Disclaimer: I do not own anything from the collective works of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Saga
Blueberry-Banana Smoothies
Louisa had planned on thanking Jasper the very next day for helping her, she really had. But then she saw his beautiful face and humiliation flooded her veins at the thought of him seeing her so vulnerable and she never got around to it. Louisa instead chose to pretend like it never happened and Jasper at least had enough tact to realise that she didn't want to talk about it. He still rarely spoke in class and she still shamelessly flirted with him, much to his sister's ire.
Rosalie seemed to take it upon herself to protect her brother's honour, and Louisa found much enjoyment in trying to get under her skin. The two girls had developed a reputation for arguing passionately over inane topics and roasting each other any chance they got, much to the amusement of the entire class. Neither girl ever got the upper hand in their squabbling: some days Rosalie won and others Louisa did, but the elder Collins found herself quite enjoying debating with the Hale sister. It had truly become the highlight of her day. Jasper the Babe being present was just a bonus.
When Louisa found out that they had homeroom together every morning (well, the entire junior class had homeroom together every morning, but Louisa rarely reached full functionality before 10 am), school even became enjoyable. Rosalie's husband Emmett also seemed to find their arguments entertaining, as he had forced her to sit next to them in the mornings, just so he could get a front row seat to the action. He had lamented on more than one occasion that he had Spanish class with them, to which Jasper cheekily replied that he could have his spot.
Louisa wasn't sure if Jasper or Emmett were actually her friends, but she certainly liked to pretend they were. She had made friends in Forks, of course, but she found that the Cullen kids were her favourite. Of course, Louisa wouldn't go as far to say that she and Rosalie were even close to being friends, but she liked to believe that Rosalie was as fond of her as she was of Rosalie. It was always difficult to tell with the blonde.
In early October, Louisa found herself sitting in homeroom when three girls from the student body government marched in and asked for volunteers to help plan the homecoming dance. Louisa had never been to a school dance before, as her old school was all girls and dances without boys were lame, and was actually rather interested in the prospect. She knew realistically that the dance probably would be nothing like what she saw in movies, but she couldn't help imagine dancing the night away with a handsome young man (who interestingly enough, looked suspiciously like Jasper) in a beautiful dress.
That didn't mean she was any less surprised when she raised her hand and boldly volunteered herself. Rosalie was equally surprised when Louisa also volunteered her to help.
Rosalie let out an unladylike snort that would have horrified her mother if she had been alive. "When Hell freezes over," she snapped, glaring at the irritating blonde. She kicked her husband in the shin when he began to chuckle at the girl's antics and everyone in the room seemed to hold their breath in anticipation for the newest Collins–Hale showdown. Rosalie had to suppress an eye roll. The children were so easily amused.
Collins glanced at her and gave her a devilish grin. She whipped out her phone and, without breaking eye contact, said, "Hey Siri, what's the temperature in Hell?"
"It's pretty cold in Hell, Norway. -6.1 degrees."
"Wow, I can't believe that actually worked," Collins replied in shock, staring down at her phone.
Emmett let out a booming laugh. "It looks like you're helping out then, Rosie!"
Collins at least had the decency to look embarrassed. "I was just joking, Rosalie. You don't have to do it."
Rosalie had planned on saying that she wanted nothing to do with the stupid homecoming dance, but an odd feeling washed over her and she found herself strangely agreeing to it. The idiotic girl from student government looked surprised but wrote Rosalie's name down with a shrug before eventually wandering out of the room. The second the door closed, the compliant feeling drained out of her and she turned to face her adoptive brother.
"Why would you do that?" She hissed. "You knew I didn't want to join!"
"Relax, babe," Emmett whispered in her ear. "You might even have fun."
Rosalie sent both boys disgusted looks and leaned away from her husband. Collins kept sending Rosalie apologetic looks for the remainder of homeroom, and the moment they were dismissed, she leapt up alarmingly fast for a human and blocked Rosalie from making an escape.
"Rosalie, I can get you out of the planning committee, if you want," Louisa said. She wasn't sure how she would, but she was sure she could figure something out. If worst came to worst, she could always threaten to expose the student body president for cheating on her boyfriend with the captain of the tennis team.
"It's fine, Louisa. She said that she wanted to do it," Jasper said, offering a small smile at the girl.
Louisa, for once, didn't seem receptive to him at all. "I believe Rosalie can speak for herself, Mr Hale," she said with a frown. It was if they were in a weird twilight zone of their first Spanish class when Louisa turned to face his sister again, completely dismissing him from the conversation. He wasn't really sure how to react. "Just say the word, and I can have you removed."
Rosalie watched Louisa for a moment with a calculating look on her face. Jasper was surprised by the wide range of emotions that flitted through his sister, moving so fast he barely got a chance to process one before it disappeared and a new one manifested. "No, I'll do it," Rosalie said, much to his surprise. She glared at Emmett one last time then stormed off, hissing under her breath about not having sex for a week as she went.
Emmett looked unfazed by his wife's reaction. "She'll be fine."
"It's not something she decided," Louisa replied, craning her neck so that she could look Emmett in the eye.
Emmett gave her an easy going smile. "Nobody makes Rose doing anything she doesn't want to do."
Louisa found her gaze shifting back over to Jasper. "She didn't decide to help out." She replied again. Surely he could see that? It was totally obvious to her that Rosalie hadn't wanted to join the planning committee, and while Louisa couldn't figure out why Jasper would know this, she knew that he did. "Her choice was taken away from her."
Jasper wanted to say that they knew Rosalie much better than she did, but something about Louisa's wording gave him pause. Her main emotion was disappointment of all things and her the look on her face was almost accusatory as if she thought that he was somehow responsible for Rosalie's agreement. She was right of course, but how? He wanted to ask Louisa what she had meant, pry apart her mind and understand her, but pinned under the gaze of her piercing grey eyes, his mind was strangely blank. And then Louisa was spinning on her heel and storming off, just as Rosalie had, disappearing into the crowd of students.
The two brothers stood in stunned silence for a moment. Emmett watched the Collins girl's blonde head as it wove through the throng of students on their way to first period, his eyes narrowed. "Do you think she knows?" he asked his brother is a voice too quiet for human ears to hear.
Jasper found himself gnawing on his bottom lip in concern. Her emotions never read as being afraid of them at any point, and wouldn't that be the appropriate response after discovering one's classmates were members of the undead? "I don't think so," he replied. But it wouldn't hurt to have Edward keep a closer eye on her in any event.
No Stone Left Unturned
Rosalie regretted agreeing to the dance committee exactly 0.8 seconds after the meeting was called to order. She counted. And Collins didn't even have the decency to at least sit near her so that she could have someone to bitch to.
"So," the preppy redhead whose name Rosalie never bothered to learn said, clapping her hands together. She was standing confidently at the front of Mr Hewitt's chemistry classroom which they had commandeered for the afternoon, brandishing a marker to the dry erase board like a conductor's baton. "I think the first thing we need to do is introduce ourselves. That way we can build a sense of trust. I'll start. I'm—" Rosalie tuned the girl out and shot a dark look at Collins. It was her fault that she was here, after all. At least Collins looked as annoyed as she was at the small talk. Rosalie rolled her eyes when it was her turn to introduce herself. As if she actually cared about getting to know these children. They would all be dead in a few decades anyway.
"Now, I was thinking we could call it 'A Night to Remember,' and—"
Rosalie sighed. This was as excruciating as she thought it would be. She really should have taken Collins' out when it was offered to her.
"What is this? High School Musical 3?" Collins asked, unable to control her laughter. "It's a bit cliché, don't you think?"
"It's also the name of a movie from 1958," Rosalie supplied, watching Collins with a calculating look. "It's about the Titanic sinking if I remember correctly."
Collins pointed at Rosalie as if this somehow proved her point. "See, it would be a terrible name. Nobody would want to come to the dance."
Annoyed titters filled the room at this, many of the girls turning glare at her. The redhead called for silence and watched Collins with narrowed eyes. "What do you suggest then?"
Louisa was quiet for a moment as multiple scenarios ran through her head. "Well, the dance is near Halloween, right? Why not make it about Halloween? We can have a 'pretty' dance any time of year."
The committee president regarded Louisa with pursed lips. "I see where you are coming from Louisa, but we want people to come to the dance. We need to choose a theme that won't exclude anyone."
When the group muttered in agreement, Louisa turned glace at the only silent member of the room. "Rosalie, when was the last time you went to a school dance?"
"Never," Rosalie replied.
Louisa grinned and shifted in her seat so her knees were tucked underneath of her. "Why not?"
"I never saw the point. If you've been to one school dance, you've been to them all."
"Exactly!" Louisa cried triumphantly, turned back to face the president. "Look, you want the dance to be a night for people to remember, right? Then the dance actually needs to be memorable. If it's different, then people might actually come."
All of the members of the planning committee were quiet as they watched their leader debate with the newest member. "What exactly do you have in mind then?"
Rosalie found herself actually interested in what Collins might suggest, and sat forward in her seat. The girl's eyes had a glazed look to them while she thought, totally unaware that most of the room was waiting with bated breath for her reply. She looked relaxed and in her element as her mind ran a thousand miles an hour.
"A Halloween themed dance. Everyone wears a costume and there can be prizes awarded for the best ones. We'll need a photo booth. Everybody loves those things. We need to have awesome food. And the decorations have to be awesome. Finally, we'll need an activity for us to do. I suggest a haunted house," Collins said, hopping off her chair and joining the redhead at the front of the room. She grabbed a marker and began scribbling on the dry erase board, drawing out a crude diagram of the school gym and mapping out where things could go. The redhead slowly sat down in Collins' abandoned seat, content to watch this play out.
"That sounds fun and all, Louisa," Emily, the committee's treasurer interjected. "But we have a budget of five hundred dollars. There is no way we could possibly do all of that."
Collins seemed unfazed by this. "Okay, strike the food. The football team will either eat it all within the first fifteen minutes or nobody will eat anything and we will have food waste. Totally not economical." She crossed out what was probably supposed to be a table that had been labelled 'food'. "What else?"
"We would also need actors for a haunted house, so unless it's done by the theatre department, parents would probably end up doing it," a sophomore sitting in the front row pointed out.
"That would be so lame," a girl (who Rosalie was pretty sure had been in her gym class) said. Rosalie found herself agreeing: while loved Carlisle and Esme, even she had to admit that she wouldn't want to see her adoptive parents at a school dance. In the off chance that she ended up going, of course. "Does it have to be a haunted house?"
The planning committee went quiet while each member tried to think of something. "What do you think Rosalie?" the redhead replied. "Anything to add?"
Rosalie was used to people staring at her, but there was something unnerving and a little… empowering about having people wait to hear what she thought. Rosalie could suddenly see why Collins seemed to like being at the centre of everything. "Well," she began, straightening up in her seat and trying to think of something that scared her. Not many things, in all honesty. She was a vampire after all. "I don't know how it would work, but my brothers like to play this video game." For some reason, her eyes flicked over to Collins, as if she somehow needed the girl's approval. "It's basically a glorified version of hide-and-seek."
"Like manhunt?" A girl who looked way too young to even be in high school asked curiously.
Rosalie thought back to the horrifically gory game. She wasn't sure what manhunt was, but Jason was tracking down counsellors to murder in Friday the 13th which she guessed technically qualified as a manhunt. "Sure."
A boy raised his hand, trying to get the attention of the now excited committee. "I hate to be that person, but I'm sure there is a rule about students staying in the gym during dances."
"You think or you know?" Collins asked. "Does anyone have the school rulebook on hand?" there was a flurry of movement while the committee scrambled to produce a copy. Someone found the book and they tossed into Rosalie's lap and commanded her to read through it.
"There doesn't seem to be anything," Rosalie said, flicking through it quickly.
"Did you even bother to read it?" A boy with an alarming amount of acne called out, his voice laced with irritation.
"Rosalie's a fast reader," Collins replied quickly. "You should see her in class. It's impressive. So there is no rule that says we can leave the gym?"
"The teachers might still say it's a liability and shut the game down. They wouldn't want any student falling or getting lost in the woods," a tall sophomore with glasses pointed out. Angela something.
"We can stay in the school," gym class girl replied. "And everyone who plays can wear a glow bracelet or something."
Rosalie observed Collins as she sat on the teacher's desk and watched the committee debate the logistics of a Halloween dance. She had first assumed that the girl wanted to be the centre of attention, but there was something wrong about that. Her body language screamed that she was content with just sitting back and watching everything unfold. Her face was blank as she surveyed the students, listening to what they had to say and adding comments when the group's conversation started to stray off topic.
Rosalie had the sudden realisation that Collins reminded her a lot of Jasper. She knew how to work a crowd in a way that was almost alarming: whenever people got too far from what she wanted, she would redirect them in a way that made it seem like it was their idea. She knew exactly what to say to get people to do what she wanted. Collins was like a puppeteer, commanding her marionettes to do her bidding with a single flick of her wrist. It was simultaneously horrifying and fascinating to watch.
"So what will be our theme?" The redhead asked, who, even though she was supposed to be leading the meeting, now seemed content to allow Collins take over.
A grin spread across the Collins' face. "Well, I was thinking something along the lines of 'A Night to Dismember.'"
No Stone Left Unturned
She had actually volunteered to be paired up with Rosalie when assignments were given out. She was now questioning her sanity. It started off when Rosalie insisted that they leave for Port Angeles at 7 am. On a Saturday. Something about needing to catch the ferry to Victoria. Honestly, she had shut down the second she had heard the time she was being picked up.
Louisa had tried to stumble through her morning routine, which was made infinitely more difficult with the convenient addition of one of her debilitating headaches. Her father almost hadn't let Louisa leave the house and only acquiesced when she assured him that she wouldn't be the one driving. The pain was so bad that Louisa didn't eat breakfast because she was so afraid she might vomit in Rosalie's car.
Which was about as appealing as an open heart surgery without anaesthetics.
She wasn't able to completely shake off her dad's concern, though, and he made her a doctor's appointment for the next day. "You've been having these headaches for a while now. That's not normal," Mr Collins said after he got off the phone.
"You worry too much," Louisa grumbled, too tired to lift her head from where it rested on the kitchen table.
"I'm your father," Mr Collins replied dryly, setting down a glass of water and a bottle of pain reliever in front of her. "It's my job to worry."
Louisa tried to smile, but even that hurt and it turned into more of a grimace.
"Maybe I should go with you. I don't know if I like you crossing the border without me."
"Rosalie's mom was coming with us," Louisa sighed, taking a sip of water. "It's hard to cause an international catastrophe with adult supervision."
"That's never stopped you before," Mr Collins deadpanned. "Isn't there somewhere closer you could go?"
"Rosalie said that her sister was able to find what we wanted in Tacoma," Louisa replied. "Seattle was also an option, but you wouldn't have let that happen."
Mr Collins pursed his lips in annoyance. "Do you at least have your passport?"
Louisa hummed in confirmation, too nauseous to nod. "And I'll exchange some money when I get there. It'll be fine, Dad."
The second reason that proved that Louisa was insane to agree to go with Rosalie occurred when the Cullen's black Mercedes (because of course) slid into their driveway. Louisa was able to quickly make her escape with Rosalie after her and her mother knocked on the front door, but Mr Collins trapped Mrs Cullen in one of those boring adult conversations where they exchanged inane small talk.
"What do you reckon they are talking about?" Louisa asked after sliding into the back seat of the car.
"Your father thinks you're falling apart," Rosalie replied from the passenger seat without bothering to turn around. "If you hurl in this car, I'll make sure nobody will find your body."
"Duly noted," Louisa replied. This promise became very difficult to keep, however, when it turned out that Mrs Cullen shared the same proclivity as her adoptive sons for speeding. Louisa would have asked Mrs Cullen to slow down, but the reality of vomiting had become too real a possibility for her to open her mouth. She was extremely relieved when they reached Port Angeles, even if it was nearly an hour sooner than it would have been, had Louisa been driving. But the pain reliever was finally starting to kick in when the boarded the ferry and by the time Mrs Cullen had dropped them off at the mall with the instructions to meet her at the botanical gardens in four hours, Louisa almost felt human again. Modern medicine was a marvellous thing.
The two teenagers got to work scouting out Halloween decorations. As they filled the trolley with supplies for the dance, Louisa began to wonder exactly why they had needed to come all the way to Canada. Sure, there was a lovely selection of products, but it wasn't anything they couldn't find at a store much closer to home.
Louisa came to the conclusion that Rosalie's sister was weird. When she voiced this aloud, Rosalie merely shrugged and agreed.
It was nearing dinner time by the time the two finished, and Louisa realised that she hadn't eaten all day. She still felt too nauseous to eat, but after Rosalie snapped and replied that she wasn't about to carry Louisa when she fainted, she allowed Rosalie to push her into a nearby smoothie shop while the taller blonde went to put their shopping in the car. When Rosalie returned, the two headed off in the direction of the botanical gardens silently, as neither girl knew each other well enough to feel comfortable having a conversation.
"Hey, sugar," a greasy looking young man called out as the passed by him and his group of friends. They were lined up against a wall of a building, leaning against it and smoking, as if they were trying and failing rather spectacularly in an imitation of the T-birds from Grease.
Rosalie appeared totally unfazed by this and kept walking as if she were completely used to being catcalled. And the sad thing was, she probably was used to it. This realisation made Louisa's blood boil, and though she knew Rosalie could fight her own battles, Louisa felt strangely compelled to tell the idiotic boys off.
"Ignore them, Collins," Rosalie hissed quietly, reaching down to grab Louisa by the wrist when she saw the human's steps falter slightly.
Louisa glanced up at Rosalie, surprised at the sudden contact. To a casual observer, the grip probably didn't look like much, but Rosalie was gripping her wrist so tightly that Louisa was actually concerned that her wrist might break, and she could feel minute tremors shaking through her. Rosalie was apparently a lot more upset by the men than she was letting on.
"If you want to take a break from babysitting, sugar, I'd be happy to show you a good time."
She wasn't sure if it was his words or the terror that flooded through Rosalie's violet eyes that set her off. Louisa halted mid-step and spun to face the ringleader of the wannabe greasers.
"Fuck off, jackass," she yelled, tossing her half-finished smoothie at him. The lid popped off the cup and the thick blue beverage arched so perfectly it was like something you would see in a movie, before the greasers were covered in it. There was a heartbeat where everyone stopped to process what had just occurred.
Then Rosalie, still gripping Louisa, took off so fast that she nearly dislocated Louisa's shoulder.
It didn't take long for the greasers to recover, but by the time they had, Rosalie had already whipped them around the corner and into a nearby shop. The girls crouched next to the storefront window and watched as the smoothie covered boys thundered by, swearing loudly.
"What the actual hell, Louisa!" Rosalie snapped as they caught their breaths. "Why would you do that?"
Louisa had no good explanation for her actions. "Your guess is as good as mine," she panted. "I'm just as surprised as you are."
Rosalie rose from her crouch and glared down at Louisa, her golden eyes flashing with annoyance. "You're a lunatic."
Louisa shrugged her shoulders and straightened up as well. "I never claimed I wasn't."
Rosalie pursed her lips in what appeared to be an effort not to laugh. At least, that's what Louisa wanted to believe. "Are you ready to run again?"
She grinned up at the girl in front of her, heart still beating with adrenaline, and feeling more alive than she had in months. "I'm ready when you are."
What is a friend? I will tell you . . . . it is someone with whom you dare to be yourself. -Frank Crane
A/N: Hey there! I hoped you enjoyed this chapter. It is finals week so I'm procrastinating hard-core and you get to benefit from it. What did you think about the chapter? What do you think is going on with Louisa? First person to guess it correctly will get a prize! But like, not a physical prize. I'm a broke college student. But it will be fabulous. Anywho, leave a comment and let me know what you think. -CheckAlexa
