A/N: Earth to Bella (parts 1 and 2) - Incubus


Chapter 2 – The Grand Lady

By the end of the weekend I had all of the major rooms unpacked. Mine last of all and I was pleased to finally sit down and check my email. It was Sunday evening, Jessica's message had come yesterday at seven pm Washington time. It read;

Dear Bella,

That's awesome! I can't believe your dad would think of something so sweet! Not that he's not sweet, just seems like he wouldn't think of something like that. You know what I mean. Anyway, everything here seems so weird. I dread going back to school on Monday. Maybe my mom would let me fly down to see you for a week in the summer. We should try to plan that or something. Hope all goes well for you on your first day of school!

Hugs and Kisses, Angela.

I smiled, as I put away the computer. I knew she had already been through two days of school without me, but Monday would make it seem more final.

I grabbed my tattered copy of Wuthering Heights and went over to make myself comfortable on my window seat. I had read through the first three chapters before letting my mind, and my eyes, wander out my window to the view of the front yard, the street and the row of houses across the street. The one directly across from us, 112 Masen Lane, was a deep shade of blue with cheerful white trim. The roof peaked and gabled all over, it was an obviously old Victorian style house and though the yard was well kept and the paint on the house looked fresh I could see from my vantage point that it was empty.

I continued to stare at the old thing, daydreaming about what it must look like inside. I imagined it in its heyday, with ruffled Victorian ladies sitting on its shaded porch, dapper gentlemen pulling the new fangled model A Ford into the driveway. I could get lost for hours daydreaming like that. I imagined some dramatic romantic tragedy taking place and the couple sadly leaving the old thing to be bought by a succession of owners over the years.

I disappointedly pulled myself away from the window seat and my daydreams to go downstairs to the kitchen and start supper. Tonight's fare would be simple; spaghetti and meat sauce, at least until I could make a good trip to the grocery store.

Charlie came home promptly at seven as promised. We shared a quiet meal and I decided to turn in early; better to get a good night's rest before starting the daunting new school tomorrow. I could barely remember the school in Phoenix, but Forks High School had only three hundred and fifty eight, now three hundred fifty seven students. My new school was reported to have over six-hundred in my sophomore class alone.

I doubted I would make friends right away, Angela had been a once in a lifetime friend. There were other kids I knew and spoke with at lunch and during study hall, but none I really connected with.

I woke bright and early at six a.m. and showered and dressed for my first day of school. I wore my red sweater and my dark blue jeans. I put on some light makeup; I wanted my first impression in this alien place to be a good one.

If at all possible I was even more out of place here in Chicago than I ever was in Forks. The kids weren't unfriendly – they simply seemed to automatically avoid me. As I looked around at lunchtime, sitting alone at a cozy corner table, I saw a marked difference between myself and the other children in this rather large high school. They all seemed so current, so 'today', so colorful. I, in contrast, seemed faded, like when you compare a high quality, cutting edge, digital photograph from today to a Technicolor, white edged photo from the 1950s. Washed out and slightly blurry; my pastel blue t-shirt and light faded blue jeans, my pale, sallow skin, seemed so faded and worn against the bright, busy, colorful background of the cafeteria – of the whole school, actually. I ate in silence, continued my classes and built a steady, boring routine that lasted the remainder of the school year. Luckily it was only a little over a month left in the semester.

Every Saturday I finished the housework and meal planning for the week and retreated to my window seat with my tattered copy of Wuthering Heights. Likewise, every Saturday my attention was successfully called away from my book to the grand lady across the street.

I let my mind roam freely, my fantasies about my former neighbors played out as if before my eyes. I found myself more and more often letting my fantastic scenarios follow me to bed on weekends. They seemed to trickle into study hall, bus rides, and any other time my mind was not otherwise occupied. I began to cherish my time alone with my little stories.

Soon my imagination was not satisfied with my musings of the people having out there little lives outside the house. I needed to see inside; my imagination simply could not fathom the inner dwelling across the street. It was too fascinating, too grand to simply imagine the interior, I had to see it.

Before I knew it, summer vacation had come and my days were filled with long gaps of nothing. Charlie felt bad once he realized that I hadn't really had much time to make many friends and that I seemed to sit around the house during the day while he was gone. So I took up going out during the day and leaving notes on the fridge just in case he came home early, purposefully leaving them up even after I got home so that he would know I had gotten out of the house for a bit.

Of course my first temptation was to visit the beautiful Victorian across the street, 112 Masen Lane. Truthfully I was afraid that someone might catch me trespassing; who knew who owned the place, it could be the neighbors for all I knew, or perhaps the neighbors knew the owner. Either way I did not want to find myself called in to the station for suspected trespassing or worse, vandalism. Charlie would understand I meant no harm, but it might not be he who was sent to answer the call and I didn't want to embarrass him in front of his co-workers.

So I took the next best thing; the library. I made a mission of it gaining all the knowledge I could of the area of town we lived in, its history and most specifically, 112 Masen Lane. I thirsted for information about that house. I was so drawn to it. Why couldn't Charlie have bought that one? Because I would probably be obsessed with the house we are living in now, that's why. It was likely just boredom that drove my curiosity, but either way, it gave me something to do.

I found a few old photos of the street, Masen Lane, in the early 1930s, but it looked as if the house had been vacant even then. Odd; certainly it could not have stood empty for so long as that. Probably the photos were just taken in between occupants.

After very little more information turning up about my obsession I decided to ask one of the librarians how I could find out more about it. Linda, it turned out, lived on the same street I did, but two blocks down. She had lived in the house she now was in all her life as it had belonged to her parents and when they moved she decided to buy it. She told me that 112 had been vacant as long as she could remember.

She too, as a teenager, had taken an interest in the house and inquired about it of anyone who lived in the area.

"I first asked my dad about it when I was about fourteen years old. He told me that as long as he could remember it had been empty. They moved to Masen Lane in1963, but my grandparents lived in the area for decades before that. Always it has been that way, ever since the good doctor and his family died back in the early 1900s." She told me.

"Who was the good doctor?" I asked.

"I'm not sure; that answer was enough for me, I suppose. After that my friends and I just assumed it was haunted and left it alone." She laughed.

She told me that if my heart was stouter than hers, that I could research it at the regional library and possibly come up with more information about the family who had lived and died there. That's just what I did. Every day I marched myself to the regional library, well, with the help of the public transportation system, which Charlie, after hearing good report from the boys at the station, had decided to let me use.

I started my search with property ownership of the house which of course was originally in the name of Edward Anthony Masen Sr. M.D.


A/N: Alright I decided to give you chapter two as well, because chapter one really didn't have much substance to it. Please review!