A/N: I own no part of Twilight. School and college prep are kicking my ass. I'll be more consistent soon. Anyway, here is chapter 38. It's kind of a "bottle" chapter, catching up with Kim and a little with Quil. I was inspired a little by The Catcher in the Rye, but I think that's just by nature. Also, try to see if you can catch some throwbacks to chapter 8, if you're that interested.

Enjoy.

XXXVIII.

In my dark times, i'll be going back to the streets
promising everything i do not mean

"I'm just saying," Jared said through the phone, "it could work out."

"No, no, I believe you," Kim replied. "But I just don't see the point in having a long-distance relationship if we never see each other."

"Don't be like that."

She wasn't even being a certain way; she was just stating the truth. "Okay," she said, giving up before they even begun. "I guess we'll make this work."

"We always do."

You keep telling yourself that. "Yeah."

"Hey, I gotta move into the new apartment with my roommates. I'll talk to you later, okay?"

"Okay, bye." She hung up. Why didn't he tell me he was getting an apartment? Why doesn't he tell me anything?

Kim wasn't particularly happy to be "dating" Jared again, but she was bored. And she definitely wasn't going to complain to Leah about it. Based on that affectionate message Leah had sent her a little while ago, they weren't going to be seeing each other that often anymore. As much as Kim was glad to have that negativity away from her, she wished she had gotten the chance to say goodbye to her best friend of almost twenty years of her entire life. It would have really saved her from the heartbreak.

Try not to think about it, try not to think about it, try not to think about it.

Kim needed to get back in the dance studio. It had been a while, and cheer just wasn't the same. Cheer was more robotic, but Kim felt real now. She was real and didn't feel like cheer.

Youth Energy was a tiny studio out in the sticks, near Kim's house, but despite its location, it was actually a good place. Kim had been dancing there since she'd been seven years old, and it was where she had found her passion. She admitted that she had stopped going so often in high school because of cheer, but dance still helped her overall. It was a necessity. She could just lose her head, and at this point, she didn't want to find it again.

With her gym bag and high hopes, Kim set out for the studio. It wasn't far from her house, but she sort of wished it was. It would make the journey feel more perilous.

The studio looked the same—rather plain on the outside, but way nicer on the inside. The familiar lady at the front desk checked her into the walk-in hip-hop class after she paid. Kim slightly wished she could be in a select group again, but she didn't know if she had the drive for that anymore.

Kim was fairly early to the class, and while the studio itself looked the same, all of the faces were different. None of her old friends were there, even though it was a walk-in class. Usually anybody just stumbled into these classes, whether they were trying to kill some time or thought they needed the skills in case they had to audition for a music video, all because it was cheap. That was it. Some of Kim's best, best dance friends were some of the poorest, poorest kids she'd ever known, but what they had in common was dance and that was enough. It was crazy to Kim. It really was.

The instructor was also crazy to Kim. She looked harmless, but for a walk-in class, she was way too hard on everybody in there. It was a program aimed at younger people. Most of the people there were younger than Kim, and this beast of an instructor was getting mad about everything. At first, it was a good thing that Kim was in the back, keeping up fairly well for someone who hadn't danced in a while, but then she was just getting annoyed.

Kim watched the instructor, this pseudo-diva with the highest voice known to man and a gap as big as Alaska between her thighs, prance and march around in front of the mirror. Kim didn't know her name or her background or anything about her besides the fact that she was a fake. That was evident.

Without a word, Kim packed her bag and departed just as sporadically as she had arrived.

She entered her house ten minutes later with enough junk food to feed a small village. She decided she wasn't as independent as she frequently pretended to be, and she wanted to interact somebody—anybody—but she didn't want to call Jared. He'd never have the time. She wasn't close enough with Bella despite their matching tattoos. Emily was probably too busy writing or drinking or both, like the starved poet she was, and Kim didn't want to interrupt that. It was too deep for her, anyway. Quil was probably sleeping or something. Oh, and Leah? Forget Leah.

Kim realized she had no friends. Not one.

She found herself literally scrolling through her contacts. They were just the aforementioned people and some of her followers from high school. She wasn't that into cheer anymore. Or the people. Except for Ashley Newton.

The Coca-Cola, Doritos, and Snickers sat still in her mouth when Kim thought of Ashley Newton. She hadn't seen her since graduation and hadn't actually hung out with her since senior Prom, where they'd decided to stop worrying and start kissing. It had been brief, more of a spur-of-the-moment thing than an oh-my-god-I-think-I-love-you thing. Kim still liked to think about it, though. It had been real, and she needed that more than anything now: real things, real people. The only thing she was getting was real fat as she lay in her bed over the mint-colored sheets, staring at the full-length dancer's mirror along the wall, thinking of Ashley's touch.

Ashley had felt exactly like exactly what Kim had expected. Soft, warm (not just because of the ecstasy she had taken prior to going to Prom), and real. She had looked as real as ever. The girl (God bless that girl) stayed true to herself, always; she had worn her damn combat boots that night. She would have worn her denim jacket, too, if her mother hadn't stopped her. It was just about perfect, though. Even better: her brother, Mike, hadn't gone because his date had bailed on him. At least, that was what Ashley had told Kim. She could still hear the hesitation in Ashley's voice. The conversation felt like it was only a week ago instead of a year.

Kim stared at Ashley's cell phone number. It wasn't the same number from senior year—that was a given. Ashley had always been accidentally sitting on her phone or dropping it in the toilet, and she had always been getting a new number and phone because of that. Kim still had Karen Newton's number since she had been a cheer parent (and therefore, Kim's second mother) and all, but if she called, what would she say? I think I still love your daughter even though it's been over a year since I've even seen her?

So Kim didn't do anything about Ashley Newton. She hoped she was thinking of her. Kim hoped that Ashley was finally in California, with the other special people like her, getting really tan and really high without any real worries. She hoped Ashley was far away from Mike and his ignorance. Most importantly, she hoped that whenever Mike looked in the mirror or rubbed his face, he felt the scars, thought of Kim, and grew cold. She wanted that the most.

It was Kim's last carefree summer, the last summer where anything could happen. She was just about ready for college, but she wasn't ready to let the summer go. She had done it all—been places, been arrested, burned bridges, gotten another tattoo, all of that—but she still felt stuck. Was this how sober, okay people felt all the time? The normalcy even hurt to think about.

That evening, while her parents were at a dinner she wasn't even invited to, Kim decided there was a hole in her head. And, of course, the only way to fill it would be with drugs. She hadn't done Molly in a while. She missed it like an old friend, but it was so far from her reach. She didn't have Jared as a supplier anymore, and the last time she'd done it had been just prior to her arrest. Kim and Bella had been a wild, hot mess that day—how had they not known that snorting Molly from a stranger's dick was illegal?

Getting high at home was different, though. And besides, there wasn't a penis anywhere near Kim.

She called Quil, and she wondered if he knew that she only called him when she needed a hit of something. She wondered if he was still on his high horse, still thinking that selling drugs made him cool. He couldn't have been at that self-loathing stage yet since he was still selling weed, but what did Kim know? Quil could be a mess right now. She realized that when he picked up neither his burner phone nor his home phone. Of course, he could have been somewhere besides home, but if anybody didn't have a life, it was him. Suddenly, Kim didn't feel so bad.

If she wasn't so damn lonely, she would have gotten over the urge and watched some TV instead, but Kim felt insanely quiet. She hadn't conversed with anybody except her thoughts, and the little lady in her head needed to go on break; she was getting tired.

As she slipped on some shoes, Kim couldn't abstain from looking at herself in the mirror. If Jared were to take a ferry and a couple buses from Seattle to Forks tomorrow, he wouldn't think the trip was worth it. She wasn't his dream image anymore. She wasn't Miss America; she wasn't anything like her. She was what he would call unruly since she wore her hair in its natural, curly state. She was what he would call lazy since she had gained some weight, but not a lot, since the end of high school and the sports that had accompanied it. She was what he would call rebellious since she didn't give a fuck about his rules and had yet another tattoo and was getting up considerably late at night in order to get high.

Fuck you, man, she thought.

Kim drove herself out to La Push, out to the so-called "hood" of Clallam County, out to the heart of the badlands, out to the whatever the fuck, in search of Quil and some (hopefully cheap) entertainment. Quil wasn't a bad guy to be around when he was sober, and he was a damn riot when he was high. She thought of that one night they had hung out with Jared in his house, during sophomore year. It had been pretty fun before Quil's mom had busted them and sent Quil to Neah Bay the next morning in order to get him clean. Things hadn't really been the same after that. Kim didn't mind change as much as other people, but she didn't know how to feel about it, either.

She parked her black Ford along the curb next to Quil's house and made her way around the back of it to enter through the basement, where he frequented the most these days.

She put in the childhood code (knocking seven times) and waited. She got no response. She decided she could either keep knocking like an idiot or just enter the house, so she picked the latter.

She immediately wished she hadn't entered the house.

Quil was on the floor, in the darkest corner of the basement, rocking himself. Tears ran down his face, but he was also scratching at himself—at his arms, his face, all over. He was bugging out and Kim didn't know what to do. Somewhere in his expression, he was six years old again and had fallen down from the playground. It wasn't that bad, but he'd cried and cried and cried. Kim wished things could be that simple now.

She slowly approached him, but he backed up as if he didn't recognize her. She tried to touch him, to calm him down, but he moved away.

"She's gone," he said. "She's all gone."

"Who?" Kim asked gently. "Claire? Quil, who's gone? Is it Claire?"

"Three years isn't even that much," he cried. "It's just three years. It's just three fucking years. She's gone because three years is too much for her."

Claire had just turned sixteen and decided that she didn't want to be with Quil anymore, which was the right choice. Kim commended her, but she couldn't say that to Quil's face. Especially now.

So she ignored what was right and wrong and held him. He let her this time. She supposed that if his world was going to crash down, she might as well help pick up the pieces while she was there.

A/N: Thank you,

HS