Emily's POV

Jeez. What human would want to live in a little town that nobody's heard of? And it rains all the time. Of course, it was perfect for me. Forks, Washington was one of the most sunless places on the planet. That would come in handy with the whole "I-sparkle-in-the-sunlight" thing. Let me tell you my story…

I'd grown up in Houston, Texas but I was born in Charlotte, North Carolina in 1843. When I was five-years-old, my mother left my father and me. My father, John Morgan, decided that we needed to get away from anywhere my mother had been. She had been a daring and free-spirited woman. Been everywhere from Boston to Atlanta. The only place left to go was out west. Two days after she left, we were packed and ready to go.

My father was a shopkeeper. We never ran out of anything. Morgan's General. That's what it was called. I had had a privileged childhood. But all that was about to change.

When we got to Houston, I'd realized something: we had made it all the way from North Carolina to Texas. We arrived in Houston on July 5th, 1849. I was almost seven-years-old.

My father was hoping to find a job here, but there were already two general stores and nobody wanted to employ a man nobody knew anything about. After three days in the woods, sleeping on the ground and eating stale bread, he decided he would build a house, then look for a job. He said I was Going to catch a cold if we stayed in the woods any longer. Even after we moved into our new home, I still caught a cold.

But it was more like pneumonia. I don't remember it that well, but what I do remember was when a lady from town brought us some cough syrup and some other medicine. She was very nice. Offered any help she could provide. Father mentioned something about work and Mrs. Whitlock 9that was her name) said that she could get him a job at her husband's lumber mill. She also said that she had a son my age. She said that I could come over and play with him while Pa was at work. That suited me. I had never had a friend before. That was how I met Jasper.

By that time I was old enough to go to school. Every morning, Pa would leave for work and then Jasper would knock on the door and we would walk to school together. Jasper and I were best friends. All the children would tease Jasper about how his best friend was a girl. But he didn't care. He always said that he would rather be looking at clouds with me than playing ball with the other boys.

Mr. Whitlock gave Pa a job, but now that he had a job, he also had money to spend. The money didn't go towards things we needed like matches or food (we had a few chickens to lay eggs, but no land to plant crops). Instead of food, Pa spent what money we had on drink. I hadn't realized that my father had bottled up all his grief over my mother. He came home every night, drunk. He hadn't gone to work in over a week, and Mr. Whitlock said that he couldn't pay a man that didn't come to work. The night he got fired was the first night he beat me.

It had become routine after the first few nights or so. Pa would come home late from one of the bars in a nearby town, completely drunk. It was like I didn't know who he was anymore. He would come home while I was either cooking or cleaning and slap me, hit, or throw me on the ground. Or all of the above. I was nine-years-old.

When Pa was passed out or asleep, Jasper was with me. He came by every night to check on me. I rarely had any injuries other than bruises, but when I did, he would carry me to Doc Walker's house. At first Doc Walker assumed that my bruises were just from playing, but after the first few times, he realized that the cause was something more. To this day, the only people that knew were Doc Walker and Jasper.

Let's fast forward five years, shall we?

Jasper and I were fourteen. It was after school, and Pa was passed out at home. I'd gotten a nasty bruise on my leg from where Pa had kicked me the night before. Jasper and I were on the beach, looking for shells and tide pools. I was jumping from stone to stone in the water while Jasper watched from the shore.

"Come on, Jazz. It's fun."

"No thanks. I'm just waiting for you to fall in."

"I'm not going to fall in," I contradicted.

"Yes, you are."

"No, I'm not."

"Yes, you are."

"No, I'm not."

"Yes, you are and then I'm going to have to come save you."

"No you won't because I am perfectly capable of saving myself."

"Whatever you say, Em."

"Don't call me 'Em'."

"Sorry."

"It's alright." Right at that moment something caught my leg and I tumbled into the water. I screamed. The weight of my heavy dress pulled me down. I had never learned how to swim.

"Emily!" Jasper yelled. He dove into the water to rescue me. But I didn't need rescuing. I found myself standing on a sandbar, though the water was up to my waist. I hadn't realized how far out I had been. Jasper was still fighting the current, swimming towards me. It had all happened so fast.

"Wait! Jasper stop!" I shouted.

"What?!" he exclaimed.

"I'm fine."

"I thought you never learned how to swim."

"I didn't," I said nonchalantly.

"Then how is your head above water?" he puzzled.

"Because of this," I pointed in the water and told him about the sandbar I was standing on.

"Wow," he breathed. Mind you, we were fourteen. Anything and everything amazed us.

I had though our little island was the best thing in the world. But Jasper didn't like it. He said that all it would take for me to drown would be the tide coming in just a smidge.

Over the next year, Jasper and I spent more and more time with each other. We were the other halves of each other's hearts. Jasper's ma didn't like it when he was with me. She said that when she had first met Pa that he was an honorable man, and now all he was was a drunkard. I didn't argue.

As we got older, I realized that I had feelings for Jasper that were more than just friendship or brother-sister love. They were love love. Whenever I was with him all my qualms and worries dissolved. It was as if we were the only to people on the planet. I was happy. When I sat next to him on the log by the creek, it was like there were jolts of electricity shocking my body. When he held me and said that everything was going to be alright, I never wanted that moment to end. When he took me in his arms, kissed me, and told me he loved me, I knew I was in love. Jasper Whitlock was the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.

Then the Confederacy ceded. That was all he could think about. Damn the Confederacy. All he would talk about was how it would be so great to serve in the Army. To defend the damned Confederacy. But I still love him. Always have, always will. Nothing can change that.

It was my fifteenth birthday. Not that anyone besides Jasper bothered to remember. Pa was out and I was preparing for another beating. Jasper had made us a picnic dinner on the beach under the full moon.

I was alone in our one-room house when someone knocked lightly on the door. Whoever it was wasn't very patient because they opened the door and glided into the room. The first thing I noticed about her was her extremely pale skin. It was as white as the moon. This was Texas, after all. Even I was as brown as Solomon, the man that had worked in my father's store. She was definitely not from around here. I also noticed her coal black eyes. Not just a dark brown, but a black as black as the night sky. These drastic and unusual characteristics clashed with her gently waving brown hair and oval shaped face.

"H-Hello. Can I help you?" I stuttered.

"I'm truly sorry I have to do this, dear. But our numbers are dwindling ever so quickly." And with that she strode to my place by the stove and bit my forearm.

My body burst into flames. It worked its way from my arm, across my chest, all they way down to the tips of my toes. My body was on fire. I thought I had knew pain, but the harsh, discolored bruises were like pinpricks compared with this. I wanted to die.

Whatever this woman was doing to me, I wanted it to stop. If this was how the devil had decided to torture me, I didn't care. I just wanted it to stop.

And it did. Eventually. I could feel the pain slowly fading from my fingertips. I was regaining my strength and senses. I could feel that I was on the floor. I could smell the soup, burning on the stove. I could hear the sound of rain leaking through the roof, creating a puddle on the floor. I opened my eyes.

I had never in my life been so aware of my surroundings. I could see everything. I could smell everything. I could hear everything. Except my heartbeat. What was that about? Was I dead? If this was heaven, they had really mistaken the crumbling, smelly, one-room shack that was my home for beautiful pearly gates. If this was Hell, eh, it could be worse.

I looked down at where the strange woman had bitten me. Not only did I find only a scar, but I also found that I had the same strange, white skin as the woman. What had she done to me?

I was distracted from my internal game of 20 Questions by the most disgusting smell. What was that? I looked around and saw that it was the soup on the stove. Since when did soup smell revolting? Then I smelled something else. It wasn't the soup this time.

This smell was hot, sweet, and delicious. Almost like citrus.

"E-Emily? Are you okay?"

I whirled around to face the voice. It was Jasper, sitting on my cot, staring at me. Oh. My. Lord. The delicious scent was oozing out of every pore in his body. Oh, God. I wanted to close the small distance between us, sink my teeth into any part of him, and taste his hot, rich, sweet blood.

"Emily? Are you alright?" His voice brought me out of my fantasy.

"O-Of course," I stuttered. Hmm. That wasn't my voice. That voice sounded like church bells. That couldn't be my voice.

"Um, Emily?" Jasper asked.

"Yes?"

"Your eyes are red," He stated. Jasper was never known for subtlety.

"That's not possible," I contradicted. But I was beginning to think that anything was possible.

In response, he handed me the small mirror that he had gotten for me for my thirteenth birthday. I took it gingerly and held it up to my face so I could see my reflection.

I was beyond speechless. That was not me in the mirror. It couldn't be. I had dull brown hair, freckles across my cheeks and, and cold grey-blue eyes. This couldn't be me in the reflection. This woman had pale, flawless skin, angular, perfect features, and brilliant red eyes. The only thing that was the same was the hair, but even that seemed more radiant. This was the new me.

Whatever the woman had done to me had made me exquisitely beautiful, impossibly fast and strong, and ice-cold to the human touch. I could not feel this difference, but Jasper could. Along with these changes, I found that I had a strange instinct to…to…kill Jasper. And drink his blood.

I was disgusted with myself. This was Jasper. The boy I loved. The one I had known since I was a child. I did not want to kill him. I would not.

Over the next few weeks, other changes made themselves known. For one, I didn't have to sleep anymore. I was never tired. Two, my thirst for Jasper's blood only grew with time. I never told Jasper about my extreme thirst for his blood. It was just too embarrassing. I did not know what I was. I did not know if I wanted to know. But now I was a monster. A blood-sucker.

As much as I hate to admit it, human blood was the most appetizing thing that I had ever tasted in my life. It seemed now that my diet only consisted of blood. I no longer needed to cook, because human food repulsed me. I didn't need a scientist to tell me that I was no longer human.

ONE YEAR LATER

He's gone. The love of my life. The rest of my soul. The other half of my heart. Gone.

I knew that I was the cause for his absence. He was terrified of me. From the first time that he had laid eyes on me after I was changed. I knew he was repelled by my differences. I blamed my thirst, my glowing red eyes, my amazing speed and strength. Even when I was beautiful, I was horrifying.

I stayed in that hellhole of a city they call Houston for three years. That third year was the year that Alexander came home. Alex was one of Jasper's best friends. I was doing a bit of spying. I know that it isn't polite, but I needed to know if Jasper had come home.

I was spying on the Whitlock household. Mrs. Whitlock had answered the door to find Alex a grown man. He gave Mrs. Whitlock the story about how he and Jasper had run off and joined the Confederate Army three years ago. And how Jasper had gone missing.

Missing in action. MIA. They could have just told us he was dead. That was what it felt like. My world ended.

So. That's my story. Sorry that it doesn't have a happy ending, but which one of ours does? If my story had a happy ending, I would be in my grave right now and not wandering the Olympic Peninsula. It's been about a century and a half since Jasper died, and every day is lived remembering him.

Either way, Forks was a great place to lay low for a while. Throw the Volturi off my trail for a while. Hopefully.

I was wandering around in the woods when I came to a large clearing. In the middle of this clearing was a huge, white house.

So, how do you like the first chapter? Stupid? Suspenseful? Stupendous?

Whatever you think!

I can only update every other week, but I post a lot to keep you busy.

I just had my semester exams so that'll free up a lot of time for writing.

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