Disclaimer- Any character you recognize is the fabulous work of S.M. I am merely a humble servant to both her and this plot bunny.

A/N- please excuse any flaws or typos. I was in a hurry when posting and didn't want to keep you all waiting any longer.

Chapter 5- This place is so weird that the cockroaches have moved next door

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After Jared's little freak out in first period it was all the school could talk about. By lunch time the story was that Jared leaped over three desks and started to strangle Mr. Maddox until five other students had to pull them apart. I had just put down my tray when the girls started to bombard me with the requests for details. They all knew that I had the real story.

"So, what really happened?" Tiffany leaned forward on the table eagerly, so she wouldn't miss a word.

"It's not good form to engage in gossip, Tiffany." Ally shot Tiff a disapproving look as she sat down next to me.

Tiffany scoffed and waved an uncaring hand, "It's not gossip if it's the truth and Kimmy here had ring-side seats to the event."

You'll notice that she didn't bother to ask Sara for the scoop. Sara's no good when it comes to gossip. She always ends up going off on these random side tangents that have nothing to do with the story. Tiffany complains about this but she does the exact same thing.

"What really happened with what?" I asked innocently, before taking a sip of my milk.

It probably wouldn't get me off the hook but I decided to pretend not to know what she was talking about anyway. I, like Ally, hated gossip. It made me feel like some sort of ditsy cheerleader.

Tiffany leveled me with a glare, "Don't you play that game with me, missy. You know full well what I'm talking about. I want to know what went down with the Jared situation."

I sighed and put down the milk, "Fine," I relented. Tiffany was practically on top of the table she was leaning so close, "Mr. Maddox asks him a question and he says he doesn't know the answer. They go back and forth for a little bit and then suddenly Jared jumps out of his chair and just stares at Mr. Maddox and starts to shake. Then he just bolts from the room." I shrug to finish it off.

Tiffany stares at me blankly for a minute, "That's it?" She asks in a disbelieving tone. I nod and throw in another shrug just for good measure. "That blows. That's not good gossip at all. He didn't even take a swing at the teacher?"

I shake my head to indicate the negative and she slumps back in her seat looking disappointed.

"I told you it wasn't any big deal, " Sara says while snatching a carrot stick off Tiffany's tray.

"Yeah, I know, but I was hoping you were just being…you know…you."

"Well, I wasn't. People here are just starved for gossip and are blowing this way out of proportion. Especially considering Jared is involved. You know what a hot commodity he is."

Tiffany just sighs and starts to talk about her date with the new soccer captain. We all nod and pretend to be interested but we know she's only telling us this because Paul was within hearing distance, walking down the path behind our table. As previously mentioned she has a bit of a thing for him despite the fact that the only 'thing' any girl should have for Paul is a sharp knee to the groin.

Just as Tiff starts to talk about what great abs the soccer captain, Jeremy, has and how he asked her to see the new comedy movie this Saturday a can of opened soda crashes into the middle of our table, startling and spraying us all.

Tiffany and Sara shriek while Ally hurries to save her books from the mist. I look up just in time to see Paul high-fiving one of his buddies and laughing in our direction. I wave my middle finger in his face, before turning back to the commotion in front of me.

"This is never going to come out!" Tiffany whines while scrubbing at her white fuzzy sweater with a wad of napkins.

"Oh, my god! It ruined my book report!" Ally shouts while frantically searching her back pack for a second copy,

Sara and I just stood glaring at Paul's retreating form while he made his way down the aisle. Bastard.

"God, I hate him." Sara says vehemently while glaring daggers into Paul's overly-muscled back.

I stared at Sara in shock for a moment. She never says she hates anybody, not even Amy. But, then again, I guess that makes sense. Nobody was ever quite as rude to her as Paul always was.

"What an ass." Ally agrees, now holding a fresh copy of her report in her left hand. Leave it to Ally to carry two copies of the same report with her.

Ally, Sara and I all scowled daggers at Paul's form, hunched over a cafeteria table talking and laughing with his friends, having already completely forgotten about us. Tiffany sighs dreamily in his direction.

Man, that girl has it bad.

"I wish he would just disappear," Sara grumbles under her breath.

And he did.

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A week passed and Jared was old news. Two days after his outburst the school took to talking about Paul's mysterious disappearance from school, he had stopped showing up just after Jared did. This too became old news (for everybody except Tiffany, who would still steal hopeful glances to his empty seat in the cafeteria) until five days later when word started to travel around school that Jared and Paul had both been seen hanging around the reservation with Sam Uley and his crew.

Everybody knew about Sam Uley. Or should I say, we all knew the rumors. Nobody had ever managed to drag up anything concrete against him. All we knew was that he was suspicious. The gossip had ranged from him being a drug-dealer to the council grooming him to take over some position of power but nothing had ever been proven. Instead he just remained the fall back gossip, you know, the thing everyone talks about when there's nothing else going on.

"It just seems odd is all," Tiffany said one Thursday from her usual spot at our lunch table, "I mean, what? They never even talked before and now they're best friends?"

"What do you care? They're both assholes. I couldn't care less if they started to hang out with the devil himself." Sara said, while pushing her fork around the wilted lettuce on her plate.

"Paul isn't that bad!" Tiff defended, eliciting three distinct scoffs from the rest of us.

"Not that bad compared to who?" I asked, cheekily.

"Hitler?" Sara suggested.

Tiffany rolled her eyes at us but we continued anyway. What good are friends is you can't torture them every once in a while?

"I don't know about that. Hitler was, at least, an excellent public speaker, which of course that he had at least one redeeming quality. You can't say that about Paul." I replied while to trying to look contemplative.

"Too true, " Sara readily agreed, "How about Ted Bundy?"

Tiff interrupted before I could come up with a reason that Ted Bundy was better than Paul.

"Ok Ok! Paul is a bit of an ass. I'll agree to that. But he's still not as bad as that asshole, Jared."

"Well, nobody is as big an asshole as Jared." Ally put in, looking as furious as she always did whenever he came up.

"Agreed," I said, before quickly changing the subject to Janet Wieler who was going around telling everybody that she had slept with Paul (one rumor that was probably true) so we wouldn't have to talk about Jared anymore. I hated to talk about him, it always just ended up reminding me what an idiot I had been.

Ally opened her mouth to talk, probably to launch a futile attempt to get them to stop gossiping again, when the bell cut our conversation short.

"Well, I guess that's all then. I'll see you all by the car after school." Ally swung her backpack over her shoulder and gave us a parting wave over her shoulder on her way out the door. She is always entirely to cheerful to go to class.

I was about to ramble off my own goodbyes when Tiffany faced me with a wicked grin.

Uh-oh.

"You have science class next, right?"

"Maybe…" I said hesitantly, "What's it to you?"

"Oh, nothing. It's just….isn't that the class you have with lover boy?"

Sara starting laughing while I mumbled a quick 'oh, my god' and ran to class before those bitches could make my life any more miserable. Best friends are so not worth it.

Lover boy, in case you were wondering, is my lab partner. Eugene (The name alone is cringe-worthy. Nobody should have parents that cruel.) Syler had asked me out three times this year already. I've successfully dodged each attempt by laughing it off as a joke, making up previous plans and have feigned temporary deafness on more than one occasion, I'm ashamed to say.

While I, of course, find it flattering to be asked out, Eugene isn't exactly my dream date. Not that there's anything wrong with Eugene, mind you. But he is several inches shorter than me (But, then again who isn't?), teacher's pet, three-time science fair winner, and his back-pack regularly looks like it outweighs his own body by a considerable amount.

Now, don't get me wrong, I like smart guys as much as the next girl but every conversation I've had with poor Eugene has always ended up with him talking about global warming, chemicals in food, pollution, computer programs or something equally boring. Who knows, he'll probably end up becoming some super rich technology genius and I'll be kicking my own ass for not sweeping him up when I had the chance. But for now, I definitely don't want to date him.

Eugene straightened in his seat when I walked in and cleared my side of the lab table off for me.

"Hi, Kim!" His voice came out sounding high and squeaky like one of those Disney munchkins. He cleared his throat before he spoke again, this time in an unnaturally deep tone of voice like boys do when they want to sound older and manlier, "How's you're day been so far?"

I smiled politely at him while I dropped into my seat, on his left, "Fine, Eugene. Thanks for asking. How about you?"

"Good. Did you finish you're half of the report." He said before bending over sideways to dig in his backpack for his part of the assignment. When he comes back up, holding a thick looking stack of paper wrapped in a shinny project cover, his glasses are skewed at a crooked angle over his left eye.

"Of course," he watches me as I retrieve my own, considerably less thick, stack of paper and hand it over to him.

"Excellent!" he replies over-enthusiastically, still not noticing his crooked glasses. "You're the best lab partner, Kim. Last year I had to work with Shandra Adams. She never turned in anything."

"That's probably because she can't read or write." I commented before reaching over and straightening his glasses, an action that caused him to turn bright red and mumble a thanks.

"So, did you catch that special on the discovery channel last night? The one about polar bears?" Eugene asks after he had recovered form the whole me touching him thing.

"Didn't quite catch that one, surprisingly enough." I was busy watching reruns of Friends, like normal people.

"That's a shame! It was a great one," he says excitedly, like a small dog about to piddle on himself, "Their habitats are being threatened by the effects of global warming. The temperature is rising too high and melting all the ice where they live."

"That's a shame. I always liked polar bears." Well, what would you have said?

"Who doesn't?!" Eugene boomed, too loudly for the small classroom causing some people to look our way and laugh. He didn't notice of course, by now too wrapped up in the poor polar bears to notice the rest of the room.

Eugene had just started in on a healthy polar bears diet ( You know, in case I ever need to feed a polar bear) when Mrs. Turner started the lesson. Thank god. Not that I don't like Eugene. I do, actually, more than I like most people in this hell-hole. He's rather like a loveable puppy. But I had been up all night listening to my parents argue about my fathers long hours at the office and I wasn't nearly well-rested enough to make idle chit-chat with my over-bearing lab partner.

My parents spent most of their time arguing nowadays whenever my father was home, something that had a tendency to keep me awake at night. Neither of my parents seem to know the meaning of inside voices, unfortunately.

When Mrs. Turner released the period I said a quick good-bye to Eugene, one that he heartily returned, and left for history class. A class I usually shared with Jared. It was getting quite nice not having him around. Not that he actively annoys me, usually, but just being in his presence can cause anger to well up inside of me until I'm consumed with fantasies of popping his over sized arrogant head like an unsightly pimple. Now that he was gone I could actually pay attention to what the teacher is saying. My grade had already gone up fifteen percent.

But, of course, just as I was getting used to having him gone he came back again.

A/N-Get ready for some imprinting! It's gonna be a bumpy ride!

Now either review or go jump off a cliff!!! Preferably review. I don't care what they do in La Push, jumping off of cliffs is dangerous.

REVIEW!!!!!!!!!!!