Cross Your Mind , Stiles Stilinski ¹ ✓

[ 18 ] smoke screen

"No, he's not the one that bit me either." Scott explained.

"So did he kill his sister?" Stiles asked.

"No, that was the Alpha as well." Scott replied, but the Stilinski boy's attention had trailed off to something else.

A brunette strutting through the halls solo. She was wearing black jeans that hugged her figure in all the right places. Her long locks cascaded down her shoulders, resting on her crimson red v-neck sweater that continued to flatter her figure. She walked with a sense of confidence that no one had truly seen on her before.

The brunette was Aspen Carter.

Aspen and Stiles' lockers were located right next to eachother, so he held out the smallest flicker of hope that maybe she was walking in their direction.

But to his dismay, she stopped by Jackson Whittemore's locker and greeted him, not Stiles. Stiles frowned.

"Hello? Earth to Stiles?" Scott teased, clicking his fingers in front of his eyes.

"Right, sorry, you were saying?"

Scott wasn't an idiot, he could see exactly what was going on. Aspen needed to create distance between herself and Stiles, now she hangs out with Jackson most of the time. Whenever Allison's not with Scott, she's with her, but wherever Scott was, Stiles tended to be close by.

Scott knew what had taken Stiles' attention away, he too had noticed the subtle changes in Aspen over the past week. From what they saw, she seemed more confident, independent, and she surprisingly always held a smile on her face.

Of course, what they couldn't see is that all of that was a smoke screen the brunette had created.

"She looks happy." Stiles muttered. "She looks... different, even."

"Yeah." Scott sighed in agreement. "Yeah, she does."

"Have you, umm... been filling her in? On all your werewolf business?" Stiles tried to say light heartedly, but Scott could see through him. What he was really asking was a simple 'have you spoken to her?'

"Yeah..." Scott answered, tucking his hands into his jean pockets. "I gave her a call last night about all the Derek slash Alpha stuff."

"And the hunters?" Stiles added.

"And the hunters."

"Anything else?" Stiles pressed, not being subtle at all.

"You want to know if we've talked about you?" Scott reiterated. Stiles went quiet and just shrugged. "No, we haven't."

Stiles' eyes were fixated on the brunette as she talked to the one guy in this school he couldn't stand. And he definitely didn't miss the way she seemed to laugh at everything he said and continuously twirled her perfectly curled hair around her dainty fingers.

She was one-hundred percent flirting with him.

...

In order to keep herself preoccupied and limit the amount of time she spent moping around in her bedroom, Aspen had decided to get herself a job. It was nothing special, but it was enough to make a good bit of pocket money.

But honestly, money wasn't the reason she was doing it. She needed as many distractions as she could get.

She was now a part-time worker at the video-store, just on the border of town. She took four shifts a week, most of which were late afternoon after school, but her shift today was more late-evening, early-night.