Jared Cross is a year older than Toby, but in the same grade due to having been held back a year. They met within Toby’s first few days of school, in the cafeteria.
History[]
Nervous and intimidated around the other kids, who all seemed to have already formed cliques and friend groups that Toby was too shy to try to join in on, he found a seat at a corner table away from everyone, and just tried to be invisible. This didn’t work out when a huge (from Toby’s perspective) older boy with an aura roiling with negative emotions approached the table, and stood staring at him for a moment with an expression Toby couldn’t read but was sure meant he was going to be giving up his lunch soon… but the boy only asked if anyone was sitting in the seat across from him, as he had usually sat there last year. Toby wordlessly shook his head, the other boy took the seat, and they spent the rest of their lunch time eating and awkwardly avoiding making eye contact.
The two spent about a week with this arrangement, neither one talking much to the other but getting used to the other’s company. This ended after Toby became friends with Bridget King. She started sitting with Toby at lunch, and pretty much forcibly dragged Jared out of his self-imposed shell. The three began talking, and soon the basis of a solid friendship was founded.
As Toby spent more time with Jared, he realized that the dark emotions that were all he could see with his faulty Sight were mostly uncertainty, guilt, and self-directed anger, rather than the more outwardly violent emotions he had misinterpreted. In fact, while shyness was certainly a factor, the main reason Jared didn’t talk much with Toby initially was out of a fear of accidentally offending him. Around people he’s comfortable with, he is actually very outgoing and talkative, sometimes to a fault.
The latter was a ticking time bomb, as Jared, while never deliberately cruel, also has a bit of a temper problem, which flares up especially when being made fun of or seeing others in the same position. The year before he met Toby this led to a suspension from school after he started a physical brawl with another kid who had been relentlessly taunting him, and wound up injuring the other boy enough that he needed stitches (or the futuristic equivalent). The resulting stress from the follow-up disciplinary action, his own shame over actually hurting someone, and further alienation from his peers who now looked at him with nervousness and fear as well as annoyance, all resulted in him being unable to catch up after the time missed from school, hitting his grades hard and preventing him from moving up at the end of the year.
Suddenly being the oldest and biggest kid in his class didn’t help Jared’s self-image. He had already disliked himself for his social clumsiness, taking it as a personal failing every time he was told he’d said something rude or was being too loud, and now he started thinking of himself as stupid and slow on top of that. He began training himself to not talk, lest he say the wrong thing at the wrong time, and stopped trying to interact with his classmates. He lost enthusiasm for school topics he had previously loved, such as history and math, greatly worrying his parents.
Having two close friends who seemed to like him regardless of his social slip-ups helped Jared pull himself out of this gloomy downward spiral and start enjoying life again. He and Toby grew naturally into somewhat of a big brother-little brother dynamic. When not being made to feel unwelcome, Jared is much more of a natural extrovert than Toby, more confident in taking risks, and will take the lead and push forward in situations where Toby might hold back (for good or ill). Much like Toby, Jared hates to see people unhappy, and he will pull out all the stops to cheer Toby up and suggest fun activities whenever he sees his younger friend start to wallow in guilt.
Personality[]
Jared is on the autism spectrum, and especially as a child often has difficulty reading other peoples’ moods. Combined with a tendency to be bluntly honest and an inability to censor himself, this often leads to him unintentionally coming across as nitpicky, rude and insensitive. He also has a tendency to interrupt people and speak very loudly at inappropriate times, annoying his peers and adults unfamiliar with his circumstances (or who just don’t care). While a kind and generous person by nature, he had difficulty socializing with other kids due to this – he tended to get labeled “the annoying weird kid” and be ignored/excluded, while for others he was a target for teasing and bullying.
He’s interested in history (both pre- and post-Transcendence, though he focuses on the former in college – it’s the really ancient stuff that gets him to geek out. He eventually writes his thesis on how the A.T. perspective has influenced the study and viewing of B.T. history), religion, math, and astronomy. He has a good memory for details like names and dates, but struggles a bit with less organizable details.
His most prized possessions are his grandmother’s old war medals that she gave him before her death… and a mysterious slice of magically-regenerating pizza that he found in his bedroom closet one day. He has no idea where it came from, but he feels somehow that it was destiny for him to find it…
Relationships[]
Dipper Pines[]
He finds Toby’s dad a little confusing, but quickly comes to like him. The man is definitely more than a little odd, to say the least – no one who was there is forgetting the crazy events of Toby’s tenth birthday party anytime soon – but overall seems like a nice guy, whom Jared just has a natural instinct to trust. Tyrone seems to be rather fond of his charge’s friend as well – he always gets a bit of a nostalgic look about him when seeing the two kids play together. He always speaks to Jared as though he was an old friend, and never talks down to him or makes him feel bad about not recognizing social cues. (Plus he has a cool hat!) Basically, Jared loves both the Pines (and Maddie late on) and would do anything for their family.
Toby Pines[]
Their friendship is not without some bumps over the years – before he eventually gets better at recognizing the social cues that don’t come easy to him, Jared will sometimes hurt Toby’s feelings without realizing it, Toby will feel that he deserves it/doesn’t want to upset his friend by bringing it up, Jared eventually figures by the way Toby starts acting that he said something insulting but doesn’t know what, and the two fall into a mutual funk of melancholy until someone (usually Bridget or sometimes Dipper) can’t stand it anymore and makes them sit down and talk things out – but they make it through with their bond stronger than ever, and remain close friends into adulthood.
Appearance[]
Average height and build, about midway between Toby and Bridget when they’re adults (for a while after his first few growth spurts he could – and did on more than a few occasions – carry Toby around on his shoulders), dark brown skin, freckles, black hair that always ends up in childish curls no matter how much he tries to comb it straight. (In high school and college he tries to grow it out and force it into a ponytail, his ideal of coolness, but it never gets long enough for him to really pull it off.) He often wears a hat (a different one for each day of the week, and he loves them all) to hide the curls.