Disclaimer: I don't own it...

The car ride out to La Push was long, too long, particularly when stuck in the car with four boys who couldn't sit still if their life depended on it. Mark had come to pick us up from the airport, so the 7 of us were crowded rather uncomfortably into a Anne's green mini van, shipped all the way from Pittsfield, Massachusetts. We'd tried to talk to Mark for awhile, but after about five minutes into the conversation, Anne had announced that her head hurt, and requested (actually, ordered would have been a better word for it) that we all be quiet, and the rest of the ride was spent in silence.

We finally arrived at the house a little after 11 at night. It was too dark to properly see anything, of course, but I could make out that it was huge and in the middle of nowhere. To my surprise, I liked it at once. It fit our family, if you could call it that, perfectly.

After helping unpack briefly, Mark pointed me out to my room. I dragged my suitcase up the stairs and down the hall, down three doors, until I finally reached one that had a sign on it "Elizabeth". I shook my head. Leave it to Mark to make everything office-like.

The room itself was cold, with its bare whitewashed walls, and new, modern furniture, but at least it was mine, away from the ruckus- or lack thereof- that was currently in the house. Sighing, I chucked my suitcase up on my bed- I was relieved to see that somehow, my light blue down comforter had made the trip up. It was nice to have a taste of familiarity in a place that seemed so distant from everything I'd known before.

I popped open the hinges on my suitcase, not in the mood to open the white closet door at the other end of the wall and unpack a box, and pulled out my favorite pair of fleece Winnie-the-Pooh pajama pants and a large black t shirt. Then, grabbing my bag of toiletries as well, I made my way down the hall to the bathroom I'd have to share with whoever else was staying on this floor with me.

I changed quickly, leaving my bag on the chrome sink- whoever else was there could deal with it. Unless it was Anne, but she'd have insisted on her own bathroom, I was sure. So that didn't really matter. Much.

I trudged back down the hallway, looking out for the rest of the family, but none of the rest of them appeared to be around. Not that it mattered- it felt good to finally have some time alone.

I closed the door behind me, shut the lights off, and climbed into bed. All of the sudden, I felt a torrent of emotion come crashing down on me, and, before I knew it, I was absolutely sobbing, about things I didn't know, didn't quite understand.

It just didn't seem fair to me somehow, how I was stuck in the middle of what I considered a taste of hell, with a family that, for the most part, could care less. I missed my parents, my old family. I missed the way things used to be, back in the day where my last test grade seemed to be the biggest thing happening.

I was nervous about the next day- apparently we'd all been enrolled at the local La Push school, which seemed impossibly small. I was being forced into courses that were, without a doubt, going to bore me to death and leave me ill-prepared for whatever college I would wind up going to. The only consolation I had about that last worry was the thought that, if nothing else, Tom would be there with me, just as new and frightened. And I'd always been good around people, or used to be anyhow. I stopped showing interest in most of the people I'd been close to after the accident. I just couldn't handle it for first two weeks, and, after the move, it didn't really matter anyhow.

And then...the emotion just became unmanageable, unbearable. I sat up abruptly, walked across the room with tears pouring down my face, slowly, deliberately, as if in a trance. I found a white shoe-box, opened it. Inside were my scissors, my sewing scissors. I took them out, opened them. Then I bared the skin on my right hip and quickly pulled the sharp side of the scissors across the skin. I repeated this several times, in a fury, until I became suddenly aware that my side hurt. Satisfied, I dropped the scissors back into the shoe-box and put it away.

Then I looked down at my hip, almost happy in a sick sort of way to see thin lines of blood beginning to dip down. It was the blood that calmed me, wicked away the fevered emotions, made me sane again. I got up, almost methodically, went and got the First Aid Kit from which I took a gause pad and some medical tape. I held it against my side, then taped it such that it would stay. I knew from experience that the cuts would stop bleeding by morning. I also took care to put all the things away, exactly as they were. I'd always been careful- cutting in spots that I knew were always covered by something, taking care to clean up after myself. It meant that I wouldn't be caught, that they wouldn't have to know.

I sighed, shook my head at myself as I walked back to my bed. As I lay down and closed my eyes, it suddenly struck me that I was now waiting for a different kind of dark relief- one that can only come from sleep.