Disclaimer: Twilight belongs to Stephenie Meyer. I just love to write with her characters. No copyright infringement intended.

Two

Forks, America

March 19th 2089

Every day at exactly 8.04 AM, a little blue Smart Car would pull up in front of Forks High School, parking in the exact same spot every time. No one else parked in that space, mostly because it was just next to the trashcans, a filthy area littered with everything from soda cans to old cigarette packs and candy bar wrappers. All of the students were too lazy to actually put their trash into the trashcans.

No one dared to park there apart from one girl, one very different girl from everyone else. Her name was Rebecca, or Becca, Newton. She was sixteen, and her family had lived in the small town of Forks for generations.

She was different, distant, unusual in ways hard to mark in words. It just hovered over her, like some sort of stubborn cloud of rain. Others noticed it, too, and she was aware of it.

It wasn't just only how she dressed, colorful, rainbow-ish, mixed patterns, huge earrings hidden under her brown, curly, locks that always hung free. No, it wasn't that, even though there weren't many of her kind in Forks High School.

Part of it was in her gaze, an icy, blue, one so penetrating some people even flinched when she stared at them too intensely. Maybe most of it was probably in her, sometimes distant, mood. How she would drift away into her own little bubble. The fact that she didn't really care for anything at all – well, except for maybe math class and Mrs. O'Dell. Mrs. O'Dell who would always tell her what a talented kid she was at the subject – also contributed to the difference.

She hated that part of herself, and it didn't matter how much she tried to stop or hide it, because it would still always be there when she didn't focus thoroughly. It was obviously a part of how she was, and she hated it. Becca loathed herself, and she didn't know that that was what made her stick out the most among her classmates.

Maybe it wasn't that hard to guess, but no one around her was observant enough to notice her loneliness. No other students, not even her so-called friends cared if she was happy or not, sad or upset. They didn't even notice if she broke her boring, monotone, pattern and once in a while cracked a smile onto those, almost unnaturally, red, lips.

She thought of herself as the loneliest person in the world. And maybe she was.

Becca's friends, Sarah and Harper, had everything one could wish for. Or, almost. To Becca they did, because they had each other. No matter what happened, they would always be friends. Becca missed that feeling, even though she had never actually experienced it.

It was Sarah and Harper. Oh right, and Rebecca. The girl no one actually wanted. She was a burden to them. They never exactly told her, but she noticed it anyway.

And then there were the hugs. Hugs, those excluding hugs. They proved where your real place actually was, whether you were a part of something, or if you were merely an inconvenience to everyone else, a fifth wheel. The exclusion was so clear in the air, so thick one could carve it out with a knife. Loneliness and invisibility were two prominent everyday occurrences for her. They followed everywhere, haunted her like ghosts until she ceased to care.

They came with every goodbye, with every greeting. And they occurred every so often, several hugs to every person every day, one for each time they happened to see each other. And the friends saw each other often. They weren't close, not even close enough to sometimes have lunch together, but obviously close enough to stubbornly embrace every other hour.

She would never ever get used to it. She would never get used to the feeling of never being good enough for anyone. It hurt every time she noticed how someone's gaze went right through her. She wasn't even there. Not for them. She would never be. She was doomed.

Sometimes Rebecca wondered what she had done to become so… excluded from everyone else. Was she asocial? Maybe she was a bad person? What exactly was the problem? Maybe she was looked upon as strange, thanks to the fact that she would sometimes sink into an unbreakable trance for just a few moments, where she would be caught up in some sort of non-mattering thoughts. Apparently it was enough to make her a freak.

One morning, in the end of a long March, Rebecca woke with a mind-numbing headache.

Migrane…

Her head was officially exploding, her eyes almost coming out of their round sockets. The fatigue was suffocating her like a huge rock was resting on her chest, while it felt as if someone was trying to squeeze all her body fluids out.

Gosh – she wanted to ditch school so badly in that moment. Just let herself be absent for one more last day before she would start taking her education again.

But she had promised her mom, she had promised her to stop behaving as she did. She had promised her to start caring again, at least a little. She had promised she wouldn't ditch school ever again, she had promised to make an attempt to go to school as everyone else.

There was always at least one like her in every school, one like Becca. One who wouldn't freaking give a shit if everything around her got sucked up into some huge hole that ruined everything while she was the only one left. There was always one who would simply roll their eyes at everything, purposefully turning off their brains when class started.

Becca did.

It didn't exactly help her grades.

But from now on she would at least go to classes. Normally, she ditched most of them to hang out in La Push, at First Beach, alone with a pack of cigarettes in her hands, smoking like a horse, while looking at the ocean. The beautiful, free, ocean. Sometimes she even spotted whales far, far, away. She then usually smiled happily to herself, thinking life wasn't all that bad.

A reason to why she liked the place so much, was that First Beach wasn't exactly crowded. Especially not during the hours that Becca often spent there. But once in a while, beefy, tan, giants of the hot sort – their half nakedness not making them less appealing – would casually stroll down the boulevard of wet, cold, sand. Sometimes even without shoes, taking away Rebecca's possession of being the only one there.

It didn't bother her, but she liked being alone there, all by herself. It made her feel less guilty for smoking at sixteen.

Her mom hadn't noticed anything until a few months ago. It was Ms. O'Dell who had told her.

Rebecca liked Ms. O'Dell, she liked math. She understood, all of it. It was the only subject she didn't find a complete waste of time. She never ditched math class. At least not regularly.

But she had started to, those few months ago, the hardest months where nothing had been right. When all she wanted to do was to watch the whales, feel the moist wind blow the locks of hair away from her face, inhale the fresh air and just listen to the peaceful sound of the waves crushing against the golden sand.

Ms. O'Dell didn't notice Becca's usual absence right away; it took a while for her to solidify her thoughts and suspicions into concrete words and meanings. But when it all dawned for her, and she understood how Rebecca simply preferred to not go to school compared to going, she told Mrs. Newton right away.

It sort of made Becca hate Ms. O'Dell. But not really. Deep, deep, deep, down, she was aware – sort of – that the period had to come to an end.

And sneaky as her mom was, she didn't say anything at first. She chose to confirm her newly received information by checking with other teachers, playing a part and pretending to apologize for her daughter's usual absence, explaining it as a natural consequence of her father's death.

It didn't take long to find out enough. Suddenly, without warning, just like that, like a bomb, Ginger dropped it to Becca. She demanded an explanation, and a thorough one. Not one of those old white lies about how Becca had run a temperature she ever so often pulled on her.

Rebecca didn't have one.

Those difficult months had been hard, because they had in a strange way brought her back to the past. When her dad had lived. When they had laughed together, played together, been together. Just been together, when she had known he was in the room next to her, and that he wouldn't leave, ever. That he would stilly sit in front of his desk typing away important e-mails to his important colleagues, a part of his important job.

Rebecca blamed herself for his death, while she at the same time knew that she had had nothing to do with it. But it was difficult to grasp the fact that he was dead, and that he wasn't coming back, and that maybe it was partly her fault. There were two personalities, one that insisted that if Becca had only known he had been as unhappy as he had been, if she had only maybe been a better daughter by making him a little happier by maybe drawing him something, or telling him something funny that had happened in school once in a while.

Michael, Ginger's wife, had run away when Becca was ten. There hadn't been as much of a little indication of that he had once existed, until about a month later, when an innocent, normal, citizen of Seattle found him dead in a men's bathroom. He had killed himself.

Back then; Becca had tried to picture it all, how it would have looked like. Maybe because she wanted to convince the part of her that didn't actually believe that Dad was dead, that he was. That he wouldn't come back, it didn't matter how much she wanted him to.

But she always failed. She couldn't understand it. It hadn't been her dad. Her dad, mom's husband, didn't do… that. He didn't. Her dad was just like everyone else's dad. Normal… He was normal, right?

She wasn't so sure anymore.

But nothing of the past displayed inside of her head as the migraine slowly but surely attempted to kill her. At least it felt that way.

Thirty-seven seconds later, the alarm rang. Becca squeezed her eyes shut even tighter. One minute more, just one minute more…

She got twenty-five seconds.

"Bex?"

"Yes," she mumbled, eyes closed, focusing on some sort of weird complicated pattern on the inside of her eyelids.

"It's morning," her mom said as if it was the clearest thing in the world. For Rebecca it wasn't.

"I'm up," she assured her groggily, still not moving.

"I'm driving you to school today."

Rebecca's eyes instantly flew open, also widening into a remarkable size. She sat up, ignoring the migraine. Her mom was standing in the doorway to her room, looking just as tired as Becca felt.

"What?"

Ginger bit her lip. "You heard me."

"Fat chance," Becca said, getting out of the bed in search for her migraine pills. She knew they were located somewhere on her desk, just not where…

"No, I'm serious."

"You know if I wanna ditch I just leave the minute you drop me off."

Her mom didn't say anything. Rebecca quietly stopped her search, staring at the piles of nothing stacked on her desk.

"Okay, fine!" She turned and faced her mom. "Fine, you can drive me to school. Okay. But then you have to friggin' get me afterwards as well."

Her mom sighed. "Yeah, I know." She didn't leave. "Bex, I'm just worried."

"You've said that multiple times, yes," Becca said while gripping her migraine pills.

"But – "

"Now, if you don't mind I'll just go swallow some of these," she interrupted, while waving the box in front of her mother's face.

"Oh, sorry. Didn't know you had –"

"Yeah, yeah, now you know."

Then she walked out of her room and slammed the door to the bathroom shut.

She didn't mean to be so rude. She always felt bad afterwards, but it was just so hard to stop it. Especially when the migraines came. And they always did, sooner or later. But they passed, and then she had nothing to blame her behavior on.

Another reason to hate herself.

The ride to school was quiet. All that was audible was the monotone, ever so common, noise of the huge drops of rain crashing against the car window, and getting frequently wiped away by the windshields. Rebecca leaned further back into her seat.

It was almost always raining in Forks. On the few occasions of where the sky wouldn't stubbornly open up like a bucket of water and drain the green landscape, sometimes people even took out their cameras, photographing friends and family laughing, without stripes of see-through water ruining the picture. The rain was a part of every life in Forks, an inevitable burden to some, while a soothing noise of consolation for others.

Becca didn't really mind the rain. She had gotten used to it a long time ago, bearing in mind that Forks was the only place she had lived in. Almost every single face in the small town was familiar to her; she knew the place inside and out.

But she wasn't sick of it. She was… neutral. She didn't bother – she didn't care. It didn't cross her mind. The thought of being sick of Forks had never actually entered her mind, and it wouldn't. Not when First Beach was a fifteen-minute drive away, or when the old corner store next to her Grandpa's sports' good store let her by cigarettes without showing ID.

"Have fun," her mom said, attempting to sound cheery as they pulled up in front of the familiar parking lot. Her mom never parked at the trash cans, she held some sort of strange grudge for places not clean enough.

Rebecca rolled her eyes, but forced a smile onto her dry lips. "Thanks."

"I'll pick you up at four."

"Do so."

Then she stepped out of the car and walked towards the door she seldom voluntarily walked through.

You promised, you promised, you promised. You promised you would do this, so now fucking do it.

She kept repeating to herself that it was necessary as she walked down the claustrophobic hallway lined with the same, endless, blue lockers. God, she hated this place. At least first period was math, at least there was that. She tried to be positive.

Harper was standing with her locker open a distance away. She looked up, her long, light brown, ponytail swinging, a faint smile spread across her lips.

"Hi, Becca."

"Hi," she answered casually, trying to sound optimistic.

"Haven't seen you since this Monday." Today was Thursday. "Where've you been?"

Rebecca uncomfortably shifted her gaze towards the floor. She wasn't comfortable with letting people in on what she was doing. Both Harper and Sarah knew, but not because Becca had told them – they had guessed. And she supposed it wasn't that hard to figure out.

Harper understood. "Oh. Okay."

"Yeah," she apologized.

And then the topic of her frequent ditching was over with. It was a relief. She knew Harper didn't actually care anyway.

The three of them, Sarah, Harper and Rebecca, had been friends since third grade, where they had, to their greatest delight, found out that all of their dads shared the same name, Michael. And since that day, they had been inseparable. At least for a while.

But then, when Becca's dad died, things had started to change. The bond between Sarah and Harper had grown stronger every day, while the only bonds Becca possessed had slowly weakened, lost touch.

Sarah and Harper knew what had happened. But they still didn't understand why Rebecca had changed so drastically. Probably because none of them had went through anything like what Rebecca had, or what Rebecca was going through.

Deep down, she thought it was her fault. But in a strange way, it felt better to blame it on others. She felt a little less of a freak, when she told herself it wasn't her fault she was commonly disliked among people.

Sarah came shortly after, a shy, white, smile plastered on her pretty face. Becca liked her a little better, she was tactful enough to not ask where she had been, maybe because she was a shy person who often let Harper decide her actions.

There was something in Sarah's behavior that made Becca feel welcome. Even though their time together was often accompanied by silence, it didn't matter. Sarah's few, but very convincing, comforting smiles were a reminder of that she hadn't forgotten Becca. At least when they were alone.

Sometimes, when the two of them were alone together, it was as if things got back to normal. Becca was no longer the odd man out, the emo-kid without a dad. No, she was just normal. She badly wished it to be that way.

"Hi, you guys," she said happily in her light pitch, hugging them both a little awkwardly. It was a little comforting, familiar in a way.

Shortly afterwards, school started.

At lunch, Becca was ready to die. She had forgotten how it actually was, how the cruel pattern gave her bruises. She did not belong here – she knew it. High school wasn't that important, was it?

All three of them had lunch together, Becca not eating, as usual. They didn't ask why, they never did. Sometimes Rebecca wondered if they even noticed. They probably didn't.

While sitting at the table, watching them talk and laugh… eat, the last part disgusted her. She tried hard not to stare at their food, tried hard not to think of food at all, tried hard not to picture herself eating.

Becca didn't need food, not with her figure. She was fat. At least, she was convinced she was. She couldn't bring herself to eat, she simply couldn't. It disgusted her. She disgusted herself – she hated how she looked. Becca was one fat, disgusting, girl among an entire ocean full of thin, perfect, pretty, girls.

She wanted to be thin, healthy, and have to-die-for muscles. Not look like a freaking meatball. Because that was what she was.

In the beginning, she had searched around the Internet for suitable diets. Because maybe those would help? she had thought. Of course, later, she had convinced herself that stop eating entirely probably was the most efficient way of changing her figure. Yes, it had to be. She only drank. And strictly water. Some cereal with milk or a fruit in the morning to fool her mom, and a minimal dinner to keep up the charade, but no lunch. No, no. Absolutely not.

Ew, just ew.

Why couldn't she be like everyone else? Normal? Normal, which also equaled that so familiar word starting with a t, then an h, finishing with in.

She had stopped feeling hungry a long time ago. And she took that as a sign that it was working, that finally maybe she was loosing weight. Or maybe because she didn't need to eat, that her body was taking energy from her disgusting fat plastered all across her body.

Although every time she stepped onto that goddamned scale, the red shining numbers always disappointed her. Not fast enough. She wanted to cry out in desperation. Fuck everything! How fucking hard can it be to just fucking lose some weight? How hard can it be just to be like everyone else, why couldn't she be like thin Sarah, or muscular Harper?

In the beginning, everything had been fine. When she first had stopped eating, she had actually felt good. Physically. Healthy, happy, almost… overly energetic? Things went by as nothing, she was more active in Gym than ever.

But after a while, things had taken a drastic turn. Nowadays, Becca was often tired, sick, dizzy, ready to faint, and a weird stomachache was almost always torturing her. But she was convinced that this was because of bad genes, and not because she wasn't eating. It couldn't be. She was just trying to lose weight.

And she hadn't told anyone about the period. The stupid fucking period who wouldn't come! Not even her mom knew. Her mom, her mom who she usually never kept secrets from. Apparently, not anymore.

No one could know – they would jump to the wrong conclusions. They would think that it was because of the fact that she never ate, that she was starving herself. She couldn't tell anyone, the others were wrong! It wasn't because of that – she knew it.

It would come, she kept telling herself. But a little part inside of her, a part that she seldom let surface, was growing more worried for every day that passed.

Government class was after lunch, and it was one of those classes which name screamed out exactly how she felt about it. So fucking boring, that is. First Beach, or at least home, seemed so far away as she and Sarah and Harper went separate ways. They were buying a Diet coke from the soda automat outside of Gym, while she was going to her locker to get her books. Books she knew she wouldn't need anyway.

Books… She had never liked reading, and she couldn't for one minute understand why it always had to be about the goddamned reading. Why couldn't they watch movies? Or maybe listen and for once not take notes? Just listen, because it stuck in your brain anyway.

She felt a sting of something she hadn't felt in weeks – hunger – as she swiftly did the combination to her locker, and ignored it as best as she could. She quickly pushed the thought away as she slammed the locker door shut.

No, you shouldn't eat, you fat, icky, ugly, gross…

"Uh, hi?" …girl. Someone was in front of her. "I'm new here, do you know where Government class is?" She was interrupted by an unfamiliar boy, whose voice indicated that he didn't actually care. What a coincidence, neither did she.

She didn't bother to disguise her irritation as she woke up from her trance to look into a face way far up. Gosh that guy was tall. With black hair as well in a sort of tousled, messy way. And biceps. A lot of biceps. In fact, there was muscle everywhere, as far as she could see.

"Hi," she said simply, rudely shifting her gaze somewhere behind him and purposefully ignoring his question. She fingered a little with the ring she had on her index finger. It was her favorite one, and she was rarely seen without it. It was a silver ring, with a huge, pink, plastic, flower in the middle.

He waited for exactly four seconds until he asked again.

"Government class?" he finally said.

She looked at him again. They were in the same class. She raised her eyebrows, and then stood upright from her previous position leaning against the lockers.

"Follow me."

She spotted a little indication of relief in his eyes. So he did care.

He walked silently behind her as they switched buildings. She hadn't planned to come so early to class, but figured the least she could do was to give muscle-boy a little guiding help. It was cold outside, and she involuntarily shivered at the wind, hoping the new guy behind her wouldn't see it.

Government was in building four, and finally she stopped in front of the open door. Some students were already there, in the classroom. But only the ambitious ones, the ones who cared. The ones who re-read their notes before class to grill the teacher with questions. It was unlike her to arrive the same time as them.

"Thanks," he said, looking a little strangely at her when she apparently didn't walk away.

"This is my next class, too," she explained, opening her bag to take out a gum. "You want?" she offered while chewing a little more exaggerated than necessary. He shook his head. Maybe he thought it was poisoned.

"You a sophomore, too?" she wondered.

He nodded.

You sure as hell don't look like a sophomore. More like… 20? Hell, even more!

"Maybe we should go in?" he said hesitantly, eyeing the open door uncomfortably. Forks High School was intimidating him. Not that she blamed him.

She shrugged her shoulders, while still chewing her gum loudly. "Sure." He went in, but she waited a little, until more students had gathered.

She wasn't exactly waiting for Sarah and Harper, but they came anyway. Of course, together. Walking close next to each other, giggling and whispering, laughing at funny, private, moments only they had shared together. Thoughts she wasn't allowed to share with them. She pretended that it didn't actually matter to her.

"Oh, hi Becca," Harper greeted as they saw her waiting in front of the classroom door.

"Hi."

"Where were you?" Harper didn't actually care; she was perfectly fine without Rebecca's relentless company. At least that was the impression Becca got.

"Just showing this new guy to class."

Harper's eyes lit. "Oh, was it that, like, Indian, huge dude who came this Monday?"

Rebecca nodded, although she didn't know about the Monday-part. It was weird, new students in the middle – or almost – of the semester were rare.

Harper smiled. "Wow. Gosh, he is so –"

"What? Who? I… I haven't seen anyone new," Sarah asked curiously, shifting between Rebecca's face and Harper's.

Harper frowned. "You haven't seen him? How could you have missed him?"

Sarah blushed. "I don't know, I haven't noticed anyone new. Not since September."

"You haven't seen the new family either?" Harper frowned again. "It's so weird, they all came at once, like, now."

"What new family?" Sarah wondered, and Rebecca posed the question as well, just not saying it out loud.

"You know, the Cullens or something like that."

"A family?" Sarah wanted to know.

"You didn't see them at lunch? They've sat at the same table this entire week, you know that one next to the entrance. There's six of them, and then it's that huge Indian dude."

Becca immediately knew what Harper was talking about. She had noticed there were new people in the cafeteria mere minutes ago. From the corner of her eye, she had spotted the beautifully pale people sitting quietly, just watching their food. Maybe they, like Rebecca, didn't eat either. Although that didn't seem quite right, since all of them had had perfect bodies to die for.

But muscle-boy hadn't been at the table. At least, she hadn't seen him. Most likely because she had been so captured in her own little bubble. Ugh.

"They're three girls and four boys," Harper continued. "And they're all…" She paused. "I mean, they're so… pretty. It's insane, because all of them are like… so hot. They're like… perfect."

Sarah's eyes lit. "Oh! You mean them? I didn't think of them, because you know, I mean, I… They look really perfect, everything in place and… no flaws at all, like… I didn't think of them as new students, though. They were… too… I don't know but-but I didn't notice the Indian guy though," she added thoughtfully.

"Well, hun, you're about to," Harper said with a smile. "I wonder if he's dating anyone," she mused.

"But… who starts a new school now? I mean it's the middle of March, and-and that's really weird, right? Hop in in the middle of the semester?" Sarah pointed out.

"Yeah, I know, right? It's really weird," Harper agreed, just before class started. The first class Becca shared with Jacob Black.

A/N: Review for a preview! :D Thanks for reading! Thanks to my beta Vanessa James!