Chapter One
When I was a little girl, I had a dream that my parents were getting a divorce. I was five at the time, I think. Maybe four. I saw my mother and father sitting at our kitchen table and calmly discussing the upheaval of my life. I watched as my mom placed a consoling hand on my father's shoulder before going into their bedroom and packing a suitcase. I listened as my dad wept quietly downstairs. When I woke up, my things were in the trunk of my mother's station wagon, and my father was sitting in the rocking chair in the corner. They apologized to me. They explained that their marriage was over. And my mother took me away.
It didn't occur to me to be confused, at first. After all, I had seen what had happened. I assumed I had been awake the whole time, had probably crept downstairs for a glass of water and accidentally born witness to the whole affair. It wasn't until later, when we stopped driving and moved into a small apartment in Dallas, that I realized I had been sleeping. That I hadn't witnessed a complete chain of events. That what I had seen jumped and skipped like a worn record.
I hated Dallas. It was hot and big and scary and so very different from Forks, where I had grown up. Where I had been just days before, safe in my familiar room with my familiar things and my familiar father. Our apartment had one bedroom, which my mother valiantly gave to me for the first month or so. She changed her mind when she started dating Tom.
School was difficult. The kids dressed differently than I did, spoke with alien accents, used strange words. It was only kindergarten, but I hated it. And then it was first grade. And then second. And then I had a dream about Tom. He was pulling into the driveway of a big white house. A woman in an apron came out and gave him a kiss. A little boy peeked out from behind her legs and gave him a hug. And my mother was parked across the street, watching. When I woke up, we left Dallas. Apparently my mom didn't like Tom anymore.
New Orleans was fun. We found a long, skinny house on a sleepy street with lots of trees. I had my own bedroom in New Orleans, and our living room had a fireplace, though my mother hadn't the slightest idea of how to make a fire. School was easier. I made a couple of friends, and they taught me how to ride a bike. Mom found a job as a secretary in some law firm, and brought home Jason the paralegal. They were happy for a while. She was happy so I was happy. It was nice. It started to feel like home. But then I had a dream about Jason out with another girl. They were holding hands and kissing in a restaurant on Canal Street. And my mother walked by and saw them. She screamed at him, threw water in his face. When I woke up the next morning, our bags were packed and back in the station wagon. My friends waved as we drove away. I never got to say goodbye.
After New Orleans came Memphis. Then Atlanta. We never stayed anyplace more than a few years. There was always a man somewhere. Always some untenable dream of a perfect life. Always distant smiles and preoccupied hugs. And always the dreams. Like alarms before the fire. Marking our moves from one state to the next.
When I was in the eighth grade, we moved to Tempe, Arizona. It was small and hot and comfortable in a lazy sort of way. My mother found a job as an assistant manager at a department store in Phoenix. The pay was decent, and the discount generous, and for the first time since we moved away from Forks, I got new clothes to wear to school. When I started the ninth grade, we moved into Phoenix proper so I could go to a good high school. My mother never used to worry about these things, but suddenly she was obsessed with me getting a good education. She found us a house to rent on the outskirts of a wealthy neighborhood, and my first day of high school was spent surrounded by designer jeans and expensive cars.
I got sneered at a lot by the other kids. The girls would giggle behind their hands and point at me, singling out some part of my outfit or demeanor as offensive to their superior tastes. My jeans were too baggy. My sneakers to childish. My backpack too pedestrian. Still, I managed to scrape a couple of friends, and we would sit together at lunch, enduring the snickering of our peers until the period was over and we could leave the scrutiny of the cafeteria. I started having the dreams more regularly that year. And now they weren't only about what was happening, but they seemed to be telling me things that were going to happen. One night, as I slept, I watched a senior girl trip me in the hallway between classes. The next day, sprawled on my stomach and looking up at the girl with her foot still stuck out, I realized what was happening. And I started to pay attention.
I started journaling everything. I kept a composition book under my pillow, and bought a pen with a light attached. I tracked my accuracy. And I was pretty damn accurate.
I learned that I couldn't prevent most of the things from happening. When I dreamed about the cheerleaders "accidentally" spilling water on my shirt in the cafeteria, I avoided the lunchroom the next day, only to have a bottle of water dumped onto my chest by a girl in my English class. On the way to the gym locker room to find a dry shirt, I ran into a nice sophomore boy who asked me if I was alright. His name was Mark. He had shaggy black hair and a tiny dimple in his left cheek. He walked me to the locker room, waited for me to change, and walked me back to class. He became my first boyfriend.
After Mark, things got better. I started paying closer attention to how I looked, and no longer allowed my mother to simply bring me clothes when she felt like it. I started to take ownership of my life. I shopped for myself and started cooking, rather than eat fast food every night. Mark was on the track team, and we would go jogging together. And then running. And then it was the best part of my day, running with Mark on the track behind the school. The dreams kept coming, but sometimes they were of nice things. I saw my first kiss with Mark. I saw my first school dance. I saw my mom getting a promotion. And then I saw my mom with Phil.
My mother met Phil at the returns counter in her store. He was tan and charming and ten years her junior. They went to dinner together and then to breakfast the next day. And then he was all she would talk about. Phil was a minor league baseball player. Phil drove a sexy red convertible. Phil liked action movies and tequila shots. Phil didn't know she had a daughter. And when Phil found out, it took her a month to get him to come back.
I made Phil uncomfortable. Which was fine, really, because he made me uncomfortable, too. He avoided me at every opportunity, which meant my mother generally avoided me as well. She stopped coming home most nights, opting to stay at Phil's place. I maintained our house by myself, bought the groceries, payed the bills with the checkbook she left for me. At first, my mom would leave me some cash for the week. Eventually, she started to forget. In the tenth grade, I got a job at a local pizza place. I lied about my age and they hired me. I earned money to close the gap between what my mother remembered to leave me and what I actually needed. I still saw her, of course. She wasn't abandoning me. Every Thursday afternoon, I'd stop by her store. She'd let me pick something out, a pair of shoes, a shirt, a bracelet, and then she'd take me out to dinner. Phil had practice on Thursday nights, so I guess she needed to kill time.
At school, people stopped bullying me. Well, they didn't really stop... they just sort of got quiet. I'd walk down the hall, eminently more presentable but still ultimately poorer and less cool than any of my peers, and watch their eyes light up as they thought of snarky things to say. But the comments ultimately died on their lips. Mark pointed it out to me one day. He had begged me to start defending myself all summer, assured me that I was too smart and too pretty and too strong to allow anyone to walk over me the way the upperclassmen did. Just when I decided to do it, to fight back, to glare at them as they glared at me, they stopped. Mark said it was because I found confidence. I think it's because they got bored and moved on.
Mark was a good boyfriend. He was affectionate and loyal and caring. We played house a lot, with my mother gone all the time. I'd cook us dinner and we'd watch tv or do homework together until it was time for him to go home. Sometimes he'd tell his mom he was sleeping at a friend's house but stay at my place instead. We'd make out in my bed and fall asleep in each other's arms. It felt nice and safe and comfortable. I felt cared for for the first time in my life.
One night, at the end of my sophomore year, I dreamed that Phil proposed to my mom. That next week, at our regular Thursday dinner, my mother showed me her new diamond ring, exclaiming about how beautiful it was, how it was so much nicer than the one my father had gotten her so many years before. It was the first I'd heard about my father since we left him. He didn't exist in her world, so he didn't exist in mine. I felt guilty for forgetting about him, trying to remember what life was like when I was little as my mom prattled on about white dresses and reception venues. I made a silent vow to call him, but realized I didn't know what his number was. I didn't know if he was still in Forks. I didn't know anything about him.
That night, I cried myself to sleep and dreamed of my past. I dreamed of learning how to walk while clutching my father's fingers. I dreamed of sneaking out of bed on Christmas Eve to see Santa arranging presents under the tree. Santa looked up and winked at me, his face bearing strikingly suspicious resemblance to my dad's. I dreamed of flannel clad arms holding me close during storms. I dreamed of trips around town in the police cruiser, playing with the lights and the sirens to the amusement of the man sitting next to me. I dreamed of my father. And when I woke up, I remembered.
My mother got married on my first day of school. I could not attend, but saw pictures afterwards. Her friends from the store were there. Phil's teammates were in attendance. They went on a two week honeymoon to Cancun. My mom texted me pictures of swaying palm trees and sandy beaches. She said she was having the time of her life. She had never been so happy. I was happy because she was. And I had Mark, anyway. I didn't need my mother if I had Mark.
I did research online to try to find my dad. I called the Forks police station and found out he was now the town's Chief. The station wouldn't give me his home number without me telling them who I was. They offered for me to leave a message. They connected me to his voicemail. I listened to his recorded voice and started crying. Mark rocked me to sleep.
Phil moved into our house. My mom came back from their honeymoon pregnant. She was ecstatic, as was Phil. I dreamed of a little boy with Phil's sandy hair and my mother's nose. I was going to have a brother. It was exciting. But then the more pregnant my mom got, the less Phil spoke to me. He would pat her stomach affectionately, dote on her constantly, but ignore my existence. Three months into the pregnancy, I dreamed about Phil telling my mom he didn't want to raise his son with another man's child. She nodded and told him she understood, that it was about him and the baby and nothing else. She cried and told him she loved him. When I woke up, it was the first dream in years that I didn't write down.
My mom stopped talking to me.
Like Phil, she would look at me, recognition sparking behind her eyes. She would open her mouth to say something. The words would never come out.
I talked to Mark about it. I told him I felt like they didn't want me around anymore. I told him as much as I could without revealing my dreams. He told me I was being silly. That they would be stupid not to love me. That he loves me. I gave him my virginity that night in my bedroom. Thunder and lightning were crashing outside, rain was battering the windows. My mom and Phil were at an away game in California. And Mark was with me, in my bed. He held me afterwards, caressing my back and whispering his love. It felt nice and safe. Comfortable. Later, I dreamed of me saying goodbye to him. Of me packing my things and boarding an airplane. I saw mom and Phil drop me at the airport. Mom kissed my cheek and patted my shoulder and told me to be good. Mark cried and told me I was his first love, his first everything. That we should run away together. I left most of my things behind in Phoenix. The dream was jarring and disjointed and different from any others that I'd had. I woke up the next morning, kissed Mark on the cheek, and called Forks.
"Forks Police Department, this is Marcie, are you calling about an emergency?"
I sat there dumbly, the phone clenched in my hands. I didn't know what to say. I didn't know how to say it.
"Hello?"
"Yes, hi. Sorry. Is, um... is Charlie Swan available, please?"
"Who's calling?"
"It's... it's his daughter. His daughter Isabella."
My mother didn't react when I told her I was leaving. She kept folding towels, matching up corners and smoothing edges with her fingertips. I got tired of waiting for a response and left the room. I booked a flight to Seattle online and used the credit card number my father gave me. My father. It seemed weird to think of him like that, to think of even having a father. But I did. And he wanted me. So I was leaving.
I packed up my room. I brought some clothes and some pictures of the friends I'd made over the years. I had snapshots of every front door I'd ever lived behind. They were a map of my life and I brought them. I didn't have much else. The furniture couldn't come, and didn't really belong to me to begin with. I packed up my bookshelf and brought the box to Post Office, mailing it ahead of me to the address my father had given me. The address of my new home. In Forks. With him.
Mark took me to dinner in a nice restaurant downtown. He got us a hotel room and we spent the night holding each other and making love and saying goodbye. He cried twice, but he told me he loved me and he just wanted me to be happy. He wanted us to stay together, to have a long-distance relationship. That night I dreamed of a bronze haired boy with pale skin and amber eyes. He sat next to me in a field of flowers, telling me about his family. The next morning, I kissed Mark goodbye and told him we would always be friends. He hugged me tighter than he ever had before and let me go with red rimmed eyes.
Two days later, I waved goodbye to my old life and boarded the plane to Seattle. I told my mother I loved her as I left, and she gazed back at me quietly. I thought I saw a flicker of remorse in her eyes. I couldn't be sure. I was probably wrong.
The flight was long and tedious, with nothing to entertain me but the MP3 player Mark had bought me for my seventeenth birthday. I flipped through the in-flight magazine and regretted sending all of my books ahead of me. I avoided taking a nap because my dreams of late had been scaring me. Pale figures drinking from the necks of animals. Black eyes glaring at me across crowded rooms. Boys changing into wolves. I had dutifully written it all in my dream journal, but I knew it couldn't be real. It had to be the stress of the move. The upheaval of my life.
The plane landed in Seattle and a swarm of butterflies took over my stomach. My father was going to pick me up from the airport. He was going to meet me in the baggage claim. I was going to see him and touch him for the first time in twelve years. It was terrifying and exciting all at once.
My feet carried me across the terminal without my knowledge, and I worried about recognizing him. I had had dreams of him, of course, but what if they were inaccurate? My subconscious had been showing me some pretty strange things lately. What if he had changed...
But then, he was there. In grey plaid and faded denim, my father stood before me. The mustache of my childhood was still there, and it twitched when he recognized me. I took that to mean he was smiling.
"Isabella?"
"Hello, Charlie."
Charlie? Surely I hadn't just called him Charlie? But I had and his face fell a bit. And I felt bad for making him feel bad. I tried to correct myself... tried to call him "dad." The words wouldn't come out, though. So I moved past it.
"It's good to see you, kid."
"You, too."
"Come on, then. Let's get you home."
And, just like that, for the first time in twelve years, I was going home.
The house I was born in was small and white. It was a modest two up, two down, with a porch in the front and a yard in the back that disappears into the tree line of one of Washington's ubiquitous woods. It had green shutters and a finished attic with a round window like a port hole overlooking the side of the property. It was small and nothing special. But I remembered it.
Charlie pulled into the driveway and it was exactly the same.
We didn't talk much on the long drive from Seattle to Forks. He told me a bit about his job. He told me he liked to fish on the weekends with some friends from the Reservation just outside of town. He told me how grown-up I looked, how beautiful I'd become. He told me I reminded him of my mother. The last comment bothered me but I didn't say anything.
He asked me a little about my life, about school. I got uncomfortable and he quit asking questions. I thanked him for allowing me to stay and he told me he'd missed me every day since I'd been gone. We didn't talk for the rest of the trip.
The attic runs the whole length of the house. The ceiling comes to a point in the middle, with sloping beams on either side. Charlie installed hardwood floors and heating ducts. He painted the walls a calming sage green and left the beams exposed. He picked up a black, wrought iron bed frame from a garage sale and bought a soft, queen-sized mattress that takes up almost an entire wall of the narrow room for me to sleep on. There's a dark wood wardrobe and a matching dresser that apparently belonged to my grandmother. I hadn't thought about grandparents in years, so the idea of having anything belonging to them surprised me. He promised to buy me a desk when we could find a suitable one. He told me I could decorate the room however I wanted. It was mine to do with as I pleased. He offered to take me shopping so I could make the room more homey. It was already homier than anything I'd ever had before. I thanked him and shooed him out, telling him I needed to unpack. I didn't want him to see me crying and get the wrong idea. I didn't want him to think I was unhappy. In truth, I couldn't remember being happier.
I wandered around my new room, running my fingers over the cold metal of the bed frame, the warm wood of the dresser. The round window I remembered was gone, replaced by a large square with smaller panes of glass. I opened it and stuck my head outside, breathing in the damp air. The window looked almost directly into a tree, close enough that I could reach out and touch the leaves with my fingertips, and I happily decided that I would pretend my room was a treehouse. And that this was my chance to make an impression on the world. That this was my new start. I had a father and a home and a beautiful tree outside... and it was time for me to shine.