Chapter 1

I remember it so clearly. Better than any of my other human memories. Of course. The one memory I wish I could forget, is the most vivid of all.

I remember what I was wearing, the weather (not like it would have been hard to guess, it was the same as every other day, cloudy and wet.), I even remember certain smells. Like the scent of my old wonderful truck, or the wet pavement that we left behind us as we headed for the trees. I remember the smell of the forest, and of course I remember his smell. I wish more than anything I could forget it, but it's so crystal clear in my memory I'm afraid to inhale. Thank god I don't have to breath. I remember the smell of the forest floor as I laid there waiting for an end to come. Waiting for the pain to stop. As the words played on repeat in my head "You're not good for me, you're not good for me, you're not good for me". My fairy tale had come to an end, and in it's place was nothing. One big fat nothing.

Edward was gone.

After a few tough weeks I started to pull what was left of me back together. I went to school and to work. I did laundry and cooked dinner for Charlie. But I wasn't the same. It was like someone had flipped a switch and all of my creative thinking and emotions were turned off. I was still alive, but only about as alive as a blender. When someone said chop I chopped, when someone said liquify I would get the job done, but I couldn't do anything outside of what was mandatory. I didn't want to read, or spend time with friends or any of it. I wanted nothing that would make me feel alive, because how could I be alive without him?

I struggle now to remember the details of Jacob Black, but I do remember the way he made me feel. He had come over to drop off Billy for a day of Fishing with Charlie and decided to hang around for awhile. It was the first time in months that I had felt human at all. The pain that I felt for Edward was still there, but tucked away, the way you don't think about christmas or your birthday all year round. We ended up spending the whole day together talking about normal high school things, and before I knew it Charlie was back.

Jacob and I would hang out as often as we could after that. Until one day out of the blue he just didn't call. At first I thought it was just some stupid car problem he got sucked into and lost track of time, but the next day still no call. I tried calling him, but the line was busy. After the third day of pacing back and forth through my house for hours on end, I decided to head over to La Push and see what the hell was going on. When I got there the house was quiet, and everything seemed normal but I couldn't help but be anxious. When I finally made it to the door I could hear someone inside, I leaned in closer and pressed my ear up against it. "HAHA I know! I don't know what Paul was thinking! I thought Sam was going to lose it right there on the beach!" Jacob began to laugh again, but I could barely hear him over the thoughts I was having. At first it was "Oh thank god, he's okay!" and then " I wonder what he's talking about?" and finally "If he's well, well enough to be at the beach with all his other friends, why hasn't he called?" I didn't pause to knock I threw the door open, and there was Jacob, phone at his ear, laying down with his head at one end of the sofa and his feet hanging over the other edge and resting on the floor. They really needed some bigger furniture..... He looked at me with wide eyes, for about a half a second then smiled a huge smile.

"BELLA!" He was up off the couch giving me a backbreaking hug in seconds. "How are you?" Still in the hug I barely managed to whisper

"I'd be better if you'd let me breathe!" He chuckled and let me go, still with the phone to his ear. What? Was it superglued there?

"Oh hold on, one second Becka." Becka? I don't remember him telling me about a Becka ever.

"Bella I'm so glad you're here! Becka was just talking about coming over and you guys could meet!"

"Um okay? But who's Becka?" And why haven't you called me! I've been worried sick!

"Oh, I forgot you didn't know. Becka's my girlfriend." As he said her name it was as if she was the only thing that mattered on the planet. Like the way the pope would talk about jesus. I was completely confused.

"Your girlfriend? Since when?" It took me a moment to remember how to form a sentence.

"Three days ago"

"Oh" well that explains a lot.

"No don't go Becka, I can talk. Bella just stopped over and I was telling her that you two should meet! Yeah, you'd really like her, and there's no way she couldn't like you......." Alright, I'd heard enough.

"Hey Jake I gotta run, but maybe next time I'm over we can meet. It was good seeing you." I didn't even take the time to think of an excuse, he was too preoccupied to notice anyway.

"Alright see ya Bells!" After that Jake and I didn't hang out anymore. We saw each other when he would drop Billy off for fishing, and once at Billy's Birthday. Becka was there though, so we didn't get to catch up much.

After I lost Jacob things got worse. I turned back into robo-bella and did my best to keep Charlie happy. Apparently I wasn't doing a very good job because it wasn't long before Charlie was pushing me to go out with some friends.

"Why don't you get out Bells it's a Friday night for peet's sake!"

"I think I'm just gonna stay in, catch up on some studying."

"What is there to catch up on? You've done enough studying the past few weeks to get yourself through college! Why don't you give Jacob a call? I haven't seen him around in a while." Yeah because he's too busy worshiping his new girlfriend.

"I've really got some work I need to get done dad, I'll hang out with Jake some other time." With that I left the room before he could push any farther and ask me what I was behind on. I didn't feel like making up what I was studying, I was too tired to try to be convincing. So I went straight up to my room, pulled out my math book and started on chapter 8. Again. I was considering buying a new math book, I almost had this one memorized I'd read it so much. It didn't take me long to start to feel tired enough to sleep, so I climbed into bed with my book and kept reading. The equations and terminology of the math book were becoming somewhat comforting to me. The way a lullaby becomes comforting after you've heard it a thousand times. You stop listening to the words and only really hear the rhythm of the song. I let the rhythm of mathematic lullaby comfort me and somewhere around quadratic equations I drifted into unconsciousness.

I find myself alone in the middle of a street in a perfect little town. The kind of town you would see in old t.v. shows, in fact it probably was pleasantville. The only thing was there was no one there. Not a single person, or animal or anything. Now that I was thinking about it nothing was moving at all. Not a fallen leaf or lost newspaper or a window curtain. Nothing. Everything was perfectly still. As if it were all painted on a giant canvas. I turned around, looking for some sign of movement, but found nothing. I began to wander, searching for anything real, anything alive, and suddenly I was in front of my school. I hurried inside, grateful for a familiar place. But there was no one there either. I started for my first class hoping that maybe school had already started and everyone was just in their classrooms. As I came to the door of my history class I could hear the teachers voice, I started to walk faster. As his voice grew louder my footsteps gained speed until I was finally there. I pushed the door open and as I did the teachers voice became my own, the same voice I heard in my mind as I read through my math book. I searched the classroom but found no one. I sat down in the corner of the room defeated. I was alone in a perfect world.

I woke up Saturday morning with a feeling of panic I couldn't shake. I needed a change in my life, but I wasn't sure how to do it, or if I even could. I thought about it all morning, but couldn't think of anything productive. Frustrated and tired of my house I grabbed my jacket and headed outside. I was planning on taking my truck somewhere far away from anything familiar but for some reason I didn't want to listen to the noise. I needed silence. So I passed my truck without thinking twice and headed for the forest. There was a small voice in the back of my mind telling me this was a bad idea, but I ignored it. I must have made it a good half mile down the trail when the memories started to flood in. I hadn't been here since the day edward left. I could feel my thoughts going down the wrong path but I tried to push them back and kept walking focusing as much on as little as I could. I didn't last very long. I was about 2 miles down the path when I had to stop. I can't remember what memory it was that broke me, but I fell to the ground as all the feeling that had been suppressed for so long erupted from my chest and through my tear ducts. It must have taken me 20 minutes just to begin to think of calming down. I was in the process of a second waive of hysteria when I noticed that I was not alone. I looked up from my dirty tear filled hands to find a figure tall and muscular and pale about 10 yards to my left. I blinked to clear the last tears from my eyes, and there he was. Edward. Standing as perfect as could be with perfect stillness just yards away from me. He started to move towards me, especially slow. I wanted to hurl myself at him, but I couldn't remember how to move. So I just waited, for what seemed like an eternity. He was only an arms length away from me now and I couldn't take my eyes off of him. I don't think I was even blinking. or breathing for that matter.

"Why do you look at me that way human?" since when did Edward have an accent? I blinked finally, and that was it. When I opened my eyes the pale beautiful man in front of me was not edward, I had no idea who he was. And my mind slowly began to realize that it never was edward, I was just so desperate for him I probably would have mistaken a shrub for the love of my life and not realized it until I was kissing a mouthful of twigs and leaves. My heart dropped, it fell right out of my body and crash landed somewhere deadly. I looked at the man in front of me who's face had gone from curiosity to confusion in an instant, and I couldn't feel anything. I studied his face, and now that I was really looking he didn't look anything like edward. He had a bulky frame with a long face. His nose was small, and his lips were narrow, he had beady eyes and dirty blonde hair that fell to his shoulders. The clothes he wore were torn and covered in rust colored stains. He looked nothing like Edward, but he looked exactly like him in a way that should have terrified me. He was perfect. Even his imperfect features were perfectly equal and angular, his skin was bone white, and his eyes were as black as the hole where my heart used to be. He was a vampire, there was no question in my mind, and he was thirsty. These revelations should have had me running for my life. But I wasn't scared. Not even the tiniest bit. In fact I wasn't anything. I couldn't feel anything. When my heart fell it took all my emotions with it. Bella swan no longer existed, I was only a shell now, I was entirely robo-bella. Even as he lurked closer and his nostrils flared I wasn't afraid, and when the scent of me brought a cruel smirk to his face I wasn't afraid, and as he brought his lips to my throat I smiled.