Friend Of The Dead

La Push

Unedited

La Push beach is a beautiful place. The water held a color of dark grey even in the shine of the sun, white-capped and heaving to the gray, rocky shore. Islands rose out of the steel harbor waters with sheer cliff sides, reaching to uneven summits, and crowned with austere, soaring firs.The beach had only a thin border of sand at the water's edge, after which it grew into millions of large, smooth stones that looked uniformly gray from a distance, but close up were every shade a stone could be; terra-cotta, sea green, lavender, blue gray, dull gold. The tide line was strewn with huge driftwood trees, bleached bone white in the salt waves, some piled together against the edge of the forest fringe, some lying solitary, just out of reach of the waves.

There was a whistle of a breeze that the beach brought with itself. The sun lightly peeking through the grey clouds that constantly hung above Forks. The place was breathtaking and I couldn't believe that I have never been here since I moved, but when I was a child I would sometimes visit with Bella, and from what I remember, nothing has changed about La Push.

But the people certainly have, Billy Black, whose son, Jacob used to hang out with Bella, is now in a wheelchair from an accident that I was never told of. Harry Clearwater died last year from a heart attack I think. And the boys that lived here, when they were scrawny, thin and all in all normal kids, are no longer in existence. They had matured up into some kind of gang, all twice the size of me. They all had a tattoo on their right arm that was so delicately twisted and turned; I couldn't tell what it started from.

When I closed the door to the truck, a large bang echoing through the breezed beach, I breathed in and smiled when the familiar feeling of the beach surrounded me. I followed behind Bella, who seemed to know her way around. We walked in the sandy beach towards a group sitting in the sand. All of them were laughing, eating or joking around. They were normal people. When they saw us coming they smiled brightly at Bella who returned the favor, but furrowed their eyebrows when they saw me, it was a normal reaction that I was expecting, they had never actually seen me since I moved to Forks, and during my childhood I was never entirely available to come.

A boy---no---a man, got up and jogged the distance between us and the group. It took me a while to finally conclude that this was Jacob Black.

When I first saw Jacob Black, he was a kid only eight years old. He had his two front teeth missing, his hair was down to his shoulders and an everlasting sweet smile was always on his face. He liked to annoy his two older sisters who were twin, Rachel and Rebecca; he would hide their dolls and destroy their sandcastles on the beach. He'd ride around town in his bike, splashing mud everywhere and covering himself in it too. He was the goofiest kid you could think of and yet he was someone that would always stick in your mind, he just had that personality.

But the Jacob Black I saw today was a completely different person from the scrawny kid. He was tanned, a kind of russet like skin, his neck and shoulders, arms and biceps and even legs were thicker and somehow more muscular. His hair was cropped short, a dark inky color and his eyes, his warm brown eyes that I knew before from when we were kids was now a dark coal color, almost black. His face had aged, his stomach thick and tense with abs, and the friendly smile only occasionally reappeared. Jacob Black had grown up, and something happened that made him this way.

He was wearing a grey t-shirt and brown shorts. He had a friendly smile that showed two sets of pearly white perfect teeth. This was Jacob Black, and puberty had done him good. He stopped just in front of us and smiled at Bella, greeting her.

"Thought you were never coming back," he said jokingly.

"Well you know you can't get rid of me that easily." He then turned to me and scanned me over, while I did the same. He was almost a foot taller than me, and he was huge compared my fragile built. He then stared at my face and smiled an eased smile while I did the same.