Chapter 5.
After dinner I went up to my room go have some alone time. I figured Charlie needed some too, I mean there was only so much to say about school and Forks. I heard Charlie turning on the tv downstairs and I closed the door behind me. Charlie had really given decorating my room a serious effort and I actually quite liked what he'd done to it. I layed down on the bed and looked up into the ceiling, just contemplating the day for a moment.
At first when my mom had told me about going away with Phil I'd been panicking a bit, since I knew there was no way I could go with them without jumping from school to school and I could tell that Renée really wanted to go with him. And of course I didn't want to ruin that for her, so my only option seemed to be to offer to go live with Charlie. She was really hesitant at first, but she pretty soon also drew the conclusion that that was probably the best option. And hey, it honestly wasn't a huge deal to me, I'd gotten used to the nomad life after 17 years with a restless mother. Sure, I'd realized it would be a bit odd to live with Charlie at first, seeing as we hardly knew each other, but it wasn't like I'd be leaving a bunch of friends behind. Well, except for Dan that is.
Dan and I met when I was 12 and he was 13. I'd seen him around school several times without actually paying any attention and honestly he wasn't someone who'd have people gawking when entering a room. He was one of those tall and lanky guys with a bit of a quirky look, not quite hipster but more on the odd side. He always wore t-shirt with prints that demanded serious thought for you to even understand if there was a pun in it or if it was just something really deep. He had shoulder length dark hair which he tried to keep tied back, but somehow a couple of strands always managed to escape, leaving him looking a bit savage. He had friends, so he couldn't be counted as a total outcast, even though you'd think so seeing as he often left his friends behind and sitting alone reading, until they found him and dragged him with them.
Anyhow, Dan wasn't the kind of guy you'd notice and I probably wouldn't have either, if it hadn't been for "Madame Bovary". It was in sixth grade and I'd just started getting into literature for real, trying to reach beyond your typical YA books. I'd just finished "Thérèse Raquin" and decided that "Madame Bovary" by Flaubert was to be my next conquest. I walked over to the shelf were the book was supposed to be standing, but after looking through the shelf several times I still couldn't find it. And that's when I noticed Dan, sitting in one of the windows a couple of steps away holding "Madame Bovary". I sighed irritated. Normally no one at this school fought me over the books and I was used to being able to get my hands on the books I wanted to read right away. I decided to at least let him know that he was cramping my style and walked over to him.
"Hey! Could you maybe leave that book to the librarian when you're done with it?", I said in a meek voice. He looked up from his book, just staring at me distrustfully, without saying a single word. Great, was he going to give me attitude about this? "Yeah, because I'd like to read it when you're done so it'd be a great help if you did. The librarian will give it to me", I said, irritated by the fact that I had to explain myself further. "If your teacher has recommended you to read this book you'll probably want to go looking for another book to read since I only just started reading it", he said arrogantly and then returning his gaze to the book. The nerve of this guy! "Okay, buddy", I said with a pointed voice, "My teacher did NOT recommend me this book, so we're in the clear. I'd just like to read it so if you could hand it in when you're done that would be great. Think you can manage that?" He looked up again, staring at me suspiciously for a brief moment. "You read Flaubert?", he said, looking at me incredulously. "Well, I would be if you weren't hogging it." He looked at me for another brief moment and then he smiled brightly at me. "So, what else do you read?"
After that day me and Dan had quickly grown to become close friends and even though Dan's friends probably never saw what he liked about me he was always resolute on having me hang with them. After establishing that we shared a love of books we soon also noticed we had similar taste in music and movies. We became inseparable and after our parents let go of the idea of it being puppy love and saw that we actually just got along really well they stopped trying to enforce curfews and rules and let us do pretty much whatever we wanted. Which most of the times just concluded us sitting on the roof of his house and discussing literary matters, music and life in general until his mom would poke her head out through the window letting me know that Renée was about to file a missing person report if I didn't come home soon.
It was only when Dan started talking about college that I realized that our way of life wouldn't last forever and I started to question my own motives for hanging out with him. Dan was one of those brainy kids who'd finish high school one year ahead of his class, and seeing as he was one year older than me he'd be going to college two years ahead of me. To Dan high school had mostly just been the numbing torture of idiocy that he had to endure in order to be able to go to college and really start his life and during his last year of high school college was all he would talk about. I tried to be happy for him, but deep down inside I suspected I'd miss more than our talks and literature sessions when he was gone. And I actually managed to keep my cool almost through the whole year, never letting him know what I really thought about it.
But then one day, at the end of the year, he announced that he was thinking of doing a road trip during the summer and then going directly to college. And that's when I lost it for a while, not really handling the thought of him leaving even earlier than I'd planned. But I suppose that's all it took for him to realize what I'd been thinking about the last year and after a couple of weeks of awkwardness and poor communication one day he appeared on my porch letting me know he'd been thinking the same thing, but saying we should probably take things slow, if we were going to take them at all, seeing as he'd be going to college and we both knew what that did to people. Me on the other hand, I was just thrilled to know that the feeling was mutual and thought to myself that the rest of it would just fall into place with time.
So that's what we did, we took it slow. A couple of weeks later, in a moment that was excruciatingly awkward for both of us, Dan asked me to go to prom with him, because that was what couples did, right? Our parents were also a bit confused when they forced us to pose in front of the camera in the hallway before the dance, but since we kept our whatever it was on the low the probably just figured it was a common thing among friends going to prom together. And honestly it took a while for me and Dan to adjust to the new situation too, seeing as a hug wasn't just a hug anymore and hanging out wasn't as casual as it had been.
But we did good and things were fine, even when Dan went away to college and I only got to see him every other weekend or so. He'd come back home as soon as he'd get the chance and on two rare occasions I managed to convince Renée into letting me visit him over the weekend. I think she was well aware that she wasn't exactly earning any parenting skills and that it could hardly be considered as appropriate with the two of us huddled up in his tiny dorm room. But since Renée never has been the typical parent she let is pass and didn't ask too many questions about it, except for holding an excruciatingly torturous conversation with me about the importance of "being safe". Things were going great. Well, that is, things were going great until they weren't...
Writer's note: I hope you don't mind that I embellish on the part about Bella's life before Forks a bit in the beginning, I promise I will get back to the now in the next chapter. I also promise that I have a good reason for building up Bella's past. Just wait and see...
And yet again, thanks for all your kind comments!
