"Sweetie, you know you don't haveto do this," my mom, Renée, said for the gazillionth time. We were at the airport in Phoenix, and I was about to board a plane to Washington State. I was wearing my favorite shirt—white and sleeveless, with a low-cut neck—and my favorite pair of jeans. I had my luggage all ready to go, and was just saying goodbye to Renée.
"I want to go, Mom," I lied casually. In all truth and honesty, I wanted someone to come tie me to my front porch. I would miss Phoenix; miss the sun, the warmth, the humidity. But I'd miss my erratic, hare-brained mother the most.
"Tell Charlie I said hi."
"I will, Mom." We hugged for the fifteenth-gazillionth time. It lasted so long, I almost missed my flight. Which would've suited me just fine…if I hadn't been lying that I wanted to go.
As I climbed on the plane, I felt the pressure of lying to a loved one again. Charlie and Renée have been my forth family. I moved around a lot, moved from family to family. Sometimes it drove me crazy, but it taught me to deal with disappointment and to just live with the life I've chosen.
I was a vampire slayer. Not like Buffy Summers or anything like that; most vampires nowadays don't die so easily. Wooden stake, garlic, holy water…just things of myths and legends that are totally ineffective. Now, you have to rip them apart and then burn the pieces. Or take them to Volterra, Italy and have those morons do it for you.
But right now, I wasn't liking life so much. Somewhere in the Olympic Peninsula, under a near-constant cover of rainclouds, was a small town named Forks. Why someone would name a city with a utensilI wasn't entire sure. It was a four-hour flight from here to another little, but larger, town named Port Angeles. And then another half an hour driving down to Forks.
It was raining when Charlie picked me up from the airport, when the torturous four-hour flight was over. Big surprise. He's the police chief here in Forks; Police Chief Swan. And of course he had to drive his cruiser to pick me up. I sighed. I looked at a calendar on a near-by wall while Charlie and I were waiting for my luggage. Monday. This was going to be a long day.
As we drove out of the parking lot, Charlie tried to make conversation with me, but it didn't work out very well.
"Your hair's longer."
I looked at the ends of my hair. "Yeah."
Awkward silence.
"So, I got you a car. Kind of as a homecoming present."
I looked up at Charlie in surprise. "Oh…um…Demetri's driving my car up here for me. I meant to call you, but…"
"You have a car?" Charlie sounded surprised.
"Yeah. Mustang Convertible. Black." Screwed with it enough to outrun vampires, or at least keep up with them. Put in a bunch of little compartments for hiding my weapons in. Played with the wires so an unnamed radio station plays the songs on my iPod with a little wire. "I like it." Yeah. I like it a lot.
"Oh."
We drove the rest of the way in silence. If Ashlie, my very best friend from Phoenix who moved to L.A. with her younger sister, Jamie, was in the car she would've done the 'Awkward Silence Turtle'. The very thought of it made me laugh. Internally, I mean.
Thinking of Ashlie made me think of my only human boyfriend. To be exact, I've dated 42 boys: 41 vampire, 1 human. It's really stupid that I date vampires and then turn around a destroy them, but that's the way my life works. The one human boyfriend I had…the most recent one…I think about him all the time, but it only brings back pain. His name was Edward. His father died in a car accident. That same accident left his mother paralyzed for what the doctors said would be the rest of her life. His younger sister, Emily Lane, was killed by a vampire, and Edward himself died of cancer.
I stopped right there before the pain of watching him die right in front of me took over. Crying is not part of my life, doesn't hold any ground. Crying is for the weak. I am strong. And it help that I do a good job of blocking painful, unnecessary things from my memory.
Charlie pulled up in front of his house. It's a small little thing, and surrounded with forest. Well, I'll enjoy the forest. Many hiding places, which is always good.
I got my stuff out of the back and followed Charlie into the house. He led me up the stairs and into my bedroom. It had pale yellow walls, and the comforter was lavender. Well, at least it matched.
"Well, I'll leave you to unpack and whatnot." One of the best things about Charlie is he doesn't hover. It was nice to be alone, not to have to smile and look pleased; a relief to stare dejectedly out the window at the sheeting rain. Don't get me wrong; I like the rain. It's cold, wet, can soak you to the bone. I sighed. Sometimes I wondered if I was seeing the same things through my eyes that the rest of the world was seeing through theirs. Maybe there was a glitch in my brain. I laughed. Of course there was a glitch; I hunt vampires, for crying out loud.
I unzipped my suitcase. I had my clothes: shirts, both long- and short-sleeved; pants, long, short, and Capri's; underwear and toiletries and whatnot; then my hunting gear: two wooden stakes, each tipped in stainless steel, two bottles of garlic perfume, three bottles of holy water, a little bag of bombs, and a gun. The stakes don't do much, just slows them down enough to kill them. The garlic perfume covers up your scent really well, mostly because the garlic is really strong. The holy water is actually really good and quite refreshing. The bombs are small, about the size and shape of a rattlesnake magnet, but, man, do these things pack a punch. Throw them down or squeeze them hard enough and they go BOOM!really loud. They're also harmless because they only kill vampires; just leaves them in a little pile of ash. And then the gun. I picked it up in Volterra a few years ago. It's made completely out of stainless steel-even the bullets-and can kill anything. Including vampires.
I took each of them out very carefully, especially the gun. I put one stake, a few bombs, and one bottle of holy water in my backpack. I took three bombs out and slipped them into my back pocket, putting the rest in my tote bag, with the other stake, one bottle of perfume, another bottle of holy water, and the gun.
My tote bag is black, with "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" on one side, but I took a red Sharpie and crossed out "Buffy". Then I took a silver sharpie and wrote "Bella" above it, so now it reads "Bella the Vampire Slayer". On the back it says, "We can do this the hard way, or…well, actually, there's just the hard way." I wrote another quote by it in silver Sharpie, and it says, "So are you going to kill me, or are we just making small talk?" In other places on the bag, I wrote other quotes: "Well, we could grind our enemies into powder with a sledgehammer, but gosh, we did that last night."; "Why am I still talking to you?"; "Now, this is not gonna be pretty. We're talking violence, strong language, adult content..."; "Ladies and gentlemen... there is no cause for alarm. Actually, there is cause for alarm. It just won't do any good."; "I laugh in the face of danger! Then I... hide until it goes away."; "Testosterone is a great equalizer: it turns all men into morons."; "This is so unfair." and a whole lot more. When I showed Demetri my new tote bag, he cracked up.
Speaking of Demetri, it's weird that I hang out with a guy of the very species I destroy. Almost hypocritical. Demetri is, or rather, was a member of the Volturi, but when I came around, he left. He's actually the one who helped me get the gun. It used to belong to Caius. It doesn't belong to Caius anymore.
Yet again, speaking of Demetri, I heard the brakes of a car right outside. I looked out my window and saw there, parked against the curb, with Demetri in the driver's seat, was my tricked-out convertible. Dimitri shut the engine off, hopped out, and was at the front door in a matter of seconds. I ran out of my bedroom and down the stairs, to open the front door for my friend.
"Sneak attack," Demetri said, poking my shoulder as I let him into the house.
"Here, I'll act out being scared." I said, and then let my bad acting show. "Oh no." I said in a very monotonous voice. "A vampire. Ahhhhhh." Yes, definitely my bad acting.
"Gee, thanks." Demetri rolled his eyes. He handed me my car keys.
"Thank you." I went out to my car and opened the passenger side door. It was raining, but didn't care. I pu the last bottle of holy water in the cup holder and the last stake in the glove compartment, next to a small bag of bombs I keep in my car, just in case.
After going back inside, Demetri asked, "So, if you're supposed to be on vacation, why do you have all your Slayer stuff here?"
"You never know, Demetri, when a vampire is lurking just right around the corner."
"Why are you always so paranoid?"
"Oh, and you're not?" We both knew he took every precaution he could to keep the Volturi in the dark about both of us.
"Toche." I rolled my eyes; he knew I won. But instead of pointing it out, I finished unpacking whatever was left to unpack.