love, callie [p.l.]

one | stolen glances

FOR THE LIFE OF HER, CALLIOPE BLACK NEVER understood why her cousins had wanted to leave the reservation behind. Rachel and Rebecca had always been rather restless, always curious about the skyscrapers and subway trains and everything else the cities of the world had to offer. Growing up, the twins had always talked about moving; and when their mother and Callie's mother both died, it caused their wanderlust to grow. 

"I just... I can't stand it here anymore," Rachel had told Callie one night, the latter of the two girls lying on Rachel's bed and watching her fill out college applications. "I feel like this place is smothering me, Cal. And it's not the same without Mom and Aunt Nora here anymore, you know?"

That part, at least, Callie did understand. Even now, years after Sarah and Nora's deaths,Callie still felt like there was something missing and she knew that feeling probably wouldn't ever go away. Yet even so, the Quileute girl could never imagine leaving the reservation behind. She loved the trees and the wildflowers, and she loved the bonfires her people would have every summer. She loved listening to her uncle tell the legends of their ancestors, and pestering Jake to teach her how to help him fix up cars, and meeting up with Kim to walk the trails down to the beach together. And, sure, maybe nothing exciting ever really happened there, but Callie was content with her life. La Push was apart of who she was. She couldn't imagine leaving it behind.

This was why, as her teacher nagged at her class about the need to start looking into colleges so they could apply for them at the beginning of their senior year, Callie truthfully didn't pay much attention. Neither did Jake, for the two of them had agreed that they didn't want to leave anywhere. Callie was going to take online classes for the first year following graduation, and then she'd finish her schooling at the community college nearby. Her cousin, on the other hand, planned on attending the technical school to get an auto mechanic degree so he could eventually open his own mechanics shop. They already had everything planned out so that they wouldn't have to leave Billy behind. He was heartbroken when his daughters left; if Jacob and Calliope left, too, he'd be even more hurt.

Billy Black was one of Callie's favorite people. He was technically her uncle, but for all intents and purposes he was more of a dad to her than her ghost of a father had ever been. Growing up, Callie had always wondered why she didn't have a dad, but it wasn't until she was eight did Nora finally sit her down and talk to her about it. In the nicest, simplest way she knew how to put it, Nora told her daughter that in high school she had fallen in love with a boy named Theo Mason. But when they found out Callie was on the way, Theo decided he was far too young to have a child and left. So when she was born, Nora gave the baby girl her family's last name— Black— and raised her without him.

Calliope was sixteen years old now, and still her father had never made an appearance in her life. She didn't know what he looked like, where he'd left to, or what he'd been doing all these years. She didn't know if he ever wondered about her, if he planned on ever trying to contact her. But the thing that bothered her the most, somehow, was the fact that he probably didn't even know her mother was dead now.

The authorities had suggested trying to contact Theo in regards to Callie's placement after Nora's death. They wanted her to live with her biological father,  but Billy had practically jumped down their throats in refusal. Callie remembered sitting on Jacob's bed a few days after Nora and Sarah's joint funeral, hugging her knees to her chest as she cried at the thought of having to leave what was left of her family. Rachel and Rebecca had sat on either side of her and comforted the nine year-old girl, while Jacob had stubbornly started pushing his desk in front of his door. "They can't take you if they can't get in!" He had said determinedly, for even though they could all hear Billy throwing a fit to the people in the kitchen. Jacob still wanted to make sure Callie wouldn't be taken.