Speak || A Twilight Fanfic

Chapter 11

It had been a whole week of romantic bliss. At least in Gabriella's opinion. Something had finally clicked inside Jacob. Somehow, he'd finally understood what it meant to be a boyfriend. A surprising turn of events in his behavior from the past two weeks.

Jake had been the kind and caring boy she had fallen for many years before. He'd taken her out on a couple of spontaneous dates, he'd filled her with loving words, and not once did he make her question if they were meant to be together.

One. Whole. Week.

And she hoped it would last. Gabi hoped it would remain that way for as long as it could. Even with all the secrets between them. Sure, she had to wait until the late hours of the day to talk to Paul. Spending hours on the phone as she had done with Jake in the beginning, learning the smallest intricacies of his personality. Everything that made him him.

Gabriella couldn't stop the giddiness that filled her veins every time the phone rang. There was a pull to the boy that she did not understand. Something mystical that tugged at her heartstrings and sang the song of Paul Lahote. But she was too scared to answer that call, to listen to the chords that made up his name. How could her heart call to someone she hardly knew? How could she want someone else when she had spent so many years beating for another?

There was a complexity to her feelings that she could not decipher. Her head told her it was delusion. That she had only begun to gravitate toward Paul when Jake and she had hit their first obstacle. And although that obstacle had yet to be removed –Bella was always a lingering presence in everyone's life—Gabriella was seeing a way through it. Paul had been kind and comforting in a time when –even if she could not admit it—she was scared of Jake, petrified by his anger. The girl simply couldn't bring herself to believe it could be anything more than that. She simply wouldn't.

Jacob Black was it for her, she could almost bet her life on it.

Well, only for the time things were good. '

But Gabriella seemed to forget from her time in Forks that things never remained the same for too long. Laughter died, the sun stopped shining, and Jacob's painted-on mask could shatter in a split second.

School had started in the rez as well as in Forks. Teenagers spilled into the halls of the high school, mutterings about their winter vacations muddling into each other. It made Gabi's heart beat faster to be around other students once more. Two years had passed since she had been inside a physical school and she had grown accustomed to her mother and a slow computer to be her teachers. She felt odd and out of place and wondered how Bella had felt walking through these very walls only a year prior to her. And she could have asked her. Her older sister was walking right beside her and she could have asked her if the staring ever died down, or if feeling nervous was normal.

Alas, Bella would not have answered, and Gabi was resigned to keeping those questions buried deep within her. Her sister was out of her room and in the school, and that was all she could ask for. The zombie-like girl guided her to the office, where she was met with a red-haired woman with a bright smile.

"Well, it seems the Swan duo is finally complete," she said. Her glasses slid off her nose slightly as she looked at Gabriella through the top of the spectacles. "I've got your schedule right here. And though I'm sure Bella will show you around, I've added a map of the school as well with the best routes to get to your classes."

"Uh, thanks," Gabi forced a smile as she felt her cheeks warm in embarrassment. She expected to be known in the school, but she never thought that it would feel so invasive. "This is very helpful."

"Of course, Gabriella," she smiled. "Can't believe just last year I was giving your sister a similar folder."

"Yeah, time sure does fly."