Hi guys. So this is my first attempt at writing a progressive fiction. It's a dual perspective story, because I like for you to experience Snarkward AND Sassy Bella. None of the characters are my own of course, they all belong to Miss Meyer. I promise not to use them for anything horrendous like Fifty Shades of Grey (Or to ever describe an ear as an auditory canal). The title of this chapter and the fiction itself is taken from the song "Soon We'll be Found" by Sia. It's a beautiful song, go check it out! Please read and review, so far I've had some lovely feedback on my stories.
Come along, it's the break of day. Surely now you'll have some things to say. It's not the time to be telling tales on me…
I inhaled the smell of the gym, and it brought back a rush of childhood memories. I spent the majority of my younger days up until the age of seven here, cooped up in Charlie's office doing my homework. Charlie always said that my mom was so preoccupied with other things half the time, he was afraid she'd forget about me completely whilst he was at work and I'd stick my fingers in a socket, or something. Clearly having an accident prone kid messed with his head.
The building itself was housed in an old police academy. Despite Forks having a population of – 40 some days, they used to send police from nearby Seattle to get their basic training here. When they moved the facilities elsewhere, my dad Charlie bought the place (Jokingly earning him the title, "Chief of Police"). It was a weird youth/town centre these days. Before my mother had left she had run a pottery and art class here, to which flaky mothers of varying degrees had turned up to 'find themselves' again after having their children. Renée had loved the brief fame it had brought her, always the social butterfly, and my dad had been duped into believing that his wife could make do with being a local celebrity and put her dreams of moving out of the small town behind her.
It was a relatively successful business, but the greatest pull by far was the boxing gym that Charlie had constructed in the basement. In a small town, young boys got bored very easily, and the police were forever having to criminalise youngsters for small acts of vandalism, or smoking pot in a forgotten alleyway somewhere. Of course, there were those who still did those things, but the gym was a good place for them to come to vent their Podunk town frustrations. A lot of the boys around here had even secured scholarships to outer state universities because of their competition in local leagues.
Most importantly, there was always a rivalry between the La Push teens and Forks High. La Push was the Indian reservation in Forks, and it was notoriously known that the two schools just did not mix. Charlie had been best friends with Billy Black, head of the reservation for year (A friendship forged in late night fishing and card games,) and I had always been close to his son Jacob as a child. My dad really wanted to abolish the rivalry that was sparking so many fights, or even to channel the competitive energy into one place. The La Push boys - although built like tanks – were absurdly light on their feet. They made excellent trainees.
I had just hit seven when my mom decided that she was being suffocated by my dad's 'small town ways'. We had moved to Phoenix then, with the guy my mom had met over some internet dating site. Phil. He was ten years her junior, and marginally an asshole, but he had a lot of money and a fancy ass car and so, I guess that was all the reason my flighty mother needed to uproot seven-year-old me and move me to a city hot as fucking hell. Since then, I'd been updated on the gym's progress through emails and telephone calls from my dad. He was still proud as hell about this place, and it felt a lot more familiar to me - walking through the doors with their peeling red paint – than Phoenix ever had.
I was just here for the summer visit. Usually, Phil liked to take us on a big fancy location at this time of year, like Bora Bora or the Dominican Republic. But this year, his company had run into some money problems, and so we'd had to 'compromise'. Up until this summer, I had a boyfriend in Phoenix that I couldn't possibly be parted from, and I was ashamed today I hadn't visited for the whole summer in a while. I didn't mind that Phil's fancy shmancy holiday was cancelled. I was a truly boring teen, all things considered. No rebellious streak whatsoever and nursing a heartbreak (Apparently, he could definitely live without me AND with my best friend). And so Forks with my dad for the summer suited me just fine, even if it was currently awkward trying to remind him I was 18 now instead of 7.
It was way too early for anybody sane to turn up to train yet. I had never been a good sleeper in my own bed, constantly plagued with nightmares and strange, cryptic dreams which left my sheets twisted and soaked with sweat. So when I'd woken up at 7, I'd gone for a run (Almost breaking my ankle, which was usual for me, considering I was such a clutz), hit the shower and then come here to open up. I'd left Charlie nursing a cup of coffee and lamenting the fact that it was too goddamn early.
The office was just how I remembered it. Pokey, musty and reeking of…well, male. The gym always smelled kind of damp, but I figured that was probably because of the buckets of sweat people put into training here. It was barely eight a.m, and I had nothing to do with the rest of my day. I had been away from Forks so long that I highly doubted any of my childhood friends were still around…and even if they were, they'd all grown up like me. It would be weird to try and make friends with them all over again. Besides, I didn't particularly need the company. I tended to be quite a solitary individual, and I figured that I'd only have to say goodbye to everyone at the end of the summer anyway. Why torture myself with saying goodbye? No, I planned to make my summer here in Forks a reflective one.
Phoenix was too busy a city for thinking. It was always too hot to properly sit down and reminisce, or even to just take five minutes to breathe in some fresh air and think about where your life was going. The air wasn't refreshing. It was a harsh realisation, rather than a gentle evaluation.
I started sifting through the pile of papers on my dad's desk, automatically tidying them into a neat pile, placing all those with the corner folded down into the "read" plastic box, and all the new envelopes I'd tripped over on the way in into the "unread". I swept layers of crumbs from countless sandwiches and dust from countless days onto the floor. I was just reaching for the cloth to clean off the computer screen when the loud bang of the gym door opening startled me.
"Hello?" I called out to what had previously been an empty gym. I could just make out a figure, clad in atypical boxing shorts and boots, a slim fit tank top and a large black hoodie (hood up, covering his face,) making his way over to the skipping ropes.
"Excuse me?" I tried again, trying to appeal to this guy's basic manners. He simply picked up the rope and started skipping, quick and aggressive. Despite almost wearing a hole in the floor with the pace of his exercise, I heard no increase in his breathing at all. What was he, bionic?
I slammed the office door purposely, marching over to where he was training. Stubbornly, I stuck my foot out, stopping the skipping rope mid-cycle, and when he faltered he looked up angrily. His hood had fallen down mid exercise, and his hair was the colour of sunrise. Gloriously auburn and equally unkempt. His jaw was strong and sure, arrogant, even, and the plane of his nose was defined, as were his cheekbones. He was all sharp angles, aside from his effeminate lips and his disarming green stare. If he wasn't drawn so tight with visible anger, I might even think him good looking. But the light in the gym was poor at best, so I wasn't going to hedge my bets.
"What the fuck is your problem, kid?"
I bristled immediately. I was expecting a "Sorry ma'am, I didn't hear you", not something so blatantly rude. And definitely not kid. He must have only been around 23 himself.
"Excuse me?" I quirked an eyebrow at him. "What the fuck is my problem? What the hell is yours? You don't think it's common courtesy to at least alert someone that you're here, so I don't think I'm getting burgled?"
He snorted and scratched at the stubble on his face.
"What, you think you wouldn't notice if I was trying to wrench the punchbag off the wall?"
He was mocking me. He was insolent, and on top of that he was mocking me.
"I think you should leave." I wasn't going to tell him who I was. He shouldn't need to know my dad was Charlie to show some respect. I was a human being, just the same as he was. Besides, I had never been the type to cry for my daddy if things went wrong. I was too independent.
"And I think you should keep your nose out of my business. I pay to come here just like everybody else."
My chest was heaving with angry words I wanted to spit into his face. But I reigned myself in; I wasn't going to lower myself to his level. He had already gone back to picking up his skipping rope and I wanted to wrap it around his pale neck instead.
"You know what, you're right. If you want to be an asshole, that's your prerogative."
I slammed back into the office so hard the blinds shook.
The prickly stranger put me in an awful frame of mind all day. I knew the only way to purge my system was to cook it out. I always cooked when I was under emotional stress. The first few weeks at my new school in Phoenix my mom had fresh cookies and muffins every day. Much to her chagrin. She'd eat the whole lot and then scald me for 'ruining her figure'. There ensued many conversations about 'keeping herself young for Phil in the bedroom'. My mother had always been excruciatingly open about 'sex' and she had been so overexcited to give me 'the talk' when I hit puberty it was positively depressing. In fact, I think she damn near shit herself when I got a boyfriend. I guess I'd never been particularly girly, so the fact that I had to deal with the feminine traits my body had forced on me (I had pretty good boobs,) made her happy somehow. I could refuse pink clothing, but sadly, I could not out run PMS.
Charlie had a full steak dinner waiting for him when he came home from the gym that evening. I had left at lunch time to go get some groceries. All I had found in my dad's house upon arrival had been a tin of gherkins and a loaf of bread so mouldy it could have cured at least 1000 antibiotic requiring infections. He had cast an eye at me furiously mashing potatoes at the sink when he'd arrived, but he hadn't raised any questions. This is what I liked about my dad. Things that Renée would put me into mediated counselling for, Charlie accepted as normal.
We sat down at the table, and he dug in with a hearty sound of approval. I suddenly felt very guilty in that moment. If he was getting that excited over a piece of steak and mashed potatoes, then his diet since my mom left must have been ridiculously limited. He did own the menus to every single take-away in Forks, and when he had dialed last night for pizza on my arrival, they had greeted him by name.
I chewed my food carefully, my anger only partially abated. Desperate to distract myself from the feeling currently churning my guts, I cast about in my mind for any common ground to talk about.
"So do the Cullens still live in town?"
Charlie stopped eating for a while, pushed his food around his plate. He took another bite, chewed slowly.
"Yup, they're around still. Old man Cullen is still a Doctor at the hospital."
Carlisle had been a doctor for as long as I could remember. No-one remembered why they lived in Forks at all. Esmé was a renowned artist, and everyone knew they had more than enough money to move out of town. They had the nicest house around for miles. They had three children, Emmett, Edward and Alice. Alice had always been a bit…springy. It was well known she'd struggled with an array of difficulties through her teenage years and my dad had mentioned that she'd even been hospitalised once or twice.
"What about the kids? Does Emmett still box?"
"Yes he does, he's quite a big name on the circuit. He got a scholarship to the University of Seattle out of my gym." Charlie looked proud. "Did some fancy business degree too. You know the Cullens, always intelligent."
It wasn't Emmett I was interested in. I had always known that Emmett would work out just fine. It was the other two that had posed some problems. Edward had always been a wild teen. A 'dirty boxer', as Charlie had put it. He had been a musician, if I remembered correctly. An abstract, scattered brain. Carlisle had sent him to the boxing gym to try and focus him a little. Get him to expel all his energy into the gym. It hadn't worked. He'd always been too raucous and aggressive. Although Charlie always said if he could just pull in his anger he'd be ten times better than his brother because he was so much lighter. Slippery.
"Alice took off not so long back. Got married to some southern guy called Jasper. Shotgun wedding without even telling her parents. She was always flighty." He sipped his beer, swishing it round his palette. "Edward still comes to the gym. Early in the mornings…usually the first one in. He trains now, but doesn't box."
I gulped my drink. My pulse racing.
"That boy's hair matches his temperament altogether."
It was Edward Cullen. The asshole that had completely infuriated me without so much as looking my way was Edward.
"Yeah, I think I ran into him this morning. He got kind of prickly over the years. What happened?"
"A lot happened Bella. It's certainly no talk for the table, or for a young girl and it's most certainly not our business."
I paused awkwardly. Charlie was rarely this distinct about anything. I didn't push the issue any further - Charlie was like Fort Knox when it came down to things like these. He could keep a secret for years. Besides, Forks was a small town…and judging by his reaction, it wasn't some small occurrence. Someone would talk sooner or later.
That night the sound track to my dreams was a steady thwack of the skipping rope against the concrete floor. I was running from something I didn't understand, but it was all for nought. I was running in circles…I just couldn't work out my starting point.
I woke tangled in my sheets at 3 am, crying out for my father.
EPOV
My brother was home from university for Spring break, and he was looking as big a beefcake as ever. Whilst technically, I was the 'smallest' of the two of us, by society's standard, I was still built. For some reason, my mom always liked myself and Emmett on the same side of the table; for what reason I did not know, and my only guess was so she could give me a complex in the hope it would keep my outrageous attitude in check.
She needn't worry about my ego anymore. Since my prison stint, no-one tended to look at me like I was worth a damn. Even that uppity brat in the gym today had made it her personal business to assert her authority over me. It was authority, and people shouting the odds that had got me into the mess I was in in the first place.
"So Edward, how was your day?"
My mom, although an artist by nature, read a child psychology book when I was ten, and from then on we had to have these touchy feely conversations at the dinner table. She even has this weird voice she puts on for it, which is only one step away from the telephone voice. Everyone hates the telephone voice.
"Nothing special, pretty much the same as any other day."
I speared a forkful of mashed potatoes, shovelling them into my mouth with the grace of an animal, hoping that my appalling table manners would stop her psychoanalysing me.
"Did you go to the gym?"
My mother was fishing.
"Yes Mom, I go to the gym every morning."
I wasn't going to bite. My brother shot me a quizzical look and I shrugged it off with a glug of my drink.
"And did you meet with your support worker today?" I narrowed my eyes at her.
"Mom, I'm not going to any support worker meetings. I don't need one. For the last time, I'm not going to throw myself out of a second storey window because I've served a prison term. We both know he's just a glorified counsellor."
"Honey, I just think that it would be a good idea if…"
"Mom. I have a job, I don't go out at night anymore, in fact, I'm pretty sure I hardly leave the house at all thanks to the psychological baby gates you've installed in me. The whole neighbourhood treats me like a leper, so I'm hardly likely to fall off the wagon anytime soon. I go to the gym, I go to the autoshop. Occasionally, I go wild and journey to the garage to buy myself some cigarettes. That's it."
I see her wince at my sarcasm. And suddenly I feel so very guilty. My mother's face has lined over the years, the last two years, to be specific. And the entirety of my relationship with Tanya. She's still beautiful, but in a much more resigned way, and she hardly ever smiles anymore. And I know that's my fault. I chew hastily, and try to change the subject.
"As it happens, I did meet someone today, but she was a total bitch."
My mother winced at the slight curse word, and I laughed, indulging her. She was such a southern belle, it amused me. Even raising two teenage boys hadn't hardened her to casual swearing. She put down her fork.
"She seems to be the new receptionist, or something? She didn't train or anything. Just stood there hollering at me."
Esmé's face suddenly brightened.
"Oh, so Bella's back?"
I raised an eyebrow.
"Bella who?"
My father piped up from the other end of the table.
"Bella Swan, Charlie's little girl. Only I guess she's not so little anymore. She must be around…"
"Eighteen?" Emmett offered, his freakish mathematical brain and photographic memory striking again. He mumbled it around a mouthful of bread, spraying crumbs everywhere, and my mother sighed softly, resigned to having a Neanderthal as a son.
Bella Swan. The last time I had seen Bella Swan was when she was an awkward, gawky 7 year old, whom I teased relentlessly for being the only girl to spend so much time in the gym. I believe, quite cockily at the time, that I accused her of being a peeping tom on all of the teenage boys. I had made her cry and Carlisle had cuffed me around the ear, but it had been true. She had always watched us all with a rapt attention, and it had made me more than a little sad that the poor kid had just been left to her own devices for pretty much any time she wasn't in school, because her mom was a fruit loop.
"No way, Bella Swan was much less of an asswipe."
"Edward Cullen." My mother's voice was sharp. "I will not have that language at my dinner table."
Myself, Emmett and my dad stifled our laughter around the pork and gravy.
"Anyway, she's only just got back here. Please tell me you waited at least until after polite introductions before you got into some verbal sparring match."
I chewed guiltily.
"Oh Edward! You have to be careful. You know more than I do that people are tetchy around you since…"
My anger flared.
"I got it Mom. No pissing off damsels in distress for fear I get culled by an angry mob."
"Edward, that's not what I meant, but Charlie's a nice guy and…"
"And I'm just a stinking criminal. I get it. Edward the disappointment strikes again." My voice was bitter with sarcasm, and I could feel it twisting me tighter inside. Squeezing around my organs and making my stomach drop. Building on my irrationality. And suddenly my knife and fork were clattering to the plate and my chair was screeched back, and I was running again.
My mother called after me from the kitchen table, but I was too far gone.
I'm always too far gone.
Let's desert this day of hurt, tomorrow we'll be free.
