*Edited 10/25/15

Ever since I was little, I always had a bad habit. It was picking at my nails until they chipped down to a place where I was not able to pick them anymore. Once they were raw and bleeding and I would stick a bandaid on each individual finger and wait for the nail to grow back. Then, in about a month, the process would repeat.

It was a coping mechanism, like cigarettes. It gave me an idea to distract myself with. When my mother, brother, and I left my dad, I did it constantly. It got bad enough to the point my mother taped thin winter gloves over my hands to prevent the ritual habit.

I did not even realize I was doing it until I felt pain shoot up the tip of one of my left-hand fingers. I was alone in my temporary home and I already missed my permanent home. It was a stupid way of coping, but it worked. I wasn't thinking about home after the blood started to run down my finger in a thin, straight line.

Being alone had never been my forte. My mother never left me home alone during the time that Sam started acting up around the house. It was absurd. He sometimes threw things, and when she grounded him after a fit, he would sneak out. In the mornings, he came back hungover. At night, he would often sneak through my window with a finger to his lips, mouthing don't tell mom.

Apparently, she did not want it to happen to me.

Maybe it was the paranoia that scared me half to death. There were things everywhere, human or inhuman. I wasn't prepared for either, especially if they were harmful.

I got up and walked to the window. My blurry eyesight readjusted after some squinting and I realized that a car was parked in the driveway. The car was a rabbit, a classic car that my grandfather had once owned. It was quite nice, and even though my mind told me not to, I walked out the door to look at the old classic.

I peeked around the corner of the garage to find a sun-kissed torso invading my line of sight. I saw messy black hair that may have been short at some point in time. It was on the fine line between overgrown and normal length hair. I laughed, making a mental note to ask my brother if he wanted me to give him a haircut. "Sam, when did you get home?"

The man turned around and I screeched when I noticed it wasn't Sam. My senses were overtaken with a wave of panic when the man made a grunt of surprise and whipped around. My hands grasped frantically for the bat I knew was leaning on the shed. It was in the pile of baseball gear sitting outside.

My hands found it and suddenly, the bat connected with the muscular torso before my mind made a connection from the back, to the hair, to the man standing before me.

Jacob.

Black.

"Oh my fucking god," I said, my eyes widening. "I'm so sorry."

"Why would you hit me with a bat?" He asked. He was clearly confused as he rubbed the spot on his abdomen I had bashed. It didn't look like he was in pain, just uncomfortable. Nevertheless, I was practically dripping with embarrassment and remorse.

I shook my head. "You scared me. I'm not used to people just . . . showing up."

He rubbed his abdomen once again with the look of a small, self-pitying child. "I wanted to say sorry for last night for staring," he said. "But I must add, you've got one hell of a swing."

I crossed my arms uncomfortably. He was looking at me, but I couldn't bring myself to stare back into those way-too-forgiving eyes. "I was going to go inside and sleep, but you can . . . uh, come inside if you would like. It is only fair after I probably broke your ribs with a bat."

He shrugged my apologies off. "Sure, I could deal with that."

We walked back to the house in silence. I felt a light tingling sensation shooting up and down my dominant hand from hitting him with the bat. It was unpleasant, but completely deserved on my part.

We spent at least three hours watching some generic show about vampires. I hardly even knew the name. Neither did he.

The show was so stereotypical, and we laughed every time they made a stupid reference to the original myth. One of the vampires walked out into sunlight and was reduced to a pile of ashes. Meanwhile, his family of vampires was down in their lair, sleeping happily in their coffins. Jacob made some comment and started chuckling. I laughed, too.

The process repeated, until the show got to be to boring for me.

"Hey Jake?" I asked.

"Yeah?" He turned towards me, breaking his eyes away from the television.

"Why were you so mad at me at the bonfire?"

"You weren't supposed to be there," he answered, his voice stopping in a few places. He obviously did not want to hurt my feelings and was wording it carefully, but it still dealt a sharp blow.

"What?" My voice came out weak, hurt even. It wasn't meant to sound like that. I did not want to let him know that it meant anything to me, but that plan had obviously been thrown out the window.

"If you had just stayed away from here, I could've," he was ranting at this point, dealing blow after blow to my frail psyche. "You ruined my life and you haven't even been here three days! I tried to be civil, I really did, but you. . ."

I had no idea what to do. He wasn't making any sense, but at the same time he was making perfect sense. He didn't want me here.

There was a moment where I was silent, listening to his rambling. Then, the tears came. The anger and sadness bubbled up from somewhere inside me. It was a familiar feeling that I could not shake.

"Oh my god, are you crying? I'm sorry just-" He tried to touch me. I flinched away from his grip. I could taste the salty tears on my lips and feel them running down my face.

"Get out," I said.

"What?"

"GET OUT!"

I was screaming, pushing him. There was red behind my eyelids as I shoved him towards the door. He was trying to reason with me, but it was all a buzz, lost in the void as my temper boiled. I was just trying to be wanted somewhere.

I thought he was okay, but he is just like everyone else.

He stopped trying to reason with me when I grabbed and chucked a macintosh apple at his back. Finally, he left after five minutes of screaming and me pushing him away from me. The rage died down as I watched him leave the house. I saw his the Rabbit speed out of the driveway and out onto the road. Then, in a flash, it was gone.

And I promptly sat on the couch and cried.