5 Years After

Emma POV

Ever since she found herself, I never feared her. I never feared that she would hurt me or anyone else, because that's just not who she is. Not who I thought she is, or maybe that's not who she is anymore. What's changed?

I saw a different person tonight, someone I didn't know, someone who wasn't my best friend, the girl who couldn't sing and apologized to leaves when she crunched them in the fall. The person I saw tonight was someone evil and capable of such. I have seen all kinds of feelings within her eyes, hate, glee, lust, sorrow, but this was was new, it was lust, but different from the romantic or sexual manner of it. It was bloodlust.

She wasn't her, she was a vampire who caught the scent of human blood for the first time, she was inhuman. I knew that her powers were a gift, one that could be beautiful if she used them as such, but they were also a curse, that had been key component in the crime she almost committed tonight. The worst kind of all for someone like her, someone who saw beauty in everything even when it was hardly there. If it wasn't there, she would create it.

Who was she? No, I know who she was, of course I did. The real question was where was she? Buried underneath that envy, that putrid hate? Or was she just snuffed out by the evil? I don't see her as weak, but if the lust for the blood of another was strong enough, it could overpower anyone's sense of direction, it could change them before they could question it. Or fight it.

I want to believe that it couldn't be true, impossible. I can't, because she's not immune, and she has so much power, no one could compete with that. Maybe she woke up and saw that if she wanted she could manipulate her way into the world. Anything she wanted, desired, it was hers if she only would will it.

It would be so easy for her to take and take and never have to give. No one could blame her, I couldn't. I would, because I felt, no, I knew she was better than that. I shouldn't, let's say, because when something is up for the taking, when it's easy, and looks to be inconsequential then hell yeah, taking is what anyone would do. Get while the getting is good.

Greed, it's all greed. More and more, because it's easy, because you can. If one can, then one must. That's the way that the world seems to be working, that's the way we are told to be. Though we try to portray there being a unit of us all for the greater good, when it really comes down to it, it's every man for himself, because one is easy.

Greed, because if you could have it then you should.

I think that's why the world is in such a downward spiral, because of greed, and how want is always confused with need, hungry with starving, cold with freezing. No one is immune to greed, no one is untouched by it's wicked divinities. Not me, not her.

Her.

Her. I can't say her name, but it plays on a loop in the back of my mind. I can't say her name because then I give in to her. I don't want to forgive her, but I can't help but feel that I am not completely void of fault. I know that we have a difficult relationship, she and I. It's not perfect but we do need each other, we do help each other, but we function. I couldn't imagine my life is she was no longer in it.

Maybe she feels the same, I think she does. I wish I could say for sure, but she's on a constant roller coaster of confusion. Never knows what she wants or when, she hardly even knows what she needs. I make it sound as if she's a helpless young child who needs guidance in every sense of the word, in every sense of herself. That isn't true, she doesn't need guidance, but she craves it, as she is lost, she knows that, she does but how can she be so vulnerable to admit. I don't expect that from her, I don't even want that from her.

I just want to be the same person, if not the same person then a better one. Not a better one because there is no such person, but one that grows instead of shrinks. Always stepping forward, never back, no matter how small the step of far the leap. Forward, always. That's who I thought she was. Now, I see that this was just another one of those things that I was wrong about. This is the worst thing I could have been wrong about.

After, I climbed back into bed with that man, let him fuck me. I let him fuck me hard because I wanted him to, I could smell his fear more than the sweat of his back. Fear, was something I craved, it brought me pleasure. So, he fucked me, then he left. I was alone for the first time in longer than I could remember.

I lay in that room, my room and stared up into the ceiling, each time a car would pass heading south, it would light up the room. I waited for each one, as if the next were better than the last. It was game with no winners, one would always come before, once one came before, then another would pass it. A game that I liked to play because there was so much competition for a title that could never be won. Maybe because it didn't exist.

I fell asleep, she was the last thought that plagued my muddy mind, her, her eyes, her apology, her evil. Her. What was happening to me?

In the morning I pulled myself out of bed, still naked, I pulled into a large flannel shirt. I buttoned it up, only two, as I planned on taking a shower to cleanse myself of the filth that would continue to make my skin itch and crawl. I stopped a moment outside her door, I almost knocked, but it was open, so I pushed inside, she was gone.

I looked down and around her mess of a room. We never cleaned anymore, we didn't want to, we really didn't have to, because it was our her, well, her house. Her house and she could care less if anyone knew what color the carpet was. I couldn't either, it was beige plush, I knew that, so did she, so if we ever found it then at least we wouldn't be surprised.

I closed the door softly and headed in to the bathroom, stripped myself free of clothes and stepped under the warm spray, running my hands over my body until it was smooth and the skin didn't stick or slide rough over any places. I felt dirty where I shouldn't, I wasn't sore but I hurt, burned where I shouldn't. I just sniveled, rubbed my nose before grabbing two cloths from the rack. One for my disgusting body, the other for my disgusting face.

I felt clean after the shower, clean as I could feel when the grossest part of me was untouchable. I dressed myself in cotton shorts, oversized hoodie from this soccer camp I had gone to a few years back when I thought I wanted to play soccer.

I fucking hate soccer.

I like sports, but more track, cross country, swim, maybe softball, and archery, but soccer can stick it. Fuck soccer. I'm bitter as fuck about soccer and I don't want to ever go back to that time in my life when I had been at my worst.

I was twelve, and I had hit rock bottom. The bikini would have been preferable.

Now I'm mad about it, so here goes.

7 years earlier

Today I'm doing something new. I'm super stoked because I've never played soccer, which is surprising considering I'd at least tried just about everything else.

Anyways, I'm going alone, I'm on the bus right now, this smelly boy is next to me. I want to tell him her smells like a toenail, but that's inappropriate, so I have to be more subtle. I pull out perfume from my bag, because if I got sweaty but didn't have time to fully shower. I could do what Mr. Mills did, he called it a man shower. I hope that's just a title, and men actually shower, because if not then I might not ever marry one.

Perfume. I pull it out and spray under my shirt, the over it, the all over him. He glares at me and grabs the bottle, throws is across the bus.

"Excuse you!" I huffed and balled my fist.

"You made me smell like girl!"

"What's wrong with that?" I asked, tried to make myself tall. I'm not, I'm like 4'11. I'll grow, though.

"I'm a boy, idiot!"

"Oh, right." I nodded. "It's my bad, I just mistook you for a foot."

"I don't look like a foot."

"You're right, but I'm genderblind, I go off of smell alone." I nodded. "Thought it would be better if I were under the impression I were sitting next to a girl and not a FOOT."

He was about to answer when the bus pulled to a stop, I heaved up my duffle and stood before everyone else. I turned and looked down at him. "At least as a foot, I can assume you play better than you smell." I smiled wide, he scowled.

Training was annoying, all these kids are annoying. No wonder I only have three friends. Do I even have three friends? I don't even think so, but it's no damn mystery! So, we were doing sprints, and I was cool with it, but then Foot Boy ran up next to me and tripped me, but I hooked his sausage leg and he tripped, but he ended up falling flat on his face and scraped his nose. I laughed. It was humorous.

Then our consoler came up and I was the one who got in trouble!

"But, he tripped me first!" I accused, pointing down at him, still on the ground as if he'd broken something other than his ego.

"All I saw was you trip him, Swan." The girl said, she didn't have a name tag or anything, but I could sense her name was Hannah or Claire. Something like that.

"Whatever." I said and turned around, kept running.

"Hold it!" There girl yelled. "You have to apologize."

"Look, I'm not going to argue with you, but he tripped me, he doesn't get an apology." I ran off, not listening when she called me again. She must have given up, because we completed sprints and after stretching, began a scrimmage game.

I had a basic concept of how to play soccer, and I didn't want to be placed in the beginner camp, so I signed up for intermediate level. Most of these kids were around fourteen or fifteen, and I was the youngest and puniest there.

Not that that mattered to me, because I liked to think that I had the potential to be good at everything, it has been true so far.

Scrimmages; so I was red team, and I thought it was unfair at first because it was all girls then boys on the other blue team. I mean, not that girls couldn't do it, but these were teenage boys going through puberty! If you don't get then use you imagination.

We began and after kickoff, we were kicking their ass! I guess because none of the boys wanted to get rough with us. The girls took advantage of that and rammed the fuck out of them. I was offense, but they asked me to hang back in case the ball came back, because the defensive girls' were all just standing and twirling their hair because no one thought the boys would be allowed the upper hand.

That was funny, because boy, were they wrong. It was all sausage boy, he kicked the ball right out from underneath that girl Amanda, and came running my way. I ran towards him because no way in hell was he about to get a goal if I could help it.

That was a mistake.

Next thing I know I'm being carried into the infirmary with a broken shin, he kicked it into two pieces.

Now, I hate soccer. I blame soccer and all of it's players for the problems in the world.

7 Years Later

I haven't played the game in years, not even for fun. The only thing I gained from that camp was the allowance to say I'd broken my leg once, and this hoodie even now hardly fits me.

I went down stairs, swimming in the thing and sat down on the couch. In the kitchen there was a mess of a mess. Dishes, leftovers, just piling up and making counter space scarce. If they were bills, our house would no loner be ours. However, we paid out bills, therefore had the right to make a fuck stye out the house if we pleased.

It was a conscious effort, to make a mess, it was just something that happened. We liked to eat, buy food and things. We didn't like to clean, hire maids, or throw away bottles that could be recycled. They would be, if we ever got the time to go to the plant.

We didn't own a recycling bin.

It's safe to say we are the epitome of adults who should not be living on their own. We're hardly adults, though. I just turned 18, she would be next month. Adults was a term, a label, and something that we didn't or hadn't yet lived up to. However, if being an adult means worrying more about a clean house and having a dish made of ceramic and a glass made of just that, then it sounded like a bore anyway. There have been times that we drank from the hose, ate off of a frisbee.

I guess we weren't ready to give up the childhood that we had. We weren't ready to move up from being immature because it seemed as if time moved so slow when we wanted to get where we are now that we forgot to enjoy being young. Now, we want it back.

I think everyone faces some kind of realization like that, but aren't as lucky as us. Other people have to grow up, have to mature because they have to be self sufficient. We don't have to be self sufficient, we are, but we don't need jobs or mortgages. We have money, a house, car insurance because it was given to us. We're lucky, but that luck has made it so we don't have to grow up. I think if we did, grow up that is, then nothing would be the same, I like things the way they are but I can't see this being how it always will. Eventually, we have to stop, settle down, maybe get a job, start a business, move apart and start families.

That's a scary thought, because what if we never get to do any of those things? Not so much we, but me. What if I never get to stop, what if I never start a family, because I can't even tell my best friend that I love her. I can't imagine having to raise a child by myself or with anyone else, knowing those I chose to associate with that kid would turn out worse than me. I can't be held responsible for another life when I can't even be trusted not to make a mess of my own.

It's nearly midnight, she's still not back. I tried to call her, her phone is off, I tried to call someone she might be with, but I don't know any of her friends. Maybe because I was the only one she ever spent time with.

Wow, It's been over ten years, we were still together. Minimal fights, and it's crazy because we have been living in with one another for five of those years. Five years it's been since I've seen my parents. I thought this was normal, but it's not. I see it's not, I can't believe they just left me with my friend's family, never called me first except to fill me in on their location. I wished they wouldn't call at all. It would be less of a burden if I were under the impression they'd follow off a cliff or got mauled by a Russian bear.

Now, I was all alone, like I deserve, I see that now. I just hope that wherever she is she's having fun, doing better than me.

She, her, we. I guess I should say her name again.

Regina.