─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───
𝙲𝙷𝙰𝙿𝚃𝙴𝚁 17
𝙼𝙾𝚅𝙸𝙴𝚂
─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───
"Hey, Sabrina!" Jessica called out to the girl that stood in line in the cafeteria, beckoning to Sabrina with a bright smile, "Come sit with us!"
Sabrina smiled and skipped over to Jessica's table, plopping down in the empty seat next to her friend.
"Hi," she greeted everyone cheerily.
Sabrina could tell by the looks on their faces that Jess hadn't exactly spoken to her friends first about letting her sit with them but luckily Angela, who was incredibly sweet, didn't seem to mind.
"Hey, Sabrina," she'd welcomed with a smile.
"Hah, cool sweater," the boy sitting next to her with the emo bang — whose name was Eric, Sabrina believed — commented with a laugh.
Sabrina grinned proudly. Esme had made it for her as a birthday present a year ago. It was a black knitted sweater with a large white swan on the front that held a knife in its mouth with a caption that read: peace was never an option. Alice hated it but Sabrina had found it very amusing and, since Alice wasn't there to tell her that she couldn't wear it, Sabrina would happily wear it out in public.
"Thanks. Someone actually made it for me," she replied.
"On purpose?" Jessica asked, eyeing her sweater with the same distaste for it that Alice used to possess.
Sabrina chuckled.
"Yes, on purpose," she said, "Although you're not the first one to hate it."
"Well, I think it's cute," Angela stated.
Jessica rolled her eyes.
"It is kinda weird," Mike chimed in, probably trying to gain favour with Jess.
Sabrina's smile simply widened.
"Well, I don't know if you guys have noticed, but weird is kinda my specialty," she responded with a wink in the boy's direction.
The boy nodded. Fair enough.
"That's true," he admitted.
"Hey," Eric piped up, leaning forward on his elbows and looking around to see if anyone was listening as though there was some big secret he was about to share, "Is it true that you're the one that cheesed the boys' locker room?"
"I don't know. Could be," she answered simply, digging into her cold cafeteria pizza slice and sharing a side glance with Jessica.
Eric groaned, throwing his hands in the air and sinking back into his chair.
"Aww man," he complained.
"Back to square one," Mike commented disappointedly, "Who else has Jess interacted with in the last week?"
Sabrina gave Jess an inquisitive look as the girl just rolled her eyes.
"They think that 'cause I told them about what happened like... before the rest of the school found out that I like... somehow know who did it," she explained, fed-up with their antics.
Well, they weren't exactly wrong. Jess did know who did it but, luckily for her, she could still maintain plausible deniability.
Sabrina hummed and feigned a thoughtful look.
"Well, how do they know that it wasn't you?" She proposed suspiciously.
Jessica glared.
"Please, don't encourage them," Angela laughed.
"No no," Mike interjected leaning forward with intrigue, "The kid may be onto something."
Sabrina frowned. Kid? She was literally a year younger than them.
"Yeah, Jess," Eric added, "Where exactly were you after school that day?" He interrogated.
"Debate team, Sherlock," she answered impatiently.
"Or so she says..." Eric ominously pondered.
Sabrina giggled.
"You can ask like literally anyone else on the team!" Jess insisted exasperatedly.
"She has witnesses," Sabrina pointed out, coming to Jess's defence and feeling a little guilty that the girl was taking some of the heat for what Sabrina did, "That's a rock-solid alibi."
"Yeah and Sabrina lives with the Chief of police, so she knows what she's talking about," Angela backed her up.
"Oh, so you admit that you need witnesses to prove something is true," Mike questioned Angela cheekily.
The girl narrowed her eyes at him.
"I did see something in the woods!" Angela cried defensively.
Eric dotingly took Angela's hand, obviously trying to butter her up.
"Totally," he unconvincingly agreed, "Baby, I believe you."
"No, he doesn't," Jessica exposed with an eye roll and the shake of her head, "He's just tryna get lucky."
Mike and Sabrina laughed at Jessica's completely accurate assessment as Eric chuckled awkwardly, nervously glancing at his girlfriend to see if he was in trouble. She gave him a pointed, unimpressed look.
"You saw something in the woods?" Sabrina queried curiously.
"No, she didn't," Mike assured, nonchalantly shaking his head.
"Yes, I did!" Angela persisted, dropping Eric's hand, "It was jet black and huge. On all fours it was still taller than a person."
"What was it?" The younger girl asked, Angela's description sparking something in her memory and making her reach for the scars on the back of her shoulder.
"I don't know... a bear... maybe?" She speculated, unsure.
"Or an alien," Mike sarcastically suggested, "You're lucky you didn't get probed."
Sabrina laughed but reached over the table and lay a hand on Angela's.
"Don't worry about them, Angela," she assured her, "I believe you," she sincerely stated.
"You do?" Angela said hopefully.
Sabrina nodded with a smile.
"Yeah."
"You don't think it's... weird?" She asked.
Sabrina shrugged.
"Weird is my specialty, remember?" She reminded her.
"Great, well, maybe you guys can go hunting for Bigfoot later," Mike joked.
Feeling a little lighter and less ridiculous, Angela actually did join in with the laughter on that one.
As Bella Swan entered the cafeteria and moved toward her usual seat at the Cullens' ex-table, she caught sight of Sabrina sitting with her old friends and paused in her tracks, surprised by the sight.
If Sabrina could come out of her shell and make friends with other people then, maybe, so could she. Maybe it was time to start getting back to normal. So, the girl swerved and moved to approach her old table.
"You know you're not the only one," Bella piped in, joining the conversation and drawing everyone's attention to her.
Seeing Bella Swan sit with them again and use... full sentences was like watching one of those flowers blossom — the ones that only bloomed like once every couple of decades under the light of a full moon or something so people would throw entire parties just to see them bloom, that was what this was like for them. This was the first time she had even spoken to most of her old friends in months. So, their mild shock was quite understandable.
Bella, feeling awkward under everyone's gaze, looked to Sabrina for reassurance. Her cousin smiled encouragingly and subtly nodded, thrilled to see Bella putting in some effort to talk to her friends. With that confidence boost, the girl spoke on.
"Um, my dad's been getting reports at the station," she continued, taking the seat between Sabrina and Mike as the others stared in surprise, "Like, five hikers have been killed by some bear... but they can't find the bear."
Sabrina exaggeratedly raised her brows at the others, eagerly prompting them to keep talking. Thankfully, Angela took the hint and carried on with the conversation as though it were normal. She looked to Eric smugly with an extreme "I told you so" expression on her face.
"Hmm," she hummed, kissing her teeth.
Eric looked down, knowing he was in deep shit for not believing his girlfriend and laughed nervously.
"Haha! Last time you clowns doubt my girlfriend," he responded, pointing fingers at the rest of them to take the heat off of himself.
As Sabrina engaged in playful banter between Angela, Eric and Jessica while Bella and Mike talked about something or the other, Benny watched on proudly from the sidelines, glad that his sisters were finally finding their footing again.
"Hey, do you guys wanna go see Face Punch?" Bella inquired, likely trying to politely avoid going on a date with Mike.
"Face Punch, yeah," Eric enthusiastically agreed, "Mike, hey. We were supposed to watch that. Remember the trailer was like..." Eric imitated the sound of an explosion, punching his fist into his other hand mockingly, "Punch faces..."
"Descriptive," Sabrina commented with a giggle.
Eric grinned proudly, greatly reminding Sabrina of Quil. She hadn't spoken to him in a while — probably since Embry had called and told them he was sick. She made a mental note to text him later.
"Yeah... Movie night with Bella..." Jessica unenthusiastically sang, chuckling awkwardly as she thought back on her not-so-pleasant last movie night experience with Bella.
Great. This should be fun.
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Sabrina was generally pretty desensitised to violence. I mean, with all that she'd seen, a little fake gore should've been like nothing. Hell, she was even the kind of person that would sit and point out all the ghost lore inaccuracies in horror movies.
Maybe it was the small dark space or the crisp white hospital rooms in the movie — or maybe it was the fact that Jacob had his hand laid out on his arm rest, clearly positioned in hopes that Bella would hold his hand — but Sabrina could feel herself slipping. Her head started to swim and her calm, even breaths grew faster and deeper like she was drowning —drowning and yet still desperately trying to suck any form of oxygen into her lungs but all she was really doing was just gulping down water.
The phantom sound of tyres screeching and a voice echoing in her head clouded her mind — someone was going to get hurt tonight.
Catching the rapid rise and fall of Sabrina's chest, the sweat beading her forehead and the colour of her knuckles slowly whitening from how hard she clutched her arm rests, Jacob's face contorted with concern and, acting in instinct, he lay a hand over Sabrina's — his previous plan to get closer to Bella now long forgotten.
"Hey," he whispered, leaning closer to his friend, the familiar sound of his soothing voice filling her up and snapping her out of her state as the heat of his hand spread up her arm and warmed her, calming her mind — so much so that she realised that her entire body was shaking and shivering like a leaf. Sabrina instantly felt safer in the shelter of his hooded, earthy brown eyes.
"You okay?" He asked her.
Sabrina wanted to cry but she pursed her lips and nodded, turning her head away and screwing her eyes tightly shut in hopes that maybe if she couldn't see it, she'd forget all about the fact that he was holding her hand and showing concern for her. Maybe that way it would hurt less when she remembered that he was in love with her cousin.
She released a shuddering breath, swallowing the bile that was rising in her throat.
"Yeah," she whispered back to him, feeling embarrassed and cowardly as she knew how amusing he found movies like this, "I just didn't realise how... disturbing this movie was going to be."
He frowned and shifted closer to her in his seat, knowing exactly what to say that would take her mind off the gore.
"Well, if you think about it, when you take away the gore, it's actually kind of a shitty movie," he said.
Her eyes opened and she frowned, turning to him in confusion. She thought he was enjoying the movie, given how gleefully he was smiling at the screen earlier.
"What?" She asked.
"Yeah," he shrugged, "And the gore and stuff only looks that cool 'cause they had a really good make-up artist," he explained, pointing at the screen, "See that guy's melting brains?"
She looked to the screen and nodded, cringing slightly as the sight reminded her of that of the many many visions she'd had over the years — much like the one she had before Edward saved Bella from that van.
"That's all just melted plastic," he said, "Takes a pretty talented artist to make it look so real, don't ya think? I mean, not as talented as you... but they'd come pretty close."
Jacob's words had done exactly what he'd intended for them to do. He watched as her disturbed expression morphed into one of mesmerisation as she stopped watching at the movie as a casual viewer and started looking at it with an artist's eye. His lips quirked up into a tiny, victorious smile as he could see how entertaining she now found it. He watched her shining, sea-green eyes dissecting all the things that she was cringing away from before, and thinking about how the artists created them.
"Whoa," she muttered, in awe from discovering a whole new way of watching movies.
"Yeah," he said, the smile shining in his voice, "Whoa."
"Thanks, Jacob," she said, her voice going back to that ethereal, dreamy tone that she used to have.
He smiled.
"Anytime," he replied.
Then, Jacob's smile dropped and his face grew serious. Comically serious.
"Now, the real question is: do you think that if you painted on some of the bloody wounds and brains that I could scare the shit out of Quil?" He questioned with a raised brow and a thoughtful expression.
Sabrina giggled, covering her mouth with her hand to suppress the sound that would've echoed in the movie theatre.
"Oh, he would for sure be traumatised," she nodded, "It'll be worse than the PB&J incident."
"Ohh, that was rough," Jacob winced with a laugh at the memory, "He still can't eat strawberry jelly."
"Well, he also refused to even go near the beach for months after we saw Jaws," she reminded him, "but he got over it eventually."
"Yeah, only 'cause he saw some surfer and thought she was cute," Jacob chuckled.
Sabrina snorted.
"What was her name again...?"
"Amber Cohen," he recalled.
"Amber Cohen," Sabrina nodded, "I bet she'd enjoy that scene," she remarked, gesturing to the screen where a girl was getting her face bashed in with her own surf board — and yet her shiny blonde hair still remained in immaculate condition, as Sabrina had pointed out.
Jacob laughed but the pair's attention was torn from the screen as Mike Newton bolted up from his seat, looking rather queasy, and sprinted for the bathroom.
Sabrina sighed.
"And just when it was getting good."
─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───
Sabrina loved movies. She was always captivated by the enchanting worlds she could be transported to. The allure of diverse narratives, rich characters, and compelling plots drew her in, providing an escape into different realms of her imagination. For Sabrina, watching a movie was almost like seeing one of her paintings come to life.
Movies were actually how she learned about certain cultural and societal norms that she hadn't really been taught about during her time at Old Stones. They helped her navigate the complexities of the world and of growing up that seemed foreign to her. Movies weren't merely a form of entertainment for Sabrina; they were one of her main sources of wisdom, shaping her perspectives on life, love, and adventure.
When Sabrina discovered romance movies, all she could think about was finding and experiencing a love like in the movies she watched. Her heart yearned for a romance that mirrored the magic of the enchanting films, where love transcended time and adversity.
There were times, when she'd find herself caught in a daydream, where her mind would wander to Jacob. She'd imagine herself confessing her feelings for him in some big, romantic setting. She'd imagine him scooping her up in his arms and kissing her so passionately that everything else around them faded away. She'd imagine him holding her close and telling her that he had loved her too all along. She'd dream of them dancing in the dark and kissing under the stars. She'd dream of him holding her hand and looking at her like she was perfect for him. She'd dream of them never growing apart, of him never breaking her heart... of them living happily ever after.
But it was just so evident that real life was not like it was in fiction. Real life was messy and disappointing. Real life was the place where Sabrina had to watch the love of her life so clearly pining after another girl, where she would grow to secretly loathe that close friendship she had with Jacob Black because it meant they could never be anything more than friends; that she would always just be his best friend, the pathetic side character that could never tell the boy how she felt because she was too afraid of losing him, too afraid of being tossed aside and forgotten.
She knew the pain of rejection — she had felt it profoundly when her grandparents had tossed her out for being different, leaving her to rot away in an asylum — and it was a pain that she would never subject herself to again because she just knew that it would break her... and she wouldn't be able to come back from that.
Sabrina may have kept her feelings to herself but that ache of rejection still echoed in her every time she saw how he looked at Bella. It panged in her chest, threatening to rip a hole right through her heart as she watched Jacob reach for Bella's hand and sit so close to her on the staircase outside the movie theatre bathrooms.
"I think it's time to go, Sabrina," Benny told her in the softest, most comforting voice he could muster as he watched his sister hang back with tears in her eyes, eyes that stayed locked on the pair on the stairs — even if she couldn't hear what they were saying.
Sabrina nodded and sniffled, turning away.
"I think you're righ—"
She stopped mid-sentence, something popping into her head.
Don't let him drive. Save him.
She blinked, the world taking its sweet time to come back into focus as she heard Jacob's voice raise.
"You want me to put you in the hospital?" she heard Jacob threaten Mike, who had returned from the bathroom after hurling his guts out.
Sabrina and Benny shared a look of surprise. That didn't sound like Jacob at all.
Sabrina strode forward to the stairs as Jacob's face flushed and his breathing grew heavy. Without thinking, she wrapped her hand around his wrist and gave it a gentle pull. The scorching temperature of his hand gave her a shock but she did her best not to pull away.
"It's time to go, Jacob," she told him, her voice as smooth and calm as always.
He seemed to look at her without actually looking at her, like she was transparent and his line of sight was going right through her without even fully registering her presence.
He nodded, still looking like he was trying to breathe through the anger, and let Sabrina tug him towards the exit. She guided him to his car while he stared blankly in front of him, trying to understand the sudden waves of anger that rose and fell like the tide within him.
"Jake?" Her twinkling voice called out to him like a faint whisper heard underwater, "What's wrong?"
He blinked, trying to snap out of the dangerous reverie he'd been lulled into but his mind was too clouded with an unexpected and uncalled-for rage that wouldn't allow him to focus.
And then he saw her eyes. Bright, shiny, sea-green beacons of light that gently steered him away from the storm that brewed inside him.
"Sabrina," he whispered her name like it was his only source of water in a drought, finally feeling like he was getting a grip on himself, "I— I don't know what's happening," he choked out as he heaved for breath, "I don't... I don't feel right."
Sabrina slid the car keys out of his hand. Something was telling her that if she let him drive, something terrible was going to happen.
Based on past experiences that left cars with a bad rep in Sabrina's mind, the girl had come to hate driving. Actually, no. She loathed it with a burning passion. Cars made her sick, they made her think of the night that her brother had died. Usually, she would refuse to get behind the wheel — or let just anyone that she didn't completely trust drive her anywhere — and because of that, she wasn't exactly the best driver but, for Jacob Black, Sabrina would push aside all those feelings and all that trauma to make sure he was safe.
"I think maybe I should drive," she gently suggested, seeing the conflicting emotions flash across his face as he squeezed his eyes shut.
"No!" He snapped out of the blue, as though someone else, someone unbelievably angry, was seizing control of his body, "I don't need your help! I can drive myself!"
He snatched the keys out of her hands and the girl jumped back, her heart rate spiking out of fear. She held her hands up in surrender, trying to suppress her fight or flight instincts as warning bells went off in her head, screaming at her to flee.
"Whoa, hey, I'm just trying to help here, Jake," she tried to reason with him, keeping her cool, "You're not well, Jacob."
"I'm fine!" He yelled, fists clenching and form tensing, "I don't need your help! You and Bella think you know all about what I need. Well, she's wrong! I don't need you, Sabrina!"
Sabrina's brows furrowed with confusion before she steeled her expression.
"Jacob Black, you are sick and you are not making any sense," she spoke, her southern accent seeping slightly into her voice with that authoritative tone that it took on, "You need to get in the car so I can take you home."
That only seemed to infuriate him more.
"No! I'm not going anywhere with you until you tell me what you said to Bella," He demanded stubbornly.
Sabrina gritted her teeth, trying not to grow impatient.
"What are you even talking about?" She questioned with confusion.
"When I told Bella I liked her, she said that she couldn't be with me," he hissed, venom and frustration coating his words, "and I know it has something to do with you."
Sabrina tried not to let how hurt she felt show. He had actually confessed his feelings to Bella. And here she was, still silently dwelling on whatever pathetic crush she had on him while he was already trying to move forward with whatever relationship he hoped to have with Bella. What was she doing?
Tears pricked her eyes and suddenly it was like she forgot how to breath and just couldn't get enough air into her lungs.
"I don't know what you're talking about..." she lied, swallowing the lump in her throat.
"I think you do," he accused, "You're supposed to be my best friend. So, why can't you just be happy for me?!"
Everything was just becoming way too overwhelming and she just couldn't distract herself from her emotions to concentrate enough on her words to keep herself from spilling her secrets. The words just spewed out of her like word vomit.
"Maybe it's because I don't want you to be with her!" She blurted out but when she'd realised what she'd said, her eyes widened as she quietly gasped and clamped a hand over her mouth.
There was a deep rumbling sound emanating from Jacob, like an earth tremor that Sabrina could feel vibrating beneath her feet and reverberating in her chest. Was that... was that a growl?
Step away, something in her was telling her.
Sabrina took a step back in fear and when Jacob saw that look in her eyes — a look on her that he never thought he'd ever be the cause of — the boy took back control of his body and started to back away and the next thing Sabrina knew, she was left standing beside Jacob's car all alone as the boy disappeared into the forest at the edge of town.
Well, at least he wasn't driving.