--Jaymie--

I was five. Cowering in a corner. My parent's voices were cutting through the air like knives. They were fighting again. Shouting. Loud noises. Things smashing. I covered my ears, and shut my eyes tight, hoping that if I couldn't hear or see it, that it wouldn't be happening. I rocked back and forth, whimpering. I couldn't hear anything anymore, so I opened my eyes a crack. They were looking at me. Walking towards me. Their eyes were bloodshot, and my dad raised a hand to hit me…

I woke up, wide eyed and sweating, with the memories of that first night fresh in my mind. I forced myself to relax, and shut my eyes. My uncle had been the one to save me that time. I was reluctant to leave my parents place, because I had believed that there must be some good in them. That at some point they would snap out of their drunken rage, and decide to care for me, like my friends parents cared for them. I smiled quietly to myself, remembering the time when I had friends. They had invited me over, and in return I had invited them to my house. And that was when things started to go wrong. My parents had been drunk, and my friend had run out of the house screaming. Since then, people had avoided me and my parents as much as possible. The people who used to be my friends started to drift away from me, finding excuses to leave when I was near. When things got bad, I would call my uncle, Auron. He would let me stay at his house until my parents had calmed down. He was the only member of family that I knew, apart from my parents, and he was always cheerful. The only time I really saw him get angry was when he walked into our house, and my parents were standing over me, drunk, angry, and ready for a fight.

Auron carried me out, and brought me to his house. It was a place of shelter for me, and it always helped to make me feel better. He had told me that what my parents once had wasn't love, that it was a flame. A flame that went out after they married. He said that they drank so much so that they could escape the reality of being married to each other. He told me about my grandparents, who were very religious, would shun my parents if they divorced. That didn't make sense to me at first, why would they get drunk so that they wouldn't have to divorce? No, a part of me still thought that I was the reason they were fighting. Which meant that I was faulty in some way. I pushed the thought to the back of my mind.

Once I'd calmed down, I opened my eyes and almost jumped out of the hospital bed I was in.



"Uncle Auron!"

He grinned down at me, and laid a gentle hand on my shoulder, pushing me back.

"Calm down kid, you don't wanna hurt yourself again. Those burns were pretty bad."

"They're only light burns."

I grinned back up at him and looked around at the room I was in. There was a TV in the corner, showing some news presenter talking, and pictures of an earthquake were flashing across the screen. There were a few more beds in the room, three of them were occupied, people I vaguely recognized from the school hallways. There were 'get well soon' cards by every bed, and there were flowers by most of the beds. At the end of the room there was a huge window, through which I could see the gray, cloudy skies of Forks, because there was no hospital on the Reservation.

"I brought you a balloon." He smiled.

I looked up at the head of the bed, where a single green balloon floated cheerfully, and couldn't help smiling at the sight.

"I better leave now."

"Why?" I asked, desperate for company.

"Because there's someone else who wants to see you."

"Me? Are you sure?"

"Of course. He said his name was Mitchell. You know him?"

"…No…"

"Well I'll leave so you can meet him." He stood up

"I'll come and visit as soon as I can."

He ruffled my hair, and as he stood up his wallet fell out of his pocket. He started to walk away, and I slipped out of bed to give it back to him. I winced as my stiff hospital gown scratched against my light burns. He smiled as I gave his wallet to him.

"That's something you don't want to forget," I joked. "You might want to take better care of that. It might get stolen."

"Aww, there's nothing in it anyways. If some guy picked it up to steal it, he'd probably just feel sorry for me, slip a twenty in there and give it back."

I smiled. It was so easy to feel cheered up when he was around. He walked out of the ward, and winked at me when he passed someone else coming in. I didn't get it for a second, but then it clicked. The guy coming in was Mitchell, the person that had come to visit me.



I had almost expected the person who had saved me from the fire. The red haired guy with the deep, cat-like blue eyes, who had looked kind of like an angel. I remembered how he had looked when he had come in during class. Tall, proud, and radiating confidence. Kyle, that's what he called himself.

But this person was very different.

He was a classic 'surfer dude' type. Tanned, with windswept blonde hair that seemed to fall perfectly no matter what he did with it. I vaguely remembered seeing him around the hallways at school, one of the people that avoided me like the plague. His eyes were pale blue, but nothing like Kyle's. They were icy, and I felt like they were looking right through me. I shifted uncomfortably and sat back down on the bed.

He walked up to me, and produced a bouquet of yellow flowers from behind his back. He smiled, and handed them to me with a flourish.

"For you, Jaymie."

I looked at the flowers suspiciously. "What do you want?" He needed something from me, I was sure of it. Why else would he be here?

I tried to keep my tone light, but the good mood that Auron had put me in had evaporated.

"I just wanted to bring you flowers, and see how you were doing." He said innocently.

I couldn't quite place it, but something about him was making me uneasy.



"You've never paid any attention to me before."

"Just because you haven't seen me looking at you, doesn't mean that I don't."

I stared at him wordlessly.

"What are you trying to say?"

"You are very pretty; you just don't seem to realize it."

Now I was even more suspicious. He flicked his hair out of his eyes, and smiled at me. I started to swing my legs, but stopped when my burns started to twinge.

He came even closer, and stretched the flowers out to me. I hesitantly reached out my hand to take them, and he placed them in my hand, gently touching his hand to mine. He reached out again, and before I could do anything he took my other hand and raised it to his lips. He gently brushed them against my hand, making the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

"I'll see you at school." He called as he left.

I watched the empty doorway in a daze. This was the first time anyone had displayed any interest in me since everyone had started to ignore me. But still, Mitchell was a creep. He just came in and gave me flowers, even though he didn't even know me! And he said I was pretty! I blushed and remembered his kiss. I subconsciously reached over to wipe my hand on the bed, but I stopped myself just in time. What was I doing? Someone was finally being nice to me, finally trying to get close to me, and I was sitting here thinking he was a creep! I sighed and flopped back down on the bed. I was so messed up. The whole time he was here, the only thing I did was think that there was something wrong and that he wanted something from me. I 

really had to relax. I sighed again, and pushed my pillow into a more comfortable shape. A nurse walked past and I considered asking her if my parents had visited, but then decided that it wasn't worth the heartache. A small part of me still believed that they would snap out of their constant drunk stupor, and suddenly start caring for me like they used to. But that was a very small part. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to shake the thoughts from my mind.

I was asleep within minutes.

My dreams confused me. They were terrifying, but at the same time there was something about them that made me want to sleep forever.

Mitchell and Kyle. As I woke the two names faded from my mind, and I looked around. The sun was either setting or rising, I couldn't tell which, and the curtains were half open. The TV in the corner was displaying its silent news, and in the corner I could see the date. Could that be right? It had been five days since the fire. I looked at my arms. I hadn't been burnt badly, even though I was in the fire so long. The places where I had been burnt most were pinker than the rest of my skin, but not by much. I looked at the person in the bed next to mine. She, like the others, looked vaguely familiar and I thought I had some classes with her, but I wasn't sure. She was much worse off. Her face had been badly burned; half of one of her eyebrows had been burnt off, and her face was an angry red color. Poor girl. Oh well, nothing I could do about it.

I looked back at the TV screen. It was 8:23 PM. Tuesday. I rolled over slowly, trying not to scrape any of my burns across the scratchy hospital sheets.

Wednesday went by slowly. The burns only hurt if I rubbed them against something hard, so I barely felt them. Of course, it was almost impossible to explain that to the nurse on duty. It took me almost a full hour to convince her that I felt fine and could go home. The nurse begrudgingly agreed, under the condition that the doctor could take one final check. I was desperate to go home, so I quickly agreed, before she could change her mind. What she didn't tell me until afterwards was that the doctor wasn't free for another two hours. Which gave me plenty of time to be bored. She did give me some of my own clothes, saying that my uncle had left them there when he had visited.



I was under strict instructions not to leave the ward, or the nurse would have me stay longer. At first I considered staying here for a while; it was a good way to avoid school, and my parents at the same time, but that idea was discarded ten minutes later, when I was bored out of my skull. My uncle hadn't thought to bring anything to do, or my iPod or something, so I just sat there on the bed, my back resting against the back-board, and my legs stretched out in front of me. I flipped through the outdated magazines that lay in a stack on a table at the end of the room, and I stared out of the window.

I heard someone clear their throat behind me, and I turned around. Mitchell stood there, taking in my brown and orange striped sweater and my blue jeans.

"Hi Jaymie!"

I narrowed my eyes at him. "You're back."

"Yup!"

"Why." What I meant to say as a question came out as a flat statement.

He smiled. "Because I want you to be my friend!"

I looked at him suspiciously, but then decided that I was going to be nice to him. After all, he just wanted us to be friends.

I sighed. "Why are you so happy?" I asked, more than slightly irritated that he was so happy while I was here, bored to death.



"Why I'm happy? I'm always happy!"

I raised one eyebrow at him, and he let out a short laugh.

"Does this mean you agree?"

"Agree?" I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about.

"We can be friends?"

"Ummm…" I wasn't quite sure what to say, which was hardly surprising since I had never been in a situation like this. "Sure?"

"Yay!" he practically jumped up and down. "Hey! Are you feeling any better? The fire was pretty scary wasn't it? It's a good thing that the new guy pulled you out when he did, or you'd be burnt up pretty badly now. Did you-"

"Stop." I interrupted him, stopping the questions he was shooting at me.

He tilted his head sideways and looked at me. "We're friends now. Right?"

"Yeah…" I answered suspiciously.

"Good. Friends talk to each other."

I looked at him skeptically. "I don't think I can handle having a friend in more than five minute bursts."

"Okay," He smiled, "one last question. When are you getting out?"

"Today, hopefully."

"Good! I'll see you at school tomorrow! You better be there!" he called as he practically skipped out of the ward. When I saw him before, he seemed kind of intimidating, but now that I really talked to him for a bit he seemed like a hyper five year old. I smiled as I remembered how he had acted, then I shook my head. Oh well, at least I had a reason to go to school tomorrow. A better reason than I'd had in a long time.

I've decided to put my author notes at the end of the chapters, because no one reads them when they're at the beginning.

I know it's been a long time since I updated, but I've finally finished the chapter, and I'm pretty happy about how it turned out.

I was going to make quotes from the Snow Walker books, BUUUUT I left them in Dubai, and I'm starting at a boarding school, so I won't go back home till…Christmas. So I dumped that idea, and decided to make a different storyline. (hello Mitchell)… ;)

Thanks to:

(most of all)

KRISTINA!-for moral support and checking the chapter.

And to:

DianaTheHUNTRESSS

JasperLover93

Fantasy.is.my.reality

SuffocatingUnderWordsOfSorrow

bellandjacob

blew-up-your-mind-first

Auphora66

twilight1650

For reviewing

xxxxx

mo