Chapter One

I hated parties, and tonight was not an exception to this rule. Somehow, though, I was still excited, butterflies dancing jerkily in my stomach as my heart pounded out an embarrassingly uneven bassline.

I swear it was loud enough for Rose to pick up on; she stared at me oddly through those feather duster lashes, cornflower blue eyes examining my face intently. I tried to smile at her, but she just arched an eyebrow in disbelief. She knew me almost better than I knew myself.

Thankfully, her attention was diverted as the door to my bedroom banged open, causing Lauren, one of the many 'friends' I had made when I first came to Forks and didn't know any better, to trail garish pink lipstick across her cheek.

Jazz, Rose's twin, snickered softly at the effect of his entrance and turned to me.

"Bells, we oughta get moving, party started at like 8, right Rose?"

She nodded coolly, and Jasper scowled. What got him? He was usually the calm one. In response to my questioning glance, he turned the face of his special edition Toywatch towards me.

"Can't we just blow it off?" I whined. We could hang out here, play drinking games, just Rose, Jazz, Alice and I. And then I realised. Alice. Alice was already at the party, having travelled straight there after her return flight from Chicago, and now she'd be there alone, without her guardian angels to turn away Tyler's false apologies and hold her hand when she saw him with someone else. Ah, shit.

Jazz floored the accelerator the whole way there, ignoring the protesting squeals of Lauren and her equally skanky cousin, Jessica. We arrived in record time- 7 minutes.

Rose and I jumped out of the car, leaving Jazz with the other two and scanning the mass of intoxicated bodies for the elfin, spiky-haired figure that completed our trio.

We found her in the tiny galley kitchen, perched precariously on the countertop, skinny legs swinging against the cupboards as she lectured some poor greasy haired kid with a skin problem on Dior Homme and Lanvin and how oil and ketchup marked jeans and yesterday's shirt really did not constitute suitable party gear. She looked up, and a smile spread across her gorgeous face. She launched herself off of the counter, completely forgetting about the

poor guy she'd been preaching to as she wrapped us both up in an enormous hug, her strength once again amazing me.

'Bel-la, you tried to ditch, didn't you?' she giggled at me. Rose rolled her eyes expressively. 'When does she not?!', she snickered. It was true, of course. While my two best girlfriends in the whole world were the original party queens, I would much rather spend an evening tucked up with Cathy and Heathcliff and a family-size block of chocolate. Losing myself in books is what I did best.

About to give my best, most sarcastic retort, we were rudely interrupted by what at first seemed to be a single entity stumbling into the kitchen, and turned out to be two people glued together. Alice blanched, and I distinguished Tyler's face as he came up for air. He looked at us, horrified, and the girl turned around, clearly irritated at the distraction. Lauren. Oh, yuck. They deserved each other, and Rosalie said as much later, as we cradled Alice in the back of Jazz's car, her waifish form shaking. We needed to get out of here, away from freaking Tyler, away from Lauren and Jessica, who were probably double teaming him right now, away from stupid Forks High and away from the constant, depressing fog and drizzle that characterised our home state of Washington.

Curled up back at mine, with the dark shut out and our bodies warmed by the glowing fire in the living room, we plotted. 'We'll have to wait 'til college', Rose, ever the realist, sighed.

'No!' Alice ran a hand through the nest of spikes atop her head, 'Boarding school. Remember, Renee wanted to send Bella instead of her coming here?'

'That could work' Jazz mused 'I bet dear Monsieur et Madame Hale would love it. They wouldn't have to come home at all then.'

Rose sighed again. Her parents' absence took a far greater toll on her than she cared to admit- they were rarely even on the same continent, their wine business being based in Southern France. She had felt the lack of a mother keenly through her teenage years.

Alice slipped a comforting arm through hers and grinned. 'Actually, my parents were already planning on sending me away. Some place in London, near all the other Brandons'

'Hang on' I said, startled. 'London?'

'Mhmmm', she concurred through a mouthful of grilled cheese. 'Well, just outside. It's this closed campus place, it looks pretty cool. There's no uniform!' she added excitedly. 'That means shopping. Lots of it.'

'But that's across the Atlantic, Ali! The whole system is different there!' I exclaimed. London was a bit further than I had been thinking. Seattle, maybe?!

'It's not too bad, actually' Jazz smiled as he considered it. 'We're all sixteen now, so we'd have two years left of school over there. It's pretty awesome; you pick like three, four subjects and that's all you have to study, plus, y'know, extracurriculars and stuff..'

'Maybe, but still, London?!' I repeated my earlier anxieties. Renee, my mother, had wanted to send me away when she travelled with her new husband, Phil, a minor league baseball player, and I had refused, instead moving in with Charlie, my father. She would, in all honesty, probably be delighted if I changed my mind, as would Charlie, who led a solitary life of work and fishing and struggled to hold a conversation about anything else, making life with his teenage daughter more than a little awkward. Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing- even Rosalie was smiling now and I had to join in.

Alice took this as victory, and immediately logged into my computer, tapping keys until a navy webpage with white script loaded on the screen. 'This is it' she said, a shiteating grin spreading across her face. 'The Tower School, just outside London, so named because the oldest part of it is this awesomely tall tower. The rest got burned down in like, the eighties, so it's the only historical bit left. The rest is all modernist, glass and steel.' It was stunning- photos showed the new buildings curving elegantly around an enormous courtyard, a huge, knotted oak tree in the centre. The tower formed the end of one of the modern buildings, blackened and gothic in contrast to the clean lines of the rest of the school. My mouth opened, and before I could help myself, I was saying 'Yes. Hell, yes!'

We formulated our plans straight through the night, the sun glowing on the horizon before we 'had things straight', as Alice put it. I woke to the flickering of the dying fire, our old station clock informing me that it was three in the afternoon. The clattering and cursing coming from the kitchen made me giggle, and I joined Jazz there, letting the others sleep.

His second attempt at pancakes was successful, and I doused them liberally in syrup as Rose shuffled in, sunlight highlighting her glorious features more perfectly than any Hollywood cinematographer. The movie version of bedhead; if I didn't love the girl so much I would loathe her just for her ability to be flawless, always. Alice wasn't much easier to take, her ebony chop and elfin features making her a modern day Audrey Hepburn. Ugh. I knew what I looked like at that moment: Medusa, with rats' tail hair and mascara-blackened eyes.

We gossiped over our breakfast, taking our sweet time and just enjoying the easy camaraderie between us- it often felt as though this was my real family, as opposed to Charlie and Renee. Much as I loved the two of them, it often felt as though I was the parent, and I never really felt at home in either of their environments. I had made up my mind to call Renee the minute everyone left and tell her that I had changed my mind about looking into boarding schools. I would tell Charlie when he got back from the station- he was police chief in Forks, one of the many reasons I hated it here, although I would never tell him that.

Alice and Rose were bickering over the last pancake, Jazz laughing at the ever growing ridiculousness of their comments. His gaze lingered most frequently on Alice as she tussled animatedly with his twin, and once again I wondered about his feelings for her- they were clearly more than platonic and at times, it seemed that Ali felt the same way. Nothing had ever happened beyond drunken kisses, though, and although Rose and I had often discussed prodding them firmly in the right direction, we'd never actually acted on these plots, trusting that they'd sort themselves out in their own time. I giggled along with them, until Alice gave up, Rose triumphantly stuffing the sticky, sweet pancake into her mouth in one go.

We would be okay, our little family.