CHAPTER ONE
"Hurry up, Bella, or you're going to miss your flight!" my mom called from downstairs. I'd already finished packing my black and purple duffel bag, but I wasn't looking forward to this trip. My mother, Renee, had recently remarried-four years after divorcing my dad Charlie-and my stepfather had decided that he "wasn't ready for kids right now". Needless to say, that meant that my continued presence in Phoenix, Arizona, would be cramping his style. I had to go-and go I would, up north to live with Charlie in Forks, Washington, where I had spent the better part of my childhood. Most of my things had already been sent on to Forks by this time; all that was left was my carry-on bag of essentials.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
My name is Isabella Swan, and my life changed forever when I was seventeen years old.
#
Charlie met me at the airport after my flight. It was a cool, rainy day, and the air was cold and clammy against my skin, reminding me of ghost stories around campfires. It was almost fifty miles outside the city proper, and therefore we had a bit of a drive to get to my new home. I climbed into his old used-to-be-red pickup truck, an elderly vehicle that smelled mainly of motor oil, old upholstery, and an entire childhood of spills and various bouts of carsickness, and shoved my bag under my feet. It was an old, familiar vehicle, with old, familiar memories.
"How was your flight?" he asked me as we set off towards the highway/
"It was okay," I said, "I got crammed in next to some guy who needed to take a shower, but I was able to deal with it."
He smiled. "That's the risk you take, I guess," he said, "Are you looking forward to living in Forks again?"
"Sort of," I said, "I remember Mom was always so unhappy there, but it wasn't so bad."
Charlie's smile faded. "I don't know what it was, either. It's the Olympic Peninsula, not the first circle of Hell. I have to warn you, though, you might lose that tan you've been working on in Phoenix."
I glanced at my arm, which had developed a bit of color during my relatively brief life in Phoenix. Normally I went from white to red without any stops in between, but it was ultimately nearly impossible to live in Arizona and not have a tan. In Forks, however, it was nearly impossible to get a tan in the first place, and apparently not that big of a priority amongst the Washingtonians.
"That's okay," I said, "People who tan are on the road to skin cancer anyway."
Charlie laughed. "You got it, kiddo. The pale shall inherit the earth. Hey, your stuff arrived yesterday. I've got your room pretty much set up upstairs. If you want to redecorate after we get home, let me know."
It had been years since I'd lived in Forks, but I could almost imagine how my room looked the last time I'd seen my old room. It had seemed so empty, like I was abandoning it. In a way, I was-and now I was coming back.
"Did you take care of my enrollment?" I asked.
"You're going to Forks High School," he said-a bit unnecessarily since I only remembered the one high school there, "They've got a decent archery program-I remember you liked that a lot when you were younger. You might meet up with some old friends there."
I doubted it. The only real friend I remembered from my previous life in Fork was Jacob Black, a boy who lived on the La Push reservation not far from Forks. The locals there were a bit insular, so naturally the two of us had forged a close friendship. I wondered what he looked like these days.
"Oh, and I've got a big surprise for you when we get home, so don't let me forget."
"What kind of a surprise?" I asked.
"Oh, I think you'll like it," he said with a cryptic grin. I knew when he got in this sort of mood there would be no getting him to talk until he was ready, so I let it drop.
After a long silence, he spoke again.
"How's your mom?" he asked.
"Remarried," I summarized, "We decided it would be best if I moved back to Forks." It was a lie, I knew. My stepdad Phil decided it would be best if I moved back to Forks, and Renee decided it would be best if she had Phil instead of me. There really wasn't anything I could do about it at this point.
My old house was about like I remembered-a small two story in the suburbs-but in a strange way it also seemed a lot smaller than when I lived there. The colors seemed to be washed out, something I attributed to the perpetual clouds in the sky and the current rainfall. It wasn't pouring down, exactly, just a sort of heavy mist that had a way of soaking anyone who stood in it for too long.
I pulled my bag out of the truck and trotted up the steps to the wooden front porch-it need a fresh coating of paint-and reached for the doorknob. I hesitated, a few inches away. Was this still my house? Could my home be here once again, like it was before? That was hard to determine just yet. It felt almost like home, but it needed that air of familiarity that generall came with the overall feeling of home.
Charlie came up the porch behind me.
"Here we are, honey," he said, "Home sweet home." He unlocked the front door and let the two of us in. The cloying feeling that I was still a visitor-that I might always be a visitor-clung to everything around me, even things that I remembered from before. The living room and dining room were populated with brown cardboard boxes plastered with shipping labels-each one bearing my name. Each one bearing my belongings. My home was here. My home was no longer in Phoenix. I was stuck here.
Well. I might as well unpack and set about making this place my home, however un-home-like it felt just then.
I spent the afternoon unpacking and putting my things away, including the leather case that contained my compound longbow-an elegant instrument that had earned me a number of trophies over the years. I checked it over to make sure it hadn't been damaged in transit, nodded in satisfaction that it wasn't, and turned to unpacking my clothes and putting them away in my closet and dresser. My books came next-several tomes by a wide variety of authors ranging from William Shakespeare to Anne Rice. I winced at the thought of the shipping charges for my small library, but I loved to read. Books kept me company during lonely evenings. I piled them on the bookshelf in rough categories-romance, horror, classics-and made a mental note to sort them out properly later.
I didn't realize how long I had spent acclimating myself to my new room until Charlie called me down for dinner. It was simple fare-macaroni and cheese out of a box rather than what Renee made-but I was hungry after the day's activity, and I dug in.
"I talked to Billy Black just before I went to pick you up," Charlie said, offering me a can of soda. I accepted it.
"What's he been up to lately?" I asked.
"Oh, the usual," he said, "His son Jacob heard that you were coming back to live in Forks, and Bill said the two of them would be by to visit sometime after dinner."
My spirits rose, and I wondered what Jacob looked like these days. The last I'd seen him seven years ago he was a gangly kid-admittedly awkward-looking, but he could run like the wind. I chalked it up to his Native American heritage-his tribe, the Quileutes, believed that they were descended from wolves. Or something like that. I found mythology and folklore fascinating to read, but there had to be a line between fact and fiction-and the idea of humans being descended from wolves was pretty cool on paper, but ultimately a bit silly when you thought about it.
In any case, whether or not the wolf thing was true Jacob had always been a good friend, and I looked forward to seeing him again.
"That reminds me," Charlie said as I came to the end of that train of thought, "You remember that surprise I mentioned to you earlier?"
"Yeah?" I said.
"Well, I figured you'd need some sort of transportation to and from school, so I'm giving you the truck."
My mouth opened, but nothing came out immediately. It was true, according to the maps I'd looked at, that Forks High School wasn't within walking distance, and there was nothing about any bus routes due to it being a small town, so I did need a car. The truck wasn't exactly an ugly one, but it lacked the flash of newer cars. On the bright side, this meant that with regular maintenance it would run damn near forever, instead of breaking down if you looked at it funny. I briefly considered livening it up with flames painted on the fenders, but ultimately decided that that would just look ghetto. As it was, it just looked Old and Reliable.
"Thanks, Dad," I said, only half meaning it. A car was a car.
"I do expect you to help pay for the maintenance and gas, you know," Charlie added, "and that means getting a job."
"Dad, I just got here. And shouldn't I be focusing on school?"
"You can do both," he said, "School during the day, work in the evening. I've asked around and there are a couple people who would be willing to hire you part-time."
I could just see any hope of a social life slipping away through my fingers. My head slumped over my nearly-empty plate of mac and cheese-only to snap back up at the sound of a knock at the door.
"I'll get it," Charlie said as he placed his empty plate in the sink. I shoveled the last forkful of dinner into my mouth, wiped my lips on a napkin, and put my plate in the sink while he went to the door.
"Hey there, Billy-boy!" I heard him say from the foyer. "And Jacob! Come to see Bella?"
I took two trotting steps into the hall overlooking the foyer and stopped when I saw the wiry form that could only be Jacob Black, plus seven years since I'd last seen him. God, he was cute. He had the coppery skin and dark hair one would expect from the Quileutes, but instead of dark eyes his were a sort of soft amber color that had always fascinated me. He met my gaze with a broad grin. Beside him, his father grinned from his wheelchair-he'd been paralyzed from the waist down for as long as I could remember, but I don't think I ever heard the story of how it happened.
As Charlie let them in, I finally managed to unroot myself from the floorboards and hurried forward to hug Jacob. His skin was as warm as I'd remembered-he'd always seemed to run hotter than most people when we were children, and this seemed to still be the case now. He folded me in his arms and picked me up effortlessly.
"Hey there, Bella," he finally said after he put me down. He cupped my face in his hands. "How long as it been? Seven years already? Time flies so fast around here. And look at you."
"Look at you," I returned. I couldn't stop grinning. Even if life in Forks completely sucked otherwise, at least there was Jacob. Did I mention he was cute?
The phone rang in the middle of the meet and greet, and Charlie excused himself to the kitchen to answer it.
"So, Bella," Bill said, "You're finally back in Forks, huh? Jacob couldn't stop talking about it."
"Looks like I'm here for the time being, anyway," I confirmed, deciding now was not the time to relate the details of this arrangement.
"It's good to have you back." Bill glanced conspiratorially towards the kitchen. "Your father hasn't been quite the same since the divorce."
I glanced over my shoulder to where Charlie was not so much talking on the phone as listening to the person at the other end, while interjecting the odd syllable of inquiry.
"He seems okay now," I said, and then something came to mind. "Neither of them ever told me why Mom wanted to leave Forks so much. You don't know, do you?"
Bill looked uncomfortable. "I think that's something you'll have to take up with your dad, really," he said. "All I can tell you is that there are lots of spirits living in the Olympic Peninsula, and not all of them are nice."
Great, I thought, I ask for answers and he gives me weird Native American spiritualism. I wasn't going to rag him for his beliefs, though.
"Tell you what," Jacob said, interrupting my thoughts, "Tomorrow I can show you around Forks a bit. A lot has changed since you left, and I figure you'll want to get your bearings again.
I grinned, my mood lifting again. "Great," I said, "While you're doing that maybe you could show me how to get to Forks High."
"Sure," he said.
Just then, Charlie returned from his phone call in the kitchen, looking vexed.
"Billy, Jacob, I'm afraid I'm going to have to cut this visit short," he said to the Blacks. "There's been another..." He stopped short and glanced at me. "I'm needed at work," he said finally. "Bella, you go on and finish unpacking and getting everything put away. I'll probably be home later, but there's no need to wait up."
"Okay," I said, a bit confused. Certainly nothing major happened in a town like Forks, right?"
"And Bella, I need you to stay put tonight. Don't go wandering around after dark, do you hear me?"
"But Dad-"
"Don't 'But Dad' me, Bella. I mean it. You've got a lot to do, and I don't want a bunch of shipping boxes all over the house for weeks."
I scowled. It wasn't like I was going to go for a walk in the woods or anything, not on my first day here. I wondered when Charlie started to get so protective, but then considered that it was because I was a teenaged girl and he was the sheriff of Forks. That didn't make it any less unfair, though-seven years on the other side of the country and he thinks he can just dive back into the "dad" role?
The Blacks bade us goodnight, and I watched Jacob maneuver his dad's wheelchair down the porch steps. Once at ground level, Bill took over, wheeling himself over to their van to drive home. I turned away from the door to see that Charlie was already set to leave, his gunbelt with not only his service revolver but also ammunition, cuffs, and a walkie-talkie securely buckled in place and his sheriff's fedora perched on his head. I saw that the vexed look had been replaced by an anxious one, but for only a split second before he saw me looking and put his Brave Face on.
"Don't wait up for me, honey," Charlie said, "I'm sure it's nothing but we have to check out everything."
Bullshit. Charlie was never a skilled liar, even in the department of little white lies told to one's offspring.
"Okay, Dad," I said, giving him a hug. "I'll see you in the morning, then."
"See you in the morning."
It took him a little longer than usual to let go, before he headed out the door into the deepening twilight, striding towards his police cruiser. He waved out the window before pulling away, and I waved back. Inside, though, I was left wondering what was bothering him so much.
By the time I finished tidying up enough to call it a night and go to bed, I found myself unable to sleep right away. Recent events conspired with the discomfort of the unfamiliar bed and the recent questions that ran in circles in my mind to prevent me from having any but the most fitful night of sleep.
End Chapter One.
