A/N: I don't own Twilight or any part of it. Also, Sydney (vampiregirl93) has proofread this chapter, as well as the previous one. Thank you, lovely.

II.

i get this feeling like
it all could happen

The summer of after her freshman year was the last normal summer Leah would ever live to see.

It started out like any other summer: she was thankful that the school year was over (even though she hadn't really struggled throughout the nine months), and she was immensely thankful for the fact that she could focus on other things. Leah would go to the beach and the park that accompanied it every other day to play basketball, and she would hang out with her friends at their houses in the days in between. She would come home to her parents in the backyard, barbequing and drinking beer like nothing was wrong. In any other summer before this one, nothing truly was wrong—or at least that far from right.

This summer started out as normal as ever, but then Leah got a job. It was minimal. She would be helping out her cousin, Emily, at her part-time job in a rental store in Neah Bay. Emily was more grown than the rest of them, being sixteen and about to be a junior and very, very mature. But Emily knew better than to try to punk Leah.

So that June, Leah hitched a bus every other day to Neah Bay, where Emily resided (yet insisted on attending Forks High School). Emily's dad was a Makah living on the reservation there, but Emily and Leah were related through their mothers, who were sisters. Leah had been visiting Neah Bay for summers on end, so the bus ride wasn't that bad.

Leah was glad that she didn't live in Neah Bay, and she always pitied Emily because she lived in Neah Bay. Neah Bay was in the same county—or the badlands as most people around here called it—as Forks and La Push. It was just never far enough. Whenever Leah visited, she was reminded that it was truly on the edge of the world. She always thought that if she stuck around for too long, she just might fall off. She also constantly prayed that Emily would stay on.

"Get a move on, Emily! You're not getting paid to just sit there."

Fuck you, man! I'm hardly getting paid at all.

Emily Young continued to tap her pen next to her little black spiral journal, blatantly ignoring her boss, Trent. Ink was spattered on the side of her right hand; it had been a long day, so she'd gotten a lot of writing in while Leah watched her. Writer's block used to plague Emily when she sat at home, unemployed, but the second she got a job was the second she started to write her novel again. Emily was working on her life story, but she kept changing the name of it every time she picked up the pen. Also, it looked kind of like a diary right now, so that wasn't doing her any good. She wanted it to end up as an epic.

It wasn't like Emily's family didn't have a little bit of money, because they did. She wasn't like Kim, with her lazy, snooty, old money. Emily's parents—not her grandparents, or her great-grandparents, or so on—had made a life for their family, which consisted of them, sixteen-year-old Emily, and her younger brother, Michael Jr. Money shouldn't been everything, but when one had it, it was. Emily's parents had it.

So why was it that Emily was working less-than-minimum-wage at a goddamn hardware rental store? She could see Leah here, but Emily didn't have to be here at all.

Yeah, it was convenient—it was just down the street from her house in Neah Bay, so she didn't have to drive in her own car that she didn't like to put gas in, anyway—but it was fucking stupid. Emily only got the job because her aunt used to work there, and was probably the best goddamn employee there was. But her aunt wasn't Emily. The minimum wage in Washington was about nine dollars and thirty cents by the hour; Emily and Leah got paid eight fifty. What the fuck is this?

It was fucking stupidity, that's what it was.

On average, in America, the white man gets paid more than the white woman, who gets paid more than black people in general, who gets paid more than Latinos in general. Where did Emily and Leah fit in there, being Native women? Emily didn't know. The white people probably didn't care (as usual), but that was sort of their thing throughout history, and the Natives were still going strong despite the constant abuse. Why stop? Why sleep? Money didn't stop and money didn't sleep.

The store that Emily and Leah were "working" in was asleep. Things in the store were always slow around 5:15. Customers always thought it was too late to come in and pick up a drill, so they didn't come in at all, but Trent—old and "still made of gold," as he liked to say— had hope, so he kept the front doors wide open. Emily had never been fond of the outdoors, merely because there was nothing to do besides get dirty and a couple shades darker, but to get off work early today… it'd be a dream.

There was nothing to do in Neah Bay, period. But there was nothing to do in La Push except go to the beach, so that was what Emily and Leah were gonna do today. The second the clock struck six would be the second they both clock out on the computer, wave goodbye to Trent and their other coworkers, and dip the hell out of there. Emily's boyfriend, Sam, would be out there, waiting for them in his silver pickup truck, and there would be Jared Cameron and Kim Conweller in the bed of the truck (much to Leah's dismay, even though Kim was her best friend), and Seth, too. Paul would find his own way to the beach because he loved people enough to go, even if he was supposedly grounded. There was no use in trying to budge Quil and Embry; they had other things to do and other places to be. And then there was Jacob—Jacob Black was such a mixed bag. Maybe tonight he'd take a minute to not feel sorry for himself and actually come out to play. He wasn't like Emily in that way, though; Emily was usually the life and death of the party (to her friends, not to her), so if she didn't come, there was no use in anyone going. Everyone could live without Jacob going out with them, though they couldn't necessarily live without him. Jacob was complicated in that way.

Pen to paper, Emily wrote away at her novel. The main character of her story was always struggling with something, dealing with event after event. Would she ever find happiness? She shouldn't. Emily always hated the western way of thinking that happiness was a noun, or an object, that could be achieved and won with hard work, because that just wasn't the truth. Emily was always looking for the truth.

The idea that people—white, American people—sought happiness in life was so pretentious and cliché that it hurt. Happiness wasn't a prize to Emily; it was an emotion. A person could be happy… and they could also be sad and angry and confused like every other human being on the planet. Waiting for "happiness" as endgame was just silly. That whole hedonistic idea made it sound like one needed to earn happiness, when in reality, everyone deserved it. Even depressed people (or so she thought) like Emily. Even Emily's depressed little character in her stupid little novel.

Writing was tedious fucking work, but all writers knew that. Emily felt the need to always write something good, something worth reading, but she didn't have any audience besides herself, yet she could never, ever be pleased with her writing. She was actually really, truly, deeply stuck.

"You can run if you want to," Trent said after some time.

"Really?" Emily asked. She already knew; this Really? game just made her sound dedicated to her job.

"Yeah, go ahead."

It was 5:45, and Emily looked through the large store windows to see Sam's blue pickup pulling in, and three heads of dark hair in the bed, swaying in the wind. Emily and Leah quickly clocked out, waved to Trent, and smiled as they felt the sun on their faces, their hair, taking over. Emily went to the passenger seat, and Paul popped out of it, leaving the door open.

"Get your ass in the back," she said, playfully shoving him out of the way. He laughed as he jumped in the back of the truck with Leah going in after him.

"I told you that you didn't have a chance," Emily heard her other cousin, Seth, say. Smiling, Emily climbed into the passenger seat.

"Hey, babe," Sam greeted her.

"Hey," she replied, rolling down the window.

"How was work?"

She shrugged as he started driving. "Work was work." They'd never been a couple of many words. "You?" she asked.

"Work was work," he repeated, a small smile upon his face.

Even though she had a boyfriend, Emily had never felt as lonely with him as she did without him. Only two people have ever had the power to make her feel lonely just by talking to her, and they were Sam and her mother. She tried to not be around her father too much, so she was stuck with Sam as a replacement of sorts.

Sam was her American dream, though: sufficient endgame. He was what she was gonna end up with whether she liked it or not, and she didn't like that feeling, but now wasn't the time to have those feelings. That was the huge difference between Emily and Jacob: she would put those bad feelings on hold for as long as she was distracted, doing shit with her friends; Jacob would allow himself to be plagued with bad feelings forever, which was why he wasn't in the truck with the rest of them.

But Emily was with her friends. Her fresh-to-death clique. Her squad. Jacob might come around later if he was feeling it, but he was not here now. Emily sure did spend a lot of time worrying about people who worried too much about themselves.

Heading onto the highway, kicking the speed up to sixty-five miles an hour, Emily knew her bad feelings wouldn't be back for a long time from now. Out in the badlands, there were people who liked to forget their demons. She was one of them.

Sam's pickup pulled up to the First Beach parking lot an hour later, and when Emily climbed out, the first thing she heard was Jared's voice, in its typical douchebag tone. "Shit, I think I forgot my sunglasses."

"Poor thing," Leah replied.

That's Leah, alright. Always needing to be heard.

Sometimes Emily forgot they were cousins because they were polar opposites. Leah was who Emily liked to believe she was on the inside—fearless and strong—except Emily had more bad qualities than Leah had the capacity of holding. Kim, too. Kim was immaculate, and Leah was a goddess, basically Athena on Earth, and then there was Emily. Emily the depressed writer and half-assed cellist who complained about everything, mostly stayed in her house, and shouldn't be around alcohol. Cool.

It turned out that Jacob was at the beach, and so was Embry. Oh, Embry. He was one of Emily's favorite people, despite him barely leaving his house (just like her), so when she saw him, she was amazed. People often amazed her on sight. Sam left her side to go start a bonfire with Jacob, and Embry took Sam's place like he usually did.

She put her on around his waist platonically and they started walking toward the beach, walking behind everyone else as they all scattered for the moment.

"What's going on, whiz?" she asked casually. He was a whiz-and-a-half. He didn't leave his house, but when he did, he was smart. He had always been smart.

With his arm around her shoulder, he smirked. "Thought I'd catch the sun for a quick minute."

"Just a minute?" Emily asked. "You had me thinking you were a vampire with all the time you spent in your house."

He laughed. "You'd be surprised. How's your novel coming along?"

She regretted telling him about it from the start. As much as she trusted and liked him, letting him in on the fact that she was writing something made her feel like she gave him something that he hadn't deserved yet. Not even Sam had earned a detail of her that was so personal.

"It's a novella at this point," Emily said, "and very incomplete." The words sounded so pathetic coming out of her mouth. She had gotten the idea of the novel a year and half ago, but up until now, she had stopped and restarted and destroyed and remade a handful of times.

"That's something, though," Embry replied. "Better than nothing."

"I guess."

Upon reaching everybody else, they took their arms off of each other, and Emily felt herself growing cold. The lack of Embry's presence did that to her, as well as the fact that he had been thinking of her and her novel. He actually thought about her a lot, while she thought about Sam and how he never thought of her at all.

She didn't want to think about it right now.

The same old tales at the bonfire never expired, so when everybody gathered around once night fell, Emily felt the sense of summer and friendship and all that shit that she had been so deprived of for the longest time. Even though she was a loner, she didn't like being lonely. Now she was less lonely and definitely not alone.

Sam held her close, but Emily could see Embry in her peripherals, where she wanted to be. Almost everything was just perfect, but that was the way that things went for Em: things would be going so well until one aspect turned sour, or ugly, and threw everything out of place. Maybe if things weren't like that, she wouldn't be so afraid to leave her house, or so afraid to speak without holding back. She just wouldn't be so afraid, period.

If things weren't like that, she just might know a thing or two about bravery.

Emily glanced over at Leah, who was lost in Paul's eyes as usual. They sat close, with their hands touching at her bare thigh, just above the hem of her denim shorts. They looked serious, but he was probably telling her a crazy story—he thought his half-Mexican heritage from his mother's side made him something special. Leah didn't get lost often, but when she did, she was always with Paul and it would take days to get her out because he was just that captivating. She was a hypocrite like that, since she was always rolling her eyes and shrugging her shoulders as she constantly said to everyone else, You guys are too obsessed with your boyfriends and girlfriends. Live for yourself. Nobody would point out her hypocrisy, though. Leah would drown anybody in all of their faults if they ever came for her.

And that was what made Paul safe: Leah. Even though he was aggressive and hardheaded and all kinds of fire, Leah loved everything about him because nobody else could. She was as soothing as water when it came to Paul. Nobody else knew how to love him, and even though Leah wasn't at all patient in general, she was as patient as ever with Paul. He was her favorite, after all. She had that unconditional kind of devotion to him, and nobody ever questioned it because she had the power to destroy somebody with a sentence. The only thing scarier was that she wasn't hesitant about it.

So on the Friday of that Independence Day weekend, when Emily and Leah sat in the former girl's bathroom, having not yet left for work yet, Emily was scared. Besides the fact that she had just taken a pregnancy test, she was scared that Leah wouldn't be there for her. How fucking cowardly was that?

When the test told her that Emily was indeed pregnant, with the two little lines and everything, Emily waited for Leah's reaction. Leah knew before Sam—before anyone. Her reaction would truly guide Emily because she never knew what she was doing, but Leah always knew what she was doing.

"I really thought you were much smarter than this."

Leah was there, though. She was there at the end of August when they were in Emily's bathroom again. They had already quit their jobs for the summer—school was coming back. Emily would be a junior and Leah would be a sophomore.

Emily had lost the baby. No, she hadn't wanted to be pregnant in the first place, and no, she hadn't had any plans to take care of it, but the fact that it was gone hurt her somewhere inside she couldn't pinpoint. She was too much of a fucking coward to look that deep. So instead, she looked to Leah, and Leah looked her back right in the eye.

"I know you're much smarter than this," Leah told her. "Keep it moving and take care of yourself. You're gonna be fine."

School eventually came back—Emily never did.

A/N: Hi! This is my newest story, Static. Some things to know:

-I've been working on this story for almost 3 years now.

-It will be very long (I won't say how long, though).

-Rated M for language, some sex, drugs, death, heavy topics, the usual.

-Sydney (vampiregirl93) will be proofreading this story. (Thanks again!)

-It's a chronicle, honestly. I feel like it'd work better as a TV show but it is what it is.

-Angst for days.

Thanks for reading. I'll update soon.

-HS