"I promise that I'll never fall in love with you. Cross my heart, hope to die."
"Here's to hoping."
Harper Young was sure that moving in with her aunt would be an improvement. It wasn't. This was all due to three tiny little problems.
1) Embry Call...
" I don't have a feeling of inferiority. Never had. I'm as good as anybody, but no better. "
- Katherine Johnson
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Discovery
"Dude, stop staring," Quil had whispered to his friend. Embry finally tore his eyes away from the laughing and happy go lucky group. Or rather one person.
Harper Young was starting to annoy Embry. He wasn't sure if it was because she got all the answers right in class. Or actively argued with the teachers when they were in fact wrong. Or that she had taken to calling him Embryo. In short, Harper was grating on his nerves and he couldn't wait to get the project over and done with.
Quil, Jake, and Sage (who had started sitting with them when she wasn't in the library with Harper) all looked at him with raised eyebrows and knowing expressions. Oh, yeah. Another annoying thing was that his entire friend group was sure he was harboring a crush on the girl.
Like that would ever happen.
"I'm not staring, I'm observing," he stated pointedly. It was a lie and they all knew it.
Sage and Jake both snorted. The girl wiped a fake tear from her eye. "Oh, Embry," she chuckled, "I didn't know you were funny!"
Embry glared as the three laughed. "I'm just confused why she's hanging with them," he defended himself.
That was the real mystery. La Push was a small reservation, everybody knew everybody and aunties gossiped. Everyone seemed to know Harper had family here and she's staying with them, but as to why she had started hanging around Sam Uley and his lookalikes was beyond most of them. They all acted like she was their younger sister or something.
"Okay, you got me there," Quil admitted with hums of agreement from Jake.
Sage looked unconvinced. "Why should it matter?" She asked the group.
Jake, Quil, and Embry were all trying to stutter out a response. "Be-because they're druggies! They do steroids and who knows what else, they-they're like a gang!" Jake had said between clenched teeth at the girl who looked at him cooly.
"I just think you don't like them because your dad totally approves of them." Sage had struck a nerve and Jake had clammed up, digging into the sandwich he brought from home.
Quil shook his head. "I don't like them because they look at me like they know something I don't and it's kind of terrifying," he said earnestly. Jake pointed his sandwich at him and nodded, black hair flowing with the motion.
"Also," Embry added with a smile playing on the corner of his mouth, "I definitely think they're overcompensating."
Harper was a goal-oriented person, a busy body if you will. Yet with no Claire to look after and Emily promising that she didn't have to do chores (it was what Sam was for, she had joked), Harper was getting bored. She had her review homework, the only new thing she was learning the Quileute language. And so her job hunt had begun. She wouldn't mind having some extra money in her pockets or something to help Emily out.
