RETURN || SCOTT MCCALL [1]

||5.01.2||

"We haven't seen this kid in years. You don't find that highly suspicious?" Stiles rants his concerns to Scott as the four of us enter the school just before midnight.

We managed to hightail it out of there and to the school after sending Liam, reluctantly, on his way back to the hospital, with strict caution for more murderers with blue talons.

Speaking of murderers...

"I'm kind of more concerned about the guy who just tried to kill me." Scott points out, and Stiles opens his mouth to argue, but ultimately shrugs in defeat.

Malia, who's been on her phone, suddenly gasps, catching our attention. " I'm in- I passed." Her wide brown eyes flit over the four of us in disbelief. "I'm officially a senior."

I smile at the werecoyote, proud. She's been studying her metaphorical tail off the whole summer, and even before that, always trying to learn and catch up. Missing basically all of middle school, and some of high school, she was a bit behind.

Well, a lot behind.

But she wanted to improve, and she wanted to pass, so with determination, and Stiles, Lydia, and I's help, and even summer school, which she hated, but stuck with, she managed to pass the proficiency test, and is now going to graduate with us.

"Congrats." I praise, and she grins, unbidden and wide, showing off her dimples.

"Thank God!" the voice of Lydia Martin sounds from down the hall, her heels clicking with it. "Where have you guys been? The whole senior class is here. Are we doing this or not?"

I link my arms with my best friend above all since I moved to Beacon Hills in the ninth grade when I was a bitchy, cold omega with daddy issues, immediately drawn to the ice queen of the school with daddy issues of her own. We clicked right away, and have been best friends ever since, and while our friendship has never changed, we definitely have, and definitely for the better.

And here we are now.

____

"This isn't vandalism, is it?"

I cringed at the sound of her voice, trying really hard not to snap, because while Kira and I were never really friends, but never really enemies, she threw any chance of ever becoming friends when she started seeing my ex-mate.

So ignoring her was the nicest I could be after six months.

"Not technically." Someone else answers her, thank God, and I may have let some of ninth grade Indi slip out when once she was done, I snatched the pen out of her hand, slightly pushing her aside without a glance.

Lydia kicked me for that, and werewolf or not, her pointy heels hurt!

My fingers ran over the big D.H., bigger than the others, smiling. I miss my former unofficial alpha, hoping he was well, and hoping one day in the future he'd return. Because I more than anyone understand the need to leave the past behind in this town.

"Really Stiles? S.S.?" I quirk an eyebrow at him, and he glares.

"Like hell I'm writing M.S. That is not how I want to be remembered." he quiffs, and I shrug.

"Understandable." Right under the rightfully S.S., I scribble I.D., a little bigger than the D.H., always defying the older male. "I would never want a mouthful like that as my legacy."

Stiles snorts. "Says the one named after a state."

Scott takes the pen from my hand then, our fingers brushing, and choking off my snarky retort, and I clear my throat to save face, feeling Lydia's arm wrap around me.

After he writes the S.M., that would be it. He would put the marker down, and we would walk away, off to sleep for a mere six hours before school the next morning.

But under the S.M., Scott McCall scribbles a careful A.A., and I lose my breath for a second time in the library.

Allison Argent.

Flashes of the huntress, my second best friend after Lydia, and at one point she was before Lydia, and at a different point, she was my rival. But it grew from there, and so did I, and then our friendship that was once held together by Lydia grew into an inseparable bond, and I couldn't imagine life without my best friend.

Until I forced to live it.

"She would have been with us." he explains, and no one argues, caught in our own memories of the brave huntress who sacrificed herself that night in order to save Lydia and I, and there's not a day that goes by that I don't think of her.

She would've been, and I can picture it clearly if she had been. She would've been over my house tonight with Lydia and I, crying with laughter at the nasty things I wrote in the Burn Book, probably agreeing to skip Senior Scribe in favor of Mean Girls- her favorite above all. She would've grabbed her crossbow, one she always had in her car, and come with me to the school after Liam's call. She would've laughed when Malia pinned my little brother to the wet concrete because she has that kind of humor no one understands, and it would've gotten me laughing, until we sobered at the mention of our ex-boyfriend. (Which wouldn't be a weird term to describe him, because that's exactly how she'd describe him.)  She would've had her crossbow hoisted in a defensive position, chin tilted in defiance at the blue taloned murderer. She would've smiled politely at the new wolf- Theo, and elbowed me suggestively, and I would've glared at her for being so obvious, but she would only laugh. And when we came back to the school for senior scribe she would've rolled her eyes at Stiles's rants, and she would've hugged Malia in congratulations for passing because she would've helped the coyote all summer as well, smiling in genuine joy. She would've linked her arms between Lydia and I, marching us down the hall to Senior Scribe. She would've been the one to push Kira aside at the bookshelf, and I'd have to choke back a laugh. She would've been here, making everything a bit funner (which she'd cringe at, she hates words that aren't words.) and brighter. And the fact that she fits so easily into my life, day after day proves she never really left.

"She still is." I whisper, and no one argues.

And I can picture her dimpled grin clearer than ever.