The fact that I woke up and it was light outside was my first clue that I woke up late.
Really late.
Before I threw myself out of bed, I cracked open one eye to look at my clock.
Seven thirty.
Cursing, I nearly tripped on my throw rug and bounced into my dresser, bruising my hip. Cursing even louder, I hurriedly pulled on some clothes- a sweatshirt that was much too big, leggings and boots. Not bothering to run a brush through my hair, I put it in a bun, and decided against contacts, and used my glasses instead. I glanced outside, then groaned.
My second clue was that the car was gone.
I grabbed my bag and sprinted into the kitchen, where two of my three siblings froze at the kitchen table, their spoons of cereal half way to their mouths.
"Why didn't anyone wake me up?" I cried.
Maqahla, who was seven, shrugged her shoulders. "We thought you wanted to sleep in."
"Yeah!" Raven, who was five, stuck her tongue out at me. I sighed, grabbed a brush from the bathroom, then hurried back to them and started brushing their hair furiously.
"You guys literally have ten minutes to get ready," I told them. "Is your homework done?"
"Yes," they chorused.
"Do you have lunches packed?"
Maqahla shook her head as I tried pulling it into a ponytail. I started over. "Dean didn't make us anything before he left."
I groaned, and continued to hustle, trying to get my sisters ready for school. The bus pulled up just as they finished tying the leather cords on the mocassins and I finished making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. They ran off, their backpack straps flapping in the breeze. I glanced at the clock when the bus pulled away.
Seven forty-three.
I had seventeen minutes to be in my first class. On a good day, it took me a half hour to walk to school, five minutes if I had the car that Dean and I shared. My mom, who worked the graveyard shift at diner in Forks, had her car and wasn't due home for another hour or two. Sighing, I locked the front door (like that could stop anyone from getting inside, anyways) and began trudging to school as fast as I could.
I was almost seventeen years old and I already felt as if I had lived the most of my life.
I was constantly moving, though I didn't really mind. The only word I could use to describe my life was overwhelming. My mother tried her very hardest to provide, though she wasn't there physically or emotionally- just financially, and only just. Dean and I had never met our father, and the girls' father lived on the Makah reservation with his new wife and family.
Like most of La Push, we were poor. We didn't have the things that most people had- most people, who lived on a few miles from the rez. Crossing the border line from Forks to La Push, was like time-traveling. La Push was very old-fashioned, but somehow, we all thrived and were happy. Despite some factors, I was happy. There were things that would make my life easier, of course- if my house stopped falling apart, and Dean could hold down a decent job for more than a week, and my mother would step up, and my anemia would go away- but I had learned long ago that if I wanted to be happy, I had to think of the little things, such as the smiles my sisters gave me when I was able to pick them up from school, or having a sleepover with Avenue, my friend from school. So I dealt with the fact that Dean was lazy, my mother was never home and I shivered as often as I blinked.
Despite the fact that I was walking briskly, I was still late to class. It was when I was at my locker, spinning the lock when I realized that I had left my bag at home- on the kitchen counter, where I dropped it before I started brushing the girls' hair. I slammed my locked shut and dragged my feet to my English class room.
Everyone looked up when I walked inside. I avoided all eyes as my face flushed.
"Sorry," I muttered to my professor and scurried to my seat.
"Kimber, we're open to page sixty-two, and answering problems one through five," Mrs Henley told me. I opened my mouth to let her know that I didn't have my things with me when a small stack of paper, a pen and a text book slid across my desk. Surprised, I looked at the person sitting next me-
And I froze.
Sitting in the desk- the desk that had been empty for almost two weeks- was Jared Cameron. The Jared Cameron, the Jared Cameron who I'd been infatuated with since the day I first laid eyes on him in first grade. Jared Cameron, who I've never spoken to before in my life, inspite of the fact that we lived in the same neighborhood and had been in the same classes in school for most of our education. The beautiful, Jared Cameron, who most likely didn't know my name.
Who, if possible, had become even more attractive.
What had happened to him? The last time I had seen Jared, he was only a couple inches taller than me and thin- he had always been lanky, but now...
Even though he was sitting down, I could tell that Jared had grown a substantial amount since I last saw him. He was toned- definitely toned; his sleeveless shirt left little to the imagination, because it sat on him like a second skin. His skin was darker, as if he'd spent most of his time out in the sun. And on his right arm was a tribal tattoo.
I had never felt more unnerved before in my life.
He was staring at me. Really staring at me, like he was trying to read me like a book, or something. My heart sunk like a ship in the Pacific when I realized that it was he who had given my the pencil and paper.
"Why-"
"Kimber," he said and his voice was like birds singing on the first day of Spring; it rolled off his tongue naturally, like he had grown up saying it.
Like nothing I had ever heard before. I shivered, though I had already been cold before I sat down.
"Kim," I said quietly and pushed my falling glasses further up my nose. "Just Kim."
He smiled faintly and nodded his head slightly at the supplies he had pushed onto my desk. His eyes never left mine. "I noticed that you aren't carrying anything with you. You can borrow mine, if you want."
I glanced down at the textbook, open to the correct page. My heart was pounding. Was this a joke? Was someone trying to cruelly punish me for waking up so late this morning? It certainly seemed so. I bit the inside of my cheek.
"Thanks," I said carefully and looked back up at him. He seemed satisfied and then moved his desk closer to mine, so that we could both read from the textbook. The desk grated loudly over the floor and I jumped, bumping his bare shoulder with my own. I gasped.
Because I was anemic- my body did not make enough red blood cells to carry oxygen to my brain, so I was constantly cold and pale all of the time. When I was younger, I was often teased because my skin was more white than brown. They called me White- Girl and other derogatory names, names that, at the time, hurt me so much that I stopped talking to just about everyone but Avenue. Silly things like that didn't matter anymore and I stopped caring.
Since I was so cold all the time, I was always wearing heavy clothing- today, I was wearing the oversized sweatshirt with the sweater leggings and boots. Despite this, I could still feel the burning skin on Jared's arm when I jumped.
"Sorry," he whispered. "I didn't mean to make you jump."
"Your skin," I said quietly. "It's so hot...are you sick?"
"Oh," he said, looking down at his arm. The tattoo was large and covered most of his upper tricep. Normally, tattoos disgusted me but this one made me shiver- and not from the cold. "No. I just run a higher temperature than most people, I guess."
"Oh," I said, but his skin was much too hot to be normal. I dropped the subject because it was not my place to pry. I tried concentrating on what we were reading, but I was internally freaking out- Jared Cameron was sitting beside me. I could feel his body heat through my sweatshirt.
I was hyper aware of everything he was doing. His eyes scanned the page and he tapped his pencil on the desk to some tune in his head. He didn't seem to be concentrating either; he glanced at me a couple of times and sighed deeply.
A few minutes later, the teacher called us to attention to discuss what we had read and Jared still hadn't moved his desk back, though we were done reading. I had to sit ontop of my hands to keep from reaching out to him involuntarily. I craved the heat he was exuding and continued to shiver.
He noticed.
"Cold?" he asked and I shrugged.
"It's nothing."
He nodded but didn't look convinced. He scooted half an inch closer and ran a hand through his hair. I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply, his scent tickling my senses. I breathed in again, trying to decipher what the smell was. It was better than any bottled cologne; a mixture of wood and spice that could only be described as Jared.
I was going insane.
Jared didn't move his desk back until the bell rang, ending the class. I smiled at him and handed him back his pencil.
"Thanks," I said and slid his paper across the desk. "I was in a rush this morning."
"Keep them," he said, pushing them back. "You'll need them for your other classes, right?"
He had a point, so I just nodded and took them back, sticking the pencil in my hair and giving a slightly awkward wave when I left the classroom.
When he was gone from my sight, it was like all hell broke loose on my body. My palms itched and became clammy, and I felt like I had a cold sweat. I discreetly checked to see if I needed deodorant, and then tried to find Avenue to tell her what had just happened in English.
She was going to flip out.