Black Fire

I made it back into the kitchen before either of them, quickly washed my hands, and began piling food onto my plate. As I sat down, I had two steaks, a considerable pile of broccoli, and a little helping of potatoes on my plate. Beside the plate, I had a Mason jar of Sun Tea.
Soon after, they each sat down with similar arrangements. Jacob had a third steak and his portions of broccoli and potatoes were switched, but otherwise we all had about the same dinner.
They both just dug in and I had to shake my head slightly to bring myself back to reality. "Right," I said. "Too used to Mama and Matt's house."
"We can say grace, if you want," Billy offered in a joking/teasing way, but meaning it enough that if I did want to, I wouldn't be too offended.
"Do not even think about it," I replied, tearing into my steak. Mama and Matt were both Catholic - they even sent me and my siblings to a private catholic school - and they always said grace. They had Renee, Frankie, and I all memorize a typical catholic PoG (Prayer of Grace - how sad is it that we acronymized that?) in English, Latin, and German.
Oremus! Benedic, Domine, nos et hæc Tua dona, quæ de Tua largitate sumus sumpturi. Per Christum, Dominum nostrum. Amen. I recited quickly in my head as I swallowed a mouthful of steak and licked a little blood off my lips.
They both chuckled. "Tell me you eat like that at your mother's," Billy said, thinking that if I did it the reactions of the other half of my family would be just priceless - a Kodak moment.
"Matt would freak if I did," I laughed. "What can I say? La Push brings out my wild side." They shared a look - I just barely caught it.
"Oh, speaking of Matt, he asked me to tell you he and the others say hi," I said to Jacob.
He had the exact same reaction that I had when Matt asked me to do it. "Why?"
"I really have no idea, Jay," I growled at myself mentally for calling him that. "He and mama both try to force friendship on you guys, probably because they see the situation as awkward. They want to ease the discomfort they feel and which they somehow believe I feel, too, by being all buddy-buddy with you two and the twins. They have been doing that since the first time we visited. It just makes it more awkward for everyone." I actually did feel a little discomfort with the Blacks, but it wasn't because of the separate-families situation, and it wasn't something that would be helped at all by Mama and Matt killing them with kindness.

"On the topic of the other Dawsons," Billy said, and that alone caught me as funny because I'd legally changed my surname to Dawson-Black in late Fall '06, so I wasn't really a Dawson or a Black, I was my own thing. He continued, "do you have copies of the graduation photos?"
I pulled a little dark brown book of photos out and handed it to him. He held it to the side a bit as Jacob leaned over, so they could look through them together.
"One of these things is not like the others; one of these things just doesn't belong. Can you tell which thing is not like the others by the time I finish my song," Jacob sang as they looked at one of the photos. Billy turned the book to let me see which one it was.
"Oh," I laughed, rolling my eyes and pushing Jacob's shoulder in mock-offense. "Okay, yeah, my mama and her family are very, very,"
"Very," Jacob chimed in, mock-helpfully.
"White," I concluded. "Miracle Whip on Wonderbread white; Porcelain," I listed.
"Nearly fluorescent," Jacob supplied.
I giggled - giggled. For that I mentally scorned myself, too. "They're pureblooded Europeans, they can't help it."
We all moved on after that observation; the guys continued to look at the photos as they ate (hooray for putting photos in plastic sleeves!) then insisted on doing the dishes and whatnot while I sat in the livingroom with the dogs. It was 7:30, so Family Guy was on - one of my favorites, the Viewer Mail one with the genie, the mutated Griffins, and Li'l everyone - and I had it playing in the background.
I was focused more on texting my mom than watching the show. I was just lying on the couch with Sabre curled up on my stomach, assuring Mama that the trip was fine, I missed her and Frankie, I'd talk to her soon and often, I'd tell everyone she said hi, and, most of all, that I was sure I still wanted to do this.

'This' was the reason I was here, the reason Matt spent over a day driving from Wichita to La Push.
Since I was an infant, I knew about my parents' situation. Of course, I understood it better when I was older, but before I could even speak coherently I understood my daddy was with his other family in Washington and my mama was with me in Kansas. Billy sent me things and wrote to me, which really started around when I was three; around the time I was born he had sent a hand-woven bracelet with two wooden coin-shaped charms embedded in it, but other than that there was nothing before age three.
Mama read me the letters until I was five years old, when I'd taught myself to read independently by remembering what Mama had said and looking at the letters to match her words to the writing on the pages.
I started writing back with proofreading by Mama when I was six, my first letter being a thank-you for the letter and gift he had sent for my birthday.
The following year, on June 14th, we received a letter from him addressed to both of us - Mama should have been the one to read it but I was excited to hear from him and I always liked to practice reading. (he wasn't stunting his vocabulary anymore, and I usually learned a new word or two, especially when he talked about tribal things.) It wasn't hard to understand the main topic of the letter - Sarah, his wife, had died on June 9th, three days after my seventh birthday. Jacob was only four years old at the time; he would be starting school in the fall and of course everyone on the reservation would know, and he would know that they knew without them ever saying anything, which would be almost as bad as if they did.
Billy called us on the 18th and asked if I could finally visit him; Mama flew up to La Push with me and we stayed from June 23rd to July 3rd. I finally met my dad and half-siblings face-to-face. The twins were closer to my age - they are four years older than me, so they were eleven years old at the time - and, not to mention, they were girls, but I didn't really seek out a friendship with either of them; I simply grieved for their loss and left them be unless they were to seek me out. I really just focused on Billy and Jacob.
I could easily see that they were hurting. Billy wouldn't talk to Mama about it much, but I really wanted to help, so I asked him how I could. He told me he just wanted to know me and be involved more and, most of all, to have me visit him more; he said that would be the best thing I could do for him. I figured that was the best thing I could do for Jacob, too. So, I spent a lot of the visit with him, and by the time his fifth birthday came around on the 31st, we were already really close and he had a pretty happy birthday for a kid whose mom just died.
Cutely enough for being five and seven, we took to calling each other Jakey and Shaney. Those nicknames lasted through my visits at Christmas that year, two years later, and two years after that , my eighth and eleventh birthdays, Jacob's seventh, two of Billy's birthdays which he'd prefer I not number, and one Fourth of July. Since then I've visited for my fourteenth birthday, Jacob's tenth and twelfth, two Christmases, three Thanksgivings, and my last visit was a combination of my belated sweet sixteen and Jacob's fourteenth birthday.

I told you all that to tell you this. My step-dad - who, since I'm already sharing my life story, came into the picture when I was eight - drove me up here to La Push and is leaving me here for no-one-knows-how-long. See, when I was thirteen, Mama, Daddy, and I talked about it - more the former two than I, but the final decision was mine - and agreed that, after I graduated from high school, I would come to La Push and stay as long as it took to decide whether I wanted to move there. It was all taken care of; the house was built on a little slice of land Billy owned, and he told us that he'd rent it out in the meantime and have any tenants out ASAP if I said I wanted it, and he'd just give it to me - a house, as a graduation gift.
As I mentioned before, I had a slight discomfort issue with the Blacks. I didn't before my last visit, though. I wasn't sure about coming, but I really did miss them and I figured I had already made the deal - I had to give it a chance.
So, what was my issue with the Blacks?

"Sweet," Jacob commented, catching sight of the tv on his way out of the kitchen. The second of three parts of the episode was about halfway done, and Chris Griffin had just set some kid on fire, which caused his whole high school to catch flame. Jacob walked over and, as he did, I sat up from my lying position and he sat beside me on the couch.
"I always kind of wanted Pyrokinesis," he said, and I felt like there was something behind that.
"Yeah, it's pretty sick," I agreed. "I kind of wanted it, too."
He just glanced over and gave me a smile - I could swear there was something behind that, too. See, that's what my issue is.
Family Guy? No.
Pyrokinesis? Nope, I was pretty much cool with that.
The way it seemed like just about everything Jacob did had a deeper meaning? Swing and a miss!
Similarly, the way it felt like Jacob was keeping a load of secrets from me? Not that either - much as that and the aforementioned double meaning issue irritated me. Give up?
...
...
Jacob. He was the issue; just Jacob.
Well, not really just Jacob, but it wasn't anything he did or said. Maybe the best way to say it is that the issue was that Jacob was an issue for me.
Something had happened during my last visit - probably it had happened before, but it hit me during that visit.
"There's a Dead Like Me repeat next on 21, it okay if I change it then," he asked from beside me on the couch, cutting through my thoughts.
"Mhm," I replied with a nod and a smile. He smiled back and returned his attention to the tv. I resisted the urge to sigh.
Something - I couldn't even tell you what it was if I tried - just clicked in my mind one day last June. Something got me to pay attention to my own thoughts - finally - and what I found shocked me shy of Jacob and his dad, and the other Quileutes, and even the handful of Forks kids who were my friends. Staying in Wichita made things safe and uncomplicated; if I wasn't around Jacob, I'd be okay. But, the same little detail which kept me away kept me from staying away.

He was my brother - well, half, but close enough. I loved my home in La Push, my extended family of the Quileutes, my dad Billy, and I loved my baby brother Jacob.