I sat on the bed in my childhood bedroom and stared at the four pink walls around me. The walls were cluttered with all sorts of memorabilia from Forks High banners to band posters to concert tickets and pictures.

There were so many pictures.

Even though there had been that brief few months in which I was sure Bella Swan would end up in a psych ward at a hospital in Seattle, she was still my friend. Even when I belittled her or shaded her out of jealousy, she was still my friend. I mean, okay, maybe I wasn't really that nice to her or Edward after they got together but… that didn't mean I didn't care about them. Especially Bella. Maybe she wasn't part of Student Government, or the Yearbook Staff, or any sports team ever like the rest of us. But that's what made her Bella, wasn't it? She was the only person who never tried to be something she wasn't in Forks High School, and that's one of the biggest reasons I had been so jealous of her.

And now she was gone.

I hadn't realized I had been crying until my mom knocked on the door and stepped in, but I quickly wiped my cheeks dry with my sleeve.

"Oh, honey. I'm so sorry," she said as she sat on the bed next to me and wrapped her arms around me. I had intended on putting up a fight, but the second I felt her hug me I leaned into her and began crying into her shoulder.

"I can't imagine what poor Chief Swan is going through. I would be inconsolable if anything had ever happened to you. And they just had that beautiful wedding," I heard my mom click her tongue against her teeth and then felt her shaking her head as she rubbed my back. "Such a shame."

I thought about the wedding, which was the last time I had even seen Bella. We waved her and Edward off as they left the Cullen house out in the woods and headed off to their honeymoon in Brazil. Later that night I told Angela I didn't know anyone who would actually ever want to go to Brazil, but that was just jealousy. Again. How did Bella just get so many beautiful things handed to her? What was it about her that I had missed while everyone else fawned over her? I guess I would never know, because I would never see her again.

"I ironed that black sweater dress that was in your closet and hung it back up in your closet so you could wear it to the wake tonight. Do you want to eat before Angela picks you up?"

I shook my head and pulled away from my mom, letting her wipe my now tear stained cheeks clean.

"No, I'm just gonna take a shower and get ready. Maybe after."

Truth was I hadn't had much of an appetite since Angela's phone call yesterday. It was hard to think about food when all I could think of was Bella.

My mom left me with a kiss on the forehead, and I made my way into my bathroom to take that shower I had been craving.

The warm water was more than welcome as it poured over my skin, and I felt alone in my thoughts.

Bella Swan. I remembered the first moment I met her in the gymnasium, the day we lost the volleyball game in class. Even after we started eating lunch together I wouldn't let her back on my team for the rest of high school. She was a pretty terrible volleyball player, after all.

I remembered how beautiful she looked when she walked into our junior prom with Edward Cullen. Edward Cullen, who I had spent so many years chasing after, arm-in-arm with the new girl in town. It was a punch to the gut, but by that time Mike and I were pretty much a thing and though I might have been a bitch, I wasn't horrible enough to break up a relationship – especially my own.

Dozens and dozens of lunches together flashed through my memory, followed by shopping trips to Seattle and surfing trips to La Push. For some reason I thought of her friend Jacob and that time he showed up to school and they rode off together on a motorcycle without Edward, which she never told us about. Then again, their relationship had been so strange we never really asked. It had always been more fun to watch from the outside anyway, constantly speculating and gossiping like they were celebrities or something.

Angela had told me how Bella had died, according to Alice, but it all sounded so strange.

"Dr. Cullen said she caught some weird bug down there. Something that just ate away at her until there was nothing left. A parasite, he called it. She was so sick she couldn't travel back home until she died."

A parasite. Where could she have picked up a parasite? You never really heard much about people being sick in Brazil, so where was this mysterious parasite hiding all along? And how did Edward not catch it, too?

Everything was mysterious with the Cullens and always had been, and now that Bella is a Cullen… was a Cullen… I guess everything about her would be mysterious too.