Claire

Four days later, in the middle of afternoon on December 16th I was waiting for my father at the airport of Port Angeles.

My teachers had been nothing but understanding when I said a family situation had come up and I needed to leave before the end of the semester. Most of the material we would go over I could read about in my textbooks but if I needed to stay longer than the holiday I needed to let them know before the new term started so they could transfer me to a distance class.

I seriously didn't know how long this would take. Charlie had made it sound like Bella had been lobotomized by Victor Frankenstein, but maybe it wasn't that bad.

One could hope, right?

Suddenly I saw Charlie's form in the crowd making his way over to me. He was wearing his uniform, a rare smile lighting up his features.

"Claire!" he exclaimed and put his arms around me, a bit awkwardly but still wholeheartedly.

"Hey, dad!" I said hugging him back.

"Still got that going, I see," Charlie said, trying to sound stern as he touched the small glittering stone in my nose piercing.

I just laughed. "It's been there for three years, dad. It's not going anywhere."

I intentionally failed to mention that I now also had two tattoos, since my 18th birthday. I guessed my dad wouldn't like that either. One was of a hummingbird on my right thigh since that was my favorite bird.

The other one was a quote from the first Harry Potter book, The Philosopher's stone, that I loved, now printed on the left side of my rib cage. "It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live".

"I must say it, Claire, you truly look exactly like…"

"… my grandmother," I finished for him, smiling a little. He never failed to mention that, practically every time we saw each other nowadays. But I knew it was true – I had seen the photos.

Unlike Bella, I didn't look much like either Charlie or Renee. Instead I was the spitting image of Charlie's mother, our grandmother. I was actually named after her too.

Claire was Renee's compromise from Clarabelle, our grandmother's name, since Bella's first name was Isabella. She thought it would be too much with two Bell- ending names.

"Trip went okay?" Charlie asked, snapping me out of my thoughts as he took my duffel bag, starting to walk against the exit.

"Yes, it was fine," I answered. "How's Bella?"

"Well … I told her that you would be coming home over Christmas and she said that was nice. That's about it," Charlie muttered, sounding defeated.

I felt my eyes widen at his tone and the dead sounding description of Bella. Okay, so maybe it was that bad after all …


A few hours later I was sitting in my old room in Charlie's house, wrapped up in my big faux fur blanket. I had missed it and silently reminded myself to bring it with me when I got back to London.

That might take a while, I heard a small voice in the back of my head point out as I remembered the greeting my twin had given me as I stepped inside the house.

I had nearly dropped my jaw as I saw her, she was more of a ghost than the sister I remembered. More pale than ever with dark shadows under her big doe-like eyes, which seemed as if all light had drained from them. She was thinner than before and even her hair seemed lifeless and dull.

When she saw me she gave me a smile that wasn't more than a twitch of the lips. It looked like it physically pained her to do so. "Hello Claire. It's good to see you."

Yeah, I had a long road ahead of me…

For a few days I just silently observed my sister and her "zombie-state" as Charlie called it, but in my opinion that was far from the truth. Zombies might be dead but at least they longed for something; meat and brains. Bella didn't long for anything, she just… existed. She cooked dinner, did the dishes, the laundry and the small amount of homework she had over the holiday but when she wasn't busy with anything like that she just sat, staring at nothing. Either in her room or in the living room while Charlie watched sports.

I heard her screaming during the nights as well, the first time her wailing awoke me I seriously thought that World War III had broken out and the first bombs had detonated in her room.

Charlie ran into her room and woke her while I watched from the doorway in the upper hallway, feeling helpless and truly confused. All this because of a boy, that Edward Cullen?

Yes, the first love was always hard to get over – or at least that's what I have heard. I hadn't had my first love yet. I had been asked out a couple of times but I had always declined since I didn't feel anything for the ones that asked me. My friends said I was romantically bipolar since I was a very realistic person otherwise, but when it came to love and romance I wanted it to be like in the books. That I just knew that this was the right one. Perhaps not for life since us humans and mammals didn't seem to be monogamists, to be honest, but at least the right one for that moment.

Of course, if there was such a thing as everlasting love, I would love to find it. Had Bella thought that Edward was her everlasting love? "Til death do us apart"? That would certainly explain a bit, but if that was so, why had she broke up with him and tried to flee back to Renee? Scared? Overwhelmed?

I had to get Bella to tell me about him and what really had happened. But I knew I couldn't just walk up to her and slap the truth out of her, even though it was what I thought she seriously needed, to wake up from that misery state if nothing else.

But I knew Bella, she turned into a clam if you pressed her. But if you coaxed carefully enough, preferably with some bribe involved she would open up.

So four days after Christmas I snuck up to Bella's room with a cartoon of Ben&Jerry's, spoons, two mugs and eggnog. The strong kind.

Charlie was already snoring heavily, probably from the Christmas dinner left overs Bella had served so I knew we wouldn't be interrupted.

I knocked on Bella's door and after just a moment of waiting she opened it, meeting my gaze with those lifeless eyes of hers.

"Oh hey, Claire. What's up?" she wondered in a monotone voice.

I held up my arms to show her the goodies. "Sister time!" I cheerfully exclaimed. "We haven't gotten to talk at all since I got home, so I thought why not do it now?"

I moved beside her, going into her room and put the objects in my hands down. Bella sniffed a little bit in the air as I went past her before her eyes widened, comically at the same time her mouth dropped open.

Well, look at that! A sign of life in her face already.

"Claire! That's eggnog with alcohol! You know we aren't allowed to drink. We're just eighteen. Charlie would kill us!"

"Very true, sister mine," I said, taking a sip of the eggnog, grinning angelically at her. "But, it's not allowed to park in a handicap space without permission either and people do that all the time. It's not legal to download pirated films, and people certainly do that all the time. It's not allowed to take pictures of someone without their permission, yet there are people who do that for a living. So this is just you and me catching up with the rest of the population."

Bella looked like she wanted to protest, then she suddenly looked to the left of me, as if seeing something there, by the window. When I turned my head to investigate there was nothing there however.

Bella closed her eyes and sighed loudly before she did that twitchy lips thing at me again before she propped down on the floor beside me, taking a sip of her own eggnog.

"Now," I said as I opened the ice cream container. "Tell me what's really going on here."

Bella was silent for a moment, then she shook her head. "I can't. Besides, you won't believe me."

I groaned. "That's just an excuse for not telling me. You don't know that – come on! Try me!"

Bella stayed silent, taking another sip of her eggnog and I sighed loudly, carefully putting my hand over hers.

"Listen Bella, you have to talk about this. I don't know what happened, but it's not… you can't keep this bottled up inside you. It's going to kill you if you don't talk about it. I might not understand but I'm your sister. You can trust me. Sure, we don't always agree, but have I ever betrayed a secret you wanted me to keep?"

Bella shook her head and bit her lip. I knew I had her there. Then her eyes widened again and she looked toward the window once more.

Okay, she was starting to creep me out now!

But before I had a chance to say anything she took a deep breath and then looked up at me with a new sort of fire in her eyes.

"Do you believe in the supernatural, Claire?"


A/N: First off, thank you EVERYONE for your kind reviews and votes!

Please keep it up, as it always makes my day to see what to you think about this story!