CHAPTER 1 PROLOGUE – ON MY OWN

Welcome to the real world where life and love do not mix. Believe me, I know this from experience.

~*~ FLASHBACK ~*~

"They can't be," I sobbed into my hands. "They just can't be!" I just stood there looking at the policemen sitting in my living room. I had just gotten home from school and there were two policemen, a social worker and Uncle Bill all waiting for me on my front porch.

I led them inside the house, the officers worked with my dad so it wasn't like I didn't know them. The social worker sat across from me with her hands on her lap. I could see certain sadness hidden in her eyes. This sadness was not for me alone but for the years of having to do this with many other children such as myself. My parent's lawyer Bill Stanley, Uncle Bill, sat beside me with his hand over mine. My parents have known him for so long they grew up together and it was only fitting that their kids grew up together too. So it was already like he was my uncle in many ways.

"Bella, your parents left you everything including the house. Since you have no living relatives all of their assets, aside from the house, were liquidated and put in the trust fund. There is also a matter of your grandmother's estate that was left to you by default. It along with what your parents left you will be yours when you are 18. Your grandmother's estate was worth 1 million dollars, making your trust fund a total of $1,450,000.

We will leave the house for you to decide what you want to do with it. I have hired a maid to come once a week and a gardener to come and maintain the grounds. This is all going to come out of my pocket and will continue until you turn the age of 18 and after that you can decide what you want to do." He lifted my chin with his fist, "With no living relatives you will be sent to a foster home, you do realize that right?"

I nodded my head only slightly I kept thinking to myself; it was highly unlikely I would stay with people I didn't know. "Uncle Bill," I whispered. "Why can't I stay with you?"

"Honey, as much as I would love to have you stay with us, with another baby on the way, we just don't have the room anymore. You and Jessica are crammed in that small room as it is when you stay over"

I just nodded again and a fresh new batch of tears fell.

The social worker held out her hand for me to follow her, and I did. All of 12 years of age and I was on my own in this world. As I walked through the front door of my home and I knew I was never coming back here. Not even when I was 18. I sighed as I took one last look at everything I was leaving behind… including my prized possession… my black baby grand piano. I would have to sell it… I would never be able to play again.

Three weeks later, I was on a plane to Florida on my way to my new home.

~*~END FLASHBACK ~*~

"My father was the Chief of Police in Forks Washington and my mother, who usually had these hair brain ideas, was a kindergarten teacher and until the age of 12 I lived in Forks Washington. She had enrolled me into ballet, gymnastics and figure skating. She had me doing these things as a means of keeping my klutziness at bay but I eventually grew out of it. However as I kept at them, I found that I enjoy them, but that enjoyment also brought out my love of dancing. I was never professionally taught what I do; it always just seemed to come naturally. I guess you can say it was a gift. These loves of mine I use as a means of release from the day's frustrations.

"I used to have another method of releasing my frustrations, the piano, but ever since I was 12 I don't play anymore, it's just become too painful. For you to understand the need to release my day's frustrations I guess I need to tell you my story. I have these "weird" abilities, now you see what I mean by frustrations.

"I noticed things happening since the day I hit puberty my senses became more refined. I should say my senses became more defined... more sensitive. I'm able to hear people whisper even if they are across the room from me. I see things that no one else should be able to see. My sense of touch is also more defined... I can feel the grain in any wood surface. And don't get me going on my sense of smell... believe me when I say a fart is more than just a fart to me."

"Oh god Bella, that is to fucking funny, sorry I didn't mean to interrupt you. Please continue love." My face dropped even further than it was… did I not like it when he called me that, I don't know? But I love him and without telling him straight out, I want him to know.

'Seriously, I can smell things that other people wouldn't want others to know about… like... those husbands who were with their mistresses and even though they showered they still have the scent on them... if their wives only knew. As I said... heightened senses... if I believed, I would said my heightened senses remind me of those vampires I have read about in the Twilight series, you know the ones I am talking about right? But seriously though… vampires do not exist right? That is, however, the best way I can explain to you how my senses feel to me.

"Then on my 16th birthday other things started happening... such as... having premonitions, talk about freaky. My first premonition happened when we were sitting at the airport café the day of my birthday and I was reading a Penthouse magazine. That's how I got the job at the club; it was a premonition of us working there.

"Three months had passed ever since I got my first premonition, and I soon figured out that I was also able to freeze time. You were involved in that one; you remember when you got in to that fight at the club? Yeah then it only lasted about a minute but it was enough to freak me out.

"And then a few months before my 18th birthday, I was able to move things without touching them... I was able to do it with my mind. I researched that topic to find out it is called telekinesis. The first time it happened I was walking through this very park and some guy tried to attack me. All I could think of was for him to get the hell off me and then he suddenly went flying.

"I keep wondering if there will be anything else in my life that is going to pop up on me. I guess only time will tell right? I've just learned to accept everything as it comes, besides there must be a reason for all this, at least I hope there is.

"My story starts as such; I was 12 when my parents died in a plane crash coming home from their second honeymoon. Since then I had been in a foster home with people who really didn't seem to care whether I was there or not. So most of the time… I was not… and when I was 16 I decided to run away with my two best friends, Alice & Rosalie. Actually we ran on my birthday, it was my present to myself. They too had been dying to get away from that home as much as me, they were there about as often as I was.

"Alice and Rosalie have both been in that foster home just as long as I have. They showed up a month before I did and being the low man on the totem or new kid on the block, we became close right away. They were with me even when my 'weird' abilities started showing themselves to me. They never turned their backs on me; they were truly my sisters, my best friends.

"You know… after losing everything that I had at such a young age, I was still able to love. I love my best friends and I would die for them. I have however; never been able to fall in love. I don't know if I ever will, besides who would ever love a foster kid/runaway like me. I had no living family to take me in, not that I wanted to be a burden on them anyways, so there was no one to miss me when I took off from Florida to California.

"No one except Uncle Bill, he was my mother & father's lawyer and closest friend, I loved him and he knew that. Just he had his own family to take care of and I understood that back then. He was the only one I let know where I was living, as he was really the only family I knew. Needless to say when I told him I ran away he was not happy but he didn't stop me because he knew I was not happy in that house. Victoria was there to collect the checks while James tried to have his way with all us foster girls. Needless to say, Rose ended up giving him a broken nose and he hadn't tried to touch us since. But we could see the leers."

~*~

That's the full story I should have told him but as you will find out; I ended up slightly editing my story, for self preservation purposes I guess you could say. God I hope he doesn't hate me when I do eventually tell him.