A/N: I own no part of the Twilight Saga, thank God. Sydney pre-read this. Thanks as always. Enjoy.

VII.

all work and no play
let me count the bruises
all business all day
keeps me up a level

"You may beat all those pussies at your girl games," Jared warned, his voice dripping with competitiveness, a sly smirk upon his face, "but I'm gonna take you to college tonight, lady."

Leah tightened her ponytail and pushed her sweatband further up her forehead. "That's cute," she replied, "since your ass wouldn't even be going to college if it weren't for your mediocre athleticism. We all know you failed biology—twice."

Jared had totally set himself up, and she was allowed to throw it in his face. If she knew anything, it was that all boys could be dicks whether they were athletes, gamers, or anything in between. Just because he had been scouted by the University of Washington for football (and his spot wasn't even guaranteed yet) didn't mean he was allowed to be an asshole.

His smirk disappeared as he pouted his lips and narrowed his eyes. It was game on now. Jared had always playfully told Leah he was going to play her one-on-one someday, and today was that day. It was a warm September evening, just two weeks into their junior year, and the sky was just started to darken while still being illuminated by the orange twilight.

It was really too bad that Jared was going to have his ass handed to him at basketball by not just a girl, but by Leah, a girl he'd grown up with. Leah knew he wouldn't go easy on her, and he made that obvious. He would shout it to the whole world if he had to. But to be fair, she had never—not even once in her life—gone easy on anybody. And she and Jared had some hostility between them; they had never really liked each other, so now they could get it all out in a healthy way.

Jared and Leah weren't the only people at the park. It just wouldn't be a Leah event without an audience. Along with other kids that they'd seen here and there at school, the rest of the pack (was that what they were? Yeah, a pack) was on the rusty silver benches that faced the court, lengthwise. Even in the retrograde that Paul's departure caused, tonight was the first time in a long time that everyone got together. The fam was all back together again. Whenever they all linked up, it was guaranteed to be an interesting time, whether it was good or bad.

A week ago, Sam had suggested the game be two-on-two, or maybe five-on-five, but Jared had immediately declined it and had hyped it up as the greatest one-on-one of the year. Jared had always been all about the hype—and he'd hyped well. Everyone who was in the park had put their afflictions aside for the night and was about to watch the full-court, one-on-one game of the year tonight.

Leah placed her hands on her firm hips and smirked at her opponent. He wouldn't know what hit him tonight. "You already left two balls at home," she said wickedly. "Don't tell me you left the one that's a little more important."

Just before Jared was about to say something probably sexist, Seth, who was almost fifteen, reached for something in his sister's sports bag. He pulled out a basketball and ran over to Leah and Jared. He held out the ball to his sister and smiled. "Kill it, Lee," he told her.

She smiled back and took the ball. "You already know," she told him.

He went back to his place on the bleachers, right between Embry and Jacob, who both decided to come out of hiding for the first time since August. Leah scanned over the group. Everybody was here, except for the obvious: Quil and Paul. Paul was in Tacoma the last time he talked to her, but that was almost a year ago. He easily could be across the world or the country or even in Eastern Washington and it would still be too far away. He was so elusive that he could be anywhere.

But Leah wasn't broken about it; she was probably the opposite: pissed. Not even angry. Just pissed.

And now, she could take all of her negative feelings out of her body and onto the pavement, and hopefully, Jared's self-esteem. She never liked him, anyway.

"Snap out of it, Lee!" Jacob yelled.

"Yeah, Lee!" Emily shouted from Sam's arms. They were an item again, and solid. Emily's wrists had been clean ever since Leah found her last May.

"Who's the ref again?" Leah asked.

"Who says we need a ref?" Jared responded, looking down at her. His stance was so big, and Leah wasn't exactly tiny herself. She briefly wondered if Kim, who was still dating him, was ever scared of him just based on his size. Perhaps his stupidity canceled that scariness out.

"Somebody who plays fair," Leah replied, poking Jared in the chest. "If we're gonna do this shit—which we are—then we're gonna do this shit right."

Jared looked over to Jacob and nodded him over. "C'mon and throw the ball up, Jake," he said. Then he turned to Leah. "If we're gonna do this shit right, then I suggest you quit with your shit-talking." His voice was low.

She sneered. "Try me."

Jacob stood between them, and Leah handed him the ball. "Let's tip," she said.

"Wait a second," Jacob said, his eyes flashing between the both of them. "First person to thirty, right?"

"Twenty," Jared said.

"No, thirty," Leah corrected. "Thirty is good."

"All right," Jacob said. "Thirty."

He backed up, and Jared and Leah both corrected their stances by bending their knees and putting more space between their feet. Leah's was better than Jared's, as expected. Even though she'd known him for a lot of her life like all the other people here, he really annoyed the shit out of her because he was such a fake. He was a mindless football player trying to play basketball—real ball—and it made her a little sick. She stared down at his shiny new Jordans. He probably hadn't broken them in yet. She wanted to laugh.

"You guys ready?" Jacob asked.

Her lips pressed into a hard line and, staring at the basketball, she nodded. Jared looked at her more than he looked at the ball. Idiot.

"And we're calling fouls, okay?" Leah asked. "We're doing free throws if it calls for it."

"Are you for real?" Jared said, incredulous.

"What, you thought you were gonna get away with fouling on me all night?" Leah replied. "Think again." Jared was fuming already. It was so funny to Leah. She already won.

"Just throw it up," Jared told Jacob impatiently.

"Jesus, fine," Jacob said.

And then he threw it up. He was out of the picture soon enough because there were suddenly two beasts on the court, except one was skilled and the other was just monstrous.

Jared only managed to tip the ball in his direction because of his height and the length of his arms, but as they ran after it, he learned that Leah's nickname wasn't Lightning Leah for nothing. She beat him down the court and stole the ball in a matter of moments.

Jared's defensive skills were underdeveloped, much like everything else. He got too close and too rough, so he was fouling her nearly all the time. At one point, he accidentally (or so he claimed) bumped her with a little too much force. The first two points Leah scored were free throws. They were perfect swishes, but it would have been nice to score in some other way.

Jared would get the ball, let it slip through his butter fingers, and get his ass handed to him on a silver platter by Leah, and that happened over and over again. By the time Leah had scored fourteen points, Jared had only scored one, because Leah had fouled him. The one free throw he did make was shaky and made out of pure luck.

Once sixteen points had been scored by Leah, they took a short break. Silently, Leah sipped her ice water and Jared chugged down an entire bottle of Gatorade that Kim had brought for him. When he was done, he was still breathing like air was running out. She wanted to offer him Seth's inhaler. There was no time to waste; Leah was going to finish him and finish him good.

Right before they went back into the game, Jared stood across the court from Leah, his hands on his hips, breathing hard. Leah adjusted her sweatband and chuckled at him.

"Conceited much?" he asked, struggling to catch his breath

"Never conceited," she corrected him. "Always cocky."

"What"—pant—"the hell"—pant—"is"—pant—"the difference?"

"Conceited means you think you're the shit for no reason or something stupid like vanity," she explained. "Cocky means you've got the skills to back it all up. And I"—she chucked the basketball to her opponent—"have got some skills, man. Work on your layups and then we'll talk."

The game continued, and if Jared wasn't angry before, he had enough fire to keep a small village warm this second half.

By the time Leah had scored twenty-two points, something more than all that anger must have sparked in Jared. He was suddenly as fast as her, and as she was sprinting her way down the court, he was right next to her and ended up stopping her dead in her tracks. He was so close that their sweat had practically become one and the same, and his arms were up, blocking everything.

She dribbled, searching for an out but unable to find one, and he looked at her in the eyes instead of the waist like he was supposed to.

"Back up," she warned him. "You're gonna foul me again if you don't."

He only got closer. She dribbled backwards, and his arms were still nearly wrapped around her.

"Back up," she said, her voice more alert.

"C'mon, Lee-Lee," he told her. "Let me see you move."

Her legs wide, stance low, and knees locked, Leah started twisting her waist to the right, and then stopped abruptly. Her knee continued to twist, though, until it buckled. And then she felt the pop.

Leah's jaw dropped along with the basketball in her hands, and she was silent for a moment before the truth took place and the tears welled up in her eyes. Her knee didn't hurt, but something deep inside her snapped just as her knee did.

"You okay?" Jared asked.

She didn't reply.

"Are you okay?"

"Oh, God, is she okay?"

"What the hell just happened?"

"Call her mom!"

Words surrounded her in ambiguous voices as Leah was on the ground, people all around her. She heard nothing. The last thing she had heard was the snap. The snap of her ACL. The snap of reality hitting hard. The snap of Ivy League basketball—and college in general—abruptly leaving her future forever.

It was all over.

Within two months, Leah had gotten surgery for her ACL and started physical therapy. She tried to be hopeful, but she was actually behaving like a coward. She hadn't told anybody from UPenn about her injury.

Prior to surgery, her doctor had told her that she would be okay again in about nine months, which was good, but because he lived in Forks, he knew about her and UPenn. Everybody did. He suggested she tell the school, but she didn't want to. She wanted to keep up her school work and act like she'd be okay and that she would still go to college in order to get out of the hellhole she lived in.

Kim was more coercive than Leah's doctor. A couple days after surgery, Kim went over to Leah's house with her homework for the next few days while Leah recovered, and she didn't hesitate to ask about UPenn.

Leah laid in bed, exhausted because of the painkillers, but she was still mostly attentive. "I'm still gonna go," she said. She didn't sound convincing.

"Would like me to email the coach?" Kim asked.

"No—no!" Leah choked out. "You're not going to do that."

"You have to tell them you're injured. They have to know if you're planning on playing for them."

"I'll tell them," Leah lied. "Just give me my homework and get out."

Silent, Kim stood up and walked over to Leah's door. "Don't mess this up for yourself," she said.

Leah avoided contacting UPenn, and it all blew up in her face when Carol, the woman who had scouted Leah in January of her sophomore year, called. She asked if Leah could possibly come to a summer training camp in Philadelphia to train with the current players and get in touch with the coach. Leah, not thinking about the money, said she was definitely interested, and she said that she should be okay by then. She simply said that she was recovering from surgery on her ACL, and then Carol froze up. Carol would have to let the head coach know about Leah's injury, and that she would get back to her soon.

The day before Leah's seventeenth birthday, Carol called Leah again. She was sorry to say that Leah would no longer be able to play for the University of Pennsylvania in the fall of 2012, and that her scholarship had been "put on hold."

If it hadn't been over before, it was definitely all over now.

Harry Clearwater was considerably older than Sue Clearwater, but Leah had never reflected on their age difference, or the possibility that she was going to have to live without one of them at some point. Since she was little, she always thought her parents would stay together forever because they maintained the most stable relationship she had ever seen. They weren't alcoholics or abusive, which a rare thing in the area. They barely even argued, too, unless it was about Harry's cholesterol level, but Sue was supposed to worry about that—she was a wife, a nurse, and a Capricorn.

Leah never knew that things would change between them so fast, though. Even through all the changes that had taken place and the pain that Leah had felt in response to said changes, she could always return to the most stable, static people she knew: her parents. They were unchanging. Sue still had an attitude, but was completely honest. Harry was upset that Leah lost the scholarship, but he believed in her abilities, promising that she would go far in whatever she chose to do because she was so smart. Leah was used to it.

But of course, nothing lasted forever. (She needed to tell herself that more often.)

In December, Harry Clearwater had a heart attack in his home in La Push. Sue had been at work, like always, and Seth had been visiting Junior up in Neah Bay. Leah had been in her bedroom, but she was blasting her music—some CD that Emily had bought her for her birthday. Emily had been so convinced Leah would love it, but so far, it did nothing for her.

As she lay in her bed, she took out one earbud. "Hey, Dad," she called, "can you get me some orange juice, please?"

She got no response. She called Harry's name about four more times, becoming annoyed, before hoisting herself out of bed, getting her crutches, and making her way to the kitchen after passing through the living room. But when she got to the living room, she saw her father unconscious on the floor.

Leah hobbled over to the landline in the kitchen as quick as she could and dialed 911, but when the police and EMTs arrived at her house, it was far too late. It hurt the chief of police and Harry's best friend, Charlie Swan, almost as much as it hurt Leah to discover that Harry Clearwater was gone.

After losing the stability her father, Leah lost some of her own stability. She had always hated what the people around her had become when things had initially gone downhill, but the change she made after the death of her father was incomparable. Her once tolerable bitterness turned into a mean, scary edge that drove everyone away and pushed her into a dark, ugly, cold silence. She was tired of feeling hurt and beaten-down and betrayed; now she just decided to not feel at all, making her completely heartless.

It was the worst thing she could have done to herself.

A/N: Next chapter's not going to be sad. I. Promise. You. So, thoughts? I'd love to hear them. Also, I think I'm going to update this Mondays and Fridays.

HS