Hello! I would first like to thank my wonderful beta AnotherStupidLamb for her amazing work, without which this would not be published.
A note on place and time: This story is set POST Breaking Dawn. Lilah is not a replacement for Bella.
Disclaimer: Twilight is the wonderful creation of Stephanie Meyer, and I am in no way making money off of this story.
Chapter One: A Chance Encounter
It was the one action in my life that would alter my worldly perception, my soul, my heart, my entire view on life; though, at the time, I didn't know it.
I had moved from my home of Santa Fe, New Mexico—filled with artists and hippies, sunny days and stunning sunsets—to the Olympic Peninsula in Washington, the rainiest place in the continental U.S. I was two years away from graduating at home, and had never even been to the Pacific Northwest. I didn't mind much, pulling up and moving. I loved Santa Fe, with its culture and mountains and food, but my social life, my connections were few. It was getting settled in that bothered me. So why had I moved? As with almost all of my life, the decision came down to my mother. My mother, Sandra, had Huntington's disease. It's a rare, incurable genetic disorder that robs a person of their ability to control their emotions, movements, mental status and eventually costs them their life. My mother was diagnosed when I was twelve, after three years of depression and mood swings. With her diagnosis, my father started to disengage. He left three years ago, after a violent and abusive episode, and I have been left to care for my mother ever since.
The disease progressed slowly at first, but about a year ago it picked up momentum and reached a stage where my mother could no longer function alone. She couldn't stand to have her friends and former colleagues watch as her life slowly slipped away, and missed the rain and green of her home state of Washington. I couldn't deny her the ability to live her last few years as she wished. So, after months of preparation, planning and figuring of finances, we moved.
Forks, Washington: a small, sunless, green logging town. I missed New Mexico, I missed the sun, and I worried about my life here. I woke up to what I'd been dreading for months. I was my first day of school here, in a little town where I'd be a fascination, if only for a few days. It's not that I don't like people, I try to be friendly. I had acquaintances at school back home, but I couldn't afford friends. Friends require close relationships, sharing, and questions about my personal life. It was simply easier to be friendly and remain anonymous than anything else.
I gulped down some orange juice, my stomach lurching in anticipation. My mother was sitting in her chair, jerking and rocking back and forth, her meds unconsumed on her plate. I sighed and walked over, gently coaxed her into opening her mouth, stiff from dystonia. I tilted the cup of water to her lips and held her chin up as she swallowed. Giving her a last worried glance, I walked out the door and into the rain. I hadn't gotten a car yet, worried about funds; and frankly, I'd seen no need to, Forks is small enough to bike anywhere. At the time, I obviously hadn't been thinking about the rain. Sloshing through the mud to a used bike I'd bought yesterday, I groaned and realized that biking in the rain is far more difficult than riding a bike through a dry street on a warm day. I vaulted myself onto the seat, grimaced at the feeling of wet jeans, then placing my foot on the pedal, rode off to school.
I did a double take at the red brick buildings. This was a school? This is what one hundred and fifty people looked like? Anonymity, my best defense, would be hard to keep up here. Sighing for the hundredth time that day, I headed to the office.
The secretary looked up at me with a smile. "Ah yes. You must be the new girl from Mexico? Lilah Adams?" I almost laughed at her knowledge of North American geography, but kept my manners and nodded when she got my name right. She showed me my schedule, gave me a map—as if I could get lost here—and told me to have a good day and enjoy the rest of my time in Forks. I smiled and headed out the door, once again into a light drizzle.
I walked towards my first class, English, in a building labeled with a number three. Quaint, I thought, but cute. The students here looked at me, not really unfriendly, just nervous to make a first move, at least I hoped. My clothes were simple, jeans and a t-shirt hidden under a purple raincoat. I looked like every other kid here, and they looked at me like I was from a foreign country. Maybe they thought, like the secretary, that I was from Mexico. Smiling wryly, I entered the class. By the end of my first two classes, English and Biology, I'd figured out how the day would go. I would be introduced, either by myself or the teacher, people would ogle and I'd eventually go back to my seat and get on with class. By lunchtime, I'd gotten tired of the stares, the looks without the follow up of introductions. Was I really that strange? I wasn't all that tanned, maybe a little more than everyone here, but not by much. My hair was dark, simple. I was slim, barely muscular, only from the fact my main form of transportation was a bike. I was completely average on the outside.
As my thoughts went deeper and deeper into why no one would talk to me, it happened. I was standing there with my lunch tray, looking for a place to sit, when someone bumped into me from the side, sending me flying. I gasped as I hit a hard, cold surface, felt a shock, and fell to the floor. I looked up to discover who I had fallen into. He was tall—not extremely so, maybe six feet—and vaguely muscular under his t-shirt. I could hardly pay attention to that though. It was his face—perfect in every imaginable way—that drew my attention. Features that you only see in magazines after hours of airbrushing away imperfections, angular, flawless, framed by wavy chestnut hair and set off by amber eyes.
He looked at me, eyes torn by something I couldn't imagine and said in a stiff voice, "Sorry."
I could barely get a sentence out.
"Oh! I am sorry! Will, man, sorry! And you, you must be the new
girl from Mexico, Lily?"
I tore my eyes away from the perfect creature I had just fallen into, and looked up to see a much more normal teenage boy. Offering a hand and helping me up, he introduced himself as Josh. Picking up my lunch tray, which had miraculously been reassembled, I established myself as Lilah from New Mexico. I headed off to eat lunch with Josh and his friends, the boy I had collided with nowhere in sight.
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