Static

Part One

onism: the frustration of being stuck in just one body that inhabits only one place at a time.

I.

we all look for heaven and we put our love first

With a backpack full of pencils he couldn't expect to still have on the last day of school, knockoff Chuck Taylors that he still needed to break in, a haircut he hated, and a slight stomachache, Jacob Black entered the main doors of Forks High School. He inhaled, taking in the new atmosphere that would soon belong to him, or he at least hoped it would. High school. He could smell the parties and overbearing stress already. The scent of memories, memories, and more memories—even as he wasn't a memory-savoring kind of guy—also wafted through the air, along with hints of sweat, perfume, and fresh pairs of jeans. This was it.

"Ayo, Jake!"

He turned around to see Quil Ateara and Embry Call. He knew he was missing something. He waited up for them, and the three of them walked the halls like always with Quil on the left, Embry on the right, and Jake in the middle.

The Quileute reservation didn't have a high school, so the ninth-through-twelfth grade students of the reservation had to go into the small yet efficient one in Forks, where all the self-proclaimed civilized kids went. That worked for Jacob, though; just about everything did. Jacob was a rider. He would love to call himself a comeback kid, but he'd never really fallen; he'd never had to make a comeback. Nothing had ever really pushed him down.

At least, before his mother died, his father was put in a wheelchair, and his sisters left him.

But that was a different thing.

This was new. This was even kind of exciting.

Forks High wasn't a big school in the least bit; he found his first class, Algebra, easily enough, and he felt smug about it. It was funny watching kids who'd lived here in Forks their entire lives get to class five minutes late. Hell, he'd even skipped the orientation and gotten it right. He was a rider, and that worked for him. It always had.

Before first period started, he took out his binder, along with the most recent postcard from Hawaii that his sister Rebecca had sent him. He'd waited for the card for a week, and it had finally arrived last night, and he hadn't gotten a chance to read it yet. Might as well start now, he decided.

Rebecca droned on and on in her tiny handwriting about Hawaii, as if it was any more interesting now than it had been when she'd initially departed. Becca had met a guy in Long Beach just last spring, and they had ended up moving to and eloping in Hawaii before Jacob could even say goodbye. Solomon was her husband's name, and Jake had only met him once or twice before he'd whisked his sister away. Solomon was a Samoan surfer, and Jacob had never known that Becca was into surfing. She probably wasn't, but she'd been longing to finally get the hell out of La Push. He couldn't blame her, but he couldn't be happy about it, either. After all, she just left. He knew their mother died and kind of messed everything up with that, but Becca didn't have to leave as soon as she could. And he knew their dad was screwed up from diabetes and ended up in a wheelchair, but how was that fair to him? To them? Had Rebecca been embarrassed of having a useless family? Jacob thought so.

Only after Rebecca just fled La Push, his other sister, Rachel, had run off to college. She was a freshman at the University of Washington (go Dawgs!), and she'd barely given a warning that she was leaving. Jacob guessed he couldn't be mad at her for that, then. It was for school, and wanting an education wasn't as bad as meeting a Samoan surfer and running off. That was silly. No, screw that—love was silly. Who needed love, anyway? Not Jacob, for sure.

He squinted his eyes down at the postcard as he tried to read Rebecca's tiny handwriting. I'm so proud of you, it read. It feels like you were just a little kid, and now you're going to high school! That's so great. I've been waiting for this day for such a long time.

Well, that's bullshit, Jacob thought. If Rebecca had been waiting for this day, she would be in town, just having driven him to school. But no—she was probably lying on the beach with her surfer husband, a flower in her hair, wearing a grass skirt, or sipping from a coconut or something. That sounded like her.

Jacob continued to read, and all in all, it was just bullshit. Loads of it. It was everything he expected, but nothing more. Don't get him wrong, though; he loved receiving a postcard from Rebecca every month. It was just a little obvious now. Typical. Jacob wasn't opposed to the typical since his life in itself was very typical, but maybe he wanted to be.

"Whatcha reading?" a voice asked him. He looked to where the voice had come from, his left, and saw Leah Clearwater settling into the chair at the desk next to him. She ran a hand through her black, wavy, waist-length hair and leaned in to look closer.

Speaking of the typical…

Jacob flipped the postcard to the other side, revealing the tropical illustration of Waikiki Beach and the word Aloha floating in the sky. "Just a little letter," he replied.

Leah sighed. "Rebecca Writes Again," she said in understanding, as if she was in the same situation. Jacob nodded and turned the card over again, his eyes leaving Leah's.

Leah bit her lip—a dumb habit she was absolutely determined to quit—and just shook her head. Maybe it wasn't as if she was in the same situation as Jacob, and that was because she wasn't a fool. Every month since Rebecca had left, which wasn't a lot of months, either, Leah had been there when Jake had excitedly received the postcards. Leah knew exactly how his reactions had deteriorated from enthusiastic to annoyed. She even knew exactly how he had the postcards positioned in his room, and where. He'd shown her three times. Leah hadn't always been there for Jacob, but when she was, she always remembered. She was the type of girl who remembered the miniscule things, but not the seemingly important ones. That was another habit she wanted to quit, and when she was determined, she always succeeded.

Somebody—a white girl she didn't know—spoke loudly next to her, but not at her, about what she'd heard about the girls' basketball team, which reminded Leah. She would go to the gym with Kim Conweller after school today to work on her three-pointers. (Leah had preparation to get to before the school basketball season, and her select team would have a tournament next weekend.) Her friend Kim was a fitness freak, always pushing Leah to do better. She was like a personal trainer and best friend all in one, and Leah loved that. Leah reached into her own backpack as the classroom slowly but thoroughly filled with freshmen, and once she got her planner out, she looked to the doorway to see Paul Lahote.

If there was anybody she fully understood, it definitely wasn't Jacob Black, but it was Paul Lahote, and he wasn't equipped for the first day of high school with more than a used-but-still-kinda-new backpack and a fresh bruise under his right eye. It was worse than the usual, too—she could see right now that it would stay purple for weeks.

Leah's mouth fell open, and she couldn't help but feel sorry for him—she always did. Paul was the one person she ever felt sorry for, even as a kid, and she could admit that. She could also admit that she would kick his father's ass in a heartbeat. Arnold Lahote couldn't spare his son just for today. A scowl also decorated Paul's face as he took a seat in the back corner of the classroom, near the cabinets.

If anybody was truly a comeback kid, it was Paul. He had been kicked down countless times and come back over and over and over again. He and Leah once had plans for him. They'd decided too loosely and not seriously but definitely repeatedly that Paul would leave his abusive household. Mr. Lahote had beat him "for the last time" when Paul and Leah had gotten the idea for him to leave, back in the sixth grade. It was far from the last time, though, and it was really hard for kids to actually run away, as Paul had learned.

Paul had slept on the Clearwaters' couch twelve separate times in the past year. Leah had selflessly given up her one blanket for him and slept cold for a night, twelve times. They'd had twelve conversations and laughed for minutes twelve times. They'd exchanged twelve secrets—six each a night—twelve times. One hundred forty-four secrets. The Clearwaters' living room held one hundred forty-four secrets between the two teenagers. It was slightly pathetic, but mostly it was damn impressive. Leah understood Jacob's loneliness, but she never really fully understood him, and she was a little grateful about that. Paul had her heart because he was so quick to give up his own. She appreciated it.

Paul was something else, though. Everybody knew it—especially Leah. And twelve times, he had run back to his house in the dead of the night because he hadn't been able to sleep. Paul had a restless, forgiving soul, and he always believed things would be better until a punch and a shove later, he realized that things would not be better. He'd never given up, though. Arnold was all he had, besides his friends, and deep down, maybe Arnold actually cherished him. Deep down, maybe Arnold was just utterly ashamed that he didn't know how to love his son right. Paul was always looking for the love in people, that punk.

It was some tough-ass love, if that was what it really was.

Leah had always known there was something a little off about Paul, but she had never really talked to him about it. She'd thought—and still sometimes thought—that he had ADHD. He'd always been distracted easily and tended to forget things, like simple tasks, which was why his father constantly beat him, like it would miraculously make him remember. Paul had always had trouble concentrating, too, and was rather impulsive. If it weren't for his impulsivity, he wouldn't have left Leah twelve times in the past year. He would have stayed the night all twelve times and tried to heal, but the damage was already done. Far past it. He was just damaging his damage by cutting open the wounds and pouring salt on them by himself. But he was her favorite nonetheless.

The final bell rang, and right at that moment was when the teacher walked into the classroom. Leah blinked to attention and got out her pen to finally write the reminder to meet Kim at the gym after school in her planner. Once she was finished, she sat back in her chair and absentmindedly fiddled with the pen in her hands. Out of the corner of her vision, Jacob sat up straight and looked like he was happy to be here. He was setting an example, so Leah straightened up, too. It was her first class of her first day of high school, and she needed to get off to a good start.

She couldn't help herself, however, but look back to the corner of the classroom and finally meet eyes with her confidant. You alright? She mouthed.

He smiled at her. Only Paul could be treated like absolute shit and still smile afterward like the cuts didn't sting. I'm alright.

Kim Conweller thrust her arms out and passed Leah the basketball. The force she exerted would have fazed just about anyone except Leah. Not only was she as quick as lightning, earning her the local nickname of "Lightning Leah," but she was also strong. She had to be. Leah was the type of person who liked to top herself, and as far as she knew, she was only getting better faster. She was the best and most important Leah of all the Leahs in the county; it didn't matter if your name was Leah, too, because everybody would already be thinking about Leah Clearwater.

Leah dribbled for a second, and then looked forward, prepared her form to shoot. She was just past the three-point line, and she was confident in this, pretty much like how she was confident about everything. She took another step back and reset her form, the ball just in front of her forehead. It was even more perfect, if possible. Just the way she liked it.

She got conversational as she extended her right arm and shot the ball. She kept her finishing pose as the ball sank into the basket with a nice swish, and some of her nerves calmed. She still had it. She would always have it.

"So what's it like being in geometry?" Leah asked Kim, watching the ball bounce.

"It's fine," Kim said. "I don't know anybody in my classes. They're all sophomores."

Leah got the ball and quickly shot a layup. She sighed. "The loneliness that comes with being at the top."

If only Leah knew how much she could truly relate.

Leah jabbed Kim in the side. "Damn it, Kim, quit eating all the Doritos."

"You better watch your fucking mouth, Leah," Sue Clearwater, Leah's mother, called from the kitchen. Leah said sorry, but Sue had already returned to her conversation on the telephone.

Kim smirked and kept her hands in the bowl of Doritos.

With nacho cheese-covered fingers and palms cold with cans of Coca-Cola, Kim and Leah did what they normally did on the weekdays during the school year: raid the local gas station for snacks and wait for Kim's inevitably late parents to pick her up by watching Selena on VHS.

It was what they did when things weren't going so well, when one of them wasn't feeling so good, and sometimes Kim needed that more than anything. She wasn't the type to ever directly tell Leah that she wasn't feeling well or that she needed some rejuvenation via their old routine because Kim was just too damn independent, but Leah knew. They shared a kind of intuition that neither of them wanted to give away verbally because of their pride. Someday, one of the girls' prides was gonna get in between them, but Kim would ignore it for as long as possible and Leah would internally obsess over it for the rest of her days, and neither of them wanted that.

"Did you see Paul today?" Leah asked Kim with her eyes on the box television.

The question had gotten so old to Kim. Leah talked about Paul like he was a movie star, and to Leah, he was. Everything about him was damn near cinematic. He was a movie on his own. Leah couldn't pinpoint why—maybe it was the way that he walked, or the way that he talked—but she just knew it. Even at the tender age of fourteen, if Leah was absolutely sure of anything, it was that Paul was everything. He was her absolute favorite.

"I didn't," Kim replied, staring blankly at the same scene she had viewed only fifty other times in Leah's presence. Jennifer Lopez gyrated across the stage, and Kim really, really wished she had been old enough to see the real Selena perform live. J-Lo was good, but Selena had been a legend.

"What happened?" she asked. "His dad beat him again?"

"Mm-hmm. Real bad this time."

"That sucks."

Leah wasn't surprised that Kim sounded uncaring; she didn't expect her to care. Kim didn't know anything about broken households or abusive parents. She'd grown up in an old money household with parents who didn't particularly care for her, but they weren't alcoholics like everyone else's parents, and they certainly never laid a hand on her. Kim had never really been hit before—the girl could never handle it.

But that was how Leah and Kim's friendship worked. The mechanisms lied in carrying on even though the former girl thought of other friendships as the latter didn't understand, and while the former girl put their love first and the latter hardly recognized it at all.

Their friendship was also history more than anything. They appreciated the history they had with each other—besides being alive, being friends with each other was the longest habit both girls had kept up.

What would they be if they weren't historical?

A/N: This is Static.

-HalcyonSeasons