Song for the start of the chapter!

Stella's POV

With a heavy face, I sat down in my seat at school and looked to see if Gray was in his seat. It was empty, telling me he had not been in school for days. Grayson's seat had been empty for four days in a row now, which made me worry.

The last time I saw him was that late night when the beast attacked me. That beast still haunted my mind at the most unexpected times. It was in my dreams, in the corners of my eye, in the shadows, following me down the road at night. I had so many questions about what I saw that night and I wanted him them. Once I had answers, I would have peace of mind.

I thought school was the perfect place to corner him and demand answers, but as another day passed by; I had a feeling that he wasn't coming back.

It was as if something more happened that night that I didn't know; I was sure of it. I saw the look on his step mothers face; I saw too much, and they left because of it. His step mom looked so concerned as she dropped me off as if she was worried that I would change everything. She was afraid of me. But couldn't she tell that I wouldn't say anything? I cared about Grayson, probably more than anyone else, and I would do nothing to hurt him. I just wanted answers for my own use, I had no goals of making it to the front page.

Last night I went to his house, hoping to find him. I stayed on his porch for 30 minutes in the snow and cold, thinking he would come, but there was no sign of him nor his stepmother. That alone worried me, he was nowhere to be seen, and I was getting desperate now, to the point that I called him several times, but it went straight to voice mail.

In no time, I found myself at the end of the school day, waiting for Bec to pick me up. Gray did not show up once, nor was he brought up in conversation. It was as if no one cared he was gone or that he had been missing for days.

Breaking me from my quiet thoughts was when Alice sat beside me on the bench by the school front door. "Hey girl!" Alice said as she wrapped her arm around my neck, pulling me closer to her.

"Hey... what's up?"

"Nothing," she shrugged as she looked out the school front door.

I smiled at her, then looked back at the window, hoping that I wouldn't have to wait long. We hadn't talked about the party and how she wanted to kiss me. I thought about bringing it up a few different times, but the moment never seemed right, maybe it would never be right. She was in love with her boyfriend and I was, in her words, 'obsessed' with Gray. Plus, I didn't like her like that, at least I was pretty sure I didn't. "Have you heard from Gray recently?"

She shook her head as she looked at her freshly painted nails, as if they held more interest than this conversation. "Nope. I would think you would hear from him before I did."

She had a point in that. "I am just worried about him."

She shrugged. "That's nothing new. You are always worried about him," she pointed out as she stood up from her seat. "Hey, do you need a ride home?"

I shook my head with a smile, trying to be as nice as possible. Lately, Alice had irritated me because of the lack of concern she had with Gray. "Bec is coming, but thanks for the offer."

"Sure thing."

For a moment we were silent, but the silence that filled the space between us was short-lived. I knew she was thinking about something, but I couldn't tell what it was exactly.

"Stella, I don't get it. You guys aren't friends anymore. You haven't talked in weeks, but you are still obsessed with him. But we are here, your best friends, and you haven't wanted to hang out with us. I don't know what is going on with you, but I tried to help you move on, since he is clearly not interested. You don't seem interested in that though, you just want to chase him around like a ghost."

I shook my head. Her words stung like a slap to the face, but she had some truth to them. I chased him because I knew he wanted to be friends still. Something deep within me told me he was in trouble, but no one believed me. Gray left without a word, in the dead of night with a stepmother he didn't like. There wasn't anything safe about that. Plus I knew he still wanted to be my friend, something was just stopping him.

"In my opinion, good riddance. Ever since he came with his hoodies, things haven't been right. It's like he's a bad omen"

Her statement was rude and uncalled for, and we both knew that. "I came in a hoodie," I retorted, defending him.

"You are so much different from him. Gray was never liked from the beginning, long before the rumor came out about him killing our classmate."

"So you think it's a rumor too." Alice had always said that rumor like it was a fact, she had never admitted that it was a rumor as well. I think she enjoyed believing that he did it, but deep down, she knew no one could prove it. So did he actually kill him? She would want to believe yes. She wanted him to be the outsider from the beginning, and this was perfect to fuel her war against him.

She frowned as Bec came rolling up in her car, saving me from this challenging conversation. "Some people aren't supposed to fit in."

That statement was incredibly unfair to me and I don't think she even realized how terrible it sounded. "And what made me fit in?" I asked with a frown. Because in my mind, I was no different from Gray. "Because we both came in hoodies, we were both outsiders. You just chose to hate one, but not the other. Why?"

She shrugged as if the answer was simple. "Because you became one of us. Gray would never become someone like us. He was too different, he came from a place that no one knew or understood. He would never model to our ways and for that, he would never fit it, always an outsider. Those rumors about him killing the classmate just sealed his fate even more." And with that, she walked off, leaving me alone in the hallway to think of the harsh facts of this school and this town.

Her comment made me sick to my stomach. I knew Alice wasn't a terrible person because she was a good friend and treated me with nothing but love. But that statement showed that Alice wasn't perfect and maybe no one in this town was. She and this school had these preconceived notions that were unrealistic to the world we lived in and I don't think she even realized this herself. It was as if they were deep in her psyche that she just regurgitated rehearsed lines when she heard keywords. Even if I shouted at her to explain why she was wrong, I don't think she would even realize it. She would just turn around and claim that she was the victim, and that Gray was the true criminal for even turning up in Jackson.

I gripped my backpack and swung it over my shoulder, then with heavy steps I made my way to Bec's car with a frown on face.

"Hey, what's that face for?" Bec asked as she rolled away, noticing that I didn't even say hello to her as I got into the car.

"It was just something that Alice said to me," I shrugged as I tried to formulate what I wanted to say to her. For a second I was silent as Bec drove out of the school lot. "Do you feel like you had to give up yourself to become someone from Jackson?"

She lifted her eyebrows in surprise at such a deep question. "Gosh.... let me think about that for a moment," she said.

I nodded as I looked out the window, willing to wait as long as it took to get the answers I wanted. The surrounding snow looked so picturesque but I knew that behind its perfect fallen state, the ground lay uneven and hole ridden. It reminded me of how people appeared so perfect on the surface, but underneath they hid their demons.

"To answer your questions, yes, I do feel like I changed to fit in. But it wasn't against my will. I wanted to change to do more activities outside and to be less of a city girl. It happened slowly until before I knew it, I wasn't who I was when I first moved here."

I nodded as her words sank in because in a way I felt the same way. It happened slowly but before long, I was this different person that liked biking with my father and going skiing with them. "Do you think people would like me less if I didn't fit in?"

She bit her lip as she thought about it. "I want to say no, because I would love you regardless of fitting in or not, but I am your family and I know high school can be brutal."

"Gray never fit in and I think that's why the school hated him from the start."

"A pleasant reminder why high school is terrible."

I nodded as I thought about it. "But you know, these people continue on after high school. They will grow up, have a family, and expect people to blend into their community. I have seen it," I said as I remembered my mother complaining about how the neighbor across the street always cooked outside and spoke loudly. They were outsiders and for that, the street hated them, always complaining about them behind their backs.

She sighed with a frown, seeing my point. "I guess it is what it is."

But that statement frustrated me. It wasn't that simple and there could be changes to make it better. I wanted to see change, but she just shrugged her shoulders, ready to move on, which made me believe that so many other people thought the same thing. "For priding ourselves on being an individual thinking country, we don't like anything to be individual."

"So what do you recommend we do?"

This time, it was my turn to frown. It was a simple question, but the answer was complicated and long. It boiled down to acceptance and willing to see things differently, but that involved removing some unconscious bias that even I had. "I don't know."

She nodded as she turned into our neighborhood. "Well, give it time, think about time, and get back to me. I'll back you up as long as you have a solid game plan and then maybe we can start to change."

I smiled at the willingness she had to help with this concern I had.

"Changing topics now, we are going skiing tonight once Hank comes home. Want to join?"

I nodded as I got my backpack and got out of the car when Bec stopped in front of the house. "Sure, I'll go." I wouldn't say that I was a lover of skiing, but it was a lot better than I thought it was going to be. I just had to try it out before I made an opinion of it, just like so many other things in my life in Jackson.

She beamed at me. "Great."