Charlie woke me the next morning at six, tapping on my door timidly like a good knock would startle me awake like a deer.
I stumbled out in my underwear and thermal vest, rubbing at my eyes, and staggering to the bathroom like a drunk. My hair was a nappy mess, and there were bags beneath my eyes. I had struggled to get to sleep in the deathly quiet of Forks. In Jacksonville, I had been lulled to sleep by the distant highway and the sounds of Renée's late night TV. But Forks was silent like a graveyard, so even the smallest of sounds startled you awake like an axe-murderer was coming to get you. All of that was made worse by Bella's screaming nightmares.
The howl had shocked me so much I'd jolted out of bed and tripped on the wooden floors in my socks, slamming onto the floor in my half-asleep delirium. The thing inside me had tried to escape the confines of my moonstone bracelets, my skin had felt prickly and tight like I'd been vacuum-sealed into my own flesh.
Charlie had heard Bella screaming, which wasn't surprising considering it could've stripped paint, and had heard the loud thumping from my bedroom. He'd told me to go back to bed when I'd darted into the hall, saying he would handle it before disappearing to Bella's bedroom. I knew better than to invade my introverted sister's privacy. My night had totally blowed… and so had hers.
Another sucky point to Charlie's house was the communal bathroom. In Phoenix, Bella and I had shared the family bathroom, and I'd had my own bathroom in Jacksonville. It smelt of Comet bleach, like the kitchen, and everything was neatly organised. In the narrow shower stall, all the shampoo bottles had been turned label-front like a Bed, Bath & Beyond. It was freakin' disturbing.
Charlie had a pretty good water tank, my shower remained at a constant blistering heat the entire time I was in there. I hadn't thought to bring my own toiletries beyond a toothbrush, makeup, and deodorant. So I washed my hair with Bella's strawberry shampoo and conditioner, and scrubbed myself down with Charlie's Old Spice soap. Conflicting perfumes, maybe, but I loved the familiar scents.
It was overcast and still dark outside, so I had to turned on the light in my room to get dressed. Before I had left Florida, I had agonised over what to wear to my new school. I had only just started my Freshman year of high school in Jacksonville before I had been told of Renée's plan, so I had never really prepared for high school fashion-wise. Forks would be my first proper proper high school. Although, to be honest, I still felt like I belonged in middle school.
Because it was probably going to rain later that day, I decided jeans, a t-shirt, and my pastel sweater was a good idea, paired with my waterproof boots. It sort of went okay with my grey raincoat, and I wore a couple more pieces of moonstone jewellery. It felt like my beast was in check; but it was better to be safe than sorry. Mostly my worry was with the bags beneath my eyes that I tried to hastily cover up with some concealer.
The first thing I smelt when I walked out of my room was hot coffee and peanut butter. My stomach growled again, aching, as I made my way to the kitchen.
"Morning," Charlie greeted, his voice hoarse from sleep, and he took a drink from his coffee mug. A percolator sat on the stove, and I could smell fresh coffee from across the room. Coffee. Nectar of the gods, and lifeblood of a grouchy Swan in the morning.
To my dismay, I learnt that Bella was in charge of grocery shopping. Which meant the breakfast cereals in the house consisted of Cheerios and some nasty looking All Bran muesli. I shuddered. I generally had pop tarts or Lucky Charms in the morning, as I was a sugar-hungry heathen that didn't give a crap about diabetes. Being faced with unfrosted Cheerios was tantamount to starvation. That would have to be rectified; Cheerios werenot a suitable breakfast option.
Charlie raised an eyebrow when I put my cup of coffee and bowl of cereal on the table, but didn't comment. I had only started drinking coffee earlier that year anyway, so it was a new-ish development. To be frank, though, it did have more creamer and sugar in it than actual coffee.
The old pipes shuddered and creaked when the shower turn on upstairs, meaning Bella was awake. Charlie didn't look up from the newspaper on his lap. I forgot sometimes that normal people couldn't hear what I often could.
"Anything interesting?" I ask conversationally, popping a spoon of Cheerios into my mouth.
Charlie shook his head, "Nope, just some bear sightings near the Sol Duc."
That surprised me. Forks had never really had a bear problem; exactly. Coyotes often snuck into town to tear through people's' garbage cans with the raccoons. I remember one of my last summers here had involved chasing some coyotes out of old Mrs Geller's backyard so they didn't eat her equally geriatric cat.
We had seen bears in Washington about once, when Charlie and Billy Black had taken me, Bella, and Billy's kids to the Olympic National Park. That day had involved one of Billy's daughters pushing another into a lake and Bella falling into a patch of stinging nettles.
But bears near the Sol Duc river? That was pretty close, especially considering the winter had been very mild this year. Guess Forks had two animal control problems now. I shrugged and continued eating my cereal.
Bella did not look any better than she had last night. Even freshly showered and in clean clothes she still looked sort of… unkept. Like me, she was dressed in jeans and a sweater, but hers hung loosely and didn't flatter her sallow complexion. I had never seen her like this before.
Bella had never been girly, but even in her jeans and t-shirts, she'd always been presentable. With her unblow-dried hair and gruesome-looking black rings beneath her sunken eyes, however she was doing a great imitation of a drowned rat.
"Morning!" I chirped, hoping to get Bella's usual reply that I was far too annoying in the morning. But she just smiled limply and gave a mumbled greeting. I watched my sister-who-was-not-my-sister make a bowl of Cheerios, a frown tugging at my lips.
Charlie gave me a reassuring, if sad, smile across the table like a weathered soldier. I sighed and turned back to my own cereal, patting down the floating cheerios with the bowl of my spoon. I pretended I was pushing boats beneath the sea to drown.
Bella took the remaining seat next to me, but didn't say anything. She ate her cereal exactly like she used too; drowning in milk. It was a relief to see Bella eat something. The vertebrae of her spine could be seen through her t-shirt.
"Big day, huh," Charlie broke the silence like the hell-raiser he was. He put on hand on his thigh and put his elbow on the table like a constable in a TV show. "You ready, Emily?"
I pulled a face and breathed dramatically, "I think so."
I wasn't ready. I lied.
"Bella's going to drive you to school," Charlie said unnecessarily. I knew my sister was going to drive me to school, Bella had said so in an e-mail to Renée when this whole disaster had been arranged.
Bella didn't look up from her cereal but she nodded, one hand raised to her lips resolutely. She didn't eat any more breakfast.
The car ride to my new school was awkward. Bella didn't turn the radio on and refused to let me when I asked. She said she didn't like music playing when she drove. Music was distracting. I thought that would be the end of our conversation, and the beast inside me jittered along with my own anxiety.
"How's Renée?" Bella asked suddenly, leaning forward in the driver's seat to reach the monstrously large steering wheel. The truck was huge, at least to five-foot-nothing me, and Bella had to push her seat all the way forward for her feet to touch the pedals. I half expected to see cushion beneath Bella's butt to boost her up higher.
I was a little surprised but I answered quickly, "Good. She's taken up candle-making again, although this time she's going 'vegan' or whatever."
My sister crinkled her nose but there was a hint of a smile on her lips. "Wonder how long that's going to last."
"Well," I pondered sarcastically, tilting my head and putting a finger on my lips. "We went to the vegan bistro on Thursday last week… so, four days, I reckon."
We both chuckled lightly, but the conversation dropped after that. Our mother's fickle flightiness wasn't exactly a good topic for a lasting conversation. Much like her decision making. But the drive to Forks High School wasn't very long; like most things it was just off the main highway.
I remember Bella talking about it in an e-mail when she first moved here. There weren't any fences around the school buildings at all, and as Bella pulled into the student parking lot I noticed there weren't security guards either. Or metal-detectors, or even a ticket system for parking.
Small towns were pre-9/11 pipe-dreams. There weren't many new cars in the lot either, most of them battered eighties and nineties models with bumpers covered in band and football stickers. It was early, so kids were hanging out between their cars and talking. It looked like a couple of them had cafeteria sacks; meaning the cafeteria sold breakfast. What in the actual fuck. The PTA here must have held aggressive bake sale campaigns to fund that kinda crap.
Nobody looked at us when we hopped out of the truck, and Bella offered to walk me towards the front office so I could sign in and collect my timetable. FHS had virtually no-one in the locker-covered corridors. Most of the fittings, like the florescent lighting and barren trophy cupboards, looked like they were installed in the late seventies.
Along the way, Bella vaguely gestured to classrooms with an arm like a dead fish. She did at least make a point to point out the large black numbers on the corridor walls. When we reached the front office Bella waited outside for me to go in, already pulling a book out to read. A typical reaction, even for zombie-Bella.
The lady at the front desk had frizzy orange hair in a bun on the top of her head, with a pair of gold braid earrings straight from the eighties. She was sort of dumpy, with glasses that fell down the high, sharp steep of her narrow nose. I'd never had a problem with introducing myself, or making the first move, so I strolled up to the desk and smiled.
"My name is Emily Swan, I'm a new student here."
The lady gave me a lopsided smile and leafed through some papers on her desk before she slid them across to me. "You're Bella's sister aren't you? How is she going?"
In a town this small it shouldn't have surprised me that people had noticed her… zombish-ness. And noticed to a point the desk ladies at her high school gossiped about it. I wondered what they thought of her.
"Fine." I said curtly, holding back the bite on my tongue. Probably not a good idea to snap at a desk lady on the first day at a new school. Incidents like that couldn't be swallowed up in a sea of four-thousand students.
Bella showed me to my first class, and we hovered awkwardly outside its door before we said goodbye. She said we could meet in the cafeteria at lunch time before she walked off. Although it looked like she wandered off, her pace like that of a dreamy Alzheimer's patient.
My first class was introductory algebra, taught by Mr. Varner, a middle-aged man with a beer belly. He shook my hand and gave me a battered copy of the textbook with a blistered laminated cover. Seats weren't assigned, and the class was mostly empty, so I took a pew in the middle of the room by the window. It was mildly disturbing to me how small the classrooms were.
Only a couple of kids seemed to notice me when they started to walk in, but I kept my head down by riffling through the textbook and arranging my things on the desk. After the bell rang, Mr. Varner didn't go feel the need to mercilessly embarrass me by making me introduce myself.
Surprisingly, I was a little ahead in algebra than the class and breezed through the exercises we were set. During class time, I doodled in the back pages of my notebook, smiling at a girl who kept turned back to stare at me. Her dusty blonde hair was tied up in a bouncing ponytail that swished each time she turned her head.
Logically, I knew she was probably wondering who the fuck I was. But her big hazel eyes made it feel like she was wondering if I was some kind of imposter student. When she caught my gaze and I smiled, she blushed terribly and snapped around to stare at the board.
After the class let out, she came up to me as I was packing my bag.
"Hi," I greeted casually, wedging my notebook in my bag. "I'm Emily."
She grinned awkwardly and tugged at the corner of her sunshine yellow shirt. "I'm Bridgette. Are you new? I don't think I've seen you before."
"I'm Chief Swan's other daughter." I clarified and her face seemed to bloom with understanding. "I just got here from Florida."
"Ohhh, cool. I've never been to Florida - hey, what class do you have next?"
I pulled my timetable I'd folded into quarters out of my pocket, "Umm… classic literature."
"Sweet! Me too, it's with Mr. Mason. He goes pretty easy on freshman so it's really easy."
The first thing I learnt about Bridgette was that she was that she didn't mind talking about herself. She also seemed to know everyone in freshman year. She had an older brother who was a senior and a younger sister who was in the middle school, which sat conveniently across the football fields.
Bridgette stopped by groups of other girls along the way to literature class to chat with friends, and to introduce me. Everyone smiled and seemed quite nice, although I knew it was because of my newbie novelty. The normal cliques would return to normal within a month or so of me being around.
We were reading Oliver Twist in literature, which Mr. Mason seemed pretty bored with. He took my pink slip when I came in, and said he looked forward to having me in his class because my sister was a good student. He let me sit next to Bridgette without any hassle.
Oliver Twist was boring to me. We'd been studying Charles Dickens's The Magic Fishbone in Florida, so I didn't even own a copy of Oliver Twist. Mr. Mason said there were some copies in the library but I knew I'd either have to buy one, or see if Bella had one I could borrow.
Like my sister, I loved to read. But unlike Bella, I liked modern young adult and fantasy novels. Bella liked classics; Jane Austen and Charlotte Brönte. There had been a couple of times we'd convinced each other to read another's books, and I hadn't minded Pride & Prejudice and Bella had enjoyed Outlander. But as a whole we largely stuck to our own genres. In a way, I suppose it made sense for Bella to fall in love with such an arrogant asshat. Just thinking about him gave me the creeps.
Bridgette was in most of my classes except for third period, where she had Spanish and I had French, but as our classes were side-by-side we walked together. We chatted about inane stuff like Lindsay Lohan in Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen and our favourite TV shows. We had started talking about our favourite male celebrities when Bridgette encountered another cluster of her friends outside of our classrooms.
"Louise, Emma!" Bridgette greeted, and they all hugged each other like a puppy-pile. They looked pretty much like typical girls I'd known in Florida. Both of them were brunettes, although one was quite skinny and the other less so. "This is Emily, she's Chief Swan's daughter!"
We shared hellos and I managed to put some vague names to faces. Louise was the skinnier one, with her light brown hair in a french braid and a small sheen of lip gloss on her thin lips. Emma had hair down to her waist she didn't bother to tie back, and wore a tartan-pattern dress over black tights. It was kind of awkward.
I felt like I was being foisted off on Bridgette's friends but I tried not to be bothered about it. Connections were connections, right? And I wanted to have friends, even casual awkward ones with bad fashion sense.
I was behind in French, which was frustrating. I hadn't taken Spanish because I thought French was more whimsical… and I regretted that decision. But I couldn't change electives this time of year so I was stuck. Serves me right, I supposed.
Louise and Emma didn't hang around after-class. So I awkwardly hovered around the classroom before I decided it was a good idea to follow everyone else. I figured it was the least obtrusive way of finding my way to the cafeteria.
It was confronting to see how tiny the cafeteria was. At Jacksonville, the cafeteria was big enough for twelve hundred people to eat sitting down at once. Forks High School sat about one-hundred and fifty, and the cafeteria serving benches were only a couple of metres long. There were only three vending machines along the wall, and only one of which had junk food inside. Jesus fucking christ. Where was I supposed to get a Snickers bar from?
Charlie had given me a ten dollar note as lunch money before he left for work. I looked around the cafeteria, trying to see Bella's mop of brown hair. After a couple of minutes of searching, my stomach growled and I started to give up. Mr. Varner must've let my class out early or something, so I decided to join the lunch line whilst I waited.
I grabbed a can of Grape Fanta from a vending machine, and when I noticed the hot food for the day was gross looking spaghetti or meatballs, decided the lunch bar was a better option. Jacksonville had had a make-your-own-lunch bar for only a couple of weeks before it was removed, as people kept doing stuff to the food. Forks's seemed pretty untampered, and reminded me vaguely of a Subway. I made myself a tomato and cheese sandwich, and picked a large chocolate chip cookie from the dessert basket.
As I was leaving the bar, I struck me that I had nowhere to sit. I couldn't see Bridgette anywhere, and Bella was still MIA. I made a snap decision to head towards an empty table by an unfamiliar set of doors when I heard someone say something behind me.
"Hi, ar-are you Bella's sister?" It was a male voice, on the cusp of being the truly deep baritone of a fully grown man's. I looked behind me, an automatic smile on my face. Bella never hid her displeasure, but I did on a regular basis. 'Fake it until you make it' had become a personal motto of mine.
The speaker was a senior in a navy blue, yellow, and white Letterman jacket. He had his thick blonde hair gelled up in spikes, and although his blue eyes were a little too close together he wasn't unattractive in the least.
"Yeah," I answered with a nod of my head. And the strange boy smiled. "My name's Emily."
"Oh," He chuckled, "Sorry, my name's Mike Newton."
"Like Newton's Outfitters?"
"The one and only." He boasted fake-smugly, and smiled cheekily like a used car salesman.
I grinned, "Sweet. So, lemme guess… football team?"
Mike puffed up like a peacock, jutting his chest out to display the Spartans' logo on the front of his jacket, and then jumped into an Atlas pose when I started giggling.
"You a sophomore, or a junior?"
"Freshman," I nodded somberly when he mock-gasped.
I was about to ask Mike if he'd seen my sister when a semi-familiar voice cut through the bubble of the cafeteria, "Emily, over here!"
It was Bridgette, waving frantically from an almost full table. She looked at Mike like he was a zoo exhibit.
"I,uh, better let you get back to your friends," He chuckled good naturedly, looking like an abashed golden retriever. "But-uh, if you ever need anything, I'm your guy."
"I will, thanks." I gave him a little wave with one hand as I made my way over to Bridgette's table. I loved seniors like Mike. Back in Jacksonville it had been a weird quasi-tradition for some seniors to 'adopt' the baby freshman like little ducklings. I guess it must've been universal.
At Bridgette's table, I felt like a circus animal when I went to sit in the chair she had saved for me.
"I can't believe Mike Newton was talking to you!" She squealed excitedly like we were already best friends. The other girls at the group, who thankfully did not include the ones who'd ditched me before, all looked at Bridgette with mild interest. Of course, Bridgette appeared to be the ring leader.
"Only because he's friends with my sister," I brushed off with a shrug, cracking open my grape soda.
Bridgette gaped at me like a fish even so. "Yeah, sure. Nobody just does that even if they know your sister."
I pretended to be skeptical and consider her words seriously. But I knew her type; making a big deal out of everything to get attention from the group. Which wasn't a bad thing, I just hoped she would drop it and not carry on the whole semester. Mike seemed nice, and a-dork-able, but definitely not someone who was interested in a baby freshman.
Through lunch, I joined in vague conversations with the other girls and chomped through my sandwich. I ended up splitting the cookie with the girl next to me named Layla, who had frizzy blonde hair and braces. It turned out we both liked Outlander, and had started giggling about Jamie Fraser when the bell rang. Bella was still nowhere to be seen.
The last class on my first day was chemistry, which wasn't terrible. Layla, the girl from lunch, sat next to me and let me use her textbook. Renée would have to transfer some money to my bank account for all the books I needed. We talked a little bit during class, but I was worried about my sister. I hadn't seen her the entire lunch period or in any of the corridors. In a school this small it should have been easy to spot her, even at a distance.
When class let out, I walked to the front office to hand in my pink slips. The desk lady smiled and asked about my day, so I lied that it had been awesome as I left. Finding my way back to the parking lot was a little difficult. All the corridors looked the same in the dying Washington light.
Unlike my ghost of a sister, her truck was easy to spot in the afternoon gloom. The setting sun reflected off the puddles colouring them a burning orange, and bathed Forks in a rainy tangerine fire. Pine trees flooded the horizon like a green sea, the peaks of mountains poking out in the distance. I took it all in with a deep breath, like I could suck the atmosphere into my lungs.
When I came back to earth, and FHS's parking lot, I saw Bella in the cab of her truck, a book in her hands. Apart of me wanted to march up to the cab and knock on the window, demanding to know where she'd been at lunch. But I wasn't a complete ass and Bella deserved better.
Bella looked up from her book when I hopped into the cab, giving me a very weak smile. Little droplets of rain dotted her chocolate brown hair, the setting sun catching the red strands in it.
"Hey," Even her voice was weak. "Sorry I - uh, didn't see you at lunch. I had ah.. a headache so I had lunch in the truck."
It didn't surprise me. Not really. Bella had never liked large groups of people, and I suppose high school must have been hellish for her… especially now. It hadn't escaped my attention that people gossiped about how she was.
I nodded and tried to keep my voice light, "It's alright. I met your friend Mike in the cafeteria; he seems nice."
Bella snorted a little, shoving her book into her bag and putting her keys in the ignition. "I've got to stop by the Thriftway to get some things for dinner, that okay?"
My sister had always been good with dodging topics of conversations; and I wondered why Mike was a subject left alone. But then I remembered what Charlie had said during a phone call, about Bella not seeing her friends. Maybe friends were like music to her now. Distracting.
A/N: Sorry for the later-than-expected update! It was several thousand more words than I was expecting, and I got slammed with college assessments.
I legit drove through Forks in Google Maps to make sure every thing fit perfectly, and Forks still has the Thriftway Stephanie Meyer described lmfao. I've also never eaten pretty much 97% of all American foods described, so if I describe the flavour wrong please tell me. Can I also just add it seems so bizarre to me that some American schools have metal detectors and security guards ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Thank you for your review, Anon! I'm sorry your toilet break was ruined so tragically lmfao.