Summary: After her brother's death, writer Bella Swan severs contact with her family and moves to Forks, where she meets the reclusive Cullen clan and forms an unusual bond with the youngest Cullen boy, Edward. However, as Bella falls deeper and deeper into the fantasy world of her latest novel, she risks losing everything she has come to hold dear.

Please note that I am writing without a beta reader. There are bound to be small errors of the sort a fresh pair of eyes would catch immediately. If you see one, please point it out so I can fix it.

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

Sylvia Plath, "Mad Girl's Love Song"

Emmett thought he was invincible right up until the day he died. Maybe even then.

He always was a reckless little boy –– a risk-taker and a fighter to the core. The threat of injury never stopped him; sometimes I think he really couldn't comprehend it. That I, careful to the point of obsession, was his twin was an endless source of astonishment to our friends and neighbors.

It wasn't how I thought he would go.

Rose and I were at Ellie's soccer game when we got the call. Neither of us cared for sports, but Rose watched the field as intently as any fanatic. I guess motherhood does that to you. Me, I wrote. Incessantly. I think I had my laptop, but if not it would have been my journal. I'm never without one or the other.

When Rose's cell rang she growled and thrust it at me without looking at the number. I sighed; I didn't want to take it either. Talking on the phone made me unaccountably nervous. Still, I flipped it open and answered. Talking on the phone was better than talking back to Rose any day of the week. "Hello?"

"Is this Rosalie Swan?"

It was a man. I didn't recognize the voice. "This is her sister-in-law Bella. May I take a message?"

"I'm Officer Willis of the Phoenix Police Department. If there's any way I could speak with Mrs. Swan …"

"Um. Hold on a minute." I tapped Rose on the shoulder and held the phone out apologetically.

She jerked it up to her ear. "Hello?" she snarled. I winced. But then her face went white and slack. She mouthed a word soundlessly. I don't think it was directed at me, but I am an excellent lip-reader; it's my party trick.

Idiot.

We stood at the same time. She snapped the phone shut. "Where is he?" I asked.

"Memorial Hospital." We raced away from the field, Ellie and the game long forgotten.

I knew even then that it was going to be bad. There was a sick churning in my stomach, like I'd been force-fed hydrogen peroxide. People joke about twin bonds, but mine and Emmett's was real. When I was six I broke my leg, the first and last time I ever seriously injured myself. Emmett was thirty miles away with our dad, but he knew and it hurt him. And I'd hurt with every one of his stupid accidents and failed risks.

Rose parked the car haphazardly across two spaces; then we ran. They were prepping him for surgery. Motorcycle accident. We jogged alongside the gurney. He looked an awful mess, pale and bloody. There was a gaping wound in his abdomen. I felt sick. He wouldn't make it.

Just before they pulled him into the surgery, he opened his eyes. "Hey, Bells," he whispered. Then the doors closed and I never saw him alive again. It was fitting that his last words were to me. We came into the world together. We should have left it together, too. His death left a great, gaping, Emmett-shaped hole in me. You couldn't see it, but I felt it in my breath, in my bones. It wasn't meant to be like this.

Rose looked so alone in the hospital corridor. I forget sometimes that I was not the only one hurting, but pain will do that to you.