Prologue
I wasn't as upset as my parents expected me to be, and probably less than I should be. I mean, I was moving away from freaking New York City. New York City. Most people would be mad, right? New York, the city that never sleeps, shining lights, Times Square—people came from all around the world to tour New freaking York. So why wasn't I mad? I had it all in New York. Friends, family, I went to a good school, I was happy.
So when my mom told me that we were moving to La Push, Washington, the most random state imaginable, I don't know why the idea appealed to me so much. Maybe it was the fact that I had spent the last 15 years (has it really been 15 years?) in the small townhouse on the outskirts of Manhattan, and that moving to a not so crazy, beautiful, and unpolluted town in Washington was, however stupid it might sound, an adventure? Maybe it wouldn't exactly be an adventure—but it was a change. And I wasn't opposed to change, I welcomed it—I had wanted one for such a long time, and moving was so perfect.
I liked New York. A lot. I liked that waiting more than 5 minutes for the train or bus was waiting too long. I liked how everyone seemed to walk with purpose, how they always had a destination. And I liked how whenever there was an accident people seemed to be more concerned with how they might not get to work on time, despite the fact that someone just died—it sounded morbid, but New York was just so… exciting.
But La Push. Sunsets. Cliffs. Trees. Beaches. More sunsets. It sounded so… different.
And that was what I longed for.