Chapter 2:

How It All Began

"Sometimes you have to let go of something to see if it's really worth holding onto… And sometimes, when you realize it was worth holding onto… It's a little too late."

BPOV:

My story begins when I was sixteen, I had made the decision to leave my life in Phoenix - the place I had loved above all else, the place I thought I would forever call home-and move to Forks. Why? Well, my darling mother Renee, whom despite her best efforts, had a tendency to forget that she did, indeed, have a teenage daughter who needed to eat and have a roof over her head.

Renee had the habit of forgetting that she had to work to pay the bills, to pay for food, to pay for my school books etc, instead of working like most thirty-four year olds, she prefered to spend her days-and nights- at the local college hangouts, you know, the bars and clubs, in the hopes of finding "The One".

My mother never could understand why I was so against her finding her future husband at a bar or club. I wasn't, I was against her marrying someone who was college age - mainly because they were a lot closer to my age than hers and the men she picked were good-looking but they were also young, usually stupid boys who were looking for a free place to crash or a chance to get laid.

After getting tired of accidentally walking in on 'situations' that I really wish I hadn't and seeing things that have caused me to entertain the idea of pourring bleach on my eyes in the hopes of permanently removing certain mental images, I made the decision to call my father Charlie, whom I hadn't spoken to in over a year and hadn't seen since I was ten, and ask- i.e. Beg- him to allow me to move in with him. To say he was surprised would be a gross understatement.

Forks, Washington, is a wet, quiet town with a population of less than four thousand people. Everyone knows everyone and everyone knows everything about everyone.

There are no secrets in Forks.

Forks high school can hold, at most, two thousand students and to the best of my knowledge, it has never had more than 1200.

It's what I like to call "A fitness town", which basically means you can only have fun in Forks if you are athletic. There is many "fun" things to do in Forks if you are into sports, such as hiking, fishing and hunting. Unfortunately for me, I'm not particularly sporty. I jog and that is about it. Hence my dislike for the town.

Something else I disliked about Forks was that it rained a lot. I mean a lot. In fact, Forks is the wettest place in the continental U.S.

Another issue I had with Forks was that Charlie happens to be the Chief of Police.

Yeah. I'm sure you can see how excited I was to be the new girl in Forks. Who wouldn't want to befriend the towns Police Chief's daughter?

So, at the age of sixteen, I left the only place I had ever really called home and moved. My father was excited about the move. He had always been vocal on the fact that he wanted to be more involved in my life and this was his chance. My mother, on the other hand, viewed this as the ultimate betrayal. To this day, she still hasn't completely forgiven me.

A few months before my seventeenth birthday, I moved to Forks. I decorated my bedroom, I signed up for junior year, I got a part-time job at the local sporting-goods store, I fell into a routine of cooking, cleaning, working, reading, going jogging around the town, going to the library and preparing for what I was sure was going to be an awkward, lonely year.

I was quite wrong.