Word Count: 12,605

January 2011

Ben's garage

Vancouver, BC

"Not that I'm complaining," I sighed, watching as vapor from my breath rose in the air, "but why are we building a doghouse in January?" My too-large suede jacket still kept my chest warm enough, but the rest of me was another matter. I held a handful of woodscrews in my gloved left hand, and a mug of good, old-fashioned coffee in the right—Ben, much like Marty and I, believed that anyone who combined alcohol and tools deserved their fate if they lost an appendage. I'd just come back outside from checking on our dinner, my step-father's traditional New Year's Day recipes: boiled cabbage for wealth, black-eyed peas for good luck, and ham hocks for prosperity. It tasted great in a Southern kind of way, but it smelled awful while cooking. I much preferred the sawdust scent of the garage.

"Because Laura is poor at planning," Ben grumbled, double-checking his drawing before aligning the plywood to the frame. "Hannah's grandfather—you've met him, actually. He's the director of the Saanich Adult Education Centre." I nodded, remembering the firm but joyful man who welcomed my interest in his life's work. "He got her a rescued dog for Christmas, and in all the excitement of possible names, dog bowls, leashes, shots, and chew toys, Laura forgot that dogs need shelter if you're going to keep them outside for any length of time. Hold up this wood right there and hand me a screw."

I set my coffee down next to Ben's on a nearby workbench and complied, looking over the inside of Ben's garage and trying to hear the sound of his banged-up shop radio over the din of the power drill. As garages go, this one was fairly organized. It was unfinished, meaning there was no drywall, but the walls were covered in pegboards, shelving, and homemade cabinetry. There was a table saw, a nail gun, some landscaping equipment, and a host of other power tools I couldn't readily identify. Ben had a large, red Crafstman toolchest on casters, the updated counterpart to my forty-year-old portable toolbox, specifically for his mechanic tools—we made adjustments to our engines together before the winter set in.

"You didn't fight with Laura about it, did you?" I asked carefully. For the most part, I tried to mind my own business where that part of Ben's life was concerned, primarily because I expected the same courtesy. But he'd opened up the discussion about his ex-wife this time, and I had to admit that I was curious if there was actually such a thing as a divorced couple that got along. People who got along with each other didn't just break up for no reason, right? At least, I didn't think that was how it was supposed to be. I didn't exactly have a good frame of reference for normal, healthy relationships.

"Nah, we just had a little strained conversation," Ben replied, already on the second wall—he was nothing if not efficient. "We try not to argue in front of Hannah, but sometimes…I swear to god, Laura never thinks to tell me about this kind stuff. She puts herself in a tough spot when she doesn't need to be, and she gets pissed if you can't drop everything to fix the problem for her, then she gets even more pissed if you get mad. If she would have just said something, I could have taken care of this last month and had it ready when I visited for Christmas."

My curiosity somehow unsatisfied, I held my hand out for Ben to pluck another woodscrew. "I don't mean to dismiss your effort," I told him, "but why didn't anyone just buy one of those igloo-shaped plastic doghouses? It's easier, it's cheaper, and that poor little dog wouldn't have been out in the snow this whole last week."

"His name is Bear," Ben smirked, "and he's part mastiff, part Irish wolfhound. That dog is bigger than me. It's either this or the whole family pitches in to buy him a tool shed." I looked at the frame again and realized that I'd fit quite comfortably inside the finished structure, with enough room for my sleeping bag and an ice chest, possibly a mini-fridge. He even built a floor for the damn thing, with joists and everything so that it could sit on top of several cinderblocks. "I don't mind building things like this," he continued, moving around me to drill screws on the other end of the wall. "It's fun, actually, and I'm always glad to do something nice for Hannah. It's just going to be a real bitch getting this in and out of the truck."

"We've got beer and soul food to bribe your neighbors," I laughed, moving out of the way so Ben could retrieve the next wall piece.

In a far corner of the room, behind a tall storage cabinet and the supply of precision-cut plywood for our project, I noticed a several small boxes of random supplies perched on a crooked table. I stared at it for several moments before seeing the pleasant memory of long hair three shades lighter than mine, a thoughtful, round, inviting face leaning over a slanted desk covered in huge sheets of graph paper, mechanical pencils, paint swatches, photos, marble tile samples—Bella, I'm thinking of redecorating upstairs. I never did get around to redoing the bathroom beyond installing the new plumbing. What do you think about these for the floor?

I still had the tiny square tiles tucked away in a little wooden box my underwear drawer.

"Is that a drafting table?" I asked, every bit as curious about its presence as its misuse.

"Yeah," Ben answered distractedly, aligning the next piece. "My folks gave it to me years ago."

I reached over and grabbed the building plans for this sturdy structure. It was hand drawn, not printed off the internet. The notations were all in Ben's even lettering. I didn't know why I was so surprised—obviously Ben built things for a living, though there wasn't much work to be had now that it was the slow season. The reason he got this house so cheap was because it was a fixer-upper and he could remodel it himself.

"Did you go to school for this?" I asked, holding up the blueprint with one hand and the plywood with the other as Ben indicated. This wall was shorter than the one directly across from it.

"Doghouse Building 101," Ben teased, moving quickly as the doghouse in question took shape. "Is that class not in the course catalogue at UBC?"

"No, smartass," I laughed. "I mean these plans you drew. Did you go to school for it, or did you learn it on the job?"

"I studied civil engineering at Camosun College in Victoria," Ben answered as he fastened the final wall to the frame. "I was hoping to get into the UBC architecture program eventually. I tried to, anyway."

It seemed like a statement that would normally be accompanied with a certain amount of bitterness, but his voice held none. I wondered if he was rejected and made peace with it, or if he needed to hurry up and get a job at the time because of Hannah and Laura. "What happened?" I asked.

Ben took the plans from my hand, studied them a moment, and moved on to affixing the roof. "Sometimes you think you know what you want in life," he grunted as we lifted a large, heavy piece of plywood over the standing walls, "but when you finally reach it and take a good look at it, it's not at all what you thought it would be."

Haunted, I reminded myself that we were talking about Ben's career, not Him or His betrayal of me. "Architecture wasn't what you thought it would be?" I exhaled roughly from the exercise, noticing that because of the way the frame and walls had been built, the roof sat at an angle so that rain and melted snow wouldn't collect on the top.

"Not the way they taught it," he told me, climbing onto a stepladder and drilling still more woodscrews into the little roof. "I wasn't trying to learn how to draw theoretical buildings with no practical use, and I wasn't in it to win some kind of recognition for the most outrageous sustainable structure. By the time I was nearly done with my bachelor's degree, I realized a master's in architecture wasn't what I wanted after all. I wanted to build, really put my hands into the work, not sit back and draw. So I got a job on a construction crew in Victoria and stayed with that company until my divorce. Once Laura and I split, I came here. Can you hand me the felt paper and the stapler?"

"Did you finish your engineering degree?" I asked, handing him the large sheets of black paper he was pointing at and swapping tools with him.

"I did," he answered, laying the paper across the roof and securing it. "Dad told me the more you know, the more the boss is willing to pay you." Ben hopped down from the ladder and traded his staple gun for a nail gun, opening a package of something. It looked like—

"Ben," I said, amused, "are those shingles?"

"I don't want the roof to rot, obviously," he defended. "Or I'll just have to go back and replace it again in a few months. I don't believe in half-assing my work. If I'm going to take the time to do a thing, I intend to do it right."

"I see," I nodded, finally understanding. I strode up to him purposefully, surprising him with a kiss on the cheek.

"What was that for?" he smiled, expertly cutting and folding the edges of what would be the bottom layer of shingles.

"For building a doghouse nicer than my first dorm room," I grinned, grabbing a shingle and following his example of the correct folding pattern. "Even though it's not your dog." The Greeks called what he was doing meraki—putting something of yourself into what you do. It was the same way I felt whenever I spoke or studied my languages, as if I could infuse my soul in the words.

"Anything for my Hannah," he chuckled. "And thank you for helping." My smile stayed in place as I helped him fix this roof for a dog I would never see, for a child I had never met. I expected to feel some sting, thinking that way, but there was none. I simply stood beside him and assisted and enjoyed being in the cool, crisp air, asking if Hannah had picked out a paint color and whether primer was needed for plywood, teasing him about installing gutters.

"You know, Ben," I said once the last row of shingles had been nailed down, "there's an old New Year's superstition that whatever you're doing on New Year's Day, you'll be doing a lot of for the rest of the year." I stripped off my gloves and tossed them carelessly onto a nearby tabletop.

Ben put down his nail gun and stared at me meaningfully. "Oh really?"

"Mhmm," I hummed deeply, stepping closer to him. "Another tradition says that the first visitor of the year can bring good luck, particularly if he's a tall, dark-haired man."

"Is that so?" Ben pulled me into his arms and grinned down at me. "So does that mean short, brunette women are bad luck? You're visiting my house, after all."

I pressed an open-mouth kiss under Ben's jaw, exactly where I knew he liked it. "Why don't put away your power tools and come visit me in your bedroom?" I suggested, unzipping his coat. With Ben, there was no need to be quiet, reserved, or still. "Meet me there in five minutes."

"But I'm all dirty," he protested in a low groan, his arousal already evident against my stomach. He was like that sometimes, expecting me hit the brakes, turn girly on him, and protest any form of dirt. "I smell like a cedar mill."

"I know. It works for me." I raised an eyebrow at him and unbuttoned his pants, reaching in for what I wanted. It took time for me to get to this point, but my days of clumsy fumbling and uncertainty about my own limbs were long gone. "Unless the problem is that you want to keep the sheets clean. In which case…I've never had sex in a garage before."

"Goddamn it, Bella," Ben growled, grasping my face in his hands and angling my head up to meet his rough, hungry kisses. "I think you may be the perfect woman."

I laughed throatily and reached into my coat pocket, pulling out a condom. "On the tool bench or up against the wall?"

"Perfect," Ben muttered, making quick work of my jeans, tearing the condom package open, and nudging me backward until my back came into contact with a tall cabinet door. "Absolutely fucking perfect."

I moaned into his throat as he lifted me up and hitched my legs around his waist. "Happy New Year…"


February 2011

Marine Drive Student Housing

UBC

Drunk-dialing.

My whole life I read stories and saw movies about people who completely lost touch with their parents once they left home. I was never able to do that, which simultaneously comforted and frustrated me. Renee never managed to lose my number, and for better or worse, I could never bring myself to change it without informing her. The part of me that remembered total abandonment wouldn't allow it. The key to getting along with Renee, I'd learned, was to limit our contact to small doses. Short e-mails. The occasional letter or card in the mail, because she liked Canadian stamps—I used extra postage every time. A phone call here and there. She seemed to understand this now, finally, and she'd been respecting the boundaries. Mostly. But for all my care in cultivating a sustainable relationship with her, my mother liked to stay unpredictable. Random telephonic ambushes like this were her idea of a wild card.

This is why I usually screen my calls.

"It's not a big deal, Mom," I groaned, walking into my bedroom and carefully closing the door behind me so Shalice could study uninterrupted. "I have tests next week I need to study for. Ben has Hannah this weekend. Not seeing him for a couple of days is not indicative of a relationship problem."

"Oh, but it is," Renee replied cryptically. I heard her take a swig of whatever bottled beer or wine she had in front of her—bottles made a distinctively different sound than cans when you pulled your lips away from the rim. "Just not the one you think."

Renee had a terrible habit of being right about things I'd rather she was wrong about, but this time I wasn't putting up with her meddlesome bullshit. Years she'd spent pressuring me to develop a romantic relationship, and now that I had one, it was apparently doomed to failure, not because of the age difference, not because of dissimilar career paths, but because my boyfriend had a child he actually liked spending time with. By this token, was I to understand that Renee's marriage to Phil would have failed if I hadn't left for Forks, or should I infer that she didn't actually like spending time with me, despite all her protests to the contrary at the time?

I rubbed my temple in frustration. "Mother, I don't know why you're so flabbergasted by the idea that I'm fine with things as they are. Regardless, this is in no way even remotely your business. Kindly keep your opinion to yourself." Hoping she would take my blunt advice, I tried to change the subject by hinting about the amount of studying I still needed to do, but she had a one-track mind this evening.

"I'm just saying, you and Ben are both incredibly busy people, and he only has so much time to devote to his personal life," my mother pressed.

"That's right, Mom. I tell you I've got to prepare for midterms, and you insist on arguing about my boyfriend and his daughter." And Renee wondered why I never wanted to visit her anymore.

"Honey, this is important. If it comes down to a choice between you and her, he's going to choose her every time." She said that like it was a terrible thing, like she hated the idea that someone would organize their priorities that way. Growing up as I did, I couldn't say I was all that surprised.

"I already know that, Mother. Do you honestly think I'd be with him if he was the kind of person to choose his social life over his kid?" Renee made no response; I wondered if she even registered the implied judgment of her parenting. "I understand why you're concerned, but this is a different dynamic than the one I grew up in; Ben is not the custodial parent. Certainly having me at home limited your social agenda," though not nearly enough, I did not say, "but your love life didn't come at the expense of the amount of time I spent with Dad, and if Charlie ever did date anyone when I was that age, it certainly didn't interfere with my visitation. Hannah gets all the attention she needs from her father, and I get my fair share of his time. This arrangement works for us, but if we ever feel the need to change it, we will."

In fact, Ben and I had been discussing that very topic lately, though nothing had been resolved. It was a foreign concept to me, the way he regarded the idea as a family decision, subject to Laura's approval, not that I disagreed. Renee thought nothing of asking Charlie's permission for things like that when I was young. "So once more," I finished, "and hopefully for the last time, this is none of your business." Drop it, for the love of god; just drop it so I don't have to give you a piece of my mind.

"Bella, I think you should consider what I'm saying." She took a sharp breath before continuing—ah, she was smoking, too. Perhaps this was more than just a drunk-dial; perhaps this topic was actually bothering her. "I'm glad you finally got over whatever was holding you back, but you're too young to be tied to someone with this kind of obligation. Shouldn't you—?"

"That's rich coming from you, Renee," I sneered, "considering how long it took you to find someone who didn't mind that you were a single mom, not that you acted like much of a mother. When you said you wanted to get married, I did all I could to support you. Who helped plan the wedding? Who got rid of our useless junk so he'd have room for his things? Who learned how to make his favorite meals? I even moved to Forks to get out of the way while you and Phil took off to travel the country, not because of some abiding love for Washington or loyalty to Charlie, but because you were so unhappy staying home with me during your husband's away games, and I didn't want you to be miserable. I did everything to make you happy! Who are you to tell me a goddamn thing about obligation? Why can't you just be on my side and back me up for once?"

If Renee felt any shame at all, she moved past it quickly to make her case. "I'm not backing you up on an error in judgment," she answered, infuriating me. "That little girl is still so young, not nearly grown like you were when I remarried. She's not capable of being a supportive adult right now. There's still time for you to get out of this and look for somebody without a—"

"Enough!" I hissed, finally understanding how she wanted me to solve what she deemed an unnecessary complication. "What do you expect me to do, just turn off my feelings because you think you know what's best for me? Tell Ben he's wrong for me because he has a life that doesn't revolve entirely around me and my needs? I'll be damned if I ever go through that shit—!" I stopped just short of adding again.

"Don't you even care that you're in a relationship with someone whose top priority is someone else?" Renee demanded, clearly ignoring my actual words and just waiting for breaks in the conversation.

"I got into this with my eyes open. Ben never lied about what I should expect from him, which is more than I can say for some people." Maybe that would get her attention. "You don't know anything about Ben or Hannah or even me. I refuse to listen to your crap anymore."

Renee took a heavy drag from her cigarette. "With this man, you'll always be last. Doesn't that bother you at all?"

Somewhere deep inside, in a place I'd tried my damnedest to forget, I felt the deep, intrusive agony of a knife twisting in my heart.

"Being put last isn't exactly something new for me, Mother," I yelled, hating her. "You neglected to tell Phil about my sixteen-year-old ass for the first month of your initial online relationship. Not because you were trying to avoid sexual predators, but because you didn't have the courage to tell him you were thirty-six instead of twenty-eight. You pretended that I didn't even exist. Being last with Ben still feels better than coming in second—" oh, who was I kidding; Renee had always been her own highest priority, "scratch that, third—with you!"

Without waiting for her to respond, I hung up. One deep breath, and I started to scroll through my contact list for the cab company. If I got drunk enough and tried very hard to remember just the right thing, I'd be able to hear Him tell me I was the most important thing in his endless life. I didn't even care that it was a boldfaced lie.

Just as I found Maclure's Cabs, Shalice walked into my room without knocking. "Don't," she said quietly.

"Don't what?" I asked, looking up. Her eyes were so kind and worried that I flipped my phone shut.

"Don't let her do this to you," she clarified, coming to sit beside me on my bed. "I've been watching this for years. She calls and says something to piss you off, you call a cab, then you come home at two in the morning completely sloshed. Just…don't. It won't solve anything."

"I know that," I told her, slowly lowering the phone. "But it'll make me feel better."

"No, it won't," she countered, drawing one arm around my shoulders. "You stumble in with dried tears all over your face, you cry in your sleep, and the next morning you hate yourself. That's not better."

"It's all I know," I whispered.

"You know me," Shalice said firmly, plucking my phone out of my hand. "Talk to me, not to a bottle."

"I just…she just…" I looked down at my socks. Shalice had ordered the little Born to be Wild socks as a gag gift for my birthday one year; they were actually quite warm and comfortable. "She always did know how to hurt me better than almost anyone." Almost.

"That's what mothers do," Shalice said wisely.

"That's not what a family is supposed to do," I argued weakly, thinking of caramel hair for the second time in as many months. "A family is supposed to love you and support you."

"You have an unusually idealistic concept of family for someone who grew up with this particular mother," Shalice pointed out, sounding a bit curious as she did so. "Was Charlie that kind of dad?"

"Not especially," I muttered. "We didn't really become close until I was an adult. I mean, he wasn't awful, but I didn't see him that much until I was seventeen. And even when I did spend vacations with him as a kid, he basically handed me over to Billy's two daughters so he could enjoy his time fishing." It wasn't always that way, if memory served; I had a vague impression of baking cookies with Grandma Swan before she got too sick to take care of me, and another memory of Charlie taking me aside and teaching me to defend myself. But more often than not, I would find myself at First Beach while Charlie fished, with Rachel and Rebecca Black chattering at each other in their Quileute-English twinspeak while I stared into the tide pools by myself. You could call that a lot of things, but you certainly couldn't call it parenting.

"Okay…then where are you getting this non-existent family archetype if not from your parents?" Shalice wanted to know.

"My step-mother is really great," I answered instead, though I wasn't thinking of Sue. "She's amazing with her own family, the way she tempers everyone. I just wish she'd come into my life sooner." I wish Esme hadn't gone. I wish she'd loved me enough to stay.

"But she didn't," Shalice said sensibly. "And she's not going to teach Renee the proper way to be a mother, either. Why do you expect things to be any different than the way they've always been?" she asked.

"Renee was different when I was a kid," I sighed. "She wasn't perfect, but she didn't constantly tell me everything I wanted was wrong. She was fun, she encouraged me, and up until I was seventeen, she was my best friend." But was she my best friend because we had common ground, or did she just take up so much of my time with her antics that I didn't get enough chances to try with anyone else?

"I thought you said she relied on you too much to take care of her responsibilities," my friend replied.

"She did," I affirmed, remembering when Mom taught me to drive at the age of thirteen. Once she was satisfied that I could drive ten blocks to the Safeway without crashing or getting pulled over and ticketed, she handed me the keys and three twenties and told me I could go to the grocery store without her, since I'd already taken charge of both the budget and the meal planning. I didn't discover until years later that I could have been arrested had I been stopped, or that she could have been arrested for knowingly putting me behind the wheel alone. At the time, I simply believed it was the coolest thing ever. "For a long time I just thought it was normal for things to be that way. I believed looking after her was my job."

"Why didn't Charlie ever do anything?" she asked. "I mean…he couldn't have been unaware of what kind of person Renee was. He was married to her."

I shrugged. "Charlie liked keeping things simple. He didn't know anything about raising a girl. Maybe he wanted to bring me home, or maybe he didn't, but getting it done wouldn't have been an easy feat. I hated Forks, and I made it no secret that I would rather live with Mom. She was 'fun,' and I thought I was free." Free to be just like her, only with more burdens.

"So did Renee just stop being fun and encouraging and supportive?" Shalice wondered.

"Yes and no," I answered. "We had an unusual relationship. When I was a kid, she was an oversized playmate. When I was a teenager discovering boys, she dated a lot of guys. Vicarious living was always how she dealt with me. Mostly she was too afraid to be alone. Things turned sour when it was time for me to choose a university, and I chose to come here instead of moving closer to her. I think she wanted to continue living through me, but I wouldn't let her anymore. I still cared about her, but we couldn't agree on anything and started fighting all the time. Mostly, though, once I turned eighteen I just stopped thinking of her as fun."

"Why?"

For some reason, I thought of the day I woke up in the hospital in Phoenix nearly six years ago.

I've been spending the night.

Renee sounded so proud of herself for having done so, like it was such a big accomplishment for her to remain at my side when I was suffering from multiple broken bones, concussions, cuts, and severe blood loss. She stood there staring at my heavily bandaged body, tubes in my nose and a needle in my vein, expecting my accolades because she camped out on a recliner.

"I grew up."


March 2011

Ben's House

Vancouver, BC

"Hannah, this is Miss Bella. Bella, this is my daughter, Hannah." Ben smiled, but I saw the nervousness in his eyes.

"Hello, Hannah," I said quietly, giving the shy eight-year-old girl a friendly smile but not approaching her too quickly. Her shiny black hair was pulled back into a long ponytail; I noticed that her skin was a shade lighter than Ben's, with the slightly rounded smoothness of childhood. "I'm very happy to meet you. Your father talks about you all the time."

She looked at me with curious, bear-brown eyes so much like her father's, but she did not respond.

"Say hello, Hannah," Ben prodded gently, looking down at the top of her head and patting her back.

"Hi," she tried, hiding her face in her father's shirt like a much younger child but still peeking at me. Ben and I exchanged glances, and I could see he was worried that we were doing this too soon, though it was his idea. But I knew a little about Hannah from his stories, and I remembered my own childhood, replete with Renee's string of companions as she went through her serial monogamy phase, so I had some idea of what to do.

"I like your necklace," I said to her in SENĆOŦEN, knowing she was studying it in school on the reserve where she lived with her mother. "Is that WEXES?" WEXES the frog was honored as the keeper of sacred seasons, and this was the time of year when he was thought to sing in the New Year with the beginning of spring.

Hannah's eyes grew wide at being addressed in this tongue, and she replied with an exaggerated nod and an awed "HÁ,E." She fingered the little frog charm as she proceeded to tell me, in a mixture of English and her tribal dialect, stories she learned in school about the importance of the frog and other sacred animals.

"I brought something to show you," I said after a while, making sure there was plenty of room on Ben's threadbare couch so that she could sit as close or as far as she liked. "Would you like to see some pictures?"

Carefully, I pulled the album from my bag, grateful that my mother dragged me into a scrapbooking class for a month when I was fifteen. "These," I said as she scrambled to scoot a little closer to me than I expected, "are pictures of the Sonoran Desert, where I grew up. Everything changes colors there as the sun moves."

"The sky is very blue," Hannah observed, craning her neck to look at the pictures. "Don't you have any clouds there?"

"It didn't rain very often," I answered. "I liked that, though. Whenever I would lie down in the back yard and look up, the sky was like a giant bowl."

"Cool." She flipped to another page. "Why is it so pink? It's like neon." It wasn't such a strange question; most of the sunsets I'd seen here were varying degrees of orange, the sun a fireball in the sky.

"It did that sometimes when the sun set. That was my favorite time of day. It was so hot in the daytime, and the nights were cold, but at sunset, the mountains would turn purple, and everything was just right."

Hannah sifted through the book with me, asking questions about the heat and cacti and scorpions, and paused when she came to a collection of photos from the Hopi reservation in Northern Arizona. Little fingers lingered and hovered over the photos of the celebration, the native regalia and scenery very different than anything she was personally familiar with, and she became animated with her hunger for this new knowledge, firing off questions. "Did you live in a house made of mud?" she squeaked, examining an adobe house on a postcard. "Just like on Discovery Channel?"

"No," I grinned, turning to the next page. "See that place? That was my home. Just a regular house like your dad's."

She pointed, careful not to get fingerprints on anything. "Is that lady in the picture you?"

"No, that's my mom, and the little girl next to her is me." It was so strange, looking at this picture of Renee and seeing so much of myself in her—she was twenty-eight when the photo was taken, about five years older than my current age. We both looked happy. It was easy to be best friends when our conversations were about dolls and children's books. "I was about the same age you are now."

"I'm eight and a half," Hannah announced proudly.

"Yes, I know."

"You were adorable!" she decided.

"Thank you," I grinned. "You're lovely, too." Ben turned to smile at me over Hannah's head; I could practically hear his mental thumbs-up.

"Why isn't your daddy in the picture?" Hannah wondered.

"His picture is on another page. He didn't live with us. His city was far away, but I went to see him every year. I even went to live with him for a couple years when I got older."

"Oh." I waited to see if she would have any questions about that, but she only flipped the page again. "Hey, you're cooking!"

"Yes ma'am, I started cooking when I was very little."

"Did your mom teach you?"

"Good heavens no," I laughed, "and trust me, we're all better off. I learned from cookbooks and cooking shows, mostly, and from a few neighbors." I pointed to a faded blue index card, covered with my friend Luzmaria's nine-year-old scrawl. "That's my first recipe for flour tortillas."

"Can you show me how to cook?" Hannah asked suddenly, looking up at me with pleading eyes.

"S-sure," I stammered, caught off guard both by the request and the tone of her voice, as if this were an important thing to her that I might deny. "If it's okay with your dad."

Hannah turned to her father immediately. "Daddy, please? I promise I'll be careful and I'll clean up my mess and I'll even wash my clothes before I go home if they get dirty."

Darkness clouded Ben's face for a moment. Obviously he was upset, though not with the child sitting beside him. "In my house," he said quietly, "you can cook, and I don't mind a little mess." Another glance passed between us, and I nodded in understanding. At that moment, I was thankful that I'd grown up with a mom who regarded spillage as something that could be easily remedied, not the end of the world. "Just so long as you listen when Bella tells you to do something," Ben clarified, "and don't try to use the stove or a sharp knife without one of us here to supervise."

Happy with this answer, Hannah asked me questions about food and what other kinds of things I knew how to do before she remembered the book in her lap and began flipping through the rest of it, stopping at a photo of my frowning face and ripped tights at my ballet recital.

"You were a ballerina?"

I didn't know whether to laugh or cover my face with embarrassment, so I settled for shaking my head. "I took lessons, but I wasn't very good. I fell down a lot."

"Did you get hurt?"

"Yes," I answered swiftly. "All the time. But my friends helped me stand up again."

"Do you miss your friends?"

I paused, my fingers tracing the crescent scar on my hand almost of their own free will, though I hadn't given the cold scar more than a passing thought in forever. I could almost see the head of smooth, golden hair and hear the disgust in an otherwise gentle voice. He bit her.

"It was a long time ago," I told Hannah softly. "I was very young then. I'm all grown up now."

"Yeah, but don't you miss them?" she pressed.

Covertly, I peeked at the underside of my forearm, at the long, jagged white line that slashed across my cream skin. My birthday scar. That was the last time I ever saw Carlisle, the last time we were all together before my humanity sent Them all running.

It's not your fault, he told me. It could happen to anyone.

Could. But it usually just happens to me.

"Yeah," I whispered, earning a troubled look from Ben at the pain in my voice I couldn't quite conceal. "Sometimes."


August 2011

Peace Arch Hospital

White Rock, BC

"Son of a bitch!" I hissed under my breath. "Not you," I reassured the patient in the bed next to mine, who looked offended. "I mean my ankle. It feels broken and it hurts like hell."

"It is broken," said a tall, thin, brown-haired woman in green scrubs and a white coat as she strode into my corner of the emergency room.

"Dr. Rutherford," I sighed, watching as she affixed the large x-rays to the light board on the wall. "Tell me there's some good news." Preferably news that it was a minor break, but at this point I'd take news that there was something stronger than acetaminophen on the way. Part of the reason it was taking so long for someone to bring me a painkiller was because the hospital insisted on a blood-alcohol test before I could be prescribed anything. As I pointed out to the nurse who drew my blood, if I'd been drinking, I wouldn't have needed pain medication

"There is," my doctor nodded, though her face was grim. "The good news is: your talus and tarsal bones weren't pulverized into dust by your motorcycle."

Goddamn it. I almost never went out riding alone, but my afternoon class was cancelled, and the day was so perfect and beautiful. Great job, Bella. You just had to feel the freedom. With Ben away on a job in Alberta and Marty unable to get away from the bar, that meant my choices were either to wait until the weekend or head out by myself. I chose the latter, wanting to take advantage of the good weather to explore Peace Arch Provincial Park near the US border. Every time I crossed the border to visit Charlie I drove or rode past Peach Arch Park, but I'd never really taken time to look around. So I packed a lunch, rode for forty-five minutes to get there, and tried to find access to the beach. Everything was fine until I turned too hard on a damn dirt road and went into a skid. Luckily I wasn't traveling too fast; I didn't hit my head, and the left side of my body was bruised but not cut up. Unfortunately, my ankle got pinned under the bike, crushed, really. I was just barely able to reach back into my right-side saddlebag for my cell phone. And if that wasn't enough, my bike took damage, too. Fucking perfect.

I looked at the dark blue and white films on the wall, strange images made familiar thanks to years of clumsy behavior before I came to college. The healed bone growth on my tibia was visible, and I tucked my cold-scarred hand away automatically as I answered questions about how that particular injury occurred. The sight of the specific damage to my ankle was nauseating to look at, even as Dr. Rutherford showed me the undamaged bones in the rest of my foot.

"Doc, I feel a 'but' coming on," I groaned, trying not to jostle my leg.

She looked at me, her pale blue eyes sympathetic. "You'll need some surgery. Right now it looks like at least two plates, here and here," she indicated the shattered bones on the film with a pointer, "and some pins here. I'll know more once I go in and look. There's room in the OR schedule for you in the morning."

"Shit," I grumbled, pressing my hands to my face momentarily before giving her my full attention. She explained the procedure, how long I should expect to be on crutches, precautions against infection, the risks involved in having the steel plating removed down the road versus leaving it in, and physical therapy. The good news was that eventually I'd be able to ride again, probably in six months or so. And, since I was a legal resident of BC and the procedure was mandatory, not elective, I'd be covered by the public health care system. The bad news was that I had to give up the waitressing job at the Chatterbox for a while. There was no way I could carry a tray when I could barely walk, so there went a few thousand dollars income I'd been counting on. If I got put on bed rest, I might not even be able to finish out the summer class I was currently two weeks from completing.

Dr. Rutherford left not long after, promising to have me admitted and send someone in with pain meds. When a rather large Cantonese woman from the admissions office came in with a computer on a rolling cart, the first thing she asked for was my emergency contact information. I stared at her stupidly for a minute, unsure how to answer her before I explained that my family lived in the US and my old man was in the next province, thirteen hours away.

I didn't even know how I was getting home.

In the end, I gave Brown and Marty's number, since they were closest, then my roommate's. Shalice and I kept spare keys to each other's cars as a precaution, and I was pretty sure she'd come pick me up whenever I was released.

After the woman took my electronic signature on the consent forms and departed, I called and left Shalice a message so she wouldn't worry about why I didn't make it home for dinner. I would call everyone else after the surgery, I decided—no use getting everybody worked up over something beyond their control. I thought about calling Ben but felt it was better not to. He was too far away to get here before I went under the knife anyway, and there was no point in both of us missing work, especially since I didn't know how long I'd be stuck in here. Damn it! I was supposed to show Hannah how to flip pancakes next week.

A nurse finally brought me some Tylenol-3 (the "three" evidently synonymous for codeine), and I closed my eyes and drifted away.

"…we're going to insert your IV now…"

"…Ms. Swan, this is your room. I'll assist you with this bedpan…"

"…Miss Swan, I'm going to check your vitals again and give you a mild sedative to help you sleep…"

I would like to ask one favor, though, if that's not too much.

There you are. I've been waiting for you.

Don't do anything reckless or stupid.

Why? You promised I wouldn't see you again. But you forgot that humans dream. You told me to take care of myself for Charlie, but he's not alone and he doesn't need me anymore. Nothing you said is relevant.

Bella, you promised.

Why are you surprised? I thought you understood: humans get hurt all the time.

That's no excuse.

Isn't that why you left? So you wouldn't be tempted to feed on me when this happened? So I could get hurt without you having to feel worried or guilty?

Don't do anything reckless or stupid.

Are you going to come here and hold me, or are you going to lecture me all night? I had the worst day, and this is a terrible dream.

Why do you have to be so stubborn?

You know what? I don't need this from you. Leave me alone, dreamwalker.

You'll just do something like this again.

And it won't matter—you aren't here to do anything about it. I'm going to wake up alone, because you only exist in my head now. Aan dang k'yaaw g̱a hll 'aawuu g̱as ga—I will sit here and wait for you. But you will never come.

Bella…

You're a dream. You're not really Him. He's gone. U TW̱ HE,HO,I SEN OL. YOŦ SEN OL U HE,HO,I. I'm just alone now. I'm always alone…

A dulled metal grocery cart with a squeaky wheel and a red plastic handle. Shelves full of junk food towering over me. The promise of a motherly face and an enormous, state-of-the-art, empty kitchen waiting to be stocked with snack food for my visits—Charlie was finally relaxing his limitations about visitation now that school was almost out and summer was approaching.

"Why do humans insist on making a spicy version of every kind of chip?" She was wearing a fire-engine-red wig today, something we picked up at the costume shop in Bremerton. She said it made her feel like Sydney Bristow, a character in some spy drama show, although why a spy would wear something so conspicuous I had no idea. Under the wig her real hair was so short, she didn't even have to cover her scalp with pantyhose. "I will never understand the desire to cover your food in cayenne extract. It stinks, it burns your mouth, and Carlisle says too much of it causes stomach ulcers. What's the point?"

"Variety, Alice," I laughed, grabbing a package of rice cakes to toss in the basket along with the Doritos and cream cheese, because I knew I needed real nutrition, too, not just empty calories. I had no wig, but we'd sprayed temporary purple dye in my hair, so for once the curious stares of the citizens of Forks made perfect sense, and were accompanied by smiles. "People get tired of the same old bland flavors."

"I can always tell when my prey has been into someone's pepper plants," she remarked, "and let me tell you, it's not pleasant."

"Do you think I should eat more spicy food?" I asked in earnest, dropping my voice. "Would that help Edward resist?" I would gladly set my mouth on fire three meals a day if it would lessen Edward's pain and guilt even a little.

"No," Alice said lightly. "When I say I can always tell, I mean their bowels release the most awful-smelling—"

"Just grab the Ding-Dongs!" I ordered quickly, before my stomach turned and I lost all desire to eat ever again. So much for that idea. "Hey, if we pick up some Cokes, will you be able to keep it secret from Edward?"

"I've got you covered," Alice winked. "All I have to do is look ahead to what you two will be doing tonight, and he won't even think about human food."

"I don't know if I want you looking for that," I replied insecurely, twisting my fingers together.

"Too bad, I already did." She gathered three boxes of Ding-Dongs and deposited them in our cart. "Just a glimpse. That navy blue tank top I gave you with the spaghetti straps brings out your pale skin, and he loves that."

"You know how upset he gets when he thinks you're interfering," I reminded her. It was a cop-out—I was too chicken to tell her I wasn't comfortable with her looking through my private moments. Last night was especially beautiful, complete with flowers and poetry and oh god his skin—that was supposed to be just between Edward and me, 'glimpse' or no.

"Edward always behaves that way," she said blithely, something at the far end of the aisle catching her eye. "Right up until it's convenient for him to feel otherwise. Seriously, wear the blue tank top. You'll thank me for it later."

She fluttered away to examine whatever bright new package caught her attention while I exhaled and shook my head at the silliness of it all, something I did a lot whenever Alice and I were together. Intrusion was just how she operated, and it was best to maintain a sense of humor about it if at all possible, especially if we were going to be sisters for the next thousand years or more.

"Alice, wait!" Holding on to my grocery basket for support, I clomped after her as best I could with this hideous black boot on my leg. Carlisle said it would be another two weeks until my leg was completely unhindered, just in time for me to start cashiering at Newton's store. Two weeks couldn't come soon enough—Alice was impossible to keep up with even at human speed. I was forever being left behind, but she was my family in a way my parents had never managed to be: she always twirled in place with her inhuman grace and came back for me.

Men and women hovered in the sky above me, a bright light shining over their heads, silhouettes of the vampire gods in my drunken imagination. One introduced himself as my anesthesiologist.

"This procedure should take a few hours, Ms. Swan. We're going to start with the laughing gas. I need you to breathe normally and slowly count backwards from ten." Rubbery plastic settled over my mouth and nose.

"Diez, nueve, ochos-seven…" Seven little vampires jumping on the bed, one fell off and bumped his head…

The world stirred around the heavy weight anchored in my head. Chemical odors and the nauseating smell of open human flesh filled my nose.

regaining consciousness.

My quiet moan was magnified in my chest a hundred times, and everything was black and red and without form as I swam through tar, trying to surface, desperate to breathe. Something beeped nearby.

Can you hear me? Your operation was successful…

I opened one eye and saw the bleary form of a tiny woman in blue scrubs. She had short, spiky black hair and perfect pale skin. She smiled at me.

Alice?

You're going to be just fine, honey.

Oh, Alice. I knew you'd come. Where am I?

You're in the recovery room, Ms. Swan. My name is Jeanette.

Alice? Where are you?

Don't cry.

Why aren't you here, Alice? You were supposed to come for me.

You'll be out of here soon. I'm just going to check your wound.

Alice! I need you! They're hurting me!

Ms. Swan, please, calm down or you'll reinjure yourself. Doctor!

Alice! Help me!

Pulse is 175 and rising, BP is 180/105, her incision is bleeding—

Alice, please! I love you! Alice!

Increase her Demerol drip rate by five. Get me 10ccs of diazepam—

Alice! ALICE! Alice…alice…

Black.

Cool air breezed across my face, pulling at wisps of my hair. The air smelled different—no iodine, no blood. Fragrant and sweet, like flowers. Like one of Them. I turned toward the scent and opened my eyes, letting everything slowly come into focus and assume its normal shape.

No one was there.

My eyes squeezed shut and I inhaled, trying to prevent a fresh round of tears, when I heard the familiar sound of a clearing throat in the vicinity of the doorway.

"Dad?" I tried to sit up, but a nasty pain in my ankle throbbed at me. I looked down to see my heavily bandaged leg and foot, elevated. I didn't remember so much…padding, before. Was that a cast?

"Hey, Bells," my father greeted me by my baby-name in his low voice. I tried to focus on him as he walked in, but the ache in my leg was distracting, and worse, it was strengthening. "How do you feel?"

"Hurts," I rasped, raising the head of my mechanical bed with the blue button and looking around the room. There was another bed near mine, but it was empty. The red-and-brown striped wallpaper behind Charlie's head was…moving? Rolling? "Is it over? Did she operate?"

"Yes, she did." I stared at Charlie as he spoke, trying to understand why he looked so different. "All she would tell me was that your condition was non-life-threatening and that the procedure went well, but she couldn't give me details because you didn't have me down as a medical proxy." His irises, I finally realized—they were golden. Covering my eyes with my palms, I tried to rub the crazy out. "Why didn't you call me?"

"H-how'd you know—" I began, but suddenly I clamped a hand over my mouth. Charlie grabbed a bucket from nowhere and thrust it under my chin. I retched over and over, spewing yellow, mucous-flavored bile, my ankle aching more sharply with every heave.

"It's okay," Charlie whispered, taking the bucket from me when I seemed done and handing me a wet hand towel. "That's just from the anesthesia. It'll pass."

The damp rag was cool on my sweat-soaked face as I mopped at my skin and collapsed against the mattress. "What…" I gasped, trying to catch my breath, "what are you doing here, Dad?"

Charlie deposited the pink plastic tub under the nearby sink and walked back to my bedside, one hand lodged in his pocket, the other carrying a Styrofoam cup of water. "Shalice called me. She said you left her a message—she was under the impression that this wasn't severe, but I came anyway. I just got in a few hours ago." Something in his voice made me look at him closely as I sipped my water, at his eyes, sad cinnamon brown now, like mine. "Are you hurting?" he wanted to know.

"Yeah," I groaned, fighting the instinct to wiggle my toes. Are you?

"Should I get the nurse?" Dad asked rapidly.

"No, no. I can wait." I kept my eyes fastened on the wrinkle in the corner of my father's eye. It was wet. Maybe.

"Are you going to tell me what happened?" Charlie asked quietly but firmly.

"Um." Five years of college, and the first thing out of my mouth was um. Better than fuck, I supposed. "I had a motorcycle accident yesterday and broke my ankle. You can stay and listen when Dr. Rutherford stops by later."

Charlie sighed and lowered his gaze, studying his shoes. "Because I'm a cop, I feel the need to ask: were you drinking?"

"Of course not!" My ankle throbbed in agreement. "You raised me better than that, Charlie!"

"Okay, okay." He held his hands up, a gesture of truce. "I believe you. I just had to ask."

I folded my arms and looked out the door, watching as various hospital staff walked by in their multi-colored scrubs. I didn't see how anyone could tell the doctors, nurses, and orderlies apart when everyone was dressed the same. Maybe you were supposed to look for stethoscopes, print fabrics, and blood stains.

"Just so you know," Charlie said awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck, "I called your mother."

"Dad," I moaned. The sound reverberated all the way down my injured leg. "Why would you do that? Is she on her way here? God, like I need that." Did I really just say that out loud?

"You're her daughter," my father reminded me with a cross look on his face. "This is the kind of thing she would want to know."

"You know she's just going to show up here and start freaking out," I predicted.

"No, she's not," Charlie assured me, though I had no reason to believe such naïve assurances. Our mother-daughter relationship had cooled considerably after that phone call six months ago, but Renee was never one to miss an opportunity to get carried away. "I convinced her to stay put until I assess the situation. Just so long as you call her with good news and let her lecture you for a while, I'm sure she'll stay in Florida."

"Right. That'll happen." Batten down the hatches, people. Secure the provisions to the lifeboats. I puffed my cheeks and waited for Charlie to say something else.

"Bella," Charlie asked, sounding perturbed, "where's Ben? Why isn't he here?"

My tear-ducts seemed hyperactive today, but I could master those like I did everything else. "He's out of town on a job, and he won't be back until Sunday or Monday."

Dad's eyebrows lifted in surprise. "Couldn't get away from work?"

"He doesn't know yet."

"Doesn't know?" Charlie almost shouted. "Why not? Why wouldn't you tell him about an emergency?"

"It's just a broken ankle, Dad," I sighed, looking at the bouquet on my nightstand, obviously from the hospital gift shop. Charlie, forgetting my aversion to them, brought peach roses mixed with sprigs of lavender.

like lavender…or freesia. It's mouthwatering.

I fussed with my towel, looking for a clean corner to press against my eyes.

"You didn't even call Brown and Marty," he said, still bewildered. "They had no idea until I got here and called from your phone."

"What'd they say?" I wondered softly. I forgot all about being scheduled to work tonight; I was supposed to close with Marty, since Brown still wasn't feeling well. They were depending on me and I let them down. Stupid, stupid, stupid…

"They were worried sick," my father informed me. "Brown said he'll be here this evening, when you've had a chance to rest, and Marty is coming by in the morning. They had me call the towing company and ask that your bike be dropped off at their house. I've already paid for it. Thought I'd save you some money on towing and storage fees."

"Thank you," I whispered, checking the wallpaper to see if it was still moving. Thankfully it was holding its position. "You didn't have to do that. I can pay you back, but it might take a while." My thoughts flickered to the safe bolted to my closet floor, then dismissed the idea. I would talk to my advisor in a few days, see if she had any useful advice. Maybe I'd be able to take on some tutoring or work as an RA—the resident assistant in my building never did anything but sit on her ass and fall asleep at her desk.

"I don't want you to pay me back," Charlie grunted. "Bella, what are you doing? Why are you…?" I heard him make his exasperated noise, a kind of gruff, throaty exhale. "Why did I find out this way? Why did I get here and find you all alone?"

Huu tll guu giidang. That's how it is.

I took a deep breath and squeezed my eyes shut against the pain. I could handle pain. Pain was nothing. "I was going to call Ben after…now, I mean. You know, when I was sure I was okay. I didn't want anyone to worry." The murmur of my mother's voice tinkled through my ears: You'll always be last. I didn't want to be disappointed if I called him and he didn't come.

"What if everything wasn't okay?" Charlie asked. "What if you had complications during your surgery? What if you went into a coma and didn't wake up?"

"For god's sake, Charlie," I hissed, trying to keep my foot still and most decidedly not answering his question. "It's only steel plating and pins, not open heart surgery. I'm fine!"

"Why are you doing this?" Charlie demanded.

Red. The red call button was large and flat and depressed easily under my hand. "Can I get my nurse in here with more pain meds, please? This is really starting to hurt."

"Bella, please, talk to me."

"Your nurse will be there soon with some Tramadol, ma'am."

"Thank you!"

"Bella."

"I didn't call anyone because I didn't need anyone," I snapped. "This is my mess, my fault, and I don't need anybody to come in and rescue me. I can handle it on my own. I'll be fine."

"On your own." Charlie pressed his lips together and nodded, not in agreement, but as if contemplating something. He dropped his voice and leaned close, like he was trying to keep a secret. "The doctor said you asked for Alice."

Don't get attached—you only lose what you cling to.

I didn't look at anything, but it didn't matter. For a fleeting moment, I could see her beautiful smile again. Then it, like everything else I ever cared about, disappeared. "Yeah, well, I was drugged. I probably asked for the Easter Bunny, too." Never trust anyone you can't prove exists.

"You didn't scream for the Easter Bunny." He sighed, and it sounded almost like shame. "I never realized—" Charlie placed his hand over mine, but I jerked it away. "Don't be like that. I'm just trying to help."

"I will deal with this, Charlie," I huffed. "You don't need to worry about it."

"Bella—"

"I'll be fine all by myself," I repeated, turning my head away from him so he wouldn't see the tears falling hard and fast.

Don't rely on anyone else; the only person with the power or desire to take care of me is me.

"I'll be just fine."


October 2011

Charlie's house

Forks, WA

This is so stupid. Why am I crying in the middle of the night at Thanksgiving?

Really, there was no reason for this. I was so fortunate, and I knew that. Lucky I never developed a post-op infection. Lucky that Sue came up to Vancouver during my initial recuperation time on pretense of giving Renee a break from having to help me get around during those first two weeks, and that I had people who cared enough to assist me after that. Lucky that my incision healed properly and my hard cast would be traded for a boot next week, with physical therapy beginning not long after. Well-favored, in a darker but no less appreciated way, that I now could not afford to fly to Florida for Christmas, where Renee was hosting Phil's family holiday gathering this year. Fortunate that I still had office work that wasn't physically demanding and paid enough to get by, and that I had time enough to study and to host tutoring sessions, and that I would be able to finish my Master's degree in the coming year if I took a few extra courses in the summer. Lucky that between Ben, Marty, and myself, we'd be able to fix the damage to my bike's engine, though I couldn't exactly ride it at present. Blessed (by whom or what, I didn't know) that I was alive and well and able to spend Canadian Thanksgiving-slash-American Columbus Day in Forks with my dad and his wife, with a gaggle of step-siblings, in-laws, nieces, and nephews, and with Ben, whose daughter was away on vacation with her mom and grandparents this year.

Nieces and nephews, I thought again, trying to smile. It was bizarre having four kids call me 'Aunt Bella' and clamor for my attention. Sue probably had a lot more to do with that than Leah—I didn't know Leah very well at all, and I only saw her family once a year for the most part. Still, it was kind of nice; I could handle being Aunt Bella for a while, so long as nobody asked me to hold the baby for too long. They would be visiting again tomorrow, 'helping' Sue, Leah, and I prepare a feast—Hannah would have loved being allowed to help in the kitchen with the other kids. Charlie and Sue were coming around to the idea that Canada got it right, that Thanksgiving was better celebrated in October to put more time between expensive, fattening holiday meals, so we were expecting a full house tomorrow. Seth was even visiting from college in Seattle, and he had always been pleasant company.

So many things to be thankful for. I should be ecstatic right now.

Grateful.

Small sniffles escaped from my nose. Try as I might, I couldn't keep quiet enough. Shutting my eyes didn't help; I could still see the same thing I'd been staring at for the last couple of hours, and the throbbing sensation felt more acute.

"Bella? What's wrong?" Ben rumbled, snorting abruptly out of a particularly loud snore and rolling over beside me in bed. Sue had given away my twin mattress set and brought in the full-sized bed she once had in her old house, ostensibly so that she could fit all the grandkids in one bed for sleepovers. She and Charlie suffered no illusions about the nature of my physical relationship with Ben, and they did not feel a need to impose false notions of propriety that neither of them held to. Not that I was in a fit state for anything like that at present. Anyway, it was better for me to have someone with me at night in case I fell or needed something. "You're shaking. You alright?" Ben asked.

"Sorry for waking you up." I whispered to cover what I knew he would hear in my voice. "I'm okay."

"The ankle bothering you again?" he persisted, groggy but concerned. "Do I need to fix your pillow?"

"It's just the damp weather and cold air." Please don't look at me. The thing I hated about being stuck in this cast was that I couldn't roll onto my side, not to get comfortable, not to have sex, and not to hide my face. "Go back to sleep."

So of course, Ben propped himself up on one elbow and peered down at me. "Don't be so stubborn, woman," he sighed, rubbing his face with his free hand and sitting up. "I'll get your Naproxen."

"Ben, I'm fine," I protested, wiping my eyes hurriedly while his back was turned. "It's just a little achy. No big deal."

He listened—I could always tell when he was really listening—but that didn't stop him from fishing my medicine bottle out of my bag and sitting it beside the water glass from the nightstand. "Stop being brave. It's just me."

The low light made it difficult to see his features, but I could imagine the strong set of his nose. Sometimes, when I had a few too many beers (never with meds, because I wasn't an idiot), I could imagine him as a proud warrior in another life. Generally this led to hot, wild sex, although that was unlikely to happen in my dad's house, injured or not. Quietude was a quality I did not possess in bed.

Shaking myself from this errant thought (where did that come from, anyway?), I exhaled harshly in resignation and pushed myself up into a sitting position. "Fine. Just one, though. It's not that bad."

Ben handed over my pain pill and water before he returned the prescription bottle to the luggage. "Say what you like, Bella. I know it hurts."

I swallowed my medicine quickly and placed the water back on the nightstand, carefully avoiding knocking over my forearm crutches. After a moment's consideration, I settled back under the covers again, shifting my foot around while Ben readjusted the cushion. "What makes you say that?" I asked, staring up at the ceiling.

Ben crawled back into bed and threw an arm across my stomach; I fought the urge to squirm. The warmth of another body was something I should have been used to by now, but tonight it felt especially foreign. "You think I didn't notice you crying?"

My eyes shifted back to the window and the rocking chair beside it that held my scruffy suede jacket. Ben had offered to get me a new jacket for my birthday, but I declined, insisting new boots would be better, since mine had to be cut off me after the accident for my x-rays.

Two hours I'd been lying awake, staring at that window, that jacket, and that chair. Waiting.

Waiting for the screaming to start again, the ancient pain of my younger body's physical manifestation of loss and abandonment. Waiting for the window to slide open. Waiting for a lecture on what a terrible job I did stitching the jacket back up. Waiting for Him to make me beg Him not to kill the fragile human male who dared to share this bed with me, in this room that was once our oasis. Waiting for Him to steal me from this life. Waiting for Him, any of Them, to love me, if only for my blood flavor. Waiting to be worth something. Waiting to wake up from a strange, six-year-long dream. Waiting to suffer and die all over again.

I placed a hand over Ben's on my belly and laced my fingers with his. "I've hurt worse before."

Ben squeezed my fingers and moved closer, placing a sleepy kiss on my shoulder. "Try to get some sleep."

Sleep. Right.

"Hey," I whispered after a minute. I knew he wasn't deeply asleep yet because he hadn't started snoring. "What are you doing for Christmas?"

Ben grumbled against my shoulder, something about ridiculous questions. "Going to the rez to spend Christmas with Hannah, just like I do every year."

"Oh," I breathed. Compartmentalize. Do not let him see that this means anything. "Right, I forgot." I thought for a few seconds, hoping to sound like I was just curious. "What do you usually do with Hannah?"

"Typical Christmas stuff," Ben replied. "Songs, stories, cookies. Just the three of us on Christmas Eve, I crash on the couch, and then Laura's parents and a few of my relatives come over the next day to open gifts, or we go to one of their houses. Hannah never gets any real family time with both parents except for special occasions, so Laura and I try to make things feel as normal as possible for her."

"That's really great," I replied, infusing a bit of enthusiasm in my response. It really did sound like fun, and I would never want to take that sense of family away from him. "My parents never did anything like that for me when I was a kid. I'm sure she's looking forward to it."

"Uh-huh. What about you?" he asked, half-asleep but still polite. "Coming back to Forks?"

"I, uh…" Why was this so hard? "I think I'll be staying in Vancouver this year. I can't really afford the gas to make this road trip again, you know? Renee's not an option either, so I decided to just stay put." Shut up, Bella; stop babbling.

"Oh, right," Ben remarked, sounding slightly awkward. That was all he said.

And I understood.

You'll always be last.

"I was thinking," I said in a small voice, "that maybe I'll spend Christmas with Brown and Marty. If they don't go out of town, I mean."

"That sounds nice," he yawned.

"Yeah." I trained my eyes on the night-grey ceiling again and kept my voice toneless. I couldn't be angry with Ben over this silly wish of mine. Family came first, and I wasn't family. I was just his girlfriend, and I had no business intruding and making everyone feel uncomfortable. This is me, not clinging. "Marty loves my Gran Marie's homemade chocolate custard pie."

"Get some rest," he mumbled, rubbing his thumb on my shirt. "Wake me up if you need another pill or anything at all."

After a few minutes Ben started snoring again. I lifted my hand off his and pushed my hair away from my forehead, staring at the window for another twenty minutes. It was pointless. Stupid.

Frustrated, I gently shoved Ben's arm off me and sat up again, swinging my legs off the bed and grabbing my crutches. My arms had grown stronger, I thought, slipping them through the forearm braces as I stood and grasped the handles. Thumping the rubber-tipped crutches on the hardwood floor as quietly as possible, I made my way past the jacket and chair and window, through the bedroom door, down the hall and into the bathroom.

Sue had redone this room as well, mostly just in terms of general cleanliness, some paint, and a bath mat on the floor. She also installed a full length mirror behind the door. Leaning against the sink and setting my crutches aside, I lifted my sleep shirt off my body and slung it over a towel bar. As carefully as I knew how, I balanced my weight on my good leg and stared at my tattooed body in the mirror.

Raven looked back at me from my right breast, reminding me who I was. Not the mousy girl with two ridiculous parents anymore, but a woman of knowledge with a proud and ancient family history. The sink served as a handrail as I twisted around; the tribal Harley tattoo on my shoulder reminded me what I could do, what I had learned about myself, and that, injury notwithstanding, I was free upon this earth, not bound to any place or thing or person unless I so chose.

Tattoos were painful and bloody and took a lot out of me, but there was a certain amount of satisfaction and accomplishment that came with such hardships. No one could take that hurt from me, feel it in my stead, or make it easier or better. Analgesics and alcohol were out of the question, since they thinned the blood and only made the bleeding more profuse. When I wanted ink, I endured the process strictly under my own strength and pain tolerance. My vulnerability was on full display, but so was my power.

I lovingly traced the empty stretch of skin under the opposite shoulder, from waist to shoulder blade, thinking of the tattoo I wanted there. My accident had interrupted my money-saving process, but someday, maybe after I was done with university, a grand symbol would cover me: Hiilanga, the Thunderbird, intelligent and powerful, sometimes guardian, sometimes wrathful, ever watchful. This I wanted, to show the world—to show myself—that I was inferior to no one.

With a smile, I pulled my shirt back on.


Footnotes:

WEXES: (SENĆOŦEN) Frog

HÁ,E.: Yes

Aan dang k'yaaw g̱a hll 'aawuu g̱as ga. (Haida) I will sit here and wait for you.

U TW̱ HE,HO,I SEN OL. YOŦ SEN OL U HE,HO,I. (SENĆOŦEN) I'm just alone now. I'm always alone.

Diez, nueve, ocho…: (Spanish) Ten, nine, eight…

Huu tll guu giidang. (Haida) That's how it is.

Hiilanga: (Haida) Thunderbird

Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction. All recognizable characters and song lyrics are the property of their respective copyright owners. Portions of Stephenie Meyer's original work are reprinted, but no copyright violation is intended. References to real places and groups are used fictitiously, and certain elements of history are ignored. This story is in no way meant to reflect actual criminal events or territorial claims of gangs or motorcycle clubs in Vancouver or any other location.