Chapter Two

Of Yellow and Blue Paint

It was only a few hours later that I crawled out of bed for the second time that morning. My dad had always been a firm believer in early rising, and he barged into my new bedroom at half past seven in the morning.

"Up and at 'em, Honey!" he practically yelled at me, throwing a cuddly toy at me.

I groaned and snuggled down further under my covers, unwilling to be roused so early. I hadn't been able to get much sleep at all. After I'd hung up on Lissa and crawled back into my cold bed, I'd tossed and turned some more before finally giving myself a mental punch and focussing on counting the little sheep walking past a wall in my mind.

"I know you're tired, Ellody, but we've got work to do." He pulled at the end of my duvet, pulling it away from me and off my bed, exposing me to the cold air in my room.

"Ugh," I groaned again, forcing my eyes to open. I blinked a couple of times, adjusting to the light in my room. "It's cold."

My dad smiled at me, and rubbed a hand over his thinning grey hair. "I know, Honey. It's on the agenda for today." He pulled a piece of crumbled paper out of the pocket of his jeans and waved it at me. My father was a paediatrician and was a great advocate of cleanliness being next to Godliness. He couldn't stand to be disorganised. I knew that that piece of paper would have written on it a list of things my dad was planning on getting done today, and that they would be coded in some fashion to tell him which things needed doing more urgently and so on.

I groaned again, but this time swung my legs over the side of my new bed. I stuck my tongue out at my dad and raised my hands in surrender. "All right, I'm up."

Dad smiled triumphantly before leaving the room. I looked around me. I had to admit that the room was pretty cool; it was bigger than the bedroom I'd had back in Seattle. The walls were painted an ugly pale cream colour, and I knew that I wasn't going to rest until my dad consented to let me decorate my new room according to my own tastes. The room wasn't living up to its potential as it was, and it was still cluttered with boxes of my belongings, and bin-liners full of clothes. The coolest thing though, was the window. There was a large window that could be opened, and I'd noticed before going to bed last night that there was a sort of mini balcony out there. If I were so inclined, I would be able to crawl out onto the mini balcony and soak up any sunshine that Forks might be enduring.

I pulled myself off of my bed and began rifling through the black sacks, looking for my overalls. They were an old blue denim pair, spattered with paint and faded with holes in the knees. They'd belonged to my mother, and I couldn't bear to give them up despite their raggedy appearance.

Once I found them, I pulled them on over a long sleeved t-shirt which professed my love the Sims. In the bathroom – there was only one bathroom in this house – I brushed my teeth and smoothed down my dyed red hair in the mirror. I regretted having had bangs cut across my forehead. I had been talked into it by my friends. They had been right, the bangs did suit my face quite well, but they were a nightmare to maintain. I managed to fashion a sort of braid across the front of my head in order to keep my hair out of my eyes.

I examined myself in the mirror briefly. There were large purple bags under my almond shaped green eyes. My dad wouldn't have appreciated me forgoing helping him with the unpacking in order to find my make-up box though, so I just rubbed a little cold water on the skin. My skin was pale and my eyebrows looked a little bushy – I hadn't plucked them in a while due to the havoc Lissa had wreaked on my face when she had convinced me to let her style my eyebrows, and I'd ended up having to draw them on for over a month. All in all, though, I was pleased to say that I still looked like me, despite this place. A part of me was afraid that I was going to turn into a country bumpkin type person now that I lived in the proper place for such people.

Hazel and my dad were already in the kitchen preparing breakfast when I made it downstairs. My dad was frying various breakfast meat product in a pan, and my sister was mixing up a bowl of pancake batter. I didn't bother to ask where the food had come from; knowing my dad, he had probably had this breakfast planned since he had accepted his job in Forks hospital, and had organised that we would have all the correct utensils and foodstuffs in order to have a good hearty breakfast before our day of hard work.

"Oh, you're actually up," Hazel said, surprised when she saw me. "I thought dad was lying to me." She grinned over her shoulder at my dad.

I made a face at me to tell her just how funny I thought she was. Which was not funny at all. I dragged one of our bar stools over from where they were sitting by the door, and ripped off the bits of packaging that were still attached to it. I seated myself at the counter so that I could talk to my family.

"How did you sleep, Honey?" my dad asked me.

I bit my lip. He would definitely flip his shit if I actually told him what had gone one during the night when he was sleeping self and sound in his new room upstairs. But, would it be irresponsible of me not to tell him? Perhaps my assailant was a no-gooder who was going to do some other girl harm? Some other girl who wasn't fast enough at running or something.

Perhaps I was going a little overboard with this? I mean, it wasn't like he had actually attacked me. In fact, he had looked as surprised as me.

"Not too well," I told him instead. Which was true, but there was no need for the specifics at this point in time. "So, what's my list of tasks for today?"

My dad raised on arm and pointed over to the wall. Oh, he had been a busy man this morning. He had already fixed up our notice board to the wall in the kitchen. There were three pieces of paper on the board; one with each of our names at the top. I hopped off of my stool and grabbed mine.

'1) Unpack bedroom completely

2) Clean and unpack bathroom

3) Go to hardware store (see attached list)'

The list went on like that for almost the entire page, and there were three separate little pages attached to the main page. I briefly wondered when my dad had had time to compile these flawlessly organised lists for all of us. I didn't ask, knowing that I would only get another lecture about how organisation was the key to success in life.

I often thought about my mother when he said this. She hadn't been an organised woman. She had been messy and unpredictable and she loved to be spontaneous. I could never understand how a man so... straight-laced as my father was could have ever managed to fall for a woman like my mother. Being organised and prepared in all things was my dad's main aim in life, and my mother would have laughed in his face. Of course, they did eventually get divorced, but there were together for sixteen years before they had finally had enough of one another and decided to call it quits.

"What time are you leaving tomorrow, Hazel?" my dad asked.

My sister had been reluctant to accompany us down to our new home in the first place. It was almost a four hour drive from Seattle to Forks and she had been unhappy with the idea of having to make the journey twice in one weekend. My dad had managed to persuade her though. She was attending Washington University with major of international relations and a minor in French. She was in her third year, and after Christmas she was going to go to Europe to intern at the United Nations for a couple of months.

"I'm not sure," Hazel replied. She began pouring some of the batter into a skillet. "Probably late afternoon. I don't want to leave it too late. I want to get settled and everything."

"I thought your classes didn't start for like, two weeks," I mentioned. The first week in September seemed a little early to me.

Hazel nodded. "I volunteered to help with the orientation for freshmen." Ah, my typical sister. She always did everything like that. In high school, she had been the president of the student council, and the head of about fifteen different extra-curricular clubs. She was a sucker for brownie points.

I regarded my sister for a moment. Of the two of us, she was the one who more closely resembled our mother. She had the same dark brown curls our mother had had, whereas my natural colour was a light, mousy brown. She had also shared those big blue eyes with my mother. She ever wore the same sort of glasses that our mother had worn. Our mom had joked that she could have opted for contacts, but the glasses made her look like she knew was she was talking about sometimes. I was sure that my sister kept the glasses as a sort of tribute to our mother, too. Her build was also similar to our mom's; she was tall with an athletic physique. She had never really been one for sports, but I envied her shape.

Me, I resembled my father the most and had been struggling with my weight since I had hit puberty. I wasn't massively overweight, but I was in the category of what some people would describe as 'pleasantly plump'. I was also shorter than my sister was and my mother had been. My dad was perhaps a little short for a male, but he was the same height as my sister. I reached about five foot four.

"Scram time," my dad announced. He had managed to set up our small kitchen table and three chairs around it, and we all sat down to eat.

We ate mostly in silence. Hazel chattered a little bit about her course syllabus this coming semester, and asked me whether I was nervous about starting a new school or not. I shrugged and told her than I hadn't really given it much thought.

In truth, I was nervous. I had lived in the same apartment all my life up until now, and had been going to the same schools as my friends since kindergarten. My mother had been good friends with Lissa's mother and they'd sent us together to elementary school, then middle school and then high school. We'd never had to worry about friends or anything like that, because we'd always had each other. I wondered if there was such a thing a soul-mate of the friendship type. Because, I was sure Lissa and I had that. We had the sort of relationship where we were completely different in so many ways but just... clicked. We very rarely fought, and we always both felt so guilty afterwards that we'd end up just apologising to each other and laughing at ourselves.

I'd never had to worry about making new friends before.

"Lissa wants to come and visit once we're settled in," I told my dad as we cleared away the dishes after breakfast.

Dad pursed his lips. "You know that Lissa is welcome in our home any time. But I'd really rather you didn't have her come and stay during school time. Why don't you wait until the Fall break?"

I stared at my dad, raising my eyebrows. "So what you're saying is, Lissa is welcome in our home any time, as long as it's not just any old time? And the Fall break is almost two months away!"

My dad gave me a dirty look. "I just think you should focus on your studies right now. This year is a very important year for you."

"I realise that, Dad," I muttered, my voice straining. "It's not like I'm going to have Lissa stay over for one weekend and I'm suddenly going to derail my education."

"I'll think about it."

I grumbled and shuffled off to start working my way through my personalised agenda. That was as good as a no from my dad.

My dad consented to letting me buy some paint at the hardware store to paint my room. I was sure he felt guilty for snubbing my request to have Lissa visit in the near future. As he should have. Lissa was my best friend and she had practically been a part of the family for years.

I took Hazel's car to go to the hardware store. I didn't have my own. My dad had said that he didn't see the point in my having one in Seattle when I was still living under his roof, and the public transport system was so good. I wondered if that would change now that we were living in this tiny town. The nearest place that had a Wal-Mart and a movie theatre was a slightly larger town named Port Angeles which was an hour's drive away. As great as my father was, I doubted that he was going to be down for driving me to Port Angeles every time I wanted to catch the latest release.

The hardware store – amusingly titled Nailing It – wasn't hard to find. Forks was constructed of a small central town which held most services like the stores, the single diner, a bar and the filling station. They were all clustered around a small road off the highway. I passed both the hospital where my dad would soon be beginning work, and the school where I would soon be attending on my way to the hardware store. Even though the population of Forks lingered around three thousand mark, the town was quite spread out. There didn't seem to be any residential areas or streets or any such nonsense. People seemed to just have their patch of land, and in a town where everybody seemed to know everybody else, I didn't suppose you really needed to be able to say that you lived on a certain street in a certain number house.

Forks also wasn't big on organised parking, it seemed. Cars were parked mostly on the side of the streets, with no discernible parking spaces or markings. I ever got stuck behind an old red truck as it stopped in the middle of the lane and the driver leaned out of his window to talk to the driver of the car that was parked next to him on the side of the street.

I didn't use my horn, though I was sorely tempted. I was afraid that the driver would get out of his car and come and reprimand me. Perhaps Forks was the kind of place where there was an unspoken rule where people didn't honk their horns. Either way, I just sat there in my seat, fuming.

When I finally reached the hardware store, I was running behind schedule. It took me longer than I thought it would to pick out paint. I stood in the isle in the store, examining swatches of different colours. Eventually I settled on one tin of bright yellow paint, and one tin of blue paint. The gawky teenager from behind the counter who mumbled a hello to me was kind enough to run around the store gathering all the other items on my father's list. He even helped me carry my supplies out to Hazel's car and load them into the truck.

"Thanks," I told him, smiling as best as I could before I got into my car and drove away.

At home, I was tasked with the job of carrying all of the items into the house on my own. And some of them were damn heavy. And pointy. And sharp. I was just struggling to balance a hammer on top of a tin of paint when I almost jumped out of my skin.

"Do you need some help?"

It wasn't a voice that I recognised. I spun around quickly enough to drop the hammer on my foot. I yelped, but then I realised who was standing behind me and I yelped again. It was that man again. The one I had gotten a brief look at when he'd bowled me over at three am. Except this time he was fully clothed, his broad chest covered in a plain black t-shirt and a hooded sweatshirt. And I couldn't help but absently notice how damn hot he was. He was like the kind of guy you'd see in magazines modelling underwear and shampoo and other things that he would make look amazing.

"Eek!" I squealed. He sort of looked amused at my predicament. He smiled a little. "How did you find me?"

"I was actually just dropping my mom off next door," - he paused to gesture to the house about fifty feet down the road from our own - "and I saw you unpacking your car. I thought I'd come and apologise for scaring you last night."

"Well, that's-" a perfectly reasonable explanation. I couldn't deny the fact that there didn't seem to be anything suspicious about that. After all, it wouldn't take a genius to work out where someone lived in this town. Especially when everyone knew everyone and their business. I was obviously a new face. They had probably already had a town meeting about us or something equally as daft.

"Between you and me," the man carried on, "I think my mom's dating the chief." He made a disgusted face at me, his eyes darting over to linger on the other house. "Have you met Chief Swan?"

I shook my head. How was he being so... casual about this? He had scared me witless and now he was standing in front of me in broad daylight, discussing his mother's relationship status.

"Have you checked their relationship statuses on Facebook?" I asked pertly, raising my eyebrows at the man.

The man stared at me for a moment, scrunching up his nose. "There's a disturbing thought." He shook his head, as if attempting to remove said disturbing thoughts from his mind. In stead, he reached forward with one hand and held his palm out to me. "I'm Seth Clearwater. It's good to meet you."

I didn't shake his hand. And not just because my arms were loaded with stuff which I'd have to drop in order to shake his proffered hand.

"Aren't you a little... old to be introducing yourself to teenage girls? And, for that matter, running around half naked in the middle of the night?" I knew that it was rude before the words left my mouth, but I couldn't seem to help myself. After the scare this man had given me, I wasn't about to shake his hand and make nice with him. So what if I wanted to watch him squirm a little? When I told Lissa about this, I knew there would be many text messages pertaining to her amusement on the subject.

The man – Seth – just smiled at me and laughed. It wasn't beyond my notice that he did have a very nice smile. His white teeth contrasted so nicely with his dark skin. But the really startlingly handsome thing was the way his eyes sort of sparkled. The edges of his dark eyes – they almost looked to be black – crinkled up. I got the impression that he was the sort of person that smiled a lot.

"And aren't you a little young to be taking walks on your own at three o'clock in the morning?"

"Touché," I mumbled, having to admit that he had me there.

"Besides," he continued, "I'm not exactly too old to be fraternising with teenagers. I'm only eighteen myself. Though I can't really make my mind up on whether I'm too old to be running around half naked." He used one hand to pat his stomach lightly. "I think I still have the shape for it." And then. He winked. The son of a bitch winked at me.

My mouth opened, but I had absolutely no idea what to say to that so I just snapped it shut again. I was gob-smacked, and for a variety of reasons. The first being that he was only eighteen years old, probably less than a year older than me. I scrutinised his face. There weren't any discernible lines or crow's feet. In fact, his skin seemed to be as smooth as a baby's bottom. The second reason for my speechlessness was the wink; what could he possibly have meant by that?

"So, I'll ask you again; would you like some help with those?" I looked at him blankly for a moment, and he smiled again and gestured to the supplies I was still holding in my arms. I felt like smacking myself in the forehead. Why had I suddenly gone all weird?

"Uh- sure!"

Seth stepped forward and began to unload some things from the trunk of Hazel's car. I left him to it, needing to escape quickly. I practically ran up the porch steps and into the house. I wasn't usually so put off by boys. I wasn't that girl; the kind that could barely utter a few words in front of a boy, let alone one I abhorred. Despite his half-assed but seemingly sincere apology and offer of help, I was not going to just forget that he was running around in the woods – the woods that supposedly contained wolves and bears and all manner of wild and dangerous creatures – half naked and in the middle of the night. That didn't sit well with me.

My dad came into the hall from the kitchen when he heard the clatter of me putting down the paint cans. He was wiping his hands on a cloth which he then slung over his shoulder.

"Did you have trouble finding the store, Honey?" he asked. "You were gone a long time."

"Not at all," I answered. "It's not like Forks is big enough to have trouble finding anything. I bet this is the kind of back-ass-ward place where you lose your keys and someone shows up at your house to return them."

"It's exactly that kind of place," Seth butted in with a smile, coming through the front door. He seemed to have the entire contents of the trunk in his arms – even the heavy planks of woods my father had requested for putting up some shelves – and he didn't seem to be struggling with the items at all.

My dad rubbed his hands on his jeans a couple of times as he regarded Seth. "Um, hello?"

I figured that I had better introduce Seth – who was only eighteen! - to my dad before he got rightly confused about the strange man-boy who had just walked into his house.

"Dad, this is Seth. He, um, was just visiting next door – did you know the chief of police lives next door to us, Dad?"

"I didn't, Honey." He raised his eyebrows at me. He was waiting for me to finish my explanation of why Seth – a perfect stranger – was in our house.

"Yes, Sir, I was just visiting next door; dropping my mom off really, and I saw... your daughter unloading some heavy stuff from the car," Seth explained smoothly to my dad. I was glad that he left out the part about our chance meeting before sunrise. Now that Seth seemed to be a perfectly normal-ish and amicable teenage boy, any thoughts I had of telling my dad of my scary middle-of-the-night experience seemed counterproductive. It would just make him angry.

Seth looked at me. "This is also the kind of place where people like to lend a hand."

My dad nodded, but didn't smile. "Oh, well, that was very nice of you, Mr..." He raised his eyebrows in question.

Seth chuckled and sighed. "Why does everyone think I'm so old? I'm only eighteen, Sir, and I'm pretty sure that's a bit young to be addressed as mister anything. My name is Seth Clearwater."

My dad looked as surprised as I had been to hear of Seth's age. "Eighteen?" he repeated. "You do look a good deal older, son." This time he smiled at Seth. Now that he knew he wasn't a grown man, and just a local teenage boy trying to be neighbourly, things didn't seem so bad, I supposed. "I'm Doctor Rowan Bishop." He and Seth shook hands.

Since my dad seemed to approve of this fully clothed teenage boy – I wager he wouldn't have approved of him had he been in my position the night before – it didn't seem like such a terrible idea to introduce myself also.

"I'm Ellody," I announced, my voice squeakier than I would have liked. I held out my hand towards Seth.

"It's nice to meet you, Ellody." He took my hand in his large one -skin to skin – and smiled brightly at me.

And I got shivers.

Author's Note

Okay, so I know it's a bit long and a lot of it doesn't even have a certain wolf-boy in it. But as you can see, now Ellody and Seth are on a first name basis, which I like to think is quite something. Also, I think it's important to get to know Ellody's family a bit. I really think it will serve us well to better understand her own character.

Anyway, thoughts?