LOVE AND DRAMA

I own nothing. Except Mikayla, the plot, and the title.

Why do people always search for love? I asked myself, watching Mikayla, several days later. She was still as broken as I had been before meeting her. I sighed. We all look for a girlfriend or boyfriend because we think they'll make us feel complete, because we want someone who will always be there for us, who will trust and believe in us and who we trust and believe in, who would rather say and do nothing in our presence than do something with or talk to someone else, who will take the time to understand us, who tries to figure out how our minds work, who can tease us but who lets us tease back, who accepts us for who we are. And that's what love really is. That's why we want it. We just want to feel like we belong somewhere.

Every day, I would sit down in math and slide my bag under my chair. My happy face was always on; if the pack knew I was sad, it wouldn't take them long to realize that it was because Mikayla was sad first. Though I always expected her pained expression to break my heart, I couldn't help but wait impatiently for Mikayla to enter the room. This event used to erase the need for my happy face because she made me genuinely happy. Mikayla was the only one who could make me so. I loved being Mikayla's Jacob. But every day, she would walk in and only sometimes would she return my greeting, but even then, she would slide into her seat across from me, not once finding the resolve to smile. At the end of every class, we went the same direction, she to English and I to health, and we would walk together.

Of course, I always saw how broken she was, and I always wanted to make it okay, to take her in my arms and tell her that she should put him behind her; that anyone who had the balls to hurt her ever again would have to deal with me. But she didn't know that I knew what her boyfriend had done to her, and I knew she wouldn't want me to ask. She never said anything about the matter, and I didn't press her for information. If she wanted me to know what was going on – not that she really had a choice, as I already knew – she would tell me. Then I could talk to her about something like this. As much as it hurt me to admit it, I knew that, as of yet, she didn't feel close enough to me to reveal too much of her personal life.

But my Mikayla wasn't here. This Mikayla was empty, the same way I had been. I felt the need to help, but if I tried to cheer her up, I would feel like a hypocrite. But hadn't she saved me once? In some small way, didn't she save me every time I saw her? She was the only one to truly offer me consolation. Now, I had to do the same for her.

"Mikayla?" I whispered tentatively.

She shifted.

"…and that's all we'll do for today. The bell is going to ring in a few minutes. Talk amongst yourselves. I'll be right back; I have to fetch something from my office."

I looked up at my teacher, only then remembering that I was still in class. I had been so caught up in my worries that I hadn't even been paying attention. It made me mad that he could have two students not paying attention to the lesson and could totally ignore them the whole time. I knew he wasn't oblivious to the situation; he just didn't care.

As soon as he left the room, the class was reduced to a group of chattering monkeys. I couldn't discern one shouted conversation from another, so I decided it would be a good time to have a heart-to-heart with Mikayla. I called her name again. This time, I was prepared to demand her attention. But my force would be unnecessary.

Mikayla's head snapped up. "What?" she growled.

I was at first taken aback by her uncharacteristic outburst but I immediately regained my composure. I decided in an instant to play off her anger.

"You can't be like this!" I exploded. "You're being so selfish! Sure, you're sad, but I'm broken! I feel sad everyday, but at least I make an effort to appear happy!"

"You have no right to say that," Mikayla retorted, her voice a strange, deadly calm. "Before me, you were like this. You didn't talk to anyone. You refused to. And now you're criticizing me?!"

"Mikayla, I know I'm being a hypocrite, but, please, take it from someone who knows. It's terrible to feel this way, but there's no use in showing it. You can let it interfere with the way you act toward me and everyone else, but you can't let it interfere with school. Your grades are going to suffer if you can't concentrate in class, and that's just wrong. And maybe it's not something to be proud of, but I manage to concentrate on other things, but as soon as those things are done, I'm sad. But now I'm pretending otherwise. It's better."

"No. It isn't. It really isn't. Because I thought I had made you happy. And now I find out that it's a lie? People don't like being lied to, Jacob. I thought I helped you. From the moment I saw you here, sitting alone, I felt protective of you. I don't know why. Before I saw you, I wanted to stay away. I had heard of you and you didn't exactly seem like the kind of person I would be friends with. But when I saw you, I had to help you; your heart truly was broken. And here I was thinking I had mended it."

"You almost did," I admitted, lowering my voice because we were beginning to draw attention. "Every time I was with you, it was like heartbreak medicine. But when I found out you had a boyfriend, that medicine stopped working and my heart broke more. Because the only way for the medicine to heal my heart completely is by my being your boyfriend. And you don't feel that way about me. And I can tell you're upset because he broke up with you, that son of a bitch, whoever he is. That's how I can tell how you don't feel about me, that you still love him, and even though there's no way I'd ever hurt you like he did, you're always going to want him. And it seems that that's the way it always is. Everyone wants what is bad for them."

Mikayla's mouth hung open. I had thought I had been too obvious with how I felt about her. Evidently, I had thought wrong.

"I – I –"

The bell rang, signaling the official conclusion of class. I stood up, throwing my bag over my shoulder. Turning on my heel, I left without a word to Mikayla, and I walked to health alone, my happy face gone. And as I walked, I thought that maybe I was right in telling Bella that I would never imprint. Because I would never have the chance to be with someone I love. Because no one would ever love me back.

The next morning, I had a fight with Billy. By the time I reached school, I had all but completely forgotten what it was about, but I recalled not wanting to go to school and Billy voicing the thought that my anger came from lack of sleep. That, of course, only angered me more. I could go a week on only a half hour of sleep. Total. I had done it on more than one occasion. I remembered that, in a desperate attempt to stay home and avoid the source of my emotional chaos, I had said that the main reason I was angry was that I was intelligent and I couldn't go to school because I was tired of everybody wanting too much from me. Billy said that he didn't care how smart I thought I was; I was still going to school. To this day, I am amazed I didn't phase right there in the kitchen. I was able to control myself and storm out of the house without a final argument against Billy, but it took a lot of my strength. I realized that keeping myself from phasing now, with all that was going on at school with Mikayla, was a near impossibility.

The morning flew by, lunch beginning and passing in the blink of an eye. Math came much too soon for my liking, and I found it hard to keep my happy face on as I awaited Mikayla's arrival. Instead of succumbing to my despair, I looked around the classroom. The lights were still off, the teacher not yet in the room. Blue light filtered in from the shaded windows, dimly exposing the scene before me. I saw that most chairs were placed snugly beside one another, that geometry worksheets lay forgotten by students eager to be finished with the subject, and that small slips of paper, passed notes, littered the floor surrounding the tables, evidence of blissful camaraderie. I slowly looked to Mikayla's chair. Here, too, was this indication of friendly relationships. I looked down at myself. My chair was pushed back from the table, separated from all the others, my papers neatly tucked away in my folder and my floor-area devoid of scraps. It was as if the very room was trying to tell me to move on, not to accept that my life had become nothing but meaningless existence. It seemed to tell me to fight back, to stand up for what I wanted, what every human needed.

It was then that I realized I hadn't looked about me in quite a while, probably since Bella had left. I didn't want to let anything get too memorable. I didn't want to allow any habits or familiarities to form. But as I looked at my classroom, I realized that I had let most of my freshman year slip by. I had pushed everyone away, closed my eyes to the outside world and stayed inside myself, brooding on what was never to return. The whole high school experience was lost on me. I had matured too quickly and I could never get my childhood back. I was an old man inside. I had lived, loved, lost, loved, and lost again. I had likely been through more than all of my classmates combined, and there was no erasing any of it.

"Jacob? Son, you know you can turn on the lights."

I nodded to Mr. Aza (my math teacher) but didn't move. He sighed and turned the lights on himself. Gradually, the room filled. I was just starting to worry that perhaps Mikayla was absent when she walked in and sat down across from me as usual. The bell rang seconds later, and I wondered if she hadn't come later than usual to avoid another argument.

If this was her intention, she must have been disappointed when, at the end of class, Mr. Aza once again allowed us some free time and left the room.

"Mikayla?" I couldn't help it. Talking to her was the only thing that had been keeping me sane lately.

Today, she didn't respond. Her head remained at rest on her folded arms.

"Mikayla, this is insane."

She looked up wordlessly.

"Please talk to me."

"Jacob, do you have a problem with me?" she asked quietly, her eyes narrowed.

"I have a problem with what you're doing, how you're acting. I told you that yesterday. You're creating drama where there is none, Mikayla! He doesn't go to this school, and nobody here knows him. Nobody here knows you!"

"You're wrong. People here know me. You see me in the hall with other people; I know you do. You're just fooling yourself into thinking that you're the only one I have here because that's how you want it to be. You want me to like you; you admitted it. You want me to put him behind me and run into your arms, but it isn't going to happen like that. I'm not the one creating drama here. But you want me to because you want to be involved in this!"

"Maybe you're right," I said, so loudly that it was almost a shout. "Maybe I want a little drama! Maybe I want to be high-strung and crazy or live a normal life like every one of my fake friends! And maybe I want to be normal!" my voice rose with each possibility I spit out. Mikayla just looked at me with an expression of utter shock. Her surprise and hurt didn't even faze me, and the usual tremors that came with my anger did not afflict me. "But I know I don't," I concluded, and my voice was excuse enough for the absence of anger. I enjoyed being who I was, Jacob Black. For some strange, twisted, and possibly morbid reason, I would never want to be anyone else. Because if I were normal, I would have gotten over Bella when I found out about her and Edward. I wouldn't have tried so hard to protect her; I would have trusted her in Edward's hands because I wouldn't have even known about the animosity between his kind and mine. If I had gotten over Bella, I might have had a girlfriend long ago and might have ignored Mikayla. If I had ignored Mikayla, my life would be normal and I would be normal. And normal was boring.

"There really is no such thing as normal, you know. Everybody wants everybody else to like them. Everybody thinks that they need to be like everybody else to be accepted. So everybody tries to become someone else. Because that's just how people work, Jacob Black." Mikayla said, her voice betraying no emotion. "And you just have to get used to it. Life happens. Deal with it." She said her final statement with as little emotion as the opening, but I felt she was accusing me of doing something wrong.

"I made a promise to myself," I told her. "Long ago, I swore that I would never let anyone get away with telling me what to do or who I should be. I made a promise to myself that if I saw something wrong, I would not just sit back and deal with it. And this way of life that everyone accepts? I don't."

I walked away from her then, and she didn't follow. And I didn't care. I didn't even wonder what she thought of me after that declaration. So perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps this wasn't love after all.