BPOV

Another home, another family, another time of strange looks being shot my way. It doesn't matter how I got into this mess, but suffice it to say, I'm not getting out of it any time soon.

I have limited knowledge of my new foster family. It's large. There are three boys and two girls. Three of them are adopted if I understood what I was told correctly. At least I won't be completely out of place.

Who am I kidding? I'll be out of place. It's easy to see that I am severely damaged goods. I'm covered from head to toe in scars I got from a fire that killed my parents a few years ago. I had third degree burns on a lot of my body. So, I am ugly and bitter. Who wants to look at me? I barely look at myself. Most people don't want to deal with me. Therefore, I get passed from family to family a lot. There is no way it could be different with this family.

Or so I thought until I actually met them. I mean, who wouldn't fall in love with this family. It's impossible.

I get off of the plane and look around. No one seems to be looking for a sixteen-year-old. And definitely not one with a haunted look about her. Until someone walks up to me and smiles brilliantly.

"Hi! Are you Bella?" she asks me more happily than I am used to or think anyone should be when meeting me.

I'm not sure what to make of her, so I respond hesitantly, "Yes."

"Awesome! I'm Alice, your new sister!" Normally this much peppiness gets on my nerves as it is the direct opposite of my personality, but it seemed to fit her perfectly.

"It's very nice to meet you, Alice," I say politely.

"C'mon! Let's get your stuff and take you home." Again, peppy, but still natural for her. In a way that's not quite annoying.

Alice spent the drive home telling me about her family. She somehow knew I didn't want to talk about myself, so she didn't make me talk all that much.

One thing Alice didn't seem to realize was that she was telling me a lot of information very fast. I did the best I could to remember what she said, though. This would be my family until they decide they don't want me anymore. Which, from past experience, they would want to get rid of me pretty quickly. That way they would be able to get someone a little easier to deal with.

From the barrage of information, I did manage to get some idea of what her family is like. She and her twin brother, Edward, are seventeen, and they are the only two kids in the family not adopted. Jasper and Rosalie are siblings the Cullen's adopted together. They fight a lot, being only a year apart, but still stick together and are pretty close. Emmett was adopted on his own. He is two years older than me – the same age as Rosalie – and a senior in high school. Their parents are Carlisle and Esme. Alice told me I didn't have to worry about formalities and could just call them by their first names. At least she didn't say I had to call them mom and dad. I've had some families who tried to do just that. It never ended well.

From what I could tell, this family wouldn't be too hard to live with in the short time I was here. At the very least, it could be much worse.

As I walked into the house, I was surprised. There must be something wrong. No family had ever thrown a party just because they were getting a new foster kid for a few weeks. And the party couldn't have been for anyone else. My name was on the banners. And they yelled out "surprise!" when Alice and I came in. I nearly jumped out of my ugly, scarred skin.

"Okay, Bella, this is our family." I didn't miss how she said our. I just let it go for now, however. "This is my mom and dad, Esme and Carlisle."

"Hello, Bella," the woman, Esme, said. "I know this must seem overwhelming to you, but we wanted to do what we could to make you feel welcome."

I didn't know what to say to this, so I just nodded and stayed quiet.

Alice continued on with her introductions. "This is Jasper and Rosalie. They were adopted ten years ago. This is Emmett. He turned eighteen before he could be adopted, but he is still one of the best big brothers ever. And Edward... Well, he is supposed to be here. He knew all about this and knew better than to not be here."

I couldn't blame him for not wanting to meet me. Who would want to?

_0*_0*_0*_0*_0*

EPOV

I refuse to go to the stupid party. We had one each time there was a new foster kid.

Don't get me wrong, I love Jasper, Emmett, and Rose, I just don't like some new person acting like they've known me their entire life. And that's how it will work. My family has been host to so many foster kids that I lost track of how many there have been. Every person who had come through had slowly decided that they should belong here in my family. And they didn't belong. We were complete how we were. I didn't want that to change.

This is my house and my family. This might sound mean and greedy, but that's how I felt. I can't help it that I feel this way, and even if I could, I don't know that I would want to.

It all starts the same way. My family brings someone home and they have a party to welcome them and make them feel more at home. The person is nervous for a few weeks, until they begin to soften due to my family's ever so warm hospitality. By the time they are supposed to leave, they walk around the house like they own it. And they don't own it.

So I figured that the new girl would be no different than the rest of them. How could she be any different? They all act the same after a while.

And then I met her. After that, as they say, it was history.

I was sitting in my room. I knew Alice would kill me, but I figured it would be less violent if I was still in the house, seeing as I had wanted to take off over an hour ago. She knew how I felt, yet she still made me be a part of all of this stuff.

I didn't make my feeling too obvious, because I didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings. But Alice could always tell. The two of us are more than just siblings or twins. The best way to describe it is that we are best friends. We can easily tell what the other is feeling without talking. It's not supernatural or anything, we have just been around each other so much that all it takes is a certain look and we understand what the other is trying to say. We usually just do this if there is something we want to say that we don't want anyone else to know. Every once in a while, however, we do it just to annoy people.

So, Alice really knew how I felt. And yet...

"Edward! Get your butt down here now, or else...!" Alice didn't have to finish that threat for me to know exactly what she would do. There is almost no line she wouldn't cross if I didn't do what she wanted when it came to stuff like this.

So I just decided to go down for a few minutes and see what new face I would have to get to know for a while. When I got to the party, I was quite surprised with what I saw.

At first glance – there was no polite way to say this – the girl was ugly. She had scars from some unknown tragedy covering all of the skin I could see. She had on jeans and a sweatshirt, so all I could really see was her face. After the initial shock however, I started to notice other things about her. Especially her eyes. There was something about those eyes.

I was usually a good reader at what people were thinking. I could just sort of, well, tell. Not with this girl, though. For some reason, I wasn't really able to figure out what she was thinking.

Except for those eyes. Through her eyes, I could see every emotion that she seemed to be feeling. Saying the eyes are the windows to the soul would be an understatement here. Like just now, she seemed to be feeling nervous about herself and the situation around her. Until she saw me. As soon as she saw me, there was some emotion that I didn't have time to label before she looked away. Something almost like longing though.

I couldn't look away from her eyes, even as Alice made the introductions.

"And this, Bella..." Alice's voice started to snap me back to the present and I noticed the rest of her face again. "This is my annoying twin brother, Edward. Edward, this is Bella."

How ironic. A name meaning beauty, when she would never be seen as such by the rest of the world. But the rest of the world probably would never see her as I had started to already.

This girl was going to capture my heart very fast.

The question was: Did I want her to?

A/N: It's been way too long since I put something up, especially since this chapter has been sitting in my notebook for over a year now. Amazing what not doing homework will do some days, though, isn't it?

11-29-2012: I am not under any circumstances updating until I get at least one review. Don't mind if I don't get many, but really people? No reviews?