I don't own Twilight.
Much thanks to my wifey, GemmaLisax, and to Forthelongestday and SweeneyAnne for making sure I don't post crap. They are all so awesome.
I sit in the darkened living room of Charlie's house, the glow from my cigarette the only illumination, just thinking. Thinking about the fact that's it's been nearly a year since I moved here and yet, it still doesn't quite feel like home. I'd taken up smoking and drinking wine a few weeks ago, driven by some unknown desire to have Charlie actually notice me. He noticed, he cared, just not about the smoking or the wine. He and I had spent a good two hours that night, sitting at the kitchen table talking.
"Bella, I don't know what to say," he'd said as he stared at the plates my mother had hung on the wall so long ago. "I've never been a teenaged girl. This might just be a part of all of that."
He was uncomfortable with my blossoming womanhood. He felt just as inadequate at this as I felt at life, just as clueless. We were both lost in this quagmire of "growing up" and both of us wanted nothing more than to pass through to the other side unscathed.
"Charlie," I spoke quietly, "I don't think I'm normal. It's really bad. Maybe it is normal though. I've never done this either." I was so lost, felt so out of touch. I had always envisioned my life in one particular way, and things had strayed so far from the course that I'd imagined that I didn't even know if I was normal, or worthy anymore. I let out a deep breath, dreading what I was about to tell my well meaning Father. "I think I should see someone," my voice trailed off as I clarified for him, "a therapist."
He only nodded at me. It was a testament to just how much he cared that he didn't argue with me that I was in fact just going through a phase. There were stories around town about some girl that I had never met who had offed herself because she couldn't cope and I didn't want to be the next person that the town gossiped about.
That was a month ago, and here I sat, quiet strands of the blues wafting through the air, teasing my mind; making me ask myself all of the hard questions that I've been avoiding for weeks. Questions that I'd been instructed by my therapist to address in writing, painting, and journaling. Questions that I had touched on, but never fully committed to answering.
The ash fell unnoticed from the tip of my cigarette, I was completely lost in my mind. The questions played in an endless loop. Life is a series of answered questions, and right now, I was thinking that I've been answering wrong for years.
Why do you want to move to your Dad's?
Are you settling in ok?
Do you have any friends?
Are you going to college?
Will you go to dinner with me?
Do you understand?
Can you possibly love me?
Will you marry me?
No, none of the questions have right or wrong answers, just somewhere along the way they got all mixed up and now I'm sitting in a dark room, burning my fingers to put out my cigarette as I wonder where I fucked up.
Edward Cullen. The much talked about, and little understood, gorgeous new kid. He was a part of what appeared to be a close knit family of gorgeous new kids, with glamorous parents and the ability to ignore the fact that everyone in the town was talking about them.
Initially, I had been just as fascinated by their constant detachment from everyone else in the school. Never having had siblings, I just attributed their closeness to a very strong sense of family and the old adage that blood was thicker than water. It's laughable now, that I thought that. Now that I know about them.
It didn't take Edward long to get to know me. We were assigned to sit next to each other in Biology class. After a false start, he saved my life twice in rapid succession, only to spill his secret and ultimately condemn me to a death, of sorts. At the time, I didn't mind at all. I was happy, or what I thought was happy. I was loved and wanted. As I spent more and more time with Edward and his family, I grew further and further away from Charlie, and from the other teenagers in this town that had befriended me.
The air reeks of stale smoke and the wine that I spilled last night when the questions got to be more than I could handle sober. I contemplate pouring another glass of the tart red wine that Charlie bought in a box last week to impress his current love interest, but that would require me getting up and at least rinsing out a plastic solo cup that is all we have to drink from. Instead I shake another cigarette from the box and wonder how many more I have to smoke before I have to face the happy blond cashier at the gas station.
I envy the overweight blond cashier her smile and her laughs. I hate her for being so satisfied with a shitty job, and for smiling at strangers. I despise her for commanding me to "Have a good day." when she has no idea that I sit in my dark living room, surrounded by empty packets of cigarettes every night and that I now go days without using my voice. I'm beginning to believe that the therapy is making me worse, but maybe it's just the fact that I'm a non-compliant patient that won't follow through with the recommendations that my therapist gives me.
My phone stopped ringing two months ago, after we all got back from Phoenix. It was the third time that Edward had been forced to save my life. I don't know why he and his family even bothered since my integration with them was like a death warrant. During the "getting to know you" phase of mine and Edward's relationship, I had stumbled across the fact that my new boyfriend was different.
The brief inadvertent touches of his cold hand, the changing eye colors, it had all set off a burning curiosity in me that wasn't satisfied until it was too late. It was a bonfire with ghost stories that had educated me, not Edward. I should have been mad that he didn't tell me himself, but even in my current funk I realized that had he told me then, "Bella, I'm a vampire" I would have run from him, thinking him crazy, and set into motion a series of events that would have led to my untimely death.
Instead, I dove into the local lore. Research, the never failing friend of the friendless, had confirmed every single story that I'd heard at the bonfire about "The Cold Ones" and I had stupidly confronted Edward alone.
"I know what you are," I'd told him with shaking hands, staring into his bright golden eyes. His eyes never lost the softness that they held whenever he looked at me as he used his super-human speed to blur around me, a feeble attempt to frighten me away. I had already figured out his big secret, and I wasn't afraid. His demands that I say the word didn't frighten me. Nothing he could say or do would frighten me, so strong was my desire to be wanted, needed, loved. It was then that he told me about Singers. I was his Singer. It was laughable, really, given that I was nearly completely tone deaf. That day I learned that my blood could do what my voice never could; my blood was like the call of a Siren to him.
I stopped calling almost two weeks ago, deciding that it was time that I stop being so dependent on others for my happiness. I hadn't even heard from Alice, Edward's sister, and the only Cullen other than him that I considered myself to be close with. His abandonment, I could nearly understand. He was almost as fucked up as me in the head. It was the loss of communication with Alice that troubled me at times like this. I knew that she was just like him; that she was a Vampire and that my blood was my biggest draw to her. But Alice had never made me feel that way. She had always made me feel as if my company was the reason that she wanted to be around me. Though I allowed her to treat me as a dress up doll at times, just to ensure that she liked me and stuck around; I never felt that had she known the true me she would have left.
I guess that I had misjudged my friendship with Alice, perhaps she had come to covet my blood and humanity just as much as Edward had. My therapist was continuously advising me that I needed to accept the fact that it was impossible to please everyone all of the time and that my attempts at doing so were simply alienating the people that truly cared about me. I had written about fifteen really bad poems about the feeling that I got when I knew that someone didn't like me. They made me laugh now, though I was still able to relate to the feelings.
I had hoped that during the time in Phoenix, when Alice and her husband Jasper were so focused on protecting me, we had all become friends. I had felt their eyes on me, and though I couldn't hear the conversation between the two of them, I'd imagined that they were really worried about the state of my emotional health. I suppose I would never really know what it was that they talked about while I lay in bed curled into the fetal position crying. I imagined long conversations between the two of them regarding my mental health and what I would need to feel from them to gain back some security with my humanity. I imagined them professing their love for one another and cursing my existence because it meant that they couldn't freely act on the desire that they felt.
I had grand ideas by this point in my infatuation with Edward Cullen, ideas that I assigned to the behaviors of Alice and Jasper. I imagined them to be so wrapped up in one another that the rest of the world faded away; that I became nothing more than a hindrance to their desire for one another. The little therapy that I had endured had educated me enough to know that there was no such thing as the fantasy world that I was imagining; there was no "perfect" love.
I stared down at the blank journal page in my lap. It was begging me for some grand revelation that I couldn't give it. It desperately wanted me to admit what my subconscious had already surmised. I didn't want to put it to paper. I didn't want to write it, or sketch it, or admit to myself that I had been tainted by Hollywood and Disney to expect that love was a simple matter of "he loves her, he protects her, and she has only to accept everything without question."
My hand moved of its own volition and I began to sketch. I am not gifted with the ability to draw things, my gifts lie with the written word but I was unable to put to words the epiphany that had just occurred to me during my mind's stroll down memory lane. Every feeling that I had felt during the courtship between Edward and myself came rushing to the surface of my mind. I compared our relationship to that of Alice and Jasper and found it lacking.
Where Alice seemed so happy and fulfilled, I nearly always felt that I was stamping down my thoughts and opinions in order to align them with Edward's and keep him happy. I was clinging to him; needing his approval for every aspect of my life. Only giving myself some sense of justification and validation if my thoughts aligned with his. And as I sketched out the abstract lines that reflected this, I realized that it wasn't true. I realized that I had assigned the task of validating my own personal thoughts and beliefs to the men in my life. It was a grand revelation that was interrupted by a knock on the front door.
It's one of the reasons why the knock surprised me; the other being that no one ever came to see Charlie and I. The interest that he bought wine for left when she discovered my existence, and Edward and his family stopped coming to visit after the disastrous time in Phoenix. I stare in the direction of my door in disbelief, listening to it vibrate in the frame from the force of the second knock. I take another drag, and crush out my cigarette while the door frame threatens to collapse from the knocking. Stumbling through the darkness, I grope for a light and blink at the pain its sudden illumination sends my eyes. I have no idea how long I've been sitting here in the dark.
I ran my hand through my hair as I walked across the living room floor, carefully avoiding looking at the pictures of Edward and I that Charlie had placed along the mantle of the fireplace. The still images of two happily smiling teenagers would have mocked me as I crossed the room and given my current state of mind, I didn't need the mocking. I was annoyed that the pounding at the door had interrupted what could be one of the most important realizations of my short life.
"Chill out, I'm coming," I croak with my ill used voice as I throw the locks. I think it's been three days since I spoke. Charlie knew that I'd been cutting school freely, and had apparently spoken to both my therapist and the school's administrators to accommodate me. Every so often, I would find assignments lying on the kitchen table for me to complete. I opened the door with my eyes cast down, not really caring anymore if it's one of the dreaded home invaders you hear about on the news. Maybe it will be one of them. I can throw up my hands, halfway protest as they simply rape me and beat me into oblivion.
Yeah, maybe it will be them.
A glimpse of the perfectly polished black cowboy boot standing a foot from my doorway seems to laugh at the disappointment I feel to not have a gun pressed to my forehead. I raise my eyes, following what I once would have thought to have been very attractive jean clad legs attached to the boots. It's Jasper, Alice's husband; but I see a vampire cowboy with hungry looking eyes and a somber expression staring back at me.
"Bella?" he asks with a rough, but quiet voice that belittles the struggle that I know he's facing at simply standing there and not draining me of my life-giving force. I'd spoken to Alice about Jasper's past and knew that he faced great personal trials of his self control at simply being in the same room with me. I couldn't help but wonder if he was the emissary of death sent to me from the Cullen family. "Bella, can we talk?" he asks me, even as his rapidly darkening eyes give me a different reason for his visit. He constantly shifts from foot to foot, and I recognize this a habit borne of his years of preying on people just like me. He doesn't need to shift, but it makes him appear lost, and endearing.
I take a fearful step back from the door, forgetting for an instant Jasper's gift, and the fact that my actions will only make this encounter harder for both of us to get through with our lives unscathed. There has never been a doubt in my mind that Jasper was the perfect predator. While hearing from his family members how dangerous he was, I had always felt extremely comfortable around him; even after I learned that making me feel that way was an illusion of his gift.
"Hello Jasper," I greeted him with a flourish of my hand inviting him into the house. I made no rush to hide my journal, or to make excuses for the slovenly appearance of myself or the house. Jasper was an empath. He was able to gather all of the information that he needed to deal with me before I ever even opened the door. I motioned to a seat, "Take a seat." It was an unnecessary bit of speech, but I was still trapped in my human nature, even if Jasper wasn't.
"I'd like to speak with you Bella," he said as he stared at the mess that surrounded him. I should have been embarrassed at the state of the house, but I hadn't gotten that far in my therapy, and right now I just didn't give a shit. I hadn't invited Jasper to come over. He could deal with the refuse that was such a part of my every day's existence.
I nodded at him and sat back into the seat I'd occupied before he knocked on the door. Placing my journal in my lap, but still not bothering to close it, I stared at Jasper. His eyes were nearly black, and I had heard the stories of his poor impulse control. It was nearly a suicide attempt to sit here with him in this state, but I was so far beyond caring what happened to me that I simply settled back into the sofa.
"Bella, I'm very worried about you," Jasper shared with me in a tone that should have sounded very condescending. I was surprised that it didn't coming from him. I had only spent time around him in Phoenix, avoiding death, and I wasn't sure if he was actively manipulating my emotions, or if he was truly genuine in what he was saying to me. I simply continued to stare at him. After giving me some time to think about his words, he continued, "I've been watching you, sampling your emotions from the first day that Edward brought you to visit. I have concerns, Bella, that things aren't the way you perceive them to be. I'd like to help you."
He worried with his hands as he spoke to me; knotting his fingers together while staring at them and completely avoiding eye contact with me. It wasn't until a few minutes after his last words to me that he raised his eyes to look at me.
"Bella, will you please let me help? I know you're seeing a therapist, I just think," he paused and sort of waved his hand halfheartedly, "I can help you as well."
I watched the wrinkles that appeared in his forehead as he tried to think of the right words to speak; the way he wrenched his tangled fingers back and forth as he asked my permission to ensure that I died with the most personal clarity available to me.
"Jasper, does it really matter?" I asked, "I mean, I'm gonna die in the end, one way or the other, right?"
His eyes were sad as he raised them to look at mine, but his face was expressionless. He didn't speak but suddenly, I was flooded with an overwhelming sadness. I was overwhelmed with feelings that cycled so rapidly, and through such varying emotions that I could barely identify them before they changed. I simply sat there; staring at Jasper as he shared his explanation of his motivation for wanting to help as best as he could. So many emotions cycled through the two of us; him constantly sharing his with me. One emotion that was constant; one that never changed was love.
It wasn't the love of fairy tales; or even the love of tragic romance novels. It was a subtle love, filled with affection. It was the most difficult emotion to identify, of all of the emotions that he shared with me. I had a firm grasp on anxiety, hate, loathing, hunger, desire, annoyance; it was that deep familial love that was so foreign to me. I stared at him in confusion as he bombarded my senses with this foreign love. It was unyielding. I felt so unworthy to receive such an unencumbered form of affection, yet he continued to force it upon me. Slowly a small smile showed at the slightly upturned corners of his eyes that I couldn't refuse.
"Jasper, where did that come from?" I asked him as the first genuine smile that I had felt since moving to Forks broke out on my face. My smile was answered by one of his own. It illuminated his face. I could finally see the beauty in him that Alice had always spoken of. His smile was beautiful.
"I have quietly watched since your first day at school. Alice told me that you would be an important strand in the fabric of our family and so I watched. I simply shared with you a small portion of the way people feel when you are around." His speech was tainted with the smile that he couldn't seem to rid himself of. I hadn't seen him smile so much before. "I want to help. I know that you are at a crossroads and I think that I may be able to help you. Will you let me?" His voice was nearly pleading with me; begging me to let him redeem himself to his family through assisting me with these personal problems that seemed to be consuming me.
I saw the hope in his eyes. I knew the way that Edward spoke of him being the black sheep of the family; and the way that Alice seemed to adore him regardless of his faults. It was based on their impressions of him that I nodded my agreement. I didn't know the man sitting before me, but I didn't know myself either. I was going to die regardless, and I didn't feel any hint of foreboding fall upon me as I agreed, with a nod, to allow Jasper to help me wade through the difficult task of finding myself and becoming confident enough to believe that my desires and wants were worthy of attention.
Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed it.