headache / jasper hale

08 | that's quil, he's a pig

Thea

"Hey," she says simply, startling my. I turn to see Bella standing behind me, a small smile on her face.

"Bella, you scared me," I say, nervously gulping as I glance around the hallways surrounding my locker.

"I can tell," the girl lets out a quiet laugh before shutting me locker door, once I'm done of course. "A bunch of us are heading down to La Push today after lunch, do you want to come?"

"La Push?" I ask, confused as we make our way to first period.

"It's a beach down on the reservation - good for surfing."

I quickly shake my head. "Surfing and Thea don't go well together."

"Neither does surfing and Bella," Bella says, nudging me with her elbow. "We can whale watch or take a walk on the beach, it'll be fun!"

I bite my lip, pondering the invitation. Tiffany and Sam have been trying to get me out of the house more. Sam also did say that anything on the reservation is in the safe zone, away from the . . . Cullens.

Whatever that meant.

"Sure," I say, shrugging my shoulders after a few minutes of debating. "Who is driving?"

•••

It was only fifteen miles to La Push from Forks, with gorgeous, dense green forests edging the road most of the way and the wide Quillayute River snaking beneath it twice.

Bella and I were seated on the side of Tyler's van, blankets wrapped around us like cocoons. It was freezing - too cold for a beach day.

I've been to plenty of beaches in my lifetime. After all, I did live in North Carolina. At least twice, maybe three times a month, my parents, Dawson, and I would travel down to the coast for a beach day. The water would be clear and the sun would be bright, the sand warm. Absolutely perfect.

But the La Push beach was still breathtaking. The water was dark gray, even in the sunlight, 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 actual 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 brisk wind coming off the waves, cool and briny. Pelicans floated on the swells while seagulls and a lone eagle wheeled above them. The clouds still circled the sky, threatening to invade at any moment, but for now the sun shone bravely in its halo of blue sky.

"Have you two ever seen a driftwood fire?" Mike asks us, standing opposite to us. We were the last three at the cars, everyone else was running towards the beach.

Bella answered no while I simultaneously answered yes. Mike them proceeded to drag us down to the beach - where it was much colder than in the parking lot - and began to instruct us on how to build a driftwood fire.