Chapter Text
2.1
Prom (Part One)
Jacob
As with most things, Jacob blames Quil and Embry.
His friends try to make a break for it the second he corners them in the cafeteria. He's armed with the speech he spent all of Spanish rehearsing under his breath—because they know it's their fault, and they know he's been gunning for them all morning.
Unfortunately for them—and fortunately for Jacob—they're more worried about missing lunch than they are about their lives, so they end up sitting through the whole tirade over pepperoni pizza.
His reasoning is sound. If they hadn't gone and landed themselves in trouble—"again, guys, come on!"—then their moms wouldn't have joined forces to ground them until the end of time. If they weren't grounded, Jacob wouldn't be spending so many hours in the garage trying to pass the time without them. And if he wasn't in the garage, the doors would have been locked, like they always are.
Which means a heartbroken Leah Clearwater wouldn't have been able to walk in and start making herself at home.
"I think you're just pissed we didn't include you," Quil says twenty minutes later when Jacob has finally run out of breath. He doesn't look nearly half as apologetic as Jacob thinks he should.
"No, I'm pissed that you went and got caught," Jacob hisses, aware that he has drawn more than a few eyes to their table.
Quil rips the crust off his pizza, untroubled. "Sucks to be you, man, what can I say."
"Really? That's the best you've got? Where's my apology?" Jacob demands. They are two weeks away from summer vacation, and he is having visions of spending three months with only Leah Clearwater for company whilst his best friends are locked up for the foreseeable future.
"Just tell her to leave," says Embry. "What's the worst she could do?"
Jacob stares at his friend. "We are talking about the same Leah, right?"
"What about if you said 'please'?" Quil asks in a tone that suggests he genuinely believes he's being helpful.
Jacob can hardly believe he calls these two idiots his best friends. "Have you ever tried telling her to do something?"
Thinking about it, he can't name a single soul on this planet who has mastered the ability to tell Leah what she can or cannot do and emerge unscathed. Even her mother tends to lose a bit of her sanity whenever she attempts it.
"Never had reason to," Quil says around a mouthful of cheese and pepperoni. "I don't even think she knows I exist."
Embry smirks. "Same as every other girl around here, then."
The rest of Quil's pizza hits him square in the face. The next thing Jacob knows, his best friends are rolling around on the cafeteria floor in a tangle of limbs with twenty students crowding around them, baying for blood.
They're in detention for the rest of the week, and then the next—this time, for upstaging the seniors on Prank Day, without him (again), because apparently they are determined to finish their freshman year in a blaze of glory.
"It was stupid," Leah tells him, because of course he's out sick with flu and missed the whole thing. "Brilliant, but stupid. I think the seniors were more pissed than the teachers."
Leah has good days and bad days. More bad days than not, if he's honest. Today must be a Good Day if she's speaking to him in complete sentences, given that most of the time she doesn't even say hello when she walks in. The only rule she ever seems to stick by is that she doesn't bother him at school.
Jacob seizes the opportunity, and he asks for every detail of how the whole freshman class unbolted every single rubber speed bump from the school parking lot to create an obstacle course in the hallways. Twice he asks her to describe the scene of Quil and Embry volunteering as crash dummies and taking their bikes for a spin.
Their moms are going to have a field day with that one. At this rate, he'll be lucky if he sees Quil and Embry before Christmas.
The next four days are Bad Days. Leah still comes to the garage after school and over the weekend, of course, probably because she's trying to catch any lingering germs so that she can miss the rest of the semester, but otherwise she seems set on ignoring his existence and treating the garage like it's her own.
Nothing new there.
Is this his life now?
"Probably," Embry tells him on the last day of school. He claps him on the back in what is probably supposed to be a sympathetic gesture before they part until September. "See you, man. Have a nice summer with your new best friend."
Jacob scowls. "She's not my best friend."
Embry laughs. "Tell her that."
"I hate you."
"Could be worse," Embry says. "You could be stuck in school for four more weeks like the palefaces. Hey, do you think me and Quil could transfer? At least we'd actually be allowed out of the house for another month."
Jacob feels sorry for him, he does, but not as sorry as he feels for himself when he starts wondering if Embry is right about Leah being his new best friend.
God, he really hopes not.
Admittedly, four weeks is an exceedingly long time to endure someone's presence and grant them unrestricted access to your garage (your life) before finally informing them that they're not welcome or wanted. As far as Jacob is concerned, it's pretty much the equivalent of having a handful of conversations with someone before realising you don't know their name. It'd be too awkward, too rude to ask.
In hindsight, what he should have done was tell Leah to leave on the very first day—or better yet, the very first minute—that she walked into his garage. He should have told her where to go after she made it clear that she was here to stay, but it's probably far too late for him to start throwing a temper tantrum about it all now.
So, yeah. That probably makes him and Leah best friends now, or something.
Shit.
Does his new best friend really have turn over the whole garage, though? It feels as if Leah is everywhere these days. Her CDs have practically moved into his stereo player (she brings a new album with her every day, but never seems to take any home); her sweatshirt has taken to keeping a permanent residence in his hammock (her new favourite napping spot); her hair ties are scattered all over the place, almost as if they've conspired to conquer every inch of his beloved garage (why girls need so many, he'll never know). And don't even get him started on the trashy novels she enjoys reading—his shelves, usually reserved for his odd collections, have been turned into her library of guilty pleasures that he's too afraid to even peek at (which is why she likely keeps them here, where her parents can't see).
Three days after school lets out—or perhaps it's ten, or even a hundred; Jacob is seriously losing the will to live at this point—Leah unapologetically downs the can of soda he's been saving for a celebratory toast upon finishing work on the Rabbit. Then, with an insouciance that never fails to astound him, she settles into his hammock and closes her eyes, entirely unaware of the fact that she's just ruined his entire day.
From where he's hunched over his workbench, pointedly ignoring the books surrounding him, Jacob barely manages to hold his tongue. He probably wouldn't mind if she had asked. If she had bothered to speak more than two words to him all week, he might not have even complained.
He can't bear it any longer.
He didn't know what his last straw was going to look like when this—thing started with her, but apparently, it's a can of Dr Pepper.
Today, it's Dr Pepper. Tomorrow, it'll be a suitcase being dragged through the door. He has to draw a line. Right now, before this gets even more out of hand.
Jacob pushes away from his workbench, his heart already hammering at the thought of what he's about to do and who he is about to give a piece of his mind. Because he is going to give her a piece of his mind.
Any second now.
He opens his mouth, closes it.
...
He just has to work up to it, is all.
He scans his cluttered garage as if the right words to say are lurking amidst the mess—probably hidden with those damned hair ties, he thinks. He's not equipped to deal with this, with Leah. Anything he says is just going to set off her temper, but he's reached his breaking point. Enough is enough. He might have known her his whole life, but everyone on the reservation knows that this garage is his.
The empty can of Dr Pepper stares at him, goading him.
He takes a deep breath—
"Jake!"
Saved by the bell.
Or rather, his father.
If he runs out of his garage a little too quickly, it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he's more frightened of Leah than he is of his dad.
Nothing at all.
Billy has the audacity to laugh at him as he sprints across the yard. His own father.
"You looked like you were running for your life," he chuckles when Jacob thunders up the ramp and meets him at the door. "Leah giving you trouble?"
"She drank my Dr Pepper."
A theatrical gasp. "The Dr Pepper?"
Jacob glares at him. "This is serious, Dad, I can't take it anymore! She's just—she's so—"
"Sad? Heartbroken? In need of a friend?" Billy offers, all of which makes Jacob feel like an absolute ass, because he knows Leah is sad and heartbroken and in need of a friend, but that doesn't mean she has to be all of those things in his garage whilst she drinks his Dr Pepper and upends his whole life. He doesn't need a new best friend, anyway. He's got Quil and Embry.
"It's not as if you're exactly overwhelmed with a great deal of company yourself at the moment," his father then decides to say, reminding him that his best friends are grounded. Probably forever.
"Gee, thanks, Dad."
"Anytime, son," he replies cheerfully. "Now help your old man out and hold the door open, will you? I have something to ask you."
Jacob looks over his shoulder, hesitant. The garage is hidden from the house, concealed behind a thick stand of trees and shrubbery, but he stares as if he's expecting to see a thick plume of smoke rising in the distance.
"She'll be fine," his father says.
"It's not her I'm worried about," he mutters, stepping around his father's chair with a sigh and opening the front door.
"I'll make it quick," Billy promises, following him into the house.
Sure enough, the moment they are both inside and seated in the living room, Billy gets straight to the point. It takes him less than five minutes to explain, though it's only after the first few sentences that Jacob starts genuinely worrying about his old man's sanity.
He is well aware that his dad has always been a little bit ... kooky. Superstitious. Traditional. It all seems to have gotten worse in recent years, especially since the new doctor and his family moved into town; it's because of Doctor Cullen that he refuses to go to the hospital and get his diabetes under control, refuses to even step foot the ER if he starts exhibiting any symptoms that indicate he's having a hypo—he damn near blows a vein if anybody dares to suggest it, and he usually ends up calling Sue Clearwater for help instead.
But then, earlier this year, he started getting, well ... weirder, if such a thing is possible. He started attending council meetings nearly every day, always at odd hours that never made sense. (Jacob can't speak for his father—the man might use a wheelchair, but he isn't exactly elderly; he's forty, for God's sake—though surely Old Quil is far too ancient to be hobbling down to the old rec centre at eleven o'clock at night.) In addition to the unscheduled meetings, he began holding court with Leah's dad, Harry, nearly every morning, always talking in code. (Sometimes they talk about Leah now.)
And, if that all wasn't strange enough, Sam Uley has started coming by more often. (He came alone, at first; now he comes with Jared Cameron or Paul Lahote, but never both at the same time. Thankfully, Leah is always in the garage and hasn't yet realised her ex-boyfriend is sniffing around with his cronies.)
By the time his father has finished talking, Jacob is all but ready to commit the old man.
"You're crazy," he tells him, because he feels like it needs to be said. "Actually certifiable. Are you feeling alright?" he asks then.
Maybe it's another hypo, he thinks worriedly—he's heard people can get delirious and confused, though Billy has never acted like this before when his levels have been out of whack.
"Shall I call Sue?" he asks, but he only has to think about this for all of a second before he nods to himself. "I'm going to call Sue. Wait there."
"Put down the phone, Jacob."
"Maybe she can talk some sense into you—"
"Jacob."
"What?" he demands, spinning back around, phone still in hand. "You do hear yourself, don't you?
"Yes. I know how it sounds—"
"How it sounds!" Jacob scoffs. "Say it again—slower, this time, and actually listen to the words you're saying, Dad. You can't honestly believe that Bella's boyfriend is—"
"A vampire, yes."
"My God, he's lost it."
"Edward Cullen is a vampire," his father says, "and so is the rest of his ... family. The doctor, his wife—all of them. They're cold ones, Jake, exactly as our legends tell us. Only they're not legends—they're real."
Jacob slots the phone back into its cradle and sinks into a chair at the kitchen table, feeling oddly sick. Not because he believes a single word that's coming out of his father's mouth, but because he believes there's something seriously wrong with the man. He's already lost his mother. How close is he to losing his father?
"Okay," he says. "Okay. Let's just say I believe you. Which I don't. But if I did, then ... I told her. I told Bella."
Billy wheels himself towards the table, expression guarded. "What did you tell her?"
"The legends. About the Cullens. I told her the story—"
"History," his father corrects.
"The story," Jacob presses on, "about the cold ones, and the Cullens. She was asking about something Sam had said on the beach, and we went for a walk ..."
"I'm sure you didn't tell her anything she didn't already know. You were likely just confirming it," Billy says, "which is why this is important, son. I don't believe for one minute all that crap about what happened in Phoenix. Bella is in danger."
"And you want me to do what again?" Jacob asks weakly, feeling a headache beginning to pulse at his temples.
"Charlie mentioned that she's going to her prom tonight. I want you to go—it'll be a safe place to talk—and tell her to break up with Cullen. It's for her own good," Billy stresses. "Tell her please, if you really must."
"And if she doesn't listen?"
"You tell her—no, you warn her that we'll be watching—closely." The note of urgency in his voice sends a chill skittering down Jacob's spine. "Make her understand that her safety is at stake."
Jacob pushes his hair out of his face. He grasps it in his fist, pulling at the roots in pure frustration. "Dad, this is so stupid—"
"And if she still doesn't listen, then I want Leah to talk to her."
"Wait. Leah?"
Billy nods. "You'll probably blend in better if you take a date. Plus, you'll need someone to drive—I'm not having Charlie calling me again to tell me he's seen you behind the wheel."
"I can drive myself," Jacob protests, indignant. "If this will stop you acting so freaking insane then I'll do it, but I don't need a babysitter, okay? I can do it on my—"
"Not a babysitter. Someone to watch your back."
"Dad," he whines, "that's even worse. I don't need protection."
"It's non-negotiable."
Jacob attempts a different approach, though he doubts it will make much difference. "Dad, I can't arrive with Leah as my date. What will Bella think?"
"Seeing you with a girl who's about the same age as she is?" his father asks, tapping his chin thoughtfully.
He hesitates. It feels like a hypothetical question ... A touch mocking, perhaps, but then his father has always liked to tease him about his crush on Bella Swan. Not that he has ever explicitly admitted to anything—he's not completely stupid—but he knows that the whole world has figured it out anyway.
"Who knows," Billy says then, "it might make her see you in a different light."
"You don't play fair," Jacob accuses.
"No," Billy agrees. "Son, I'll make you a deal. Go to Bella's prom. Take Leah with you. Talk to Bella—tell her exactly what I've said, word for word. If she doesn't listen, then you go to Plan B and have Leah scare her a bit—"
"Dad."
"Fine, not scare her. Talk to her. Get her to talk to Bella about overcoming heartbreak, or something, and tell her to make it good. If you do all of that," Billy continues, "then I'll buy that part for your car."
Jacob stares at his father, eyes bugging out of his head. "You're lying."
"Nope." Billy digs around between his leg and the arm of the wheelchair for a few seconds before he pulls out his worn leather wallet and flips through its contents. "Here's twenty bucks. Call it an advance payment."
Jacob blinks. "You're really serious about this."
"Do we have a deal?" his father asks.
Jacob nods, totally dumbstruck, though he has the presence of mind to grab the cash before it can be taken away.
His dad may have lost his mind, but it's clear he feels strongly about this. And Jacob isn't going to convince the man otherwise when there's free cash and a master cylinder for a 1986 Volkswagen Rabbit on the table. He might have reservations about crashing the palefaces' prom, but he's never claimed to be proud—he needs to finish that car like he needs air to breathe.
"Good," Billy says. "You better go and grab Leah."
"Hope you've got another twenty bucks," Jacob says.