North Starr

61

Season Five

Melanie sat cross-legged on the hood of Stiles' Jeep while Scott sat a short distance in front of her. Stiles had a map open that was covering part of her knee. It was of the San Francisco Bay Area. "All right, so I found some cool two bedroom apartments in the Mission District, but they're pretty expensive. A couple in Haight and Ashbury. Also expensive."

"What about Berkeley?" Scott wondered.

"Two bedroom?" Melanie asked.

Stiles nodded. "Yeah."

"There's always UC Berkeley."

Scott frowned. "Don't a lot of students live around Berkeley?"

Stiles shot his hand into the air. "Well, yeah, we could try Nob Hill. But, the Jeep would probably burn through a lot of clutches."

"You're bringing the Jeep?"

Stiles glanced to the brunette in disbelief before turning back to his friend. "Did you ask that? Did you really just ask that? You know the plan, okay? No one gets left behind. That's the plan. Lydia's not gonna have a problem getting into Stanford. Kira's thinking USF. Malia's, uh, gonna you know, she'll figure something out, okay? And Mellie's gonna study literature history somewhere. The plan's perfect."

Scott let out a sigh. "Or we could also wait until we actually get into college and then figure out where to live."

Melanie shot him a look. "Don't ruin the vision."

Stiles nodded. "Yeah. Don't ruin the vision. You, Mellie and me always wanted to go to college together. We can check out East Bay. Haven't looked at Oakland yet, you know."

Scott turned around to look at something and Melanie frowned. "Are you okay, Scott? Is the full moon causing you to feel something?"

He shook his head and gave her a small smile. "No. Just thinking."

"About what?"

"Senior year."

Stiles threw his hand into the air once again. "Senior year, come on, that's, that's... That's nothing. That's going to be easy."

Scott sat up. "It's more like something Deaton told me once. You ever hear of regression to the mean?"

Stiles shook his head. "No, I don't think so."

Melanie nodded. "I have. To put it in layman's terms, we're in a gray area. Things are good, but not the best they could be."

Scott glanced to Stiles. "Like Melanie touched upon, it was his way of saying that life can't ever be all bad or all good. You know, eventually things have to come back to the middle. So, think about the last few months. Things have been good, right? But not amazing."

Stiles sighed. "Yeah, but no one's tried to kill us in six months either."

Melanie shot her friend a look. "And let's try to keep it that way."

Scott nodded at her words. "Right. We've been pretty much in the middle for awhile. Which means at some point, the scale has to tip one way or the other. Things are gonna get really good again..."

"Or really bad," Stiles said as a loud crack of thunder sounded. "Think it's been long enough?"

"Yes!" Liam cried from the tree he'd been chained to.

Scott said, "Liam's still there. I'd call that progress."

Stiles frowned at the beta. "Hey. Trying to have an adult conversation over here."

Liam rolled his eyes. "All right, you're two years older than me. And I'm fine. She's almost two years older. Just let me go."

He rattled his chains trying to free himself. Melanie walked towards him and noticed blood in his clenched fists and saw his nails shifting back. She frowned at him before turning back to her friends. "I see no sign of shifting."