Disclaimer: This is inspired by one of SMeyer's outtakes from "New Moon" that her editor (wisely!) told her to delete. There is some language from both the outtake and "NM" in here, but I lay claim to none of it.
Looking for the epilogue of "Getting Warmer"? It's been posted.
Chapter 1:
"That's it, Bella!" Charlie's voice erupted in my ears as I stared at the small white bowl on the bumpy veneer of the kitchen table without really registering that it was filled with something that I was supposed to eat. Cereal. My head snapped up in surprise.
"I'm sending you to Renee, to Jacksonville," Charlie went on, his voice harsh, as he glared at me from across the table. "You can't spend your days moping around, doing nothing."
"I am not moping around. I am not doing nothing," I protested, my mind jumpstarted from its usual torpor. "I have a job, I have school and all my homework, and the house." I stared pointedly at his plate, still filled with the toast and eggs that I'd made for him.
"Wrong word," he conceded. "You are not doing nothing. But you are … lifeless. I just want you to not be miserable. I think you'll have a better chance if you get out of Forks." I knew what he was leaving unsaid for now: I want you away from memories of that boy, that boy who made you run away to Phoenix and break your leg, that boy who left and never called or sent letters or gave any indication that he knew you still existed.
"I'm not leaving," I muttered. The last thing I wanted was to go to Jacksonville. The last thing I wanted was my mother's constant questions, her inevitable attempts to make me "talk it out," to try to be my best friend, the role in my life she was most comfortable with. While Charlie's worry hung heavy in the air between us, it wasn't his natural inclination to pry. He was a small-town cop – when he broke up the party at Tyler Crowley's parentally unsupervised house, he didn't ask who had brought the liquor. His goal was to keep the peace.
Today, he was venturing way out of his comfort zone. "Why not?" he demanded.
"I'm in my last semester of school – it would screw everything up."
"You're a good student. You'll … figure everything out," he said, his assurance fading a bit at the end.
That gave me my opportunity. "Yes, I'm a good student, and I want to go to Udub, and we'll be able to swing that only if I can pay in-state tuition," I pointed out. "If I go to Jacksonville, I won't be a resident of Washington. I won't even be counted as a resident of Florida, so I'd have to wait a year to start college there, and even so, Washington's better than University of Florida. " I wasn't playing fair – I wasn't sure I had all my facts right, but Charlie wouldn't be able to tell if I was wrong.
It worked. Charlie sat speechless, obviously trying to come up with a rebuttal. But what was he going to say? "Sure, no problem, I can pay $24,000 a year instead of $7,000"? I took advantage of his silence to dump my uneaten cereal and grab my school bag.
"Speaking of school, I need to get there. I have a calculus test," I said. "See you tonight."
The next Saturday, I used my break at work to drive over to Forks Federal Bank to deposit my paycheck. Not for the first time, I cursed the Newtons' apparent inability to put me on direct deposit and the bank's apparent reluctance to have an outside ATM. For there was, as every time I deposited my minimum wages into my meager account, Mrs. Stanley at the teller's window.
"Good afternoon, Bella," Jessica's mother greeted me.
"Hello, Mrs. Stanley," I said with reflexive politeness despite her openly appraising stare. Yeah, yeah, I knew what she was thinking – after all, I was the ex-associate of the mysteriously disappeared town freaks, the zombie daughter of the police chief's wife who bolted. I slapped my deposit slip on the orange-trimmed brown laminate counter, startling her from her survey of my purple-shadowed eyes. "Time to put in my huge paycheck."
"Tell me about it," she said conspiratorially, her stiff curls bobbing with her nod. I might look like a rather unattractive vampire, but she and I could share the lament of the American working class. She started pecking at the keys of her computer terminal; I dug the toe of my right shoe into the bank's gray carpeting.
"Huh." Mrs. Stanley's exclamation was abnormally high-pitched, and an unwonted curiosity stirred.
"Is something wrong?" I asked. I couldn't imagine that the Newtons were trying to pass bad checks; their business was too good, and my paycheck too paltry.
"No, no, " she mumbled quickly before looking up at me with some sort of ill-concealed excitement. "Would you like a printout of your recent deposits?"
I was about to say no, but her almost visibly vibrating body made me change my mind. "Sure," I said. Mrs. Stanley hit a key, and the printer spit out a sheet of paper.
I stared at it in shock. Instead of the $1,500 and change that I expected, my account balance was listed as $21,036.50. A deposit of $20,000 made three weeks ago was nestled among the monotonous entries of Newton paychecks. It was a wire transfer, with no name attached.
I raised my head to see Mrs. Stanley's eager eyes. However this turned out, mistake or deliberate, innocent or criminal, it would be fodder for conversation at the Stanley dinner table and Shear Madness and the Thriftway. But I had to ask. "Could you tell me more about where this comes from?" I said, pointing at the anomalous entry.
Jessica's mother looked down at her monitor again. "Well, it's from another bank, " she said.
Thank you, Mrs. Stanley, for that brilliant insight.
"But from whom?" I persisted.
"I'll have to ask Charlotte … Charlotte, are you busy?" she called out. Charlotte Gerandy walked out from the manager's office in the back and after greeting me, leaned down to peer over Mrs. Stanley's shoulder. The two murmured together for a few minutes.
"Sorry about this, Bella, " Mrs. Gerandy eventually said. "I'll need to make a phone call to track this down."
Fifteen irritating minutes later, Mrs. Gerandy called me into her office. As I sat in front of her desk, and Mrs. Stanley, I knew, lurked on the other side of the closed door, she told me all about my unexpected and thrilling scholarship from the Pacific Northwest Trust. The $20,000 down, $5,000 a month till "the end of your college career," no-strings-attached, J. Nicholls Scholarship. Paid directly into the account of a girl who wasn't at the top of her class even in tiny Forks, Wash. Mrs. Gerandy, looking increasingly perplexed, gave me the contacts of the scholarship "administrator" and ineffectually tried to answer my expressions of disbelief – and something more.
For the first time in four months, I felt an emotion other than desolation.
It was anger.
That bastard.
I spent the rest of my afternoon at work fuming, enough of my anger showing on my face that Mike Newton looked at me in astonishment when I returned from the bank, and then made sure to give me a wide berth.
There were no restrictions on the money, Mrs. Gerandy had told me, though the intent was clear: Be a good girl, go to school. But there were other possible interpretations, and they assailed me as I showed customers backpacks and fishing poles, ran credit cards and made change. You can't find me, but my lawyer will keep tabs on you. I'll be able to forget about you, but you'll remember me every time you pay a bill.
That controlling bastard.
Then, as I waited outside the dressing room to hand a woman a larger size in hiking pants, even worse occurred to me: This will guarantee your silence. That thought made me nauseated.
My stomach was roiling still as I made dinner for Charlie, boiling water and sautéing bacon for amatriciana sauce. My father, sitting at the kitchen table reading the newspaper, looked up at me, startled by the racket as I banged pots and pans with unnecessary force. For months, I realized, I had been noiseless - except when I should have been, in my sleep.
By the time I cleared away Charlie's empty plate and my full one, a tiny bit of my anger had been replaced by determination. I had to plan.
A/N: Probably every fic author has an urge to rewrite the end of "New Moon," but I've never see a story using the outtake as a starting point, so I hope this isn't too tiresomely familiar. Thanks for reading!