Chapter 2

"Please take me home," I begged. Mommy would be so angry with me. I should have stayed home until the bruise was gone. How would mommy survive without me? I didn't feel relieved to be taken away from my home. Then I had an idea. "Can I go to the reservation until mommy is better?" I asked hopefully. The only friends daddy had were on the reservation and things had been different when they had visited. Maybe they could help mommy again and things will get netter.

"Bella, we cannot take you to the reservation. You have no family there. We can't find any family members anywhere, that's why we're at a foster home. Now dry your tears before we go inside."

"Mrs. Volturi this is Isabella. It's very kind of you to open your house to her."

"Mrs. Karp, it's the least we could do under such unfortunate circumstances. I'm sure she will get along nicely with Jane and Alec. It would be nice having another child around." Mrs. Aro said.

She stooped and brushed my hair off my face, which revealed the handprint that had led me here. It was my badge of shame.

"Oh dear. You poor little thing," she cooed. "Don't worry, we'll take care of you."

When Mrs. Karp finished speaking to Mr. and Mrs. Aro, she left, with promises to check on me and reassured me again, that staying with a foster family was better than being at my home. In the end, I was a kid, so I had to do as I was told.

When Jane came home from school, she refused to share her room, so I was given a little room that was no bigger than a closet. I was given clothes and shoes which Jane had outgrown. Most of them didn't fit right because as Mrs. Volturi said, I was "a scrawny little thing", but I didn't complain. I didn't want to cause any trouble.

During my mother's neglect and abuse, I had become a quiet, reserved child. The twins teased me. They called me a mouse, and they told me I was ugly; I believed them. Being in their house was a nightmare, even worse than what I had lived through in my own home. I became more withdrawn and clumsy, which led to me falling over my feet often. This provided the twins with more amusement and gave them more ammunition to use against me. Any time they got into trouble, they blamed me. I was beaten for any little infraction, whether real or something cooked up by the evil twins. Sometimes, Mr. or Mrs. Volturi would beat me and then send me to bed without any dinner. I was often rebuked for being mean and ungrateful. I only cried when I was in bed at night because I had learned that this amused Jane and Alec even more, provoking them to pinch me or pull my hair, to make me cry for their amusement. I learned to melt into the background as much as possible, but that didn't help. The twins were not happy unless I got into trouble at least once a day.

I kept silent through all the years of abuse because Aro, Mr. Volturi, had threatened that if I told anyone what went on in their home, the social worker would think I was just a troubled girl making up stories, and she would send me to a group home. He told me terrible things happened to girls in those homes. I was so scared that I would have endured anything, so I wouldn't have to go to one of those terrible places.

I had been relieved when I was told I would be going back home. After seeing doctors at a special place, my mother was deemed fit enough to take care of me again. When I got older, I realized my mother had gone to rehab to stop drinking and popping pills. In the beginning, she was the caring mother I had known before. Eventually, things went downhill again, and one night she was so angry that she beat me until I was black and blue all over. I couldn't go to school. Eventually, Mrs. Karp came to the house. She called the police came to the house and took me to the hospital. No major bones were broken, but I had a fractured leg. The pain was both physical and emotional. How could she do this again? I spent weeks in the hospital, and then I was taken to another foster home. Luckily I wasn't sent back to the same home. By that time, the Volturi had taken in another foster child. I felt sorry for this child, but I was afraid to speak up for fear of being sent to a group home as Mr. Volturi had threatened.

By freshman year in high school, I had been in three foster homes. It was difficult moving around so much because it meant getting used to a new family and a new school. I was a nervous wreck, wondering if I would get a decent family or not, but none of the other families had been as cruel as the Volturis.

I didn't have any friends because I never stayed in one place or attended the same school long enough. Each house was in a different town. The longest I stayed with anyone had been at my first foster home, and the burden of having to hide the physical and verbal abuse had made me shy, so even if someone decided to talk to me, I couldn't keep up my end of the conversation. Soon they would lose interest and leave me alone. A few asked why I didn't live with my parents. I started telling them my parents were dead.

I made up invisible friends, and a make believe family who loved me. What made me feel worse about my situation was the pity I saw in my teachers' eyes. I didn't want their pity, so I studied hard and excelled in all my classes. Getting out of the system and going to college became my new goal. Once I went away to school, I was never coming back to Washington State.

At fifteen, I was returned to my mother again, and I became determined not to go to another foster home. By that time, I learned to guard myself. I became a great liar. Any time someone asked how I was, I would look them in the eyes and tell them I was fine. When my mother started drinking again, I took care of the house and the garden, so if the social worker showed up, she would think my mother was still sober. I got a part-time job washing dishes at the diner, and I hid as much money as I was able to under a floorboard in my closet, saving for the day I graduated from high school and left this town behind. I never made it to graduation.

One day, my mother came home in a rage. It was something to do with money and the bank, and she took her rage out on me. She smacked me so hard that I banged into the wall and hit my head. I saw stars. I slumped to the floor and sat there until I felt strong enough to stand. Then I went to my room, packed as much as I could in my backpack, and took my money from its hiding place. After my mother had drunk herself into a stupor, I left the house. I got into my old truck; Mr. Black from the reservation had given it to me. It was a monstrous looking thing, but he had started teaching me to drive, so I drove to the Greyhound depot in Port Angeles. I had always intended to go to school in L.A. because it was warm and sunny and totally different from Washington State, so I decided it was the best place to start. I didn't want to use all my money for a ticket, and I wanted to make it hard for anyone to track me down – assuming my mother or the state decided to locate me. I was sixteen and homeless.