Chapter 2

There was a constant pounding in my head.

I looked at the peeling walls and the dust-covered floors with disdain.

"You can put your clothes and shit in here." Tracy's boyfriend, who I later learned, was called Leonard. Which was an odd sounding name, considering what he looked like.

He pulled open the door to what must have been a small storage closet. There was a lower half of a broom, whose stick seemed to have been broken and placed by the end of the bristles. A dustpan, filled with tiny shards of what looked like glass, was also placed in the storage closet.

He looked over my bags. Which were small and loosely packed. I hadn't brought many clothes. Just a few pairs of skinny jeans, some blank white t-shirts, and my favorite (and only pair) of navy blue vans. My Aunt and Uncle had only bought simple clothing - and my father hadn't really bought much at all.

I nodded my head uncomfortably and I gently placed my bags in the closet.

"Sorry bout the couch - but the guest room is, uh, occupied."

"Occupied?"

He nodded and then looked down seriously. "Best not go in that room."

I sensed the warning in his words. I could only imagine what he would do to me if I ever dared step foot into whatever room he was talking about - I had yet been shown the rest of the house. And I wouldn't be. I would have to figure that out on my own.

Tracy went over to the kitchen, which was placed just beyond the dingy living room. There was a small television placed on a tall table with a lamp to the right of it. Beer cans and bottles littered every surface available. I felt disgusting even breathing in the same air. I saw some cigarette buds smushed into the carpet. Tracy had said this house had been given to her by her grandmother. I could only imagine how nice it had once been - well - to be quite honest, I couldn't imagine anything except the horrible house before me.

Tracy pulled open the fridge, grabbing a cold beer. She flicked her hands over a radio and turned it on. Classic rock music came blaring on. Her feet were bare and she was clearly tired, but still she twirled in the middle of the kitchen. I almost forgot how old she was - in comparison to me.

I was fourteen, having turned so a few days before… The incident. He had seemed so peaceful at my birthday party. Nobody had any idea that he would - he would do what he did those few days later. It was early July now. School in Forks wouldn't begin until September, as usual.

Tracy was in her early thirties. I didn't know the exact age, but I knew she couldn't be much older than my dad had been. Her dress swished around her knees, barely hitting the tops of them. Leonard came into the room, ducking around her and they seemed relatively happy to be together again. Even if their house smelled like shit.

He kissed her, once, then twice. Each kiss longer than the last. Her hands dropped the can on the counter as she grasped his neck with her arms, pushing deeper into that second kiss. I avoided looking at them and the smell of the air seemed to enclose on me, drowning me in a sea of foul odors.

A headache painfully grew behind my eyes.

"May I go for a walk?"

Tracy pulled back just long enough to wave her hands. "Do whatever you want."

She went back to kissing Leonard and I stood awkwardly for but a second before finding my way outside the house. The smell of the open air was wonderful, moist and completely unlike the air I was used to, but wonderful in its own right.

I looked at the hills and hills of trees. From what I had seen of Forks, it was a well-spread out town. Having less people, but more land. And the beauty of the trees was certainly mesmerizing.

I took one step forward, off the creaky porch. And then another and the another one after that. I walked almost confidently forward. I knew where I wanted to go. On the drive around, the nearest neighbor seemed to be miles away. Tracy had told me that we lived on the edge of Forks, close to the Quileute tribe reservation. She claimed that her grandmother was full-blooded Quileute, which is why they owned a house so close by.

Digging my shoes into the dirt, I explored the thick woods, eyeing the pines, spruces, and oaks that formed the thickened fantasy playland. Quickly the scent of the cigarettes and the alcohol - it faded away into nothing as I went deeper and deeper in, exploring the world around me.

I grew deeper in. The light being dimmed away from full penetration and I was left in a sort of shadow. There was nothing but me and nature. The birds were all but quiet and I was left with the sound of my own heartbeat, which drummed deeply through my body; I felt it intensely.

My jacket was almost not enough for the strikingly different cool temperatures. I wore it often, even in Nevada. Had I not been born and raised there; I would have been shocked just by how cold it got in the desert. It could drop to freezing before you knew it.

I sucked in the moistened air, filled with more water than Nevada, the state itself, had. I smiled at the feeling. I eyed some of the trees with curiosity. I had never climbed a tree before. There was a foreign, yet exotic pulse that brimmed through me. I was alone and I could do what I wanted. It was a sort of bravery that I rarely ever showed or even gave thought to.

There was one that had branches seemingly in all the right places. I had walked perhaps at least an hour into these deep woods. I could be on someone's property right then and there, but there would be no way of knowing for certain. I tentatively placed my foot into the crook of this great, magnificent tree, whose verdant green leaves already began to surround me. And then I slowly pushed myself higher, placing my feet in those crooks, using them as my steps. I had a goal. A thickened branch, nestled between others of similar sizes.

Looking down, I knew that I had no fear of heights. There was no woozy sensation and more importantly there was no fear that struck my heart at that moment. For once, I felt brave.

It was an addictive feeling that sizzled in my veins, sparking them to life and I began to climb higher and higher. Soon I made it to my goal and I grasped onto it and began to crawl on it, swinging my legs over each side. I stared down at the ground curiously.

I was at least twenty feet up.

The farthest I had ever been in the sky.

My back was sat against the thick bark and I leaned softly against it. And Mother Nature comforted me in her arms and my memories caught me off guard. Thoughts of my distant, yet, at the same time, close father drifted across my brain. Christmases, Birthdays, Halloweens. He had made sure to be there for every single one of them. He had been much like me - quiet, reserved, and nothing like Tracy. It was crazy to think that we were related. How could I be related to such a loud, rather obnoxious woman? How could she be from Washington? And not from Nevada? The same could be said for my father.

The states were quite opposite in the way nature had formed them.

Overwhelmed, I slowly began to fall asleep to thoughts of the past and with hopes that the future will not be too different, but even my moments of slight incoherence - I knew there was no way that could be true.

I do not know how long I slept for.

But I woke up to laughter.

I awoke in the branch, surprised I hadn't fallen off and I eyed at the ground, looking for the sources of the noise. I hoped they wouldn't be mad, when I must have been on their property.

They were both tall - and beautiful.

Two teens, much more teen-like than I, were whirling around each other. They had russet brown skin and dark, gorgeous hair. I found myself enraptured by them. These were the first people from the area of I had met. I knew they must have been from the Reservation. They had to have been.

"Sam!"

The girl shrieked as her boyfriend picked her up, swirling her around. His muscles were thick and bulging and he was absolutely tall. He whispered something that I couldn't hear but it made the girl giggle. There was a certain gleam and I noted the simple ring on her finger. They were engaged.

He bent his face down into the crevice of her neck.

She held her arms around his neck as his face moved closer and closer to her lips and he kissed her gently as his hands tucked around her waist, pulling her closer and closer to him.

His hands reached beneath her shirt, running up and down her back as she moaned softly into his mouth as she leaned back and took off her her shirt for him. My eyes widened as I realized what was about to be happening. My cheeks tingled as I began to blush as thought of what I was about to witness. Still, I said nothing, finding of the idea of making them aware of my presence to be more embarrassing than watching them.

He took off his shirt as well as they began to kiss each other ferociously. His hands were cupping her bra-covered breasts and one of them reached back to unlatch it, but her hands stopped him as she pulled back.

"Fuck, we can't." She said, clearly disappointed as her eyebrows clenched in annoyance.

"What?" He said with a small chuckle as he pushed past her hand.

"My dad invited my cousin Emily over to stay with us. She's arriving today and I have to be there in time for dinner."

"Emily. Emily can wait." Sam laughed.

"No. She unfortunately can't." She leaned back to kiss him softly on his lips as she pulled her shirt back on. She hugged him closely. "I'll keep my window unlocked."

They left, Sam keeping his shirt off, and their hands entwining as they walked. Luckily, they were in the opposite direction as to where I had come from. I climbed down the tree as soon as they were gone; a blush still painting my cheeks.

It took me less than an hour to speed walk home. Somewhat from fear that I'd run into that couple. And although they hadn't seen me; I had clearly seen them. I wasn't allowed to watch stuff like that at home. I'd barely been able to convince my father to let me watch pg-13 movies and even then, they couldn't be rated like that for any sort of sexual reasons. Thus, I hadn't seen many make-out sessions in my short fourteen years on Earth.

When I arrived home - There was a sort of tingle at the back of my neck. I heard yelling, even through the thick walls of the house. Rather, they must have been thin for surely my mom could not yell that loud. I opened the door to see a bottle flying across the room and Leonard cowering in the kitchen, a pan guarding his face from his girlfriend's anger.

Tracy was shouting obscenities as she she swung objects left and right. I couldn't even discern what she was saying. She was slurring her words too much and it was clear she was barely coherent.

I didn't know what to say, to feel. So I simply didn't. I walked back outside the door, sat on the porch, and eyed the woods. Thinking of that couple, of my dad, of the peaceful serenity I had felt while I was in those woods. I was so tempted to run back into them were it not for the dying sun.

This was my life now.