Takes place right after the Cullens leave in New Moon. Bella tries to cope without Edward away from Forks in the confinement of a specialized high school. Looks like the only way to mend a teenage girl pining for a vampire is a lot of therapy. A lot of therapy.
Charlie was the one who drove me. It was a nice gesture, I guess, that he didn't just pack me up into a taxi. He'd tried to write his cell phone number on my arm with a marker, just in case I wandered off or something. But clearly, I wasn't that far gone.
Clinical depression. That was my official diagnosis. The concern was that the 'trauma' that induced my melancholy had been a particularly nasty break-up with my boyfriend (the therapist's words, not mine), not that huge in the grand scheme of things. This led Dr. Waters to believe that this was a single drop of water that caused the brimming glass to overflow. Apparently, my instability had been brewing for quite some time. A shame Charlie had never noticed until now.
After Edward (I could now quite clearly divide my life into two subcategories: before Edward and after Edward) had left, I'd taken a quick walk to clear my head. Several hours later, I awoke to the concerned faces of several strangers, and one that I knew quite well. Charlie. He called Renee and they spoke quite briefly, but definitively. She would fly up. And all of us would attend group therapy with a local doctor who specialized in helping adolescents.
I knew that Charlie was hurt by how I was acting. Renee was in tears, but it didn't take much to push her over the edge. It was Charlie who felt like the failed parent. The one who couldn't even take care of his daughter for a full year. And the worst part is I didn't even care. I was too dead inside to love my parents the way I knew I ought to.
I didn't go looking for Edward, because I knew he meant what he said. They had shipped off like they'd never existed. It was as if the Cullens had never lived in Forks at all. Only Charlie's complaints of a sub-par hospital staff convinced me that I hadn't made them all up in my head—at this point, I was thoroughly convinced of my own insanity.
Sitting stiffly in the front seat, hands clutching my thighs, I thought of Renee flying back to Florida. She didn't want to come, so we'd said goodbye last night. "It will just be too hard, Bells." She'd whispered with watery eyes. Through all of this—weeks of therapy, afternoons and nights on the living room couch, passively watching trash T.V., skipping school and not really caring—my eyes had remained dry.
Dr. Waters was a nice enough woman. Bright and genuine, responding to my mother's 3 A.M. calls and answering questions my father hadn't even thought to ask. I'm convinced that maybe I was the problem; with a different patient, a couple sessions with her could have been really helpful. But the whole thing seemed so juvenile. The way she responded to my relationship with Edward, she made it sound like any other high school drama. Some shallow, normal boyfriend/girlfriend situation. Like Jessica and Mike. Like Brad and Jennifer. Like Serena and Dan. I wanted to scream, "You don't understand me!"—And then I realized I would sound just like any other melodramatic teenager.
"Was Edward your first serious boyfriend?" Dr. Waters had asked during my first session.
"Yes," I'd replied.
"Bella had always had plenty of boys who were friends at school," Renee had replied, fidgeting anxiously with her hands, trying so hard to make me sound like a normal, sane person. "She just was never really interested in dating. But boys always seemed to like her. What was the name of that boy who asked you to homecoming two years ago? Tim something? Tom? I don't remember. But she always fit in quite nicely, socially. She always had plenty of friends, even if she didn't have a boyfriend." She seemed quite content with her answer. "And we have always been very close." She added as an afterthought.
"But no other real dating experience?" Dr. Waters pressed, clearly asking me. I remained silent, and the seconds stretched on.
"A few boys here in Forks had their eye on you, Bells." Charlie stepped in. "Mike Newton seemed interested in you, I thought, before Edward came along." I winced at the name, but Charlie misinterpreted my reaction. "Maybe," he said quickly. "At least I thought so. Could be wrong."
"So this was your first 'real' relationship with a boy." Dr. Waters added the finger quotations herself, smiling soothingly. "And judging from your own parents' relationship, I'm sure you had certain expectations." Charlie and Renee shifted awkwardly, uncrossing and crossing their legs, respectively. "Am I reading this right?" I stared blankly at her, and she continued. "Perhaps, do you think, that you and Edward had a different idea of what the two of you really were? Maybe you wanted something more serious, and Edward just wasn't ready for something like that." Dr. Waters shifted her gaze to my parents, tucking her hair behind her ears and continuing.
"In every relationship, there is a push and pull. While, ideally, two partners should be equals, that isn't always the case. Usually one person is more aggressive, deciding, for example, the restaurant where they'll eat dinner or the movie they'll see, while the other is more passive. I'm guessing Bella, despite her many suitors—" She winked, and my mother smiled painfully, sitting on her edge of the seat, waiting for the doctor to describe some panacea to cure my 'condition'. "—was hesitant to start any sort of romantic relationship, because she was a witness to your painful breakup. Once she met Edward and realized she had feelings for him, she probably dove headfirst, ready to create the sort of perfection she had seen in her friend's parents, or on television."
"She did seem pretty serious, pretty quickly, about Edward." Murmured my father, breaking the silence. I turned quickly to him, feeling betrayed that he was absorbing these ridiculous ideas.
"This reaction to the boy is just so unusual." Renee's voice broke, and I braced myself for another bout of tears. "I've only met him once, but he did seem pretty crazy about her," Renee admitted, "But seventeen-year-olds can be so cruel."
"I don't doubt that both of your feelings were real," Dr. Waters addressed me again, "But I don't think you're just upset about him breaking up with you." Um, yes, yes I am. "I think you're still troubled by your own parent's separation. You never really did give yourself a chance to grieve. I think you tried so hard to be the brave one; you suppress your feelings in times of distress. This Edward fellow was just the last straw; you couldn't contain your sadness any longer." My parents were enthralled with this woman, holding onto her every word.
"I'm just so sorry I hurt you, Bells." My mother burst into tears and threw her arms around me. "I thought I was doing what was best for all of us. Now I see I was just being—" She took a few shaky breaths, digging her fingernails into my shoulders while I patted her arm awkwardly. "Selfish!" She choked out the word and collapsed into sobs.
"I think we made some real headway today," Dr. Waters nodded and handed my mother a box of tissues. But we hadn't. When we returned the following week, I wasn't feeling any better about this. My parents, on the other hand, were really getting a lot out of these therapy sessions.
"I think its because my father wasn't around much growing up," Charlie mused one night, twenty minutes after the session was supposed to end, "I always felt drawn to certain activities. It was like I had to prove I was a man."
"I just didn't want to turn into my mother!" Renee's break-throughs tended to be louder, broken up by crying jags. "Barefoot and pregnant at twenty. I mean, it was the 90's, I didn't want to be this housewife, cooped up all day making macaroni salad." My mother never once made me macaroni salad.
Dr. Waters tried, quite often really, to get the conversation back on me. I was more than happy to let them have the spotlight, I had gotten used to wallowing in my grief, ignoring everyone and everything around me. But my parents noticed me pulling away, going deeper and deeper within myself. After the first week, my parents insisted I go to school, but I never actually went. I would trek out to my truck in pajama bottoms and hiking boots (why get all dressed up?) and aimlessly drive around until I was sure Charlie was at work. Then I'd go back home and sleep all day.
Almost a month and a half after our first session, Dr. Waters seemed to notice the hopelessness of my situation. She handed my parents a pamphlet with a sad-looking building on it. 'Bridges to Recovery' was written in calligraphy along the bottom. Inside, grainy photographs of grinning teenagers were displayed under the words 'Learn to live a sober, healthy life!' Good God.
"Bridges to Recovery is a high school for troubled youth in Seattle." Dr. Waters explained to us. "I've known quite a few of my patients to graduate there, and they've gone on to do many successful things. The teachers there are specialized to give more care than what the high school here can give to Bella." She paused to see if my parents had any questions. For once, they were both quiet. "Bella would have therapy sessions three times a week with a colleague of mine, who I highly recommend. The school contains students who struggle with depression, like Bella, but also those with bipolar disorder, and drug addiction." Wonderful. I could make friends with drug addicts. Maybe they could score me some heroin to ease the pain away. My parents exchanged glances, not completely won over. For years, they had both fought over who got to have me. Now neither of them could. "Your insurance should cover the expenses." She folded her hands on her lap, waiting expectantly for an answer.
So that's where I was headed, to a school full of crazy people. That couldn't change the way I longed for Edward, missed him so much that it hurt. But now I would be out of Forks, away from everything that reminded me of him. I hugged myself tightly and leaned against the back of the seat, trying to forget his topaz-colored eyes.