A/N: This is what happened after Edward left. Bella never fell in love with Jacob. Sorry JB shippers. Bella jumped off the cliff, Alice never saw, Jacob never rescued her, Edward never went to Italy. Just an idea that demanded I write it into existence. AU obviously.
Prologue
It was my third day in the ICU that I realized he was never coming back.
I was eighteen, and I had graduated high school, so what'd I do? I did something that wasn't me at all. I packed my bags and left on a four month long volunteer trip to South America, Brazil to be exact.
I cut my hair short, so short that I sometimes reminded myself of Alice. I tried not to look in the mirror much.
I still remember the day I jumped. It was cold, the wind biting my face. They only sound was that of the water churning violently below me, and all I knew was that it had been the most alive I'd felt in a very long time. And when I stepped off the ledge, I was indescribably, morbidly happy.
That is, I was happy until I hit the water. It closed over me like a fist.
I expected him for some reason. He'd have come if I really needed him, right? Wrong.
He never came. Bruised and battered, I washed up onto the beach shivering. Sam Ulley found me later and drove me to the hospital. They had to pump water out of my lungs. I had a broken leg, two broken ribs, and was in the intermediate stages of hypothermia when I arrived. The doctors said I was lucky, but I didn't feel that way.
After that, I just wanted to be different. It took me weeks to realize why.
Maybe, just maybe, if I had a different life, I could forget. If I could become a different person, I would simply loose all remnants of who I had been before.
Charlie didn't stop me, not after I convinced him how much I really wanted to do it. And I did, in more ways than just wanting to change. I truly did want to help people, or at least, that's what I told myself. It was the first step to becoming someone new, making myself truly believe I was someone new.
I coughed up the five grand, boarded a plane, and left Forks behind, headed to Rio de Janeiro.