Start. My Documents. Renesmee. PRIVATE. My fingers found home row again, and I began.
How do you find out who you are? Who you're supposed to be?
I know I have a good life: my parents adore me – at least, they love the "Renesmee Carlie Cullen" they have in their heads; my extended family are great; we're pretty much loaded; and I'll probably never die. Wow, that looks more weird than I thought it would...
A little background, perhaps:
I was born sixteen years ago in a little town in Washington state to an eighteen-year-old girl and her centenarian vampire of a husband. I almost killed her, and she was changed into one of them to save her life immediately after my birth. My early life was pretty exciting, I guess – a visit from a slew of benevolent vampires and a group of less-than-benevolent ones, whispers of wars and werewolves, and my own super-rapid growth – and we moved every few months for a couple of years.
My mother told me she'd been terrified that I would age so fast that I'd be dead by now, like some sort of supernatural progeria. Grandfather Carlisle had charted my growth in the first few months, and expected me to reach maturity at around seven years of age, which had been confirmed by a family acquaintance, Nahuel, another hell-spawn — or, vampire/human "hybrid," as they like to call me, as though I were an improvement on either species – but they were wrong. By my third birthday, I appeared and functioned as an eight year old human child; but while Grandfather's estimations would have placed me at nearly eleven on my fourth, when the dismally-attended party arrived, I hadn't aged so drastically after all. I was ahead of the curve thanks to my head start, but my growth slowed to near-human – in a year, I only aged a year – and continued to do so until reaching physical maturity three years ago.
I never knew even one other child growing up. My family was all I knew: they were my protectors, my friends, my enemies, my mentors, and my tormentors all wrapped up in one unit. My mother, Bella, is quiet but fiercely protective of those she loves, with a dry wit that, without fail, goes right over most everyone's head. Edward, my father, is incredibly chivalrous – charmingly so, at times; "me-kill-mammoth-you-no-leave-cave" so, at other times. Sometimes I call Grandfather Carlisle "Poppy Gee" just to see the confusion in his eyes as to where his granddaughter came up with such an absurd and unfitting nickname, while my Grammie, Esme, just smiles and pats his shoulder. Uncle Emmett and Aunt Rosalie lived with us. Emmett always snickered when I called Rosalie "Aunt Rose," and she would run a hand up to his shoulder all casual and cool, then sucker-punch him for it. She's always been my favourite. Uncle Jasper and Aunt Alice flitted in and out of our lives, always bearing gifts and sunshine and rainbows and butterflies, but leaving as quickly as they came.
Their departure always threw my mother into a slump for a few weeks. She would say that Alice was her best friend, and that seeing her again made it hard to say goodbye. Their reunions and adieu's were as close to tearful as their fluid-less bodies would allow, for sure, but I always had a sense that wasn't the whole story. No one would satisfy my curiosity.
My family's constant quest for overcast days brought us north of the land of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" into the world of "peace, order, and good government" within my first year. We've lived all over the country, building or buying dwellings in the vast expanses of uninhabited land of nearly every province, and both territories. Now, we live just outside of the twin towns of Labrador City and Wabush, Newfoundland, Canada. With a population of just under 9,000 –
"Renesmee!" My mother. She was home? "I'm only here for a sec, I've left something." What, did she hear my brow furrow? "Can you come out here please?"
"Just a second, OK?" Save. Close. Laptop closed. Good.
I could just picture my mother leaning in through the half-open front door, one hand on the door-frame, her arm glittering in the winter sun, just like the snow on the ground behind her, probably wearing only a camisole and jean shorts. Jorts. Heh. Awful, those.
I padded down the hall, turned the corner into the small living room, and out into the front mudroom. I was right, she was in jorts.
"It's February, you know?" I said. She just shrugged her shoulders and smiled a little, with that far-off look in her eyes she can't seem to shake. She's an odd woman, I do like that about my mother. She looked at the ground for a half-second and shook her head, then looked back up at me.
"Are you sure you don't want to come with us?"
Sigh. "I'm sure. Am I the thing you've left?" I was taken aback by the acid in my own voice. Now it was my turn to look down at the floor. Deep breath. Back up at her. "Sorry. But I'm sure."
"I don't know that I want you to do this." She said, and her voice trailed. She opened her mouth again slightly, but didn't say anything more.
"Listen, I know how everyone feels about this, I've heard it all. I have to do it anyway." I closed my eyes and took a breath. I could feel the anxiety welling back up as I remembered the day I announced that I was going to try living without blood. I didn't understand their immediate anger, and as they each said their piece, I understood it less and less. Breathe. "I don't know why you don't understand."
She hesitated then, and bit her bottom lip, "I do understand." She looked almost nervous as she brushed some hair behind her ear, and bit her thumbnail. Definitely nervous. She stepped inside, closing the door behind her. On instinct I stepped back to let her through the door into the living room, but she stood where she was. "What if you start ageing again? What if you die? Have you even thought about that? You're sixteen years old, that's all, that's too young to put your life on the line!" I can't recall the last time my mother spoke so quickly or so forcefully. I took another step back, but this time she followed me, right into my personal space. "I fought so hard for you, we all did, and now you could just throw it all away! All you can think of is what you want, the normal life you want, but you don't know what a normal life is, you–"
"Exactly!" I cut her off. "I need to know! Why don't you get that?"
"You wanna know what a normal life is, missy?" Missy? "A normal life is a dead family! Don't you get that? A normal life is burying your father, or burying your daughter!"
Emotional blackmail! I was furious!
"How dare you!" I just screamed at my mother – my mother who endured so much to have me, and raise me, but it was too late to stop myself. "How can you hold that over my head? It isn't my fault you didn't go to your father's funeral; it's not my fault that people die! Youchose what you are, and yourchoice made me what Ihave to be! I want to see if I can be what I want, but you just can't handle that or something? You're such a hypocrite!" She stood stone-still in front of me. "Hypocrite!" I screamed as loudly as I could right into her face. She didn't even flinch.
I turned on my heel, and ran toward the back of the house, through the large kitchen, out the back door, and across the yard, into the sparse forest behind our house. I ran and ran until I came to the frozen creek where I'd spent days worth of time sitting on the bank; my "me" place. Come the spring thaw, it will be like a raging river, I thought as I dropped to the ground, exhausted for the first time I could remember, I would jump in and let it carry me away.
I had drifted into a light, dreamless sleep on the bank of the creek, less from exertion than a need to clear my mind, but as the sunlight turned a deeper yellow and the shadows grew long and flickered over my eyelids I stirred awake. The sun hit the trunk of a red pine and I made a mental note of the rich, warm brown as a possibility for the paint job my bedroom desperately needed. It had been almost seven years since my parents and I had moved into the small two-storey farmhouse outside of Labrador City. We were on hunting trip during caribou season and happened across it while my mother was on the trail of a unsuspecting stag; the second she saw it she snapped out of the hunt and stood transfixed, as if the building were hypnotizing her. I could tell right away my father was not impressed at all by it, but when my mother and I took a look inside the obviously abandoned building I fell in love, too. Two against one, hah! Edward threw up his hands, but insisted we have the best contractors available in to fix up the place before we even considered leaving my grandparent's home in Goose Bay.
Mom! I forgot all about our confrontation. I groaned as I sat up, realizing how I'd left her – the things I said! I was seriously tempted to stay right where I was, but the sun would be setting soon, and I was a little bit hungry and a little bit chilly. Maybe cutting blood out of my diet really was making me weaker. So what! I have to try it, at least for a while. I reminded myself of how badly I wanted to just be human, or at least have the closest thing to the human experience I could, and added what was happening to my body to the list of things I would not be mentioning anytime soon.
As badly as I wanted to walk very, very slowly back to the house, the creek was on the far edge of the property and if I wanted to get back before dark, I would have to run. Despite the heightened senses and superior strength and speed – which I can thank my father for – there are plenty of things "out there" which everyone says I am simply no match for, especially at night; consequently, sunset is my curfew – which I can also thank one Edward Cullen for. Heaven forbid he teach me how to defend myself or something crazy like that.
The frozen landscape rushed past me as I ran back to our little red farmhouse, and I blew through the kitchen door just as the sun was sinking below the horizon, toward the living room, and right into the stone frame of my father. Don't look up, don't look up, don't look – he cleared his throat, and I was looking straight into his eyes. Whoa, not good. I edged backward.
"No, Renesmee, not good at all. Would you care to explain your mother's state?" I hated when he crawled into my head, but followed his gaze to my mother, still standing just inside the front door. If I didn't know better, I would have thought she'd frozen to death – unless this is how vampires die? Their daughters say terrible things to them, they shut down, and it's all my doing?
I replayed our argument in my head, both for my mind-reading father's benefit and my own, as I couldn't bear to say the words out loud again. In less than an instant, he was at my mother's side and I was crumpling to the floor as the tears started. What had I really said that was worse than any other teenager? Why did I go there, and throw the death of a grandfather I never even knew in her face – and for what, really? Why couldn't she deal with it like a normal mother, and just slap me or ground me? Why wasn't anything in my life normal? And why was I so worried about myself when I had no idea what was happening to my mother, my mommy?
When I managed to lift my head to look up at my parents, Mom was just the same and my father was stroking her hair and whispering into her ear, no doubt professing his love for her, begging her to say something, anything to him. Just like Pygmalion and his purest, fairest ivory woman – she wouldn't speak to him, either, I couldn't help but think.
My father's head turned faster than I could see it, his yellow eyes frightening me for the first time in my life. They'd always been like honey to me, the providers of my doting father's shining gaze, melting his pride over me as I sang with my mother, or presented my findings at our family science fairs, or even my lacklustre-but-determined effort at tap-dancing. Now, oh now, they were like some sort of wild thing from the worst of nightmares I couldn't survive dreaming. Instantly, I understood the wide berth our family was given on our rare trips into town, why the clerks, so warm toward me, would clam up and look away when my parents stepped into their view – they were instinctively avoiding the slickest, sickest predator of all. The mask was ripped off, and I wondered if the father I knew even existed at all.
"That's quite the thought-stream, sweetheart." I heard him before I saw him crouched in front of me, eye-to-eye. Like his eyes, the dulcet tones of my Daddy's voice had soured, and he laughed a cruel, bitter chuckle. "We think we know everything, now, don't we?"
Just keep breathing, don't look away. "Daddy, I..." don't know what to say.
I stared into his eyes, shaking harder than ever in my life, and detected the slightest of movement in him, so I closed my eyes, braced for God-knows-what, when I sensed a void where Edward had been.
"Get out!" Mom! "Go now, before I kill you. I swear to God, I'll do it." I looked over to where I heard her voice: across the living room from where she'd been standing so still moments before, with my father pinned to the floor under her, pain and adoration mingling on his face as he stared at her, and looking, again, somewhat like the father I knew.
"Bella, love, don't do this." He pleaded with her as his words sped up. "I don't know what came over me, I don't know what I am without my family. Please!"
Fear washed over me again as I watched my mother lean over his ear and, inaudibly to me, whisper something that made my Daddy's sweet face fall into that of a broken little boy. I knew nothing would be the same for us. I knew that, were we human, we were now a statistic.
I knew our family was no more.
A/N: Hey-o! to anyone who stuck this far :) I've got an idea where I'm going with this one, and a few more chapters written, but I'd appreciate any comments, critiques, inconsistencies I'm missing, etc. Then we all win, because I clean it up into something I can be proud of, and you lovely folks have something that doesn't kill those precious brain cells as you read it. Thanks!
