Defining Normal | EMBRY CALL

Transit

The first time Embry thinks about turning the car around is forty minutes in - forty minutes of pressing the pedal as far down as it'll go, almost willing the cops to pull him over. The plan is a colossal mistake, after all; there's no way to break the imprint, and even if there was, it would destroy the tribe, and it would sure as hell blow up everyone's lives like a fucking modern-day Hiroshima. He knows it, Kim knows it, and he knows that Lex knows it. And still, she's asking for him to do the one most destructive thing he could possibly do.

Sometimes, she can be a real asshole.

It's times like this, the days when she makes him want to tear his hair out, that he thinks that imprinting on a girl like Kim would have been easier. Simpler. Kim rolled with the punches, letting the whole shape-shifting revelation wash over her like water off a duck's back, as if accepting Jared was as easy as breathing. Kim embraced her new life with pure enthusiasm, or at least, with a lot less trepidation than Lex. After awhile, most people tended to come to the realisation that sometimes, things just happened to you, whether you liked it or not.

He would have thought that Lex, of all people, would have realised that by now.

The needle of the speedometer twitches, edging dangerously close to an even one hundred miles per hour. He squeezes his eyes shut for a second, welcoming the blackness with a little too much enthusiasm. Just like the truck, his life is careering out of control faster than he can correct, and, this time, there are no guard rails to protect him. Instead, he's strapped into a course of action, figuratively and literally hurtling towards an unavoidable wreck. None of it was meant to be like this; none of it was meant to hurt. She wasn't meant to hurt.

Imprinting wasn't meant to be like this.

Embry remembers the first time he'd heard about imprinting, when Billy had told them the story of the Great Fire in the summer of sixth grade. Like all great revelations in his life, it had taken place on the rocks of First Beach, though Embry wouldn't realise the significance of the land until years later. If he focuses hard enough, he can almost taste the smoky air on his tongue, feeling the same trepidation and wonder that had washed over him years ago. Jacob nor Quil had believed the tale, considering it to be yet another horrifying myth spun around the bonfire, but it had stuck with Embry regardless. He'd lay awake that night, staring at the cloth ceiling of the tent they'd pitched in the Black's yard, imagining himself as one of the warriors. What would it be like, seeing everything you loved and held dear burn around you? What would it be like to lose everyone you'd ever loved in one fell swoop? He didn't have too many people to die protecting, but the thought of adding one extra special person into the mix - the fabled imprint - was a little thrilling. Protecting the tribe was a sacrifice; the promise of a perfect love was a fair trade-off. Of course, none of it was real, he'd reasoned in his little sixth-grade mind, but part of him still longed to become a spirit warrior, if only for the romance of the thing. It seemed noble, admirable, even, a kind of legacy you'd want to leave for your ancestors.

Six years later, he can't help but realise how entirely wrong he was. He'd thought imprinting to be this incredible, revelatory thing, something that brought two halves of a whole together into some perfect union. The reality, though, was far more lacklustre. Sam and Emily had been the blueprint, and their complete failure to achieve that idealised romance should have sounded the mental warning bell. Sam had irrevocably harmed the person he was slated to protect above all, and how could you undo that? No amount of apologies and penance could take away the trauma created by one errant swipe of a monstrous paw. Jared and Kim were next, and though she had emerged physically unscathed, Embry couldn't help but think about her words from earlier in the day. In joining with Jared, she'd departed from herself, melding their personalities into one palatable approximation of two previously independent beings. There was no Kim, only KimAndJared, one super-being, a model of what life could be like if Embry could just imprint. Her without him didn't matter: life had become a dual effort, and their only option was to muddle through the mess.