A/N: I own no part of the Twilight Saga.
IV.
we know it ain't right but we do it anyway
Whenever something happened to somebody on the Quileute reservation, it happened, and then it was over. When a kid killed themselves or somebody's uncle got hit by a drunk driver, everyone else felt bad for a little while, but once it was over, it was over. After that, nobody talked about it. Nobody even thought about it. That was just life and it kept moving on because Quileutes were, as Sue Clearwater would put it, "damn resilient."
Leah couldn't have been a real Quileute, then, because the initial departure of Paul Lahote rocked her to the core, and she would never move past it.
It was a cold Thursday night, the twelfth of November (and four days short of her sixteenth birthday) when Seth ran to Leah's bedroom. He came from just down the street, but Leah thought he was gonna die when he made it to her room. Seth was the most asthmatic person in town—probably in the state, too—and Leah sat up in her bed when Seth slammed open the door, panting.
"Seth, what's wrong?" she demanded.
"It's—" He took out his inhaler from his pocket and shook it up with all the energy in his body. He started to take a few puffs. "Paul. Leah. Do some—" —cough— "thing."
Leah stood up and took Seth by the shoulders. "Is Dad at Charlie's?" she asked.
Seth nodded, struggling to breathe. His face was red, his eyes were shut tight, and he was coughing up a storm. He was having the third worst asthma attack of his life.
"How bad is it, Seth? One to ten."
He dropped his inhaler and held up eight fingers, coughing and wheezing.
"Shit," Leah whispered.
She got Seth to sit down on the floor, and she picked up his inhaler. She shook it up for five seconds and helped him hold it up in his mouth. He took six puffs, waiting nearly a minute between each one. Once Leah was positive her brother wasn't dying, she bolted down the street to Paul's house, clad in sweatpants, a tank top, and Adidas socks and sandals since basketball practice ended only half an hour ago.
When she neared Paul's front steps, there was a crowd surrounding it and people were yelling. All the teenagers on the rez were there, as well as many adults. She pushed through a few people until she got in front of the crowd, at the bottom of the steps. All she saw was red.
Paul was beating the living shit out of his father, and nobody was doing anything to stop him.
Leah ran to Paul and tried to pull him off of his father, but she was only dealing with unadulterated rage, even as the man on the ground was clearly unresponsive. She backed up, trying not to get punched.
"Calm down, Paul," she said, but he didn't hear her over the crowd. "Paul!"
Suddenly, Jacob and Jared appeared behind her and tried to pull Paul off of his father. They succeeded, but Paul was still so pissed that he was snarling. He had the worst temper, and his ADHD wasn't helping. It never did.
"Chill, Paul," Leah said loudly. "Chill the fuck out."
Paul didn't listen to her; instead, he went back to punching his father. It was all bone and blood at this point, and hardly a fight. The man was unconscious. Jacob and Jared had pulled Paul off again, but with the help of two tribal policemen.
"Hey, he's good now," Jared lied.
"Yeah, he's straight," Jacob told the policemen.
The lies didn't change the fact that Paul was being handcuffed.
Leah watched as Paul was thrown into the back of the cop car, and angry, ugly tears stung in her eyes. She went up to the window of the backseat and banged her fist on it, desperate and hopeless as she demanded his attention. "Paul!" she cried. "You're my favorite. Don't you fucking forget it."
His eyes were suddenly apologetic, begging for forgiveness. "I'll be back," he told her. "I'll try, okay? I'll try. Trust me."
That was the last thing she heard from him.
Leah went home to find her family in the living room. Seth was mostly back in good health, but Sue had come home from the hospital early to tend to him. Harry had even come home from Charlie Swan's.
Sue looked at Leah with wary eyes. "Where were you and why'd you leave the house looking like that?"
Leah just realized that she looked rather disheveled in her post-practice ensemble. "I—Paul—" She was at a loss for words.
"You see that crowd out there?" Harry asked Sue and Leah. "You know what happened?"
"Paul got arrested," Leah blurted out. Sue and Harry's mouths dropped. "He beat up his dad."
"Is his dad alright?" Sue asked.
Leah shrugged. I don't give a fuck if he's alright. "I don't know. He was unconscious by the time they got Paul. But they put him in the back of a cop car and everything."
"Told you the kid's trouble," Sue said, shaking her head. "You get into fights like that all the time, you face the consequences."
"Wasn't his dad beating him for a while, Lee?" Harry asked.
Leah nodded. "He beat Paul all the time. Paul would come into class with new bruises pretty much all the time."
"The fucker deserved it, then," Harry said. "Beating his own kid like that." Leah felt some gratitude. Her father always took her side.
"Arnold wasn't always a bad guy, though," Sue countered. "He was going through a lot."
"He was putting Paul through a lot," Harry replied. "There's no excuse for that kind of shit."
Sue shrugged. "Whatever you say. The kid's always been trouble to me."
Leah started to boil with anger. Her hands curled into fists at her sides and she said, "Mom, you don't even know Paul. Don't talk about him like that."
"I know you're not balling up your fists like you're gonna punch me," Sue said with raised eyebrows and pursed lips. "You need to quit coming at me like I'm one of your little friends."
Before she could get slapped, Leah silently retreated to her bedroom. Seth followed, going back to his own bedroom. Sue and Harry remained in the living room.
Leah tried not to eavesdrop, since it probably didn't matter, but she couldn't stop herself. She overheard her parents talking about her—and her attitude.
"She gets it from you," Harry said.
"Bullshit," Sue replied. "Her attitude is all her own. If I ever talked to my mama the way she talks to me these days, I would've been slapped so hard I wouldn't have any more teeth. She gets it from the kids she's been hanging out with, too."
"Kim's a good kid," Harry reminded her.
"Kim hasn't been around here for months. And Emily—pfft." Leah could feel her mother rolling her eyes. "I haven't talked to her or my sister in months. They act like they don't have to talk to anybody just 'cause they live up in Neah Bay. I'm telling you, Harry, it's Paul that's the problem."
"Paul's a good kid, though," Harry said. "Yeah, he's got a temper, but he's not a bad influence on Leah."
"We'll see. When she starts getting into fights and shit, then you'll know the truth. I never liked that boy. Not one bit."
The only thing Leah hated more than her parents not understanding anything about her was their refusal to attempt to understand her. They always talked about her, but never to her. To them, Leah didn't exist. How could they talk about her and what they needed to do without ever talking to her, yet get mad when she didn't abide to their standards, having not known of them directly? It just wasn't fair.
And even worse, her dad was so fake about it all. Harry would talk about her, gossip about her with Sue, and then go to Leah's room to tell her he loved her. She knew he loved her—he was her biggest fan, after all—but he put up a front all the time. Maybe he was afraid of Sue's attitude; maybe he was afraid of Leah's. He didn't dare to shrink either of the women, though. He knew better.
When he was done talking with Sue, he went to Leah's bedroom. He told her he loved her and that he was sorry about what happened to Paul and that he was also sorry for Sue being such a bitch. Leah fake-forgave him and gave him a hug. Harry told her that he was proud of her for her achievements, and that he would definitely-always-for-sure go to her next basketball game. She was becoming a pro at the sport now. She was looking into sports scholarships at Ivy League schools and other universities. At the start of the season, Harry could tell it was going to be her best season yet. His praise was all the same.
The only difference in their exchange this time was that at the end of it, he leaned in and told her, "Be good."
School the next day was torture. Leah hadn't gotten any sleep knowing that Paul was gone, and she was bombarded with questions since everybody knew they had been close. She didn't know why he did it (he had probably been keeping those feelings pent-up), she didn't know where he was (he could be about anywhere), and she didn't know when he'd be back (hopefully soon).
Kim couldn't look Leah in the eye that Friday. She knew what happened since Jared had filled her in, but what was she supposed to say to Leah? That she was sorry? Kim was so bad at saying sorry; it would come off as insincere. But Leah needed the interaction; she needed to know that at least somebody besides her father was on her side, and believed that Paul was still a good person, but just did bad things.
Kim didn't feel the same way about Paul like Leah did. Kim didn't know the first thing about Paul, and she couldn't bring herself to pretend that she did for the sake of Leah's sanity. So Kim would lay low, avoid interaction, and wait for Leah to resurface. That was all their friendship was: waiting. It would carry on like everything else.
If only Leah could carry on like everything else, too.
A/N: Thanks for reading.