As I approach the school doors I am filled with dread. As soon as I breach the entrance, the whispers start and people's gaze burn holes into my back. I make my way to my locker down the main hallway.
Slut, bitch, whore, fat ass
Words whispered over and over like rocks thrown on a window. Sure they bounce off, but there are still chips and cracks in the class; evidence that they were there. That's what I am, a broken window full of chips and cracks.
I open my locker, spinning the dial slowly. I gather the books I will need for my first five classes when someone bumps me throwing all I have into the floor.
"Dumb bitch can't even say 'Sorry'!"
That's Tony. He is the walking STD of La Push High School. He can play almost every sport perfectly but can't seem to get above a 67 on a math test. All of the girls throw themselves at him, despite the fact that if he doesn't pass Pre- Calculus he won't graduate high school to even have the chance for a sports scholarship and become a professional basketball or football player that lives in a big mansion and can afford to buy them fancy clothes and cars until he tires of them and leaves them out on the street.
Tony killed my best friend once.
Her name was Kat. This was when he was just emerging as a star athlete to the coaches. Kat fell in love with him. He said and did all the right things. Held her when she cried, got her chocolate and Midol when she was on her period, sat outside her house in the rain when they had a fight. When they had sex for the first time, Kat had said how wonderful he was, how gentle and patient he was. For a while, things were great for them. But as his popularity grew, they drifted apart. He started flirting with more girls and Kat didn't know what to do. They had already discussed breaking up when she found out she was pregnant. He accused her of cheating and said that the baby wasn't his. Kat's parents kicked her out because they said if she wanted to be an adult and have sex, she had to be an adult and take care of her baby on her own. When Kat told me, I told her to stay with me and my brother, Noah.
Kat stayed with us until she was six months pregnant. She was working at the diner in Forks to get some money to buy things for the baby's room. She had just found out she and Tony were having a little boy, and she wanted to do the whole room in blues and greens. One night, Tony and his friends walked in the diner. When Tony saw her, he said something to his friends as they sat down. While they were in the diner everything seemed fine and there was no incident. It was as Kat left to come home that she was jumped by Tony's friends. The beat her and raped her. She was left bleeding and unconscious on the concrete behind the dumpster when Geordie found her and called an ambulance. She lost her little boy. For a few weeks it seemed like Kat would be ok. One day I had come in from my shift at the gift shop to find her in the bathroom choking on bloody vomit and an empty bottle of sleeping pills that my dad had kept before he left us. We had gone to the hospital but she was pronounced dead at 7:41 on that Friday evening.
After Kat died, Tony took his grief and ran to almost every teenage girl in La Push and I've heard he also gets around in Forks.
All I see when I look at Tony now is Kat's face when she was told she miscarried. He smirks at me but I see the hollow look in his eyes. Despite everything, I know he loved her. She was the only one who loved him for him. He just got caught up in everything he could have that he ignored what he did have. As he walked away, I finished gathering all of the things that had fallen from my bag and hands.
I entered my Anatomy class slowly, my footsteps seeming to sink into the tile floors like I was walking through wet cement. I looked through the curtain my hair provided and saw my demons sitting in the rows of desks. Their whispers hissing like snakes wrapping around my head. I trudged over to my desk and sat down. I stared at the fake wood and the painted veins trying to impersonate the rings in a tree while we waited for Mr. Tarsus to begin the lesson. He was an older man in his late forties with a bald spot that he tried to cover with what greasy hair he had left on the sides. He wore khaki pants everyday and he always spilled coffee on his short sleeve button down with his argyle sweaters. He wore thick rimmed glasses that made his eyes seem to bug out and rested on the mole at the side of his nose. He was basically the stereotypical science teacher. Other students hated him because he could be a hard ass but I knew it was because he always heard what they said about him. He was white and so a lot of the popular students made racial comments and he disliked them for that. To everyone else he was a fair teacher, but he wasn't a push over. I liked him okay. I aced almost all of the tests unless I had a particularly bad morning.
The first days going to school without Kat were hell but for a different reason. I hated her for leaving me alone. I never fit in with the cool kids but I was okay with that because I had a best friend and she was amazing. I was so angry after she died. I wanted to follow her. I stopped doing school work, stopped eating what little I did. I didn't sleep, I sat in the rocking chair my mom had bought when she found out she was pregnant with me. I would sit there rocking for hours like a mad woman. I'm sure I resembled one with my wild curly hair and green eyes that stared at nothing. Like Mr. Tarsus, my family is white. We come from Irish and Scottish backgrounds with only a touch of Quileute but my mother was adamant about returning to her home. Her grandfather had been full Quileute and had a nice house that we moved into after our arrival.
Before we moved we used to visit every chance we got. I met him one summer on the beach. Jared Quinn was ten years old. He had been playing football with his friend Paul when I had fallen off of one of the rocks and scraped my elbow and knee. Paul laughed and wanted to continue with their game but Jared was kind. Well, he was kind then. Now not so much. As Jared reached his full maturity, he realized that like Tony, he could have pretty much any girl he wanted. He had a new girlfriend every few weeks or if the girl was lucky it may have lasted for a month or two but he always broke up with them to find a new victim. As time went on, he didn't just ignore me, I could have lived with that. The boy who had once given me a ninja turtles band aid became a monster who tortured me with Kat's death and with my own insecurities about my weight and race. Now at eighteen, Jared towered over me even though our height difference was only a few inches. But he had power over me that I lacked to hold for myself. After losing both parents and my best friend, only having my older brother who worked all the time to provide for us, I was a shell of my former self. Hollow. He knew that and he broke me.
I return to the present in the class of hell when a body slams into the chair behind me. I barely tilt my head to see if I can get a glimpse of who it is and my heart stops. Jared hadn't been to school in almost a month but now he sits behind me. He's grown and he is buff. Like inhumanly buff. Before I let myself think about his attractive change, I pivot my head and look at the desk again focusing more on the grainy pattern now. As the rest of the class files in, Mr. Tarsus begins the lesson on the whiteboard. I try so hard to ignore Jared behind me but I can feel the heat radiating behind me. The constant reminder of his presence makes me remember everything he did to me.
I had gone to a party with Kat sophomore year. Since she was dating the quarterback, she got invited to every party and she tried to make sure I came along to at least a few of them. I was never the social butterfly, typically trying to blend in because being ignored was better than being insulted. Anyway, Kat and Tony had gone to another area of the house and I was left in the kitchen trying to avoid everyone that was drunk or shooting up in the bathroom. Jared and his girlfriend at the time Blair, trampled through laughing in their drunken stupor and when he saw me, he smirked, whispered something in her ear to which she giggled, and grabbed both of their beers and walked past me. As I moved to get out of his way, he held his arms above his head and poured both beers over my head. The alcohol burned my eyes and I gagged from the smell. Blair acted like she was mad at Jared and for the next few minutes I believed her. She led me upstairs to a bedroom and gave me some clothes to change into. When she left I started to peel the grimy clothes that started sticking to my skin.
I decided to strip completely bare on the top since even my bra had become soaked with their beers. As I reached for the Nickelback t shirt, the door to the bedroom busted open with half of the football team staring at my chest and laughing. Leading the group was Jared with his camera recording my humiliation. I snatched the shirt, pulling it over my head and pushed through them to get out. All I wanted was to get out of that house, to get away from the boy I thought I knew. But he grabbed my arm, pulled me close and whispered,
"If I knew you had a set like that I would've recorded you sooner."
I pushed myself away from him and tried to make my way through the crowd of spectators that had formed. As I walked I could feel them grabbing at my breasts and butt. By then I had started crying and desperately trying to free myself. That's when Kat showed up. Kat started yelling at them and told them to back the hell off or she would make them. Kat was a bad ass and she protected me. She was the big sister I needed and the best friend I knew I could always count on. She never made me go to another party after that because by Monday, those pictures of me circulated through the school and Jared apparently made a website where that video was the first thing you saw. It was a hate page made for me. All of the nasty comments I received at school were now publicized online for other people to read.
After that, I hated Jared. I hated him more than anything. I wanted him to pay for what he had done but I knew he never would. The beautiful go unpunished while the plain and ugly are forced to suffer, I learned that a long time ago.
And now, as Jared sits behind me, I can feel my anger boiling over. My hands clenched into fists, my nails biting into my palms while I bite my tongue to keep from screaming.
He taps my shoulder and I recoil from his touch. One, because his touch is burning and I feel fire course through my veins. Second, because his touch makes my skin crawl.
"Hey, do you have a pencil or something I can borrow? I just got back today and kind of left my pencil case at home," he whispers.
I turn slowly and look into his eyes. I see his eyes widen and his mouth gapes. Then he gets this stupid little smile that would make any other girl melt. Not me. Not anymore. I refuse to be a piece of a toy for him to play with when he gets bored.
"Why? So you can break that too? Actually, yes you can borrow this pencil and stab yourself with it in the eyes and throat so you can't look at me or speak to me ever again you asshole."
His face fell and he looked hurt. Good. I want him to hurt as much as I fucking hurt. I want him to feel the pain he caused me. But he won't. All that stuff he said to me were "just words". He can't feel pain. Beasts don't have hearts.
I hope you all enjoy this chapter. I had a lot of fun writing it. Thanks so much to everyone who had favorited, followed, and reviewed my story. It really is an honor. I apologize in advance for any spelling or grammatical mistakes. I do not have a Beta. I have no copyright claim on Stephenie Meyer, Twilight, or her characters. Kat, Tony, and Blair, so far are the only characters that I have invented for the purposes of my story. Please continue to review. I would love to know what everyone thinks and any ideas or suggestions. Please be polite in your criticism, pure hate reviews will result in me reporting you to the Fanfiction employees. I also will apologize if I do not update regularly but I will try my best to update within a timely manner. Unfortunately work, school, and life are bitches that require lots of my time and energy. Anyway, I look forward to writing the next chapter and I hope you all continue your support.