CHAPTER ONE

"I'm sorry I haven't been able to make you a daylight ring yet." Marie says, and Jay shakes her head as she glances over at her. They're sitting in the kitchen eating ice cream, and they're on opposite ends of the room.

"Don't worry about it. That's one of the benefits of living in a place with barely any sun." She tells her. "Besides, you have to work through your...growing pains? Is that what Bonnie called them?" She asks, and her friend nods.

"Yeah. Headaches, nose bleeds — no fun." The witch shakes her head.

"You need sunlight outside to even do the spell anyway. So, don't start feeling bad until Summer rolls around."

"Oh, that's nice. Thank you." She says sarcastically, and Jay chuckles. "So, have you, uh... Have you talked to Paul lately?"

"A little bit." She nods. "He checks in, but he keeps his distance mostly. He knows that this has all been really hard for me. I spend most of my time with Damon and Stefan."

"Stefan goes to the high school with you now, right?" Marie asks, and she nods.

"He obviously won't pass as a Freshman... He started as a Junior, in case I still need him there after the Summer." She explains.

"The Salvatores are really going out of their way for you here." She smiles. "I'm glad that you haven't been completely alone. Though I am surprised that it's been Damon taking on the bulk of the responsibility when it comes to your well-being."

"Maybe it's guilt." Jay looks over at her phone when it starts ringing on the table, and she walks over as Marie picks it up to look at the caller ID.

"Bella." She tosses it over to her, and the vampire catches it with ease.

As soon as Jay answers the call, Bella's ranting through the receiver. Charlie lifted her grounding as long as she hangs out with her other friends and not just Edward, and he mentioned that Jake has been having a hard time lately. Bella was gonna drive down to see him, but Alice saw her decision to do just that, and then Edward showed up at her house and screwed with her truck so that she couldn't drive to the reservation. Jay hears that and then disappears, letting her phone hit the ground in the process. Marie picks it up to talk to Bella, not knowing what's going on.

Damon walks into the kitchen just as his car starts up outside, and he turns. "Who taught the rugrat how to drive?" He questions.

"Jacob taught her how to drive a motorcycle." The witch tells him.

"What about my car?" He asks, and she shrugs.

Jay pulls up outside of the Cullen house — after not driving the Camaro very well to get there — and she then gets out to head inside. Alice tries to stop her from getting past the living room, but she moves past her easily since it's her instincts guiding her movements and not an actual thought process — no decisions to watch. That ends when the big one shows up and locks his arms around her torso, pinning her arms to her sides.

"Get off of me." The little brunette struggles against his hold.

"Why are you in my family's house?" He questions.

"Your brother's an asshole who needs some serious lessons in how to be a decent person." She tells him. "Because apparently he thinks we still live in a world where women are property and not equal partners in a relationship."

He pauses for a moment and then shakes his head. "What?"

"My relationship with Bella is none of your business." Edward says as he walks into the room.

"It is my business when she calls me pissed off because you won't let her see her friend. I don't understand why men think we need your permission to do a Goddamn thing."

"What's going on?" Their mother-figure asks as she walks into the room with her husband.

"You left Bella alone in the woods, where she wandered off and got lost for hours. She was found unconscious, on the ground, in the middle of the night, when it was freezing outside. But now you're concerned with her safety?" Jay questions, still looking at Edward. "Last I checked, none of the wolves have ever done anything to hurt her, but it was Sam who found her that night. You vanished, and Bella isolated herself from everyone else in her life.

"Now, you're back and you're controlling her every move?" She shakes her head. "I get that you were probably born in a time when men traded goats for wives from their fathers, but we live in the modern world now. For some reason — that I can't fathom in the slightest — Bella took you back. She's your girlfriend, she isn't your property."

"I'll kick his ass for you later." The vampire holding her says. "I think you should go home, cool off."

Jay takes a deep breath, her jaw clenched. "Fine." She reluctantly concedes, and he lets go of her. "Can you drive me please?" She looks up at him. "No one ever taught me how to drive a car, and Damon might actually kill me if I crash his precious Camaro."

"Come on." He motions to the front of the house, and they both leave.

—

"I hate teenagers." Jay grumbles as she walks past Stefan, who's waiting for her outside of her classroom.

"I don't think they like you either." He says as he glances behind them. "That one doesn't anyway. What's her problem?"

"She likes Paul." The little brunette tells him as they make their way to the cafeteria. "I guess she thought she had a chance with him, but realized she didn't when he ditched her because he saw me crying at the beach the night that Ric called to say goodbye."

"Wouldn't that be his fault, not yours?"

"Are you asking me to understand and explain the jealousy of a teenage girl?" She questions. "I have other issues... Like not killing her even though it pisses me off when she gossips and stares at me in class."

"Okay, calm down." He wraps his arm around her shoulders and pulls her into his side as they walk over to her friends' table in the cafeteria.

"Throw it away." Mike's saying as Jay and Stefan sit down.

"Stop." Jessica chuckles.

"Hey." Eric greets as Bella and Edward walk over as well; she sits next to Jay.

"Just in time, check it out." Mike says as he looks at the four of them. "So, we got: My fellow students... Right?"

"Wow." Jess says sarcastically.

"Right?" He nods. "We are the future. Anything is possible, if you just believe."

"Nice."

"Smack 'im." Jay tells Angela, seeing as she's sitting right next to him, and the older girl chuckles as she looks over at her.

"Perfect." Eric agrees with Mike.

"And you got yourself a speech." Mike tells Jessica as he tosses her notebook back over to her.

"No, this'll be my speech...when I want everyone to throw diplomas at my head." She crumples up the papers and throws them at him; they then bounce off of his face. "So, thank you."

"You gotta embrace the clichés, Jess."

"They are the bread and butter of all valedictorians." Eric adds, and Jay makes a buzzer noise.

"Wrong." The little brunette shakes her head at them, and Stefan smirks as he unscrews the cap on his water bottle.

"And that is why you are not valedictorian." Angela tells him.

"You are not the valedictorian." Jay says as she flips through her notebook, and everyone looks at her.

Bella chuckles. "She keeps going to see Step Up 2 at the movies, and that line makes her laugh every time." She explains.

"I made Damon mad by stealing his car, so he gave me money and told me to get away from him." She smiles as she looks at Stefan. "It's not a punishment, and your brother's a moron." She tells him, and he shakes his head.

"You two are gonna drive me insane." He takes a deep breath.

"Anyway, Jess doesn't need clichés." Jay says as she looks back at her friends. "This speech is gonna be epic."

"Epic can change lives." Jess smiles as she looks at Mike.

Alice and Jasper walk over to them then, and the petite vampire smiles at the others. "I've decided to throw a party." She tells them, earning everyone's attention.

"After all, how many times are we gonna graduate high school?" Jasper asks, and Jay raises her eyebrows as she looks at Stefan.

"Three, including here." He mouths, and she chuckles.

"A party?" Angela asks, no one having seen the exchange between Jay and Stefan. "At your house?"

Jess looks at them then. "I've never seen your house."

"No one's ever seen their house." Eric reminds her.

"I have." Jay smirks. "You guys are losers."

"Hey, at least this one won't be by the ocean." Mike chuckles as he looks at Jay, remembering her behavior after she got drunk at the last party that they went to.

"Will there be alcohol?" The little brunette smiles.

"Not for you." Stefan says, and she turns to glare at him.

"Another party, Alice?" Edward questions as he looks at his sister.

"It'll be fun." She insists.

"Yeah, that's what you said last time." Bella reminds her, and she looks away from them.

Jay hears her name from a different table, and she turns her head. "...feel bad for Paul. He never dates, then he finds someone that he actually likes, and she's always with different guys." It's the same girl from the beach party — Laura. "She spent the entire night of that party with Mike, and now she's always with the new guy; and they constantly have their arms around each other. I heard they even live together."

Jasper's listening to them too, having noticed the shift in her mood after she heard them. So he's the one who goes to talk to her after she gets up and walks away from their table. The two of them end up in the parking lot, and Jay hops up into the bed of Bella's truck so she can lay in it.

"Teenagers like to gossip; you shouldn't listen to them." The blond boy tells her as he sits on the closed tailgate with one foot inside the bed.

"Knowledge you've accumulated over your multiple high school stints?" She asks, staring up at the gray sky.

"You could say that." He smirks. "Why does it bother you so much?"

"I don't know what I feel...and it's heightened." She huffs as she crosses her arms and places them over her face.

"I noticed." Jasper nods, working to help calm her mood.

"What if they're right, and I am hurting Paul?" She asks as she looks over at him. "I don't want to; I don't mean to."

"I know how difficult it is to control your thirst, and I've seen in my siblings how your heightened emotions can so easily blur into it." He tells her. "If you're worried about his safety, then you're doing the right thing for the time being. And you should take the time to figure out your feelings."

"You really believe that?"

"Emotions are very complex."

Jay smirks. "Right. You're the...empath." She nods. "I remember that."

"You aren't doing anything wrong." He tells her. "All of this takes time. Anything that's new to a person takes time to learn and control. Things will work out as they should."

"Thanks, Jasper." She says, and he offers her a small smile in return.