This is my submission for the Project Team Beta challenge: "The Life and Times of Bree Tanner". Reading the Bree Tanner book took me an hour, and she just wouldn't leave my head afterwards. So I sat down and wrote her background, as I saw it. This little one-shot pulled me out of the writer's block that had been messing with me for a few weeks. I love Bree for that.

Thank you JillM12 and Netracullen, my awesome beta's, who put their finicky beta-hats on and picked this apart for me. It would have been way worse without you guys.

Want a burger, kid? That's what he said. He offered me a cheeseburger. If there is one thing you don't do when you are hungry, it is turning down a free burger. If you are a hungry fifteen year old girl, you definitely don't turn down a free burger when it is offered to you by the hottest guy you've ever seen. His name was Riley. He had a perfect face, blond hair, and really cool sunglasses, the aviator pilot kind, which he kept on all the time. So yeah, I wanted a burger.

He asked me to come with him, and I agreed. Thinking about it now, when I'm sitting next to him in the car, I feel really stupid. I was pretty sure I knew what he wanted in exchange for the burger, and if he'd asked nicely I guess I would have done whatever he wished. If I was being honest, I'd done way worse guys than him for a hot meal and a place to crash. But there is something odd about this entire thing. He clearly has something else in his mind, and I don't like the way I feel about it. And what kind of guy keeps his sunglasses on like that? It's raining, for Christ's sake.

I've always had a way of knowing who to trust, of distinguishing the good ones from the bad ones. I developed that skill from a very young age, dealing with evil from the moment I took my first breath. It has kept me alive for the past few years of my life, and this is the first time I've ever felt that my intuition may have been wrong. The moment Riley peeked behind the dumpster that was my current hide-out, and offered me a burger with the smoothest voice I'd ever heard, my ability to spot a guy with bad intentions went right down the drain. I had a teddy bear named Riley once, so I figured guy with that name couldn't possibly be bad.

I squirm in my seat and try to figure out a way to get myself out of this situation. I've had my share of violence, and I'm not particularly keen on another round. Violence is what made me run away from home in the first place. That, and the realization that what really happened to my mother would probably happen to me too if I stayed with my father.

I vaguely remember the look on my mother's face the last time I ever saw her. I didn't understand it then, but as I got older and learned more about life with my father, I recognized fear, angst and shame in that memory of her face. I was just a little girl back then, hiding under the table with my ragged old Riley bear tightly clutched against my chest. The familiar scent of that bear soothed my silent cries as I peeked out under the table cloth and watched her being dragged into the hallway. I saw my dad's large, hairy hand buried in my mother's hair as he pulled her across the floor. It was dirty and calloused, the hand of someone who worked hard and never bothered to clean it up properly. He probably still had blood on it after yesterdays shift at the butcher's, and I knew, even at that young age, that it would soon be blended with my mother's. Now, after a few months in this new "so called life" of mine, I guess it made sense. Why clean your hands when you know you're going to soil them again soon enough?

I never saw my mother again after that day. I stayed under the table long after her screams quieted. My father later told me she left us. I cried for her a lot, and I missed her. I missed her reading my bedtime stories, because my father never did. I missed her kissing me goodbye in the mornings, my father never did that either. But most of all I missed watching her cooking dinner. My father definitely didn't do that.

I asked about her a lot, and he said she didn't want me anymore. He told me she ran away to start a new life with new children that were prettier and nicer than me. I was so little, and I couldn't understand why she'd leave me behind like that. His explanation was the only thing that made sense to me, so I guess I accepted it. I blamed myself for not being a good enough kid, and my father never missed an opportunity to tell me I was a failure just like her. The older I got, the more I looked like her, and the violence escalated. What started out as an occasional slap on the cheek when I was a small child, ended up in regular beatings as I hit puberty.

It wasn't until about a year ago I found out that my mother maybe didn't leave me like he said she did. There was this really nasty guy in our neighbourhood, Raoul, that used to call me names whenever I passed by. He'd eye me from head to toes, smirk, tell me I'd grown up, and ask me about things like if I'd gotten my period yet, how old I was when my boobs started growing, and if I'd ever seen a naked man before. He never touched me, but he told me he'd wait until my fifteenth birthday to give me his "gift". Fortunately for me, he disappeared before that happened. He just went missing without a trace, which was odd. When someone like Raoul vanishes like that there are usually a few rumours floating around, but this time there was nothing. He just didn't exist anymore.

I didn't miss him, because he was an asshole, but he was the one who brought my mother into our conversation. Well, conversation isn't exactly a correct way to describe what happened, it was more like him threatening me. I wished I had gotten a chance to ask him more about that, because he didn't give away much detail.

I was on my way home from school that day, dragging my feet, not wanting to get home too quickly. I knew I would pay for that later, if dad got home before me and I didn't have his meal ready and a cold beer waiting, but I couldn't force myself to speed up. As I passed by the local store I heard the sound of cans being kicked around, boys screaming and laughing, and a dog howling in sudden pain.

Those kinds of sounds were usually followed by Raoul and his gang of mentally challenged thickos, the local mini mafia. They thought they were really badass, trying to rule the blocks from the school where I went, to the store at the corner of the street I lived on. So yeah, I met them a lot. And they messed with me, a lot. Well, Raoul messed with me. His dumbass followers just watched, and laughed like hyenas. Funny thing is, though, that whenever I ran into them without Raoul being around, they never even looked at me. It was odd. It was like I was only his to mess with, and no one else had the permission.

I hesitated as I got closer to the sounds. I knew that when I rounded the corner I'd face them, and they would probably stall me for another ten minutes at least. I wondered if I'd have avoided them if I hadn't been so damned slow. It was no use to take another way home, they would see me anyhow. I sighed with resignation. Better just get it over with.

I nearly bumped into Raoul when I turned around the corner. He grabbed my shoulders angrily, ready to kick my ass for being as stupid as to run into the self-proclaimed king of the street. When he noticed it was me, a malicious grin spread across his face and he turned me around so I faced his crew. His usual verbal diarrhoea began, pointing out my growing female features to his friends, telling them I belonged to him, and what he intended to do with me when I got past that fifteen year old limit he had somehow decided was appropriate.

It was amusing in a weird way, that he thought he was being appropriate by waiting that "long" for doing something that still was really quite the opposite. I mean, what's appropriate about the things he rattled off, when the girl you are doing them to is still pretty much a child? I couldn't help but snicker at that, which was the worst thing I could have done in that moment. I felt the change in the air around him, as he went from being just a crude asshole, to a wicked demon. The evil seeped out of every pore in his skin. I recognized the scent of it; I lived with it at home. Raoul was just like my father.

He threw me around and pushed me against the wall. My back ached from the impact, but I knew from experience that it would soon wear off. It may leave some blue marks, but no one would see them. He had one hand around my throat, and one was gripping my hair, pulling it hard. He pushed his pelvis hard into me, and I could feel his… thing… against me. It was hard, and it hurt.

He growled at me, and spouted out a long and incoherent tirade about me being a useless and disrespectful bitch, that I deserved every slap, beat and punch my father gave me, and that I'd end up in the ground like my mother if I didn't watch my mouth. Then he threw me on the ground and stomped off, followed by his pack. Every one of them could have easily given me a kick when then passed by, but none of them did. They just left me there, lying on the sidewalk, catching my breath.

It wasn't until I got up and stumbled home, that it dawned on me what he'd actually said. I guess Raoul would be the person to know if this was really what happened to my mother. His family was the one you went to if you had a problem that needed to go away. It wouldn't surprise me at all if they were the ones who had helped my dad to make my mother go away. So yeah, I kind of believed him. He was still an asshole, but I didn't think he was lying about that.

I was lucky that day, though, because my dad didn't get home until late. He'd managed to score an extra shift at the butcher's, and was so tired he fell asleep on the couch after no more than three beers. He didn't even bother to eat the meal I prepared for him, so I quickly crammed it into my mouth. I never knew if we would have enough money to buy food, since beer was my dad's primary food source. If there was still something left after he had paid for the beer, I could get some groceries. Sometimes there wasn't, but I never had to go hungry for a long time.

Not like now, anyway. I've felt real hunger since I left home. A few months after the run-in with Raoul I decided to try a life on my own. Anything would be better than living with the abusive beer-drinking piece of shit that was my father, I thought. I realized I'd probably end up dead if I waited too long. I had my back-pack ready for several weeks, waiting for an opportunity to leave without having to get into too much of a fight with him. The night I finally took my chance, he was so drunk he didn't even care. He laughed hysterically when I told him I was going to leave. He said I'd never survive on my own, that I'd starve to death. I heard his voice behind me as I left, screaming that I'd end up a thief and a whore, and that it was fine because that's just what my mother was. I wiped my tears and left one shitty life, just to end up in another equally shitty life.

I turned out exactly as my father told me I would. I am now a thief and a whore. And I am starving.

I feel the cheeseburger floating around in my belly, swimming in diet coke with some fries and an apple pie. I wonder what he wants me for, this Riley guy. It's not the first time a man offers me something to eat and gets something in return. Older men usually just want to lie next to me, and that's fine because at least it gives me a dry place to sleep and an opportunity to take a shower. Sometimes they want me to touch them, and I've done that, too. They tell me that I'm a good girl, that I'm pretty, and in some ways it feels good to hear that. I realize this is just something they say, but I've been told the opposite my entire life, and it feels good to hear something nice about myself.

Younger men, like this one, usually want to do something more. They are not satisfied with lying next to me, and when I touch them they always want more. Most of them want to do it in the car, or in an alley. They probably still live at home, and their mothers would surely not approve if they brought me there.

This is why I like the older men more. The younger ones are easier to look at, but I get less from them. And I don't do these things because I like it. I do them to survive. It is a simple matter of business: how can I gain the most from the least investment?

Want a burger, kid? Yeah right. I should have told him to keep the burger. It seems like this young man will make me invest a lot. And I'm not sure I'll gain anything at all.