Been a while since I uploaded anything, and for that I apologise sincerely, but thank you to those of you who favourited or put this story on your alerts list, it means a lot. An especially big thanks to those of you who did review, it means the world, and is great inspiration!


Mom and dad were doing that strange silent conversation thing again. They just kept exchanging glances with various facial expressions attached. It was like they have finally managed to perfect arguing to the extent where words were no longer needed.

I was used to my parents' disagreements. They disagreed about everything and anything, whenever they spent any time together. I once asked mommy whether she was happy after she and dad had a screaming match, and she just looked at my strangely but didn't answer.

Ignoring my parents, I concentrated on the boy, Edward. He was permanently stooped, and dragged his feet in a manner my mother would have found highly offensive if I'd replicated, if she'd been paying attention that is.

He had changed out of his miniature tuxedo and bowtie, and had replaced it with something decidedly less formal; a pair of baggy jeans that slumped over his slim hips, and ill-fitting flannelette shirt and a pair of lace up work boots that were the only decent piece of attire in the whole outfit. My mother was particularly taken aback at the sight.

"We're staying in a hotel," I announced to our house guest for the evening, but he didn't respond.

"It's got a pool and a spa downstairs, and my room has its own television!" I continued, trying to provoke a response.

All I received for my troubles was a swift rebuke from my mother, who told me "not to boast". After that I was silent until the car arrived to collect us.

The limousine pulled up out the front of the building, and the man at the reception desk held open the front door for us so we could exit the lobby. Edward looked strangely at the receptionist, and then back to me, and then back at the man, as if unsure of what had just occurred, as if exiting a building was some kind of big thing.

It was nothing compared to his reaction to the limousine however. He just stared at it in awe.

"Haven't you seen a car before?" I asked with a giggle, and my mom gave me a warning glare.

"Why's it so long?" Edward blurted out, staring at it.

"It's a limousine, that's why," I answered smugly. Once again, I knew something he didn't.

"You travel in a limousine?" he asked, sounding overawed.

"Of course we do. We get them all the time, don't we dad?"

"You're mother told you not to boast darling, now hop in before I get it in the neck for letting you get cold standing on the sidewalk," my father said, gesturing to the door his was holding open.

"Aren't they for really, really rich people?" asked Edward, as he followed me into the car.

"We are really, really rich," I replied with another smug grin.

"Isabella!" my mother admonished loudly. "Charlie, did you hear what your daughter just declared? It was extremely rude of you!"

"Hmmph?" my father grunted in reply, clearly not paying attention. I would have put money, all that birthday money I had been given, that he was checking the baseball scores on his smartphone.

Sure enough, when I leaned over, he had the ESPN application open and the scorecards were being pored over on the phone in his right hand, while his left hand teased the end of his moustache, a feature that was another source of tension between my parents.

My mother just grunted disapprovingly and said no more as we settled into our seats. Meanwhile a stunned looking Edward sat with his chin resting on his arm staring out the window as the bright Los Angeles lights whizzed by in the middle of the night.


By the time we arrived at our hotel, I was very tired, and yet I was still excited. I led Edward by the hand, while he stared open mouthed at the foyer of the building, leading him into the elevator ahead of my parents.

I insisted on pushing the button for our top floor suite, as I always did, and we stood in silence as the floors were illuminated one by one from the ground up. Once the little light lit up the number fourteen, the doors pinged dully, and slid open.

My mother unlocked the white door with the number '118' on it in gold lettering, and opened it.

"This is my room," I told Edward excited, while my parents just looked pointedly at each other, my father concealing a yawn behind his hand.

There was a knock on the door, and my mother ushered in a concierge who wore a less that pleased expression, and had a mattress under one arm. My mother had evidently organised somewhere for my newfound friend to sleep.

Pressing some money into the man's hand, my father declared that it was time for bed, to which I protested loudly. It wasn't often that I got to have a friend stay over, but my parents were having another argument, although this time they were clearly trying to keep it quiet.

"We don't know him, we don't know where he comes from or what he's like," my father whispered gruffly, just loud enough for me to make out. For his part, Edward simply stood there peering around the room with a shocked look on his face, as if he'd never seen anything like it before in his life.

"He's a kid, not a criminal Charlie." My mother's whispers were softer than my fathers, but I could still make out their conversation, and if I could hear it, I was sure Edward could as well, although he pretended not to I think.

"I don't want him sleeping in Bella's room," my father said more loudly, sounding demanding, but I could already tell my mother was going to win this argument. Sometimes you just know.

"Don't be ridiculous Charlie, the mattress is already set up and everything," my mother answered with a tone of finality, and turned to us. "Come on Edward dear, I'll get you and Bella ready for bed and then tomorrow we'll doing something about getting you down to Child Services in the morning."

If I hadn't been watching Edward fairly closely, I don't imagine I would have noticed him stiffen almost immediately, as if he was suddenly petrified of something. My mother was too busy to notice, pulling sheets and a pillow out from the cupboard, but I did. Edward took a few deep breaths and just like that he was calm and silent again. I didn't think too much of it.

I'd always thought it was easier to talk lying in bed than anywhere else. My friends and I often had sleepovers, especially when my parents were away, and we used to talk long into the night and tell each other things we'd never dream of saying during the daytime.

It was this phenomenon I hoped would hold true when I started a conversation with our strange houseguest, who was lying on the floor on the mattress next to my single bed.

"Pssttt..." I hissed loudly, "are you still awake?"

There was a temporary silence, and then the soft voice came back to me.

"Yes."

"Well, aren't we going to talk? Isn't that what you do during a sleepover?" I asked him.

"I... I don't know," he replied, sounding unsure.

"Well, what do you normally do when you have sleepover?"

"I haven't had a sleepover before," was the reply.

I was silent for a second.

"Do... do you not have any friends?" I asked quietly. It was a little blunt of me to be sure, but I felt honesty was important.

"Not really," he answered, not sounding at all offended, as if it wasn't really a concern for him.

"Well, since I'm your friend, would your parents let me sleep over?" I asked, sounding him out.

"You wouldn't want to," he replied shortly.

"Why wouldn't I want to? We're friends, friends spend time together, my mom says that's how it works anyway."

"My parents wouldn't want me to have people sleep over," Edward answered.

"Are your parents mean? Or is it just one of your parents? Is your dad mean, cause sometimes my dad is mean, he gets angry at me for the smallest things and then mom gets angry at him for getting angry at me."

"My dad is dead."

I was silent for a good long time, while I tried to think of something to say.

"Do you just live with your mom then?"

"And her boyfriend," he replied, his voice cracking a little bit.

"And she wouldn't want to have me sleep over? Doesn't she want you to be happy? If she loves you, she would want you to be happy," I announced, sounding confident.

"She loves whatever is in those needles she puts in her arm," Edward replied, his voice almost a whisper now.

I didn't understand this concept very well, so I blustered on.

"What happened to your dad?"

Even at the age of thirteen, I realised that question may have been insensitive as soon as it left my lips, but I couldn't take it back. It simply hung there in the air, lingering painfully.

"He was killed in a place called Victorville, which is a prison according to Donny. Someone stabbed him with something called a shank in the neck, he said."

I was shocked into silence once more. I had never met a kid anything like this boy, and my intrigue was stupidly overriding my reasoning. I was too interested to stop and seriously consider the boy's feelings.

"Whose Donny? What's a shank?"

"He's my mom's boyfriend. He's a bastard and I hate him," Edward added viciously, the first overt emotion I'd heard from him all evening, overlooking the second part of the question.

"What's wrong with him?" I asked, ignoring the voice in the back of my head that told me my mother would have been appalled if she heard me.

"All he does is drink and lie around in our house. He hits me if I'm late or I argue with him. Sometimes he hits me because he's just angry. I just hate him," he repeated.

"My parents sometimes used to smack me if I broke something or I used a swear word," I said, knowing it wasn't quite the same even as I said it.

He didn't respond to this.

"What do your parents do as their jobs?" I asked, changing tacts. This was a favourite topic of mine, because lots of people knew who my father was, which made me proud.

"My mom and Donny don't work."

"How do they pay for things then?" I asked, sounding shocked. My parents were big on teaching the value of hard work as paying off with money that I could use to buy stuff. All adults did some sort of work, that was just how the world worked, as I knew it.

"They collect welfare checks for being unemployed."

This puzzled me, as I remembered back to our conversation at the event that evening.

"But don't you work?" I asked, confused.

"Donny makes me work, because they get welfare for me because mom is listed as a single mother. He says he can only get welfare if he's unemployed whereas I can get it cause I'm a child so it doesn't matter if I work or not."

"I don't understand that," I said honestly.

"Neither do I," came the bitter reply.

The silence stretched out interminably, until I felt the need to break it with simply anything, and I said the first thing that came to my mind.

"I don't think my parents love each other," I declared into the black space. The sentiment was born from the feeling that Edward had provided lots of personal information while I had given nothing. Not that I didn't believe it.

"I'm... I'm sorry," was Edward's simple reply.

"Yeah... me too," I agreed, laying back into my pillow.

Another lengthy pause ensued.

"Do you like working?" I asked, trying to keep the conversation flowing.

"I liked school," Edward replied slowly and deliberately, "everyone else always complained about having to go to school and do work, but not me. I liked school."

"Did you have lots of friends at school?"

He paused.

"Not sure really. They were my friends at school, but I don't see them anymore. I never have time to play and so they've forgotten me. I saw Jonathon in the street the other day and he ignored me."

"I'm sorry," I responded earnestly. I couldn't imagine what having no friends was like, especially since I had so many of them.

I sat silently considering what I'd heard that evening, and for the first time I began to realise that there was a world outside the one I lived in. I didn't know anyone my age that had to work for a living. Sure, there were a few kids whose parents were mean, and they seemed to never let their kids do anything fun, but they weren't beating them as far as I knew. Not like Edward seemed to suggest he was, anyway.

It was well after midnight by now though, and I was getting sleepy. My eyes began to droop, and I curled up slightly and burrowed into my pillow as sleep overtook me.


"Bella!" whispered a voice in my ear.

I groaned.

"Bella!" repeated the voice more urgently, shaking my shoulder gently.

I curled up tighter, hoping the person would go away.

"I'm leaving Bella," the voice said, and my mind registered who it was.

I rolled over and glanced fleetingly at the clock, which informed me that it was 4:08am in the morning, and the light had not begun to touch the shores of Los Angeles yet.

Edward was standing there fully clothed, his hand on my arm, shaking gently.

"What do you mean you have to leave?" I asked, completely nonplussed.

"I can't stay here. Your parents want to take me to Child Services, and then my parents would be called, and mum's boyfriend would beat the hell out of me cause he'd have to come and pick me up. I have to go before your parents wake up!"

"My parents will protect you, I know they will!" I insisted dopily, as I considered making enough noise to wake them up regardless. I still was sleepy, and everything was happening so fast that I couldn't decide what to do. It was a mistake.

"No, no, please don't. I have to work tomorrow, I have to take money back to my mum's house or else terrible things will happen. You don't understand, please, just let me leave and if you have to tell your parents, tell them tomorrow morning. Tell them thank you, and goodbye," he said, and with that he turned, picked up his ratty bag of god-knows-what, and ran out the door.

I wouldn't see that strange boy again for more than a year.


Short I know, but I just wanted to get it out. The next chapter is a bit of Edward's perspective and a view of his world, so prepare to be depressed! Well, hopefully I can convey that feeling, anyway. As always, in you have a second to spare, I would love some feedback. You don't even have to have an account to review, just type two lines and tell me what you think! Thank you very much for your patience and support!