Disclaimer: I do not own anything from the collective works of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Saga

A Well-Organised Library

Choosing the house was one of the hardest decisions Louisa had to make in her entire life. On one hand, the house had a fascinating history — an unsolved mystery and a long list of previous tenants that had vacated the building within six months of moving in. It was also aesthetically pleasing, in a tiny logger town sort of way. The off-white two-story was by no means a grand house, though it was much larger than their cramped apartment in Tacoma. The kitchen had been recently renovated, the property was secluded enough for privacy from nosey neighbours but not too remote in the event of an emergency, and there were central heating and air (which was another improvement from Tacoma). On the other hand, there were only three bedrooms.

True, there were only three people in the Collins family, so only three bedrooms were really needed. This also meant that Louisa and Dorothy wouldn't have to share a living space — while the sisters did love each other very much, they were vastly different people and their ways of living didn't always mesh together well. No, the real issue with amount bedrooms centred on the fact that only nine months previously, the Collins family would have required four. There was a finality, Louisa decided, to move into a three-bedroom house, one which she hoped would help heal her fractured family, rather than hurt it further.

There was an unspoken agreement between the sisters that the master would be their father's bedroom. The moment Louisa unlocked the front door, the two thundered up the staircase to claim the larger of the two remaining rooms. Louisa, who had already viewed the property, knew that the room that faced the front of the house was not only much larger, but had more natural light, and scrambled to claim that one. Dottie, who knew her sister had more knowledge of the house, followed after, cursing the four-inch difference in their heights.

In a moment of desperation, Dottie yanked on Louisa's jumper, causing her sister to slip on the hardwood floor. Vaulting over the fallen teenager, Dot sprinted into the room and slammed the door shut, making sure to lock the door so that Louisa couldn't try to pull her out. Louisa, though annoyed with her sister, was mildly impressed with Dottie's dirty tactics (not that she would ever admit it). Swearing colourfully and rising from the floor, Louisa gave Dottie's newly acquired bedroom door a few half-hearted kicks and hollow threats before turning and trudging towards the other bedroom.

Unlike Dottie's open and airy bedroom, Louisa's was much smaller, where three of the four walls comprised of built-in bookshelves, giving the room an ancient and claustrophobic feel. The room itself might have originally been a library or a study (though according to Mrs Cullen, the shelves were added after the house was built), but a small closest had been built into the far corner during some renovation so that the room could be labelled as a bedroom. Louisa briefly wondered if she should purchase a wardrobe to accommodate all of her clothes, though, with the addition of her desk and a twin bed, she wondered if it would even fit. If she even needed a desk, now that she had given up solving mysteries. She'd have to ask her father what he thought when he arrived. In the meantime, there was a lot of unpacking that had to be done.

Stuffing her long blonde hair under a Rainiers baseball cap, Louisa called out to her sister while she trudged back down the stairs, demanding help at unloading the car. They had been able to cram a surprisingly large amount of boxes into their tiny Prius, including the two inflatable mattresses the sisters would be using until the movers arrived with their furniture. But between the two of them, they made short work of sorting out their belongings. At some point, Dottie turned on the Rent soundtrack and managed to find a hammer, and the teenagers spent the remainder of the afternoon singing and hanging pictures. Louisa's heart would throb painfully in her chest every time they came across a picture of their mother or brother and silence would fall between them, broken only by Idina Menzel's voice.

Dottie and Louisa were debating what they should do for dinner when there was a knock at the front door. The movers weren't supposed to arrive until the next day and they didn't know anyone in the town yet. Commanding Dottie to remain behind her, Louisa crept into the living room, hammer still tightly gripped in her hand, to peer out the window. She could just make out the form of a tall man with curly brown hair shifting from foot to foot as he stood on their front stoop.

"Good evening, Officer," Louisa said after she opened the door. The man was wearing a black jacket with a police emblem on the left breast and the name 'C. Swan' printed on the right in yellow letters. Louisa quickly hid the hammer behind her back, at the same time wondering if their car was illegally parked. Louisa tried to peek around the tall man, only to see the little Prius sitting in their driveway, right where she had left it. As a precaution, she pulled off her baseball cap from her head so that the police officer could see her face better. "Is there a problem?"

The gruff-looking man gave her a little smile that twitched his moustache. "Only if you have something to confess, Miss. I'm Charlie Swan, the chief of police around here. I just thought I'd come and introduce myself."

He stuck out his hand and Louisa was so shocked that she almost didn't shake it. Shakily, she took his hand, mind still reeling that an actual police officer was at her door, and Louisa wasn't even in trouble this time. Divorced father. Lives alone. Maybe he was lonely?

"Hello, Chief Swan," she said. After introducing herself, she realised that it was raining, and the chief didn't seem to have an umbrella. "Would you like to come inside?"

"Is it normal for the chief of police to introduce themselves in small towns? I've never had a police officer come to my door for anything pleasant before." Louisa asked, moving them into the living room.

Chief Swan let out a low chuckle. "In Forks it is," he replied. "We don't get many people moving here. It must be quite a culture shock from Tacoma."

"Word travels fast," Louisa responded, trying to hide a scowl. She had heard of small-town gossip and she was less than keen to experience it first-hand.

"I would say you get used to it, but that would be a lie," Chief Swan said, shrugging his shoulders. "It doesn't help with that hat," he added, pointing to her baseball cap.

Louisa looked down at the hat still in her hands then back to the police officer in mild surprise. She got the impression that the man didn't usually talk this much, and was taken aback by him driving the conversation. He must miss his child quite a lot to be talking to a total stranger for so long. "Most people didn't follow the minor leagues."

"I prefer the major league, but I'll watch minor every now and again," he explained.

"Do you think the Mariners will make it to the World Series?" Louisa watched as Chief Swan launched into a passionate speech about Seattle's baseball team. His child was definitely estranged from him. Didn't like sports all that much either. And judging by his interactions with Louisa, most likely a girl. Brunette, like her father, if genetics was to be assumed.

"I'll let you get back to your unpacking," Chief Swan said after a few more minutes of rambling about baseball. "If you have any problems, I live down the street. Just look for the police cruiser."

Dottie reappeared from the kitchen the moment the front door was closed behind the chief, blinking owlishly at her sister. "He seemed nice."

Louisa tossed her sister an amused grin. "How would you know? You hid the moment I let him inside the house. So, what do you want for dinner?"

As it turned out, however, they wouldn't have to decide. The visit from Chief Swan must have broken some sort of dam because it seemed every family in town wanted to drop by and goggle at the newest additions to Forks that evening. The Lutheran minister, Mr Weber, dropped by with his children and his wife piled six casserole dishes into the Collins sisters' arms. A Mrs Mallory offered help with decorating the house after their furniture arrived. Cora Forge offered a nervous Dottie a job down at her diner after discovering that the younger sister loved baking. Bob Marks offered to teach an enthusiastic Louisa how to ride a motorbike, much to Dot's horror. By the end of the night, Louisa's voice was hoarse and a headache was beginning to form in her temples.

"Thank goodness," Dottie sighed after the final visitor was gently nudged out the door. "I didn't think those people would ever leave."

"You didn't seem too upset when that D.J. Garret came by," Louisa teased, ruffling her sister's hair. "He's single, you know."

Dottie scowled in annoyance at her sister's antics. "I'm not looking for a boyfriend."

"Good answer," Louisa replied.

Dottie rolled her eyes. "I'm going to bed."

Louisa watched her sister stomp up the stairs and called after her, "When the rest of the boys from school come calling, I'll just remind them that you are 15 and not interested." Dottie's bedroom door slammed shut in response. Louisa giggled to herself, listening to her sister's movements. While she waited for her sister to fall asleep, Louisa organised the mountains of gifts their new neighbours had delivered.

When she was certain she would not be disturbed, the teenager pulled out her cell phone and snuck out of the back door. She hadn't even sat down on the back steps by the time she was calling her best friend. She knew that her father would be furious to know that she had called him, but Louisa needed to hear a familiar voice.

"Privet," Pyotr answered after the first ring. "I am surprised you are calling so soon, Lastachka."

"It's been a rough day," Louisa sighed, rubbing her head with her free hand.

"I am sorry to hear that," he replied. Louisa could hear papers being rustled on his end, and she wondered if she had disturbed him. "What is wrong with you?" Louisa had to smile; while Pyotr's English had improved immensely in the five years they had known each other, he still struggled with conversational phrases.

"I met a lot of people today," the blonde replied, her voice heavy with exhaustion. "Everyone in this damn town wanted to meet us, I think." Louisa paused for a moment, reflecting on her words. "Well, no, I know that's true."

Pyotr hummed in understanding. "Yes, I imagine that would be thoroughly overwhelming for you. Have you added them to your library?"

Ever since she was little, Louisa had been incredibly curious about other people, and some would go as far to say that she was nosey. Her mother would read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes with her for hours and encourage her eldest child's inquisitive nature. One of Louisa's favourite games growing up was deducing things, just like Holmes: she would try to guess a stranger's job or their favourite food or how many dogs they had, and more often than not, she was right. With practice, Louisa could pick up a lost child's hairbrush and know exactly where they had been, or touch businessman's pen and discover precisely how much money he had been embezzling from his company.

The facts Louisa learned were often so specific that people often thought she was a mind-reader. In her humble opinion, that was a rather ridiculous idea. The information she could deduce, however, was as overwhelming as it was extensive. Thus, Louisa decided to build a 'brain-attic' just like her favourite detective, which took the form of an elaborate mental library, filled with books about every person she met. It helped her stem the onslaught of information, filter out the important things from the insignificant, and remember more clearly what she saw. Her Library wasn't nearly as perfect as Holmes' (she wasn't a book character after all), but it helped focus her in both her investigations and daily life.

"That's the problem," Louisa sighed. Not only was there a sudden influx of new books that needed to be created, there was some unknown, but incredibly distressing problem with the creation of three books in particular. "There was this family I met today." She wasn't exactly sure how to put into words her issue with the Cullen family, or even what that issue was, but she was keenly aware that there was something off about them. The moment she had shaken the doctor's hand she knew that there was something… wrong. It was a feeling she had never encountered before and it threw her off balance.

Pyotr's voice was gentle and soothing, grounding the girl in her growing anxiety. "Tell me about them," he said patiently. "Let us figure them out together."

And so Louisa began to describe the elegant Mrs Cullen, who looked oddly familiar despite Louisa being absolutely positive that they had never met before. She told him about Mrs Cullen's handsome doctor of a husband who didn't introduce himself as a doctor. About the youngest son Edward, and their four other children she knew that Cullens had but had not met. She explained how the Edward, Mrs, and Dr Cullen looked strikingly similar, despite none of them being related, and she didn't know why. For some reason, the Cullen family disturbed her, and she wanted to do nothing more than open up her laptop and begin researching them. She couldn't though — it would be a violation of her promise to her father.

"Perhaps you are not classifying them correctly?" Pyotr replied after listening to her rant for a few minutes.

"How so?"

"Well," he said slowly. "In libraries, there are different types of books. Some are fiction, some are non-fiction, correct?"

"So, instead of sorting them in the literary fiction section, they should be in the mystery?" Louisa asked. "Petya, my Library isn't exactly organised by the Dewey Decimal System."

"Let us assume that I know what that means for a moment," Pyotr chuckled. "Perhaps a well-organised Library is what you need, Lastachka."

Louisa sighed in frustration and massaged her temples harder. Creating the Library had been hard enough — how on Earth was she supposed to organise it? Where would she even start? There had to be over a million books in her mind. "Maybe. I don't know."

"I understand that this is not something you want to hear, Lastachka," Pyotr said soothingly. "But think of it as making your mind more efficient."

Louisa almost snapped at her friend for adding to the list of things she needed to do, even though she knew that he was not the enemy. "I suppose you're right."

"I generally am," Pyotr replied, and Louisa could almost picture a satisfied smirk on his lips. "Call me again if you have a problem."

Louisa was suddenly aware of how late it actually was getting to be, and how she had most likely interrupted her friend from doing something important. She felt a little embarrassed for keeping him occupied with her problems. "I can't call you if I just want to chat?"

Pyotr hummed in thought. "I suppose you could do that as well," he said. "As long as it is safe for you to do so?"

"You make it sound like my father will hurt you if we contact each other."

"Nyet, he would not hurt me," Pyotr replied. "Just incarcerate me. And do not apologise, Louisa Collins. It was my fault, and mine alone, for what happened."

"I think we can both accept considerable blame," Louisa sighed. She leaned her head forward on her knees and took steadying breaths, the cool night air tickling her lungs. "You are far too kind to me, Petya."

"That is true."

Louisa chuckled lowly so as not to attract the attention of her sister. "I'll let you go then. Poka," she said while she stood, wiping off her wet backside.

"Spokoynoy nochi." Pyotr ended the call and the dial tone began to blend with the chirping of crickets and the patter of raindrops falling from the leaves in the backyard.

Louisa's skin began to prickle with anxiety. She had that feeling of eyes being on her and she turned her head to survey the forest that lined their property. It was almost as if something was watching her.

Probably an animal of some sort. But she still felt freaked out. Louisa threw open the door to the house and ran inside, making sure the deadbolt was engaged fully. The call to Pyotr had only served to remind her that she was indeed a long way from home.

"We will not be characters in our stories. /Not villains, not victims, not even heroes./We are the authors of our lives./We write our own daring endings." –Brené Brown

A/N: Thank you all so much for the interest you showed last chapter and for all of you that reviewed. What did you think of this chapter? Leave me a comment to let me know! For your own entertainment, the following are the Russian words used in this chapter, written in the Cyrillic alphabet...

Privet = "hi"

Lastachka = diminutive form of the word swallow; a pet name

Petya: diminutive form of the name Pyotr

Nyet= "no"

Poka = "bye"

Spokoynoy nochi = "sleep well"

Hope you enjoyed it! -CheckAlexa