Alrighty, here is a rather long chapter for you all. I couldn't find a good place to cut it in half, so I just went with it. I hope you enjoy it, and I'm going to try to get an Embry chapter written for after the next chapter, which is already done.

Review!

-Jenn

That got me upright, "Vampires? Really? Do you think I'm that gullible?" I pushed him gently off my bed and he landed on the floor with a solid thud. "Get out, I need to change clothes."

"Jenna!" He protested as I steered him to the door, "I'm not lying! It's what momma said!"

I stopped before I slammed the door in his face, "Rafe, has momma been telling you those stories again?"

We both knew the ones I was talking about, the ones where our mother spoke of Avalon, her voice rising and falling as she weaved the stories of vampires, Merlin and creatures called Rowan. She was an excellent storyteller, and even had one of the longer stories based on how she and my father had fought to be together, filled with murder, lies and love. The three of us had been weaned on those stories, but I had thought that we had all come to the truth that they were just stories, as beautiful, and as terrible and threatening as they were, they weren't real.

I looked at my brother's face, judging his expression, "Rafe?" I asked after he didn't reply.

"No! She hasn't been telling me those stories! I was telling you the truth!" I'd hurt his feelings, I could tell that much, and he ran off, tears in his eyes.

I sighed, but closed the door. It looked like Megan had been gone for hours, her bed was made and her pajamas folded neatly at the foot of the bed. I got the feeling that she was avoiding me. The only time I'd been able to see her since I got here was just the ends of her brown curls sticking out from under her covers.

Just like when we were kids, she still slept with her head under the covers. It was endearing, but then again, Megan and I hadn't gotten on in years. We had a…tenuous relationship. I still loved Megan, but around when she turned fifteen, she just…pushed me away. It annoyed me, so most of our conversations up until I left for college were mean and cutting on both ends. I wasn't the cause, but I was by no means innocent in our failed relationship. It had started out as normal sibling squabbling with an edge of stressed teenaged hormones, but had quickly morphed into out right hostility. How we had managed to not kill each other during the last year I lived at home, I might never know.

I looked away from her bed, thinking about how sweet she looked when all you could see were those damnable curls. No one was really sure how my sister had ended up with curls, since our father's hair was straight and black, and our mother's was brown, but had barely any curl to it, more like kinks that made her hair fall in basically two very loose curls and most days, she would blow it dry and it would be just as straight as mine. Megan had started blowing hers dry, but still couldn't get all of the kinks out.

I was feeling patriotic I guess, or maybe just wanted to not wear something that made me feel vulnerable. My Spartan hoodie was warm but clean, and my jeans were worn the way I liked them. I missed home.

I had gotten in yesterday afternoon and nearly immediately after, I'd been picked up by Max and gone to the party. Max was a jerk. I knew that, but part of me was afraid that I would end up alone so I had kept a hold of the Forks native when we had both ended up at California State. I was done with him now, even with how things had turned out later that night, he had attacked me.

Of course, thinking of Max made me think of Embry. I still couldn't believe what he had done. He had taken advantage of me. I had trusted him, that was why I had called him…I think. He had been sort of like a mentor to me, my best friend in some ways while I was a kid. Maybe this was why he had pulled away from me when I'd gotten older, a sick perverted crush on his friend's young daughter. Being the danger magnet I seemed to be, it must have seemed like I was offering myself to him.

Now I was angry at myself again.

"Jenna?" A soft rap on the door accompanied my father's voice.

"What?" I said harsher than intended.

"Sorry, but what happened with the kid? He just ran to your mom crying." I heard him sigh through the old door, "You two normally don't fight."

I flinched, "Yeah, it's just a misunderstanding. I'll take care of it."

"Okay, but do I get to at least get to see you?" He said.

I smiled, standing up and walking to the door before opening it and stepping into the hall. "Hi daddy." He smiled, wrapping me in a long awaited hug. I rested my head on his shoulder, which I still barely came up to, and he ran his fingers through my hair.

"Hello, baby girl. I missed you." He kissed the top of my head before pulling away suddenly, "Are you bleeding?" He asked with an incredulous look on his face, sniffing.

I pushed his hands away, "It's nothing." I tried to go back into my room, keeping my face down.

He held it open with one hand and jerked my chin up with the other, "Jenivieve, what happened to you?"

"Nothing!" I said, a little louder than I'd planned on.

"Jenna," He said, grabbing my wrist to keep me from darting away, "You're cheek is bleeding."

"Dad, it's nothing!" I jerked my wrist away, knowing he wasn't holding tight enough to hurt me, he never did. I went into the bathroom across the hall to inspect the damage, locking the door behind me to keep my nosy father out. My right cheek had a bloody cut just under the eye, a bruise had already formed under it, staining my tan skin dark blue. It was bleeding, but just a little on the corner next to my nose, like I'd reopened it when I'd smiled, hardly enough to notice.

A few minutes later, and you could hardly tell that I had a giant bruise on my face. Makeup was a wonderful thing for times like these. I brushed out my hair and pulled it into a ponytail. Satisfied that I looked as good as I was going to look, in a sweatshirt and jeans, I checked my shoulder. It looked better than the night before, more like a really bad scrap and less like a deep cut. I gingerly wrapped it in gauze again before pulling my shirt back down.

I went to the living room. My brother was sulking in his favorite chair, the old red recliner that had once been in our Grandpa Charlie's house…before Grandma Sue had moved into his house and demanded that the thing be moved. So, my father had saved it, and had put it in our house. It was just another of the eclectic furniture pieces that my father had littered over the house, against Grandma Sue's decorating advice.

I would admit that after over twenty years in his house, it smelled like Grandpa Charlie still. I couldn't wait to see him.

Out of all of the people in La Push, I'd always missed Grandpa Charlie and Aunt Leah the most. I loved my parents, but Charlie and Leah were the two people that I felt like I could tell anything to. I knew Grandpa Charlie never lied to me, and Leah wasn't about to go tell my parents when I'd messed up, she was like the sister I should have had in Megan.

I knew I needed to talk about what happened with Embry, and I was still trying to figure out which one I would go to when my sister walked in the front door. She looked really bad. I'd seen her with all sorts of childhood ailments, but I'd never seen her look like this. She was wearing a pair of jeans and a white tank top, which was pretty much her staple fashion. There was a difference now though. I could see every bone in her body. Her face was sallow and pale, her cheek bones prominant on her face, her eyes were glassy, a flat grey rather than their usual silver. All of the muscle that had once been on her body was was grotesquely skinny, probably not weighing more than a hundred and ten pounds. It was so wrong to see her like this.

She raked a sneer over me, seemingly oblivious to my scrutiny. "Well, look what the cat dragged in."

"Megan." I said with a sigh, rolling my eyes behind my closed eyelids. Whatever had caused her body to change certainly hadn't changed her attitude. "Can you please not be a bitch to me right when I get home? Can't you at least wait a day or so? You know, let me get ready for the claws?"

Our mom walked in about midway through the last sentence. She looked like she really wanted to disappear down the hall again, but said awkwardly, "Well…I suppose you two have said hello now. Megan, would you like to help me in the kitchen?"

"No, I have homework." She said, going towards the stairs.

Mom just looked at me with one brown eyebrow raised, "I thought she did it last night. Oh well, will you come help me?"

I nodded, "Sure."

We linked arms and ambled slowly into the kitchen, "Your shoulder okay?" Mom asked, leaning her head on my good shoulder.

"Yeah, it's just a nasty road rash. I'll be fine." I breathed in the warm, comforting scent that was my mother, "Makeup did wonders for my face too."

She laughed, "I noticed."

"Meg doesn't look too good." I noted softly.

My mother nodded, "Hasn't for a few weeks now. She won't talk to your father and I, and not even when we…" She paused before changing her words, "We thought maybe she'd talk to you."

I laughed out loud at that, "Mom! It's more likely that we'll have vampires over for lunch than that she will talk to me! She hates me!"

My mother had that odd look in her eyes that she got when she was lying to me…only she wasn't talking yet. She took a deep breath, "Jenna, she loves you."

I started reading over the open page of the cook book on the counter, "I wish that was true mom, but it's not. She hasn't tried to be nice to me in years. I have a really hard time remembering a time when we got along at all. I don't even know why."

Mom smiled ruefully, "You girls do love to fight, but it's worth a try."

I nodded reluctantly, "I guess."

She shook her head, "And for the record, we aren't having vampires for lunch."

I snorted, "I didn't think so, but in Rafe's la-la-land, we are."

Mom shrugged, but looked wary, "I'll talk to him."

"You should, he's old enough that he should know the difference between what's real and what's just a story our mom used to tell us." I said, citing my college classes mentally.

"I know!" My mom said, giggling nervously, "Geez, I really should have thought about not sending you to college to be a sociologist, now you can see how terrible a mother I am!"

I hugged her, kissing her cheek before moving to chop up an onion, "You're the best mom, Rafe just doesn't want to leave the land of make believe. I assume that he'll grow out of it soon."

"You're the one studying that stuff!" My mom said, reaching up and spinning the spice racks, "Crap." She said quietly, "Jenna, would you mind going to the store and getting some basil?"

"The store?" I choked out.

"Yeah," She said looking me over critically, "What's wrong?" I didn't say anything. "You're not afraid of Embry are you? You two used to be friends."

I shrugged, "Things change, that's all."

"Well, better you go now than later when everyone goes to the bonfire tonight." Mom said, slicing a tomato with a large knife and steady hands.

"The bonfire?" I said, surprised.

She nodded, "Yeah, Sam wants everyone to have a little party, just to keep everyone together." She stopped and kissed me on the cheek, "Now that you're home."

Yeah, that was me, I was the little girl who had gone away for college…to California...an hour and a half away. I was sort of the reservation's favorite piece of gossip for a very long time. All four grandparents called every other weekend. Grandma Sue and Grandpa Charlie one weekend and Grandma Elaine and Grandpa Raven the next, and so on and so forth. My mother called on Friday nights because they were the nights that my father got home early from work and could talk to me after she was done.

Aunt Leah called, "Whenever the hell [she] feel[s] like it." Sometimes she would let her kids, Kaden and Tori talk, but most of the time she just asked me about my social life. I could talk for hours with Leah. I would tell her about Embry.

"Jenna?" My mother said, waving a hand in front of my face, "Anybody home?"

"Sorry!" I exclaimed, "What did you need from the store?"

"Basil." She said, giving me that same examining look.

I grabbed my tennis shoes off the floor. "I'll be back."

My mother smiled, "Be careful." Hah, if only she'd told me that yesterday.

I ran out the door, feeling way better than I had yesterday. This time I stopped at the top of the stairs, picking up my brother's toys. I looked into the front window, knowing that my brother was sitting just on the other side of the glass. Sure enough, he was watching me. I smiled apologetically and waved at him, sitting his toys on the wooden railing before running to the sidewalk.