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With a little time jump, our little Lorainne is now 14, and she still doesn't know what lingers around her home in the night. All she knows is Sam is her bff, her sister is hella weird now, she has a niece that's older than her but not really?? And that Bella is always cold. Really cold. And it hurts to hug her because she's, like, super hard.
And if she had said that last part out loud, Jared would've come across with a that's what she said.
Only she hasn't seen Jared in a year. She hasn't seen most of the boys, really.
It's weird, growing up. The people around you have this idea of you in their head and when that idea changes because you were 12 when they met you and now you're going through puberty and growing up and becoming more and more a woman, they get weird. When you don't want to do weird things with Embry anymore like skin an Elmo doll, or make mud pies in a rainstorm with Seth, or climb a very tall tree in the middle of winter with Paul while in shorts and a tank top. They tell you that you aren't fun anymore and they slowly stop coming around.
It isn't your fault that you're in high school now and filling out. Your brain is maturing. You're maturing.
But they don't like that. They want you to stay in that little 12 year old bubble that they love because you're fun.
It takes a bit getting used to it. It stings a lot, at first. Sam tries to comfort you and tells you that they're all adults, and they have things they have to do and no matter how much they want to, they can't be around you 24/7.
Then the girls at school call you weird for spending all your time around grown men.
Then the teachers - the teachers, they just don't understand. No one understands why you hang out with them. They just don't get it.
Nobody gets Lorainne except Sam. So she keeps to herself, isolating from the world and doing what she needs to do to get through the school day and then she comes home to her dad, and they hang out, and sometimes Sam comes over to hang out but, y'know. He's an adult too, and he has adult duties.
Sam doesn't like it when she comes home one day with hearts for pupils instead of her normal look of boredom.
Sam doesn't like it when she talks to him and Charlie about a boy at school who helped her pick up her things from the floor after the school bully pushed her over.
He doesn't like it when Lorainne tells them that she likes the boy.
Sam doesn't like it when she tells them that they started dating.
Sam knows something is wrong.
And he's right. Like always.
When she comes home after the three month relationship ends with the boy laughing at her in the face telling her it was all a joke, all a bet, he holds Lorainne in his arms while she cries. He watches Charlie grab his gun - but what's Charlie going to do to a kid?
Sam decides, then, that he's going to tell Lorainne about shifting.
He's going to do it to make her happier.
I have no excuse for my absence other than it's been a very rough 3 years
