A/N: So this is my first venture at writing twilight fan fiction. Let me start by saying that I am a wolfgirl at heart and won't always be Cullen friendly. That being said, this will be a Paul/Bella story eventually and Bella will be a little OOC. This first chapter is just a little back story on my version of Bella and her friends/family. There will be some original characters along the way, although only 1 or 2 will play any major part. This story has been batting around in my head for almost a year now, so I figure it's time I got the beast off my back. Please review, if you have any questions or something you'd like to see, I'll do my best to answer you and work things in. Constructive criticism is always welcome, though if your only comment is that you hate it and think it's a piece of garbage, please keep that to yourself. Now, on to the story...

Disclaimer: I in no way, shape, or form own any of Stephanie Meyer's characters, (although I wouldn't mind borrowing a few.) If you want to sue, all I have is a ton of debt and 3 dogs.

My name is Isabella Swan, I usually go by Bella or Bells with my close friends and family, or Izzy with most my friends from school. My half-brother Noah Uley and I are getting ready to leave Phoenix and move back to Forks to live with my Dad, Charlie Swan. Our mom Renee, was once upon a time, in love with a married Quileute man named Joshua Uley. They had an affair and as soon as Joshua found out she was pregnant, he dropped her like hot cakes, I mean his wife Allison had just given birth to their son Sam, and so another bastard kid was not an option. Luckily my dad Charlie was one of his best friends, and had been in love with Renee for years. He offered to marry mom and help raise Noah since her family disowned her the minute they found out. They had been friends their whole lives and mom did love him, though not the way she should've to marry him, but she hoped with time that kind of love would grow. Even though Joshua was listed as Noah's dad on his birth certificate, Charlie was the only father he knew growing up. Mom and dad were happy for a few years, (I mean hello, I'm only 10 months younger than Noah, even if I was a preemie.) About a year and a half after I was born, Joshua took off in the middle of the night and was never heard from again, leaving his wife and three year old son Sam to fend for themselves.

I was five and Noah was six when mom and dad started to fall apart. Mom had always wanted to travel the world and get out of Washington, but dad was happy with the life they had and had just been promoted to deputy chief at the Sheriff's office. I had just turned 4 when mom decided to pack up all of our stuff. Noah was at his brother Sam's house on the reservation in La Push. When his mom called to ask if Noah could spend the night, I answered crying because mommy was packing all of our clothes in suitcases and said we needed to leave before Daddy got home. Mom came to the phone and Sam's mom Allison begged mom not to do to dad, what Joshua had done to her. She started crying, but finally agreed. When dad came home, she was sitting at the table with a suitcase still next to her. She told him she wanted a divorce.

We stayed living with dad until the end of the next summer, right before I turned 6. We spent most of the summer on the reservation, since that's where all of our friends lived. I was devastated when we left. Mom moved us to Tacoma, which wasn't so bad and for the next two years we still got to visit dad and our friends every other weekend and longer during the summer. At school I became best friends with a boy named Paul that was a year younger than me. His grandma also lived in La Push, so we started taking him with us and introducing him to our friends. His mom and ours were pretty much best friends too. They both worked at one of the diners in town. Mom worked the morning shift, and would drop us off at Paul's every morning so his mom could take us to school. Then our mom would pick us all up in the afternoon and we'd play until his dad came to pick him up.

One day, his dad didn't show up to get him at 6 like he usually did. Mom made us all some mac and cheese and said not to worry. By 8 o'clock, he still hadn't shown up and mom was starting to worry. She tried calling his house and cell phone, but he wasn't answering and no one was picking up at the diner either. Finally at 9, she told us to go get in the car and drove up to the diner. There were 3 or 4 police cars when we got there and yellow tape wrapped around the building. Mom told us all to stay in the car while she got out to talk to one of the officers. It turns out that someone had come in trying to rob the diner around 5:30. One of the robbers saw Elena trying to call her husband on her cell phone and shot her. They didn't know the call had already gone through and Mark could hear everything. He immediately called the police from his work phone and told them what he heard. By the time the police arrived, Elena had already passed out from the blood loss. They took her to the hospital and tried to save her, but too much damage had been done and she had lost too much blood.

Paul stayed with us for about a week before Mark came to pick him up. Mom got into an argument with him cause he was drunk when he showed up. She told him he needed to sober up for his son and not to come back til he did. Paul lived with us for another 2 weeks before school let out for the summer. Mom didn't know what to do about Paul since Mark disappeared. Mom had tried calling him & the one time she went by the house it looked deserted, so she finally called his grandmother and she agreed that he should come live with her until Mark got his act together. We made our friends promise to look out for him.

By the end of that summer mom decided that we needed to get away from Tacoma too, so this time we moved to California, then Texas, Missouri for a while, then Kansas and Oklahoma. We still visited Charlie and our friends for Thanksgiving, the week after Christmas, and our summer breaks. When Noah started high school, we had just moved to Phoenix. He decided to go to football camp for the summer instead of back to Forks. I was only 13 and mom didn't want me flying by myself, so I didn't get to go either. Sam came and stayed with us for 2 weeks instead.

The next year, I started high school and mom was dating Phil. He was a minor league baseball player she had met at the yoga studio she was working at. He was a lot younger than mom and his younger sister Quinn was in my grade. She seemed pretty nice, and I let her talk me into trying out for the cheerleading squad the next year, so she took me to cheerleading camp with her. When Noah and I got home two weeks before the end of summer, we found out that mom and Phil had gotten married. We called dad and told him that we were moving into our new house instead of coming to visit. He seemed bummed out, but promised to come visit us the first chance he got. He had just been made Chief of Police and was trying to clean up some messes that had been left behind when the old chief retired.

Dad never got to come visit. I tried to make sure I skyped with he and Sam once a week. All of our friends would usually be a Sam's so we could say hi to everyone. As tends to happen with teenagers though, we all started to get busy and the calls came fewer and farther between until they just stopped all together.

Now Phil had been traded to Jacksonville, and mom wanted to travel on the road with him, so Noah and I were moving back to Dad's house for the last half of his senior year and my junior year. I hadn't talked to Sam or Paul in months, but I had talked to Leah last night and she told me not to take it personally. That Sam had been acting like an ass for the last six months. Evidently he just disappeared for 2 months over the summer, then came back and broke up with her over the phone, said it wasn't safe for them to be together. Needless to say, she was furious, they had even talked about getting married when she graduated and then, BAM.

Then about a month ago, Paul had stopped hanging out with all of them and developed a really bad temper. He and Sam were always together now. She said they were both huge now, and looked like they were on steroids or something. Worst of all, her dad Harry seemed to know something about it, but wouldn't tell her anything. She said now Jared had bulked up overnight and she was expecting him to be the next member of Sam's little gang.

I wasn't sure what was going on with our friends, but I was determined to figure it out when I got back to Forks. Dad said that Billy was planning to throw us a welcome back bonfire down at first beach and I was excited. The bonfires were my favorite. We would all eat and huddle up around the fire and listen to Billy and Uncle Quil tell the old legends of the tribe. Noah though it was all a bunch of crap, but I loved to think that there were spirit wolves protecting us.