Disclaimer: I don't own any Twilight characters.

A/N: Thank you so much for the reviews. I have read them all. Enjoy.

Coin Toss

I somehow make it out of the woods and use what senses I have to sense my way back to my father's house. As soon as I'm sure I'm heading in the right direction, I begin running again in hopes of getting inside of the house safe and sound before any other freaky shit can happen to me.

Thankfully, I get back home before Charlie. I have enough time to take another shower and throw my salvageable clothes into the washing machine before he walks into the house ready to approach me about my first day.

"Your counselor called me." I guess we're not going to start this conversation off with a simple, 'how are you doing', we're going straight into the, 'you've done something wrong and I know about it'. It's familiar territory for me.

"She did?" The least I can do is play along in this little charade of his. If I start telling stories about vampires and tree branches puncturing my abdomen then he might think I'm crazy...er. He might think I'm crazier.

"You missed your first appointment with her." He needlessly informs me. "You also missed some of your classes."

So what do you do when you're faced with someone who doesn't believe you, maybe just doesn't want to believe you? Lie. "It was my first day," I tell him. "It was a lot handle, okay?"

"Are you still taking your medication?" He asks, because it's all he knows about. It's all that he understands. I need to take the blue pill to make me feel better and the white one to calm me down.

I sigh. "You know I am."

"Okay." He nods his head, and looks just about as helpless as I felt when Alice was hovering above me, but I think I prefer Alice. There's not talking to Charlie, no chance in me fighting back. "How'd you like pizza for dinner?" He asks, turning our conversation to something safe.

We had pizza two nights ago. I should probably start cooking, but I've kind of forgotten about the whole eating thing since the whole not being able to die thing came about. I can't feel when I'm hungry...no pains.

"It sounds good, Charlie."

"The same as last time?" He asks, forcing out a bit of a smile that doesn't even bother to reach his eyes.

"Same as last time."

"Okay, Bella." He turns around and I would too if I thought this conversation was over. He stops himself from walking away, like he's suddenly remembering something. He turns back around to face me. "How did you first day go?" Ah. Now we can start with the 'how are yous'.

"I think I made a couple of new friends." I also discovered that vampires exist. "I got caught up in all my subjects at the..." institution for the crazies, "place so I'm not behind. I understood what the teachers were talking about." I discovered werewolves exist. "It went good, other then the having to leave early thing."

He smiles. This time I can't tell whether it's real or not. "I'm glad to hear that, Bella. Real glad."

I smile back. It isn't real. It's a lie just like everything else I had told him. "I've got homework so I'll be upstairs waiting on the food." I point towards the stairs then take off. It was hard hanging out with him for too long. I so desperately wanted to try and get him to understand what was going on with me, but just like everyone else he buried his head in the sand and thought it best to throw me away and lock away the key.

I go back into my bedroom and instantly fall onto my bed. I don't have any homework. I don't even have my backpack or any books. I left it all in the school after Alice and I 'met' each other. Years from now, I'm sure that'll be a funny story to tell. Though, I don't know who'd I get a chance to tell it to.

I lay on my bed staring at the ceiling. I'm beginning to feel restless and don't know why. My body had been completely exhausted when I finally made it home for a second time. I could have fallen over, but my superhuman self must have fixed that. I'm not tired at all now. I don't really sleep that much anyway. It seems like two hours of sleep is more than enough for my body to function in top condition.

I turn on my side to look out my window. Amazingly, Alice and I hadn't done any damage to it when we tore through it out into the open space below. My mind went back to our second fight and at how easily she had bested me. She could hurt me. Hell, maybe she could even kill me. She made me mortal again, and if she did then that meant that other vampires could, too.

Alice had said as much before she had tried to kill me, again. She and I were really forming an odd...series of interactions. I don't think she was supposed to be my friend, but she is the only being in the world right now that knows what I could do. That is, she is the only being as long as she hasn't blabbed to any of her vampire family. I kind of hoped that she keeps silent since I didn't want them trying to kill me, but then again I kind of hoped that she doesn't keep silent, too.

I'm not completely against dying.

Maybe I did belong in that crazy house after all.

"Bella, food's here!"

Then again, maybe it isn't time for me to die yet. I roll off of my bed and then quickly make my way downstairs. If I lingered too long then Charlie would come frantically searching for me in hopes that I wasn't trying to kill myself again. He still doesn't trust me with razors. He doesn't even let me cut my own food.

It seems like one big overreaction, but then again, everyone does sort of believe I tried to kill myself. They don't trust me to not do it again. They're afraid I'll succeed next time. They just didn't know that I had already tried and failed over and over again.

"It smells good."

"I already cut you off a slice." Charlie tells me as he hands over my piece.

"Thanks," I mumble biting my tongue. I want to tell him that I'm not a child, but as he already told me: I am his child. I may not be an infant anymore, but I was still his little girl and apparently that meant he could always treat me like I was five.

I went along with it because I had to. I live in a world where vampires and werewolves and things like me exist, it's fucked up but it's still better than being locked away in a room where people keep telling me that I'm getting better only when I lie to them about the world I've been living in.

Charlie and I eat our pizza in front of the television. He turns on a baseball game and I force myself to sit and watch it alongside him. We don't say much. He asks about the friends I met at school and I tell him what details I can remember about Angela and her group.

He asks me about my teachers and I tell him what little I remember about their lectures. I ask him about work and he tells me hardly anything at all. He's a sheriff or whatever but in Forks that isn't as exciting of a job as it might have been anywhere else.

I sit and talk with him for as long as I can stand it. The game ends and it's time for us to go to bed. He's just now beginning to let me sleep with my door closed. I never quite understand how my open door offered him any extra comfort, but I had to try and make things better so I kept my door open until he gave me the luxury of privacy.

When I make it to my room and finally close my bedroom door, I release a heavy sigh. Spending time with Charlie always sort of makes me feel powerless even though I know that I'm not. I'm stronger than him. Bullets won't hurt me. I'm not at all natural, but there's pain in his eyes every time he looks at me. I'm never quite sure if he's blaming himself for what I've become or if he's blaming me. Maybe he's doing a little bit of both.

I go back and lay down on my bed. I extend my senses feeling the night overcome the house. Charlie's breaths grow deeper and he falls into deep sleep, but the night is awake and yelling at me. I feel like I should be outside doing something. Maybe even...what was it Alice said she was going to do? Hunt? Maybe I needed to hunt, too.

I jump off of my bed and approach my bedroom window. I look out of it, once again using my instinct to drive my senses in the right direction. As silently as I could, I open my window and then jump out of it. I let my instinct drive me. I let it push me forward towards whatever my destination was supposed to be.

It feels so natural to be roaming out at night. It feels natural like it had felt natural to fight Alice, even though I couldn't win. My body comes to an abrupt stop, my reason for once leading my instinct. There are more than one vampire in this town and who knows what else. I'm not strong enough to fight them. I can just maybe get in one good hit before I have to tuck tail and run.

"What are you doing here?"

Shit! I jump away from the voice, knowing it would be best to not strike out this time. I guess my instincts could learn lessons. I turn to face the voice that is making my heart hammer against my chest and my adrenaline spiral out of control.

"What are you doing here?" The voice asks again, angrier this time.

It's the blond Cullen. My instinct is telling me that it's possible she isn't as strong as Alice, but I'm not willing to test that theory. Plus, if Alice hasn't told any of the others what I can do then I don't want to give it away by giving a demonstration.

"I'm taking a walk," I stutter.

"A walk?" She asks clearly not at all believing my lie, and why would she? It's a stupid lie. A three year old could have come up with a better one.

"Okay, fine." I hold my hands up in surrender. "I came to talk to Alice."

She perks up at that. "Alice?"

"Yeah." It was at least a better lie. I so didn't want to see Alice right now. She had just tried to kill me and I wasn't so much over that yet. "But if she isn't home or whatever then that's fine. I can just go on home and go to bed to sleep because it's a school day tomorrow and teenagers need the most sleep, I think, and you should probably be sleeping, too. We should all be sleeping..."

"I'll get her," she interrupts me before I can continue vomiting out words.

"Cool." I reach out my hand. "I'm Bella by the way."

She looks down at my it, but makes no move to shake it. "Rosalie," she says after a drawn out breath. "I'll get Alice."

"Okay then. I'll wait here." I smile just so that she thinks I'm completely reliable, like I don't have plans to run the minute she's far enough away not to see me shooting dust into the wind like I'm some sort of cartoon character.

She gives me an odd look, the sort of look that lets me know she doesn't trust me and that she thinks I'm pathetic. It's a two for one, but she does eventually turn to leave. For a moment there I thought she might invite me inside the home I am just now noticing I was standing outside of. Stupid fucked up broken instinct brought me to den of vampires.

I take a few steps away from the house realizing that if I could feel all of the vampires in there then they can probably sense lil' ole me outside.

"When Rosalie told me you were here, I thought she was joking." Ah. Alice. Perfect. I should have run away.

"It was an accident," I tell her.

"What was?" She asks, with a slight twinkle of mischief in her eyes. There's something she's not telling me. There's probably a lot she's not telling me.

"Well okay then." I slap my hands together. "I guess it's time that I go." I turn to run away but feel a cold hand take a hold of my shoulder.

"Wait," Alice softly whispers, "let me apologize first."

I turn around, sort of surprised to realize that she's standing so close to me. I jump away and trip over my own feet. The hard ground greets me as well as soft laughter coming from the girl standing above me. I glare up at her and think that she could at least offer me a hand, but then remember what happened the last time we did that so I get up on my own.

"You're something else Isabella Swan," she says.

"Yeah," I agree as I wipe the dirt off of my butt, "I thought you already knew that."

The mischief is still in her eyes and for some reason I'm drawn into it. "What?" I ask.

"I knew you were coming," she admits. "I can sort of see the future."

Awesome. That just makes me feel...I don't know what to feel anymore. This day seriously needs to end. "Well," I look down at the ground, "I can sort of fall on my ass, a lot. I'm starting to think of it as a special skill."

We both laugh at that. I think I just accomplished successfully breaking the ice for the first time in my life. I made things easier instead of more awkward. I should retreat while I'm ahead. "I should really go." I point to her house. "I'm starting to feel a little overwhelmed."

She nods her understanding. "I do still want to apologize. I didn't mean for you to get impaled."

"I know." And I do know. She was trying to teach me a lesson, and I have a feeling most of my lessons are going to be hard to learn. "How are you doing with the," I waved my hand over my face trying to somehow indicate how her inner vampire had gone into overdrive around me, "stuff."

"I had to hunt again," she admits sounding almost ashamed.

I smile knowing that I ended up at her home because I was trying to do that very same thing. I was hunting, and wasn't even sure what it was I was supposed to hunt. I just ended up here. Fate, it seems, just gave me another kick in the ass. "You're going to have to tell me about that one day."

She seems sort of bewildered by my response and quite honestly so was I. This wasn't so much of the normal. We tried to seriously injure each other twice already and here I am talking about us having future conversations. There is something seriously wrong with my head.

"Okay," she eventually replies. "Whenever you want to."

"Yeah," I rub at my abdomen, my body unconsciously reminding me of the pain she'd already caused me, "I guess this might be the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

Her eyes widen in surprise. "You've seen that movie?"

I smile. "Is that where that saying comes from?"

She softly laughs. "I guess that answers my question."

"Did I just lose some cool points?"

"You might have," she holds her smile and I feel like smiling back. It isn't like the tense smile I shared with my father. This is real.

"But I'm indestructo girl," I say. "That gives me major cool points."

"Okay," she nods, "Whatever you say Jenny From The Block."

This is so completely ridiculous. Stupidly ridiculous. "One day you're going to forget I ever said that."

"Goodbye, Bella." She tells me as looks back at her house. We're running out of time and we both know it. A member of her family is going to walk out of the house and then this pleasant bout of control we've both managed to hold onto will break.

"Goodbye, Alice." I give a short wave and then run back to where I had come from. I focus on Charlie's house and let my senses guide me there. I even manage to jump onto the roof and get into my room without making too much noise. Charlie is still asleep and he would never know about my little trip to the Cullen's home. He wouldn't get the chance tell me how stupid I was being or how much danger I had put myself in.

Even though, maybe those are two things that I desperately needed to hear right now. My instinct is obviously broken. Maybe Alice had somehow managed to break it when she split my side open, or maybe she broke it when she apologized. I guess the how of it really didn't matter. She made me vulnerable, she made me breakable and no matter how that coin was tossed my instinct knew this wasn't going to end well.