I Give absolute all credit to Stephenie Meyer. All I did was switch some names. Twilight was her idea. 10 years into the future was mine. Written from her book but revised. Like I said. All Twilight credit goes to her.

10 years into the Future

Chapter 1

My father drove me to the airport with the windows rolled down. It was seventy-five degrees in Phoenix, the sky a perfect, cloudless blue. I was wearing my favorite shirt – sleeveless, white ribbed tank; I was wearing it as a farewell gesture. My carry-on item was a parka.

In the Olympic Peninsula of northwest Washington State, a small town named Forks exists under a near-constant cover of clouds. It rains on this inconsequential town more than any other place in the United States of America. It was from this town and it's gloomy, omnipresent shade that my father escaped with me when I was only a few months old. It was in this town that I'd been compelled to spend a month every summer until I was fourteen. That was the year I finally put my foot down; these past three summer, my mom, Charlotte, vacationed with me in California for two weeks instead.

It was to Forks that I now exiled myself – an action that I took with great horror. I detested Forks.

I loved Phoenix. I loved the sun and the blistering heat. I loved the vigorous, sprawling city.

"Ashton," my dad said to me - the last of a thousand times – before I got on the plane. "You don't have to do this."

My dad looks like me, except with thinning hair and laugh lines. I felt a spasm of panic as I stared at him wide, childlike eyes. How could I leave my loving, erratic, harebrained father to fend for himself? Of course he had Phoebe now, so the bills would probably get paid, there would be food in the refrigerator, gas in his car, and someone to call when he got lost, but still…

"I want to go," I lied. I'd always been a bad liar, but I'd been saying this lie so frequently lately that it sounded almost convincing now.

"Tell Charlotte I said hi."

"I will."

"I'll see you soon," he insisted. "You can come home whenever you want – I'll come right back as soon as you need me."

But I could see the sacrifice in his eyes behind the promise.

"Don't worry about me," I urged. "It'll be great. I love you, Dad."

He hugged me tightly for a minute, and then I got on the plane, and he was gone.

It's a four-hour flight from Phoenix to Seattle, another hour in a small plane up to Port Angeles, and then an hour back down to Forks. Flying doesn't bother me; the hour in the car with Charlotte, though, I was a little worried about.

Charlotte had really been fairly nice about the whole thing. She seemed genuinely pleased that I was coming to live with her for the first time with any degree of permanence. She'd already gotten me registered for high school and was going to help me get a car.

When I landed in Port Angeles, it was raining. I didn't see it as an omen – just unavoidable. I'd already said my goodbyes to the sun.

Charlotte was waiting for me with the cruiser. This I was expecting too. Charlotte is Police Chief Philips to the good people of Forks. My primary motivation behind buying a car, despite the scarcity of my funds, was that I refused to be driven around town in a car with red and blue lights on top. Nothing slows down traffic like a cop.

Charlotte gave me an awkward, on-armed hug when I stumbled my way off the plane.

"It's good to see you, Ash," she said, smiling as she automatically caught and steadied me. "You haven't changed much. How's Robert?"

"Dad's fine. It's good to see you, too, Mom." I wasn't allowed to call her Charlotte to her face.

I had only a few bags. Most of my Arizona clothes were too permeable for Washington. My dad and I had pooled our resources to supplement my winter wardrobe, but it was still scanty. It all fit easily into the trunk of the cruiser.

"I found a good car for you, really cheap," she announced when we were strapped in.

"What kind of car?" I was suspicious of the way she said "good car for you" as opposed to just "good car."

"Well, it's a truck actually, a Chevy."

"Where did you find it?"

"Do you remember Billy Black down at La Push?" La Push is the tiny Indian reservation on the coast.

"No."

"He used to go fishing with us during the summer," Charlotte prompted.

That would explain why I didn't remember him. I do a good job of blocking painful, unnecessary things from my memory.

"He's in a wheelchair now," Charlotte continued when I didn't respond, "so he can't drive anymore, and he offered to sell me his truck cheap."

"What year is it?" I could see from her change of expression that this was the question she was hoping I wouldn't ask.

"Well, Billy's done a lot of work on the engine – it's only a few years old, really."

I hoped she didn't think so little of me as to believe I would give up that easily. "When did he buy it?"

"He bought it in 1996, I think."

"Did he buy it new?"

"Well, no. I think it was new in the early seventies – or late sixties at the earliest," she admitted sheepishly.

"Ch – Mom, I know a little about cars. I wouldn't be able to fix it if anything we wrong, and I couldn't afford a mechanic…."

"Really, Ashton, the thing runs great. They don't build them like that anymore."

The thing, I thought to myself… it had possibilities – as a nickname, at the very least.

"How cheap is cheap?" After all, that was the part I couldn't compromise on.

"Well, sweetie, I kind of already bought it for you. As a homecoming gift." Charlotte peeked sideways at me, through her brown curls, with a hopeful expression.

Wow. Free.

"You didn't need to do that, Mom. I was going to buy myself a car."

"I don't mind. I want you to be happy here." She was looking ahead at the road when she said this. Charlotte wasn't comfortable with expressing her emotions out loud. I inherited that from her. So I was looking straight ahead as I responded.

"That's really nice, Mom. Thanks. I really appreciate it." No need to add that my being happy in Forks is an impossibility. She didn't need to suffer along with me. And I never looked a free truck in the mouth – or engine.

"Well, now, you're welcome," she mumbled, embarrassed by my thanks.

We exchanged a few more comments on the weather, which was wet, and that was pretty much it for the conversation. We stared out the windows in silence.

It was beautiful, of course; I couldn't deny that. Everything was green: the trees, their trunks covered with moss, their branches hanging with a canopy of it, the ground covered in ferns. Even the air filtered down greenly through the leaves.

It was too green – an alien planet.

Eventually we made it to Charlotte's. She still lived in the small, two-bedroom house that she'd bought with my father in the early days of their marriage. Those were the only kind of days their marriage had – the early ones. There, parked on the street in front of the house that never changed, was my new – well, new to me – truck. It was a faded blue color, with big rounded fenders and a bulbous cab. To my intense surprise, I loved it. I didn't know if it would run, but I could see myself in it. Plus, it was one of those solid iron affairs that never gets damaged – the kind you see at the scene of an accident, paint unscratched, surrounded by the pieces of the foreign car it had destroyed.

"Wow, Mom, it's awesome! Thanks!" Now my horrific day tomorrow would be just that much less dreadful. I wouldn't be faced with the choice of either walking two miles in the rain to school or accepting a ride in the Chief's cruiser.

"I'm glad you like it," Charlotte said gruffly, embarrassed again.

Forks High School had a frightening total of only three hundred and fifty-seven – now fifty-eight – students; there were more than seven hundred people in my junior class alone back home. All of the kids here had grown up together – their grandparents had been toddlers together. I would be the new boy from the big city, a curiosity, a freak.

Maybe, if I looked like a boy from Phoenix should, I could work this to my advantage. But physically, I'd never fit in anywhere. I should by tan, muscular sporty – a football player or a baseball player, perhaps – all the things that go with living in the valley of the sun.

Instead, I was pale skinned, without the excuse of blue eyes, or red hair, despite the constant sunshine. I had always been slender, but soft somehow, obviously not an athlete; I didn't have the necessary hand-eye coordination to play sports without humiliating myself – and harming both myself and anyone else who stood too close.

I parked in front of the first building, which had a small sign over the door reading FRONT OFFICE. No one else was parked there, so I was sure it was off limits, but I decided I would get directions inside instead of circling around in the rain like an idiot.

Inside, it was brightly lit, and warmer that I'd hoped. The office was small; a little waiting area with padded folding chairs, orange – flecked commercial carpet, notices and awards cluttering the walls, a big clock ticking loudly. There were three desks behind the counter, one of which was manned by a thin, blonde- haired woman wearing glasses. She was wearing a pink t-shirt, which immediately made me feel overdressed.

The blonde-haired woman looked up. "Can I help you?"

"I'm Ashton Sutten," I informed her, and saw the immediate awareness light her eyes. I was expected, a topic of gossip no doubt. Son of the Chief's flighty ex-husband, come home at last.

When the bell rang, a nasal buzzing sound, a gangly girl with skin problems and hair black as an oil slick leaned across the aisle to talk to me.

"You're Ashton Sutten, aren't you?" She looked like the overly helpful, chess club type.

"Ash," I corrected. Everyone within a three-seat radius turned to look at me.

"Where's your next class?" she asked. I had to check my bag. "Um, Government, with Jefferson, in building six."

There was nowhere to look without meeting curious eyes.

I'm headed toward building four, I could show you the way…" Definitely over-helpful. "I'm Emma," she added.

I smiled tentatively. "Thanks."

After two classes, I started to recognize several of the faces in each class. There was always someone braver that the others who would introduce themselves and ask me questions about how I was liking Forks. I tried to be diplomatic, but mostly I just lied a lot. At least I never needed the map.

One boy sat next to me in both Trig and Spanish, and he walked with me to the cafeteria for lunch. He was tiny, several inches shorter than my five feet four inches, but his widely curly dark hair made up a lot of the difference between our heights. I couldn't remember his name, so I smiled and nodded as he prattled about teachers and classes. I didn't try to keep up.

We sat at the end of a full table with several of his friends, who he introduced to me. I forgot all their names as soon as he spoke them. They seemed impressed by his bravery in speaking to me. The girl from English, Emma, waved at me from across the room. It was there, sitting in the lunchroom, trying to make conversation with seven curious strangers, that I first saw them.

They were sitting in the corner of the cafeteria as far away from where I sat as possible in the long room. There were seven of them. They weren't talking, and they weren't eating, though one girl was. They weren't gawking at me, unlike most of the other students, so it was safe to stare at them without fear of meeting an excessively interested pair of eyes.

They didn't look anything alike, although the girl that was eating looked like one of the boys and one of the girls. Of the three boys, one was big – muscled like a serious weight lifter, with dark curly hair. Another was taller, leaner, but still muscular and honey blonde. The last was lanky, less bulky, with untidy, bronze colored hair. He was more boyish that the others, who looked like they could be in college, or even teachers here rather than students.

The girls were opposites. The tall one was statuesque. She had a beautiful figure, the kind you saw on the cover of the sports illustrated swimsuit issue, the kind that made every girl around her take a hit on her self-esteem just by being in the same room. Her hair was golden, gently waving to the middle of her back. The short girl was pixielike, thin in the extreme, with small features. Her hair was deep black, cropped short and pointing in every direction. The medium sized girl had dark curly hair that touched her shoulders. She was dressed more casually than the other girls. She was tightly holding the bronze hair boy's hand. She was gorgeous. Not like the taller one but a little prettier than the short one. The last girl was sitting off to the side next to the tall girl and the medium girl. She looked younger than all of them. She had the bronze boy's hair that fell to her shoulders and was thick like the medium girl's hair. She was dressed more like the girl with spiky hair and she gently touched the bronze boy's face. He nodded. She looked over at me and waved slightly. I blushed but didn't look away.

All of them except her were exactly alike. Every one of them was chalky pale, the palest of all the students living in this sunless town. Paler then me. They all had very dark eyes despite the range in hair tones. The girl was different. She had their pale skin but it was flushed like she couldn't stop blushing. Her eyes were dark too but looked much like brown. She didn't have the bruises under her eyes like the rest of them did. And she was eating.

"Who are they?" I asked the boy from my Spanish class, whose name I'd forgotten.

As she looked up to see who I meant – though already knowing, probably, from my tone – suddenly he looked at her, the thinner one, the boyish one, the second to youngest perhaps.

"That's Edward, Emmett, Bella and Renesme Cullen, and Roaslie and Jasper Hale. The one who left was Alice Cullen; they all live together with Dr. Cullen and his wife." He said under his breath. I glanced sideways at the beautiful girl, who was eating a bagel now. Strange unpopular names, I thought. The kinds of names grandparents had. I finally remembered that my neighbor was called Josh, a perfectly common name.

"They are…very nice-looking." I struggled with the conspicuous understatement.

"Yes!" Josh agreed laughing. "They're all together though – Emmett and Rosalie, Jasper and Alice, and Bella and Edward I mean. And they live together." I glanced over at them.

"Who is who?" I asked Josh.

"The big guy is Emmett, the blond one is Jasper – his twin is Rosalie – the one with reddish brownish hair is Edward, the short one is Alice and the brown haired one is Bella."

"Which one is the girl with the reddish brownish hair?" I asked.

"That's Renesme Cullen. She's gorgeous, of course, but don't waste your time. She doesn't date. Apparently none of the boys here are good-looking enough for her." He sniffed a clear case of sour grapes. I wondered when she'd turned him down. The bell rang and got up to go to my next class Biology II.