The Beginning of the End

Chapter Seven

I'm not Stephenie

You've seen straight through

The lawyers are yelling

'Cause they can't sue.

Don't own any of the characters from the books. Plot's mine; Courtney's mine. And my computer. I own that, too.

On with the chapter!

I sat fifteen feet or so off the ground on a conveniently sturdy branch, absently picking out the appearing constellations. Edward and Bella were taking a walk, but the rest of my extended family was gathered around Carmen and Eleazar, who were telling a story of some sort.

I paid them no attention, too lost in thought. I was busily recalling the fragmented memories I could still dredge up.

My aunt Shelley, crying with happiness as my favorite cousin was married. I'd been nine.

My little brother rigging my bedroom door with the classic bucket scam. I'd been ten, wet, and ticked.

Dad, coming home after a day at the office, and swinging me around like an airplane. That one – I couldn't remember how young I'd been. The house I remembered was the one I'd lived in until I was eight, on the Oregon coast. Mediterranean décor, with tiles everywhere.

The fight I'd had with my mom, the day that I wanted to spend the night with my friends at a sleepover and my grandmother was due to come. That had been three weeks before The Accident.

My brief stint in the spotlight as Juror Number Four in a fifth-grade play. Age eleven.

Time flashed before my eyes, but even my memories that I'd clung to as a human – winning the class spelling bee in sixth grade, getting my cat… they were filmy and distant, like I was watching them in a soap bubble.

I shook myself out of my reverie, alarmed to notice that the sun had gone from setting to completely out of sight. Only Alice stood beneath me. "And they say I daydream too much."

I jumped down, landing gently on my feet. "Yeah, yeah…" Suddenly, I noticed the warmth. Since I was under a tree, I didn't sparkle (finding out that I glittered had been one interesting afternoon) but it was much warmer than it had been in a while. "Alice, what's the date?"

"May ninth."

"What?"

"It's a Saturday," she added.

"But… Alice! It can't be May!"

That darling black-haired Tinkerbelle that we all know, love, and are irritated by laughed. "It most certainly can. We're thinking it's time to go home, though. Rosalie and I are both dying from lack of shopping!"

I rolled my eyes and started walking back.

Suddenly, Alice stopped me and placed her hands on my shoulders, giving a little hop. Then, she smiled broadly. "Your eyes!"

Completely befuddled, I just stared at her. She fished a little mirror out of her pocket and handed it to me.

"Alice! My eyes are orange!"

"No they aren't. They are a mix of red and gold."

"Orange."

"Citrus!"

We dashed down to the campsite at top speed to pack up. We'd leave in the morning.

As the four-car caravan drove down the slim dirt road to the main part of the camp, my eyes were drawn to the campgrounds.

"Why are all these people here?"

I was riding with Edward and Bella again. No one had said so in so many words, but I knew I was here so Edward would know if I was close to losing control. Gotta love the telepathic vampire. Thanks, Edward.

He took his eyes from the stereo and twisted around to look at me; I couldn't tell whether it was because of my thoughts or the question I'd asked out loud. I squeaked. "Can't you look at the road?"

"What is wrong with my driving?" he asked Bella plaintively. She pretended to think deeply. "You drive like a drunken and crazed maniac."

"I do not," he said, deeply offended. "You said it yourself; I'm a good driver... Do you remember the day in the meadow? I never even swerved, much less put any of us in danger."

"Be that as it may, Edward, it's human tendency to want to look at the road. And whatever Alice says, Courtney has only been a vampire for about a year and she's not used to everything yet!"

"Um, as interesting as this conversation is, why are we going through the campground if it's filled with… humans?"

He twisted to look at me again. "Haven't you noticed? We've been moving steadily closer for almost two months. If you haven't been bothered by it, then that's wonderful. Your control is getting better."

"Really? Wait; has it really been a year? Is that why my eyes are orange now instead of red?"

"What is this, twenty questions?" Bella laughed. "Yes, it is. Of course, you'll probably need another year or so before your control's really good, or even acceptable."

"Hasn't Jasper been doing this for a lot longer than that? You said he had control issues when you were human."

Edward flinched. Bella's eyes flicked toward him. "He was much more used to instant gratification."

Edward nodded. "I was living in Ashland with Carlisle in 1920. I'd only been changed two years before. Being out here for so long with Bella was merely a precautionary measure."

"Okay." I nodded. Only another year, then I could get on with whatever life I now had.

Behind us, I saw the other car turn down a road to take them to Denali.

"Esme, may I redecorate my room?"

"Of course. What were you thinking of doing to it?"

I looked down. "I miss carpet. I love the wood floors, but… carpet is comforting."

She nodded. "Alice will go shopping for you gladly. That girl would go shopping for different kinds of dust bunnies if the need arose."

"You don't have to tell me. Do you know where she is?"

"I think she's up in her room." Esme pushed a strand of wavy hair behind her ear and stood up. "The garden is really starting to look quite nice." The yard behind the house was complete with a re-directed stream and a riot of blooming color. It was easy to see where my family's passions were.

Esme's was the garden; Edward's showed in his massive CD collection. They had started to spill off of the shelves into boxes; I'd noticed on my last visit that he had four shoeboxes full of the slim CD cases.

Bella and Jasper both had wall-to-wall bookshelves (Bella's warring with Edward's CDs for space), and I had the feeling I might be joining that little club soon.

Carlisle had his study, with the paintings hung on the wall. I'd spent a lazy afternoon in there once, imagining what England was like back then. I'd always been fascinated with pre-eighteenth century culture.

Alice had her closets (so, to some extent, did Rosalie), Emmett had his video game consoles (each expertly set up, of course) and Rosalie had the little garage set aside from the house.

Each was a labor of love, and Esme's certainly showed.

"It's turning out beautifully," I agreed, and went to look for Alice.

I found her sitting on her bed, staring at the ceiling. I looked at the stereo that her headphones were plugged into. I didn't recognize the singer, but I didn't really expect to. Alice has some very odd taste in music.

"Alice, are you up for shopping?"

"What am I shopping for?"

"Carpet." She eyed me. "Why am I going carpet shopping?"

"Call it impulse. Esme is catching – I want to re-decorate my room."

She grinned. "Okay. What do you want?"

I surveyed my freshly-carpeted room, decked out in a light cream shag so thick that my feet disappeared when I put them down.

I laid down on it for the pure pleasure of the softness, and got out a book, but before I could get into the story Emmett's head poked through my door. "Courtney, do you know what day it is…?"

I looked at my calendar, the one that Alice had gotten me. It had a picture of Niagara Falls on it. "July nineteenth?"

He rolled his eyes. "Yes!"

"Emmett, dearest darling brother of mine, what is so special about July nineteenth?"

He gave me an appraising look. "You could do a Rosalie impersonation very well."

"HEY!" Rosalie's voice came up from the living room, clear and loud.

Emmett laughed and picked me up. I wiggled out of his grip and darted downstairs, flopping in front of the empty fireplace. "Seriously, will someone tell me what's so darn special about July nineteenth?"

Carlisle gave me a fond, fatherly smile. "One year."

"Has it really been a year since I was changed?" It seemed like just a few weeks sometimes, more like an extended vacation than a new life.

Alice nodded. "And we were curious about something."

"Alicceeee…" I whined. "You're always curious. You're like the bloody monkey, and I'm the man with the yellow hat!"

Only Bella got the Curious George reference. I guess when one is frozen at an average age of eighteen or nineteen, kid's books don't make much of a difference – especially when one is technically forty years old when it comes out.

She shrugged after I explained it. "Do you think that you could have a power of some sort?"

"Uh, Alice? Wouldn't it have shown itself before this?" Was it really all that common for vampires to have powers? From what I knew, only Edward, Alice, and Jasper had a 'power.'

"No. Bella's didn't show for almost two years." Huh?

"Bella? What can you do?" She smiled, a little sadly. "I can sense non-humans within a certain radius."

"Really? So you could tell when the Denali clan was going to be here, before they were too close?"

She closed her eyes briefly. "It's much like that, yes."

I was intrigued, now. "So can you sense only vampires, or anything else… is there anything else?"

Edward's eyes hardened slightly, but Bella nodded. "Know where Forks is?"

"Vaguely."

"Okay, there's an Indian reservation there, called La Push. A bunch of the teenagers-" Edward broke in. "Not teenagers, love. Jacob would be over thirty now." She sighed. "Fine. A few of the people there can turn into giant wolves. And they smell awful, now. Pity, that."

Now I was really interested. "But didn't you say that a human trait that's exaggerated becomes a power, sometimes?"

Alice nodded. "Bella had a knack for running into supernatural creatures."

"I ran and found the first ones I could when I went without Edward for a while," Bella laughed. Rosalie's eyes flickered slightly; Esme's face twitched. Bella might be fine with talking about "being without Edward" now, but it was obviously a sore subject.

I might have been here for a year, but in some ways I was still just getting to know these eight people.

"Anyway," piped up Alice, "it is kind of rare for powers to manifest themselves. Can you think of anything that could be intensified?"

I shook my head. "I was normal, Alice. I think. Other than being fiercely anti-conformism at school, which did not make me popular with the Abercrombie clones."

She raised an eyebrow. "Is this why you refuse to wear a quarter of the clothes I bought?"

"Ummmm… pretty much, yes."

"Okay, then. Now I know what not to shop for."

"We're getting off the point," Esme reminded all of us quietly. "We didn't call you down here just to talk about the admittedly strange things some of my children can do."

"Do you feel ready to start working harder on your control?" Carlisle asked me softly.

I gulped. "Will you all stop me if something goes wrong?"

"Yes." Carlisle.

"Of course!" Bella.

"I'll be watching the future, don't worry!" Alice.

"I'll be watching your thoughts. With Alice and I, you should be perfectly fine." Edward.

"Hell, yeah! I'm not letting my little sister down!" Emmett.

"Do you have any faith in us at all?" Rosalie.

"I'm here for you, Courtney, if you need support. Going though it myself was hard, but I might be able to help." Jasper.

Esme looked at me evenly. "You've got all of us behind you."

And so it begins…

Okay, wow. I did a huge time-skip in this chapter. I figured that another six chapters of the Cullens doing nothing but sitting around would get boring, both to those reading and to me as the writer. Next chapter: Courtney gets her first control test.

I don't have a plot written out for this at all, so it's kind of go-as-it-will. The only thing is that I was planning on having this stretch from Courtney's changing in chapter one to gosh-knows-where in an undetermined amount of chapters later. I have a feeling this'll be a long story, just because I want to get into an actual plot without it seeming too sudden (i.e. having ten or twelve years go by in between chapters), but I also don't want it to drag on forever.

That being said, I got several reviews saying, more or less, "Will Courtney ever wind up with someone romantically?" The answer to that is I don't know. Probably sooner or later, yeah. But within the next five, six chapters? No.

Also, before I wrap up the ridiculously long Author's Note: if someone would do a beta-read for me and would like to volunteer, feel free to drop me a line. I think I do fairly well with just Spell Check and I, but a second opinion is always a bonus.