BELLA SWAN IS TURNING EIGHTEEN SOON
BY
PRETTYINPRINT
Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight, but I like to hang with the characters.
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Bella Swan has always been a dreamer. She'd been described, by various school officials throughout the years, as having her "head up in the clouds" more times than she could count. She wasn't sure if she was born that way, or developed the ability to live inside very detailed daydreams out of necessity.
Bella's mother, Renee, was more like a flighty, slightly older sister, than any sort of beacon of maternal guidance and support. Since she'd been old enough to notice, Bella had counted that her mother had held at least seven different jobs. She'd been a substitute teacher, folded clothes at the mall, managed teenaged ice cream scoopers, taught an art class down at the community center, traveled from school to school taking ill-posed portraits of students, answered phones at a doctor's office, and attempted to go door-to-door selling knives with the power to easily slice through an aluminum can. Bella was certain there were many more before she'd started keeping a list in her journal for posterity's sake.
While Bella was known for her somewhat aloof behavior out in public, at home, she was the steady, responsible rock for her little family of two. She took after her father that way, even though he lived several states away and she'd hardly spent enough time with him to absorb any personality traits. She'd been informed by her mother, on more than one occasion, that she was just like him. The way she said it, though, Bella knew she didn't mean it as a compliment. Sometimes it felt like Renee wanted to divorce her too. She had never quite figured out how other adults managed their lives so efficiently, so Bella did it for the both of them, the best any little girl could. By the time she was thirteen, she'd developed a habit of attempting to balance her mother's checkbook each week. The thought hadn't just popped into her head at random one day, but was born out of experience, like most things. She didn't just happen to remember exactly when her weekly ritual had started. It was impossible to forget, seeing as how it put quite the damper on her thirteenth birthday.
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Bella hopped off the school bus with extra bounce in her step. It wasn't just any Wednesday. It was also her first day as a teenager, and she was having a birthday party that evening to celebrate. There would be pizza, movies, ice cream sundaes, and friends. She always celebrated her birthday on the actual day, no matter if it fell on a school night or not. She'd never liked the idea of waiting until a random weekend to celebrate something that had passed days before. She walked toward the little blue house she shared with her mother with the drive of a girl who had been waiting for her moment for weeks, if not months.
As she approached the house, she noticed her mother's car wasn't in the driveway. Bella assumed she must have been off at the store picking up last minute additions for tonight's party. Renee was nothing, if not least likely to plan ahead. Bella walked around to the back door, where she hid a key nearby for just such an occasion, and let herself into the house. She instantly made her way to the kitchen for a quick snack to hold her over until her birthday dinner arrived. She tugged the refrigerator door open, and squinted into the darkness. Her forehead crinkled in confusion as she wondered if she was wrong in remembering the contents of the refrigerator were usually illuminated by an interior light. She flipped the light switch on the wall nearby, but was met with no change. She flipped it back-and-forth a few more times, hoping it was just a momentary glitch, but she had no such luck. Their electricity was off.
Bella grabbed the phone, luckily an old wall unit, rather than a cordless that would have been useless at this point in time, and dialed her mother's cell phone number. It rang four times, then the voice mail picked up. She didn't bother leaving a message, as she was quite sure that Renee didn't know how to check them anyway. With no help from her mother on the horizon, Bella set off to solve the mystery for herself.
She made her way to the front door, yanked it open, and ran out onto the front lawn. She spun in a circle, evaluating the electrical states of the houses surrounding hers, and easily noticed that they all seemed to have working lights. When her spin had her directed back toward her own front door, she noticed a bright orange paper stuck to its surface.
NOTICE: ELECTRICAL SERVICE HAS BEEN CUT OFF ON THE PREMISES DUE TO LACK OF PAYMENT.
She had found her answer. It was in big, bold letters that felt like a slap to her newly-teenaged face. She noticed a phone number for getting the lights turned back on down at the bottom of the sheet, and immediately went to the phone to dial. She spent thirty minutes on the phone doing her best impression of Renee begging to get the electricity back on in time for her daughter's birthday party that evening. When they asked for an over-the-phone payment on the past due bills that she wasn't able to provide, they were suddenly much less interested in talking to her. She hung up and her shoulders sagged with defeat.
School hadn't always been easy for Bella, and it had taken her years to manage to round up the group of girl friends that were due at her house in just a few short hours. With no hope of having any way to power the television for the planned movie marathon, much less manage to avoid the embarrassment of her house having no electricity, Bella decided to cancel her birthday party. She spent the next hour calling each and every almost-party goer to relay the news. She told them her mother was under the weather, instead of herself, to avoid having to interject fake coughing and nose sniffling into each of her conversations.
Once the deed was done, Bella plopped down on the couch in the living room and waited. She sat in the silent room, darkening more and more as the sun went down, for what felt like hours. There would be no celebration to kick off her teen years tonight. Without the party she'd been looking forward to for so long, she couldn't help but feel like her birthday had been canceled all together. It felt as if she'd be going to school tomorrow still a twelve-year-old girl. Because of this new disappointment, added to a depressingly long list of letdowns that came before due to her mother's lack of ability to grasp adulthood, she dreamed of her chance to just be a kid. She worried that it would never come, and if it ever did, that it would be when she technically wasn't one anymore.
Bella was broken out of her reverie by the sound of the front door opening. She looked up just in time to see her mother come stumbling into the living room, looking perplexed, balancing seven pizzas and a bag full of sundae toppings in her arms.
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Bella was seventeen now, and had never attempted a birthday party at home again. She spent her fourteenth having a picnic in the park, her fifteenth doing a double feature at the local movie theater, her sixteenth riding roller coasters, and her seventeenth trying to forget what day it was, since her mother seemed to have managed to do just that on her own. Renee had met a man.
It had been almost a year ago, eleven months to be exact, but Bella could remember it like it was yesterday. She rang in her seventeenth year on the planet at home, alone, with a cold cut sandwich and a marathon of her favorite television show. Before her mom had failed to show, they'd planned to go out to dinner at Bella's favorite restaurant, then grab dessert at her favorite bakery.
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"Bella! I have the most wonderful news!" Renee squealed as she came barreling into the living room, interrupting Bella's sad and lonely one woman birthday celebration. She didn't notice her daughter's forlorn expression, or wait for her to ask for details. "I'm getting married!"
And get married she did. Two weeks later and to a guy she'd met on Bella's seventeenth birthday in line at the grocery store. Bella met Phil, her new stepfather, once before he moved in. She didn't know what to make of him, but was grateful that he didn't bring any children along in the move.
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Eleven months later, she'd just finished making arrangements to move several states away to her father's house in Forks, Washington for her senior year. She had been born there, but her mother had moved her away before she was old enough to remember ever being a permanent resident of the town. Charlie said he'd love to have her, but warned her that he worked long hours. She told him she'd manage. She had tried to settle into life with her mother's new husband, but it just wasn't for her. He was still stuck in the honeymoon phase, and thus, completely useless in helping to reign in her mother's wild notions. He only made them worse by encouraging her with his belief that her scatterbrained attempts at life were fun and exciting. Bella had enough trouble being the adult for herself and her mother, and didn't want to add another human being to her list of responsibilities. There was a reason she'd returned every dog her mom had tried to bring home for them. She knew exactly who would get stuck on poop scooping duty.
She would be on her way to to Forks as soon as they allowed her to board the plane. She hadn't spent any real time there in a few years, as she and Charlie had taken to meeting up in California for a few weeks of sun every summer, in recent years, instead of having her hole up in his house while he worked.
Charlie was easy to spot once she arrived at baggage claim. He was decked out in his uniform and standing off to the side of the crowds all alone. Bella made her way over to him, where they shared an awkward pat-slash-hug, before grabbing her luggage and heading to the car. The ride was quiet until they entered the Forks city limits.
"So, Bells, I got a few new things for your room so you could settle in right away, but we can head into Port Angeles to get you whatever you need this weekend when I'm off work."
"Okay. Sounds good," Bella replied quietly. She wasn't all that worried about room décor. She was really just looking forward to some peace and quiet, which was hard to come by when Renee was making an effort to not forger her at home, as she had been the past few weeks with Bella's impending move.
Charlie pulled the cruiser into the driveway, and they made their way to the trunk to grab Bella's luggage. Charlie handled the unwieldy suitcase, while Bella grabbed the easier to manage carry-on. As she turned around, she noticed a sleek, silver car driving slowly past the house. Her eyes locked with the driver's. He was sporting bedhead like she'd never seen and a smirk that could drive girls the world over completely wild. In her shock, she pulled her eyes away from his, only to notice a girl, with her face pressed to the glass, staring at her like she'd known her forever.
"Who was that?" Bella turned to ask Charlie as soon as the car disappeared around the corner.
"Edward Cullen."
Bella had no idea why or how, but the little voice in her head was quick to inform her that her eighteenth birthday would be anything but lonely.
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A/N: Thanks to you for reading, and to TwilightMundi for the fantastic editing services. And a very special thanks to all of the authors and readers who contributed to the Haiti relief compilation project, and MsKathy for ogranizing it. I was so happy to play even a tiny part in such a great cause. Over $85,000 raised! WOW!
Reviews appreciated, of course. :D