The Special Two

I closed my eyes at their question, and my heart raced by the expressions they had on their faces. Something was wrong with my arm. Part of me wanted to look and see what sort of disaster disease I caught in La Push but the more rational part was telling me to forget about it. It was like watching a horror movie and someone's head is chopped off. You know it's going to fall down the hill and zoom up on the camera, but you want to look anyway. Maybe I cut my arm? Bruised it? Maybe it's decaying and you can see all my flesh...

Cautiously, I opened my eyes and peaked at my arm. I opened them wider, it seemed perfectly find. I flipped it and contorted it at different angles to see this horrifying aspect, but I couldn't find it. The only abnormal thing was my scar. Wait, seriously?

"You're not seriously talking about the scar?"

Seth loosened his death grip on my arm and I pulled it away, my fingers danced over the slightly raised scar that was two shades darker than the rest of my body. I had had it since I was born, so I guess it was a birth defect. Sandra and Dad used to say it made me special. I believed every word of it, until he died. Then it got lost behind the wall with all the legends and other memories of him. I haven't actually looked at it years.

It had a crimson undertone to it, which I guess made it look startling to the rest of them. When I was little, I thought it was an extra eye. It still sort of looks like one, with leaf-like petals surrounding it, spreading out until they softened and faded. I would have just cast it off as a tattoo if I were them. No need to give the new girl a heart attack.

"That's not a scar Clara," Seth's voice had become rougher. It reminded me of an angry Chihuahua.

Well now, he's just being rude.

I stared at him blankly, "What the hell Seth!" I snapped. "You've seen it a thousand times before."

"Well now I know what it means!" He yelled right back at me.

I thought about smacking him over the head with my wok, but there were still leftovers in there and I was too poor to waste the food. It's too cliché anyway.

Our faces were now inches apart and I had forgotten that the rest of them were in the room.

"It doesn't mean anything!"

I was fuming. He hadn't seen me in years, how dare he just come in and tell me what I do and don't have on my body? His eyes were turning darker, just like Jake's had earlier that day. It jumbled up something inside me and I staggered back.

"Doesn't mean anything? Doesn't mean anything! You wanna bet? It means you're a monster!"

I pulled the kitchen knife from the table, "You bipolar little..."

A warm, sturdy pair of arms wrapped around my waist and pulled me backward. Someone else took the knife from my steady hands. My first instinct was to struggle against the human restraints, to bite, bitch and fight my way out of them. Instead, I stayed put and tried to breathe. I've learned in the past few months that anger was not a good thing for me.

Mr. Hit-On and Run's arms stayed wrapped around me in the kitchen, to keep me in my place as the five other man-beasts pulled Seth out the backdoor in the living room. He released me as soon as they were gone, the room felt significantly colder. I couldn't taste the heat in my tongue anymore. My house smelt like wet dog. I guess that's what I get for letting grown men who walked through God knows what to get to my house inside.

A hot breath of anger escaped my lips when I left the room and fell down on the white couch that still needed to be broken in. I locked my jaw and looked forward at the blank TV, my knees had found their way to my chest and I wrapped my arms around them. I freaking hate La Push.

I felt the opposite end of the couch sink in a few minutes later. We sat in silence for a while, as I rethought this whole 'I don't want to be a runaway' thing.

"So, who's winning?"

Despite my mood, I smiled and let out a short laugh. I leaned my head down into my knees and sighed. The way he looked at me made me want to melt, and I didn't know what to do with that.

"I'm not a monster." I mumbled simply into my legs after a moment of silence. I looked over at him with an awkward attempted at a smile.

He smiled half-heartedly. "I know."

"Do you ever feel like you're different from everyone else?" I locked my eyes with his, and for the first time I just let him see what he wanted. "Like, you look normal and smell normal and talk normal but inside there's just something...I don't know. Strange."

Jake met my gaze and answered uneasily, "Sometimes."

The storm outside was raging, as if to beat some sort of answer into my head. On the other hand, it could have been trying to make me run away from here, run as far as I can, and just hide. Lightning struck and it illuminated the room, allowing everything to be covered in an eerie glow. A wolf howled somewhere close by. Thunder shook the house. A brick in my wall fell out and the memories hit me like a tidal wave.

The legends. We descended from wolves. Well, they did, I was only a half Quileute. When cold ones came to town, men transformed into wolves. They would stop aging. They were huge. They had a fiery body heat and a short fused temper. They traveled in packs. Oh my God...

"The legend." I whispered. My heart picked up its pace and I looked up at Jake with wide eyes, "You're not human. You're different aren't you?"

"Yeah."

Holy shit. It's true. The bedtime stories, the old legends they used to spin at bonfires. They're all true. There's a huge mythical part of the word that really isn't mythical at all. My breath had gone rigid and I glanced at my arm with a completely new pair of eyes.

"I'm different too." I said finally.

Jake only nodded and I looked over at his arms, completely clean. I wasn't huge. My body heat was completely normal. Friends weren't ever appealing to me, I always traveled alone.

We weren't the same, I realized with a wave of devastation.

His eyes were cautiously watching me reevaluate my entire life.

"I'm not like you, am I?"

"Clara..."

"Just answer."

"No." He said as if the very word meant death.

"Jake, what am I?"

Lightning struck once more and coated Jacob in a white glow that made him look terrifying and mysterious. My eyes followed his until they landed on my right wrist, where I scar I had never second-guessed until now was bathed in similar light.

"You're a monster!"