Twilight doesn't belong to me, but this angst does :)
CH 1
Isabella took a hard drag of the hot, dry air as she leaned back and flicked what was left of her cigarette. She watched it whirl through the air, stray embers streaking through the dark, and land unceremoniously in the neighbors back yard pool. She chuckled...her neighbors had complained to her mother many times of her unsavory habit, and the fact that the end result often made it's way onto their property. It wasn't as if she aimed for their pool, in fact, her aim, or lack of skill with it, was the problem. The chuckle came from the fact that, if they came to complain tomorrow, they'd find the house empty. It was a bitter-sweet chuckle.
She wasn't entirely opposed to the changes that would come with the sun. She took comfort in knowing that what she was doing for her mother and Phil was a good thing, a kind thing. And while the familiarity of her current surroundings held comfort, there wasn't much of this place, other than these long hot drags of air, while sitting alone on the roof outside her window at night, that she would miss.
Of course she'd miss her Mother, and she supposed Phil as well, a bit, but she often enjoyed solitude. She knew her father would give her space. He wasn't a hoverer, unlike her mother, who meant well, but she couldn't seem to accept that Bella wasn't going to suddenly wake up one day a cheerful and enthusiastic joiner. A fan of group activities, she was not. Her mother, however, was the polar opposite, never having met a club or hobby she didn't like, and gleefully want to share, with anyone who made eye contact with her, whether they liked it or not. On numerous occasions she'd grabbed Bella's sketch book, flipping through it, clutching her heart and proclaiming that her daughter should be sharing her art with the world!
It wasn't that Bella was insecure. She simply didn't see the appeal of opening your soul to strangers the way her mother seemed to do daily, in any capacity possible. In her experience, and from her own observations, that kind of openness often ended at best in a cheapening of something that once brought great solace and joy, and at worst in the kind of pain that you try to shove deep down inside, where it takes hold and changes who you are, fundamentally.
Wiping her roof sullied palms on her jeans she turned to crawl out of her thoughts and back through the window. Only a few more hours now. Her stomach fluttered with nervous anticipation as she continued sorting through her things, choosing what would stay; she was unlikely to need three tank tops each in every color of the rainbow.. and what would accompany her; among them, three boxes of sketch books and her well worn sweatshirt that read "not all who wander are lost - tolkien." She didn't have any delusions that moving to a rainy town in Washington was going to be some sort of pivotal turning point in her life. She kept reminding herself that she'd likely just be bored, wet and cold. But the unknown, while a bit uncomfortable, was also a bit exhilarating. Stubbornly, she refused to recognize the emotion playing around the edges of her thoughts when she considered this new chapter of her life.
Hope.