Disclaimer: The plot belongs EstrellaGrace and the rest is Stephanie Meyer's. There is abuse in this chapter so if you are uncomfortable….Please stop reading.
JPOV
I took a few deep breaths and close my eyes. When I open them again, Ed is staring at me with an expression I can't place. "The only way I got out it was with flirting, don't speak of this again." He nodded quickly and we keep walking to the cafeteria. The air around us feeling lighter.
Maybe Ed can help me as a tutor. No, that is a silly thought.
"Hey Cowboy, would you like to sit with me?" He seemed a little nervous when he asked me. I looked over at the table he was heading to. Emmett was throwing a piece of pizza at Vee. Alice was sitting and braiding Rosalie's hair. Leaving Rosalie to glare at any unlucky person who happens to pass by her.
"As much fun as that sounds….No thanks. Maybe another time." He doesn't show it, but I can tell that it made Ed feel a little down. Sorry, but I knew girls like Alice. I wasn't sacrificing my hair for Alice's pleasure. My hair brushes my shoulders and I am sure that little pixie would make something up like, "Ooh, it's just the perfect length."
Yeah, no way in hell I'm doing that. Maybe he could sit with me. I quickly dismiss the idea. Edward was too shy...on somethings. I knew better. He could be more bash when he needed to be.
I guess when Mike found Jessica, I went looking for another best friend.
We fist bump, then head our separate ways. Mike was beckoning me with a waving hand. I hurry over, stealing a pizza slice off Ben's plate and a soda from one of the freshman.
"You'll never believe it, Jasper. We have the whole plan from the Rangers, the team we are playing against the Saturday after next. Yesterday, some of the boys and I went over to their school and… uh, convinced…. some of the freshies at the school to go and take some notes on the plays they are running and then they sent them to us."
I opened my mouth to say that I doubt that is their actual play. Mike knows me all too well and beats me to the punchline. "I know what you're gonna say, man. Oh, but Mikey, what if they were just lying to you? They could have made it up. Trust me here. After a few thinly veiled threats thrown their way, there is no way that they are gonna risk their limbs for a silly football game.
I still had my doubts. Everybody snickered and I joined in. I was already making contingency plans in the back of my head. Maybe even ways to use it against them. Just in case. I was already quite sure that we are going to win this upcoming game. Now, I don't have a shadow of a doubt that I would put money on this game if it wasn't for the gambling incident of 2012 when it was outlawed in Forks High.
Still hungry, I go up to the lunch line. Pulling my wallet out of my back pocket, I was planning on paying for another three slices of pepperoni pizza. I felt a hard tug on the back of my shirt.
"Bend down!" I heard a high voice squeak. I turned around to see that it was the Alice girl. She was trying to reach for my hair. Thank god, she's too short to reach.
"What are you doing?" I asked as she jumped with her arms high in the air. I set down my pizza on the counter. I was just in time to grab her wrists and secured them at her side. She was strong like Edward and cold to the touch like him.
They all can't have the same disorders and not be kin by blood. Well, no, it was possible. Maybe Dr. Cullen collected children with a certain kind of disorder. Like he on a mission or something. She had a frustrated look on her face and her nose was scrunched up adorably as she glared at me.
"What's it look like? I want to play with your hair, but you are too tall so you need to bend down for me. Ooh, it's just the perfect length." Dammit, I just knew that would happen. Did I not just predict the future here?
It's really not that I don't want her to play with it, which I don't. It's that I'm afraid she'll get a little too excited and start tugging really hard. My Ma used to love to play with my hair when I was a boy since she had no little girl play with. Sometimes she would get too excited about all the things she could do with my hair. More than once she had accidentally ripped out a patch of my hair.
I let go of her hands and finished paying. Just as I go to sit back at my table, she linked both of her little arms through one of mine. She started pulling me over to the Cullen's table. She almost made me drop my pizza with her incessant tugging.
"Whoa, there, lass. Go a little easy me, you're stronger than I think you realize." Alice paid me no heed and kept on jerking my arm until she is close enough to push me into a seat between her and Rosalie.
"Hi, Jazz." Rosalie felt strangely happy when I sat down. She didn't show it, but I could feel it. She crinkled her nose at my food and then she asked me something. "Are you really going to eat that? It smells so bad, and it looks so greasy." I laugh at the nonsense coming out of her mouth.
"It smells delicious to me, and the grease is how you oil these guns." I flex my arms and everyone at the table laugh simultaneously. Emmett laughed loudly, drawing the attention of the whole cafeteria.
"Wow, I like this guy. Eddie here sure knows how to pick his friends." My ears turn pink from all of the people staring. The Cullens must be bigger outsiders than I realized. I decided to question them on it. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Alice bite her bottom lip really hard after that thought passed my mind.
"Yeah, I'm a pretty awesome friend. If I do say so myself. Who else are y'all's friends? I never you guys talk to anybody but me and yourselves." This makes them uncomfortable. I'm not letting them off the hook. I really want to know why I am so special.
"Well, um," Vee mumbled at first. Then a little louder, he said. "No, if it wasn't for Edward, we wouldn't be talking to you. I guess we just haven't found anybody else who we like enough to call a friend?" He said it like a question. Then he looked around the table to see if his siblings agree with his statement. Which they do. I can tell by their nodding. "You are Edward's friend so you are our friend."
Something about Vee just never sat right with me. He always seems to be the one trying to talk for the group. But I noticed that Rosalie and Emmett would always look towards Edward before they say or do something. There was a division line in the group.
That little question had sent the stress levels through the roof. Everybody was so full of tension that I could practically feel it in the atmosphere.
The bell rings and I can't help but think of the saying, saved by the bell. I chuckle at my own joke as I get up to throw away my empty tray.
"What are you laughing at?" I hear from Rosalie as she came up next to me. She bumped my hip with hers. I shake my head and don't answer. She might find the answer rude if she knew. I don't want to get on the Ice Queen's bad side.
She is holding her tray in her left hand while mine is in my right. The only difference between the trays is that her's is still full. In fact, not one thing on her tray even looked like it had even been touched. I sit my mine down in the holder and before she throws all of her food in the trash, I pull off a chicken tender and turn to her.
"You should really eat something for lunch, Rosalie. Anorexia is not something that I take lightly. Neither should you. You are perfect and really don't need to be any skinnier than you already are. Please eat this." I offered her the chicken and her nose scrunched up.
"I am not anorexic. I will not eat that breaded chicken. I like animals." She tried to turn away, but I grab her arm.
"Please, just eat one bite." I really don't want my new friend to suffer from a problem that she was inflicting on herself. I won't stand to see her rot away without the proper nutrition. I know that it's not really my business to start with, but I'm going to make it my business. She needed help.
Rose pursed her lips together and nodded slightly. She opened her mouth and I stick it in. Rose chewed slowly and it looked painful as she swallowed it down. I shove the rest of the tender in my own mouth and finish it in record time.
"See, it wasn't that bad." I think I may have heard her saying along the lines of, "maybe not for you." I'm not too sure that I heard her correctly so I ignore it.
I head off to biology for another boring class where I just talk to my friends for an hour. The plans Mike got us are really going to help us win the first game. Be it nice and easy breezy. Maybe with a little luck, the other team won't know what's going on. Then we can use the same tactics the next time that we play them.
Of course, I don't really expect them to use a plan that doesn't work. I mean, come on. They beat our mathlete team every year. Granted, I'm not on that team. So I don't really know.
"Jazz, come here man," Emmett called out to me. I walk over to him and he shrugs his muscular arm over my shoulder. He pushed down slightly so that it hurt a little bit. He bends his neck so our faces are just a few inches away. "I'm sure that I don't need to tell you this, but Rosie is mine and mine alone. Don't you go flirting with my woman or else we are going to have some problems. She knows what she's doing so don't be getting on her ass about eating or anything. As a matter of fact, don't be getting on her ass at all, that ass is all mine, and speaking of." Rose struts up to us and Em shoves me out of the way while he kisses her passionately, grabbing her butt and squeezing hard. All I could do is look away.
I really didn't mean to be flirting with her. For some reason, I'm not interested in Rose. She's more of a sister figure than anything. No doubt she is the prettiest girl I have ever seen in my entire life. But I know another man's boundaries and I don't want to be pushing Em or ever get on his bad side.
Biology was more boring than watching paint dry. I could've slept. I have slept through the class and missed absolutely nothing.
Mr. Banner was just talking about his divorce again. Like how his ex-wife took his cat and he now cries for them every day. Okay, maybe he didn't say that exactly, but that's what I got out of it.
The government class was almost as bad. I had taken government the year before. I had failed it and now I had to take it again. Meaning everything was just going to be repeated again. The good thing was I now have heard it twice. Which means I'll have a better chance of remembering it. The bad thing is, it will be just as dull as last year. I did find out that Alice was in my class.
What is it with the Cullens and blending in the walls in the back of the classrooms? As I sat there, bored out of my mind, I looked out the large windows and saw Edward walking to his car. As if he could feel my eyes on him, he turned around and waved at me. That was the highlight of the class. If that doesn't say how boring it is, then I don't know what would.
"Hey, sit with me today, Cowboy." Edward and I walk side by side into the flex classroom for the study hall in place of P.E.
"Um, I'm not too sure I should. Usually, the guys need help with homework or something." That was a total flat out lie. Almost all of my buds are in higher classes than me. Even if I were in their class, I probably couldn't help them anyway. Unless it was math. Honestly, I am just kind of worried about what they will think of me if I start to drift from the group. It's not like I'm really ditching them. I just happen to have friends outside of the group. Yeah, all of them have friends outside of football. I'm just going to go sit with mine.
"Oh, come on, Cowboy. I'm sure that I'm more fun than those pigskin chasing losers you're hanging out with. I bet I could beat every one of them up." I laugh as he playfully flexes his arms. My eyes linger on his biceps. Nice.
Of course, he said this in a joking manner. I didn't think he would call my friends losers and mean it, nor could he possibly beat up the whole football team.
"Oh fine, but know this. It's not your words that persuaded me, it's those hunky muscles of yours." Whoa, where did that come from? I was mortified on the inside. I gave a nervous laugh and put on a strong face. Thank god he was laughing with me. Seriously, where did that come from?
We walk over to a table near the front of the room and sat down. We spread all of our school work out on the table. I have a lot more homework to do than Ed does. Lately, Mike hasn't been home to help me out. The table has an overabundance stuff with all of the papers I put on top of it. I saw Ed's eyebrows rise briefly when he saw the load.
"Wow, Cowboy. Are you a hoarder in denial or something?" I can't help but rub the back of my neck. I am somewhat abashed.
"Well, I just haven't done anything yet." I drop my voice to a whisper. "I need help doing most of this stuff, and I can't find anybody…." I trail off. Ed shakes his head with a smile. "Please, I need help. Please don't tell anyone." He gave a quiet chuckle and pulled up a chair.
"I'll help you out, don't worry about that. That's what friends are for," he said. "Let's try to make a dent in this and maybe we can finish the rest some other time. What is it that you need the most help on?"
I pretend to think about it. "Well, the only class that I actually can do is math, so pretty much everything else." Saying it out loud made me feel really ashamed of myself. It's the only the first week of school and now I am already falling behind all of my classmates. It so early in the year. "It's not that I can't do it. It's that I need to hear it for me to understand it. I guess that means I'm an auditory learner or something like that, right?"
Ed looked me straight in the eyes. He stared intently at me before writing something on a post-it note and slid it in front of me. I look down at the note and back up at him, my gaze questioning him.
"Jasper, just tell me what's on the note." He is talking very softly, "please." Wow, I haven't heard him call me anything but Cowboy when we were alone. In fact, he only calls me by my real name whenever his family is around, does he not want them to know too much about our friendship or is it something else? I laugh nervously.
"What is up with you today, Ed? You wrote the note, you can read it yourself." Briefly, I glance at the note. None of the letters were in the right place. I could puzzle it out, but it would take a little while.
"No, Jasper. I want you to read the note aloud to me." Now he is just starting to piss me off.
"I don't take orders from anybody, Edward. Don't tell me what to do." I said in an angry whisper. I stood up and shove all of my papers back into my backpack before walking right out of the classroom, not worried at all about the teacher.
Coach Clapp is in charge of the study hall and he needed me too much on the football team. He wouldn't dare report me and possibly have me cut from the team. I head to the gym to blow off some steam. The poor guy who has to defend me today in practice is going to get one hell of a beating. I'm not holding back today.
I got a soccer ball out and started kicking it as hard as I could against the gym's walls. I stop when I heard the chiming of the bell dismissing us for the day. I leave to head to my locker and saw Mike leaning against it. If he knew what was best for him, he would get the hell out of my way. In typical Mike fashion, he is completely unobservant to the rampaging emotions that I'm sure are showing freely on my face.
"Hey man, do you think you can grab me some boxers and bring them to me tomorrow? I'd use Jessica's brother's, but that's just nasty with a capital N." I ignore him and jerk open my locker, stuffing in my books haphazardly. "Hey, what's up with you? Listen to me for once, would ya?"
"If you want your panties then you can go to your house and get them yourself. Piss off." I walk past him out the front door of the building, knocking his shoulder roughly with my own.
I see Edward leaning against my car and it feels like my anger has been set on fire. Then a hand grabs my shoulder and jerks me around.
"Don't fucking talk to me like that, Jasper. I haven't done anything to you." My face must show that bewilderment that I feel. I know that I am going to regret this in the future, but right now my head isn't what's controlling my mouth.
"Haven't done anything to me? What about how you left me at the house with your parents. They hate me! Then you want to make me your bitch by bringing you all your shit. Not even thinking about how the hell I'm supposed to do my school work without you around? All the while you are hanging out with your slut of a girlfriend."
Wham! I feel his punch before it registers in my mind that he wound back his arm and hit me as hard as he could. I raise my hand up to my bloody cheek and stare down at my fingers as the red goo slides freely down them.
After all of the abuse that I've been through, I don't know whether to call Mike brave or stupid for hitting me. Seeing the expression on his face I know he just realized what he's done.
I am past the point reason and he is clearly re-thinking his action. I drop my backpack to the ground beside me and step toward him. I roll up my sleeves as I slowly walk towards him. Mike took a step back, then he tried to talk his way out of his ass whopping. It is way too late for that.
"Jasper, I swear I didn't mean to punch you. But that doesn't mean you can just say stuff about my girlfriend like that and expect me not to do anything." He looked at me pleadingly as I keep on slowly walking towards him. His words are not registering in my head.
Teenagers are starting to circle around us. Some are even exchanging money with each other. "You can't really blame me for wanting to get out of my parents' house, wouldn't you. If you could?" He just narrowly missed my first swing by barely an inch. "Also, I asked you to get me some stuff. You could have just said no if you felt so strongly about helping a cousin out." Swing and a hit. My fist connected with Mike's side and he lands hard on the ground breathing shallowly.
"Mikey!" I heard someone yelling in the crowd. The voice is high and frantic. It is quickly drowned out by the hollering of the other students that are surrounding us.
I kick him hard in the stomach. Some distant part of me knows that if I hit him in the head, it could leave some lasting damage. I have enough sense not to go that crazy. I heard a crack as my foot gives another strike. Before I can go in for another, two cold hands grab me from behind. The hold is like a cold iron shackle with a grip I can't break.
Teachers are starting to pour in around us. I see Coach Clapp helping Mike up off the ground. Distantly I can hear an ambulance rolling up in the parking lot as they do.
"Fuck you, Jasper. It's not my fault that you can't fucking read." Mike said as he was loaded onto a stretcher and rolled away. The cold hands still do not let go of me. Breathing is hard. I try hard to only think about each breath. I breathed in then I let it out slowly. I am trying to regain my composure. Eventually, I shake them off and look back at my captor. Ed.
"Hey, Cowboy," he says softly, almost caring. "Let me take you to the nurse's office." I look down at myself to assess the damages. My ankle hurts from kicking him. My face is a bloody mess. I notice my hands are too from having touched my face and slugging Mike. My poor knuckles are busted. I can't feel too bad for myself, Mike got the bad end of the stick anyway.
Ed weaves his arm underneath my armpit and aids me in limping to the nurse's office. I'm in a daze as I walk there, so much so that I forget that I'm mad at Ed. I look up at his face as we walk. His eyes are pitch black, what happened to the unique butterscotch eyes that I saw this morning. He has his nose all scrunched up and he is holding his breath. None of the other Cullens are anywhere in sight. The eyes, I had seen that kind of eyes before.
Well, that's odd. I would've thought that they'd want to see if Ed was okay.
We walked into the office to find the nurse sitting in a chair. She was reading some magazine. When she looked up to see who was coming, her eyes widen at the amount of blood coming off of me. She hurried me over the bed covered in paper.
"Oh, my!" she exclaims. "What have you gotten yourself into, young man? Is there anybody else who is hurt?"
Thank you. Everyone, this ends the original chapters. Go ahead and review. Good or bad, all are welcome.