Yo, its been awhile. Unfortunately, I'm super busy with school right now, midterms and all of that, so I apologize for my horribly long gaps in updating. But the next chapter is here, yay~!

... Yeah, its still kind of like a elongated prologue with no real dialogue, but its setting things up further so I can fully launch into the story when the time comes. More of Bella's thoughts. She is in Forks at last at least so that's good, right?

Thanks to all who reviewed, I really appreciate it! You guys make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside :) Anyway, here's chapter one. Again, let me know what you think!

Chapter 1

Unprepared

Making myself understood used to be all but effortless. When I was angry, I often said so: to Renee, who forgot, in her usual carelessness, to pay the bills; to my best friend Carla, who had a big heart but an equally big mouth, which she was constantly putting her foot in. Even to Phil, who had a penchant for playful roughhousing- like he was six years old instead of the thirty I knew him to be -and tended to break things in the throws of it. I would let them know I was upset, like a normal person, why I was (like a responsible young adult, Renee would tell me, appreciative or sour, depending on her mood) and we would make our way down the road of forgiving and forgetting. We would move on, just like normal people did. But normal doesn't apply to me anymore, and I strongly suspect it never will again.

It was my lack of normalcy that left me unable to explain my frustration, curiosity, morbid embarrassment, and complete confusion as I sat in my biology lab on that first day of school in Forks, my new home, staring into the pitch black, contemptuous eyes of the most beautiful boy I had ever seen. My muteness, as always, had me in a choke hold, and even though I wanted to demand answers (needed, quite desperately, to do so) from what had to be the epitome of God's creation (if an inexplicably angry- no, furious -epitome) I was, again, thwarted by my disability.

It was agonizing.

When I left for school that day, I knew nothing about the Cullens. I did not know that Carlisle was a doctor. That he, along with his wife and children, were all inhumanly gorgeous, that Edward (for that was my lab partner's name: Edward Cullen, descendant of Gods) was unbelievably stunning in his own right. And I certainly didn't know that they were, in fact, not human. In reality, I knew next to nothing about anything, save for Charlie and the confines of his humble home.

Charlie.

My father.

It was still weird, at that point (even now, really) to put those two things together. You would think that it wouldn't be, me having lived with him for months by then, yet it was. My brain and heart would not reconcile with the truthfulness of this fact- Charlie is your father, he slept with Renee, he and your mother had a baby and you are the result -so I was left struggling to find balance. Not that that was unusual. Not anymore. Not since the 'incident.'

It was hard to accept much of anything, after that.

Before I met Charlie I knew, logically, that the Swan in my name had to come from somewhere. It was as mismatched from Renee's maiden name as the combination of a blue and orange sock paired together but it never bothered me before. I never let it. I had Renee, my flighty, scatter-brained but well meaning mother, her love, and the support of my best friend, Carla, who was my rock in times of hardship. She's the thing in Phoenix I miss the most, besides Renee.

So I never let my lack of a father bother me. Renee explained to me during my abc's and 123's that I did, indeed, have a father, but that things just didn't work about between them and he wasn't in the picture anymore.

It was that simple.

I accepted this knowledge, both then and later, the same way that I accepted Phil when he came into our lives, recognizing my mother's happiness and glad for it. I knew I was the main reason she had never settled down with a man, worrying needlessly about me in that flamboyantly exaggerated way of hers, though she never admitted it. And, as it turned out, Phil was a nice guy. Young, but nice. Sure, he was more of a brother figure than a father one with his rambunctious personality and childish dream of playing baseball professionally, but I was used to taking the parent role. It was in my nature.

I never missed not knowing Charlie. Not really. I didn't have a name or a face to put under the blank space that had father scrawled above it on my imaginary, ignorantly short family tree, and occasionally I would wonder, in the late hours of the night before I fell asleep, if he was still out there somewhere: my mystery dad. I would come up with random ideas of who he was, if he looked like me, if he ever laid in bed like I was laying in my bed at the time, idly thinking about me the way I mused about him. And then I would turn over, curl into a ball, and fall asleep, not letting it trouble me too much. The next day it would be out of my mind, like smoke that had dissipated into thin air.

But then Renee died, and my whole world flipped on its axis.

The first time I saw Charlie, I was covered in bruises, cuts, and other various injuries. It was the one in my heart that hurt me the most though, throbbing and twisting more painfully than any of the others combined, including my torn throat. It hurt and I was convinced, at that point, that it would never stop; that I was doomed to a life of miserable anguish, alone in my complete and all encompassing despair.

Even when they told me my father was coming, my biological father, I believed that.

The funeral had ended, and I was back in the hospital for a checkup. Phil had long since left, not that I had expected anything less. He wasn't my father and Renee was dead. The bonds connecting us were suddenly thin and unquestionably feeble. So when he said his goodbyes in the hospital room where I would spend weeks on my own in isolation (with only nurses, doctors, and an occasionally tear-streaked Carla my company) Charlie in the process of being found and arrangements being made, we parted ways as amicably as possible, what with our chests hollow and aching something fierce. He quietly apologized to me then for his inevitable departure, telling me he couldn't handle it, that it was too much- "I'm not ready to be a father Bella, not on my own" -and I voiced my polite goodbyes as well, unable to find it in my heart to blame him. I recalled him, and still do, as a child; fun-loving but hardly capable of looking out for someone other than himself.

And… secretly, it was what I wanted too. Distance from any reminders of the life I had lived up until then.

It just hurt too much.

It was then that Charlie came. Mystery dad numero uno. The ghostly vestige of my internal musings was, suddenly, turned to flesh. He wasn't what I expected but at that point, I hardly cared. About anything.

It was easier that way.

He wasn't particularly tall, nor impressive to look at. He was lean though, and his face looked worn, I thought, when I saw him step into my hospital room, the lights throwing the shadows of his features into sharp relief. There were lines around his eyes, around his nice looking mouth, surrounded as it was in stubble, so that he appeared haggard, as though he hadn't slept- or washed, for that matter -in days.

I'm sure I looked much the same, minus the facial hair.

His dark hair was disheveled, his checkered flannel (out of place in the hot climate of Phoenix) rolled up to his elbows and half tucked into his belt, as though he'd been in a hurry to arrive and hadn't taken much time on his appearance. His old blue jeans were dark and faded at the knees, his boots muddy and equally worn. But it was his eyes that got me. They were my eyes. Brown, not very extraordinary, but warm nonetheless.

It was only then that I pieced together in my foggy mind that this was my father. After all of this time, after years and years of absence, I finally got to meet him.

All I could think about was Renee.

He took me to Forks after that. First on a plane, and then, from the airport to home, we rode in his police cruiser, of all things. My dad, it appeared, was a cop.

It took me awhile to wrap my head around that one.

It also appeared that he didn't say much. Like me before the accident... and I guess after it too. We danced around one another awkwardly, even after allowing each other space for the first few days of the transition. Everything was bizarre though eventually, we settled into a routine. Charlie took it upon himself to ask me about my day, how I was feeling. If my wounds were starting to heal.

My replies took longer as I was forced write on my whiteboard things like fine, good, they're getting better, my pen squeaking against the plastic surface as he waited, shifting awkwardly, his hand going to the back of his neck to rub it like a bashful elementary school kid. And then silence would lapse once more. He would leave for work, asking if I would be all right on my own, and I would assure him, through my dry erase pen, that I would be.

Then he would make his exit and I would have the house to myself.

It was strange and uncomfortable. Sometimes there was a connection between us. I would cook and clean, things that I had learned out of necessity in Phoenix (thanks to Renee's disastrous creations in the kitchen) and he would thank me, gruffly but kindly, and we would both smile that same small smile that we also seemed to share. Sometimes we would watch TV together, both on the couch, together but not too close, and when he would get up to leave he would pat me on the shoulder, squeezing it carefully, the gesture awkward but the intent behind it caring and gentle.

I found myself almost loving him, my stranger-dad, in those moments.

And then, after the first few weeks, reality set in, and I learned something about Charlie that I would rather not have known. I guessed it was the reason Renee had left in the first place, if not on her sheer spontaneity.

Slowly, I discovered that Charlie wasn't just shy and awkward.

He was painfully damaged too.

There were times when he would come home from work late in the evening in what can only be described as a morose mood, his eyes impossibly dark and the whole world seemingly resting on his shoulders. He would sit on the couch, this time alone, and nurse one beer too many, the TV he stared broodingly at as dumb as my own tongue.

I would get scared by the look on his face during those evenings. It was like he was mad at the whole universe, raging against it, but he would say quiet, dark things, and they were often directed at me. Because I was there and the rest of the world wasn't. The people he was really mad at, they didn't exist in the recesses of our home. And so it would be me that he said; "you ruined my life," to. It was me who was the burden, who was creepy for silently watching things all the time (like I could help it) for making him depressed. Somehow, when he was in those moods, it was my fault that he had a job that left him old and tired, forced to stop domestic disturbances, to watch them go horribly wrong, to sometimes crouch over the body of a teen girl that had been raped and murdered, leaving him, the cop, to pick up the pieces.

He blamed it on me.

I hated this Charlie. He was frightening and pitiable and his hands hard as they griped my arms and shook me in earnestness, reminding me of old injuries, his kind eyes devoid of warmth as he looked at me, accusing and pleading at the same time.

I would try to get him to bed, to rest, so that he would let go of me, release me from his bruising fingers, so I could clean up the mess at the coffee table and pretend that this had never happened. I prayed for a voice so that I could reason with him, to speak in my defense when his grip prevented me from reaching for my board to write words he was in no mood to listen to anyway. But, of course, the God I had long ceased to believe in did not answer my prayers. I was on my own.

The first few times, spaced initially over a few weeks time, I stayed up late into the night crying, my eyes red and my heart rubbed raw. But by the time school had rolled around, it had become routine... and much more frequent. My tears, for the most part, dried up.

I didn't know what to make of it. There was Charlie, the one who loved me and wanted to, in his own shy way, get to know me and protect me from what was out there. This Charlie bought me a car and drove me around for the first few days so that eventually I stopped shaking every time I sat in the passenger seat, reminded of another car and the bloodied after math that had come from riding in it. The kind, thoughtful Charlie, who, unfortunately, shared a body with the one who felt too much and tried to drink it away, the Charlie with hard hands and a hard gaze.

They were interwoven together in a complex knot that I couldn't hope to unravel. They- him -were the reason my silence trailed to my finger tips instead of simply lingering on my useless tongue. He hardly talked, I hardly wrote, and so when I went to that school the first day I was clueless about Forks High and busy missing Renee with a feverish, aching intensity.

In my ignorance I didn't realize how strange I would be there, the new girl, the daughter of the Chief that no one even knew existed, the poor girl who couldn't talk. I didn't know this. I didn't know the Cullens.

So I was totally unprepared for the presence that was Edward and his coal black eyes, his all too sudden hatred of me. I was unprepared for Alice, her bubbly enthusiasm and cold hands.

And I certainly wasn't prepared for her confession that they were vampires either.

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