Dusk
*Disclaimer: Every character and situation was created by Stephanie Meyer.
First Sight
I looked up towards the synthetically blue sky, my face warmed by the lunar energy pulsating from the overhead generator. I sighed; this was to be my last glimpse of the Phoenix Biodome—well, for a while at least. Mom stood staring, "Sweetheart, are you sure you want to go?" I nod tearing my eyes from the man-made sky. I don't trust myself to speak; I'm just that bad of a liar. Together we climb into the sleek pod that would take me towards the airport; towards that unprotected, constantly rainy part of the United States of America—Forks, Washington.
After World War Three, the human species was reeling from the effects of chemical warfare. The radiation alone had been enough to kill those who hadn't been directly subjected to the Gas. The generation who survived was nicknamed the Survivors…original, right? The Survivors banded together to create massive biodomes encasing North America's major cities. The Phoenix Biodome was one of the newer domes built, employing all of the latest technology. It was famous for its startlingly real-like blue sky, thanks to the city's sophisticated holograph machines, and for its efficient harvesting of lunar energy which provided essential nutrients now that the Sun was no longer visible through the thick clouds of the lithosphere. But towns like Forks were a completely different kettle of fish. Forks was a town established during the Resurgence, a time six hundred years post WWIII, without a biodome. It was part of a series of towns designed to reintegrate humans into our natural environment. The population of Forks? Who cares? It's just another reminder of why the Resurgence didn't work. Just another reminder of what I'm forcing myself into.
My mom and I sit opposite each other in the pod as it whizzes through the Biodome. I'm not abandoning her, I tell myself. She's living with Phil now. And he's a decent man; he'll make sure she has enough frozen dinners to fend for herself when he's not home, and remember to lock the house when they leave. I smile at her to calm her down, she's wringing her hands again (it's something she always does when she's nervous). No, I tell myself, this is the best thing for her. An hour later I've boarded the air-carrier after assuring Mom that I'll be just fine, and yes, of course, I'll call.
Charlie picked me up at the air-carrier terminal. We exchanged terse greetings. He offered to carry my bag. "Okay," I mumbled. We didn't talk until we were in his hover car headed toward my new home. I stared out the window. Blue and white paint were caked onto the side of his hover car, separated regularly by miniature lunar lights that glowed red when Charlie turned the siren on. Here in Forks, he was Police Chief Swan. I would have gone for calling him Charlie but he won't let me say it in his presence. So I'm stuck with calling him Dad. At least it's monosyllabic.
"Er—uh, sorry about the weather Bells."
I know this is his attempt at a joke, the weather at Forks is nearly always raining. Today is no different. Dark green teardrops slither down the hover car's windows like tiny sludge-filled rivers. Disgusting, over a millennia have passed since the last major gassings and the sky still spews out its own bile. What is there left to cleanse, I wonder.
"I'll get used to it," I mutter back. We hover over the ill-kept roads in silence. Charlie waits a few moments before breaking it.
"I, ah, got you a little something." He says it almost shyly, like he's afraid of the answer.
"Mhmm," I've never been a particularly loquacious person. Why start now?
"Bought it off of Billy Black. You remember him, right?" I shake my head. Charlie continues anyway, "We used to bait the slime with him." That would explain it. There are some memories no one wants to relive. Baiting the slime was an old game Charlie made me play with him when I was younger. It was kind of like old school fishing (if fishing was anything like what our history textbooks said it was) only instead of pulling aquatic animals out of a lake, we would try to remove trash from the muck-filled slime someone decided to call Lake Oneata. It was part of some restoration project for the town.
"Anyhow," Charlie kept talking, oblivious to my involuntary shudder at the memory. "I figured I'd get you your own hover car…to get to school and stuff like that."
I was touched, like me, Charlie wasn't the overly emotional type.
"Thanks, Dad."
He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, nodded in my direction as if to say "No problem". Instead he said, "It's got a couple of years on it, but it runs great".
"How many years," I ask, not really wanting to know the answer.
"Well, Billy bought it…" he looks over at me. "About the time you were born."
"Did it already have years on it?"
"Yeah," he took his eyes off the road to glance at me guiltily. "I think it already had about fifteen years to its name."
"Thanks, I'm looking forward to seeing it." The lie sounds weak even to me.
He nods and smiles. I look back out the window. It looked as though all the color had been sapped out of it. Dark green rain continued to pound on the dusty green moss that barely covered the brown mud underneath. Even the gnarled Evergreen trees, that had been reintroduced some seventy years earlier, seemed to droop toward the dank ground, sweeping their branches over the rough-hewn gravel of the road. This was far from the bright colors of the Biodome. It was downright depressing.
A couple more moments of silence and we pulled into Charlie's house—my house, I corrected myself mentally. Parked in the front was the ancient hover car. However baffling it may seem, I instantly took to it. It had that sturdy look of something that could stand up on its own. I gushed that it was just perfect for me. Charlie smiled sheepishly, and murmured a quick your-welcome, hauling my single bag out of the trunk and into the house.
After he had set my suitcase down on my bed, and told me he would just be downstairs if I needed anything, he left. I smiled quickly after he left, mentally thanking him for the space he was giving me. Then I groaned. I couldn't help it as I looked around the room. It was exactly the same as it had been the day I was brought home from the hospital minus the stuffed animal collection. Oh, and there was now a desk where the crib used to be.
I thought about my new school as I unpacked; Forks High School…definitely an original sounding name. I was already dreading it. The entire school had half the students that my junior class in the Biodome had. I was going to be the new, weird transfer kid from one of the Big Biodomes. Only instead of the spectacularly decked-out-in-the-latest-technology with a full-blown lunar tan Phoenix Biodome stereotype, I looked as if I could have been born in the time of the Resurgence—pale-skinned, mousey-haired, oddly disoriented. Not that I was popular in the Biodome, far from it, but at least in a school of over three thousand I had a chance. The rain began to pour. Green slapped my window over and over again almost as if it were reprimanding me for the monstrous teardrops streaming down my face. It was a long night.
By the time I woke up, it had stopped raining. Sickly green vapors were rising from the wet ground in tendrils, snaking upwards to my bedroom window. Gross.
I walked downstairs to breakfast. "Morning," I said. Charlie grunted. That was the extent of our conversation until he left for work muttering something about good luck on my first day of school. When I was putting my plate into the cleaning oven (a dishwasher of sorts that uses high pressure steam instead of water to clean things) something caught my eye on the mantel. They were simple digital holographs of me that Renee had sent him over the years. It wasn't hard to decide they were not going to stay in plain sight much longer. I gathered them up and lined them all in Charlie's office. I even closed the door for good measure. Glancing back at the mantle, I smiled. That was better.
I glanced at the red digital numbers on the wall. I would be early to school if I left now but there was no way I was staying any longer in the house. I quickly stepped into my thick protection suit before heading out the door. The air might be breathable but the rain in Forks had enough acidity in it to speed up the disintegration of your clothes by light years. Once outside, my rubber-soled boots squelched through the greenish-brown ooze on the way to my new hovercraft. I shuddered, the Biodome, thanks to its pre-programmed weather, was never like this. At least the hover car's interior was mercifully rain, ooze, and vapor free. Excellent.
I turned the hovercraft on and immediately began looking around for a tortured animal. Oh, I breathed a sigh of relief when I realized that it was only my dinosaur hovercraft wheezing loudly and not some sadist hurting an innocent creature. I took a couple of steadying breaths. It was actually not that bad once you got used to it—kind of comforting actually.
When I finally managed to get to the school, I stopped the hover car in front of the first building I saw. I got out and trudged my way into the building, finding the office quickly. A red-haired woman came up to greet me. She looked at me expectantly.
"I'm Isabella Swan."
Oh, there it is; recognition flooded her features. I had no doubt she knew who I was. The town was just too darn small for unknowns. I left the building as soon as I received my class schedule and a map of the school. It didn't take long to find the student landing lot, park my hover car and follow some students into the closest building. Mr. Mason; English; classmates gawking at me despite the fact that I was seated in the very back of the classroom, yup, first period sucked. Someone called Mike helped me get to my next class, overly helpful, if you were to ask me. But by the time I got to lunch, I was able to recognize some people who had the same classes as I did. In that way, school had been productive.
The cafeteria was uninteresting for the most part. Whitewash walls displayed holographs of the town outside on its better days, thoroughly unsuccessful at brightening up the lunchroom. I sat at a long table, and nodded occasionally whenever whoever (never actually remembered her name) was talking with me about teachers. Actually it was more of a monologue—I didn't jump in much. Then, I saw them.
They sat in the far back, five of them, biodegradable trays still filled with the same gruel that I had been trying to pick at for the last fifteen minutes. They were all different from each other but all of them together were somehow the same, as if everyone else were the ones that were different. Their skin was flawless, not in the free-from-acne way but it seemed like stone, cool polished marble with not a trace of imperfections. At first glance they were beautiful, captivatingly beautiful. At a closer look, they were just as radiant. But there was something perceptibly wrong with them.
They didn't seem to talk, listen to, or otherwise engage in any of the other students. They sat there, not looking at each other but still moving their mouths in some sort of quiet conversation. Each of them, the two girls and three boys, were glowing. I mean, they seemed to actually give off some sort of faint light that wrapped itself around their bodies in thin filaments like halos. And their eyes…I can't really put my finger on it. There was no emotion in those eyes. None. Not hate, or disinterest or seriousness, nothing. It was as if they were—inhuman, those eyes. I couldn't stop staring, those unfeeling eyes were…just…so…enticing. I broke my gaze when the littlest one, the thin black-haired girl left the lunch table, deposited her uneaten food in the garbage receptacle drone and walked out of the cafeteria. Ordinarily I wouldn't have bothered to pay attention to a girl doing something so mundane as leaving the lunch room but this one did it with such grace she looked as if she were rehearsing for a musical number. My eyes flicked back toward them.
"Who are they?" I asked the girl beside me.