Liquid Silver

Eight

The day Jem had at school had been so perfect she almost forgot about everything else that was going on.

It had been for the most part a perfectly normal day in the life of any private school teenage girl. By that, it meant the day was wildly chaotic and Jem's cheeks were practically sore from smiling and laughing so much.

Brett had picked up her up from her house in the morning, after Stiles and her dad had already left for school. She had done one of those one on one sessions in her mirror while she was drying her hair, repeating over and over; Jem Stillinski is going to have a good day.

If she was going to believe in werewolves and banshees and whatever else, then she was certainly going to believe in positive manifestation as well. The feeling of the wind blowing her hair back as she clung to his waist on his bike had been the closest thing Jem had felt to a healing experience in a long time.

They'd only spoken briefly about the Tracey and Donovan situation when he arrived to pick her up, and not enough to flatten her mood. Jem wasn't sure if it was out of stubbornness, or the fact that she had finally slept more than six hours that had made her so determined to stay positive, but Brett's company was making it easier regardless.

Unsurprisingly when they skidded to a stop in the school car park, hundreds of kids had already started to congregate outside the front doors before the bell called them inside. A lot of them looked over to the pair of them curiously, each pair of eyes dying to see what girl had managed to snag a ride off Brett Talbot. She tried not to meet any of their gazes as she pulled Lori's helmet off again, shaking out her hair as Brett fastened them back into the carry-box on the back of his bike.

"You training today?" He asked her as she flattened her school skirt back down, trying to fix the pleats as neatly as she could.

"Duh" Jem responded, already aching to get back on the field. Last week she and Brett had flown through tryouts without a bother. Only a handful of the team last year were seniors, so about only two new freshmen had joined them and a couple of other sophomores and juniors. Any senior who wanted to play was already on the team by their fourth year of high school, and if they weren't then it was unlikely their fourth tryout would end any differently than the last three years. The new team hadn't trained altogether as a unit yet and Jem was dying to start getting used to them all, moving as one on the field again.

She spotted Maisie, Beth and Cole arriving a few spaces down the road, hopping out of Maisie's stunning new four wheel drive. Jem figured she might get a birthday cake and some new sports gear for her sixteenth birthday, maybe tickets to the football or lacrosse if she was lucky. Maisie meanwhile was swinging a brand new set of keys around her finger.

Brett noticed that she had seen them. "See you at lunch then?" He asked, leaning against the seat of his bike which was propped precariously on the stand. Not a lot of guys would have been able to balance without knocking it over. Jem was now standing between his parted feet, legs on either side of her and fidgeting with the collar of his blazer without really thinking about it.

"Don't we have homeroom?" She asked. She hadn't realised he'd been staring at her and couldn't help smile when she met his gaze. "What?"

"Nothing" He smiled back, planting a kiss on her mouth with his thumb gently on her chin. Her mind was woolly and giddy but she managed to concentrate. She could see Maisie and Beth elbowing each other excitedly.

"Come on" she took his hands, leaning backwards to pull him up off the bike again. "It's Monday, we do have homeroom"

She had decided he was going to meet her friends. It wasn't that she was going to make them all into one big happy family. She knew Brett already had his group of friends, kids he'd known since middle school. They were always messing around in the cafeteria and most of them were on the lacrosse team with them both. She didn't know any of them massively well but at least she'd spoken to them all once or twice before.