A/N: Sorry for such a late update...I've been kind of obsessed with Criminal Minds in the meantime.
"To burn with desire and keep quiet about it is the greatest punishment we can bring on ourselves."
― Federico García Lorca, Blood Wedding and Yerma
October 7, 2005
I never exactly intended to become Jared Cameron's personal stalker. I'm serious about that. I mean, spending ten years of your life pining over some guy who miraculously has never acknowledged your existence in a class of less than thirty people with what is possibly the worst fangirl crush in the history of gruesome fangirl crushes? Not exactly something one would wish upon oneself, in all honesty. I know it's unhealthy, but Jared is my own personal addiction. I can't function without him—just like my mom goes into a crazed rage or a "constructively criticizing" bout of "X-treme Parenting" if she doesn't have her 'coping glass' of wine that she drinks every night, or my friend Natalie's inability to have a civil conversation without her daily dosage of caffeine, or maybe my brother Alex's meticulously and painstakingly (and thus, highly out of character—as in all other aspects of his life, my brother's a lazy slob) organized routine of sleep, eat, and soccer that he'd go apeshit without. And my sister Laura has panic attacks whenever she's not socially connected to her numerous airheaded "popular" friends via her crappy, secondhand cell phone.
(I'm also pretty sure my younger sister Rory has an unhealthy relationship with her calculus homework, but who am I to remark upon unhealthy relationships? I mean, I went vegetarian for two weeks for a guy who (still) doesn't know I exist. Pathetic, I know, but can we please keep this zone judgement free?)
It must be standard protocol for all pathetic stalkers to remember every detail about the day they met the object of (insane) pining and (creepy) obsession. And by every detail, I mean every. Single. Freaking. Detail.
See? At least I follow standard stalker principles, right?
Cough. Okay, moving on.
It was almost ten years ago, in the spring of my kindergarden year. It's probably one of my earliest memories, to be honest. I still remember it like it was just yesterday, which is true no matter how corny and old I feel saying that. It had happened instantly, like a great wave of emotion overwhelming my six-year-old self (it's a little less pathetic than it sounds, I promise. Just don't quote me on that, though). I had been on the always water-logged wooden playground equipment at the Tribal School, because that day was the first day of sun in a month or so. I was talking with my friend Natalie, who was and still is my best—and only—friend, about something dumb and kindergarden-y, like Sesame Street or Cinderella.
Whilst we were discussing Big Bird with all the seriousness our six-year-old selves could muster, somebody knocked me down. For the life of me, I can't remember who the boy was (I would guess that it was hot-tempered bully Paul Lahote, but he didn't attended Tribal School until he was in the first or second grade), but that hardly mattered.
What mattered was that because whichever ill-mannered kindergardener had knocked me down, my book had gone flying and I'd fallen to the ground, conveniently landing right at the feet of the boy who'd be the star of every knight in shining armor daydream I've had since.
Jared Cameron.
This part gets kinda cheesy, so brace yourselves. The way I remember it, Jared was like some sort of angel, and cheesy at it sounds, he was directly in front of the sun, its light like a halo around his dark, shaggy head. He smiled at me, his white teeth contrasting his russet skin and his dark eyes glittering.
"You okay?" He asked me, extending out a hand to help me up.
"Y-yeah…" I know, even in kindergarden I was a smooth talker.
I should have my own comedy show, no? Heh, just kidding. I still am deemed completely and horrendously illiterate whenever Jared is around. Maybe it's a good thing that he hasn't noticed I exist…
The smartest, and possibly also the dumbest, thing I ever did was take his offered hand. And even now, I can feel the warmth of his hand wrapped around mine. Can you say desperate?
He pulled me up to my feet and grinned lazily at me, and I'm that much of a loser that my heart "pounded against my ribs like I'd run a thousand miles", if you want to be dramatic like I'm the heroine of one of the cheesy romance novels I most certainly do not read. Ever. Heh…Moving on.
"Wouldn't want you to get hurt," Jared said, picking up my book and handing it to me with another smile.
He'd left right after that, running after some kid whose name, in the scope of things, doesn't matter at all. Natalie knocked her elbow into my side and hissed "Stop staring, Kimmy" under her breath, but I couldn't stop staring after him. It was like being struck by lightning (or something kind of like it that's not fatal) or maybe seeing a unicorn; it was incredible, awe-inspiring, and fleeting, and I just couldn't stop thinking about it. Jared Cameron was suddenly taking over my dreams, my thoughts, my daydreams, my conversations, the doodles I absentmindedly drew on the side of my paper… And then I was blushing like an idiot/tomato whenever I saw him, which was often considering my eyes always—whether I had wanted them to or not—sought him out. He made my heart jittery, he made me incapable of speech and made my stomach erupt in butterflies.
He hasn't looked at me since.
But I couldn't not look at him (that probably should have been in the present tense, but whatever). No matter how my obnoxious sisters and stupid brother mocked me, how many times Natalie ranted about the cons of Jared Cameron, how much my mother scolded me. Jared was—is—my one happiness in a world I'm not gonna deny I'm not exactly "living the life" in. He still is the warm, golden ray of sunshine breaking through the cloud after months of cold, gray Washington rain.
As creepy and weird as it sounds, I know a lot about Jared. I'm a pretty efficient stalker, if I do say so myself. (Oh, God, I can't believe I just patted myself on the back for good stalking. Why don't I have a life?) I know his favorite fruit (apples), his favorite ice cream flavor (vanilla, weirdly enough), the names of his brothers (Ethan and Jason, and they were both younger), his favorite animal (all things dog), his favorite TV show (Malcolm in the Middle), the names of his cousins (Hunter, Justin, Savannah; his Uncle Zachary had three stepkids from his wife Ellen's previous marriage, as well.)
Heather, Maya, Conrad.
Yeah. I know their names, too.
Or how he rarely ever smiles, and how I counted two whole smiles in the three-line conversation we'd had in kindergarden, surrounded by the woodsy scent of the playground and the everlasting green of the La Push trees.
It just so happened that I was daydreaming about Jared in my art class, which I hate. I've never had a talent for art, particularly, because if I had then surely my mother Liana would have latched onto it and I would've found myself enrolled in art school by the time I was in my sophomore year. My mom's sort of psycho about our "chances" of getting off the Rez or whatever. My older sister Laura's got enough money from beauty pageants (I honestly have no idea how we can afford pageants) and good enough looks to be a model in New York or Los Angeles or something; my younger brother Alex is one of those obnoxious athletes who is naturally gifted at sports; and my younger sister Rory is kind of a math/science freak genius. I guess you could say I'm the least favorite because, well…I don't really have any talent, and I'm not brilliant or beautiful. Not anything I can help, exactly, but…try telling that to my mom.
My friend Natalie was better at art, although she often loses patience with her artwork and ends up smashing it or something (usually on days when her mom tries to get her on decaf). And then Natalie gets upset about it 'cause her mom will kill her if she gets herself sent to the principal's office (again).
So I was mostly trying to keep Natalie from losing her shit over the stupid clay sculptures (again) instead of working on my own piece of "art" (I use the term very loosely), along with reading Eldest by Christopher Paolini. The Forks library finally got it sent in just this Tuesday, even though it'd come out in September or August. I couldn't have bought it at the bookstore 'cause I kinda splurged in July on the sixth Harry Potter book.
I eyed my sculpture warily, not liking its misshapen limbs. It was supposed to be a wolf, because everyone in the class seemed to be making a wolf. The old tribal legends and whatnot always "inspired" artwork, although I maintain it was just because my art class as a whole is too lazy to come up with any more interesting animal, and I more or less figured that I didn't want to be the only one with a not-wolf for their sculpture. Natalie, however, didn't go with the flow, ever. She was making a frog, and intended to paint it very colorful so that it would be a poison dart frog for her older brother Jackson. Jackson was currently studying to be a zoologist at U-Dub and wanted to be travel to South America to study the fauna in the Amazon rain forest, and just so happened to be Natalie's second favorite brother of her five. Jackson has always been a bit of a "green freak", to use Natalie's terminology (it's meant affectionately, surprisingly enough).
Natalie had been a bit jumpy all morning, sort of nervous and edgy; this sort of behavior usually meant that she had a secret she was trying to keep from me—and that she was probably close to spilling. Or that she'd had two cups of coffee in the morning, but that's irrelevant.
It was then that Natalie brought up the subject that she'd apparently been chafing under. "So…" She used old dentist's tools to hollow out an eye in her frog.
"Yeah?" I added a tail to the wolf, which promptly fell onto the table with a splat!
"Y'know my cousin Sabrina? The real gossipy one?" If Natalie was mentioning her cousin Sabrina, whom I know Natalie can't stand, then something was definitely up. Sabrina Carlton, the eldest daughter of Natalie's mother Josephine's sister Daphne, was one of those gossipy bitches who was seemingly incapable of keeping her freaking nose out of everyone else's business. There's always some sort of family-holiday-gone-wrong horror story every year about Natalie getting into a huge blowout fight with her. They were about as opposite as night and day; Sabrina was a girly-girl obsessed with boys and Natalie was a tomboy who'd grown up the youngest and only girl with five older brothers and liked grunge music and bugs. It was even worse than me and my own sister, Laura, which is certainly saying something. Then again, Natalie (thankfully) doesn't have to deal with her cousin as much as I had to deal with Laura. Sigh.
"Yeah…" An image of Jared and Sabrina kissing at last year's winter formal sprang unbidden from the recesses of my mind, but I pushed it—and the sudden surge of jealousy—away. He's not my boyfriend. He's not mine. Never been mine; wish he was mine… Is it sad that I had to say that to myself everyday to stop myself from slaughtering Sloan Hammond, Jared's current on-off girlfriend?
I turned the page of my book with enough force that it tore a little.
"Well, I overheard her bitching to your sister in the girls' room today, and she was like 'OMG, Laura! You will not BE-LIEEEEVE this! This is, like, hotter gossip than when Sydney got, like, knocked up last spring!'" Natalie imitates her cousin in an unintelligent valley girl accent that's too funny not to laugh at, and I end up stifling giggles—okay, mostly they were unattractive snorts—under my hand. "'Jared got into, like, an actual fight! It was, like, the totalliest ghettoest thing I've, like, ever, like, seen. Like ever.'"
Okay, that was unexpected. "Jared got into a fight?" I whisper-shrieked, accidentally squashing my first successful attempt at a tail. You see, as far as hormonal teenage guys go, Jared wasn't particularly violent. In fact,he was hardly ever angry at all. Believe me, I would know. He was a pretty chill guy, and coming from a crazy-ass family where no one can calm the hell down or shut the hell up, it's one thing about him that I could really, truly appreciate.
"Oh, hells yeah." Natalie chuckled at me, her brown eyes glinting with mischief. Never a good look coming from her. "With that Paul kid, y'know?" She went on to explain. "Paul Lahote? It was so crazy, Sabrina was saying! All Paul did was just knock into Jared a little—I know, for once he wasn't picking a fight—and Jared just lost it! Sabrina said they were punching each other on the ground before the principal showed up and had Sam Uley cart Jared away. It's weird, dude."
"Nat, are you sure you heard what you heard? Maybe Sabrina was just exaggerating—" Exaggeration was, apparently, a common hereditary trait on the Hewes side of Natalie's family.
"She wasn't, for once; I saw Paul today, and his face was all swollen and purple before his dad had to come take him home. Talk about awkward." She laughed at Paul's expense.
"But Jared?"
"I know, I thought you'd wanna know. Look, dude, if you don't believe me, interrogate Laura after we get back from work tonight, 'kay?"
I frowned, making my seventh tail and pounding it onto my wolf's butt. Mercifully, it stayed put. "But why Sam? Why'd they call him? I thought he was on drugs or something." I spun around to face my friend at the horrible thought that had just struck my mind. "Natalie, what if he gets Jared into drugs? What about the health effects? It'll ruin his life! Oh my God, who will watch his brothers? What would happen to him? Should I make him a casserole? Oh my God—" Did I mention I was slightly prone to excessive anxiety and melodrama?
"Dude, calm yourself!" Natalie poked me in the arm with a plastic stick used for clay carving. "I still don't understand why you care so much about him, anyway, Kim," she sighed, adding indents for the black splotches on her frog. "But if you're so worried, I seriously don't think that'll happen. For one, this is La freaking Push, the most boring-ass bumfuck of a town as you can find, so the idea of golden boy Sam "I'm a goody two-shoes who was captain of the chess team and enjoys long, romantic walks along the beach" Uley starting drug culture here?" Natalie's eyebrows disappeared under her "I'm growing them out!" bangs. "He wasn't captain of the chess team. Do we even have a chess team?" I muttered dejectedly. Natalie ignored me.
"Well, I happen to know that that's just not gonna happen, 'cause that would at least be somewhat exciting and since this is La Push,by very definition a tiny puddle of boringness, there is never anything even somewhat exciting here beyond some shit-for-brains Leah Clearwater-wannabe slut getting knocked up by their dumb-ass boyfriend. You here that? Nothing. Is. Ever. Not-Boring. Here. Sam Uley, Council god and ex-Rez golden boy starting a drug cartel here? By definition, that's actually fucking exciting. Even if I'd rather have a damn movie theater put in so we wouldn't have to drive to Port fucking Angeles to see some goddam Star Wars!"
"Not to mention the new Harry Potter movies," Kim added numbly, staring blankly at the page of her book.
"True, true. I need my Potter fix!" Natalie agreed. "But like I was saying, there's practically a rule against us having any fun in this town. So I say that Sam Uley will not start some drug ring, even if he did dump Leah fucking Clearwater and give up that huge-ass scholarship…to be a handyman on steroids…" Natalie looked like she didn't want to comprehend that sort of logic, and frankly, neither did I. Sam Uley was simply one of those peculiarities on the Rez. "…and start dating Scarface…" I frowned angrily at Natalie from over my tailless, malformed wolf. I hated it when Natalie badmouthed Sam Uley's new fiancée Emily Young, cousin and ex-close, personal friend of Sam's recent ex-fiancée Leah Clearwater. It wasn't that I liked Emily, or anything, after she what she did to her cousin. The Emily I had met once before at the Clearwater's house was certainly different than the Emily I imagined would do something like that. So, I guess I didn't dislike her as a person, but I certainly did dislikeher and Sam together. It was a moot point how sweet Emily had been the one time I had met her.
I mean, come on. You just don't steal the guy your best friend/cousin is going to marry and is head-over-heels in love with. It was against some unspoken rule of sisterhood, and Leah, after all, had always been something that might have been sort of in-the-situation friends with me whenever our parents threw us together at some stupid party thrown with Leah's kid brother Seth and Alex and Rory in mind instead of Leah, Laura, and I. And I, after all, had only met Emily the one time. So, by the merit of prior association, my loyalty lay with Leah.
But still, it's kind of crossing some line to mock Emily for her scars. Whatever Emily had done to Leah, nobody deserved to be mauled by a fucking bear outside of their home. The scars were real bad, according to my brother Alex, who had seen them when Seth had dragged him to see Emily in the hospital after the accident (Seth was firmly Team Leah, but he'd still gone to see his cousin, even if it was a "top secret" operation). The scars, which, according to Alex and popular rumor, were three long, puckered claw marks running from her temple to her waist, and on her arm, too. They'd ruined Emily's delicate beauty on the left side of her face and torso.
I had hit the back of Natalie's head when she'd whispered "Karma…" under her breath while Laura gushed about last year's "latest juice"—which just happened to be that Leah Clearwater's cousin/the girl that Sam Uley was stalking had gotten "like, randomly torn apart by this, like, bear thing", to quote Laura. I would defend Emily for what she couldn't control, like how her face looked after a bear attack that she hadn't asked for.
I hadn't ever defended her when she was called homewrecker, and I wasn't sure how I felt about that.
"All right, sorry, you know I didn't mean it." Natalie mollified quickly, holding her hands above her shoulders in mock surrender. She lowered them back to her frog once I had turned what I hoped was a disapproving scowl at my disfigured little wolf. "But Leah for Emily? That's a fucked up trade, Kim."
"I guess…" I attempted to reattach the lumpy, soggy piece of clay that was supposed to be my wolf's tail.
"Yeah, Jared wouldn't go for that shit. 'cause, well, as much as it pains me to admit it…" Natalie glanced around nervously, like she was about to say something incredibly taboo. "Jared'sagoodguy. There!" Natalie smacked her palm onto the table in to show the finality of her statement. "I said it, and I'll never say it again. Ever." Natalie shook her head like she was trying to dispel an unpleasant thought, her eyes screwed shut.
"What?" I asked, my wolf's tail splattingon the table again.
Natalie sighed, grimacing like it literally pained her to say what she was about to say. "Well…you know I think this whole Jared situation is unhealthy. I mean, kindergarden? Really? But anyway, as an objective third party with absolutely no personal interest in the matter, Jared's a…not-bad person, y'know. He plays with his little brothers and defended Carly Shultz, you know, that Forks slut, when Paul said she was shit in the sack. Probably because he was banging her on the side, but, it's the principle of the thing, right?"
"Jared doesn't bang people like Carly!" I protested, because I liked to turn a blind eye to all of Jared's sexual conquests.
"You keep telling yourself that, sweetheart. You know what it'll get you?" Natalie didn't wait for an answer, and instead plowed on. "A job cleaning up shit after fucking idiot tourists at the resort while taking care of a baby on the side while he enjoys a Camaro and a hot girlfriend. Probably Lebanese or something."
I eyed Natalie wryly, reforming the soggy clay of the tail. "You watch How I Met Your Mother too much, Nat. You got the hots for Neil Patrick Harris, huh?"
"Don't be knockin' on my main squeeze, baby. Neil is the man. Even if he does play for the other team…but you best be believin' it, girl." Natalie grinned, winking wolfishly at her, and I couldn't help but giggle a little. She sobered up quickly though, classic Rez brown eyes looking at me intently with what appeared to be concern and a little carelessly disguised amusement.
"But Kim, dude, what I'm trying to say is…well, Jared's not exactly the type for drugs n' stuff, right? Even if he has gone, y'know, wack." Natalie winked at me with the last statement, and my lips involuntarily quirked upwards in a semblance of a smile.
"I guess so…" I agreed. Splat went the tail again.
"Dude, you aren't just lumping the clay together, right? 'cause it won't stay, and it'll get air bubbles and blow up in the kiln and destroy everybody's little clay thingamabobs…Oh my god, Kim, you are! Mrs. Jones just went over it ten times, Kim, come on! See, you would know this if you hadn't taken a one-way ticket to Crazyville on the Jared Cameron Express, dude." Natalie rushed over to my station, constructing a semi-wolflike tail and, adding water and a few squiggly lines, attached it seamlessly to the main wolf body. I scowled.
Jared was still acting weird, and Natalie's tail didn't go splat.
I'm not sure if the gods truly hate me or whatever, but they sure do like to fuck with me a lot, for whatever reason.
One of these practical jokes that the good ol' Man Upstairs had played on me was that Jared sat right next to me in English. As in, six inches away from me for an entire hour four days a week, all six feet and one inch of lean, wiry Jared Cameron and his shaggy hair and big hands and his leg which sometimes brushed mine…
Luckily, English was my best subject, so I could catch up on what I missed in class at home and still get an A. Jared-watching was an important job, and literally it was the only thing keeping me from dying, seeing as it was the second period of the day, far enough into the day for sleep to be improbable and far enough from lunch to be hopeless.
But there was, as Natalie had said, no Jared.
English sucked.
So did Geometry, incidentally. And Chemistry and Spanish and Tribal Studies and Art and US History and Gym, too.
Basically all my classes sucked except for Lunch and Study Hall, 'cause at least then I could read a book.
But still, English was the worst, because for an entire hour I was forced to stare at Jared's empty seat and pity myself and work myself up into a frenzy over his safety.
Oddly enough, I wasn't the only one talking about Jared. It was like he'd fallen off the face of the earth. His dad didn't know where he was—which I knew because I'd brought his English work home to him; Jason and Ethan were clueless (as usual); Sloan, Jared's 'girlfriend', was hysterical over it, and was convinced he'd been abducted by aliens; neither my sister nor Sabrina seemed to know, and they both knew everything about everyone; none of Jared's cousins or step-cousins, relatives or friends had a clue. Of course, many people had developed theories as to where he'd disappeared to.
One popular theory was Sloan's: alien abduction, which was stupid.
Another was that he'd been kidnapped. Unlikely, but possible.
Another one was that he'd been eaten by sharks and all they'd find of his body were some bloody chunks, which was not only stupid but also pretty nasty.
Then there was the one that Paul had caught up with him and murdered him, which didn't make sense if you knew that Jared had walked away from that fight unscathed and Paul had walked away with a busted up face.
When Paul disappeared within the week after a fight with some idiot girl he'd dumped, that theory was toast.
My personal theory was that Sam Uley had something to do with it. I mean, didn't Sam cart Jared away when he went apeshit on Paul? Yes. And, besides that, it mirrored Sam Uley's own disappearance almost a year and a half ago. I hoped this wasn't true, but nothing else made any sense whatsoever. If Sam was getting Jared involved in drugs, I didn't know. Probably find a nice rock to crawl under and die or something.
Whatever it was, something was up in La Push. Sam, Jared, Paul. Paul, Jared, Sam.
Something was definitely going on, and if I weren't me, I'd probably say something ominous and cool, like "and I'm gonna find out what it is or die trying!" Then again, if I were that person instead of me, I probably would have spoken two words or more to Jared, and then maybe he wouldn't be gone, and maybe my heart wouldn't hurt quite so badly.
Except I am me, Jared is still missing, and my heart is still broken.
A/N: First attempts at first person POV, so bear with me. Review/Comment, please. Have a great Summer/Start of School!
