Chapter 1

Bella POV

"What did the snail say on the turtle's back?" asked Mike. I sighed quietly. Everyday he tells another stupid joke with another stupid answer. And since it was a Friday it called for an extra stupid joke.

"What?" I asked with mock excitement. Putting up this stupid at was getting tiring. Especially when you had stupid 'friends' to make it even worse.

"Whopeee!!!" he said cracking up after words. Our entire table erupted in laughter. I really didn't see the humor in the joke, but I laughed anyways. I looked around my table and found everyone gasping for air. My eyes wandered farther out to the cafeteria. I found nearly everyone was staring at us. That's when it hit me. They were only laugh to get people to notice themselves. How shallow can these people get? I thought. But what did I really expect? Having friends as shallow as a kiddie pool wasn't going to get you that far in life.

"So what are we going to do tonight?" asked Jessica animatedly. She was the most bubbly out of our group and not to mention the most ditzy.

"I don't know I'm up for anything." Said Angela. She and her boyfriend, Ben, were probably the only two people I actually mutually liked. Not only was Angle fun and adventurous, she was also really intelligent. If I were to pick my favorite of all my friends I'd pick her in a hear beat.

Their conversation began roaming off and I barely listened, only nodding and "hmm"-ing when necessary. I looked around the cafeteria once more out of boredom; to my surprise many of the people were still staring at us. That just goes to show how desperate people could be when they wanted to be somebody whey weren't. Unfortunately for me, being something I wasn't, wasn't a choice.

Through someone else's eyes my life would seem to be perfect. I have perfect friends, smile, look, etc, all the components for you life to be absolutely wonderful. Being the most popular girl in the school is every girl's fantasy and I was living it. All those people look at me and want what I have. Their looks of admiration and longing and mostly jealousy all remind me of one thing, that the life I am living is a complete and utter lie.

If those people really knew how my life was a living hell I doubt that they'll look at me the same way. All those looks of admiration and longing would just turn into pity and disgust. I couldn't take it. I couldn't take all the rejection and remorse I already had in my life and I surely wouldn't be able to take anymore. My fear of rejection was the only reason I put this wall up between the real me and the me everyone wanted to be. I was just trapped inside a shell that was cracking slightly every single day.

Before, there had been someone who was always there to patch up the cracks before I burst, but he was gone, and now I'm left all alone to fix the cracks myself.

One month ago…

It was a warm Friday afternoon there was a breeze gently blowing, a perfect spring day. I was sitting in my brother's car after a torturous day at school. A day of fake smiling and laughing had made my cheeks numb. I placed my fingers on my face and started massaging myself. That's when I heard a distinct bark-like chuckle to my left.

"What?" I asked slightly peeved at my overly annoying brother.

"Nothing," Jacob replied trying to keep a straight face, but failing miserably. I just rolled my eyes and returned to my window gazing. "So, how was you day at school?" Jacob asked incredulously once he had regained his composure.

"Oh I don't know," I remarked sarcastically "How would you feel after having to laugh and smile at all of Mike's stupid remarks?" Jacob's body shook with laughter. I always wondered how he could find the humor in any situation while his sister sat there exhausted from a dreadful day at school.

"Well I'm sorry you had such an awful day at school then." Jake said with a slightly more serious tone. I sighed.

"Anyways, how was your day at work? I'm pretty sure your day was better that mine." Jacob had dropped out of community college so that he could work full time to make ends meat for us.

"It was fine," He said in a monotone. " We get paychecks tomorrow."

"Aww, look at my brother all grown up and getting his first paycheck." I said in a mocking voice while pinching his cheeks. He shrugged out of my grasp and opened his mouth to speak again before he stopped himself. "What?" I asked.

"Okay well, you're going to have to spend the night at one of my friend's houses." He began. Great. Whose house would it be this time? Quil, Embry, Sam?

"Why?

"Well, Dad's home and a few of his friends are there, too. And we wouldn't want a replay of what happened last time." The memory of my dad hurling a beer bottle at my head while his friends all had started to approach me was all too clear in my head. If Jacob hadn't shown up that exact moment I might've been dead for all I knew. I cringed away from the thought.

"Bella dancerella you okay?" he asked. I couldn't believe he still used my old nickname from when I was five. I had been obsessed with ballet and I would always fall on my butt whenever I had tried to dance.

"Yeah I'm fine. I just remembered something." He let the subject drop. I let out a sigh of relief. I really didn't want to relive those memories ever again. We shortly arrived to our house. Our house wasn't really that big, but not tiny. It had 4 bedrooms and 3 baths, plenty large for my family. Especially when it was only Jacob and me.

"Okay Bella, I'm going to give you 15 minutes to get your stuff before we leave to Leah's house. Ok?" Jacob announced. I nodded quickly.

I was somewhat grateful I would be over at Leah's house tonight. Though she wasn't always the most pleasant person around, I could always let my guard down around her. She always seemed to get the position I was in. Always at the top, but never quite fitting in. Out of Jacob's entire group of friends she was the only girl there, and I respected her for that.

Whenever we were in situations such as this one Jacob always was overbearingly protective of me and I knew he would never let anything happen to me. In some ways he was kind of like my guardian angel.

I rushed inside the house and up to my room. I quickly grabbed some pajamas and clothes for the following day and threw them into a bag I had grabbed from my closet. I went to the bathroom to go grab my toothbrush when I heard a car pull up to the driveway and a car door slam. "Oh no," I mumbled. My dad was home.

I ran back to my room to get my bag and ran down the stairs as quickly as possible. I was about to open the door when I heard muffled voices on the other side. They all seemed to be slurred speech except for one. "Jacob!" my mind thought. He must have been trying to stall them as long as possible. Then the door burst open and I was standing there frozen, in the doorway.

"Well what do we have here?" asked one of the men obviously drunk by the way he was swaying back and forth.

"This is my lovely daughter, Isabella," my father said with a maniacal grin forming on his lips. He too was drunk, but what was I expecting? "Why don't you introduce yourself to everyone."

"Hello," I said quickly stepping around them trying to make my way towards Jacob. "…and goodbye." I had barely made it out of the doorway when someone grabbed my wrist

"Now where you goin' suga'? We were just getting to know each other." Said another man as he pulled me closer to the group. I tried to pull myself away, but another man had grabbed me by my waist and started to pull me closer and closer.

"Let go of her," growled someone menacingly behind me. In almost a blink of an eye Jacob had come over and knocked out the guy that was holding me by my waist. He grabbed my arm and started to drag me out the door.

"After them!" someone had shouted behind us. I quickly ran into the car and buckled my seatbelt as Jacob did the same. He accelerated the car to over 70 mph. I looked behind me and 2 cars were following closely behind. Jacob was making very sharp turns every few streets, trying to lose our pursuers. When we had thought we had lost them we made one last left turn for safety. That's when it hit us… literally

Another car was charging at us and we couldn't escape. The force implanted on the side of the car was enough to send us tumbling in the other direction.

I couldn't see anything while we were rolling. The airbag was stuffed in my face, I could barely breathe. My neck felt as if I had broken it a million times. My arms and legs were flailing around as if I was a marionette puppet and someone else had control of the strings. The car finally came to a stop.

I didn't feel dead. I felt more alive actually, like right after an adrenaline rush. I looked over to my left to make sure Jacob wasn't harmed. Then I realized why I wasn't hurt. Jacob had covered my entire body with his. He risked his own life to save mine. Then I smelt it, blood. A streamline of red liquid was running down his forehead. Shards of glass were slashing cuts into his skin. His t-shirt had red splotches everywhere.

The hysteria hadn't hit me yet. I through the mangled car door open with the remaining strength I had. Once I was out of the car I pulled out my cell phone and called 911, next I would have to call Leah . . .

I returned back to reality from my day dram or I guess you could say day nightmare, but it wasn't a dream or a nightmare, it had all been real. Jacob's death was just another reason for my father to hate me, resent me, and blame me, because in truth it really was my fault. All the resentment and hatred towards me had started the day I was born, the day my mother died. She had died giving birth to me. The doctor's had given her the choice of saving her own life or my own and she chose me.

I have always felt that my father never truly loved me, but when I was a mere baby he still took care of me. As I got older he started caring less and less. Getting more abusive year by year. The more I reminded him of my mother, Renee, the more he hurt me.

When I had turned 12 I was almost a spitting image of my mom. That's when the abuse had gotten to an extreme high. He would get drunk and think that I was really my mother. He would throw empty beer bottle at me screaming things like "Why did you leave me?" and "Why did you leave me with a bitch of a daughter?" That's when Jacob began to intercede.

He was 18 at the time and he had always thought my bruises and scratches came from my unreasonable clumsiness. He had never been home whenever I was beaten, but that time he came home a little earlier and he saw me curled up in a corner of the living room with Charlie, my dad, standing over me with a bat.

After that run in with Jacob my dad had moved to Seattle to pursuit his job as a "lawyer", leaving Jacob and me with the house to ourselves. I never really believed Charlie was a lawyer and I as right. Charlie was really a major drug dealer. Any kind of drug you could think of, he had it. Jacob and I were the only ones who knew though. Everyone else in Forks thought he was an honest, hard working, single parent, working for a living for his children, if they only knew.

Every time he came home he always brought some friends along and they all would be considerably drunk. All of them have tried to harass me one way or another. When ever they cam Jacob had always hidden me at one of his friend's houses. I always felt I was a burden to him even though he told me otherwise.

Charlie had never abused Jacob, like he did me. In Charlie's eyes Jacob was the perfect child. He always loved Jacob from the beginning because Jacob hadn't killed his beloved wife. Now that Jacob's gone Charlie has more reason to hate me. I don't blame him either. It was my fault Jacob wasn't here anymore. If I hadn't been born then Jacob would be alive and living a happy life with both Charlie and Renee. His death and my mother's death had been my entire fault and there was nothing I could do to bring them back.

"So, Bella are you in for the movie tonight?" Mike had asked me, the twinkle in his eye meant he wanted me to accept his invitation. I pondered on it for a moment. Charlie would be home tonight. This would be the first time Charlie would be home since Jacob … died. A stab of pain surged through my chest at the thought.

"Sure," I said without thinking. Hopefully I would be home late enough that Charlie would already have passed out on the couch and could quietly sneak into my room without him noticing.

"So anyways Bella," Jessica said " Where has Jacob been lately? I haven't seen him in a while." I froze. None of my friends knew what had happened that day. I just thought none of them would notice, so I didn't come up with an excuse of why Jacob was never around anymore.

"Umm… he went out of state for college," I stated. They dismissed the subject. I sighed of relief.

I hadn't felt the need to call Leah or anyone of Jake's other friends since the… accident. It just brought back memories that needed to be forgotten. Leah was the most understanding out of all of them because she was the only one that knew the whole story.

All of Jacob's friends knew he died of a car crash and that I was with him at the time, but that was all they knew. When they had seen me at his funeral, a few days after with only minor scratches and bruises they shot me looks of sadness, regret, and resentment. I felt like they blamed me for his death. That they wished I was dead instead of my brother, I did too.

Leah tried to comfort me, saying things like "They're just mad and wished they could have done something about it," or "They're just trying to find a scapegoat for their own anger." Though try as she may the guilt kept building with every glare and look.

Guilt is somewhat like a black hole. It just grows and grows until it consumes all. That's what was happening inside me now. The guilt was slowly consuming me. The guilt for killing my mother, the guilt for killing Jacob, and the guilt for making Charlie a miserable man. All of it would consume me and eventually there'd be nothing left. I'd be just a shell.