Bella Swan is in-between something and something else. She can feel it. She can.
She just doesn't know what those two things are.
Sometimes Bella sits in her room (not really her room, her room is back in Phoenix, but it is a room, and it's where she sleeps) and thinks about all of the things that she could possibly be in-between.
It's a long list.
She's in-between her parents. She's always been in-between her parents, in-between being a Swan and a Higginbotham. And lately she's been feeling more and more in-between two states. She's not in Phoenix, Arizona anymore, but she's not in Forks, Washington either.
Not all of her anyway. (During classes, when she thinks no one will notice, she closes her eyes and concentrates on the feeling of being on the verge of a sun burn. It's her favorite feeling in the world.)
She's in-between books at the moment. And friends.
It's not a good combination for her, it leaves her too much time to think and get lost, but that's life. She can't decide what she wants to read next, can't decide which book to give her life over to right now (that's what she does, give her life and heart and soul away to a book, just for a little while). The feeling is unsettling.
Being in-between friends isn't the same as being in-between books.
Being in-between friends makes her feel unsteady in the world. The Cullen's are gone, and so are the few friends she managed to make before that family wrapped themselves up in her life, in her soul. So she's left stumbling around school, her thoughts not quite grounded enough, yet far too present in the here and now.
Bella Swan is in-between worlds right now.
She can feel it, how she's starting to lose her grip on the things around her, the people around her. Sometimes things slip through her as though she isn't even really there. It's a disconcerting feeling, to be in-between life and death and something not quite… understandable.
Sometimes she walks out into the woods by herself. She stands in-between the trees, not looking at the forest around her, not listening to the noise, just being. She takes off her shoes and her socks and she digs her toes into the earth and she holds on to the dirt and the roots and the bugs with all of her strength. In-between trees, Bella Swan could float away. In-between the trees, Bella Swan could release her death grip on the earth, and she could simply go.
But she doesn't. Because somehow, impossibly, Bella Swan is leaning just the tiniest bit towards staying on the ground with her father. She's leaning, only slightly, towards reading Pride & Prejudice, and towards walking up to Jessica Stanley tomorrow and asking about that cute new coat.
Bella Swan is leaning towards life.
She's still in-between. But that little lean that she has is slowly bringing her back to something… definite.