Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight, obviously.

Second chapter in Sundown! I finally decided to stop torturing you and post this. I hope you like it!

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Sundown
HallowedHallsOfWriting

This is quite possibly the fifteenth 'home' I've been sent to in three years.

i'malinei'malinei'malinearen'tyoujealous?

My mom saw to that. After Chase's death, she ignored me for a good few months. The few months in which I changed, drastically. My skin paled from all the time indoors. My friends started to slowly slip away until we weren't even close acquaintances anymore. My grades dropped. I started getting into fights, as well as picking them, especially with anyone who decided they had the right to comment about my family life. I had withdrawn from the world completely. My mom didn't even notice, off living in her own little world.

To be fair, I think she was still reeling from that blow. Though I had been her little angel, it was Chase who was her dream son. Chase, who reminded her of the good times she had with my father, before I was born and everything went to hell. Chase, beautiful, talented, smart, strong, charming, perfect Chase, who wiped away all worries with a smile and brightened up someone's day just by being there.

Chase, my mother's favorite child.

He was pretty much the apple of her eye, and it wasn't just because all the clients were impressed by him. She loved him more than anything, and, quite frankly, who wouldn't? Hell, even I cared about him over all others. He was the most amazing guy ever to step foot on the planet, in many people's views, and I, well…

I couldn't measure up. No matter what I did, she always saw Chase in it. So she did the next best thing, and completely ignored me.

So it was no wonder it took nine months, half of my teachers, the school counselor, and the principal to get her to open her eyes and see the train wreck that was fast becoming Kaye Hart. And instead of getting all sad and sympathetic, she simply pressed her lips together and nodded, assuring the little 'Help Kaye' committee that she would talk to me. And she did, except not really. She yelled at me, she screamed at me, she shrieked, she screeched, and looked like she was crossing the fine line of her sanity as she berated me for making such a mess out of myself, about embarrassing her in front of the school higher-ups. Then she took a look at my appearance, and started ranting again. She dragged me upstairs and shoved me in the shower while she picked out some neat clothes for me that reminded me of my mini socialite-in-training days. After all that, she dragged me to the shrink, or, more accurately, the 'grief counselor'.

My mother always overreacted after that bastard of a sperm donor left.

So every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday afternoon found me sprawled across the cheery yellow futon meant to banish depressive thoughts, and doing my goddamn best to annoy that nasty old hermaphrodite with a stick shoved up her ass as she pursued her lips like she had sucked a lemon at every passing moment of stony, unyielding silence on my part. The shrink wrote my mother a note. Mother yelled at me. I glared back. And then I went back to school, didn't turn in my homework, and failed the test/pop quiz/project/classwork assignment/whatever the fuck we were supposed to do. Then I got into a fight. Dragged in front of the principal, who took a look at my bloody nose and the black-and-blue spotted form of my opponent and promptly called home. Then I got yelled at, again, then dragged to the shrink's office, again. And so the cycle repeated itself over and over and over again. Fail class. Get into fight. Get yelled at. Get dragged to shrink's office. Ignore said shrink. Get yelled at again. Go to sleep. Rinse and repeat.

Day in, day out. That was my routine, and I was goddamn proud of it.

Finally, my mom had had enough. The day before my fourteenth birthday, I came home to see my mom on the phone. When she hung up, she told me to go pack. When I refused to budge, staring at her, she went up to my room, threw (all right, not threw; my mother was a fucking neat freak so she folded and placed) my clothes into a duffel bag, and told me to grab whatever the hell I wanted and get the fuck out of the house by tomorrow morning, because she wasn't going to be responsible for sending me down the path of child delinquents and jailbirds. The next day, I found myself shoved outside the house with two duffel bags, a wallet full of cash, my credit card, and a one-way airline ticket to my aunt Allegra's house. It wasn't that hard to realize what was going to happen.

So I spent my fourteenth birthday on a cramped plane headed towards London. After that, I caught a cab to the edges of the town my aunt, uncle, and their three children lived.

mymotherwasline-myfatherwasaline-soi'maline-anddon'tyouforgetit

When I got there, I could tell immediately that I wouldn't be here for long.

It was a rather modest two-storied, four-bedroomed house in the suburbs of a nice, quaint little town. Too tame, was my first thought. But I went on in, and scared my uncle, who had yet to realize I existed, let alone was coming to live with them, completely shitless. It took a few hours of arguing with Allegra for Robert to agree to let 'this hoodlum anywhere near my precious, impressionable children'. It took even longer, to let me stay in their oldest daughter's, Elizabeth, room.

I smirked. It was like I was back home. Deliberately popping my gum to draw their attention back to me, I spoke for the first time in five hours.

"So, where the hell am I staying?"

They both shot me such a nasty, nasty glare, I almost laughed. It was like they thought I would dirty the pristine lining of their tablecloths just by my presence alone. Allegra beckoned (do they even use those kind of words any more? Or are they just permanently stuck in the sixteenth century) imperiously with her finger, setting a brisk pace as she practically trotted up the staircase. I walked into a room that had an elegant, noble feel to it. I snorted, annoyed. What a poser this girl was.

Allegra dragged in an extra mattress with a blanket and a pillow, and I plopped my stuff down. At exactly four o'clock, the three girls came in. They noticed the raggedy, dirty, boyish blight that was me invading their perfect home and screamed in horror. Synchronizedly. It was like they had planned it.

The oldest, with her platinum-streaked-ash-blonde braided hair recovered first. She turned to Allegra. "Mother," she said, her accent making her sound even more prim and proper than a shiny new silver pin, "what is this, this, this… this savage doing in our home?"

I almost choked laughing. My downward spiral had made me even crazier than ever.

"That is your cousin, Kaye. She is here because her family has recently suffered the tragedy of losing their eldest son, Chase. May I talk to you in private?"

I had to hand it to the old lady. She was one hell of an actress, and it wasn't just because she had the accent down to a T. The three 'young ladies' followed her into the kitchen, where a low and intense discussion was heard. When they came out, their faces were in totally (falsely) sympathetic.

They surrounded me, saying things like, "Oh, you poor girl," and "I'm so sorry for your loss. He sounded like such a wonderful person!" and "My deepest apologies for what I said earlier. I didn't know," and shit like that.

I flipped them off.

After that, I went upstairs into the room I was staying in, and just, well, slept.

The next day, I went to school. I went through all the motions of new students, and introduced my uncivilized, American self to the students at the private school. After that, I settled down in a corner, backwired my iPod, and just ignored them. Just like back home, my grades dropped, and I went to the shrink. Again.

This went on for a month, when one of those annoying girls came over and started insulting pretty much everything about me. I ignored her, even when she got to ragging on me about my parents, but when the bitch mentioned my brother, I was pissed.

Without any warning, I lashed out, punching her square in her cheap little nose, then in her stomach.

The teachers saw. I got in trouble. My aunt was called, and Your Highness Elizabeth, Catherine the Great, and Her Majesty Victoria wouldn't speak to me for days. Apparently the girl was one of their friends. I was fine with that.

Later that week, her boyfriend and his friends started on me too. It was an all-out street brawl, that one. Fists flying, legs kicking. I was sweaty and bloody but all I could feel was the wind swirling around me and adrenaline running through my veins, and every time I tasted blood in my mouth, I was happy. It was strange and fucked-up, but for some reason I felt alive for the first time since I saw my brother's cold, unfeeling corpse. And even stranger was the fact that I felt my most human when I was relying on the high I got from fights, fights where the thoughts were barely human. Strike. Dodge. Run. Punch. Duck. Kick. Jump. Fight. Fight. Fightfightfight don'tgetcaughtdon'tgetcaught.

After my aunt found out I was grinning like a lunatic after being beaten up she immediately doubled the therapy sessions.

Eventually, I fell into routine again, the same old routine that had carried me through the year after my brother's death and had prompted my mother to kick me out. Get up. Fail class. Get into fight. Come home bloody and bruised but satisfied. Get ignored or scolded. Get dragged to the shrink. Ignore said shrink. Get lectured again. Go to sleep. Rinse and repeat. Same old, same old, same old. Everyone could tell that the whole Williams family was at their wits end with me, ready to commit homicide with their little teacups and fashion magazines. I only wished they would, giving me a reason to beat them up in 'self defense'.

ofcoursei'malineyoumorons!howdareyousuggestotherwise!

So it was no surprise to anyone, even less to me, when Allegra told me to go back because her husband was right and she wasn't going to tolerate such a street rat in her house ever again, family ties and grief-blinded teenagers be damned. Then she shipped me off to her flower-child of a cousin, Peace Fensworth (now a widower), who was permanently stuck in the hippie days.

At first it wasn't that bad. Then, when she found out I was getting into fights, she kicked me out, claiming that, "Child, unless you stop bringing your bad karma into this home, don't darken my doorstep ever again." Then I was sent to mother's uncle Arnold Pcherski (married on my grandma's side), who was a retired business man. Then, my grandmother on my mother's side. Then my uncle John Hart (my mom's brother). After that, it kind of blurred together.

Aunt Helen Hart (divorced, my mom's eldest sister). Her divorced husband, Nicholas (who was, surprisingly, not-so-distantly related. Incest much?) Hart. My mother's cousin, April Langley (unmarried, but with kids). April's parents, Mary and Adam Langley (Mary, of course, was a Hart). Her sister, May Cliff (married to a bastard of an oil tycoon). Her brother, Jeffrey Hart (married, to a sweet lady about five, ten years younger – he was a few years older than Helen). Her other sister, Arabelle Rinfeld (married, four years older). My mother's aunt, Lillian Kensing (married, on my grandma's side). My mother's uncle, Maximillian Pcherski (unmarried, but ridiculously wealthy. Figures).

I've been shipped from relative to relative, school to school, therapist to therapist… My memories are so similar it's hard to tell which house I was in when certain fights occurred, but I remember one thought that was constant: I'm not crazy, or have a case of self-loathing, or even grief-stricken, dammit! What is wrong with these people? Can't they just leave me alone?

Quite honestly, my memories of living with them are all running together. I distinctly remember quite a bit of shouting, though. My mother's side of the family have always had quite the set of lungs when they wanted to. It was rather unnerving, considering my much softer voice compared to theirs, which I thought I got from my mom. Apparently, it was from the other half of my DNA. I sooooo didn't know that. In my defense, I've only really ever heard him shouting.

So yeah. I was the typical teenage head case, with a violent streak a mile wide. Quite honestly, the only things I think were keeping out of juvy and/or cells were my mother's name and her money. I mooched off her a lot.

You see, my mother wasn't the type to spoil me rotten, but I had unlimited access to her cards. And I was smart, like her, 'if only I would apply myself'. Problem was that I didn't want to apply myself. So while I had the brains, I didn't have the drive. So for the most part, I just coasted by on my rather sizeable trust fund, which was only a fraction of my inheritance, and lived like a wild child, minus the social side. It was all very contradictory.

hmph!you'rejustjealous'causei'malineandyou'renot!

This time, though, I'm here to stay. Or, at least, until I graduate junior year.

So that's pretty much it. I have to make it through the year, or I quite literally will be in the doghouse. Currently, I'm living off of my trust fund (paid for by my mother) and living in my relatives' houses. Right now, though, I'm at the last house that can even claim a slight resemblance to me in gene terms.

My father's.

My mother asked him to take me in. Well, maybe not asked; that implies he actually had a choice in the matter. Ordered; maybe even blackmailed or threatened would be a better word. I quote: 'William Llewyn, take your delinquent daughter and fucking fix her!'

Yeah. I also remember her distinctly telling me, over the phone, as I waited in the airport, slouched in a seat, 'Young lady, I am sending you to your father.'

She then continued with her little tirade:

'I swear to god and all that's good and holy, Kaye, you get expelled from this school and I will cut you off! So don't you dare let me hear that you have nowhere to live or you failed your classes before the end of the school year, or you'll find yourself disowned and on the streets before you can even hang up the phone!'

That's how I found myself on a plane bound for Seattle, and then in a beat-up old cab heading for the quaint little town of Forks, Washington.

And that's how I began my journey to hell.

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