chapter nineteen

Embry Call sat across from me, slumped against the diner booth. In between us there were plates of food that had gotten cold and an invisible wall of immeasurable tenseness that seemed to prevent either one of us from speaking to each other. My arms were crossed over my chest, staring at the boy across from me. And I think at this point my brain had become totally incapable of any cognitive processing, because I felt totally drained and unable to come up with any meaningful thought. I was shut down.

I had spent the previous night lying awake next to a sleeping and snoring Bobby, eyes fixated on the ceiling above us and mind fixated on nothing. I was blank, unable to sleep but unable to think. I went through the motions all day, waiting for this moment in which I would get to confront Embry and bombard him with questions but now that he was sitting in front of me, I became blank once more.

And I thought this made him skeptical. He stared at me like he was waiting for me to snap, waiting for me to act like myself and erupt. I knew he was afraid to say anything; I could see it from the way he tensed and hunched his shoulders. He was hoping to avoid that trademark Remy Snap of mine. I thought that's why he wanted to talk to me at a diner, somewhere public, so I wouldn't try to hit him again.

The ridiculousness of the situation almost made me laugh, and I thought that maybe I was going clinically insane. I thought that maybe yesterday's hysterics were clouding my judgement and made me susceptible to some elaborate ruse. And now that I was blessed with this clear-sighted calmness that I was never quite capable of before, I could snap out of. I could look at Embry and say to him, alright tell me what's really going on, because I you should know I'm not stupid enough to actually believe you're a shapeshifter. But whenever I thought about saying it out loud, I halted. I had seen too much for me to deny the possibility like that.

I had spent so much time switching between wild conspiracy to wild conspiracy that I never actually stopped to think what I would do if any of them turned out to be true. And now that I was face-to-face with a concept of something so unreal and nightmarish I felt like all that time preparing and researching was useless.

Embry's eyes were expectant and heavy, and I knew I would have to be the one to open this conversation up. "I need you to understand," I said, shifting against the booth and leaning towards Embry, "that if any of this is some sort of joke and you think you can make a fool out of me, hell will rain. Alright? I will ruin your life, mercilessly."

"It's not a joke," he said plainly. "I wouldn't do that to you. What sort of person do you think I am?"

"I don't know, Embry. I thought you were just some harmless dude that liked to follow me around. Now things have changed," I snapped, leaning back against the booth. "And excuse me for thinking that you playing a mean little trick on me is a little bit more plausible than the idea of literal fucking werewolves."

He sighed. "This isn't how I imagined this going."

"If you think your expectations are rattled, try being me right now."

Embry chewed on his cheek the way I do. And then he buried his face in his hands, rubbing his palms against his skin and groaning. "Remy," he said suddenly, sitting up and reaching his hands over to me. I didn't take them. "I know this is a lot, but it's the truth." When I said nothing in response, he offered, "If you want, we can go outside and I can prove it to you."

The thought of Embry turning into something deadly and mythological right in front of my eyes made me sweat. "Maybe later," I said coolly.

There was a softness in his voice when he said, "You're a part of this now, Remy. And I know that it might take some time getting used to the idea, but I'm begging you to keep an open mind here. You've wanted answers for so long, and now you can have them. But you have to trust me, okay?"

I chewed on my cheek and tapped my foot against the ground, trying to focus this nervous energy that was building up. I didn't know if I wanted to believe him or not. "How do you, I mean like, how does this even happen?"

'It's...a protection thing," he started, looking around at everything but me. "When there's a threat nearby, we start to...change. It's starts with the rage. I would get mad at everything, the smallest things and I constantly wanted to," he trailed off, shaking his head. "And we get a fever, but we're not sick. That's just how we are."

I thought of how warm I got under Embry's arm. "Is that why you're always," I shifted uncomfortably, "hot?"

He nodded. "And then when it happens for the first time, it felt like my skin was being ripped apart and my bones were growing too big for my body. It was agony."

My gut wrenched at the idea of him being stuck in so much pain while he morphed and twisted into something else. "Does it still hurt?" I asked, sounding gentler than before.

"No," he replied, shaking his head. "It got easier, after a while."

I didn't feel like we were talking about reality. I didn't think I would ever be able to really believe in any of this, but even though I kept telling myself how illogical everything was I wanted to know more. "Do you need like, a full moon?"

Embry stared at me for a moment before cracking a smile, and he then he laughed, shoulders shaking. "No, Remy, we don't need a full moon. We're not cartoon characters."

I rolled my eyes. "I don't have very much to go off of here. How do you do it then?"

"You have to get mad, but not like you get mad," he said with a coy little smile, and I frowned at him. "It takes a lot of self-control. We can't go bursting into giant animals in every day situations, we gotta be discreet about it. Paul used to be really bad about it, though. He had to learn mediation."

"Are you implying I lack self-control?"

Embry smiled at me. "You're gonna try to look me in the eyes and try to tell me you're not even a little bit hotheaded?"

I narrowed my eyes at him. "I liked you better when you were too afraid to talk to me," I mumbled.

"You're handling this a lot better than I thought you would," Embry said, eyes searching my face. "You honestly seem more calm than normal. I thought for sure that you would've, I dunno, stabbed me or something."

I snorted. "It's good to know you think so lowly of me."

Embry's eyes widened. "No, wait, that's not what I meant. I just meant like, it's a pretty wild concept to get used to. Especially since you thought your brother was involved, I don't think I could blame you for having a bad reaction like that. I mean, when Kim found out she ran off screaming, only after punching Jared in the snout."

It shouldn't have, but the realization that Kim knew hit me like a truck. And then I started to piece it all together and it made even more sense than it did before. I thought of that day, the day she came to my house crying, telling me that Jared wasn't what she thought he was. She cried into my shoulder and we drank together and I didn't think anything of it when she said that he was a monster. I swallowed, feeling like there was a rock lodged in my throat. I was starting to believe Embry a little more. "I guess I just still don't feel like any of this is real." I paused, twisting my fingers together. "What's the threat?" I asked after a moment.

"What?"

"You said that it's a protection thing. What are you protecting us against?"

There was a moment of silence before Embry said, "Why don't we go for a walk?"

I paid the bill (after ten minutes of debating, and I hoped Embry learned not to argue with me), and we left, leaving nearly full plates of food on the table. He lead me back to his truck, and I thought that I was spending a lot of time in different people's cars. Embry didn't say anything while he drove, just tapped his fingers against the steering wheel and hummed along to the quite songs on the radio. And the longer he was silent, the more my nerves grew, like they were reproducing.

Embry drove straight towards First Beach, where we first spoke to each other, when he asked me to lay off Jared and I almost bit his head off. It seemed like something that happened years ago, like I was a different person when it happened. At least then, I knew who I was. Embry opened the door for me and held onto my hand to help me out. He didn't let go as we walked down to the sand and it made my palm sweat.

"I don't think I apologized to you enough for the way I let Jared talk to you," Embry said after a moment of silent walking. "I think sometimes I can be kind of spineless."

I kicked the sand while we walked. "It's fine. I already forgive you. And besides, it's not like it's your job to protect me. I can handle that on my own."

Embry looked down at me with a knowing smile. "You don't even know how wrong you are."

His words sent a shiver down my spine and I didn't like the way they made me feel, so I ignored it. "Are you gonna tell me or are you just gonna keep stalling?" I asked, trying to keep my tone light.

Embry let out a heavy breath of air and let go of my hand, turning to face me. "Remy," he said, putting his hands on my shoulders, "I want you to know that you're always gonna be safe. Okay? Like, I don't want you to worry about anything. I'm always gonna make sure you're safe."

The way he talked knotted my stomach up. "Okay."

He dropped his hands and shifted his weight around. "There are...other things, besides us. There's something really dangerous around here, and that's why we all phased."

I raised an eyebrow at him. "And that is?"

"Vampires," Embry said, tone matter-of-fact.

I stared up at him for a moment, eyes wide. And then, when I realized what he was saying to me, I snapped. "Alright, you got me, Embry. Good job," I said, anger boiling up in my throat and coming out as laughter. "You know, you really had me going for a second."

Embry's expression broke, eyes filling up with something painful. "Remy."

I shook my head. "Werewolves, god I was so dumb to buy that. Even for a second. If you wanted to keep the plot-line going, you should've picked something a little bit less ridiculous than a fucking vampire."

"I know it sounds stupid, but would you please just-"

"Was this some sort of revenge plot? Like, did Jared put you up to this? Very clever. Very fucking clever. Convincing me that there was a chance my brother might be alive with some elaborate fantasy plot. Can I ask what the ending was supposed to be, if I bought this? Were you gonna tell me you found my brother and then bring me over to his gravestone? Something really fucking clever like that."

There was this pain on Embry's face that I couldn't make sense of. "I would never do that to you."

"And the details! The details you came up with were so fucking impressive. Where'd you get the lore from?" I felt unhinged, words coming out of me before I could think. "The journal was a nice touch too. I bet that's where you got the idea. Play off my grief. Those stupid ideas I had when I was missing Bear. Who stole it first, you or Jared?"

"It's nothing like that, Remy. I'm not lying to you, I'm not."

I ignored him. "Will you please just tell Jared that he didn't have to exact his revenge on me? Tell him that living the rest of my life without ever knowing why my brother killed himself is enough," I said, a sob caught in my throat. I laughed again. "Fucking vampires."

Embry grabbed onto my wrist. "Remy, would you please just listen to me?"

"No, stop fucking touching me," I snapped, and he dropped my wrist like it burnt him. "Honestly, fuck you, Embry Call. Fuck you for doing this to me."

His voice was tight with something when he said, "I didn't do anything to you."

But I shook my head, eyes brimming with tears, and walked away from him. I was so mad at him but I was more mad at myself. I was stupid to trust him and I was even more stupid for caring about him. Because even now that I knew who he was and what he was doing, it made it even worse.

I raised the shot glass to my lips and dumped the contents down my throat, ignoring the burn of my throat and the hole in my chest. I reached over and grabbed the handle and poured myself another one. Bobby spread out across the thick blanket we had laid out in her backyard, staring up at the sky. "Don't you think you should be going a little bit easier?" she asked, but I wasn't going to listen to her, because she was already on her fifth shot and her eyes were fluttering shut. "You're gonna puke your fucking guts out in the morning."

"Don't care," I said, taking another shot and coughing. "It's Friday."

"Don't you have work?"

"Not till Sunday, and I plan on being drunk every single moment until then."

I didn't know what time it was but the stars were bright in the sky and there wasn't any sound of passing cars and I thought it must've been late enough for everyone to be at home, asleep without worry. I wondered what my parents were doing, because they certainly weren't trying to make any contact with me. It was at least a day since I left that little note on the fridge, a full twenty-four hours, and they didn't even care enough to double check that I was where I said I'd be. I imagined my mother felt grateful I was gone. I pounded back another shot at the thought, wondering what number I was on.

"Jesus fuck," Bobby slurred, "what did Embry fucking do to you?"

I shook my head, looking down at the pattern on the blanket. I wasn't feeling anything but I knew if I tried to stand I would immediately fall over. "He's just a fucking jackass."

Bobby snorted. "I fucking told you. And you were over there getting soft on him. Letting him walk around with his arm over your shoulder like he owned you. I knew he was a dick."

"Well you don't have to be so fucking smug about it," I said, playing with the cap of the handle. "Doesn't matter now anyways. Never talking to that dickhead again."

Bobby propped herself up on her forearms and looked over at me. "Good. I don't know what he did but anyone who fucks with you deserves the death penalty," and then said, quieter, "You've already been through so much."

I thought about what it would be like to be Bobby. To be so pretty people were constantly envious of me, to have a seemingly endless amount of wealth, to have a long list of friends and people who admired me. I thought of all the friends she had and wondered why she chose to keep me close to her. And I didn't think it mattered as long as it wasn't some deep rooted plan to hurt me. It didn't matter if she thought of me as her body guard or just a person to down some shots with, just so long as I wasn't alone. "You're my best friend," I said after a moment, gently swaying with the wind.

"And you're my best friend. That's why I'm gonna fuck up Embry and Kim and Jared and every ugly that ever fucked with you," she said, and I admired how she used the word ugly as a noun more than anything.

I laughed. "You don't have to do that," I said.

"Yeah but I'm gonna."

"You're just drunk," I said, rolling my eyes, "and it doesn't even matter. Revenge wouldn't even be worth it. I just wanna stop thinking about them. Take another shot with me," I said, popping open the handle and pouring one for her and one for me. I pushed it in her direction.

Bobby gently held the shot glass with the tips of her fingers. She raised it towards me, and I clinked her glass with mine. I thought this might have been shot number nine or maybe ten. It started floating to my brain and the burning down my throat made me cough again.

I liked being drunk because I liked feeling like I was floating. When my blood was flooded with alcohol and I couldn't feel my face, I felt like I was somewhere else. I saw the world differently, vision shifted and blurred and there was something different about the way everything felt. I could pour shot after shot of tequila down my throat and the more I drank the more I free I felt. It lit different parts of me on fire, and I became someone who was softer and someone who giggled her way through her sentences. I wasn't Remy Cree when I was drunk. I was who I would be if my brother was alive and my parents loved me and I hadn't been betrayed by almost everyone who had ever spoken to me. It was worth the vomit.

"Do you wanna have another party tomorrow night?" Bobby asked, swishing her hair around behind her. "My parents aren't gonna be home. But who's fucking surprised? They're never home." There was a bitterness in her voice I knew all too well.

"What do they even do?" I asked. Bobby didn't talk about her parents much.

And from the way Bobby groaned it sounded like there was a good reason. "Who fucking knows? My dad's the CEO of fucking some stupid company that sells like, I dunno, pillows or something. I don't even know how he got the job. He was dirt poor with zero experience and then all the sudden he's climbing up the corporate ladder and pretending like he's not some scrawny kid from the res. He's such a fucking sellout," she spat, and reached for the bottle to take a sip straight out of it. "And now, he and my mom spent like, half of their time in some stupid condo in Seattle. They just keep this house cause they like to pretend that they care about their humble beginnings. But they stay away from here as much as they can."

"And they just leave you here?"

"I put up a big fight," Bobby said with a shrug. "I don't wanna live in Seattle, away from the res. I love it here," she said, tone filled to the brim with sincerity and care. "Whatever, though, could be worse."

I grabbed the bottle from Bobby's hand and raised it in the air. "Here's to having shitty fucking parents!" I yelled, and took a large swig.

Bobby collapsed back down on the blanket, hair spread out around her and sharp features glowing in the moonlight. "Did you know," she said, giggling and biting down on her bottom lip, "that there's someone watching us right now?"

My head was full of air and I laughed, losing my breath and I rolled over on my side next to Bobby. "No the fuck there's not," I said, still laughing. "Don't try to scare me."

"No," she whispered, trying to contain her giggles. She leaned in close to me. "Look, they're by the trees."

I couldn't stop laughing. I put my hand over my mouth and said to her. "You're a goddamn liar," I said, but raised my head anyways, looking around Bobby's backyard for any sign of another person. And there he was, standing there like he never left. My heart started racing and all the blood in my body rushed to my head. He stared at us, still and stiff like he did before. Like a ghost. "Bobby," I whispered, "that's Briah."

"What?" she asked, voice up a notch, and she shot up next to me. I heard her breath catch in her throat, like mine did, as we sat shoulder to shoulder, and stared down at my dead brother. "Holy shit," she said, but her voice was faded and sounded drowned out.

Time stood still. There was no noise but the beating of my heart in my ears. We didn't move; he didn't move. There was nothing in those moments. It felt like hours, but I knew it was probably just seconds. I held my breath. He looked like my brother, but he didn't. His eyes were black, darker than I remembered. And there was something about his skin, it was smooth and free of the scars that he had on his arms and his face. The clothes he had one were the same ones he had on the last time I saw him, grinning and laughing and I wondered if he kept them on for a full year straight. And now, his face was void of any emotion, any feeling. And before he could move away from me again, I stood and sprinted towards him.

The alcohol hit me heavily, and all the blood that was just in my head dispersed. I stumbled, and immediately lost all of my breath. And the second I stood, he was gone, sinking back into the trees. I could hear Bobby calling for me, but her voice was far away and the sound of my name didn't mean anything to me anymore. I needed to reach him.

The branches hit me hard, like they did the first time I chased after him. I wasn't going to lose him this time, I was determined, legs pumping faster than I thought I could go but still not fast enough, because Briah was out of my line of sight once again. I screamed for him. I screamed his name at the top of my lungs and I lost all the air in my lungs. I didn't know where I was running and I thought about how he only showed up when I was so drunk I couldn't see my feet clearly. I screamed his name again, and I didn't realize I was crying until I choked on my tears.

My lungs were burning and I couldn't get enough air in them. I slowed, coming to a stop, and I screamed, "Why do you keep doing this to me?" into the silence, lost as to whether or not I'd ever get an answer. I screamed again, wordless rage flying out of me and I flung my fist into a nearby tree, the bark shattering my bones and tearing up my knuckles and I felt the pain vibrate through my whole arm.

There was suddenly a pair of hot hands wrapping around my arms and pulling them behind me. I screamed and grunted and tried to pull away from whoever it was but the alcohol was weighing down on me. "Remy, Remy, Remy, calm down. Calm down, okay, I'm not gonna hurt you. Just stop!"

His grip on me lightened and I pushed away from him, stumbling back. I looked up at Jared, whole body burning. "What are you doing out here?" I snapped.

There was something in his eyes so dangerously close to pity. "It's not safe out here," he said softly. "You gotta go back to Bobby's."

"Why the fuck do you care?" I asked, words slurring together and my eyes too heavy to keep open. I just wanted to find my brother and I got the exact opposite. I got the one person that hated my brother the most.

"It doesn't matter. You just can't stay out here."

I was so mad that out of everyone in the world that could've found me in this state, face hot with drunken tears and a broken and swollen hand, it was Jared. "Fuck you," I spat.

Jared sighed, and took a step towards me, grabbing my hand. I winched at the pain. He ran his thumb over my knuckles and shook his head. "This is definitely broken and you gotta go to the hospital. Now, either I can take you, which I know you don't want, or Bobby can take you."

I snatched my hand away from him. "Don't talk to me like I'm a child."

"Then stop acting like a child," he snapped back, and then sighed, like he was trying to calm himself down. "You have to get your hand checked out and you have to get out of the woods."

I balled the hand that wasn't swollen to the size of a tennis ball up into a fist. "Fine, then I'll do it by myself," I said, voice still heavy with tears. I pushed past Jared and started walking away from him.

But he grabbed me by the arm and stopped me. "You're going the wrong way," he said, and then frowned. "Do you want me to get Embry?"

"I'd rather die."

Jared let go and rubbed his face with his hands. "God, you're so stubborn," he said with a heavy exhale of breath. "Come on, we're going back to Bobby's."

He started walking back in the direction I assumed was towards Bobby's house, and I crossed my arms over my chest and thought about just staying there, and waiting for Bear to come back. But I thought he must have been so far gone by now and Bobby was probably crying into the blanket and she was so nice to me when no one else was so I followed Jared back for her. I stayed as far behind him as I could without losing sight of him, crossing my arms and pouting and tripping over roots. I wondered if Briah ran off because Jared was there and that idea was a lot easier to swallow than him running away because he didn't want to talk to me.

When we broke through the trees and landed back in Bobby's yard, she ran up to me, tears in her eyes, and flung her arms around my neck. "I'm so glad you're back! I didn't know what to fucking do. Oh my god, Remy, what the fuck just happened? I thought I was gonna have to call the cops and I knew you'd be mad at me because you hate the cops. Was that really Briah? I missed you," she rambled, arms tight around my neck. And then, Jared coughed, and her hold on me loosened. "What the fuck are you doing here?" she practically snarled at him.

"Remy needs to go to the hospital. Her hand is broken. Can you drive her?" he asked, and then Bobby stepped back from me and stumbled backwards, landing flat on her ass. Jared sighed. "I guess not. Someone wanna give me their keys?"

Bobby's head dropped onto my shoulder and she was snoring lightly, filling up the emergency room waiting area with snores. Jared was on my other side, wearing a sweatshirt he got from the back of Bobby's car that was about eight sizes too small for him, because he wasn't wearing a shirt when he found me.

"You don't have to stay here," I said, the fluorescence of the hospital sobering me up.

"Yes, I do," Jared asserted, staring forward. "I gotta make sure you and Bobby get home after this. Neither of you are in a great state right now."

I rolled my broken hand around on my leg, watching as it puffed up and bled. "I'm not asking this to be a dick," I said, "but why do you suddenly care so much? It's out of character for you. Shouldn't you be calling me like a drunk or something like that?"

Jared shrugged. "I haven't been very fair to you, Remy. I thought I was doing what was best for Kim, and that was the only thing I could think about. I didn't realize how bad it fucked you up in the process," he said, not meeting my gaze. "Embry told me about what you said today."

I tensed. The appearance of Bear had shoved everything else out of my head. I didn't know what to say.

"I realized that I was holding such a strong grudge against your brother that I treated you like shit when you didn't really deserve it. And I didn't realize how much it would affect you and Embry. He was really pissed at me today," he said with a light chuckle, though there was nothing funny about it. "I'm sorry the way I treated you made it so you feel like you can't trust him."

It was my turn to chuckle. "Don't give yourself too much credit. It's not like I was an open book before you came around."

"But you gotta believe Embry. He's not making this shit up. None of us are. And Remy," he said in serious tone that made me shift my gaze around uncomfortably, "Embry really cares about you. It kills him when you're mad at him. I mean, that kid would do anything for you. Even if I planned some stupid thing to fuck with you, he'd have nothing to do with it."

I tried not to think about the implications of what his words meant. I wasn't totally sober and my head was still reeling from seeing Bear again, and I was still dizzy. Embry's words to me earlier in day where so surreal. "I can't think about that right now," I said, voice hushed.

Jared nodded. "I get it. It's a lot. But you gotta give him a chance."

"And how do I know this isn't an elaborate effort on your part to trick me?"

"Because," Jared said with a sad tone, "I'm kind of tired of Embry hating me. And I think if I got you to give him another chance, we'd be cool again."

And before I could say anything, there was a nurse with tired eyes calling my name. I stood, shrugging Bobby's head off of me. It landed on the chair with a thud, but she kept snoring. "Thanks," I said to Jared.

"I'll be here when you're done," Jared said, throwing a little wave at me.

jared's redemption arc ! this chapter was A LOT. i love it. i promise soon we'll exit the angst period for just a moment but who would remy be without catastrophe. what do we think! how do we like it!