A/N: Okay, so here's chapter one! And Jared's in it!
Disclaimer: I don't own anything.
"Kim, my basketball game starts in half an hour, and it takes thirty-five minutes to get there! You know Coach hates it when I'm late!" Alex bounced on his feet by the door, basketball and bag in hand. He glanced from the door to the clock on the wall to the light on Laura's cell phone, abandoned on the table by the door, and back again so quickly that he appeared to have a twitch.
"Has anyone seen my slide-making kit? You know, for my microscope?" Rory asked, pushing her coke-bottle glasses up her nose and rooting around in a cabinet.
"Go dork out somewhere else, Rory," Laura snapped, applying and reapplying her cherry-red lipstick, and smacking her lips loudly. "Some of us actually have a life—well, mostly just me, but the point is that you're a dork."
"You know, lipstick contains methylparabe, a preservative that's linked to cancer and can disrupt your endocrine system?" Rory snapped at Laura, her dark, curly hair bouncing in its ponytail as she reinvigorated her search in the cabinet. Laura rolled her eyes and applied another coat of lipstick in rebellion.
"I'm coming, Alex! Do you have your water bottle?" Kim made an appearance, bounding down the stairs two at a time and tugging a purple sweatshirt that said U-Dub over her head.
"Yes, now let's go!" Alex hissed angrily, dragging Kim out the door by her purple sweatshirt-clad arm.
"Wait, I'm coming! Forks boys are so, like, good! You know, compared to boring old La Push boys or whatever." Laura followed Kim and Alex out the door, her long, runway length tan legs wobbling in her attempts to balance in her ridiculously high heels. Kim personally thought Laura's outfit was just impractical. Heels and a skirt? It was a basketball game, for crying out loud! There were bleachers (and those things were just an issue in flats, let alone heels).
Kim opened the door to her old, beat-up, piece-of-crap-barely-street-legal-can't-go-above-forty-miles-an-hour Toyota Camry (named Cami by Laura, since technically she co-owned it), hopping in, with Alex in the back and Laura in the passenger's seat. Liana had bought the car because, well, Liana worked so often and so late, getting Alex and Rory wherever they needed to go was a hassle for her. Of course, Laura refused to drive them anywhere; she hadn't thought of getting to use the car whenever she wanted. And besides, Laura couldn't drive very well—she could drive, she was just a recklessly terrible driver; she sped, making poor Cami go at least 80 (a miracle no one besides Laura had ever achieved, and Kim marveled at); randomly braked for no actual reason; swerved to avoid butterflies… they didn't risk her behind the wheel often, if ever.
Alex started babbling about how Coach would kill him if he was late, which Kim doubted—after all, Alex was the star player of the team, and had led the Forks-La Push joint team (it was comprised mostly of just Forks boys) to state finals as an eighth grader. If Coach Reiner wanted to damn the best seasons the Forks-La Push varsity boys basketball team had ever seen in history by murdering the best player on the team, then he was crazy.
Laura started talking incessantly to her on-again, off-again boyfriend from Forks—Tyler something—on her crappy Nokia phone. Kim reached over and hung it up when Laura began to phone-sex her boyfriend.
Luckily, they reached the game in the Forks High gymnasium in time, with time even for Alex to warm up before the game started. Laura found Tyler and retreated with him under the bleachers. Kim parked the car and roved the crowd, looking for her best (and only friend), Natalie "Nosebleed" Wright. Natalie was slightly socially awkward, not to mention her chronic nosebleeds that'd earned her the dreaded nickname "Nosebleed", but she was pretty in a backhanded sort of way with her thick Quileute black hair and her soft, happy smile. Prettier than Kim, anyway. But in Kim's opinion, it did not take much to be prettier than her. After all, Kim's hair was thin and wispy, and straight as a ruler. Her face was broad, her cheeks large with her eyes and nose too small to make up for it. Her smile was nice; she shared it with her more attractive siblings and her mother, after all.
Natalie was standing in the crummy, run-down bleachers, waving her hand at Kim, signaling her to come over. She was jumping up and down in excitement, and the bleachers were groaning in protest. Kim gestured for Natalie to calm down before the bleachers became more of a safety hazard than they already were.
"Kim! Kim! Kim! You won't believe who's back from the dead!" Natalie whisper-squealed once Kim reached her.
"I'm sure I won't." Kim sighed, watching her brother warm up and sitting down on the bleacher. Natalie joined her, squealing for real this time. A few people turned around to stare at her.
"Jared Cameron!" Natalie hissed, a goofy smile on her face. Kim didn't look up at Natalie to see if she was serious, though she really wanted to; instead, she straightened up slightly.
"What would I care about that?" Kim said, a bit too quickly. Though she couldn't see her, Kim could practically hear Natalie's exasperated eye-roll.
"Yeah, and Brad Pitt just announced his undying love for me on national television," Natalie snorted.
"Your nose," Kim told her without looking away from the game, sensing that Natalie's sensitive nose couldn't take any slight pressure.
"Danks," Natalie placed a fresh tissue over her nose. They sat like that, neither saying anything, and Kim could practically feel Natalie's need to gush about Kim's love for Jared Cameron. Just like, Kim was sure, Natalie could practically feel her need to know the reason Jared had missed three weeks of school. Kim tapped her foot on the ground anxiously, imagining things like intense cosmetic surgery or extreme weight loss from mono being the reason for Jared's mysterious disappearance.
When Kim had been in first grade, bespectacled and friendless, bookish and lonely, some kid—looking back, it was probably resident bad boy and womanizer, Paul Lahote—had knocked down her books onto the floor. Jared, sweet, kind Jared, had smiled his beautiful smile at her, picked up her books, and stolen her heart. Rory, who Kim was perhaps closest to of all her siblings, insisted that, seeing as Kim had never spoken more than two words to Jared in her entire existence, Kim was idealizing and romanticizing the actual Jared Cameron with a perfect man; Jared was simply a face she'd placed with the usually anonymous Prince Charming. Still, it did not keep her from doodling Mrs. Kimberly Connweller Cameron, Jared + Kim = True Love, Kim Cameron, Kim 3 Jared, Kim + Jared 4ever, etc. on her notebooks, or from dreaming that perhaps he had I 3 Kim written in his perfect handwriting on his Algebra notebook.
Both of them finally could contain their excitement, and turned to each other so fast that Natalie's nose started to bleed again. "What's going on with Jared? Is he okay? Where's he been?"
"Okay, I'll dell you! Doend beg," Natalie said through her compressed nose. She removed the tissue to explain. "Jared and Paul—you know, that ass who sleeps with your sister sometimes?—mysteriously disappear—"
"Natalie, I know that! I thought you were gonna say something interesting," Kim said, not even bothering to hide her disappointment. Natalie rolled her eyes.
"That's just it! They're both back, and they're, like, on steroids or something! They're huge! They're both at least six' five" and all muscly and stuff and so. Freaking. Hot." Natalie said, replacing her tissue to her still-bleeding nose.
"No," Kim scoffed, shaking her head in disbelief. "No one grows six inches in three weeks, Natalie. It's physically impossible. Ask Rory, if you need further persuasion."
"I'm telling you, Kim, they're hot. They cut their hair, and got these hot-ass tattoos…and they're really H-O-T hot. And tall. And muscly…and totally fuckable!" Natalie gushed again. Kim glanced at her in surprise; Natalie wasn't prone to girly freak outs over guys. Then again, Natalie was so unpredictable and erratic in her moods and behavior that Kim was rarely surprised at any of her friend's antics anymore.
Natalie shrugged in a nonchalant, 'Well, if you saw them, you'd agree' sort of way, and Kim rolled her eyes; Jared had always been, in her mind, completely fuckable.
"Natalie, again: Not possi—" But Kim was cut off as Natalie shrieked and pointed to the edge of the gym.
"Kim Kim Kim Kim, oh my god, Kim! Are you watching this? Tell me you're watching this!" Kim followed Natalie's strange gestures and line of vision and saw three tall, muscular, hulking Quileute boys; really, Kim could only tell they were Quileute because of their black hair and russet skin. Kim's mouth dropped open, and wondered how the hell had Jared Cameron suddenly gone from high-school-crush-worthy hot to let's-stalk-that-super-hot-shirtless-celebrity hot. The others were Paul Lahote, who looked like he wanted to kill someone, and Sam Uley, the reservation drug dealer, according to local gossip. His arm was slung over the skinny, sloped shoulders of a woman with a hood, scarf, and sunglasses partially covering her face.
Must be the girl he left Leah for, Kim mused, instantly hating the girl. Kim had always felt a bit of loyalty to Leah Clearwater, who'd always been more of an older sister to Kim than Kim's actual big sister; besides, Alex's best friend was Leah's younger brother, Seth, who was the only other La Push boy on the team. Kim had met Emily, Sam's new girlfriend, a few times over the years, simply because she and Leah had been close. Now? Well, you don't steal your best friend's (let alone your cousin's) boyfriend-almost-fiance. You just don't do that. It violated so many girl codes. Kim hadn't actually seen Emily since her accident, which occurred not long before she and Sam went public with their relationship (the 'went public' part was added because most people thought that Sam had two-timed Leah with Emily while they were still together). Emily had become something of a pariah after the Leah-Sam incident, so she rarely left her house. That, and the rumor that Emily's face had been torn apart by a bear in her accident and she was ashamed of it.
That alone made it hard to hate Emily Young. Kim found it hard to hate anyone, really. Besides Sloan Hammond, Jared's girlfriend and Laura's main rival for Queen Bee/Alpha Bitch of La Push's small high school, whom Kim could easily hate.
Kim noticed Seth Clearwater pointedly turn away from Emily and Sam; it must have been done out of loyalty to Leah, because Seth himself couldn't hold a grudge to save his life. He was currently benched with a sprained ankle, and Emily or Sam could have easily stopped to talk to him if he hadn't been stand-offish. She briefly noticed him cheer for Alex from the bench as Alex shot a basket. As the ball swished through the net, Alex made a motion at Seth; something that clearly meant I'm all that. Seth laughed good-naturedly, waving his friend off. Kim remembered how Rory had always hated the boys' secret language.
Kim returned her attention to Jared, who said something out of the corner of his mouth to Paul, who smirked viciously in contained laughter. Jared was a god. He was. Kim was officially certain.
If she hadn't already been in love with him, then she sure as hell was now.
"Yeah, what could you ever want with him, Kim?" Natalie rolled her eyes and smirked slightly, ignoring the onslaught of another nosebleed. "Sometimes, I really think this stalker-obsession thingamajig isn't healthy! You'll get a chapped chin from all that drooling you do. You know, people must think we're disgusting! I mean, really! Blood never stops pouring out of my stupid nose and whenever you get a whiff of that sweet Jared-smell you start to drool everywhere. You know, sometimes I think that the spirit guides or God or whoever actually plannedfor us to be best friends; like, we were designed for it or some other crap like that. But really, going back to Jared, it's really unhealthy! I mean, you just ogle him all day but, woman, you need to make your move or just forget him! It's controlling your life! Like, right now, I might as well start talking to the wall for all the response I'm getting!" Natalie, exasperated, gesticulated wildly for added effect. She glanced at Kim, whose mouth was indeed wide open in shock and awe at the new and improved Jared Cameron. She shook her head, looking up at the sky, where it was beginning to rain as if to say, Do you see what I have to deal with, here?
"Your brother just scored a goal/touchdown/basket. I think this is his second…nope, third." Natalie remarked, returning her attention to the game, where Alex Connweller had indeed scored three baskets and six points.
"Huh?" Kim said, shaking her head as if coming out of a fog; Jared had sat down, and Kim was studying the contours of his extremely muscular back three rows ahead of them.
"My point, exactly." Natalie agreed to herself, shaking her head.
A/N: That fateful History class will be next chapter