now. I don't like being in the empty hall. We can talk about it later, okay!" Hamilton tugged Jake's hand as they went to one of the few classes that they had without Jeremy. That had been part of the reason they'd snuck into the bathroom real quick, because their buddy had gone the other direction after their last class together.
Normally, Jake would have protested and demanded answers, but something about the way that Hamilton seemed so frightened stopped Jake from arguing with him. Instead, Jake cooperated in the moment and they rushed to their honor's English class. Later on that day they'd talk more about it, but still couldn't come up with any answers, and Jake couldn't remember seeing the same boy that Hamilton described.
They didn't get the chance to talk to Jeremy about it either, because he was really upset about what was going on with Vicki. Apparently, he'd picked a fight with Tyler too, or at least threatened the older boy, and there was talk going around the school about it. Lot's of kids were looking at Jeremy like he was going to snap and go on a murder spree, but he refused to talk about what happened, even to Jake and Hamilton, and just said he wanted to go back to the hospital to see Vicki, alone.
They didn't see Matt today either, because apparently he was Vicki's younger brother, and went to the hospital to check on her too, instead of football practice. It was all a pretty messed up situation, and even though Jake and Hamilton didn't have a great impression of Vicki they still hoped that she'd be okay, for Matt and Jeremy's sake.
Stefan's exhaustingly long day got even worse when he arrived home to catch Elena in the middle of talking to Damon at the boarding house. Apparently, she'd walked right on in. Stefan was extremely weak after all his running around, compelling people, without any blood. Damon took full advantage of the opportunity to cause more mischief, and Stefan could only stand there and watch. After today, he'd probably alienated Elena even more, but Damon still seemed clueless about Hamilton. Stefan could only hope that Damon continued to stick with a mostly nocturnal schedule and the boy would continue to stay off of his radar by keeping an early curfew.
Unfortunately, there was nothing that Stefan could do to keep Damon from stalking Elena or Vicki, and Stefan knew that it was only a matter of time before someone else got hurt. Not only that, but now that Elena had seen Damon, it was inevitable that she would discover how similarly he looked to her little brother, Jeremy's new friend Hamilton. Stefan had no idea what he could possibly do about that, besides compel Elena not to notice. Even still, once Damon began leaving the house more in broad daylight, it would become obvious to far too many people than Stefan could ever deal with, so there wouldn't be much point. He needed to come up with an explanation fast, and hopefully one that would keep even Damon from instantly resorting to murder.
End Note: Thanks for reading, and if anyone out there wants to try doing a similar crossover with Jake and Hamilton in Mystic Falls, and Hamilton is Damon's doppelganger, I am giving everyone permission for anyone to take this idea and try to run with it! I'd love to read it if someone else wrote it!
