Puppy Love
Prologue
I had lived in Forks for two years when I met her. The girl of my dreams. In a forest.
Forks, Washington is a rather pluvial city. As you can probably tell by my choice of the word 'pluvial,' I am an intellectual, or at least a word-lover. "Pluvial" means "rainy," by the way, but "rainy" is too low-brow for my tastes.
I moved to Forks around January of my junior year in high school, when my mother, Renee, grew tired of me in Arizona. She also didn't want me to scare off her new boyfriend, Patrick. So she sent me here, where my father, Charlie, lives.
I call my parents by their Christian names. No, the term "Christian name" has nothing to do with being Christian. I have never been to church, and no God-crazy aunt has ever given me a Bible for a Christmas present. Unfortunately, so many people are ignorant of this that I feel I have to explain everything. Not that I mind explaining; I hope to be a teacher one day, after all.
When I came here, a girl called Jessica tried to convince me to be her friend, but she was dumb as a brick, so I brushed her off. Oh, excuse me for using the term "brick." Maybe I should've said "rock." A "brick" is someone that benefits you, and Jessica certainly didn't benefit me.
Forks is a small town. Everyone knows everyone else. Not a soul didn't know Charlie Swan, the police officer and my father.
I eventually became accustomed to Forks, with the help of my first boyfriend, Mike Newman. He's a nice guy, though not much better in intellect than Jessica, though thank goodness he doesn't think about fashion or nail polish or going shopping. I think that's what kept us together for six months, at least.
There was this boy who gave me the creeps in many of my classes. The teacher called him Edward, and I learned from Mike that his surname was Cullen. Mike told me the Cullens had five kids. Two of them graduated from Forks High at the end of my junior year. Three of them stayed on, including Edward.
Edward became involved with a girl in my class named Angela Strottinger. I sometimes would stop Angela in the hall and say, "My commiserations." She looked time I did this. Once she asked what "commiserations" meant. I told her to look it up in the dictionary.
Arguably, Angela was more intelligent than many of the girls at Forks High. I think Edward was only attracted to smart girls, which is probably why he stared at me a lot. But I never spoke to him, and he never spoke to me.
During spring vacation of my junior year, I went to La Push with Mike, and there I met these weird Native American kids. One called himself Jacob Black. He was brawny and tough-looking, not at all my type. Well, at night the Native Americans told stories around a campfire, and I listened, along with Mike.
"Our ancestors," they said, "were able to change themselves into wolves. They had no idea how they did it, but they grew hair and needed to walk on hind legs. It felt as though their spirits were free in those times. Sometimes they returned to human form and mated with squaws who were unable to transform and knew not that their husbands could become like beasts. It was a time of greatness for our kind.
"But in those days," the story had continued, "there were these evil creatures we can only call the cold ones. The cold ones drank the blood of humans and had special powers. Sometimes the cold ones turned humans into another carbon copy of themselves, at other times they simply killed them. Our ancestors knew that the cold ones would one day deplete the human race if left unchallenged. So our ancestors fought them. Sometimes they prevailed, and sometimes they lost. However, the fact that we no longer retain the ability to become wolves convinces us that the cold ones are gone. But should they return, her wolfish characters will engulf us once again."
Mike thought it a bunch of baloney, and I agreed at the time. But I know the truth now. And it is the truth I wish to tell. For when I die, and it may be soon, I hope that someone will live on to remember me, Isabella Swan, the girl who loved a female werewolf.