Alright, sorry this took so long. For the record, if you're in the IB (International Baccalaureate) program at school, BEWARE THE EXTENDED ESSAY! I spent forever trying to get it done, and guess what – it's still not done! Luckily it's not due till March or something, but still!
Anyway, so here's the first real chapter of 'Miriam', although it is the shortest one besides the prologue and epilogue.
I'm dedicating this fic to Vanessa, my best friend in Grade Six (obviously I'm not going to put her full name on the internet). We only had one year together since her dad's in the military and they move all over the country. But I was also going through a hard time with bullies that year, and she was totally by my side. Miriam's best friend Elsie is designed off of her, although we never had any issues like they will in chapter three. Ack! I'm giving away spoilers! No more! Anyway, Elsie's full name is Elsie Vanessa O'Laskey, and Miriam's middle name, Sophia, is after her younger sister.
DISCLAIMER: All I own at this point is as follows – Miriam, Elsie, Ms. Baird, Mackenzie, Glenn, Cammie, and Adele. All else belongs to the amazing Stephanie Meyer.
WORD COUNT: 2196
Monday, April 19th, 2032
"You can try to fake a left and you can try to fake a right, but Cougars came to win and we will fight-fight-fight-fight FIGHT!"
Despite the fact that I was still in the parking lot, I could hear the cheerleaders in the gym perfectly. I switched off the sports car's engine and stepped out. Luckily Golden Creek had weather patterns very similar to Forks, and the sky was grey and overcast, just the way I liked it.
A few students stopped and stared at me and my car as they arrived at school, but I ignored them and continued to the front doors. I made my way through the throng of teenagers to the main office. The secretary, a woman with short silvery hair and a nameplate that read 'Patricia Baird', almost dropped her stack of papers as she looked up. "Oh, hello, sir," she greeted me, not taking her eyes off my face, "Are you a new student here?"
"Actually," I corrected her, "I'm the new guidance counselor, Jasper Hale." I pulled my papers – courtesy of J Jenks – from the leather briefcase Alice had picked out for me, and held them out to her. She took them with trembling hands. After looking them over, Ms. Baird stood.
"Very well, Mr. Hale. As you're a new staff member, I'll give you a quick tour of the school first, and then I'll show you to your office." She led me back out to the hallway. Most of the students had retreated to their first period classes by then, so the corridor was virtually empty. "So, the school is pretty much shaped like a sort of square horseshoe with three floors. The library's over on the right wing on the third floor, and the cafeteria's a little further down the same way here on the second. The staff lounge and bathrooms are upstairs on the left. Now, right here is the gym." I took a peek and saw the ten cheerleaders I'd heard earlier in the middle of forming a four-storey pyramid. A girl with dark brown curls balanced easily at the top, while the other girls looked rather shaky in comparison.
"That's Miriam Darville," Ms. Baird explained, "Freshman, Honor Roll student, and probably your most frequent visitor."
I glanced at the girl again. "Really?"
"Mm-hm. She's a talented athlete, and very sweet, but some of the things she's able to do are almost inhuman. The other girls gossip behind her back, calling her a freak. Elsie O'Laskey – that's the blonde on the third row – is the only one who doesn't take part in that. She and Miriam have been practically joined at the hip since preschool, according to what I've heard."
"Well, it's a good thing she has someone to help her through it. High school girls can be pretty vicious."
"Yeah, you'll have your hands full. You are aware that the previous guidance counselor quit due to all the stress she got from working with these kids?"
"Oh, I'm sure I can handle whatever they've got to throw at me."
"Speaking of which, you might want to be on your guard with Mackenzie Cahill. He tends to lob whatever he can get his hands up when he's upset."
"I'll be fine. Trust me; I know how to calm the craziest, wildest people."
She arched her eyebrows. "If you say so. Anyway…" She pointed down the right hallway. "Your office is right next to the cafeteria. It's pretty hard to miss. Just look for the door with the happy-faced suns painted on it." I arched my eyebrow like she had moments ago. "It's been that way for ten years, since this place used to include a daycare for teachers' and young student mothers' kids, and we just don't have enough on the budget to change it. Just wait until you see the room itself." She shuddered.
"You know, my foster mother is an interior designer and decorator. She would love to do the job for free."
"Foster mother, you say? There's actually a family of foster kids in town, including Miriam. I'm sure she'll be more comfortable talking to someone who understands her situation a little bit better. Her brother Glenn won't talk to the one in his middle school at all. Know if any family members of yours might be available to help?"
I shook my head. "Nah, my twin sister Rosalie is actually into mechanics, Emmett's in construction and on his days off he's usually either helping or bothering her while she works – it's kind of hard to tell. And all the others are starting here as students tomorrow."
"Oh, well. Guess you can't get too lucky. Well, I'd better get back to my desk, so good luck." She turned and went back into the office.
"Ah-CHOO!" I glanced back into the gym at the sound. The pyramid of cheerleaders was swaying precariously. One girl lost her grip on the bottom of another girl's foot. Instantly, their formation crumbled. The girl on top, Miriam Darville, was falling headfirst towards to floor. I hurried over, being careful to limit myself to top human speed.
But before I could reach her, the girl flipped herself over and landed easily on her feet with the grace of a vampire (and I should know). The other cheerleaders all fell in a huge heap. "Adele!" a bleached-blonde girl accused another, "That was all your fault! I almost broke a nail!"
"I'm sorry, Cammie!" a voice apologised from somewhere in the pile.
Cammie disentangled herself from the other eight people on the floor, whipped a compact mirror out of thin air, and began critically examining herself. "Whatever," she snapped.
"Is everyone all right?" I asked, finally reaching the girls.
A chorus of 'Yeah's and 'We're fine's came up from the human knot. Miriam hurried over and helped up a girl with straight dirty blonde hair and blue eyes. I realised it was the other girl Ms. Baird had pointed out, Elsie O'Laskey – Miriam's only friend on the squad.
"Nice landing, as usual," Elsie commented.
"Hey, Freak," Cammie called to Miriam, "You mind not terrifying the audience in the competition Friday? They might accuse us of using genetic mutation to cheat."
Miriam tossed a disturbingly familiar death glare at Cammie, but I could sense the emotional pain she was feeling.
Cammie turned her attention to me. "So, who are you? A new student?" She hurried over and latched onto my arm. "I can show you around, if you'd like. My name's Cammie, by the way."
I could smell her human scent, just barely masked by all the disgusting perfume. I pulled myself free and moved a few steps away. It probably wouldn't be a good idea to start my first day on the job by losing control and attacking the girl. No matter how much of a bitch she was being.
I registered the surprise radiating from her as I easily resisted her 'charm'. If the guys in this school actually fell for that, then the human race was in trouble. "Actually," I corrected her, "I'm the new guidance counselor, Mr. Hale."
"Guidance counselor? Wow. You look like you should be in college, at the oldest." The lust around her amped up. Great. Too bad Alice would be attending as a student, so we'd have to keep our relationship a secret.
"You know, the last one ran out screaming," a redheaded cheerleader commented, staggering to her feet, "Some of the kids here are just…" She twirled her fingers around her head. "Wacky. Total psychos."
"We'll see about that," I challenged, heading back towards the doors. I didn't like the emotional climate that'd crept up once Cammie had made her lovely comments about Miriam. Negative emotions like that just bug me. The cheerleaders' emotions ranged from amused to regretful. I'd also felt some shock and a minute amount of terror from Miriam when she first looked at me. I wondered why that was.
It was near the end of third period, right before lunch, when I got the first knock on my office door.
Like the secretary had said, the room was even worse compared to the door. The walls were painted a disturbingly bright orange, splashed with more smiling suns. All the furniture was fuzzy and rainbow-coloured, and annoyingly cheerful music played in the background. After just one minute of it, I'd launched a one-man search party to find its source. Within almost no time at all, I'd located the speaker behind a bookshelf and promptly demolished it. Trust me, that crap melody is worse when you have enhanced hearing, and brightness of the room's colours were starting to give me a headache. And I was sure vampires didn't get headaches!
After that torment was over, I looked through some of the files left behind by my predecessor. 'Darville, Miriam Sophia', a freshman, had been adopted when she was two years old by an Andrew and Catherine Darville, and had four younger adoptive siblings: Glenn, age twelve, Brooke (eight), and Wallace and Dustin (four). She'd visited the counselor's office a number of times due to being distraught from teasing behind her back. Besides that, she was an Honor Role student and an active participant in school events, with no major black marks on her record.
Her best friend 'O'Laskey, Elsie Vanessa', had been in a couple times around the beginning of the school year, when her grandmother had passed away. She was an only child and had top marks in every class except PE. Apparently the teacher valued brute strength over flexibility.
I heard them coming long before they reached my door. A girl was quietly sobbing while another, whose voice I recognised as Elsie O'Laskey's, murmured words of comfort to her. "You've got to stop listening to that bitch and taking what she says so seriously, okay?" she gently insisted, "She's just jealous because you're a better athlete than she is."
I waited until they actually knocked before I got up and walked at an annoyingly slow human pace to the door. When I opened it, I saw Elsie standing there, one arm around a tearful Miriam. "Hey, what happened?"
"Cammie Everard happened. Again." Gently, she guided Miriam into one of the fluffy chairs before sitting in the one next to it. "This time, she was commenting on that landing from earlier this morning."
"She keeps saying that I'm a freak, not even human," Miriam choked, "And sometimes, I think she's right." I registered Elsie's surprise at that last statement. Frankly, I wasn't all that shocked. If this had been going on as long as her file said, of course the girl would being to believe such things. I felt the distress coming from her, and sent out a few waves of calm to get her relaxed. "I… I can do things that don't seem humanly possible. I see things better, I hear stuff no one else can, I'm faster and stronger, and I swear I can recognize someone by their scent! Does that sound human to you?"
I chewed on my lower lip as I considered this new information. Enhanced sight, hearing, sense of smell, reflexes, speed, and strength?
"And no one else has noticed your…" she trailed off, staring at her hands.
"My what?" I asked, intrigued.
"Scars. I mean, what happened to you?" Elsie stared at her like she'd gone crazy.
I gripped the pen I'd been playing with when the girls came in. The delicate writing instrument snapped in my fingers, spurting blue ink all over the desk and my hand. The girls jumped in their chairs, startled. Miriam shrank back a little. I knew now why she'd first been scared when she'd looked at me in the gym. But only vampires, hybrids, and the wolves could see the marks of my old life. How was it that she could?
A wild, impossible idea came to me. No way…
The bell rang, signalling the end of third period and the start of lunch. "Why don't we continue this after school?" I suggested, "You two should get something to eat." Quickly, I rushed them out of my office. Before I closed the door, I took a better look at Miriam's eyes. They were brown. A very familiar chocolate brown, to be exact. How did I not realise it before?
Less than a second after the door clicked shut, I'd pulled out my cell phone and dialled Carlisle's number. "Carlisle. It's Jasper. You're not going to believe this, but…"
After filling him in, I called Jacob. "Get yourself and your pack down to the school. Now."
Okay, free brownies to anyone who can guess what Jasper just did! Plus, Read and Review! And take a guess while you're at it!
