Hello, gentle readers, old and new, young and old. Welcome to my new adventure in the Twilight universe. I hope you enjoy it and please review. I think this is going to be much better than my previous story and would very much appreciate some feedback. The entire story is from Edward's perspective.
"Existentialism is a philosophy concerned with finding self and the meaning of life through free will, choice, and personal responsibility."
"One thing about Santa Clara I never could stomach...all the damn vampires."
-"The Lost Boys"
I would not miss Scottsdale. I would not miss the blistering heat. I would not miss my school; I had no friends there to miss anyway. And, most of all, I would not miss the monster that dared to call itself my father.
My mother's old Ford hit another bump and my guitar smacked me in the head.
"You okay?" my mom called from the front seat. I glared at her though the dingy back window. This was not the first time a bump in the road has sent something flying at me. It was just one of the dangers of traveling cross country in the back of a pickup truck.
"Fine." I grumbled.
I had covered all of our stuff with a tarp, half so it wouldn't get wet, half so I could hide when we passed a cop. The last thing we needed was to be sent home.
"Where are we going?" I asked for the fifty-eighth time. My mother sighed.
"I told you, you'll see." She said.
"That's not an answer." I said. She sighed.
"Edward, you know why I can't tell you."
She didn't want me to be disappointed...or she didn't want me to spill to the police and get sent back to Arizona. What a nightmare that would be.
"Yes, I know." I muttered. I gathered my old, blue, paisley quilt around my shoulders and laid down on the bed of the truck.
The sun had not shone for a whole day, an unheard of event in the Valley of the Sun. The clouds were a soft gray, a puffy gray. I didn't think there would be any rain today; always good news in my book.
I dug through a box by my left foot and found my battered Walkman. My iPod had died three days ago. I had forgotten my charger. Life was cruel that way. I fitted the earphones on and pushed play. I sighed when the wonderful piano melodies and lyrics seeped into my ears.
Music had such a way about it that I couldn't be said, even when I was running for my life. I hummed along with the lead singer and moved my fingers in the motions of the guitar chords. I had never been much of a singer, other than in the shower, but I loved my guitar more than the rest of the waking world. I loved it even more than my books, although they were a close second. Mother was moving down the list due to the moving she was forcing upon me.
I felt the old pickup begin to slow down and the cargo shifted as my mom turned onto a freeway exit. I caught a glimpse of the sign.
"Forks?" I asked. "You cannot be serious. Next thing, there'll be a town named Spoons. Not as unfortunate as Knives, but still." I laughed. The sound was foreign to my ears. Mother did not share in my amusement.
"This is your home now, Edward. Show some respect." She barked. I shut up; she was under enough stress as it was without my attitude.
With some difficulty, I managed to sit up and look around. I frowned. It looked the same as the highway, save for the tiny shops and restaurants. There was a sporting goods store and a corner store. There was a beat up looking diner that claimed to make the best waffles on the West Coast. My stomach grumbled at the thought.
"We'll get some food tomorrow, along with your clothes." Mother said. We had left all my clothes behind. Actually, it wasn't so much that we had left them behind, but that my mother had forgotten them. I had yet to forgive her.
"Sure, Mom." I grumbled again. I grabbed a plastic cup with the words "Hawaii is for Lovers" on it and began to siphon off the water on the tarp. It was dripping onto my books. I brushed a few drops off of Stephen King's nose and threw the rest of the water over the side of the truck.
I glanced up and saw a pair of girls staring at me. One had mousy-brown hair and wrinkled her nose at me. The other had darker hair and skin. Her eyes were sad and she offered a small wave. I nodded back.
We passed through the town at a snail's pace. A pair of police officers were sitting outside a gas station eating doughnuts. And they wonder why people laugh at them. I laughed to myself. Other groups of teenagers were scattered about the place, hanging around each other cars or messing around in the parking lots of diners and shops. All of it was exceptionably ordinary and yet alien at the same time. Everything was so small and green, not at all like the peaceful, elite suburbs I was used to living in.
"It's going to take some getting used to." Mother said. "But I think we can manage." I heard the smile in her voice and bit back my witty retort.
"If you say so, Mom." I sighed. I chewed on my tongue and didn't look away from my feet the rest of the way down the main drag of the town. Mom was happy here. I had almost forgotten how she got that little lift in her voice when she was happy, it had been so many years since I had heard it. She hadn't smiled since he started...God, I couldn't even think it anymore.
I gave a little squeak as Mother skidded around a corner and down a street of houses. I was sent flying into the box of family pictures. The cardboard had softened from the damp air, but several metal corners stabbed me in the side. I sneered when I saw the face of the monster peeking out from behind the top flap.
"Sorry." she said from the front seat. "Didn't know where I was going and I didn't have time to slow down." She said. "Though I must say, that noise you made seemed more suited to a guinea pig than a teenager." She laughed out loud. I gave an indignant huff and righted myself. She laughed again and busied herself with finding the house. I sighed.
"At least all the houses don't look the same." I shrugged. I was grateful I would at least have a little help in finding the house the first few days.
"Oh, here we are." Mother squealed, pulling into the driveway of a perfectly ordinary house. I felt my eyebrows bunch together at the sight of another car in the driveway.
"Mom, are you sure this is the right house?" I asked. It wouldn't surprise me if she had gotten the house number wrong.
"Yes, I'm sure." She said. The car sputtered to a stop and gravel crunched under my mother's feet as she hopped out. "So...what do you think?" She asked, looking from me to the car and back.
"What do you mean?" I asked, confused.
"The car. It's your compensation." She smiled.
"No." I said blankly. "No way." I felt a smile break out on my face and I all but threw myself at my mother. "You didn't steal it did you?" I asked.
"No." She laughed, hugging me. "I bought it off some nice family down on the La Push reservation. Said they liked to fix up cars and sold it to me for a fair price. It is ten years old after all." She smiled.
"I don't care." I spat out. I had never had a car of my very own before. I walked over to it in a bit of a trance. It was still shiny from the wax. It was small, a four door, but very sleek looking. And it was cherry red. And it was a Mustang. "Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!" I exclaimed, giving the hood of the car a hug as best I could manage.
Mother laughed and patted my shoulder. "Well, I think it's only fair. You have to go to school and I have to go to work and I would hate to have to make you suffer the humiliation of being seen with me." She said dramatically. I whacked her shoulder and gave her a smile.
"Thank you, mom." I said again, giving her one more hug. "Thank you so much." For some reason, I felt the beginnings of tears in my eyes. I ignored them and bent over the side of the truck to find the hedge clippers. "Do you want me to start unloading all of this?" I asked.
"Well, if you think you can manage it..." She trailed off. I scowled. Mother had always been stronger than me and she had never let me forget it. Just because I challenged her to an arm wrestling match two years ago and had failed spectacularly did not mean that she could go and question my masculinity at every opportunity.
"Yes, I can manage it." I hissed and stuck my nose up in the air. She giggled, shook her head and went to go open the front door. I snipped off the bindings for the tarp and pulled it off the boxes, causing a great splash of dirty water onto my shoes. I groaned and took the box of pictures out first. Mom would want to arrange them as soon as possible.
I stumbled into the house though the narrow front door and set the box down on the steps. I had to admit, the house had been a great deal, what with it being full of furniture. The bank had even let Mother keep the mortgage loan from the previous owners, no extra payments involved. Mom scurried over and began to take all the photos out of their carefully bubble wrapped cocoons. I smiled and let her be.
The next couple of hours went by slowly, a flurry of boxes and bubble wrap and memories, some we didn't want to remember. My mother tried to hide all the photos of my father, or tried to cut him out so that he wasn't there. I wanted to say something, but there wasn't anything to say, really.
My mother's bedroom was on the second floor, while mine was in the basement. Not a bad deal. I wouldn't have to hear her crying herself to sleep every night that way. My mother must have phoned ahead and asked if the previous owners had kept any bookcases too, because five of them were sitting at the foot of my bed. I pushed them all up against one wall and set the boxes full of books next to them. That project could wait until tomorrow.
I set my precious guitar on its stand next to the desk and managed to find an outlet for my laptop. I had saved all summer to get it and I was going to use it if it killed me. My life was on that computer. I slid my glasses onto the end of my nose and typed in my password. I breathed out at last. No viruses, no spyware. By all accounts it had survived this trip unscathed. I sighed with content and heard a knock at my door.
"Everything okay in here, Edward?" Mother asked, poking her head in. "Already on the computer?" She sighed. "I'm sorry you don't have any windows, but there's a beautiful skylight." She said, pointing to the ceiling.
"Why, so there is," I said. I hadn't noticed it. It was the same gray outside as it always was. "That'll help with knowing what to wear...oh, wait; I don't have anything to wear." I sighed. Mother laughed.
"I'll go run out and get you some stuff tomorrow. And don't be all dramatic, it's not as if you could have worn your Arizona clothes here anyway." She said. "Pizza sound good?" She asked.
"Pizza sounds wonderful." I smiled. Anything that wasn't out of a can sounded wonderful.
Mother and I ate and laughed and talked for an hour or so. It was so odd, being with my mother this way. She seemed so light and carefree, not at all like the timid woman that had lived with me in Arizona. I was glad she had left my father. I didn't care how taboo it seemed to some people, I was just glad she was assertive and able to think for herself. I loved her.
At long last, I yawned and dragged myself to bed. It was cold here, but mother had managed to fit my bed with sheets and my quilt while I was in the shower. I snuggled down into the covers, glad for the warmth.
I sighed, turned on my back and looked up at the sky. All the clouds felt like a cage closing in around me. But it had to be better than what mother and I had left behind. I ran a finger over the cigar butt scars on my right forearm.
"Yes." I whispered to myself, just before sleep took me. "Yes, this will be better."
Review? Pretty please with Edward on top? For those of you that may be confused, yes Edward is human. For any questions or remarks, please PM me or leave it in a review.
Until we meet again,
MonSangEstMonEncre